25 Oct 2019
Recording, Television Permalink

Marvin Miller

October 25, 2019

Marvin Miller was an American film and voice-over actor. Possessing a deep, baritone voice, he began his career in radio in St. Louis, Missouri before becoming a Hollywood actor. Miller is best remembered for two of his roles, as Michael Anthony, the man who passed out a weekly check on the TV series The Millionaire and as the voice of Robby the Robot in the film Forbidden Planet.

Born Marvin Mueller in St. Louis, Miller graduated from Washington University before he began his career in radio. He narrated a daily 15-minute radio show for Mutual Radio, The Story Behind the Story, which offered historical vignettes. He also served as announcer on several OTR shows of the 1940s and 50’s, including The Whistler.

He also won Grammy Awards in 1965 and 1966 for his recordings of Dr. Seuss stories: in 1967 for Dr Seuss Presents – If I Ran the Zoo and Sleep Book and 1966 for Dr Seuss Presents Fox in Socks and Green Eggs and Ham. He also read Horton Hatches the Egg and The Sneetches and Other Stories & Yertle the Turtle and Other Stories

In films, the heavyset Miller was often cast as a villain, many times playing Asian roles. He portrayed a sadistic henchman in the 1947 Humphrey Bogart film Dead Reckoning, and as Yamada in the 1945 James Cagney effort Blood on the Sun. In Deadline at Dawn he plays Sleepy Parsons, a blind pianist.

25 Oct 2019
Motion Pictures, Television Permalink

Martin Landau

October 25, 2019

Martin Landau is an American actor. Landau began his career in the 1950s; his early films include a supporting role in Alfred Hitchcock’s North by Northwest. He played continuing roles in the television series ‘ for which he received Emmy Award nominations, and ‘. He received a Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actor – Motion Picture and his first nomination for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his work in , and was also Oscar nominated for his role in Crimes and Misdemeanors. His performance in the supporting role of Béla Lugosi in Ed Wood earned him the Academy Award, Screen Actors Guild Award and a Golden Globe. He continues to perform in film and television and heads the Hollywood branch of the Actors Studio.

Landau was born into a Jewish-American family in Brooklyn, New York, the son of Selma and Morris Landau, an Austrian-born machinist who scrambled to rescue relatives from the Nazis. At the age of 17, he began working as a cartoonist for the Daily News, assisting Gus Edson on The Gumps comic strip during the 1940s and 1950s.

Influenced by Charlie Chaplin and the escapism of the cinema, he pursued an acting career. He attended the Actors Studio in the same class with Steve McQueen and in 1957, Landau made his Broadway debut in Middle of the Night. Encouraged by his mentor Lee Strasberg, Landau also taught acting. Actors he has coached include Jack Nicholson and Anjelica Huston.

In 1959, Landau made his first major film appearance in Alfred Hitchcock’s North by Northwest at the age of 31. Landau took the role of master of disguise Rollin Hand in , becoming one of the show’s better-known stars. According to The Complete Mission: Impossible Dossier, by Patrick J. White, Landau initially declined to be contracted to the show as he did not want it to interfere with his film career; instead, for the first season he was credited in “special guest appearances by” him. He became a “full-time” cast member with the second season, although the studio agreed to only contract him on a year-by-year basis rather than the then-standard five years. The role of Rollin Hand required Landau to perform a wide range of accents and characters from dictators to thugs, and several episodes saw Landau playing dual roles – not only Hand’s impersonation, but also the person Hand is impersonating. He co-starred in the series with his then wife, Barbara Bain.

25 Oct 2019
Motion Pictures Permalink

Martin Scorsese

October 25, 2019

Martin Charles Scorsese is a U.S. film director, screenwriter, producer, actor, and film historian. He is the founder of the World Cinema Foundation and a recipient of the AFI Life Achievement Award for his contributions to the cinema, and has won awards from the Oscars, Golden Globe, BAFTA, and Directors Guild of America. Scorsese is president of The Film Foundation, a nonprofit organization dedicated to film preservation.

Scorsese’s body of work addresses such themes as Italian identity in the U.S., Roman Catholic concepts of guilt and redemption, machismo, and violence. Scorsese is widely considered to be one of the most significant and influential U.S. film-makers of his era, directing landmark films such as Taxi Driver, Raging Bull and Goodfellas ? all of which he collaborated on with actor and close friend Robert De Niro. He won the Academy Award for Best Director for The Departed and earned an MFA in film directing from the New York University Tisch School of the Arts.

In 2007, Scorsese was honored by the National Italian American Foundation at the nonprofit’s thirty-second Anniversary Gala. During the ceremony, Scorsese helped launch N.I.A.F.’s Jack Valenti Institute, which provides support to Italian film students in the U.S., in memory of former Foundation Board Member and past president of the Motion Picture Association of America Jack Valenti. Scorsese received his award from Mary Margaret Valenti, Jack’s widow. Certain of Scorsese’s film related material and personal papers are contained in the Wesleyan University Cinema Archives to which scholars and media experts from around the world may have full access.

Martin Scorsese was born in New York City. His father, Luciano Charles Scorsese, and mother, Catherine Scorsese, both worked in New York’s Garment District. His father was a clothes presser and his mother was a seamstress. As a boy, his parents would often take him to movie theatres; it was at this stage in his life that he developed passion for cinema. Enamored of historical epics in his adolescence, at least two films of the genre, Land of the Pharaohs and El Cid, appear to have had a deep and lasting impact on his cinematic psyche. Scorsese also developed an admiration for neorealist cinema at this time. He recounted its influence in a documentary on Italian neorealism, and commented on how The Bicycle Thief alongside Paisà, Rome, Open City inspired him and how this influenced his view or portrayal of his Sicilian genes. In his documentary, Il Mio Viaggio in Italia, Scorsese noted that the Sicilian episode of Roberto Rossellini’s Paisà which he first saw on television alongside his relatives, who were themselves Sicilian immigrants, made a significant impact on his life. He has also cited filmmaker Satyajit Ray as a major influence on his career. His initial desire to become a priest while attending Cardinal Hayes High School in the Bronx was forsaken for cinema, and, consequently, Scorsese enrolled in NYU Tisch School of the Arts, where he received his M.F.A. in film directing in 1966.

25 Oct 2019
Motion Pictures Permalink

Martin Sheen

October 25, 2019

Ramón Antonio Gerard Estévez, better known by his stage name Martin Sheen, is an actor known for his performances as Captain Willard in the film Apocalypse Now, Confederate General Robert E. Lee in the film Gettysburg, President Josiah Bartlet in the television series The West Wing, and as the voice of The Illusive Man in the video game Mass Effect 2. He has worked with some of cinema's prominent directors, including Martin Scorsese, Steven Spielberg, Oliver Stone, Francis Ford Coppola, Richard Attenborough, Terrence Malick and Mike Nichols.

With the critical acclaim he has received as an actor, Sheen has become known as an activist. Born and raised in Dayton, Ohio, United States, with Irish and Galician parents, Sheen is also an Irish citizen.

He is the father of actors Emilio Estévez, Ramón Estévez, Carlos Irwin Estévez, and Renée Estévez, and is the brother of Joe Estévez, also an actor.

Sheen was born in Dayton, Ohio, the son of Mary Ann and Francisco Estévez, who was a factory worker/machinery inspector at the National Cash Register Company at the time. Both parents were immigrants, his mother was born in Borrisokane, County Tipperary, Ireland and his father in Parderrubias, Galicia, Spain. After moving to Dayton, Estévez worked for several decades for the National Cash Register Company. Sheen grew up on Brown Street in the South Park neighborhood, one of 10 siblings. He attended Chaminade High School and was raised as a Roman Catholic. Sheen eventually adopted his stage name in honor of the Catholic archbishop and theologian, Fulton J. Sheen.

25 Oct 2019
Motion Pictures, Television Permalink

Martha Raye

October 25, 2019

Martha Raye was an American comic actress and standards singer who performed in movies, and later on television.

Raye’s life as a singer and comedy performer began very early in her childhood. She was born at St. James Hospital, in Butte, Montana as Margy Reed, where her Irish immigrant parents, Peter F. Reed and Maybelle Hooper, were performing at a local vaudeville theatre as “Reed and Hooper”. Two days after Martha was born, her mother was already back on stage, and Martha first appeared in their act when she was three years old. She performed with her brother, Bud, and soon the two children became such a highlight that the act was renamed “Margie and Bud.” Some show business insiders speculated that the Judy Garland song from A Star Is Born, “I was born in a trunk in the Princess Theater in Pocatello, Idaho” was inspired by Raye’s beginnings.

Raye continued performing from that point on and even attended the Professional Children’s School in New York City, but she received so little formal schooling, getting only as far as the fifth grade, that she often had to have scripts and other written documents read to her by others.

In the early 1930s, Raye was a band vocalist with the Paul Ash and Boris Morros orchestras. She made her first film appearance in 1934 in a band short titled A Nite in the Nite Club. In 1936, she was signed for comic roles by Paramount Pictures, and made her first picture for Paramount. Her first feature film was Rhythm on the Range with crooner Bing Crosby. Over the next 26 years, she would eventually appear with many of the leading comics of her day, including Joe E. Brown, Bob Hope, W. C. Fields, Abbott and Costello, Charlie Chaplin, and Jimmy Durante. She joined the USO soon after the US entered World War II.

25 Oct 2019
Live Performance Permalink

Martha Scott

October 25, 2019

Martha Ellen Scott was an American actress best known for her roles as mother of the lead character in numerous films and television shows.

Scott was born in Jamesport, Missouri, the daughter of Letha and Walter Scott, an engineer and garage owner; her mother was a second-cousin of U.S. President William McKinley. Scott became interested in acting in high school. She got her start acting in shortened Shakespeare productions at the Century of Progress world’s fair in Chicago. Scott eventually went to New York City, where she was cast as the original Emily in the Broadway production of Our Town. Her film debut in Our Town in 1940 saw her receiving an Academy Award nomination Best Actress for her luminous and critically acclaimed performance as Emily Webb. Scott’s co-star was William Holden in the role of George Gibbs. Unfortunately the censors sanitized the film’s last scene after Emily has died, and allowed her to live to make for a happy ending.

She appeared in films such as The Howards of Virginia, Cheers for Miss Bishop, One Foot in Heaven, The Desperate Hours, The Ten Commandments, Ben-Hur, Airport 1975 and The Turning Point.

25 Oct 2019
Recording, Television Permalink

Marlo Thomas

October 25, 2019

Margaret Julia ?Marlo? Thomas is an American actress, producer, and social activist known for her starring role on the TV series That Girl. She also serves as National Outreach Director for St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital.

Thomas was born in Detroit, Michigan, the eldest child and elder daughter of Lebanese-American comedian Danny Thomas and his wife, the former Rose Marie Cassaniti. Her brother, Tony Thomas, is a television and film producer, and her sister, Terre Thomas, is a former actress.

Marlo Thomas was raised in Beverly Hills, California. Her parents called her Margo as a child, though she soon became known as Marlo, she told The New York Times, because of her childhood mispronunciation of the nickname. She attended Marymount High School in Los Angeles. She graduated from the University of Southern California with a teaching degree?”I wanted a piece of paper that said I was qualified to do something,” she said?and was a member of the sorority Kappa Alpha Theta.

Thomas began appearing as a regular on The Joey Bishop Show. She followed the series with guest shots on The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis, Ben Casey, My Favorite Martian, and Bonanza, but it was not until 1966 that she hit her professional stride as aspiring New York actress Ann Marie on the ABC sitcom That Girl. The series ran until 1971, garnering her a Golden Globe Award and four Emmy nominations.

25 Oct 2019
Motion Pictures, Recording Permalink

Marlon Brando

October 25, 2019

Marlon Brando, Jr. was an American actor who performed for over half a century.

He was perhaps best known for his roles as Stanley Kowalski in A Streetcar Named Desire and his Academy Award-winning performance as Terry Malloy in On the Waterfront, both directed by Elia Kazan, and his Academy Award-winning performance as Vito Corleone in Francis Ford Coppola’s The Godfather. In middle age he also played Colonel Walter Kurtz in Apocalypse Now, also directed by Coppola, and delivered an Academy Award-nominated performance as Paul in Last Tango in Paris. Brando had a significant impact on film acting. He was the foremost example of the “method” acting style, and became notorious for his “mumbling” diction, but his mercurial performances were highly regarded and he is now considered one of the greatest American film actors of the twentieth century. Director Martin Scorsese said of him, “He is the marker. There’s ‘before Brando’ and ‘after Brando’.'” Actor Jack Nicholson once said, “When Marlon dies, everybody moves up one.”

Brando was also an activist, supporting many issues, notably the American Civil Rights and various American Indian Movements.

25 Oct 2019
Recording, Television Permalink

Marsha Hunt

October 25, 2019

Marsha Hunt is an American film, theater, and television actress who was blacklisted by Hollywood movie studio executives in the 1950s.

Marsha Hunt attended the Theodore Irving School of Dramatics during her high school years. She was also a very good singer, and a model, before Paramount Pictures signed her to a contract in 1934. At 18 years of age, she made her film debut in The Virginia Judge.

In 1938, she married film director Jerry Hopper; they were divorced in 1943. Three years later, in 1946, she married television and film writer Robert Presnell Jr., which lasted until his death in June 1986.

During the late 1930s and into the 1940s, Hunt signed a number of petitions promoting liberal ideals. She was also a member of the Committee for the First Amendment. Because of this association, her name appeared in the pamphlet Red Channels. Although she and her husband, Robert Presnell, were never called before the House Un-American Activities Commission, like Charlie Chaplin, their names were put on the blacklist, and they found it extremely difficult to find work. On October 27, 1947, she flew with a group of about 30 actors, directors, writers, and filmmakers, to Washington D.C. to protest the actions of Congress. When she returned to Hollywood three days later, things had changed. She was asked to denounce her activities if she wanted to find more work–but she refused. For her, the issue here was not Communism, but freedom of speech, privacy of opinion, freedom of advocacy, and freedom of democracy. She did keep working until the publication of Red Channels, but afterwards it became very hard.

25 Oct 2019
Motion Pictures, Television Permalink

Marshall Neilan

October 25, 2019

Marshall Ambrose Neilan was an American motion picture actor, screenwriter, film director, and producer.

Born in San Bernardino, California, Neilan was known by most as “Mickey.” Following the death of his father, the eleven-year-old Mickey Neilan had to give up on schooling to work at whatever work he could find in order to help support his mother. As a teenager, he began acting in bit parts in live theatre, and in 1910 he got a job driving Biograph Studios executives around Los Angeles there to determine the suitability of the West Coast as a place for a permanent studio.

Neilan made his film debut as part of the acting cast on the American Film Manufacturing Company Western The Stranger at Coyote. Hired by Kalem Studios for their Western film production facility in Santa Monica, Neilan was first cast opposite Ruth Roland. Described as confident, but egotistical at times, Neilan’s talent saw him directing films within a year of joining Kalem. After acting in more than seventy silent film shorts for Kalem and directing more than thirty others, Neilan was hired by the Selig Polyscope Company then Bison Motion Pictures and Famous Players-Lasky Corporation. In 1915, Neilan was one of the founding members of the Motion Picture Directors Association along with directors such as Cecil B. DeMille, Allan Dwan, and William Desmond Taylor.

At the end of 1916, Neilan was hired by Mary Pickford Films where he directed Pickford in several productions including Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm and The Little Princess in 1917, plus Stella Maris, Amarilly of Clothes-Line Alley, M’Liss in 1918, and Daddy-Long-Legs in 1919.