25 Oct 2019
Motion Pictures, Recording Permalink

Robert Walker

October 25, 2019

Robert Hudson Walker was an American actor. Born in Salt Lake City, Utah, to Zella and Horace Walker, he was the youngest of four sons. Emotionally scarred by his parents’ divorce when he was still a child, he subsequently developed an interest in acting which led to his maternal aunt Hortense Odlum to offer to pay for his enrollment at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts in New York City in 1937. Walker lived in her home during his first year in the city.

While attending the AADA, Walker met fellow aspiring actress Phylis Isley, who later became the film star Jennifer Jones. After a brief courtship, the couple were married in Tulsa, Oklahoma on January 2, 1939 and moved to Hollywood to find work in films but their prospects proved to be meager and they soon returned to New York. Walker soon found work in radio while Phylis stayed home and gave birth to two sons in quick succession, actor Robert Walker, Jr., born April 15, 1940, and Michael Walker, born March 13, 1941. Phylis then returned to auditioning where her luck changed when she was discovered in 1941 by producer David O. Selznick, who changed her name to Jennifer Jones and groomed her for stardom. During their initial meetings Selznick was highly attracted to Jones and they quietly began an affair. She eventually landed the plum role of Bernadette Soubirous in the Twentieth Century Fox production The Song of Bernadette. The couple returned to Hollywood, and Selznick’s connections helped Walker secure a contract with Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, where he started work on the war drama Bataan. Walker’s charming demeanor and boyish good looks caught on with audiences, and he worked steadily playing “boy-next-door” roles in films such as See Here, Private Hargrove and Her Highness and the Bellboy. He also appeared in Selznick’s Since You Went Away in which he and his wife portrayed doomed young lovers. By that time Selznick and Jones’ affair was common knowledge, and Jones and Walker separated in November 1943, in the midst of production. The filming of their love scenes was torturous as Selznick insisted that Walker perform take after take of each love scene with Jones. She filed for divorce in April 1945.

That year, Walker starred in the film The Clock opposite Judy Garland in her first straight dramatic film. Although Walker continued to work steadily in Hollywood, he was distraught over the divorce and was soon prone to drinking, emotional outbursts and eventually, a nervous breakdown. He spent time at the Menninger Clinic in 1949 where he was treated for a psychiatric disorder.

25 Oct 2019
Recording, Television Permalink

Robert Wagner

October 25, 2019

Robert John Wagner is an American film and television actor of stage and screen, who starred in movies, soap operas and television.

Wagner starred in three American television series that spanned four decades: as playboy-thief-turned-secret-agent, Alexander Mundy, in It Takes a Thief, as Frank MacBride's ex-con man turned crime-fighting partner, Det. Pete T. Ryan, in the con-artist-oriented drama Switch, and as Jennifer Hart's super-rich husband and private-eye partner, Jonathan Hart, in the lighthearted crime drama Hart to Hart. In movies, Wagner is known for his role as Number Two in the Austin Powers films of the late 1990s and early 2000s. He also had a recurring role as Teddy Leopold on the TV sitcom Two and a Half Men.

Wagner's autobiography, Pieces of My Heart: A Life, written with author Scott Eyman, was published on September 23, 2008.

Born in Detroit, Michigan, the son of a steel executive.

25 Oct 2019
Radio, Recording Permalink

Robert W. Morgan

October 25, 2019

Robert Wilbur Morgan was an award-winning morning radio personality best known for his work at several stations in Los Angeles, California.

Morgan enjoyed his greatest on-air success in Los Angeles, California at stations such as KHJ-AM, where he was one of the original "Boss Jocks" that dominated the Top 40 market in Southern California during from 1965 to 1973. His trademark greeting to listeners during his morning drive shift was "Good Morgan!". Morgan also did morning drive at KMPC-AM, KIQQ-FM and KMGG-FM, and finished his career at KRTH-FM, where he retired for health reasons in 1997. He died from lung cancer on May 22, 1998.

Morgan was born in Galion, Ohio, where as a youth, he listened to the hits of the day on Cleveland?s KYW. It was there his interest in radio began. His first on-air job was in 1955 at Wooster College on WWST & WWST-FM, where his initial salary was just $1 per hour.

After college, Morgan moved to California and the overnight shift on KACY in Port Hueneme, hosting Kegler?s Spare Time with Bob Morgan live from the Wagon Wheel Bowl.

25 Oct 2019
Motion Pictures, Television Permalink

Robert Zemeckis

October 25, 2019

Robert Lee Zemeckis is an American film director, producer and screenwriter. Zemeckis first came to public attention in the 1980s as the director of the comedic time-travel Back to the Future movie series, as well as the Oscar-winning live-action/cartoon epic Who Framed Roger Rabbit, though in the 1990s he diversified into more dramatic fare, including 1994’s Forrest Gump, for which he won an Academy Award for Best Director.

His films are characterized by an interest in state-of-the-art special effects, including the early use of match moving in Back to the Future Part II and the pioneering performance capture techniques seen in The Polar Express, Beowulf and A Christmas Carol. Though Zemeckis has often been pigeonholed as a director interested only in effects, his work has been defended by several critics, including David Thomson, who wrote that “No other contemporary director has used special effects to more dramatic and narrative purpose.”

Zemeckis was born in Chicago, Illinois, to a Lithuanian American father and Italian American mother, and grew up in a suburb outside of Chicago called McHenry. and was raised in a working-class Roman Catholic family. He went to Fenger High School. Zemeckis has said that “the truth was that in my family there was no art. I mean, there was no music, there were no books, there was no theater.The only thing I had that was inspirational, was television—and it actually was.” As a child, Zemeckis loved television and was fascinated by his parents’ 8 mm film home movie camera. Starting off by filming family events like birthdays and holidays, Zemeckis gradually began producing narrative films with his friends that incorporated stop-motion work and other special effects.

Along with enjoying movies, Zemeckis remained an avid TV watcher. “You hear so much about the problems with television,” he said, “but I think that it saved my life.” Television gave Zemeckis his first glimpse of a world outside of his blue-collar upbringing; specifically, he learned of the existence of film schools on an episode of The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson. After seeing Bonnie and Clyde with his father and being heavily influenced by it, Zemeckis decided that he wanted to go to film school.

25 Oct 2019
Motion Pictures, Television Permalink

Robert Z. Leonard

October 25, 2019

Robert Zigler Leonard was an American film director, actor, producer and screenwriter.

He was born in Chicago, Illinois. At one time, he was married to silent superstar Mae Murray with the two forming Tiffany Pictures to film eight motion pictures that were released by MGM.

He was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Director for The Divorcee and The Great Ziegfeld. Both were also nominated for Best Picture, and the latter won. One of the most odd credits in his filmography is the film noir thriller The Bribe 1949 with its sleazy settings, slippery characters and steamy atmosphere.

Robert Leonard died in 1968 in Beverly Hills, California and was interred in Forest Lawn Memorial Park, Glendale.

25 Oct 2019
Motion Pictures, Radio, Recording, Television Permalink

Robert Young

October 25, 2019

Robert George Young was an American television, film, and radio actor, best known for his leading roles as Jim Anderson, the father of Father Knows Best and as physician Marcus Welby in Marcus Welby, M.D.. Born in Chicago, Illinois, Young was the son of an Irish immigrant father and an American mother. When Young was a child, the family moved to Seattle and then to Los Angeles where he

attended Abraham Lincoln High School. After graduation, he studied and performed at the Pasadena Playhouse while working odd jobs and appearing in bit parts in silent films. While touring with a stock company production of The Ship, Young was discovered by an MGM talent scout and signed to a contract. He made his sound film debut for MGM in the 1931 Charlie Chan film Black Camel.

Young appeared in over 100 films between 1931 and 1952. After appearing on stage, Young was signed with Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer ?the studio that had more stars than in the heavens?and in spite of having a “tier B” status, he co-starred with some of the studio’s most illustrious actresses such as Margaret Sullavan, Norma Shearer, Joan Crawford, Helen Hayes, Luise Rainer, and Helen Twelvetrees, among many, many others. Yet most of his assignments comprised B-movies, also known as programmers, which required a mere two to three weeks of shooting. Actors who were relegated to such a hectic schedule appeared, as Young did, in some six to eight movies per year.

25 Oct 2019
Motion Pictures Permalink

Robin Williams

October 25, 2019

Robin McLaurim Williams is an American actor and comedian.

Rising to fame with his role as the alien Mork in the TV series Mork and Mindy, and later stand-up comedy work, Williams has performed in many feature films since 1980. He won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his performance in the 1997 film Good Will Hunting. He has also won two Emmy Awards, four Golden Globes, two Screen Actors Guild Awards and five Grammy Awards.

Williams was born in Chicago, Illinois. His mother, Laura, was a former model from New Orleans, Louisiana. His father, Robert Fitzgerald Williams was a senior executive at Ford Motorship in charge of the Midwest area. He is of English, Welsh and Irish descent on his father’s side, and of French descent on his mother’s side. Williams was raised in the Episcopal Church, though his mother practiced Christian Science. He grew up in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan, where he was a student at the Detroit Country Day School, and Marin County, California, where he attended the public Redwood High School. Williams also attended Claremont McKenna College for four years. He has two half-brothers: Todd and McLaurin.

Williams has described himself as a quiet child whose first imitation was of his grandmother to his mother. He did not overcome his shyness until he became involved with his high-school drama department.

25 Oct 2019
Motion Pictures Permalink

Robert Rossen

October 25, 2019

Robert Rossen was an American screenwriter, film director, and producer. After writing and directing for the stage, Rossen moved to Hollywood in 1937. His film career spanned almost three decades. Rossen was twice nominated for an Academy Award for best director and once for best adapted screenplay, winning the Golden Globe Award for Best Director for All the King’s Men. Rossen was twice called before the House Un-American Activities Committee, in 1951 and in 1953. He exercised his Fifth Amendment rights at his first appearance, refusing to state whether he had ever been a Communist. As a result he was unofficially blacklisted by the Hollywood studio bosses. At his second appearance he named 57 people as current or former Communists and was removed from the unofficial blacklist. He returned to filmmaking, although his last film so disillusioned him that he did not work for the last three years of his life.

Robert Rossen, originally known as Robert Rosen, was born on March 16, 1908, and raised on the lower East side of New York City. His father was a Russian-Jewish immigrant rabbi. As a youth Rossen attended New York University, hustled pool and fought some prizefights.

He started his theatrical career as a director and playwright in stock and off-Broadway productions.

25 Oct 2019
Radio, Recording Permalink

Robert Ripley

October 25, 2019

Robert LeRoy Ripley was an American cartoonist, entrepreneur and amateur anthropologist, who created the world famous Ripley's Believe It or Not! newspaper panel series, radio show, and television show which feature odd 'facts' from around the world.

Subjects covered in Ripley's cartoons and text ranged from sports feats to little known facts about unusual and exotic sites, but what ensured the concept's popularity may have been that Ripley also included items submitted by readers, who supplied photographs of a wide variety of small town American trivia, ranging from unusually shaped vegetables to oddly marked domestic animals, all documented by photographs and then depicted by Ripley's drawings. He died on broadcast during his weekly show May 27, 1949.

In 1919 Ripley married Beatrice Roberts. He made his first trip around the world in 1922, delineating a travel journal in installments. This ushered in a new topic for his cartoons: unusual and exotic foreign locales and cultures. Because he took the veracity of his work quite seriously, in 1923, Ripley hired a researcher and linguist named Norbert Pearlroth as a full-time assistant. That same year his feature moved from the New York Globe to the New York Post.

Throughout the 1920s, Ripley continued to broaden the scope of his work and his popularity increased greatly. He published both a travel journal and a guide to the game of handball in 1925 and, in 1926, became the New York state handball champion and wrote a book on boxing. With a proven track record as a versatile writer and artist, he attracted the attention of publishing mogul William Randolph Hearst, who managed the King Features Syndicate. In 1929, Hearst was responsible for Believe It or Not! making its syndicated debut in seventeen papers worldwide. With the success of this series assured, Ripley capitalized on his fame by getting the first book collection of his newspaper panel series published.

25 Oct 2019
Radio, Television Permalink

Robert Q. Lewis

October 25, 2019

Robert Q. Lewis was an American radio and television personality, game show host, and actor. Lewis added the middle initial “Q.” to his name accidentally on the air in 1942, when he responded to a reference to radio comedian F. Chase Taylor’s character, Colonel Lemuel Q. Stoopnagle, by saying, “and this is Robert Q. Lewis.” He subsequently decided to retain the initial, telling interviewers that it stood for “Quizzical”.

Lewis is perhaps best known for his game show participation, having been the first host of The Name’s the Same, and regularly appearing on other Goodson-Todman panel shows. He also hosted and appeared on a multitude of television shows of the 1940s through the 1970s. His most distinguishing feature was his horn-rimmed glasses, to the point that the title card for his second Robert Q. Lewis Show featured a pair of such glasses as a logo, and they were mentioned in the title of his lecture. As a frequent guest panelist on What’s My Line?, Lewis’s blindfold featured a sketched pair of glasses.

Lewis was born as Robert Goldberg in Manhattan on April 25, 1920. His parents were Jewish immigrants.

Lewis made his radio debut in 1931, at age 11, on a local radio show, “Dr. Posner’s Kiddie Hour”. He enrolled in the University of Michigan in 1938, where he was a member of the Phi Sigma Delta fraternity. He left to enlist in the U.S. Army in 1942 and became a radio operator in the Signal Corps.