25 Oct 2019
Recording, Television Permalink

Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers

October 25, 2019

In memory of entertainer and Walk of Famer Tom Petty, flowers were placed on his star on the 

Hollywood Walk of Fame on Tuesday, October, 3, 2017 at 11:00 a.m. PDT. The star in category of Recording is located at 7000 Hollywood Boulevard . “Rest in peace Tom Petty. You will be missed!” Ana Martinez, Producer of the Hollywood Walk of Fame signed the card on behalf of the Hollywood Historic Trust and the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce.

Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers are a rock band, most of whose members are from the United States. They were formed in 1976 by Tom Petty, Mike Campbell, and Benmont Tench, all of whom had been members of Mudcrutch. Petty and the Heartbreakers are known for hit singles such as "American Girl", "Breakdown", "The Waiting", "Learning to Fly", "Refugee" and "Mary Jane's Last Dance". The Heartbreakers still tour regularly and continue to record albums.

Petty has fought against his record company on more than one occasion, first in 1978/79 over transference to another label and then again in 1981 over the price of his record, which was considered expensive. He is also outspoken on the current state of the music industry and modern radio stations. On his 2002 album, The Last DJ, Petty sang about that and other issues and talked about them on the bonus DVD that came with the limited edition album.

Although most of their material is produced and performed under the name "The Heartbreakers", they have also participated in outside projects, with Petty himself releasing solo albums, the most successful being 1989's Full Moon Fever.

The three founding members, along with Randall Marsh and Tom Leadon, recorded an album by Mudcrutch. This was the band's first album, made more significant by the fact that they had not recorded together since 1974. Additionally, as of June 2010, Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers will begin a tour following the release of their new studio album titled Mojo on June 15th 2010.

25 Oct 2019
Motion Pictures, Television Permalink

Tom Selleck

October 25, 2019

Thomas William “Tom” Selleck is an American actor and film producer, best known for his starring role as Hawaii-based private investigator Thomas Magnum on the 1980s television show Magnum, P.I. He also plays Jesse Stone in a series of made-for-TV movies based on the Robert B. Parker novels. In 2010, he appears as Chief Frank Reagan in the drama Blue Bloods on CBS.

He has appeared extensively on television in roles such as Dr. Richard Burke on Friends and A.J. Cooper on Las Vegas. In addition to his series work, Selleck has appeared in more than fifty made for TV and general release movies, including Mr. Baseball, Quigley Down Under, and Lassiter.

Selleck was born in Detroit, Michigan, the son of Martha S., a homemaker, and Robert D. Selleck, an executive and real estate investor. The family moved to Sherman Oaks, Los Angeles, California, when Selleck was growing up. His siblings include brothers Robert and Daniel, and sister Martha. Selleck graduated from Grant High School in 1962.

Along with modeling, Selleck attended the University of Southern California on a basketball scholarship where he played for the Trojans. He is 6 feet 4

25 Oct 2019
Motion Pictures, Recording Permalink

Tony Bennett

October 25, 2019

Tony Bennett is an American singer of popular music, standards, show tunes, and jazz.

Raised in New York City, Bennett began singing at an early age. He fought in the final stages of World War II as an infantryman with the U.S. Army in the European Theatre. Afterwards, he developed his singing technique, signed with Columbia Records, and had his first number one popular song with “Because of You” in 1951. Several top hits such as “Rags to Riches” followed in the early 1950s. Bennett then further refined his approach to encompass jazz singing. He reached an artistic peak in the late 1950s with albums such as The Beat of My Heart and Basie Swings, Bennett Sings. In 1962, Bennett recorded his signature song, “I Left My Heart in San Francisco”. His career and his personal life then suffered an extended downturn during the height of the rock music era.

Bennett staged a remarkable comeback in the late 1980s and 1990s, putting out gold record albums again and expanding his audience to the MTV Generation while keeping his musical style intact. He remains a popular and critically praised recording artist and concert performer in the 2000s. Bennett has won fifteen Grammy Awards, two Emmy Awards, been named an NEA Jazz Master and a Kennedy Center Honoree. He has sold over 50 million records worldwide. Bennett is also a serious and accomplished painter, creating works under the name Benedetto that are on permanent public display in several institutions.

Anthony Benedetto was born in Astoria, Queens, New York City, the son of Ann and John Benedetto. His father was a grocer who had emigrated from Podàrgoni, a rural eastern district of the southern Italian city of Reggio Calabria, and his mother was a seamstress. With two other children and a father who was ailing and unable to work, the siblings grew up in poverty. John Benedetto died when Anthony was 10 years old.

25 Oct 2019
Live Performance Permalink

Tommy Tune

October 25, 2019

Thomas James “Tommy” Tune is an American actor, dancer, singer, theatre director, -producer, and choreographer. Over the course of his career, he has won nine Tony Awards and the National Medal of Arts.

Tune was born in Wichita Falls, Texas to oil rig worker, horse trainer, and restaurateur, Jim Tune, and Eva Mae Clark. He attended Lamar High School in Houston and the Methodist-affiliated Lon Morris College in Jacksonville, Texas, and went on to earn his Bachelors degree from the University of Texas at Austin in 1962, and take graduate courses at the University of Houston. Tune later moved to New York to start his career.

In 1965, Tune made his Broadway debut as a performer in the musical Baker Street. His first Broadway directing and choreography credits were for the original production of The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas in 1978. He has gone on to direct or choreograph, or both, some eight Broadway musicals. He directed a new musical titled Turn of the Century, which premiered at the Goodman Theatre in Chicago on September 19, 2008 and closed on November 2, 2008.

Off-Broadway, Tune has directed The Club and Cloud Nine. Tune toured the United States in the Sherman Brothers musical Busker Alley in 1994-1995 and in the stage adaptation of the film Dr. Doolittle in 2006.

25 Oct 2019
Motion Pictures, Radio Permalink

Tommy and Betty Lou Riggs

October 25, 2019

Tommy Riggs and Betty Lou was an unusual radio situation comedy broadcast in various timeslots from 1938 to 1946.

Tommy Riggs switched back and forth from his natural baritone to the voice of a seven-year-old girl, Betty Lou. These dialogues found a shape in later episodes when the character of Betty Lou Barrie was established as Riggs’ niece.

In his hometown of Pittsburgh, where Riggs ran a poultry business, he was a pianist-vocalist on WCAE in 1931. When station manager J.L. Coffin heard Riggs’ little girl voice, he put The Tom and Betty Program on WCAE’s schedule, and Riggs later moved on to KDKA, WTAM and, in 1937, WLW, where Harry Frankel called a New York agent. An audition in New York led to a transcribed series for Chevrolet, and after Rudy Vallée heard the Chevrolet show, Riggs’ agent told him he had two days to get ready for an appearance on Vallée’s Royal Gelatin Hour. Vallée signed him for a 13-week contract. The audience reaction catapulted Riggs to fame and the Tommy Riggs and Betty Lou show. Anita Ellis was the program’s vocalist.

25 Oct 2019
Radio, Recording Permalink

Tom Breneman

October 25, 2019

Thomas Breneman Smith was a popular 1940s American radio personality known to his listeners as Tom Breneman.

Born in Waynesboro, Pennsylvania, Breneman was host of the show Breakfast in Hollywood which aired on the Blue Network, ABC, NBC and Mutual at various times from 1941 to 1948.

Breneman’s program went through numerous title changes but was best known as Breakfast in Hollywood. By the mid-1940s, Breneman had ten million listeners. The popularity of the radio program was such that he created his own magazine, and in 1945 he opened his own establishment, Tom Breneman’s Restaurant, located on Vine Street off Sunset Boulevard.

25 Oct 2019
Motion Pictures Permalink

Tom Moore

October 25, 2019

Thomas J. “Tom” Moore was an Irish-born American actor and director. He appeared in at least 186 motion pictures from 1908 to 1954. Frequently cast as the romantic lead, he starred in silent movies as well as in some of the first talkies.

Born in Fordstown Crossroads, County Meath, Moore, along with his brothers, Owen, Matt, and Joe, emigrated to the United States. Owen and Matt also had successful movie careers. Tom Moore appeared in his first silent motion picture in 1908. He also directed 17 motion pictures in 1914 and 1915, including The Secret Room. In 1914, he married silent star Alice Joyce, with whom he had a daughter, Alice Moore, who acted in six films with her father from 1934 to 1937. While in New York City on New Year’s Eve, 1920, Moore met the young French actress Renée Adorée. A whirlwind romance ensued and six weeks after meeting, they were married on February 12, 1921, in his home in Beverly Hills. The marriage lasted only a few years. In 1931, Moore was married a third time to Eleanor Merry.

The Great Depression saw many studios close and much consolidation as the motion picture industry went through tough times. Moore retired from the screen in the mid 1930s. Ten years later, he returned to act in minor supporting roles.

25 Oct 2019
Motion Pictures Permalink

Tom Brown

October 25, 2019

Thomas Brown was an American child model, and later a film and television actor.

As a child model from the age of two years old, Brown posed as Buster Brown, the Arrow Collar Boy and the Buick boy. As an actor he is probably best remembered for playing

the title role in The Adventures of Smilin’ Jack and later appearing on Gunsmoke, General Hospital and Days of our Lives. He also had a recurring role as Lt. Rovacs in Mr. Lucky.

25 Oct 2019
Television Permalink

Tom Conway

October 25, 2019

Tom Conway was a British film and radio actor, and the older brother of actor George Sanders.

Conway was born to English parents as Thomas Charles Sanders in St. Petersburg, Russia; his younger brother was actor George Sanders, whom Conway strongly resembled, especially in his speaking voice. At the outbreak of the Russian Revolution, the family moved back to England, where both brothers were educated at Brighton College. The brothers tossed a coin to decide which would change his surname to avoid any confusion with each other.

Conway is remembered today for playing “The Falcon” in ten of that series’ entries, taking over from his brother in The Falcon’s Brother, in which they both star. Conway also played Sherlock Holmes following Basil Rathbone’s departure from the 1946–1947 radio series. Despite an uncanny similarity to the sound of Rathbone’s voice, he was not accepted as Holmes by the listening audience and was replaced in the same year by John Stanley. Conway also starred in three of film producer Val Lewton’s horror films while a contract actor for RKO Pictures, twice playing Dr. Louis Judd in two otherwise unrelated films?Cat People and The Seventh Victim a year later?-even though the character was killed in the first film. The third Val Lewton film in which he starred was I Walked with a Zombie. His screen career diminished in the 1950s, but he appeared in a number of English films, on radio, and on television. In 1951, Conway replaced Vincent Price as the star of the radio mystery series The Saint, taking on a role that his brother, Sanders, had played on film a decade earlier. In October, Conway performed as Max Collodi in Alfred Hitchcock Presents episode “The Glass Eye” to critical praise.

25 Oct 2019
Motion Pictures, Television Permalink

Tom Mix

October 25, 2019

Thomas Edwin “Tom” Mix was an American film actor and the star of many early Western movies. He made a reported 336 films between 1910 and 1935, all but nine of which were silent features. He was Hollywood?s first Western megastar and is noted as having helped define the genre for all cowboy actors who followed.

Mix was born into a relatively poor logging family in Mix Run, Pennsylvania, about 40 miles north of State College, Pennsylvania. He spent his childhood growing up in nearby Dubois, Pennsylvania, learning to ride horses and working on the local farm owned by John Dubois, a lumber businessman. He had dreams of being in the circus and was rumored to have been caught by his parents practicing knife-throwing tricks against a wall, using his sister as an assistant.

In April 1898, during the Spanish-American War, he enlisted in the Army under the name Thomas E. Mix. His unit never went overseas, and Mix later failed to return for duty after an extended furlough when he married Grace I. Allin on July 18, 1902. Mix was listed as AWOL on November 4, 1902, but was never court-martialed nor apparently even discharged. His marriage to Allin was annulled after one year. In 1905 Mix married Kitty Jewel Perinne, but this marriage also ended within a year. In 1907 he married Olive Stokes.

In 1905 Mix rode in Theodore Roosevelt’s inaugural parade led by Seth Bullock with a group of 50 horsemen, which included several former Rough Riders After working a variety of odd jobs in the Oklahoma Territory, Mix found employment at the Miller Brothers 101 Ranch, reportedly the largest ranching business in the United States and covering 101,000 acres, hence its name. He stood out as a skilled horseman and expert shot, winning the 1909 national Riding and Rodeo Championship.