25 Oct 2019
Television Permalink

Fred Mister Rogers

October 25, 2019

Fred McFeely Rogers was an American educator, Presbyterian minister, songwriter, and television host. Rogers was most famous for creating and hosting Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood. Rogers was well known for his gentle, soft-spoken personality and his directness to his audiences; Over the course of his decades on television, he became an indelible American icon of children’s entertainment and education, as well as a symbol of compassion, patience, and morality. He was also known for his advocacy of various public causes. He testified to the U.S. Supreme Court on time shifting; and he gave a now-famous speech before the U.S. Senate, advocating government funding for children’s television rather than the Vietnam War.

On July 9, 2002, President George W. Bush awarded Fred Rogers the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the United States’ highest civilian honor, for his contributions to Children’s Education. The President stated, “Fred Rogers has proven that television can soothe the soul and nurture the spirit and teach the very young”.

Fred McFeely Rogers was born in Latrobe, Pennsylvania, 40

25 Oct 2019
Radio, Television Permalink

Fred Allen

October 25, 2019

Fred Allen was an American comedian whose absurdist, topically pointed radio show made him one of the most popular and forward-looking humorists in the so-called classic era of American radio.

His best-remembered gag was his long-running mock feud with friend and fellow comedian Jack Benny, but it was only part of his appeal; radio historian John Dunning wrote that Allen was radio’s most admired comedian and most frequently censored. A master adlibber, Allen often tangled with his network’s executives, while developing routines the style and substance of which influenced contemporaries and futures among comic talents, including Groucho Marx, Stan Freberg, Henry Morgan and Johnny Carson, but his fans also included President Franklin D. Roosevelt, and novelists William Faulkner, John Steinbeck and Herman Wouk. Ironically, in view of his often barbed observations of the medium, Fred Allen was honored with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame for contributions to television.

Born as John Florence Sullivan in Cambridge, Massachusetts, to Irish Catholic parents, Allen barely knew his mother, Cecilia Herlihy Sullivan, who died of pneumonia when he was not quite three years old. His father, James Henry Sullivan, and his infant brother, Robert, were taken in by one of his mother’s sisters, “my Aunt Lizzie”, around whom he focused the first chapter of his second memoir, Much Ado About Me. The father was so shattered by the mother’s death that, according to his son, he drank more heavily. His aunt suffered as well: her husband Michael was partially paralyzed by lead poisoning shortly after they married, leaving him mostly unable to work, something Allen remembered as causing contention among Lizzie’s sisters. Eventually, Allen’s father remarried and offered his sons the choice between coming with him and his new wife or staying with Aunt Lizzie. Allen’s younger brother chose to go with their father, but Allen decided to stay with his aunt. “I never regretted it,” he wrote.

25 Oct 2019
Motion Pictures, Recording Permalink

Fred Astaire

October 25, 2019

Fred Astaire, born Frederick Austerlitz, was an American film and Broadway stage dancer, choreographer, singer and actor. His stage and subsequent film career spanned a total of 76 years, during which he made 31 musical films. He was named the fifth Greatest Male Star of All Time by the American Film Institute. He is particularly associated with Ginger Rogers, with whom he made ten films.

According to another major innovator in filmed dance, Gene Kelly, “The history of dance on film begins with Astaire.” Beyond film and television, many classical dancers and choreographers, Rudolf Nureyev, Michael Jackson, Mikhail Baryshnikov, and Jerome Robbins among them, also acknowledged his importance and influence.

Astaire was born in Omaha, Nebraska, the son of Johanna “Ann” and Frederic “Fritz” Austerlitz. Astaire’s mother was born in the United States to Lutheran German immigrants from East Prussia and Alsace, while Astaire’s father was born in Linz, Austria, to Jewish parents who had converted to Catholicism.

After arriving in New York City at age 24 on October 26, 1892, and being processed at Ellis Island, Astaire’s father, hoping to find work in his brewing trade, moved to Omaha, Nebraska, and landed a job with the Storz Brewing Company. Astaire’s mother dreamed of escaping Omaha by virtue of her children’s talents after Adele Astaire early on revealed herself to be an instinctive dancer and singer. She planned a “brother-and-sister act,” which was common in vaudeville at the time. Although Astaire refused dance lessons at first, he easily mimicked his older sister’s step and took up piano, accordion, and clarinet.

25 Oct 2019
Motion Pictures, Radio Permalink

Frank Fay

October 25, 2019

Frank Fay was an American film and stage actor, emcee, comedian, best-known as an actor for having played “Elwood P. Dowd” in the play Harvey by the American playwright Mary Coyle Chase on Broadway. James Stewart played the role in the film version.

Born as Francis Anthony Donner in San Francisco, California to Irish Catholic parents. He took the professional name of Frank Fay after concluding that his birth name was not suitable for the stage. He enjoyed considerable success as a variety artist starting around 1918, telling jokes and stories in a carefully planned “off the cuff” manner that was very original for the time. Jack Benny stated that he modeled his early stage character on Fay. During the 1920s Fay was vaudeville’s highest-paid headliner, earning $17,500 a week.

When talkies arrived, the Warner Bros. were eager to put him under contract along with a host of other famous stage personalities. Frank Fay was cast as master of ceremonies in Warner’s Brothers most expensive production of 1929, the all-star color all-talking revue The Show of Shows. Based on the success of that film, Fay was quickly signed up for an all-Technicolor musical comedy entitled Under A Texas Moon in which he also displayed his singing abilities. The movie was a box office success and produced a song hit of the theme song which was also titled “Under A Texas Moon”.

Fay sang the theme song several times throughout the picture. Another expensive picture, Bright Lights, an extravagant all-Technicolor musical, quickly followed. Frank Fay also starred in The Matrimonial Bed, a Pre-Code comedy in which he sang the theme song twice. Frank Fay quickly found himself associated with musical films and this led to a decline in his popularity when the public became sick of musicals late in 1930.

25 Oct 2019
Recording, Television Permalink

Frank Faylen

October 25, 2019

Frank Faylen was an American movie and television actor.

Born Frank Ruf in St. Louis, Missouri, he began his acting career as an infant appearing with his vaudeville performing parents on stage. After traveling with his showbiz parents through his childhood, Faylen became a stage actor at 18, and eventually began working in movies in the 1930s. He began playing a number of unmemorable bit parts for Warner Brothers, then freelanced for other studios in gradually larger character roles. He appears as Walt Disney’s musical conductor in The Reluctant Dragon, and as a stern railroad official in the Laurel and Hardy comedy A-Haunting We Will Go. Faylen and L & H supporting player Charlie Hall were teamed briefly by Monogram Pictures.

Faylen’s breakthrough came in 1945, where he was cast as Bim, the cynical male nurse at Bellevue’s alcoholic ward in The Lost Weekend. He played Ernie Bishop, the friendly taxi driver in Frank Capra’s 1946 film It’s a Wonderful Life. Faylen’s career also stretched to television, playing long-suffering grocer Herbert T. Gillis on the 1950s television sitcom The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis. In 1968 he had a small part in the Barbra Streisand film Funny Girl. Faylen appeared in almost 200 films.

25 Oct 2019
Recording, Television Permalink

Frank Lovejoy

October 25, 2019

Frank Lovejoy was an American actor in radio, film, and television. He was born Frank Lovejoy Jr. in the Bronx, New York, but grew up in New Jersey. His father, Frank Lovejoy Sr., was a furniture salesman from Maine. His mother, Nora, was born in Massachusetts to Irish immigrant parents.

A successful radio actor, Lovejoy was heard on the 1930s crime drama series Gang Busters. Lovejoy was a narrator for the show This Is Your FBI. He played the title character on the syndicated The Blue Beetle during the 1940s, and starred in the later crime drama series Nightbeat in the early 1950s.

In films of the 1940s and 1950s, Lovejoy mostly played supporting roles. Appearing in movies such as Goodbye, My Fancy with Joan Crawford, Lovejoy was effective playing the movie’s everyman in extraordinary situations. He was in several war movies, notably Joseph H. Lewis’ Retreat, Hell! which portrayed the United States Marine Corps’ retreat from the Chosin Reservoir during the Korean War. In 1951, he had the title role in I Was a Communist for the FBI with co-stars Ron Hagerthy, Paul Picerni, and Philip Carey.

Lovejoy starred in two short-run TV series, Man Against Crime and Meet McGraw. Episodes of these two series have never been released commercially on DVD or VHS and never aired on reruns. Meet McGraw episodes were screened at the Mid-Atlantic Nostalgia Convention.

25 Oct 2019
Recording Permalink

Frank Luther

October 25, 2019

Frank Luther was an American country music singer, dance band vocalist, playwright, songwriter and pianist.

Born Francis Luther Crow on a farm near Lakin, Kansas, forty miles from the Colorado line, he was raised on a farm near Hutchinson, Kansas, where his father, William R. Crow, and mother, Gertrude Phillips Crow, dealt in livestock and trotting horses. He began to study piano at age 6, improvising his own music when repetitious exercises bored him, and began vocal instruction at 13.

Three years later, he toured the Midwest as tenor with a quartet called The Meistersingers. He began studying at the University of Kansas, but attended a revival meeting conducted by Jesse Kellems and was so deeply impressed that he accepted an offer from the evangelist to become his musical director. During a subsequent stop in Iola, Kansas, young Crow himself was ordained, despite his never having studied for the ministry.

By 1921, the Reverend Francis Luther Crow was in the pulpit of the First Christian Church in Bakersfield, California. There, he organized a 30-voice children’s choir, an 80-voice adult choir, and two church orchestras. Writing and delivering his weekly sermons proved more problematic, and the Boy Preacher, as he was known locally, resigned to devote his creative energies to the world of music.

25 Oct 2019
Motion Pictures, Radio, Television Permalink

Frank Morgan

October 25, 2019

Frank Morgan was an American actor. He was best known for his portrayal of the title character in the film The Wizard of Oz.

Born as Francis Phillip Wuppermann in New York City, the youngest of eleven children, to the wealthy family that distributed Angostura bitters, he attended Cornell University where he was tapped into the New York Alpha Chapter of the Phi Kappa Psi Fraternity, and through that organization was a member, Irving Literary Society. He then followed his older brother Ralph Morgan into show business, first on the Broadway stage and then into motion pictures.

His first film was The Suspect in 1916. In 1917 he provided support to his friend John Barrymore in Raffles The Amateur Cracksman, an independent film produced in and about New York City. Morgan’s career expanded when talkies began, his most stereotypical role being that of a befuddled but good-hearted middle-aged man. He was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actor in 1934’s The Affairs of Cellini, where he played the cuckolded Duke of Florence and was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor in 1942’s Tortilla Flat, where he played a simple Hispanic man.

Other movies of note include The Great Ziegfeld, The Shop Around the Corner, The Human Comedy, The Mortal Storm, The White Cliffs of Dover and his last movie, Key to the City, which was released after his death, in Beverly Hills, California.