25 Oct 2019
Motion Pictures Permalink

Mary Carlisle

October 25, 2019

In memory of actor and Walk of Famer Mary Carlisle, flowers were placed on her star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame on Wednesday, August 1, 2018 at 4:30 p.m. The star in the category of Motion Pictures is located at 6679 Hollywood Boulevard. “Rest in peace with the stars Mary.” Ana Martinez, Producer of the Hollywood Walk of Fame signed the card on behalf of the Hollywood Historic Trust and the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce.

Mary Carlisle is a retired American actress and singer.

Born in Boston, Massachusetts, she was a star of Hollywood films in the 1930s, having been one of fifteen girls selected as "WAMPAS Baby Stars" in 1932. The archetypal blonde, Mary Carlisle was brought to Hollywood at the age of four by her recently widowed mother. While eating lunch with her mother at the Universal Pictures commissary, Mary was spotted by Carl Laemmle, Jr. and offered a screen test.

Her first screen role was at the age of eight when she played Jackie Coogan's sweetheart in If I Were King. After that she decided to finish school before launching her film career. Carlisle finally stepped back in front of the cameras in 1930, appearing in a series of Collegian short subjects and Madam Satan, directed by Cecil B. DeMille.

She subsequently freelanced in eighteen movies, alternating between supporting and leading roles. She co-starred in three films with Bing Crosby: College Humor, Double or Nothing and Doctor Rhythm.

25 Oct 2019
Motion Pictures, Television Permalink

Mary Hart

October 25, 2019

Mary Hart is an American television personality and has been the host of the syndicated gossip and entertainment round-up program Entertainment Tonight since 1982.

Mary Hart was born Mary Johanna Harum in Madison, South Dakota and lived in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, as well as in Denmark, as a child and teenager. She speaks both Danish and Swedish fluently. Hart competed in the Miss America pageant in 1970 as Miss South Dakota, and finished in the top ten. Two years later, Hart graduated from Augustana College in Sioux Falls and while teaching English at school she also produced and anchored her own cable TV talk show.

Hart began her TV career at KMTV, the CBS station in Omaha, NE. In 1976, she went to KTVY in Oklahoma City, where she co-hosted a show called Dannysday. Determined to leave journalism behind, she moved to the Los Angeles neighborhood of Westwood in 1979 with $10,000 in the bank. Hart landed a small role on the soap opera “Days of our Lives,” as well as some TV commercials. Almost broke, she became a co-host on a Los Angeles local program, “PM Magazine.” That led to a job in 1981 as co-host of Regis Philbin’s first national talk show. When that show was canceled four months later, “Entertainment Tonight” interviewed her about what it felt like to be canceled. The day after the interview, she was hired as an “E. T.” correspondent. Thirteen weeks later, she was named the show’s co-host, along with Ron Hendren.

In 1984, Hendren was replaced by Robb Weller, who was replaced by John Tesh in 1986, who was replaced by Bob Goen in 1996, who was replaced by Mark Steines. Soon after her hiring by ET, Hart chose Jay Bernstein as her manager. Hart is known for her shapely legs, leading to an endorsement contract with Hanes for that company’s line of pantyhose in 1987. Jay Bernstein had her legs insured for $1 million each.Executive Producer Linda Blue Bell described Hart as the face of E.T.

25 Oct 2019
Motion Pictures, Radio Permalink

Mary Livingstone

October 25, 2019

Mary Livingstone, was an American radio comedienne and the wife and radio partner of comedy great Jack Benny. Enlisted almost entirely by accident to perform on her husband’s popular program, she proved a talented comedienne. But she also proved one of the rare performers to experience severe stage fright years after her career was established ? so much so that she retired from show business completely, after two decades in the public eye, almost three decades before her death, and at the height of her husband and partner’s fame.

Seattle-born, but Vancouver, British Columbia- raised, her father was a Romanian immigrant. Sadie Marks herself came from a respected show business family: relatives included her cousins the Marx Brothers and Al Shean of Gallagher and Shean; her family name Marrix was Anglicised to Marks when the family arrived in the United States. She met her future husband at a Passover seder at her family home when she was 14; Benny was invited by his friend and her cousin, Zeppo Marx while Benny and the Marx Brothers were in town together to perform. Sadie developed a near-instant crush on the funny, somewhat shy man eleven years her senior. But when he inadvertently insulted her by excusing himself for the night in the midst of her violin performance, she got her revenge the next night. She took three girlfriends to the theater where Benny performed, sitting in the front row and making sure not to laugh. Benny said later it drove him nuts that he couldn’t get the four girls to laugh at anything.

Three years later, aged 17, Sadie visited California with her family while Jack Benny was in the same town for a show. Still nursing a small crush on the comedian, Sadie went to the theater to re-introduce herself to him. As he approached her in a hallway, she smiled and said, “Hello, Mr. Benny, I’m.” But he curtly cut her off with a “Hello,” and continued on his way down the hall without pausing; she learned much later that when Benny was deep in thought about his work, it was nearly impossible to get his attention otherwise.

They met again a few years later ? while she was said to be working as a lingerie salesgirl at a May Department Stores branch store in downtown Los Angeles ? and the couple finally began dating. Invited on a double-date by a friend who had married Sadie’s sister, Babe, Benny brought Sadie along to keep him company. This time, the couple clicked: Jack was finally smitten with Sadie and asked her on another date. She turned him down at first ? she was seeing another young man ? but Benny persisted. He visited her at The May Company almost daily and was reputed to buy so much ladies’ hosiery from her he helped her set a sales record; he also called her several times a day when on the road.

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.

25 Oct 2019
Radio, Recording, Television Permalink

Mary Martin

October 25, 2019

Mary Virginia Martin was an American actress and singer. She originated many roles over her career including Nellie Forbush in South Pacific and Maria in The Sound of Music. She was named a Kennedy Center Honoree in 1989.

Mary Martin’s life as a child, as Martin describes it in her autobiography My Heart Belongs, was secure and happy. She had close relationships with both her mother and father, as well as her siblings. Her autobiography details how the young actress had an instinctive ear for recreating musical sounds.

Martin’s father, Preston Martin, was a lawyer and her mother, Juanita Presley, was a violin teacher. Although the doctors told Juanita that she would risk her life if she attempted to have another baby, she was determined to have a boy. Instead, she had Mary, who became quite a tomboy. Her birth was an event as all of the neighbors gathered around Juanita’s bedroom window, waiting for the raising of a curtain to signal the baby?s arrival.

Her family had a barn and orchard that kept her entertained. She played with her older sister Geraldine, climbing trees and riding ponies. Martin adored her father. ?He was a tall, good-looking, silver-haired, with the kindest brown eyes. Mother was the disciplinarian, but it was Daddy who could turn me into an angel with just one look?. Martin, who said ?I?d never understand the law?, began singing outside the courtroom where her father worked every Saturday night at a bandstand where the town band played. She sang in a trio of little girls dressed in bellhop uniforms. ?Even in those days without microphones, my high piping voice carried all over the square. I have always thought that I inherited my carrying voice from my father? .

25 Oct 2019
Motion Pictures Permalink

Mary Anderson

October 25, 2019

In memory of Hollywood actress and Walk of Famer Mary Anderson flowers were placed today on her star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame on Tuesday, April 8, 2014 at 11 a.m. PDT. The star in the category of Motion Pictures is located at 1645 Vine Street.

“Rest in peace among the stars!” Ana Martinez, producer of the Walk of Fame signed the card on behalf of the Hollywood Historic Trust and the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce.

Mary Anderson is an American former actress, who appeared in 31 films and 22 television productions between 1939 and 1965.

Born Bebe Anderson in Birmingham, Alabama, she was educated at Howard College in Texas.

After doing two uncredited roles, Anderson made her first important screen appearance as Maybelle Meriweather in Gone With the Wind. Ending her film career in the early 1950s, she occasionally acted on television, for example, as Catherine Harrington in the prime-time soap opera Peyton Place in 1964, episodes 2-20)

Many times confused with the stage actress of the same name or silent film actress of same name, Mary Anderson appeared in a number of films in the 1940s, and was credited under her birth name in a 1940 short film.

25 Oct 2019
Motion Pictures, Recording Permalink

Mary Astor

October 25, 2019

Mary Astor was an American actress. Most remembered for her role as Brigid O’Shaughnessy in The Maltese Falcon with Humphrey Bogart, Astor began her long motion picture career as a teenager in the silent movies of the early 1920s.

She eventually made a successful transition to talkies, but almost saw her career destroyed due to public scandal in the mid-1930s. She was sued for support by her parents and was later branded an adulterous wife by her ex-husband during a custody fight over her daughter. Overcoming these stumbling blocks in her private life, Astor went on to even greater success on the screen, eventually winning the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for her portrayal of Sandra Kovak in The Great Lie. She was an MGM contract player through most of the 1940s and continued to act in movies, on television and on stage until her retirement from the screen in 1964. Astor was the author of five novels. Her autobiography became a bestseller, as did her later book, A Life on Film, which was specifically about her career.

Director Lindsay Anderson wrote of her in 1990: “.that when two or three who love the cinema are gathered together, the name of Mary Astor always comes up, and everybody agrees that she was an actress of special attraction, whose qualities of depth and reality always seemed to illuminate the parts she played.”

She was born as Lucile Vasconcellos Langhanke in Quincy, Illinois. Astor was the only child of Otto Ludwig Langhanke and Helen Marie de Vasconcellos who were both teachers.

25 Oct 2019
Motion Pictures Permalink

Mary Boland

October 25, 2019

Mary Boland was an American stage and film actress.

Born Marie Anne Boland in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, she was the daughter of William Boland, an actor, and his wife Mary Cecilia Hatton. She had an older sister named Sara.

Boland originally was in a convent but left and was performing on stage by the age of fifteen. She debuted on Broadway in 1907 in the play The Ranger with Dustin Farnum and had appeared in eleven Broadway productions, notably with John Drew, before making her silent film debut for Triangle Studios in 1915. She entertained soldiers in France during World War One then returned to America. After appearing in nine movies, she left filmmaking in 1920, returning to the stage and appearing in a number of Broadway productions. She became famous as a comedienne.

Boland’s greatest success on the stage in the 1920s was the comedy The Cradle Snatchers, in which she, Edna May Oliver, and Margaret Dale, having been abandoned by their husbands, take on young lovers. Boland’s paramour was Humphrey Bogart in one of his first roles.

25 Oct 2019
Motion Pictures, Recording Permalink

Marty Robbins

October 25, 2019

Martin David Robinson, known professionally as Marty Robbins, was an American singer, songwriter, and multi-instrumentalist. One of the most popular and successful country and Western singers of his era, for most of his nearly four-decade career, Robbins was rarely far from the country music charts, and several of his songs also became pop hits.

Robbins was born in Glendale, a suburb of Phoenix, in Maricopa County, Arizona. He was reared in a difficult family situation. His father took odd jobs to support the family of ten children. His father’s drinking led to divorce in 1937. Among his warmer memories of his childhood, Robbins recalled having listened to stories of the American West told by his maternal grandfather, Texas Bob Heckle. Robbins left the troubled home at the age of 17 to serve in the United States Navy as an LCT coxswain during World War II. He was stationed in the Solomon Islands in the Pacific. To pass the time during the war, he learned to play the guitar, started writing songs, and came to love Hawaiian music.

After his discharge from the military in 1945, he began to play at local venues in Phoenix, then moved on to host his own show on KTYL. He thereafter had his own television show on KPHO-TV in Phoenix. After Little Jimmy Dickens made a guest appearance on Robbins’ TV show, Dickens got Robbins a record deal with Columbia Records. Robbins became known for his appearances at the Grand Ole Opry in Nashville, Tennessee.

In addition to his recordings and performances, Robbins was an avid race car driver, competing in 35 career NASCAR races with six top 10 finishes, including the 1973 Daytona 500. In 1967, Robbins played himself in the car racing film Hell on Wheels. Robbins was partial to Dodges, and owned and raced Chargers and then a 1978 Dodge Magnum. His last race was in a Junior Johnson-built 1982 Buick Regal in the Atlanta Journal 500 on November 7, 1982, the month before he died. In 1983, NASCAR honored Robbins by naming the annual race at Nashville the Marty Robbins 420. He was also the driver of the 60th Indianapolis 500 Buick Century pace car in 1976.

25 Oct 2019
Recording, Television Permalink

Marvin Gaye

October 25, 2019

Marvin Pentz Gaye, Jr., better known by his stage name Marvin Gaye, was an American singer-songwriter and instrumentalist with a three-octave vocal range. Starting as a member of the doo-wop group The Moonglows in the late fifties, he ventured into a solo career after the group disbanded in 1960 signing with the Tamla subsidiary of Motown Records. After starting off as a session drummer, Gaye ranked as the label’s top-selling solo artist during the sixties.

Because of solo hits such as “How Sweet It Is “, “Ain’t That Peculiar”, “I Heard It Through the Grapevine” and his duet singles with singers such as Mary Wells and Tammi Terrell, he was crowned “The Prince of Motown” and “The Prince of Soul”.

His mid-1970s work including the What’s Going On, Let’s Get It On and I Want You albums helped influence the quiet storm, urban adult contemporary and slow jam genres. After a self-imposed European exile in the early eighties, Gaye returned on the 1982 Grammy-winning hit, “Sexual Healing” and the Midnight Love album before his death. Gaye was shot dead by his father on April 1, 1984. He was posthumously inducted to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1987.

In 2008, the American music magazine Rolling Stone ranked Gaye #6 on its list of The Greatest Singers of All Time, and ranked #18 on 100 Greatest Artists of All Time.