25 Oct 2019
Motion Pictures, Television Permalink

Shirley Jones

October 25, 2019

Shirley Mae Jones is an American singer and actress of stage, film and television. She starred as wholesome characters in a number of well-known musical films, such as Oklahoma!, Carousel, and The Music Man. She won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for playing a prostitute in Elmer Gantry. She is probably best known as Shirley Partridge, the widowed mother of five children in the situation-comedy television series The Partridge Family, co-starring her real-life stepson David Cassidy, son of Jack Cassidy.

Jones was born in Charleroi, Pennsylvania, a suburb of Pittsburgh, to Methodist parents Marjorie, a strict, strong-minded homemaker, and Paul Jones, owners of the Jones Brewing Company. An only child, she was named after Shirley Temple. The family later moved to nearby Smithton, Pennsylvania. Jones could sing almost as soon as she could speak. Encouraged by her summer camp counselors, her family arranged for teenaged Shirley to study twice a week, in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, with the world-renowned singer and teacher, Ralph Lawando. Afterwards, she frequently joined her father for a show at the Pittsburgh Playhouse, where she fell in love with the musical theatre.

In New York City, New York, she was convinced to sing for a Broadway agent, Gus Sherman. Sherman was pleased to put Jones under contract, and with her parents’ approval, she resettled in New York City and gave herself one year to become a Broadway performer. She only had $100 in her pocket. If she did not succeed, she would move back to Smithton and work as a veterinarian. Her first audition was for a replacement chorus girl in the long-running musical, South Pacific. Rodgers and Hammerstein, writers of South Pacific, saw great potential in Jones. She became the first and only singer to be put under personal contract with the songwriters. The duo cast her in her second Broadway show, Me and Juliet. On tour, she understudied the lead and earned rave reviews.

Jones impressed Rodgers and Hammerstein with her musically trained voice and she was cast as the female lead in the film adaptation of their hit musical Oklahoma! in 1955. Other film musicals quickly followed, including Carousel, April Love and The Music Man, in which she was often typecast as a wholesome, kind character. However, she won a 1960 Academy Award for her performance in Elmer Gantry portraying a woman corrupted by the title character played by Burt Lancaster. Her character becomes a prostitute who encounters her seducer years later and takes her revenge. She was reunited with Ron Howard in The Courtship of Eddie’s Father. Jones landed the role of a lady who fell in love with the professor in Fluffy. In addition, she also has an impressive stage résumé, including playing the title character in the Broadway musical Maggie Flynn in 1968.

25 Oct 2019
Motion Pictures, Radio Permalink

Shirley Booth

October 25, 2019

Shirley Booth was an American actress. Primarily a theatre actress, Booth’s Broadway career began in 1925. Her most significant success was as Lola Delaney, in the drama Come Back, Little Sheba, for which she received a Tony Award in 1950. She made her film debut, reprising her role in the 1952 film version, and won both the Academy Award for Best Actress and Golden Globe Award for Best Actress for her performance. Despite her successful entry into films, she preferred stage acting, and made only four more films.

From 1961 until 1966, she played the title role in the sitcom Hazel, for which she won two Emmy Awards, and was acclaimed for her performance in the 1966 television production of

The Glass Menagerie. She retired in 1974.

Booth was born as Marjory Ford in New York City, the daughter of Albert James Ford and Virginia Martha Wright. By the time of the 1910 census in April 1910, aged 11, she was known as Thelma by her family. She had at least one sibling, a younger sister, Jean

25 Oct 2019
Motion Pictures Permalink

Shirley MacLaine

October 25, 2019

Shirley MacLaine is an American film and theater actress, dancer, activist, and author, well-known for her beliefs in new age spirituality and reincarnation. She has written a large number of autobiographical works, many dealing with her spiritual beliefs as well as her Hollywood career. In 1983, she won the Academy Award for Best Actress for her role in Terms of Endearment. She is the elder sister of actor Warren Beatty.

Named after Shirley Temple, MacLaine was born Shirley MacLean Beaty in Richmond, Virginia. Her father, Ira Owens Beaty, was a professor of psychology, public school administrator, and real estate agent, and her mother, Kathlyn Corinne, was a drama teacher born in Nova Scotia, Canada; MacLaine’s grandparents were also teachers. The family was devoutly Baptist. While she was still a child, MacLaine’s father moved the family from Richmond to Norfolk, and then to Arlington, Virginia and Waverly, eventually taking a position at Arlington’s Thomas Jefferson Junior High School.

Shirley had very weak ankles as a child, so her mother decided to enroll her in ballet class. Strongly motivated by ballet throughout her youth, she never missed a class. In classical romantic pieces like “Romeo & Juliet” and “Sleeping Beauty,” being the tallest in the class, she always played the boys’ role. Eventually, MacLaine decided that professional ballet wasn’t for her. In her own words, she grew too tall and did not have the “beautifully constructed feet”. After leaving ballet, MacLaine pursued Broadway dancing. Eventually, she turned to acting.

She attended Washington-Lee High School, where she was on the cheerleading squad and acted in the school’s productions. The summer before her senior year, she was in New York to try acting on Broadway with some success. After she graduated, she returned and within a year she became an understudy to actress Carol Haney in The Pajama Game; Haney broke her ankle, and MacLaine replaced her. A few months after, with Haney still out of commission, film producer Hal B. Wallis was in the audience, took note of MacLaine, and signed her to work for Paramount Pictures. She later sued Wallis over a contractual dispute, a suit that is credited with ending the old-style studio star system of actor management.

25 Oct 2019
Television Permalink

Sherry Jackson

October 25, 2019

Sherry Jackson is an American actress and former child star. She made her film debut at seven years old in the musical You're My Everything, starring Anne Baxter. She appeared in several of the Ma and Pa Kettle movies during the 1950s as Susie Kettle, one of the titular couple's numerous children, and played John Wayne's daughter in Trouble Along the Way. She portrayed the emotionally volatile visionary and ascetic Jacinta Marto in The Miracle of Our Lady of Fatima.

She may be best-remembered today for her role as Terry Williams on The Danny Thomas Show from 1953?58. She appeared on the original series as the android "Andrea" on the 1966 episode, "What are Little Girls Made Of?"

When Blake Edwards remade the Peter Gunn television series as a feature film entitled Gunn in 1967, Jackson was filmed in a nude scene that appeared only in the international version, not the U.S. release. Stills of the nude scene appeared in the August 1967 issue of Playboy magazine, in a pictorial entitled "Make Room For Sherry". The movie has not yet been released on VHS or DVD.

25 Oct 2019
Motion Pictures Permalink

Sherry Lansing

October 25, 2019

Sherry Lansing is a former actress and American film studio executive. She is former CEO of Paramount Pictures, and when president of production at 20th Century Fox was the first woman to head a Hollywood studio In 1996, she became the first woman named Pioneer of the Year by the Foundation of the Motion Picture Pioneers, and the first woman studio head to receive a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. In 2005, she became the first woman studio head to place hand and foot prints at Grauman’s Chinese Theater. In 2001, she was named one of the 30 most powerful women in America by Ladies Home Journal, and The Hollywood Reporter named her fourth on its Power 100 list in 2003.

Lansing was born Sherry Lee Duhl in Chicago, Illinois. Her mother, the former Margot Heimann, fled from Nazi Germany; her father was David Duhl, a real-estate investor, who died when she was nine. Lansing attended the University of Chicago Laboratory Schools and graduated in 1962. In 1966, she earned a Bachelor of Science degree at Northwestern University, where she was a member of Sigma Delta Tau sorority.

Lansing married Academy award winning director William Friedkin on July 6, 1991; he had previously been married to French film star Jeanne Moreau. By this marriage Lansing has two stepsons, Jack and Cedric.

She pursued an acting career but, dissatisfied with her own acting skills, she decided to learn more about the film industry from the ground up. She took a job with MGM as head script reader and worked on two successful movies, The China Syndrome and Kramer vs. Kramer.

25 Oct 2019
Motion Pictures, Television Permalink

Sherwood Schwartz

October 25, 2019

Sherwood Schwartz was honored with the 2,356th star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. Hollywood Chamber of Commerce President and CEO, Leron Gubler, presided over the ceremony. Guests included Florence Henderson and Dawn Wells.

6541 Hollywood Boulevard on March 7, 2008.

BIOGRAPHY

Sherwood Schwartz started writing professionally on "The Bob Hope Radio Show" in 1939. After four years with Bob Hope, Sherwood joined the Armed Forces Radio Service (A.F.R.S.) for four years, writing various Army shows like "Command Performance," "Mail Call," etc., working with just about every major star in the entertainment world.

After the war, he went back to radio and "The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet." In radio he has also written for Danny Thomas, Alan Young and "The Beulah Show."

Then came television.

In his long career in TV (58 years), Sherwood Schwartz has written, re-written, and/or produced more than 700 TV shows, starting with "I Married Joan," "The Red Skelton Show," and "My Favorite Martian," before creating, writing, and producing series of his own.

Sherwood received the highest honor in television, the Emmy Award, in 1961 for "The Red Skelton Show," and the following year, another Emmy nomination.

His scripts have the unique distinction of receiving five consecutive nominations for awards from the Writers Guild of America in comedy, variety, and play adaptation, receiving the WGA award in the comedy category.

In 1963, Sherwood created, wrote and produced "Gilligan's Island," a TV series which has become a cult classic.

"Gilligan's Island" led to three two-hour TV movies. One of them, "Rescue from Gilligan's Island," was the first of the so-called "reunion shows" and was the highest rated movie-of-the-week in 1978.

In 1969, Sherwood created, wrote and produced "The Brady Bunch," television's first blended family show. It, too, has become a cult classic, leading to several reunion shows.

In 1988, Sherwood and his son Lloyd, wrote and produced a two-hour TV film, "A Very Brady Christmas," which was the highest rated TV film that year.

In 1994, Sherwood and his son, Lloyd, produced the feature film, "The Brady Bunch Movie," for Paramount.

On March 12, 2004, "Gilligan's Island" received the annual "Pop Culture" award from TV Land. That same week, Sherwood was awarded the prestigious William S. Paley Award with "A Salute to Sherwood Schwartz."

In 2007, "The Brady Bunch" was also awarded TV Land's "Pop Culture" award. That same year, along with his son, Lloyd, and his daughter, Hope Juber, Sherwood produced "Still Brady After All These Years: A Thirty-Five Year Anniversary Special" which won a daytime Emmy Nomination.

In addition to TV and films, Sherwood has written several produced plays. Among them, "Mr. and Mrs.," a comedy; "The Trial of Othello," a courtroom drama; "Gilligan's Island: The Musical," (with his son, Lloyd with music and lyrics by his daughter, Hope, and her husband, Laurence Juber.) His latest play, "Rockers," a comedy-drama had a production last year at Theatre West. This June, a new musical "A Very Brady Musical" with music and lyrics by Hope and Laurence Juber will have its world premiere at Theatre West.

Sherwood Schwartz co-wrote the theme song for "Gilligan's Island" with George Wyle and co-wrote the themes song for "The Brady Bunch" with Frank DeVol.

Sherwood is a member of the Writers Guild of America, the Dramatists Guild and A.S.C.A.P, the American Society of Composers, Authors, and Publishers.

25 Oct 2019
Motion Pictures 2 Comments Permalink

Sarah Bernhardt

October 25, 2019 2 Comments

Sarah Bernhardt was a French stage and early film actress, and has been referred to as “the most famous actress the world has ever known”. Bernhardt made her fame on the stages of Europe in the 1870s, and was soon in demand in Europe and the Americas. She developed a reputation as a serious dramatic actress, earning the nickname “The Divine Sarah”.

Bernhardt was born in Paris as Rosine Bernardt, the illegitimate daughter of Julie Bernardt and an unknown father. Julie was one of six children of a widely traveling Jewish spectacle merchant, “vision specialist” and petty criminal, Moritz Baruch Bernardt, and Sara Hirsch. Julie’s father remarried Sara Kinsbergen two weeks after his first wife’s death, and abandoned his family in 1835. Julie left for Paris, where she made a living as a courtesan and was known by the name “Youle”. Sarah would add the letter “H” to both her first and last name. Sarah’s birth records were lost in a fire in 1871, but in order to prove French citizenship, necessary for Légion d’honneur eligibility, she created false birth records, on which she was the daughter of “Judith van Hard” and “Edouard Bernardt” from Le Havre, in later stories either a law student, accountant, naval cadet or naval officer.

As the presence of a baby interfered with her mother’s terrible and stressful life, Sarah was brought up in a pension, and later in a convent. A child of delicate health, she considered becoming a nun, but one of her mother’s reputed lovers, the future Duc de Morny, Napoleon III’s half-brother, decided that she should be an actress. When she was 13, he arranged for her to enter the Conservatoire, the government sponsored school of acting. She was not considered a particularly promising student, and, although she revered some of her teachers, she regarded the Conservatoire’s methods as antiquated and too deeply steeped in tradition.

Much of the uncertainty about Bernhardt’s life arises because of her tendency to exaggerate and distort. Alexandre Dumas, fils described her as a notorious liar.

25 Oct 2019
Radio, Television Permalink

Scott Forbes

October 25, 2019

Conrad Scott-Forbes, popularly known as Scott Forbes, was a movie and television actor and screenwriter. In his later career as a screenwriter, he was credited as C. Scott Forbes.

Forbes was born in High Wycombe, Buckinghamshire, England. He attended Repton, a public school near Derby, England, and then studied Philosophy, Politics, and Economics at Balliol College, Oxford. He worked for the Ministry of Defence before settling on a performing career.

In the 1940s Forbes used the name Julian Dallas, appearing in Night Boat to London, Mrs. Fitzherbert, But Not in Vain, This Was a Woman and The Reluctant Widow. He also appeared on the stage as Julian Dallas, spending a year with the Liverpool Old Vic, and in London under the direction of John Gielgud in The Cradle Song, among other plays.

Following his few British productions, he moved to the U.S. and he quickly found film work. Consigned mainly to action roles in Warner Bros. films such as Rocky Mountain and Operation Pacific, Forbes played more in-depth characters on TV. He was Maxim de Winter in “Rebecca” in a live performance for the Broadway Television Theatre in 1952. He also played the Duke of Cornwall in Peter Brook’s 1953 television adaptation of King Lear with Orson Welles as Lear. One of his best known roles was on The Deep Six, which was a 1953 installment of NBC’s Robert Montgomery Presents. In the 1955-1956 season, he guest starred in NBC’s western anthology series Frontier.

25 Oct 2019
Recording, Television Permalink

Sean Diddy Combs

October 25, 2019

Sean "Diddy" Combs was honored with the 2,362nd star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. Leron Gubler, President and CEO of the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce, presided over the event. Guests included Jamie Foxx and Antonio "L.A." Reid.

6801 Hollywood Boulevard on May 2, 2008.

Beginning with his acting debut in the film "Made," Combs went on to receive critical acclaim for his supporting role in "Monster's Ball" opposite Halle Berry and made a successful Broadway debut starring in the lead role of Walter Lee in the classic Lorraine Hansberry tale, A Raisin in the Sun. Recently, Combs starred and executive-produced a television adaptation of the critically acclaimed movie adaptation of the of the Tony® award-winning Broadway revival which aired on ABC. A Raisin in the Sun will debut on DVD May 13, from Sony Pictures Home Entertainment. Additionally, he has also appeared in the highly anticipated prequel "Carlito's Way: The Beginning" directed by Brian De Palma. Adding to his roster of television ventures, Combs joined the HBO family in June 2005 with the series "P. Diddy Presents the Bad Boys of Comedy" which features the hottest up-and-coming urban comedians performing in front of a live audience.

Sean Combs, the CEO and founder of Bad Boy Worldwide Entertainment and Sean Combs Enterprises, is multifaceted entertainment powerhouse. Sean "Diddy" Combs was recently declared "One of the Most Influential Businessmen in the World" by Time Magazine and CNN. Combs oversees one of the world's preeminent urban entertainment companies, encompassing a broad range of businesses including recording, music publishing, artist management, television and film production, recording facility, apparel and restaurants.

Music has always been at the heart of his career. He is a recognized producer, solo artist and performer, who has produced chart-topping hit songs for music superstars including Aretha Franklin, Sting, Jennifer Lopez, Mary J. Blige, Janet Jackson and the Notorious B.I.G. Combs, has also released four multi-platinum albums and won his third Grammy Award for the #1 song "Shake Ya Tailfeather" from the Bad Boys II soundtrack, which he executive produced. In 2006, Combs released Press Play, his hugely anticipated follow up album which debuted at the top of the charts awarding him the number one album in the country.

Combs' success in music quickly transitioned into the small screen. Combs and MTV have always had a special relationship beginning with his famous videos and show stopping VMA performances. In June 2003 he teamed up with MTV to find the next big hip hop group with Making the Band 2 which aired for three seasons. Making the Band 3 premiered in Spring, 2005 and Combs brought a new installment of the hit show recently with the 4th installment. Making The Band 4, in search of an all girls group premiered in Jan 2008. This time around platinum recording artists, and winners of Making The Band 3, Danity Kane join the guys in the same house to begin working on their respective albums.

Not only has Combs made an indelible mark on the worlds of entertainment, he continues to break new ground in the fashion industry. Since the inception of his label, Sean John Clothing, Combs has been praised for his innovative and sexy approach to fashion. His efforts were recognized in 2004 when he was awarded the prestigious "Perry Ellis Menswear Designer of the Year Award" from the Council of Fashion Designers of America (CFDA). Additionally, Combs launched his first fragrance, "Unforgivable" in 2006 with cosmetics giant Estee Lauder which quickly became the number one selling fragrance across America followed by "Unforgivable Woman" in 2007.

In 2007 Combs– who indirectly helped put high end liquor on the map through mentions in hip hop songs and product placements in music videos– took on the official job with Ciroc Vodka when he announced a groundbreaking, strategic alliance with the liquor company, managing all branding, marketing, advertising and public relations initiatives for Ciroc Vodka.

25 Oct 2019
Motion Pictures, Recording Permalink

Sarah Vaughan

October 25, 2019

Sarah Lois Vaughan was an American jazz singer, described by Scott Yanow as having "one of the most wondrous voices of the 20th century". She had a contralto vocal range.

Nicknamed "Sailor", "Sassy" and "The Divine One", Sarah Vaughan was a Grammy Award winner. The National Endowment for the Arts bestowed upon her its "highest honor in jazz", the NEA Jazz Masters Award, in 1989.

Sarah Vaughan's father, Asbury "Jake" Vaughan, was a carpenter by trade and played guitar and piano. Her mother, Ada Vaughan, was a laundress and sang in the church choir. Jake and Ada Vaughan migrated to Newark from Virginia during the First World War. Sarah was their only natural child, although in the 1960s they adopted Donna, the child of a woman who traveled on the road with Sarah Vaughan.

The Vaughans lived in a house on Brunswick Street, in Newark, New Jersey, for Sarah's entire childhood. Jake Vaughan was deeply religious and the family was very active in the New Mount Zion Baptist Church on 186 Thomas Street. Sarah began piano lessons at the age of seven, sang in the church choir and occasionally played piano for rehearsals and services.