Edmond O'Brien (September 10, 1915 – May 9, 1985) was an American actor who appeared in more than 100 films from the 1940s to the 1970s, often playing character parts. He received an Academy Award for his supporting role in The Barefoot Contessa (1954). His other notable films include The Killers (1946), White Heat (1949), D.O.A. (1950), Julius Caesar (1953), 1984 (1956), The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1961), Seven Days in May (1964) – for which he received an Oscar nomination – and The Wild Bunch (1969).
Life and career
O'Brien was born was in New York City, New York of English and Irish stock. After majoring in drama at Columbia University, he made his first Broadway appearance at age 21 in Daughters of Atreus.[1] O'Brien made his film debut in 1938, and gradually built a career as a highly regarded supporting actor. During World War II, he served in the U.S. Army Air Forces and appeared in the Air Forces' Broadway play and film Winged Victory.
He won an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his role as a harried publicity agent in The Barefoot Contessa (1954) and was also nominated for his role as an alcoholic U.S. senator in Seven Days in May (1964). Prior to that, O'Brien had an acclaimed role in 1950's film noir drama D.O.A. as a poisoned man who sets out to find his own murderer before he dies.
His other notable films include The Killers (1946), "An Act of Murder" (1948) White Heat (1949), "Backfire" (1950),The Girl Can't Help It (1956), The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962), Birdman of Alcatraz (1962), The Longest Day (1962), Fantastic Voyage (1966), and The Wild Bunch (1969).
From 1950 to 1952, O'Brien starred in the radio drama Yours Truly, Johnny Dollar. He appeared extensively in television, including the 1957 live 90-minute broadcast on Playhouse 90 of The Comedian, a drama written by Rod Serling and directed by John Frankenheimer in which Mickey Rooney portrayed a television comedian while O'Brien played a writer driven to the brink of insanity.
From 1959 to 1960, O'Brien portrayed the title role in the syndicated crime drama Johnny Midnight, the story of a New York City actor-turned-private detective. Two years after Johnny Midnight, he was cast as lawyer Sam Benedict.
O'Brien had roles on many television series, including an appearance on Target: The Corruptors!, The Eleventh Hour, Breaking Point, and Mission: Impossible.
In the mid-1960s, O'Brien co-starred with Roger Mobley and Harvey Korman in the "Gallagher" episodes of NBC's Walt Disney's Wonderful World of Color. From 1963 to 1965, he co-starred in the NBC legal drama Sam Benedict.
Personal life
O'Brien was divorced from actresses Nancy Kelly and Olga San Juan. San Juan was the mother of his three children, including television producer Bridget O'Brien and actors Maria O'Brien and Brendan O'Brien.
Death
O'Brien died in Inglewood, California, of Alzheimer's disease.[2] He is buried at Holy Cross Cemetery in Culver City, California.
For his contribution to the motion picture industry, Edmond O'Brien has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 1725 Vine Street, and a second star at 6523 Hollywood Blvd. for his contribution to the television industry.
References
1. Edmond O'Brien Profile, New York Times. By staff. Retrieved February 5, 2013.
2. Famed character actor dies
Warner Leroy Baxter (March 29, 1889 – May 7, 1951) was an American actor, known for his role as The Cisco Kid in In Old Arizona (1929), for which he won the second Academy Award for Best Actor in the 1928–1929 Academy Awards. He frequently played womanizing, charismatic Latin bandit types in westerns, and played The Cisco Kid or a similar character throughout the 1930s, but had a range of other roles throughout his career.
Warner Baxter started his movie career in silent film. Baxter's most notable silent films are The Great Gatsby (1926) and The Awful Truth (1925). When talkies came out, Baxter became even more famous. Baxter's most notable talkies are In Old Arizona (1929) 42nd Street (1932), Slave Ship (1937), Kidnapped (1938), and the 1931 20 minute all-star ensemble short film, The Stolen Jools. In the 1940s he was well known for his recurring role as Dr. Robert Ordway in the Crime Doctor series of 10 films.
Warner Baxter married actress Winifred Bryson in 1918, remaining married until his death in 1951. He suffered for several years from arthritis, and in 1951 he underwent a lobotomy to ease the pain. He died shortly after of pneumonia and was interred in Forest Lawn Memorial Park Cemetery in Glendale, California.
Gene Curtis Harrington (September 17, 1926 – May 6, 2007) was an American film and television director whose work included experimental films, horror films, and episodic television.[1] He is considered one of the forerunners of New Queer Cinema.[2]
Biography
Harrington was born in Los Angeles on September 17, 1926, and grew up in Beaumont, California. His first cinematic endeavors were amateur films he made while still a teenager. He attended Occidental College and the University of Southern California and graduated from the University of California, Los Angeles, with a film studies degree.[1]
He began his career as a film critic, writing a book on Josef von Sternberg in 1948. He directed several avant-garde short films in the 1940s and '50s, including Fragment of Seeking, Picnic, and The Wormwood Star (a film study of the artwork of Marjorie Cameron). Cameron also co-starred in his subsequent film Night Tide (1961) with Dennis Hopper.
Harrington worked with Kenneth Anger, serving as a cinematographer on Anger's Puce Moment and acting in Inauguration of the Pleasure Dome (1954) (he played Cesare, the Somnambulist). Harrington had links to Thelema shared with his close associate Kenneth Anger, and Marjorie Cameron who frequently acted in his films.[3] One of Harrington’s mentors was avant-garde film pioneer Maya Deren, an initiated voodoo priestess.
Roger Corman assigned Harrington to turn some Russian science fiction footage into a whole new American movie; the result was Voyage to the Prehistoric Planet (1965), which led to further films such as Games.
He also directed Whoever Slew Auntie Roo? (1971) with Shelley Winters, What's the Matter with Helen? (1972) with Winters and Debbie Reynolds, and Killer Bees (1974) with Gloria Swanson in one of her last film roles.
Harrington made two made for television movies based on screenplays by Robert Bloch: The Cat Creature (1973) and The Dead Don't Die (1975).
Harrington had a cameo role in Orson Welles's unfinished The Other Side of the Wind. In the 1970s and 1980s, Harrington directed episodes of Dynasty, Wonder Woman, The Twilight Zone, and Charlie's Angels for television.
Harrington was the driving force in locating the original James Whale production of The Old Dark House (Universal Pictures, 1932). Even though the rights had been sold to Columbia Pictures for a remake, he got George Eastman House to restore the negative. On the Kino International DVD, there is a filmed interview of Harrington explaining why and how this came about (the contract stipulated that they were allowed to save the film only, not release it, essentially to prove no profit motive). Harrington was an advisor on Bill Condon's Gods and Monsters, about the last days of director James Whale, since Harrington had known Whale at the end of his life. Harrington also has a cameo in this film.
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Harrington's final film, the short Usher, is a remake of an unreleased film he did while in high school, Fall of the House of Usher. His casting of Nikolas and Zeena Schreck in his updated version of Edgar Allan Poe’s ”Fall of the House of Usher” is in keeping with the magical thread that runs through the film-maker’s career. Financing of the film was partly accomplished through the Shreck's brokering of the sale of Harrington's signed copy of Crowley's The Book of Thoth.[4]
He died on May 6, 2007, of complications from a stroke he had suffered in 2005.[1] He is interred in the Cathedral Mausoleum at the Hollywood Forever Cemetery.
House of Harrington a short documentary about the director's life, was released in 2008. It was directed by Jeffrey Schwarz and Tyler Hubby and filmed several years before Harrington's death. It includes footage of his high school film Fall of the House of Usher.
Curtis Harrington's memoir Nice Guys Don't Work in Hollywood was published by Drag City.
Filmography
Short films
Fall of the House of Usher (1942)
Fragment of Seeking (1946)
Picnic (1948)
On the Edge (1949)
The Assignation (1952)
Dangerous Houses (1952)[5]
St. Tropaz (1952) - unfinished[5]
The Wormwood Star (1956) - documentary about Marjorie Cameron
The Four Elements (1966) - Industrial Short
Usher (2000)
Theatrical films
Night Tide (1961) [not released widely until 1963]
Voyage to the Prehistoric Planet (1965)
Queen of Blood (1966)
Games (1967)
What's the Matter with Helen? (1971)
Whoever Slew Auntie Roo? (1971)
The Killing Kind (1973)
Ruby (1977)
Mata Hari (1985)
TV-movies
How Awful About Allan (1970)
The Cat Creature (1973)
Killer Bees (1974)
The Dead Don't Die (1975)
Devil Dog: The Hound of Hell (1978)
TV series
The Legend of Jessie James (1966) - 2 episodes
Baretta (1975-1976) - 2 episodes
Quinn Martin's Tales of the Unexpected (1977) - 1 episode ("A Hand For Sonny Blue")
Logan's Run (1978) - 1 episode
Lucan (1978) - 1 episode
Sword of Justice (1978) - 1 episode
Vega$ (1978) - 1 episode
Charlie's Angels (1978-79) - 2 episodes
Wonder Woman (1979) - 1 episode
Darkroom (1981) - 2 episodes and opening credits
Hotel (1983-84) - 2 episodes
Glitter (1984) - 1 episode
Dynasty (1983-85) - 6 episodes
The Colbys (1985-87) - 5 episodes
The Twilight Zone (1987) - 1 episode
Acting roles
The Fall of the House of Usher (1942)
Fragment of Seeking (1946)
Inauguration of the Pleasure Dome (1954)
Ironside (1967) – episode Let My Brother Go
The Other Side of the Wind (1972)
Gods and Monsters (1998)
Usher (2002)
References
1. Martin, Douglas (May 10, 2007). "Curtis Harrington, Director Of Horror Films, Dies at 80". New York Times.
2. Glbtq.com
3. Obituary for Curtis Harrington in Fortean Times
4. http://www.Nikolasschreck.eu
5. Toscano, Mark (2013). Conversations in the Back of the Theatre: Preserving the Short films of Curtis Harrington (DVD Booklet). Drag City/Flicker Alley.
Ermenigildo "Jilly" Rizzo (May 6, 1917 – May 6, 1992) was an American restaurateur and entertainer.
Career
As a young man, Rizzo worked with his father delivering Italian ice to cafes. Rizzo opened Jilly's Saloon, a lounge on West 49th Street, then moved to 256 West 52nd Street at the intersection with Eighth Avenue in Manhattan. Jilly's Saloon was a popular celebrity hangout in the 1960s. Rizzo's long-time friend Frank Sinatra frequented the lounge. Rizzo later became one of Sinatra's chief aides. Rizzo was also a frequent guest on Rowan and Martin's Laugh-In, where he would recite one liners in his monotone New York accent.
In 1990, Rizzo and five other men were convicted of fraud in relation to an $8 million loan scheme. He was given 1,000 hours of community service.
Death
On May 6, 1992, his 75th birthday, Rizzo was killed when his car was hit by a drunk driver in Rancho Mirage, California. He was survived by a daughter, two sons and two grandchildren. He is buried in Desert Memorial Park in Cathedral City, California.
Moses Harry Horwitz (June 19, 1897 – May 4, 1975), known professionally as Moe Howard, was an American actor and comedian best known as the de facto leader of the Three Stooges, a group that originally started out as Ted Healy and his stooges, an act that toured the vaudeville circuit, the farce comedy team who starred in motion pictures and television for four decades. His distinctive hairstyle came about when he was a boy and cut off his curls with a pair of scissors, producing a ragged shape approximating a bowl cut.
Personal life
On June 7, 1925 Moe Howard married Helen Schonberger, a cousin of magician Harry Houdini. The next year, Helen pressured Moe to leave the stage, since she was pregnant and wanted Moe nearer to home. Moe attempted to earn a living in a succession of "normal" jobs, none of which was very successful, and soon returned to working with Ted Healy. Moe and Helen had two children, Joan Howard (born 1927) and Paul Howard (born 1935).
Death
Howard died of lung cancer at age 77 on May 4, 1975, at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles where he had been admitted a week earlier in April, just over three months after Larry Fine's death. He was a heavy smoker for much of his adult life. He was interred in an outdoor crypt at Culver City's Hillside Memorial Park Cemetery.
Helen died of a heart attack later that year on October 31, 1975 at age 75 and was interred in the crypt next to him on the right.
At the time of his death, Moe was working on his autobiography, titled "I Stooged to Conquer." Moe's autobiography was released in 1977 as Moe Howard and the Three Stooges.
Thomas Gordon "Tom" Poston (October 17, 1921 – April 30, 2007) was an American television and film actor. He starred on television in a career that began in 1950. He appeared as a comic actor, game show panelist, comedy/variety show host, film actor, television actor, and Broadway performer. According to USA Today Life editor Dennis Moore, Poston appeared in more sitcoms than any other actor. In the 1980s, he played George Utley, opposite Bob Newhart's character on Newhart.
In 2001, Poston married for the fourth time, to actress Suzanne Pleshette, who played the wife of Newhart's character Bob Hartley on The Bob Newhart Show.
After a brief illness, Poston died of respiratory failure on April 30, 2007, in Los Angeles, California at the age of 85. Although Poston was not Jewish, he was interred in the Hillside Memorial Park Cemetery (a Jewish cemetery). His widow, Suzanne Pleshette, was Jewish.
The 31st annual JUSTICE for HOMICIDE VICTIMS Memorial Foundation Event is this Sunday at Rose Hills Cemetery from 11am to 1pm.
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