25 Oct 2019
Motion Pictures Permalink

Maurice Costello

October 25, 2019

Maurice Costello was a prominent vaudeville actor of the late 1890s and early 1900s, who later played a principal role in early American films, as both a leading man, supporting player and a director.

Born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania to Irish immigrants Thomas Costello and Ellen Fitzgerald, Costello appeared in his first motion picture in 1905, in which he had the honour of appearing in the first serious film to feature the character of Sherlock Holmes in the movie Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, in which Costello played the title role. He continued to work for Vitagraph, being a member of the first motion picture stock company ever formed, playing opposite Florence Turner. Among some of his best known pictures are A Tale of Two Cities, The Man Who Couldn't Beat God and For the Honor of the Family. After an absence of some years he returned to the screen. He was married to actress Mae Costello. His daughters were the actresses Dolores Costello and Helene Costello, grandson John Drew Barrymore, and great granddaughter Drew Barrymore. He was one of the world's first leading men in early American cinema, but sadly, like a lot of other silent screen stars, he found the transition to "talkies" extremely difficult, and his leading man status was over. However, Costello was a trooper, and continued to appear in movies, often in small roles and bit parts, right up until his death in 1950.

25 Oct 2019
Motion Pictures, Radio Permalink

Maurice Jarre

October 25, 2019

Maurice-Alexis Jarre was a French composer and conductor.

Although he composed several concert works, he is best known for his film scores, and is particularly known for his collaborations with film director David Lean. Jarre composed the scores to all of Lean's films since Lawrence of Arabia. Other notable scores of his include The Message, Witness and Ghost. Jarre was awarded a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. Three of his compositions spent a total of forty-two weeks on the U.K. singles chart chart; the biggest hit was 'Somewhere My Love' by the Michael Sammes Singers, which reached number fourteen in 1966 and spent thirty-eight weeks on the chart.

Jarre was a three time Academy Award winner, for Lawrence of Arabia, Doctor Zhivago, and A Passage to India, all of which were directed by David Lean. He was Oscar nominated a total of eight times.

25 Oct 2019
Motion Pictures Permalink

Maurice Tourneur

October 25, 2019

Maurice Tourneur was an important international film director and screenwriter.

Born Maurice Thomas in the Belleville district of Paris, France, his father was a jeweler. As a young man, Maurice Thomas first trained as a graphic designer and a magazine illustrator but was soon drawn to the theater. In 1904, he married the actress, Fernande Petit. They had a son, Jacques who would follow his father into the film industry.

Using the stage name Maurice Tourneur, he began his show business career performing in secondary roles on stage and eventually toured England and South America as part of the theater company for the great star Gabrielle Réjane. Drawn to the new art of filmmaking, in 1911 he began working as an assistant director for the Éclair company. A quick learner and an innovator, within a short time he was directing films on his own using major French stars of the day such as Polaire.

In 1914, with the expansion of the giant French film companies into the United States market, Tourneur moved to New York City to direct silent films for Éclair’s American branch studio in Fort Lee, New Jersey before moving to William A. Brady’s World Film Corporation, where he directed important early American feature-length films such as The Wishing Ring, Alias Jimmy Valentine, The Cub and Trilby, the last starring Clara Kimball Young and noted stage actor Wilton Lackaye as Svengali. Before long, Maurice Tourneur was a major and respected force in American film and a founding member of the East Coast chapter of the Motion Picture Directors Association. As the feature film evolved in the mid 1910s, he and his team coupled exceptional technological skill with unique pictorial and architectural sensibilities in their productions, giving their films a visual distinctiveness that met with critical acclaim.

25 Oct 2019
Motion Pictures, Television Permalink

Mary Miles Minter

October 25, 2019

Mary Miles Minter was an American film actress of the silent film era.

Born Juliet Reilly in Shreveport, Louisiana, Minter was the daughter of Broadway actress Charlotte Shelby. At the age of five, she accompanied older sister Margaret on an audition only because no baby sitter was available, was noticed by the director and given her first part. After this she was frequently employed, widely noted for both her talent and visual appeal. In 1912, to avoid child labour laws in Chicago while her 10 year-old daughter was appearing in a play, Shelby obtained the birth certificate of a cousin and changed Juliet’s name to Mary Miles Minter. She made her first feature film in 1915 at the age of 13, after which her career steadily grew.

Minter specialised in playing demure young women. With her photogenic “registration”, even features, “periwinkle blue eyes” and curly hair, she emulated and later rivaled Mary Pickford.

Her first film for director William Desmond Taylor was Anne of Green Gables in 1919. The picture was well-received and Taylor actively promoted Minter as a star. A romantic relationship developed between them, which she later described as “a beautiful white flame.” However, according to Minter, Taylor had reservations from the outset and later curtailed the romance, citing the thirty-year difference in their ages.

25 Oct 2019
Motion Pictures Permalink

Mary Pickford

October 25, 2019

Mary Pickford was a Canadian-born American motion picture actress, co-founder of the film studio United Artists and one of the original 36 founders of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. Known as “America’s Sweetheart,” “Little Mary” and “The girl with the curls,” she was one of the Canadian pioneers in early Hollywood and a significant figure in the development of film acting.

Because her international fame was triggered by moving images, she is a watershed figure in the history of modern celebrity. And as one of silent film’s most important performers and producers, her contract demands were central to shaping the Hollywood industry. In consideration of her contributions to American cinema, the American Film Institute named Pickford 24th among the greatest female stars of all time.

Mary Pickford was born Gladys Louise Smith in Toronto, Ontario. Her father, John Charles Smith, was the son of English Methodist immigrants, and worked a variety of odd jobs. Her mother, Charlotte Hennessy, was Irish Catholic. She had two younger siblings, Jack and Lottie Pickford, who would also become actors. To please the relatives, Pickford’s mother baptized her in both the Methodist and Catholic churches. She was raised Roman Catholic after her alcoholic father left his family in 1895. He died three years later of a cerebral hemorrhage.

Hennessy, who had worked as a seamstress throughout the separation, began taking in boarders. Through one of these lodgers, the seven-year-old Pickford won a big part at Toronto’s Princess Theatre in a stock company production of The Silver King. She subsequently acted in many melodramas with the Valentine Company in Toronto, capped by the starring role of Little Eva in their production of Uncle Tom’s Cabin, the most popular play of the 19th century.

25 Oct 2019
Motion Pictures, Recording Permalink

Mary Steenburgen

October 25, 2019

Oscar Winner Mary Steenburgen was honored with the 2,395th star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. Leron Gubler, President and CEO of the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce, presided over the ceremony. Guests included Laura Dern, Larry David, Josh Brolin, Ted Danson, Ben Harper, Christine Lahti, Diane Lane, and Joe Mantegna.

7021 Hollywood Boulevard on December 16, 2009.

BIOGRAPHY

Mary Steenburgen was born on February 8, in Newport, Arkansas, into a family of Dutch-American heritage. Her mother, Nell Steenburgen, was a school-board secretary and her father Maurice Steenburgen, was a freight-train conductor.

Young Mary was fond of arts and literature. She was active in her school drama class. In 1972 she moved to New York to study acting. In 1980 she shot to fame with her role as Lynda Dummar in Melvin and Howard for which she won Oscar for Best Actress in a Supporting Role.

She will next be seen in Did You Hear About the Morgan's?, starring Hugh Grant and Sarah Jessica Parker. The Sony Pictures film is being released wide on December 18.

Recent films include Open Roads, starring Jeff Bridges and Justin Timberlake and the Warner Bros. film, The Proposal, starring Sandra Bullock and Ryan Reynolds. Last fall she was seen in Four Christmases, starring Reese Witherspoon and Vince Vaughn, and last summer Mary was seen in the comedy Stepbrothers, starring Will Farrell and John C. Reilly. In 2007 she starred in The Brave One, with Jody Foster and Terrence Howard. In 2006 she shot Nobel Son, opposite Alan Rickman and Bill Pullman. She appeared for two seasons on the Emmy-nominated CBS series, Joan of Arcadia. In February of 2006 Mary starred in the David Mamet-directed play Boston Marriage at The Geffen Playhouse in Los Angeles. She was seen co-staring in the independent feature Marilyn Hotchkiss' Ballroom Dancing and Charm School. In 2003 she was seen in the CBS television film It Must be Love co-starring her husband, Ted Danson. Mary co-starred in New Line Cinema's Elf, alongside Will Farrell and James Caan. She has appeared in two films for director John Sayles, Sunshine State and Casa De Los Babys. In 2001 Mary appeared alongside Kevin Kline in Irwin Winkler's Life as a House, which had its world premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival. She has constantly redefined herself through challenging roles in films such as Philadelphia, Parenthood and What's Eating Gilbert Grape.

In spring of 2002, Mary starred with her husband, Ted Danson in a CBS television miniseries entitled Talking to Heaven. They had previously worked together in 1996 on the critically-acclaimed NBC miniseries Gulliver's Travels and in the 1994 feature film Pontiac Moon.

Mary starred with Jon Voight and F. Murray Abraham in Robert Halmi's Noah's Ark for NBC and was also nominated for a Screen Actors Guild Award for her role in About Sarah, a two- hour made-for -television movie for CBS in which she played a developmentally-disabled adult.

Other films that encompass Mary's career include: The Grass Harp with Walter Matthau, Jack Lemmon and Piper Laurie, as well as Back to the Future III, Time After Time, A Midsummer Night's Sex Comedy, Cross Creek, One Magic Christmas, Dead of Winter and End of the Line, on which she also served as the film's executive producer.

Steenburgen's career on the stage includes starring in The Beginning of August, Holiday, George Bernard Shaw's production of Candida at New York's Roundabout Theater and most recently in Marvin's Room at the Tiffany Theater in Los Angeles.

In addition to her professional work, Mary has devoted a great deal of time to causes close to her heart. In 1989 she and fellow actress, Alfre Woodard founded Artists for a Free South Africa, and in 1996 Mary and Ted were presented with Liberty Hill Foundation's prestigious Upton Sinclair Award for their work in human rights and environmental causes.

25 Oct 2019
Recording, Television Permalink

Mary Tyler Moore

October 25, 2019

Mary Tyler Moore is an American actress, primarily known for her roles in television sitcoms.

Moore is best known for The Mary Tyler Moore Show, in which she starred as Mary Richards, a 30-something single woman who worked as a local news producer in Minneapolis, and for her earlier role as Dick Van Dyke’s wife on The Dick Van Dyke Show. She also appeared in a number of films, most notably 1980’s Ordinary People, in which she played a role that was the polar opposite of the television characters she had portrayed, and for which she was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actress.

Moore has also been active in charity work and various political causes, particularly on behalf of Animal rights and Diabetes mellitus type 1.

Moore was born in the Brooklyn Heights section of Brooklyn, New York, to George Tyler Moore, a clerk, and his wife Marjorie Hackett. She was the eldest of three children. Her maternal grandparents were immigrants from England. Moore’s family moved to Los Angeles, California, when she was eight years old. She first attended Saint Rose of Lima Roman Catholic school in Brooklyn, followed by St. Ambrose School in Los Angeles and the Immaculate Heart High School in Los Feliz.

25 Oct 2019
Recording, Television Permalink

Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen

October 25, 2019

Mary-Kate Olsen and Ashley Fuller Olsen are American actresses. Both have appeared in television and films since infancy. Since then, they have continued their celebrity through numerous television programs, films, interviews, as well as commercial endorsements. Although they are virtually identical in appearance, they are genetically different fraternal twins.

The girls were born in 1986 in Sherman Oaks, California to David Olsen and Jarnette Fuller. In 1987, the twins started their acting careers on the television series Full House. They were hired at the age of six months and filming began when they were nine months old. The show was widely popular during the late 1980s and early 1990s. Both sisters played the same character, Michelle Tanner, taking turns during the tapings to do so, in order to comply with strict child labor laws regarding child actors. For the first year, Ashley would cry when she was brought on set to do a scene, so Mary-Kate had more screen time in the first season.

Because the producers did not want viewers to know that Michelle was played by twins, the sisters were originally credited as “Mary Kate Ashley Olsen”, but in the last season and most of season one, they were credited as separate people. During the eight year run, Mary-Kate and Ashley made several direct-to-video movies, in addition to Full House, such as To Grandmother’s House We Go .

25 Oct 2019
Motion Pictures, Recording Permalink

Matt Damon

October 25, 2019

Matt Damon was honored with 2,343th star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. Honorary Mayor of Hollywood, Johnny Grant, presided over the ceremony. Guests included director Paul Greengrass and Ron Meyer, President and COO of Universival Studios.

6801 Hollywood Boulevard on July 25, 2007

BIOGRAPHY

Matt Damon is an Academy Award-winning screenwriter and actor. He most recently starred in Martin Scorsese’s Oscar-winning Best Picture, The Departed with Leonardo DiCaprio, Jack Nicholson and Mark Wahlberg, and in Robert DeNiro’s dramatic thriller The Good Shepherd, with DeNiro and Angelina Jolie.

Damon can currently be seen in Oceans Thirteen along with George Clooney and Brad Pitt, and in director Paul Greengrass’ The Bourne Ultimatum, in which he reprises his role of Jason Bourne from the hit action thrillers The Bourne Identity and The Bourne Supremecy, on August 3.

In 2005, Damon starred with George Clooney in the geopolitical thriller Syriana. That same year, audiences also saw him in The Brothers Grimm, starring with Heath Ledger. He also recently reprised his roles as Linus Caldwell in Ocean’s Twelve for director Steven Soderbergh, and as Jason Bourne in the boxoffice hit The Bourne Supremacy, the second installment in the series following The Bourne Identity.

In 2004, Damon reprised his role as Jason Bourne in the box-office hit The Bourne Supremacy, the second installment in the series following The Bourne Identity. That same year, Damon starred with Greg Kinnear in the Farrelly Brothers comedy Stuck On You, and in 2002, in Gerry with Casey Affleck for director Gus Van Sant.

In 2000, audiences saw Damon star in The Legend of Bagger Vance, for director Robert Redford and in the film version of the Cormick McCarthy book All the Pretty Horses.

In 1999, Damon starred in The Talented Mr. Ripley, for which he received a Golden Globe nomination for Best Actor. That same year he rejoined Chasing Amy director Kevin Smith and pal Ben Affleck in Dogma, a film about a pair of outcast angels.

In 1998, he won an Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay with longtime friend Ben Affleck for the critically-acclaimed drama Good Will Hunting. Damon also earned an Academy Award nomination for Best Actor for his work in the title role. In addition, both he and Affleck received a Golden Globe Award for their screenplay, and Damon also garnered a Golden Globe nomination for his performance. The film, directed by Gus Van Sant, received seven additional Oscar nominations, including one for Best Picture and a win for Robin Williams for Best Supporting Actor.

In the same year, Damon starred in the title role of the World War II drama Saving Private Ryan for Academy Award-winning director Steven Spielberg, and in John Dahl’s Rounders.

In 1997, Damon made a cameo appearance in Chasing Amy. In the same year, he starred as an idealistic young attorney in Francis Ford Coppola’s The Rainmaker, based on the best-selling novel by John Grisham.

Damon first gained the public’s eye in 1996, when he gave a vivid performance in Courage Under Fire, in which he portrayed a guilt-ridden Persian Gulf War soldier tormented by an incident which happened in the heat of battle.

The versatile young actor made his feature film debut in 1988 in a small role in the critically well-received Mystic Pizza. He went on to play Brian Dennehy’s medical school dropout in the TV movie Rising Son (TNT, 1990) and gained further attention when he returned to the big screen as a fascist preppy in School Ties (1992).

For director Walter Hill, Damon enjoyed a sizeable supporting role as the green second lieutenant new to the West who narrates Geronimo: An American Legend (1993) and in 1995, he appeared in The Good Old Boys, directed by Tommy Lee Jones for TNT.

25 Oct 2019
Radio, Recording Permalink

Mary Margaret McBride

October 25, 2019

Mary Margaret McBride was an American radio interview host and writer. Her popular radio shows spanned more than forty years; she is also remembered for her few months of pioneering television, as an early sign of radio success not guaranteeing a transition to the new medium. She was sometimes known as “The First Lady of Radio.”

McBride was born on November 16, 1899 in Paris, Missouri, to a farming family. Their frequent relocations disorganized her early schooling, but at the age of six she became a student at a preparatory school called William Woods “College”, and at 16 the University of Missouri, receiving a degree in journalism there in 1919.

She worked a year as a reporter at the Cleveland Press, and then until 1924 at the New York Evening Mail. Following this, she wrote freelance for periodicals including the Saturday Evening Post, Cosmopolitan, Good Housekeeping, and starting in 1926 collaborated in writing travel-oriented books.

McBride first worked steadily in radio for WOR in New York City, starting in 1934. This daily women’s-advice show, with her persona as “Martha Deane”, a kind and witty grandmother figure with a Missouri-drawl, aired daily until 1940.