25 Oct 2019
Radio, Television Permalink

Phillips Lord

October 25, 2019

Phillips Haynes Lord was an American radio program writer, creator, producer and narrator as well as a motion picture actor, best known for the Gang Busters radio program that aired from 1935 to 1957.

Lord was born in the small town of Hartford, Vermont, the son of a Protestant clergyman. He was still an infant when his family moved to Meriden, Connecticut where his father accepted the pastorship of a local church. As a boy, Lord spent his summers with relatives in Maine and after completing high school, he studied at Phillips Academy in Andover, Massachusetts before going to Bowdoin College in Brunswick, Maine. A born entrepreneur, while still in college he established a myriad of businesses including a book-selling operation, a shoe repair service and a taxi cab company. After graduation, the 22-year-old was hired as the Principal at the high school in the small town of Plainville, Connecticut, reportedly the youngest person in the United States to ever hold such a position. He soon grew bored with the job and headed to the big city of New York where, after a series of jobs in publishing, he began writing scripts for radio.

Phillips Lord was still in his twenties and living in New York City when he became a national radio personality. Creating the character “Seth Parker,” a clergyman and backwoods philosopher based on Hosea Phillips his real-life grandfather, Phillips Lord wrote stories for radio of rural New England humor that included the playing of old time songs. On his own initiative, he communicated with several stations across the U.S. and sold them scripts he labeled as “Seth Parker’s Singing School.” An instant hit, Lord was soon contacted by NBC Radio who contracted to buy scripts to produce a show to run six days a week that NBC called “Sunday Evening at Seth Parker’s.” This was followed by other magazine publications who acquired his scripts and before long Phillips Lord was earning close to $100,000 a year. Not limited in his scope, during this time he wrote other successful radio programs that were designed to conclude after a specific number of episodes were aired. Lord’s growing popularity resulted in his publishing two books in 1930 titled “Seth Parker’s Album” and “Seth Parker’s Hymnal” that all led to the release of 78rpm gospel records by the “Phillips Lord Trio. ” Lord and the radio show gained a wide audience and the September 1931 issue of The American Magazine did a feature article on him under the heading: “At 29 He Has Made a Million Friends.”

In 1932, Phillips Lord published a book titled “Seth Parker & His Jonesport Folks: Way Back Home” from which he also wrote a stage play titled “Seth Parker’s Jonesport Folks; an entertainment in two acts.” The book was published to coincide with the release of his 1932 motion picture produced by RKO Radio Pictures Inc. who used the shorter title from the book, Way Back Home. Starring opposite Bette Davis, Phillips Lord was billed as “Seth Parker, Preacher.” Because the radio program was unknown in England, the motion picture was released there with the title “Old Greatheart.”

25 Oct 2019
Radio, Television Permalink

Phyllis Diller

October 25, 2019

Phyllis Diller is an American actress and comedienne. She created a stage persona of a wild-haired, eccentrically-dressed housewife who makes jokes about a husband named "Fang" while smoking from a long cigarette holder. Diller is credited with opening the doors of stand-up comedy to women.

Diller was born to Perry Marcus Driver and his wife, the former Frances Ada Romshe, in Lima, Ohio.

Diller attended Lima's Central High School, then studied for three years at Sherwood Music Conservatory in Chicago, Illinois. She then transferred to Bluffton College in Bluffton, Ohio, where she met fellow "Lima-ite" and classmate, Hugh Downs.

Diller was a housewife, mother, and advertising copywriter. During World War II, Diller lived in Ypsilanti, Michigan while her husband worked at the historic Willow Run Bomber Plant. In the mid-1950s, she made appearances on The Jack Paar Show and was a contestant on Groucho Marx's quiz show, You Bet Your Life.

25 Oct 2019
Motion Pictures Permalink

Phyllis Thaxter

October 25, 2019

Phyllis Thaxter is an American actress. Born as Phyllis St. Felix Thaxter, she was the daughter of Maine Supreme Court Justice Sidney Thaxter, and his wife, a former actress. Phyllis Thaxter worked as a Broadway actress in the 1930s and eventually signed an MGM contract in 1944. Her movie debut was opposite Van Johnson in the war-time film Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo.

At MGM, she usually played the ever-patient wife to a number of leading men, including Van Heflin in Act of Violence. In 1948 she played a cattle owner’s daughter alongside Barbara Bel Geddes in Blood on the Moon. She changed studios in the 1950s, moving to Warner Brothers, but usually played the same type of roles.

Thaxter’s career stalled after an attack of infantile paralysis, while visiting her family in Portland, in 1952. She, however, made a slow comeback in character parts in television including the The Twilight Zone episode ‘Young Man’s Fancy’ in 1962, movies and the stage. In 1978, Thaxter was cast along with Glenn Ford as Ma and Pa Kent in Superman.

25 Oct 2019
Motion Pictures Permalink

Pierce Brosnan

October 25, 2019

Pierce Brendan Brosnan, OBE is an Irish actor, film producer and environmentalist who holds Irish and American citizenship. After leaving school at 16, Brosnan began training in commercial illustration, but trained at the Drama Centre in London for three years. Following a stage acting career he rose to popularity in the television series Remington Steele. After Remington Steele, Brosnan took the lead in many films such as Dante's Peak and The Thomas Crown Affair. In 1995, he became the fifth actor to portray secret agent James Bond in the official film series, starring in four films between 1995 and 2002. He also provided his voice and likeness to Bond in the 2004 video game James Bond 007: Everything or Nothing. Since playing Bond, he has starred in such successes as The Matador and Mamma Mia!. In 1996, along with Beau St. Clair, Brosnan formed Irish DreamTime, a Los Angeles-based production company. In later years, he has become known for his charitable work and environmental activism.

He was married to Australian actress Cassandra Harris from 1980 until her death in 1991. He married American journalist and author Keely Shaye Smith in 2001, becoming an American citizen in 2004.

25 Oct 2019
Television Permalink

Pierre Cossette

October 25, 2019

Pierre Maurice Joseph Cossette was a television executive producer and Broadway producer who brought the Grammy Awards to television. Cossette was inducted into Canada’s Walk of Fame in 2005. Born in Valleyfield, Quebec, he also has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

His autobiography, Another Day In Showbiz: One Producer’s Journey, tells the story of an unassuming young man from rural Quebec who worked his way to the top of the world of glitz and glamour, galvanizing the music industry in the process. He offers his vision of the industry, detailing stars, directors, producers, movies, TV companies, record companies, and the art, creation, and exhibition of stage productions such as The Will Rogers Follies, The Scarlet Pimpernell, and the Voice of Woody Guthrie””‘.

A Las Vegas legend for booking the world’s biggest acts including the Rat Pack, Mae West, and many others. He went from agent to producer with the help and support of entertainment giant Harry Cohn.

Cossette was one of the 20th century’s most accomplished and versatile producers, having been a major player in booking Las Vegas’ top shows, bringing The Grammy Awards to TV, and managing comedic giants such as Dick Shawn and Buddy Hackett.

25 Oct 2019
Motion Pictures, Recording Permalink

Pierre Monteux

October 25, 2019

Pierre Monteux was an orchestra conductor. Born in Paris, France, rue de la Grange Batelière. Monteux later became an American citizen.

Monteux studied violin from an early age, entering the Paris Conservatoire at the age of nine. He became a proficient violinist, good enough to share the Conservatoire’s violin prize in 1896 with Jacques Thibaud. In his spare time he also played at the Folies Bergères. He later took up the viola studying with Théophile Laforge and played in the Geloso Quartet which played one of Brahms’s string quartets in a private performance for the composer and in the orchestra of the Opéra-Comique, leading the viola section in the première of Debussy’s opera, Pelléas et Mélisande in 1902.

In 1910, Monteux took a conducting post at the Dieppe casino. The next year, 1911, he became conductor of Sergei Diaghilev’s ballet company, the Ballets Russes. In this capacity he conducted the premières of Stravinsky’s Petrushka and The Rite of Spring – with its famous riot – as well as Debussy’s Jeux and Ravel’s Daphnis et Chloé. This established the course of his career, and for the rest of his life he was noted particularly for his interpretations of Russian and French music.

With the outbreak of World War I, Monteux was called up for military service, but was discharged in 1916, and travelled to the United States. There he took charge of the French repertoire at the Metropolitan Opera in New York City from 1917 to 1919. He also conducted the United States premières of Rimsky-Korsakov’s opera The Golden Cockerel and Henri Rabaud’s Mârouf, savetier du Caire at the Metropolitan Opera.

25 Oct 2019
Motion Pictures, Television 2 Comments Permalink

Pinky Lee

October 25, 2019 2 Comments

Pincus Leff, better known as Pinky Lee, was a burlesque comic and host of a children’s television program, The Pinky Lee Show, in the early 1950s.

Lee worked as comic of the “baggy pants” variety on stage, becoming an expert at the slapstick, comic dancing and rapid-fire jokes of the burlesque style. During the 1940s, he was heard on Drene Time and other radio programs.

Easily recognized by his trademark lisp and his high-energy antics, his signature costume was a loud plaid suit with baggy checkered pants and an undersized hat. During his routines, whenever anybody irritated him he would unleash his catchphrase: “Oooooh! You make me so mad!”

In 1950, he had his own 30-minute primetime variety television show on NBC, The Pinky Lee Show, featuring vaudevillians and burlesque comics. In 1951-52 he starred with Vivian Blaine in a 15-minute sitcom, Those Two.

25 Oct 2019
Motion Pictures, Television Permalink

Philip Dunne

October 25, 2019

Philip Dunne was a Hollywood screenwriter, film director and producer, who worked prolifically from 1932 until 1965. He spent the majority of his career at 20th Century Fox crafting well regarded romantic and historical dramas, usually adapted from another medium. Dunne was a leading Screen Writers Guild organizer and was politically active during the “Hollywood Blacklist” episode of the 1940’s-50’s. He is best known for the films How Green Was My Valley, The Ghost and Mrs. Muir, The Robe and The Agony and the Ecstasy. {|align=”right”

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Philip Ives Dunne was born in New York City, the son of Chicago syndicated columnist Finley Peter Dunne and Margaret Ives Dunne, the daughter of the Chicago Tribune‘s book reviewer and novelist, Mary Ives Abbott.

25 Oct 2019
Motion Pictures Permalink

Philip Ahn

October 25, 2019

Philip Ahn was a Korean American actor. He was the first Asian American film actor to receive a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

Ahn was born Pil Lip Ahn in Highland Park, California. His parents emigrated to the United States in 1902 and were the first Korean married couple admitted; his mother, Helen Lee, was the second Korean woman in the country. Anh’s father, Dosan Ahn Chang-ho, was an educator and an activist for Korean independence during the Japanese occupation. Philip Ahn is believed to be the first American citizen born in the United States of Korean parents.

When he was a high school, Ahn visited the set of the film The Thief of Bagdad, where he met Douglas Fairbanks. Fairbanks offered him a screen test, followed by a part in the movie. However, his mother told him, “No son of mine is going to get mixed up with those awful people.”

Ahn graduated from high school in 1923, and went to work in the rice fields around Colusa, California. The land was owned by the Hung Sa Dan, or Young Korean Academy, a Korean independence movement which trained Koreans to become leaders of their country once it was free from Japanese rule. Since Koreans could not own land in California, the Academy put the property in Ahn’s name. Unfortunately, the rice crops failed because of heavy rains, and Ahn found himself deeply in debt. He went to work as an elevator operator in Los Angeles, to pay back the debt and help support his family.

25 Oct 2019
Motion Pictures, Radio, Recording Permalink

Phil Harris

October 25, 2019

Phil Harris was an American singer, songwriter, jazz musician, actor and comedian. Though successful as an orchestra leader, Harris is remembered today for his recordings as a vocalist, his voice work in animation and as a pioneer in radio situation comedy, first with Jack Benny, and then in a series in which he co-starred with his second wife, singer-actress Alice Faye, for eight years.

Harris was born in Linton, Indiana but grew up in Nashville, Tennessee, and identified himself as a Southerner. His upbringing accounted for both his trace of a Southern accent and, in later years, the self-deprecating Southern jokes of his radio character. The son of two circus performers, Harris’ first work as a drummer came when his father, as tent bandleader, hired him to play with the circus band. Harris began his music career as a drummer in San Francisco, forming an orchestra with Carol Lofner in the latter 1920s and starting a long engagement at the St. Francis Hotel. The partnership ended by 1932, and Harris led and sang with his own band, now based in Los Angeles. Phil Harris also played drums in Henry Halstead Big Band Orchestra in the mid 1920s.

In 1931, Lofner-Harris recorded a couple of records for Victor, then he recorded a couple of records for Columbia in 1933. In 1935, he recorded a couple of records for Decca. From December, 1936, through March, 1937, he recorded 16 sides for Vocalion. Most were hot swing tunes that used a very interesting gimmick; they faded up and faded out with a piano solo. These were probably arranged by pianist Skippy Anderson.

On September 2, 1927, he married actress Marcia Ralston in Sydney, Australia; they had met when he played a concert date. The couple adopted a son, Phil Harris, Jr., but they divorced in September, 1940.