25 Oct 2019
Motion Pictures, Recording Permalink

Phil Collins

October 25, 2019

Philip David Charles “Phil” Collins, LVO is an English singer-songwriter, drummer, keyboardist and actor best known as a drummer and vocalist for English progressive rock group Genesis and as a solo artist.

Collins sang the lead vocals on several chart hits in the United Kingdom and the United States between 1978 and 1994, either as a solo artist or with Genesis. His singles, often dealing with lost love, ranged from the drum-heavy “In the Air Tonight”, to the dance pop of “Sussudio”, to the political statements of his most successful song, “Another Day in Paradise”. His international popularity transformed Genesis from a progressive rock group to a regular on the pop charts and an early MTV mainstay.

Collins’s professional music career began as a drummer, first with obscure rock group Flaming Youth and then more famously with Genesis. In Genesis, Collins originally supplied backing vocals for front man Peter Gabriel, singing lead on only two songs: “For Absent Friends” from 1971’s Nursery Cryme album and “More Fool Me” from Selling England by the Pound, which was released in 1973. Following Gabriel’s departure in 1975, Collins became the group’s lead singer. As the decade closed, Genesis’s first international hit, “Follow You, Follow Me”, demonstrated a drastic change from the band’s early years.

His concurrent solo career, heavily influenced by his personal life, brought both him and Genesis commercial success. According to Atlantic Records, Collins’s total worldwide sales as a solo artist, as of 2002, were 150 million. He has won seven Grammy Awards, an Academy Award, and two Golden Globes for his solo work. He was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as a member of Genesis in 2010.

25 Oct 2019
Recording, Television Permalink

Phil Silvers

October 25, 2019

Phil Silvers was an American entertainer and comedy actor, known as "The King of Chutzpah." He is best known for starring in The Phil Silvers Show, a 1950s sitcom set on a U.S. Army post in which he played Sergeant Bilko.

Born Philip Silver on Thursday, May 11, 1911, in Brooklyn, New York, he was the eighth and youngest child of Russian-Jewish immigrants, Saul and Sarah Silver. His siblings were Lillian, Harry, Jack, Saul, Pearl, Michael, and Reuben Silver. His father, a sheet metal worker, helped build the early New York skyscrapers.

Silvers started entertaining at age 11, when he would sing in theaters when the projector broke down. Two years later, he left school to sing professionally, before appearing in vaudeville as a stooge.

Silvers then landed work in short films for the Vitaphone studio, burlesque houses, and on Broadway, where he made his debut in the short-lived show Yokel Boy. Critics raved about Silvers, who was hailed as the bright spot in the mediocre play. He then wrote the revue High Kickers, until he went to Hollywood to appear in films.

25 Oct 2019
Radio, Television Permalink

Phil Spitalny

October 25, 2019

Phil Spitalny was a musician, music critic, composer and bandleader heard often on radio during the 1930s and 1940s. He rose to fame after he brought together an orchestra with only female musicians, a novelty at the time.

On radio, Spitalny was introduced as Phil Spitalny and His All-Girl Orchestra featuring Evelyn and her Magic Violin. The magic violinist was Evelyn Kaye Klein, who used the professional name, Evelyn Silverstone. She helped Spitalny find the women he needed to assemble his all-female orchestra. Together, they auditioned more than 1000 musicians in New York, Chicago, Cleveland, Detroit and Pittsburgh.

Spitalny’s 22-piece band was known as the Hour of Charm Orchestra during the time it appeared on the radio program, The Hour of Charm, hosted by Arlene Francis. The program aired in various timeslots on CBS and NBC from 1934 to 1948.

Evelyn Kaye Klein and Spitalny married in June 1946.

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, 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, Radio, Recording, Television Permalink

Perry Como

October 25, 2019

Pierino Ronald "Perry" Como was an American singer and television personality. During a career spanning more than half a century he recorded exclusively for the RCA Victor label after signing with it in 1943. "Mr. C.", as he was nicknamed, sold millions of records for Radio Corporation of America and pioneered a weekly musical variety television show, which set the standards for the genre and proved to be one of the most successful in television history. His combined success on television and popular recordings was not matched by any other artist of the time. A popular television performer and recording artist, Perry Como produced numerous hit records with record sales so high the label literally stopped counting at Como's behest. His weekly television shows and seasonal specials were broadcast throughout the world and his popularity seemingly had no geographical or language boundaries. Como's appeal spanned generations and he was widely respected for both his professional standards and the conduct in his personal life. In the official RCA Records Billboard magazine memorial, his life was summed up in these few words: "50 years of music and a life well lived. An example to all." Composer Ervin Drake said of him,". ccasionally someone like Perry comes along and won't 'go with the flow' and still prevails in spite of all the bankrupt others who surround him and importune him to yield to their values. Only occasionally."

One of the many factors in his success was Como's insistence on his principles of good taste; if he considered something to be in bad or poor taste, it wasn't in the show or broadcast. While his performance of "Ave Maria" was a tradition of his holiday television programs, Como refused to sing it at live performances, saying, "It's not the time or place to do it.", even though it was the number one request of his audiences. Another was his naturalness; the man viewers saw on the screen was the same person who could be encountered behind a supermarket shopping cart, at a bowling alley, or in a kitchen making breakfast. From his first Chesterfield Supper Club television show, if scripts were written at all, they were based on the way Como would say something. Como was not devoid of a temper, and it could be seen at times as a result of the frustrations of daily life. His music director from 1948 – 1963, Mitchell Ayres, said, "Perry has a temper like everyone else. And he loses his temper at the normal things everyone else does. When we're driving, for instance, and somebody cuts him off, he really lets the offender have it."

Como received five Emmys from 1955 to 1959, a Christopher Award and shared a Peabody Award with good friend Jackie Gleason in 1956. He was inducted into the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences Hall of Fame in 1990 and received a Kennedy Center Honor in 1987. Posthumously, Como received the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award in 2002; he was inducted into the Long Island Music Hall of Fame in 2006 and the Hit Parade Hall of Fame in 2007. Como has the distinction of having three stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame for his work in radio, television, and music. Bing Crosby once described him as, "the man who invented casual".

Como was born in Canonsburg, Pennsylvania, 18 miles southwest of Pittsburgh, seventh of the 13 children of Pietro Como, and Lucia Travaglini ,

25 Oct 2019
Motion Pictures Permalink

Pete Smith

October 25, 2019

Pete Smith was a film producer and narrator of “short subject” films from 1931 to 1955.

Smith was a publicist at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer who was recruited to overdub the actions of trained dogs in the studio’s “Dogville” comedies. Smith’s speaking voice was distinctively nasal, and he would go on to narrate the studio’s sports reels. Smith would embellish the action by running certain scenes in reverse or adding his own pungent commentary. Both the studio and the moviegoing public picked up on Smith’s flair for comedy, and soon he had his own series, Pete Smith Specialties.

Smith made more than 150 shorts, almost all of which were comedy documentaries. They were made as filler material for MGM’s cinema exhibition packages, which typically consisted of a feature film, a B-movie or a serial, plus one or two “short subjects” of various types, such as animated cartoons, newsreels and documentaries. The Smith shorts were typically 9 to 11 minutes long, shot in black-and-white, with many of the laughs generated by the highly ironic voice-over narration delivered by Smith himself.

The subject matter of the individual films was enormously diverse. Among the topics Smith cast his affectionate but jaundiced eye upon were: Emily Post-style household hints, insect life seen through a microscope, military training and hardware, and dancing lessons. There were even several “series-within-the-series”, such as lighthearted general-knowledge quizzes, professional football highlights, quirky looks at many different kinds of animals, and “Goofy Movies”. Smith narrated a patriotic short for the U.S. Government, The Tree In a Test Tube, filmed in color, featuring Laurel and Hardy in a demonstration of household wood products, with Smith explaining the various exhibits for the viewer.

25 Oct 2019
Motion Pictures, Television Permalink

Peter Donald

October 25, 2019

Peter Donald was a British-born actor who worked in American radio and television.

He was famed as the character of Ajax Cassidy on Fred Allen’s radio show, the Irishman who continually complained that he was “not long for this world.”

In addition to his long run on “Allen’s Alley,” Donald was also the host during the 1940s on radio’s joke-telling panel program, Can You Top This?

Donald was the host of two early television series, The Ad-Libbers and Masquerade Party, and he made numerous TV guest appearances as a comedian and panelist. His TV appearances as an actor included Prize Performance and ABC Showcase. He appeared on The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson in 1962, and one of his last TV appearances was on the daytime panel show Get the Message in 1964.

25 Oct 2019
Motion Pictures, Recording Permalink

Peter Frampton

October 25, 2019

Peter Kenneth Frampton is an English musician, singer, producer, and multi-instrumentalist. He was previously associated with the bands Humble Pie and The Herd. Frampton’s international breakthrough album was his live release, Frampton Comes Alive!. The album sold over 6 million copies in the United States alone and spawned several hits. Since then he has released several major albums. He has

also worked with David Bowie and both Matt Cameron and Mike McCready from Pearl Jam, among others. Frampton is best known for such hits as “Show Me the Way”, “Baby, I Love Your Way”, “Do You Feel Like We Do”, and “I’m in You”, “Breaking All The Rules” which to this day, remain staples on classic-rock radio. He has also appeared as himself in television shows such as: The Simpsons, The Colbert Report and Family Guy.

Frampton was born in Beckenham, England. He first became interested in music when he was seven years old. Upon discovering his grandmother’s banjolele in the attic, he taught himself to play, and later taught himself to play guitar and piano as well. At age eight he started taking classical music lessons.

Early influences were Cliff Richard & The Shadows and American rockers Buddy Holly and Eddie Cochran, and then the Ventures, Jimi Hendrix, and the Beatles. His father introduced him to Belgian gypsy jazz guitarist Django Reinhardt.

25 Oct 2019
Motion Pictures, Television Permalink

Peter Lawford

October 25, 2019

Peter Sydney Vaughn Aylen, better known as Peter Lawford, was an English-American actor. He was a member of the “Rat Pack,” and brother-in-law to President John F. Kennedy, perhaps more noted in later years for his off-screen activities as a celebrity than for his acting. In his earlier professional years he had a strong presence in popular culture and starred in a number of highly-acclaimed films.

Born in London, he was the son of English World War I veteran Sir Sydney Turing Barlow Lawford and May Somerville Bunny. At the time of his birth, May Somerville Bunny was married to Captain Ernest Vaughn Aylen. After his birth, Bunny confessed to Aylen that the child was not his, and he promptly divorced her. Sir Sydney Lawford and Bunny were married in September 1924.

Lawford spent his early childhood in France and owing to his family’s travels, was never formally educated. In America, Sir Sydney and Lady Lawford were treated as royalty among the well-to-do in their new neighbourhood of Palm Beach, Florida, and were always invited to events and social occasions. However, they lost whatever source of money they had when war was declared by the UK in 1939.

At the age of 14, Lawford severely injured his right arm when it went through a glass door. The injury greatly compromised the use of his lower arm and hand with irreversible nerve damage, which he later learned to hide. The injury was considered damaging enough to keep him from entering World War II, but this turn of fate was probably the greatest boon to his career. At that time, Hollywood was infatuated with heroic Englishmen, and as war films were being churned out by the dozens and American actors volunteered or were drafted for the war, Lawford put his talents to work “”.