Mace Neufeld

Mace Alvin Neufeld is an American film and television producer.

Neufeld was born in New York City, New York, the son of Margaret Ruth and Philip M. Neufeld, a stockbroker. He married on 28 February 1954. He has three children, the eldest son Bradley David, Glenn Jeremy and daughter Nancy Ann.

Neufeld began as an amateur photographer in his teens; his first snapshot, a returning World War II veteran, “Sammy’s Home”, was widely syndicated and won an award from The New York World Telegram-Sun. He first ventured into the television business when he got a job with the DuMont Television Network. Within a few years Neufeld then formed his own independent television production company and personal management firm which over the years had promoted such popular comedians as Don Adams, Gabe Kaplan and Don Knotts. Not only comedians worked under Neufeld, but musical talents as well, including The Captain and Tennille, The Carpenters, Randy Newman, and Jim Croce.

Neufeld also showed his own talent in showcasing performers, writing musical material for the likes of music stars such as Rosemary Clooney, Sammy Davis Jr., Dorothy Loudon and The Ritz Brothers. He also wrote the theme song for the popular animated antics of the two crows showcased in The Heckle and Jeckle Show.

Mack Sennett

Mack Sennett was a Canadian-born American director and was known as the innovator of slapstick comedy in film. During his lifetime he was known at times as the “King of Comedy”. His short “Wrestling Swordfish” was awarded the Academy Award for Best Live Action Short Film in 1932 and he earned an Academy Honorary Award in 1937.

Born as Mikall Sinnott in Danville, Quebec, Canada, the son of Irish Catholic immigrant farmers. His father was a blacksmith in the small Eastern Townships village. When he was 17 years old his family moved to Connecticut.

The family lived for a time in Northampton, Massachusetts, where, according to his autobiography, Sennett first got the idea to go on stage after seeing a vaudeville show. He claimed that the most respected lawyer in town, Northampton mayor Calvin Coolidge, as well as Sennett’s own mother, tried to talk him out of his theatrical ambitions.

In New York City, Sennett became an actor, singer, dancer, clown, set designer and director for Biograph. A major distinction in his acting career, often overlooked, is the fact that Sennett played Sherlock Holmes 11 times, albeit in a parodic format, between 1911 and 1913.

Mack Swain

Mack Swain was an American actor and vaudevillian, prolific throughout the 1910s, 1920s and 1930s.

Born Moroni Swain to Robert Henry Swain and Mary Ingeborg Jensen in Salt Lake City, Utah, he worked in vaudeville before starting in silent film at Keystone Studios under Mack Sennett. While with Keystone, he was teamed up with Chester Conklin to make a series of comedy films. With Swain as “Ambrose” and Conklin as the grand mustachioed “Walrus”, they performed these roles in several films including “The Battle of Ambrose and Walrus” and “Love, Speed and Thrills,” both made in 1915. Besides these comedies, the two appeared together in a variety of other films, twenty-six all told.

In 1921, Swain began working with Charlie Chaplin at First National, appearing in “The Idle Class”, “Pay Day” and “The Pilgrim”. He is also remembered for his role as Big Jim McKay in the 1925 film The Gold Rush, for United Artists, written by and starring Chaplin.

Madeleine Carroll

Edith Madeleine Carroll was a British actress, popular in the 1930s and 1940s.

She was born as at 32 Herbert Street in West Bromwich, England. She graduated from the University of Birmingham, England with a B.A. degree. She once taught in a girl’s public school.

She made her stage debut with a touring company in The Lash. Widely recognized as one of the most beautiful women in films, Carroll’s aristocratic blonde allure and sophisticated style were first glimpsed by British movie audiences in The Guns of Loos in 1928. Rapidly rising to stardom in England, she graced such popular films of the early ’30s as Young Woodley, Atlantic, The School for Scandal and I Was A Spy. She played the title role in the play Little Catherine. Abruptly, she announced plans to retire from films to devote herself to a private life with her husband, the first of four.

She attracted the attention of Alfred Hitchcock and, in 1935, starred as one of the director’s earliest prototypical cool, glib, intelligent blondes in The 39 Steps based on the espionage novel by John Buchan. The film became a sensation and with it, so did Carroll. Cited by the New York Times for a performance that was “charming and skillful”, Carroll became very much in demand thanks, in part, to director Hitchcock, who later admitted that he worked very hard with her to bring out the vivacious and sexy qualities she possessed offscreen, but which sometimes vanished when cameras rolled. Of Hitchcock’s heroines, as exemplified by Carroll, film critic Roger Ebert once wrote that they “reflected the same qualities over and over again: They were blonde. They were icy and remote. They were imprisoned in costumes that subtly combined fashion with fetishism. They mesmerized the men, who often had physical or psychological handicaps.”

Madge Bellamy

Madge Bellamy was an American film actress who was a popular leading lady in the 1920s and early 1930s. Her career declined in the sound era, and ended following a romantic scandal in the 1940s.

Madge Bellamy was born in Hillsboro, Texas in 1899 as Margaret Derden Philpott to William Bledsoe Philpott, a professor of English and Annie Margaret Derden. The family was of English and Irish heritage. Her father was an 1884 graduate of Texas A&M University. Besides teaching English, he taught history and languages, and he also edited many scholarly works. Her parents were married on June 22, 1898 in Hillsboro, Hill County, Texas. Bellamy was raised in San Antonio, Texas until she was 6 years old, and the family later moved to Brownwood, Texas, where her father taught at the local college. When she was 10 years old, the Philpotts moved to Denver, Colorado. Bellamy caught the acting bug as a young girl, and she soon appeared in several plays as a youth.

She ran away to New York City at age 17, and she was soon working as an actor and dancer on Broadway. In 1918, she played the lead role in “Pollyanna” on Broadway and in the touring show. She also appeared in “Dear Brutus”, “Dream Girl”, and in “Peg O’ My Heart on Broadway”. In November 1920, she signed an exclusive contract with Thomas H. Ince’s newly formed Triangle film company to appear in the film called “Passing Thru” which was released in the fall of 1921.

Bellamy made her film debut in 1920. After 4 years with Famous Players her contract was picked up by Fox Film Corporation. Her best known films include Love Never Dies, Lorna Doone, and The Iron Horse .

Madge Evans

Madge Evans was an American stage and film actress. She began her career as a child performer and model.

Born as Margherita Evans, Madge Evans was featured in print ads as the ‘Fairy Soap girl’ as an infant. She made her professional debut at the age of six months, posing for artist’s models. As a youth, her playmates included Robert Warwick, Holbrook Blinn, and Henry Hull. When she was four years old, Evans was featured in a series of child plays produced by William A. Brady. She worked at the old Long Island, New York movie studio. Her success was immediate, so much so that her mother loaned her daughter’s name to a hat company. Evans posed in a mother and child tableau with Anita Stewart, then 16, for an Anheuser-Busch Brewing Company calendar, and as the little mountain girl in Heidi of the Alps.

At the age of 8 in 1917, Evans appeared in the Broadway production of Peter Ibbetson with John Barrymore, Constance Collier and Laura Hope Crews. At 17, she returned to the stage and appeared as the ingenue in Daisy Mayme. Some of her best work in plays came in productions of Dread, The Marquis, and The Conquering Male. Her last appearance was in Philip Goes Forth produced by George Kelley. Evans’ mother took her to England and Europe when she was 15.

As a child film actress Evans had quite a prolific career appearing in dozens of films. In 1914 aged 5 she appeared with Marguerite Clark in Seven Sisters, a film with a large female ensemble that had been played on stage with Clark’s rival Mary Pickford and Laurette Taylor in the cast. In 1915 she was with Robert Warwick in Alias Jimmy Valentine, a still extant film that has seen release on home video/dvd. At 14 she was the star of J. Stuart Blackton’s rural melodrama On the Banks of the Wabash. She co-starred with Richard Barthelmess in Classmates.

Madge Kennedy

Madge Kennedy was a movie and stage actress of the silent film era.

Kennedy came to New York City with her mother to paint. She was admitted to the Art Student’s League. Luis Mora saw her art work and recommended that she go to Siasconset for a summer. Mora described Kennedy as talented but very lazy.

The Siasconset colony was evenly divided among actors and artists, and painters often

gave theatrical performances. Kennedy appeared at a painter’s play and

Mae Busch

Mae Busch was an Australian film actress who worked in both silent and sound films in early Hollywood. In the latter part of her career, she appeared in many Laurel and Hardy comedies, where she frequently played Hardy’s shrewish wife.

Born in Melbourne, Australia, Busch was a member of a musical family. Her father was a conductor of the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra and her mother was a singer. In 1900 her family moved to America, where she was placed in a convent. Upon her graduation Busch decided to pursue a career in theatre, and appeared on stage and then in vaudeville. She first appeared in films in The Agitator and The Water Nymph, both released in 1912. In 1915 she began working at Keystone Studios, where she appeared in comedy two-reelers. Her dalliance with studio chief Mack Sennett famously ended his engagement to actress Mabel Normand when Normand allegedly walked in on the pair. According to some accounts of the incident, Busch inflicted a serious head injury on Normand by striking her with a vase. At the pinnacle of her film career, Busch was known as the versatile vamp. She starred in such feature films as The Devil’s Pass Key and Foolish Wives, both directed by Erich von Stroheim, and in The Unholy Three, with Lon Chaney. Her career declined abruptly in 1926, when she walked out on her contract at Metro?Goldwyn?Mayer and suffered a nervous breakdown. Afterwards, she found herself working for less prestigious studios such as Gotham and Tiffany, and she was relegated mostly to supporting roles.

In 1927, she was offered a leading role in a Hal Roach two-reeler, Love ’em and Weep, which began her long association with Laurel and Hardy. She appeared in thirteen of their comedies, the last being The Bohemian Girl, released in 1936. Her film roles after 1936 were often uncredited. Overall, she had roles in approximately one hundred and thirty motion pictures between 1912 and 1946.

Mötley Crüe

Mötley Crüe is an American hard rock band formed in Los Angeles, California in 1981. The band was founded by bass guitarist Nikki Sixx and drummer Tommy Lee, who were later joined by lead guitarist Mick Mars and lead singer Vince Neil. Mötley Crüe has sold more than 80 million album copies worldwide, with 25 million in the U.S.

The band members have often been noted for their hard-living lifestyles, and the persona they maintained. All members have had numerous brushes with the law, spent time in jail, suffered from alcoholism, long addictions to drugs, had countless escapades with women, and are heavily tattooed. Their ninth studio album, Saints of Los Angeles, was released on June 24, 2008, while a film adaptation of their best-selling autobiography, The Dirt, is due to be released in 2011.

Mötley Crüe was formed on January 17, 1981 when bass guitarist Nikki Sixx left the band London and began rehearsing with drummer Tommy Lee and vocalist/guitarist Greg Leon. Lee had worked previously with Leon in a band called Suite 19 and the trio practiced together for some time with Leon eventually deciding not to continue. Nikki and Tommy then began a search for new members. Sixx and Lee soon met guitarist Bob “Mick Mars” Deal. Mars was quickly auditioned and subsequently hired by Sixx and Lee. Although a lead vocalist named O’Dean was auditioned, Lee had known Vince Neil from their high school days at Royal Oak High School in Covina, California and the two had performed in different bands on the garage band circuit. On seeing him perform with the band Rock Candy at the Starwood in Hollywood, California, Mars suggested they have Neil join the band. At first Neil refused the offer, but as the other members of Rock Candy became involved in outside projects, Neil grew anxious to try something else. When Lee made one final appeal to audition, Neil accepted and was hired. The newly formed band did not yet have a name. While trying to find a suitable name, Mars remembered an incident which occurred when he was playing with a band called White Horse, when one of the other band members called the group “a motley looking crew.” He had remembered the phrase and later copied it down as Mottley Cru-. After modifying the spelling slightly, “Mötley Crüe” was eventually selected as the band’s name, with the stylistic decision suggested by Neil to add the two sets of metal umlauts supposedly inspired by the German beer Löwenbräu, which the members were drinking at the time.

The band soon met their first manager, Allan Coffman, “the thirty-eight-year-old brother-in-law of Mick?s driver friend Stick”. The band’s first release was the single “Stick to Your Guns/Toast of the Town”, which was released on their own record label, Leathür Records, which had a pressing & distribution deal with Greenworld Distribution in Torrance, California. In November 1981, their debut album Too Fast for Love was self-produced and released on Leathür, selling 20,000 copies. Coffman’s assistant Eric Greif set up a tour of Canada, while Coffman and Greif used Mötley Crüe’s success in the Los Angeles club scene to negotiate with several record labels, eventually signing a recording contract with Elektra Records in late spring 1982. At Elektra’s insistence, the debut album was then re-mixed by producer Roy Thomas Baker and re-released on August 20, 1982, two months after its Canadian Warner Music Group release using the original Leathür mixes, to coincide with the tour.

Mabel Taliaferro

Mabel “Nell” Taliaferro was an American stage, and a silent screen actress, known as the Sweetheart of American Movies. Taliaferro was descended on her father’s side from one of the early families who settled in Virginia in the 17th century, the Taliaferros, whose roots are in northern Italy.