25 Oct 2019
Motion Pictures, Radio, Recording Permalink

W. C. Fields

October 25, 2019

William Claude Dukenfield, better known as W. C. Fields, was an American comedian, actor, juggler and writer. Fields created a comic and hard-drinking egotist who remained a sympathetic character despite his snarling contempt for dogs, children, and women.

The characterization he portrayed in films and on radio was so strong it became generally identified with Fields himself. It was maintained by the movie-studio publicity departments at Fields’s studios and further established by Robert Lewis Taylor’s 1949 biography W.C. Fields, His Follies and Fortunes. Beginning in 1973, with the publication of Fields’s letters, photos, and personal notes in grandson Ronald Fields’s book W.C. Fields by Himself, it has been shown that Fields was married, and he financially supported their son and loved his grandchildren.

However, Madge Evans, a friend and actress, told a visitor in 1972 that Fields so deeply resented intrusions on his privacy by curious tourists walking up the driveway to his Los Angeles home that he would hide in the shrubs by his house and fire BB pellets at the trespassers’ legs. Groucho Marx told a similar story on his live performance album, An Evening with Groucho.

Fields was born William Claude Dukenfield in Darby, Pennsylvania. His father, James L. Dukenfield, was from an English-Irish Catholic family that immigrated to America from Sheffield, England in 1854. James Dukenfield served in Company M of the 72nd Pennsylvania Infantry Regiment in the American Civil War and was wounded in 1863. Fields’s mother, Kate Spangler Felton, 15 years younger than her husband, was a Protestant of German ancestry. The 1876 Philadelphia City Directory lists James Dukenfield as a clerk. After marrying, he worked as an independent produce merchant and a part-time hotel-keeper.

25 Oct 2019
Recording, Television Permalink

Vivian Vance

October 25, 2019

Vivian Vance was an American award winning television and theater actress and singer. Often referred to as ?TV?s most beloved second banana,? she is best known for her role as Ethel Mertz, sidekick to Lucille Ball on the American television sitcom I Love Lucy, and as Vivian Bagley on The Lucy Show.

Born Vivian Roberta Jones in Cherryvale, Kansas, Vance was the second of six children born to Robert Jones and Euphemia Ragan. When she was six years old her family moved to Independence, Kansas, where she eventually began her dramatic studies at Independence High School under the tutelage of Anna Ingleman, the drama instructor. William Inge was a classmate and fellow cast member in play productions at the school. Her love of acting clashed with her mother's strict religious beliefs, and it wasn't too long before Vance, nicknamed "Viv" by friends, became very rebellious, often sneaking out of her bedroom and staying out after curfew. She soon changed her surname to Vance and moved to Albuquerque, New Mexico, to find work as an actress. Vance was a founding member of the Albuquerque Little Theatre, where she played a vamp in This Thing Called Love and a nun in The Cradle Song, the local theatre community helped pay her way to New York to study under Eva Le Gallienne.

Starting in 1934, she was in a number of shows on Broadway playing second or third leads:

and later in her career:

25 Oct 2019
Motion Pictures, Television Permalink

Walt Disney

October 25, 2019

Walter Elias “Walt” Disney was an American film producer, director, screenwriter, voice actor, animator, entrepreneur, entertainer, international icon and philanthropist. Disney is famous for his influence in the field of entertainment during the 20th century. As the co-founder of Walt Disney Productions, Disney became one of the best-known motion picture producers in the world. The corporation he co-founded, now known as The Walt Disney Company, today has annual revenues of approximately U.S. $35 billion.

Disney is particularly noted for being a film producer and a popular showman, as well as an innovator in animation and theme park design. He and his staff created a number of the world’s most famous fictional characters including Mickey Mouse, a character for which Disney himself was the original voice. He has won 26 Academy Awards out of 59 nominations, including a record four in one year, giving him more awards and nominations than any other individual. He also won seven Emmy Awards. He is the namesake for Disneyland and Walt Disney World Resort theme parks in the United States, as well as the international resorts in Japan, France, and China.

Disney died of lung cancer in Burbank, California, on December 15, 1966. The following year, construction began on Walt Disney World Resort in Florida. His brother Roy Disney inaugurated The Magic Kingdom on October 1, 1971.

Walter Elias Disney was born on December 5, 1901, to Elias Disney, of Irish-Canadian descent, and Flora Call Disney, of German-American descent, in Chicago’s Hermosa community area at 2156 N. Tripp Ave.

25 Oct 2019
Motion Pictures Permalink

Wallace Beery

October 25, 2019

Wallace Fitzgerald Beery was an American actor. He is best known for his portrayal of Bill in Min and Bill opposite Marie Dressler, his titular role in a series of films featuring the character Sweedie, and his titular role in The Champ, for which he won the Academy Award for Best Actor. Beery appeared in some 250 movies over a 36-year span.

Beery was born in Kansas City, Missouri to Noah W. and Marguerite Beery. He was a younger brother of actor/film executive William Beery and actor Noah Beery, who also had long careers in the motion picture industry. He was an uncle of actor Noah Beery, Jr. According to U.S. Census records, all three Beery brothers were born to the same parents, making them full brothers and not half-brothers as many biographies have claimed.

Wallace Beery ran away from home and joined the Ringling Brothers Circus at age sixteen as an assistant elephant trainer. He left two years later, after being clawed by a leopard. Beery found work in New York City in comic opera as a baritone and began to appear on Broadway. In 1913, Essanay Studios, cast as “Sweedie, The Swedish Maid,” a masculine character in drag. Later, he worked for the Essanay Studios location in Niles, California.

In 1915, Beery starred with his wife Gloria Swanson in Sweedie Goes to College. This marriage did not survive his drinking and abuse. Beery began playing villains, and in 1917 portrayed Pancho Villa in Patria at a time when Villa was still active in Mexico. Beery reprised the role seventeen years later in one of MGM’s biggest hits.

25 Oct 2019
Motion Pictures Permalink

Viola Dana

October 25, 2019

Viola Dana was an American film actress who was successful during the era of silent movies.

Born Virginia Flugrath, Dana was a child star, appearing on the stage at the age of three. She read Shakespeare and particularly identified with the teenage Juliet. She enjoyed a long run at the Hudson Theater in New York City. A particular favorite of audiences was her performance in David Belasco’s Poor Little Rich Girl, when she was 16. She went into vaudeville with Dustin Farnum in The Little Rebel and played a bit part in The Model by Augustus Thomas.

Dana entered films in 1910. Her first motion picture was made at a former Manhattan riding academy on West 61st Street. The stalls had been transformed to dressing rooms. Dana became a star with the Edison Company, working at their studio in the Bronx. She fell in love with Edison director John Hancock Collins and they married in 1915. Dana’s success in Collins’s Edison features such as Children of Eve and The Cossack Whip encouraged producer B. A. Rolfe to offer the couple lucrative contracts with his company, Rolfe Photoplays, which released through Metro Pictures Corporation. Dana and Collins accepted Rolfe’s offer in 1916 and made several important films for Rolfe/Metro, notably The Girl Without A Soul and Blue Jeans. Rolfe closed his New York-area studio down in the face of the 1918 influenza epidemic and sent most of his personnel to California. Dana left before Collins, who was finishing work at the studio; however, Collins contracted influenza which rapidly turned into pneumonia and died in a New York hotel room on October 23, 1918.

Dana remained in California acting for Metro. In 1920, she became engaged to Ormer Locklear, a daring aviator and military veteran. Locklear died when his plane crashed on August 2, 1920 during a nighttime film shooting. Locklear was the prototype for the Robert Redford movie, The Great Waldo Pepper, and Dana was an honored guest for the premiere of The Great Waldo Pepper.

25 Oct 2019
Motion Pictures, Television Permalink

Vincent Price

October 25, 2019

Vincent Leonard Price II was an American actor, well known for his distinctive voice and serio-comic attitude in a series of horror films made in the latter part of his career.

Price was born in St. Louis, Missouri, the son of Marguerite Cobb and Vincent Leonard Price, Sr., who was the president of the National Candy Company. His grandfather, Vincent Clarence Price, invented “Dr. Price’s Baking Powder”, the first cream of tartar baking powder, and secured the family’s fortune.

Price attended St. Louis Country Day School. He was further educated at Yale in art history and fine art. He was a member of the Courtauld Institute, London. He became interested in the theatre during the 1930s, appearing professionally on stage from 1935.

He made his film debut in 1938 with Service de Luxe and established himself in the film Laura, opposite Gene Tierney, directed by Otto Preminger. He also played Joseph Smith, Jr. in the movie Brigham Young, as well as a pretentious priest in The Keys of the Kingdom .

25 Oct 2019
Recording Permalink

Vikki Carr

October 25, 2019

Vikki Carr is an American singer from Mexican origins, who has performed in a variety of music genres, including jazz, pop and country, but has enjoyed her greatest success singing in Spanish. Carr is a blond and blue-eyed white Hispanic.

After taking the stage name ‘Vikki Carr’ the singer signed with Liberty Records in 1962. Her first single to achieve any success was “He’s a Rebel”, which in 1962 reached No. 5 in Australia and No. 115 in the United States. Producer Phil Spector heard Carr cutting the song in the studio, and immediately recorded a cover version billed to The Crystals that reached No. 1 in the United States. In 1966, Carr toured Vietnam with actor/comedian Danny Kaye. The following year her album It Must Be Him was nominated for three Grammy Awards. The title track reached No. 3 on the Billboard Hot 100 in the United States in 1967. “It Must Be Him” sold over one million copies, and was awarded a gold disc. She had two other songs make the US called her “the best girl singer in the business”. Carr had 10 singles which made the US pop charts and 13 albums which made the US pop album charts.

In 1968, she taped six specials for London Weekend TV. She appeared on various television programs, such as ABC’s The Bing Crosby Show in the 1964-1965 season. In 1970, she was named “Woman of the Year” by the Los Angeles Times. She guest-hosted The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson in 1973. She received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 1981. Carr also achieved the rare feat of singing for five presidents during her career: Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, Ronald Reagan, George Bush, and Bill Clinton. Ford writes in his autobiography, A Time to Heal, that when Carr appeared at the White House, she asked the president, “What Mexican dish do you like?” His response: “I like you.” He goes on to write that the First Lady was not pleased: “Betty overheard the exchange, and needless to say, she wasn’t wild about it.”

In the 1980s and 1990s Carr had enormous success in the Latin music world, winning Grammy Awards for Best Mexican-American Performance in 1986 for her album Simplemente Mujer; Best Latin Pop Album in 1992 for Cosas del Amor; and Best Mexican-American Performance in 1995 for Recuerdo a Javier Solis. She also received Grammy nominations for the discs Brindo a La Vida, Al Bolero, A Ti and Emociones. Her numerous Spanish-language hit singles include “Total,” “Discúlpame,” “Déjame,” “Hay Otro en Tu Lugar,” “Esos Hombres,” “Mala Suerte” and “Cosas del Amor.” The latter song spent more than two months at No. 1 on the US Latin charts in 1991, her biggest Spanish-language US hit. Her Spanish-language albums have been certified gold and platinum in Mexico, Chile, Puerto Rico, Venezuela, Costa Rica, Colombia and Ecuador.

25 Oct 2019
Motion Pictures, Radio Permalink

Vincent Lopez

October 25, 2019

Vincent Lopez was an American bandleader and pianist.

Vincent Lopez was born of Portuguese immigrant parents in Brooklyn, New York and was leading his own dance band in New York City by 1917. On November 27, 1921 his band began broadcasting on the new medium of entertainment radio; the band’s weekly 90-minute show on Newark, NJ station WJZ boosted the popularity of both himself and of radio. He became one of America’s most popular bandleaders, and would retain that status through the 1940s.

He began his radio programs by announcing “Lopez speaking!”.His theme song was “Nola,” Felix Arndt’s novelty ragtime piece of 1915, and Lopez became so identified with it that he occasionally satirized it. Lopez worked occasionally in feature films, notably The Big Broadcast. He was also one of the very first bandleaders to work in Soundies movie musicals, in 1940. He made additional Soundies in 1944.

Noted musicians who played in his band included Artie Shaw, Xavier Cugat, Jimmy Dorsey, Tommy Dorsey, Mike Mosiello and Glenn Miller. He also featured singers Keller Sisters and Lynch, Betty Hutton and Marion Hutton. Lopez’s longtime drummer was the irreverent Mike Riley, who popularized the novelty hit “The Music Goes Round and Round.”

25 Oct 2019
Motion Pictures, Television Permalink

Vince McMahon

October 25, 2019

Vincent Kennedy “Vince” McMahon Jr. is an American professional wrestling promoter, announcer, commentator, film producer and former occasional professional wrestler, and is often referred to as the archetypal wrestling magnate. McMahon currently serves as the chairman and CEO of professional wrestling promotion World Wrestling Entertainment and is the majority shareholder of the company, holding approximately 88% of the total voting power within WWE. Upon acquiring World Championship Wrestling and Extreme Championship Wrestling, McMahon’s WWE became the sole remaining major American professional wrestling promotion until the national expansion of Total Nonstop Action Wrestling and Ring of Honor.

As an on-camera character, he can appear on all WWE brands. McMahon plays a character known by the ring name Mr. McMahon, based on himself. In the world of WWE, he is a two-time world champion having won the WWE Championship and ECW World Championship. He was also the winner of the 1999 Royal Rumble.

Vince is the husband of Linda McMahon, with whom he ran WWE from its establishment in 1980 until she resigned as CEO in September 2009.

McMahon first met the promoter for Capitol Wrestling Corporation, his father Vincent J. McMahon’s company, at the age of 12. At that point, McMahon became interested in following his father’s professional wrestling footsteps and often accompanied him on trips to Madison Square Garden. McMahon also wanted to be a wrestler but his father would not let him, explaining that promoters did not appear on the show and should stay apart from their wrestlers.