25 Oct 2019
Radio, Television Permalink

Drew Pearson

October 25, 2019

Andrew Russell Pearson, known professionally as Drew Pearson, and born in Evanston, Illinois, was one of the most well-known American journalists of his day. He was best known for his muckraking syndicated newspaper column “Washington Merry-Go-Round,” in which he attacked various public persons with little or no objective proof for his allegations. He also had a program on NBC Radio entitled Drew Pearson Comments.

His parents were Paul Martin Pearson, an English professor at Northwestern University, and Edna Wolfe. When Pearson was six years of age, his father joined the faculty of Swarthmore College as Professor of Public Speaking, and the family moved to Pennsylvania, joining the Society of Friends, with which the college was then affiliated. After being educated at Phillips Exeter Academy, Pearson attended Swarthmore, where he edited its student newspaper, The Phoenix.

From 1919 to 1921, Pearson served with the American Friends Service Committee, directing post-war rebuilding operations in Pe?, which at that time was part of Serbia. From 1921 to 1922, he lectured in Geography at the University of Pennsylvania.

In 1923, Pearson travelled to Japan, China, New Zealand, Australia, India and Serbia, and persuaded several newspapers to buy articles about his travels. He was also commissioned by the American “Around the World Syndicate” to produce a set of interviews entitled, “Europe’s Twelve Greatest Men.”

25 Oct 2019
Motion Pictures, Television Permalink

Dudley Moore

October 25, 2019

Dudley Stuart John Moore, CBE was an English actor, comedian, composer and musician.

Moore first came to prominence as one of the four writer-performers in Beyond the Fringe in the early 1960s and became famous as half of the popular television double-act he formed with Peter Cook. His fame as a comedic actor was later heightened by his success in Hollywood movies such as 10 with Bo Derek and Arthur in the late 1970s and early 1980s, respectively. He was often known as “Cuddly Dudley” or “The Sex Thimble”, a reference to his short stature and reputation as a ladies’ man.

Moore was born the son of a railway electrician in Charing Cross Hospital, London and brought up in Dagenham. His working class parents showed little affection to their son. He was notably short: and was born with a club foot that required extensive hospital treatment and which, coupled with his diminutive stature, made him the butt of jokes from other children. Seeking refuge from his problems he became a choirboy at the age of six and took up piano and violin. He rapidly developed into a talented pianist and organist and was playing the pipe organ at church weddings by the age of 14. He attended Dagenham County High School where he received musical tuition from a dedicated teacher, Peter Cork. Cork became a friend and confidant to Moore, corresponding with him until 1994.

Moore’s musical talent won him an organ scholarship to Magdalen College, Oxford. While studying music and composition there, he also performed with Alan Bennett in the Oxford Revue. Bennett then recommended him to the producer putting together Beyond the Fringe, a comedy revue, where he was to first meet Peter Cook. Beyond the Fringe was at the forefront of the 1960s satire boom and after success in Britain, it transferred to the United States where it was also a hit.

25 Oct 2019
Radio, Recording Permalink

Duke Ellington

October 25, 2019

Edward Kennedy “Duke” Ellington was an American composer, pianist, and big band leader.

A prominent figure in the history of jazz, Ellington’s music stretched into various other genres, including blues, gospel, film scores, popular, and classical. His career spanned more than 50 years and included leading his orchestra, composing an inexhaustible songbook, scoring for movies, and world tours. Due to his inventive use of the orchestra, or big band, and thanks to his eloquence and extraordinary charisma, he is generally considered to have elevated the perception of jazz to an art form on a par with other traditional genres of music. His reputation increased after his death, the Pulitzer Prize Board bestowing a special posthumous honor in 1999.

Ellington called his music “American Music” rather than jazz, and liked to describe those who impressed him as “beyond category”. These included many of the musicians who were members of his orchestra, some of whom are considered among the best in jazz in their own right, but it was Ellington who melded them into one of the most well-known jazz orchestral units in the history of jazz. He often composed specifically for the style and skills of these individuals, such as “Jeep’s Blues” for Johnny Hodges, “Concerto for Cootie” for Cootie Williams, which later became “Do Nothing Till You Hear from Me” with Bob Russell’s lyrics, and “The Mooche” for Tricky Sam Nanton and Bubber Miley. He also recorded songs written by his bandsmen, such as Juan Tizol’s “Caravan” and “Perdido” which brought the ‘Spanish Tinge’ to big-band jazz. Several members of the orchestra remained there for several decades. After 1941, he frequently collaborated with composer-arranger-pianist Billy Strayhorn, whom he called his “writing and arranging companion.” Ellington recorded for many American record companies, and appeared in several films.

Ellington led his band from 1923 until his death in 1974. His son Mercer Ellington, who had already been handling all administrative aspects of his father’s business for several decades, led the band until his own death from cancer in 1996. At that point, the original band dissolved. Paul Ellington, Mercer’s youngest son and executor of the Duke Ellington estate, kept the Duke Ellington Orchestra going from Mercer’s death onwards.

25 Oct 2019
Television Permalink

Duncan Renaldo

October 25, 2019

Renault Renaldo Duncan, better known as Duncan Renaldo, was an American actor who portrayed The Cisco Kid in films and on the 1950-1956 American TV series, The Cisco Kid.

An orphan, Renaldo apparently never knew his biological parents and was raised in several European countries. He claimed not to know where he had been born. He emigrated to America in the 1920s. Failing to support himself as a portrait painter, he tried producing short films. He eventually took up acting and signed with MGM in 1928. In 1934 he was arrested for illegal entry into the United States, but eventually was pardoned by President Franklin Roosevelt and returned to acting.

Though he starred mostly in B-films, for example Tiger Fangs, Renaldo played roles in mainstream films as well, including in Spawn of the North with George Raft, Henry Fonda and John Barrymore; and For Whom the Bell Tolls with Gary Cooper and Ingrid Bergman. He was also a producer, writer and director.

In the late 1940s, Renaldo starred in several Hollywood Westerns as The Cisco Kid, and in 1950, he began playing the role in a popular television series that ran until 1956. In the age of black-and-white television, the show was filmed in color. As Cisco, Renaldo roamed the Old West on a black-and-white horse named Diablo, accompanied by his constant companion, Pancho, played by Leo Carrillo, who was 24 years Renaldo’s senior. The Cisco Kid always helped where needed, and unlike most Western heroes, rarely killed anyone.

25 Oct 2019
Radio, Recording Permalink

Duran Duran

October 25, 2019

Duran Duran are an English pop rock band that formed in Birmingham, England in 1978. They were one of the most successful bands of the 1980s and a leading band in the MTV-driven “Second British Invasion” of the United States. Since the 1980s, they have placed 14 singles in the Top 10 of the UK Singles Chart and 21 in the Billboard Hot 100 and have, according to the Sunday Mercury, sold more than 100

25 Oct 2019
Motion Pictures, Recording Permalink

Dustin Farnum

October 25, 2019

Dustin Lancy Farnum was an American singer, dancer and an actor in silent movies during the early days of motion pictures. After a great success in a number of stage roles, in 1914 he landed his first film role in the movie ‘Soldiers of Fortune’, and later in Cecil B. DeMille’s The Squaw Man. Although he played a wide variety of roles, he tended toward Westerns and became one of the biggest stars of the genre. He was married to actress Winifred Kingston. He was the older brother of actor William Farnum and the lesser known silent film director Marshall Farnum. He also was the father of late radio actress Estelle “Dustine” Runyon.

25 Oct 2019
Recording, Television Permalink

Dwight Yoakam

October 25, 2019

Dwight David Yoakam is an American singer-songwriter, actor and film director, most famous for his pioneering country music. Popular since the early 1980s, he has recorded more than twenty-one albums and compilations, has charted more than thirty singles on the Billboard Hot Country Songs charts, and sold more than 25 million records.

Yoakam was born in Pikeville, Kentucky, the son of Ruth Ann, a key-punch operator, and David Yoakam, a gas-station owner. Like many Kentucky families of the mid-20th century, the Yoakams moved to Ohio in hopes of creating a better life. However, Yoakam has always maintained a strong connection with his Kentucky roots, as evident by many of his songs, such as Readin’, Rightin’, Route 23, Bury Me, Floyd County, Louisville, Miner’s Prayer and I Sang Dixie.

He was raised in Columbus, Ohio, but his family would return to Kentucky on weekends, thereby maintaining a sense of “home.” Yoakam graduated from Columbus’ Northland High School on June 9, 1974. During his high school years, he excelled in both music and drama, regularly securing the lead role in school plays, such as “Charlie” in a stage version of Flowers for Algernon, honing his skills under the guidance of teacher-mentors Jerry McAfee and Charles Lewis. Outside of school, Yoakam sang and played guitar with local garage bands, and frequently entertained his friends and classmates as an amateur comedian, impersonating politicians and other celebrities, such as Richard Nixon, who, at that time, was heavily embroiled in the Watergate controversy.

Yoakam briefly attended Ohio State University, but dropped out and moved to Nashville in the late 1970s with the intent of becoming a recording artist. Eventually he headed West to California.

25 Oct 2019
Motion Pictures, Recording Permalink

Dorothy Malone

October 25, 2019

Dorothy Malone is an American actress. Malone’s film career began in the mid 1940s, and in her early years she played small roles, mainly in B-movies. After a decade in films, she began to acquire a more glamorous image, particularly after her performance in Written on the Wind, for which she won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress. Her film career reached its peak by the beginning of the 1960s, and she achieved later success with her television role of Constance MacKenzie on Peyton Place from 1964 to 1968. Less active in her later years, Malone returned to film in 1992 as the friend of Sharon Stone’s character in Basic Instinct.

Malone was born Dorothy Eloise Maloney in Chicago, Illinois. The family moved to Dallas, Texas, where she worked as a child model and began acting in school plays at Ursuline Convent and Highland Park High School. While performing at Southern Methodist University, she was spotted by a talent agent for RKO and was signed to a studio contract, making her film debut in 1943 in The Falcon and the Co-Eds.

Much of Malone’s early career was spent in supporting roles in B-movies, many of them Westerns, although on occasion she had the opportunity to play small but memorable roles, such as that of a brainy, lusty, bespectacled bookstore clerk in The Big Sleep with Humphrey Bogart, and the love interest of Dean Martin in the musical-comedy Artists and Models. By 1956, Malone had transformed herself into a platinum blonde and shed her good girl-image when she co-starred with Rock Hudson, Lauren Bacall, and Robert Stack in director Douglas Sirk’s melodrama Written on the Wind. Her portrayal of the dipso-nymphomaniac daughter of a Texas oil baron won her the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress. As a result, she was offered more substantial roles in Too Much, Too Soon, where she portrayed Diana Barrymore, Man of a Thousand Faces, and Warlock. Additional screen credits include The Tarnished Angels, The Last Voyage and The Last Sunset .

25 Oct 2019
Motion Pictures, Television Permalink

Dorothy McGuire

October 25, 2019

Dorothy Hackett McGuire was an American actress.

Born in Omaha, Nebraska, she began her acting career on the stage at the Omaha Community Playhouse. Eventually, she succeeded on Broadway, first appearing as an understudy to Martha Scott in Our Town, and subsequently starring in the domestic comedy, Claudia.

Brought to Hollywood by producer David O. Selznick on the strength of her stage performance, McGuire starred in her first film, a movie adaptation of her Broadway success, Claudia, and portrayed the character of a child bride who almost destroys her marriage through her selfishness. Her inaugural screen performance was popular with both the public and critics alike and was the catalyst for not only a sequel, Claudia and David, but also for numerous other film roles.

By 1943, at the age of 27, she was already playing mother roles, in such movies as A Tree Grows In Brooklyn. She was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actress in 1947 for Gentleman’s Agreement. Other notable films include Three Coins in the Fountain, Friendly Persuasion, Old Yeller, Swiss Family Robinson, The Greatest Story Ever Told, and The Dark At the Top of the Stairs” .

25 Oct 2019
Motion Pictures, Television Permalink

Douglas Fairbanks, Sr.

October 25, 2019

Douglas Fairbanks, Sr. was an American actor, screenwriter, director and producer. He was best known for his swashbuckling roles in silent films such as The Thief of Bagdad, Robin Hood, and The Mark of Zorro. An astute businessman, Fairbanks was a founding member of United Artists. Fairbanks was also a founding member of The Motion Picture Academy and hosted the first Oscars Ceremony in 1929. With his marriage to Mary Pickford in 1920, the couple became Hollywood royalty with Fairbanks constantly referred to as “The King of Hollywood”, a nickname later passed on to actor Clark Gable.

Fairbanks was born Douglas Elton Thomas Ullman in Denver, Colorado, the son of Hezekiah Charles Ullman and Ella Adelaide Marsh. He had a half-brother, John Fairbanks, and a full brother, Robert Payne Ullman. Fairbanks’ father, who was born in Pennsylvania to a Jewish family, was a prominent New York City attorney. His mother, a Roman Catholic, was born in New York, and had previously been married to a man named John Fairbanks until his death. She then married a man named Wilcox, who turned out to be abusive. Her divorce was handled by Ullman, who later became her third husband.

In about 1881, Charles Ullman purchased several mining interests in the Rocky Mountains and moved the family to Denver, where he re-established his law practice. Ullman abandoned the family when Douglas was five years old, and he and Robert were brought up by their mother, who gave them the family name Fairbanks, after her first husband.