Trending
Popular people
Edward Arnold
Biography
Edward Arnold was born as Gunther Edward Arnold Schneider in 1890, on the Lower East Side of New York City, the son of German immigrants, Elizabeth (Ohse) and Carl Schneider. Arnold began his acting career on the New York stage and became a film actor in 1916. A burly man with a commanding style and superb baritone voice, he was a popular screen personality for decades, and was the star of such film classics as Diamond Jim (1935) (a role he reprised in Le roman de Lillian Russell (1940)) Arnold appeared in over 150 films and was President of The Screen Actors Guild shortly before his death in 1956.
Read more
Allen Jenkins
Biography
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
Allen Jenkins (April 9, 1900 – July 20, 1974) was an American character actor on stage, screen and television. He was born Alfred McGonegal on Staten Island, New York.
He studied at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts. In his first stage appearance, he danced next to James Cagney in a chorus line for an off-Broadway musical called Pitter-Patter. He made five dollars a week. He also appeared one thousand times in Broadway plays between 1924 and 1962, including The Front Page with Lee Tracy (1928). His big break came when he replaced Spencer Tracy for three weeks in the Broadway play The Last Mile.
He was called to Hollywood by Darryl F. Zanuck and signed first to Paramount Pictures and shortly afterwards to Warner Bros. He originated the character of Frankie Wells in the Broadway production of Blessed Event and reprised the role in the film adaptation, both in 1932. With the advent of talking pictures, he made a career out of playing comic henchmen, stooges, policemen and other "tough guys" in numerous films of the 1930s and 1940s, especially for Warner Bros. He was labeled the "greatest scene-stealer of the 1930s" by the New York Times. He voiced the character of "Officer Dibble" on the Hanna-Barbera television cartoon Top Cat and was a regular on the 1956-1957 television situation comedy Hey, Jeannie! (1956), starring Jeannie Carson. He was also a guest star on The Red Skelton Show, I Love Lucy, Playhouse 90, The Ernie Kovacs Show, Zane Grey Theater, and The Sid Caesar Show. Eleven days before his death he made his final appearance, at the end of Billy Wilder's 1974 film adaptation of The Front Page.
He went public with his alcoholism and was the first actor to speak in the U.S. House of Representatives and the Senate about it. He helped start the first Alcoholics Anonymous programs in California prisons for women.
Jenkins, James Cagney, Pat O'Brien and Frank McHugh were the original members of the so-called "Irish Mafia". He was the seventh member of the Screen Actors Guild.
Description above from the Wikipedia article Allen Jenkins, licensed under CC-BY-SA, full list of contributors on Wikipedia.
Read more
Glenda Farrell
Biography
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Glenda Farrell (June 30, 1904 – May 1, 1971) was an American actress of film, television, and theater. She is best known for her role as Torchy Blane in the Warner Bros. Torchy Blane film series and the Academy Award-nominated films Little Caesar (1931), I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang (1932), and Lady for a Day (1933). With a career spanning more than 50 years, Farrell appeared in over 100 films and television series, as well as numerous Broadway plays. She received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame on February 8, 1960, and won an Emmy Award for best supporting actress for her performance in the television series Ben Casey in 1963.
Read more
Grant Mitchell
Biography
Grant Mitchell (born John Grant Mitchell Jr.) was an American stage and screen actor. He is best remembered for his portrayals of fathers, husbands, bank clerks, businessmen, school principals and similar type characters, usually supporting, in films of the 1930s and 1940s.
Mitchell, a Yale post graduate at Harvard Law, gave up his law practice to become an actor, making his stage debut at age 27. He appeared in lead roles on Broadway in such plays as "It Pays to Advertise", "The Champion", "The Whole Town's Talking", and "The Baby Cyclone", the last which was specially written for him by George M. Cohan.
His screen career took off with the advent of sound (years earlier he had appeared in at least two silent films). He appeared primarily in B films, though from time to time enjoyed being a part of A-quality productions such as Dinner at Eight (1933), A Midsummer Night's Dream (1935), Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939), The Man Who Came to Dinner (1942), and Arsenic and Old Lace (1944).
Grant Mitchell retired from show business in 1948. He died, age 82, in Los Angeles in 1957.
Read more
Sheila Terry
Biography
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Sheila Terry (March 5, 1910 – January 19, 1957) was an American film actress. She was born Kay Clark in Warroad, Minnesota. Terry first studied dramatics at Dickson-Kenwin academy, a school affiliated with London's Royal Academy. Later she moved to New York, where she continued her studies and appeared in a number of plays. While appearing on Broadway in The Little Racketeer, she was spotted by an alert film scout and given a test which led to a contract with Warner Bros.
She played in 1930s for Warner Bros. She appeared with John Wayne in the Western films Haunted Gold (1932); Neath the Arizona Skies and The Lawless Frontier (1934). She appeared with Bette Davis, Louis Calhern and Spencer Tracy in 20,000 Years in Sing Sing (1932). She appeared with Cary Grant and Sylvia Sidney in Marion Gering's film Madame Butterfly (1932). In 1933 she left Hollywood briefly for the New York stage. She married Major Laurence E. Clark, a wealthy Toronto socialite on August 16, 1928. She divorced him February 16, 1934. In 1937, she married William Magee of San Francisco, and retired from show business. After his death, Terry wanted to return to show business, but couldn't find a job.
In 1947, she said in a newspaper-interview: "I'm going back into show business and I need an act, I can't sing, I can't dance and I can't play the piano. I should be terrific in night clubs". She worked as a press agent for 15 years.
In January 1957, her body was discovered in the third floor apartment, which was both her home and office. A friend and neighbour, Jerry Keating, went to the apartment when he failed to reach her on the telephone. The door was locked, and Terry did not answer the bell. Keating called the police; they broke in and found Terry's body on the bedroom floor, her back leaning against the bed. Five capsules, their contents gone, were on the floor beside her.
Friends told the police that she returned from a trip to Mexico a few days before her death and that she was ill when she came home. It was later discovered that she died broke; she left only a scanty wardrobe. She was buried in Potter's Field in New York City.
Read more
Humphrey Bogart
Biography
Humphrey DeForest Bogart (December 25, 1899 – January 14, 1957) was an American actor. He is widely regarded as a cultural icon. The American Film Institute ranked Bogart as the greatest male star in the history of American cinema.
After trying various jobs, Bogart began acting in 1921 and became a regular in Broadway productions in the 1920s and 1930s. When the stock market crash of 1929 reduced the demand for plays, Bogart turned to film. His first great success was as Duke Mantee in The Petrified Forest (1936), and this led to a period of typecasting as a gangster with films such as Angels with Dirty Faces (1938) and B-movies like The Return of Doctor X (1939).
His breakthrough as a leading man came in 1941, with High Sierra and The Maltese Falcon. The next year, his performance in Casablanca raised him to the peak of his profession and, at the same time, cemented his trademark film persona, that of the hard-boiled cynic who ultimately shows his noble side. Other successes followed, including To Have and Have Not (1944), The Big Sleep (1946), Dark Passage (1947) and Key Largo (1948), with his wife Lauren Bacall; The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948); The African Queen (1951), for which he won his only Academy Award; Sabrina (1954) and The Caine Mutiny (1954). His last movie was The Harder They Fall (1956). During a film career of almost thirty years, he appeared in 75 feature films.
Description above from the Wikipedia article Humphrey Bogart, licensed under CC-BY-SA, full list of contributors on Wikipedia.
Read more
Lyle Talbot
Biography
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Lyle Talbot (born Lisle Henderson, February 8, 1902 – March 2, 1996) was an American actor on stage and screen, known for his career in film from 1931 to 1960 and for his appearances on television in the 1950s and 1960s. He played Ozzie Nelson's friend and neighbor, Joe Randolph, for ten years in the ABC situation comedy The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet. He began his movie career under contract with Warner Brothers in the early days of sound film. He appeared in more than 150 films, first as a young matinee idol and later as a character actor and star of many B movies. He was a founding member of the Screen Actors Guild and later served on its board. Talbot's long career as an actor is recounted in a book by his youngest daughter, The New Yorker writer Margaret Talbot, entitled The Entertainer: Movies, Magic and My Father's Twentieth Century (Riverhead Books 2012).
Most notable among Talbot's film work were his appearances in Three on a Match and 20,000 Years in Sing Sing (both 1932). He played a star running back in College Coach (1933) with Pat O'Brien and Dick Powell, romanced opera singer Grace Moore in One Night of Love in 1934, and pursued Mae West in Go West, Young Man (1936). He was a gangster in Ladies They Talk About and Heat Lightning and a doctor kicking a drinking habit in Mandalay. He co-starred with Pat O'Brien in Oil for the Lamps of China (1935).
He appeared opposite Ann Dvorak, Carole Lombard, Barbara Stanwyck, Mary Astor, Ginger Rogers, Loretta Young and Shirley Temple, as well as sharing the screen with Humphrey Bogart, Spencer Tracy and Tyrone Power. Overall, Talbot appeared in some 150 movies.
Read more
Bette Davis
Biography
Ruth Elizabeth "Bette" Davis (April 5, 1908 – October 6, 1989) was an American actress of film, television and theater. Noted for her willingness to play unsympathetic characters, she was highly regarded for her performances in a range of film genres; from contemporary crime melodramas to historical and period films and occasional comedies, though her greatest successes were her roles in romantic dramas.
After appearing in Broadway plays, Davis moved to Hollywood in 1930, but her early films for Universal Studios were unsuccessful. She joined Warner Bros. in 1932 and established her career with several critically acclaimed performances. In 1937, she attempted to free herself from her contract and although she lost a well-publicized legal case, it marked the beginning of the most successful period of her career. Until the late 1940s, she was one of American cinema's most celebrated leading ladies, known for her forceful and intense style. Davis gained a reputation as a perfectionist who could be highly combative, and confrontations with studio executives, film directors and costars were often reported. Her forthright manner, clipped vocal style and ubiquitous cigarette contributed to a public persona which has often been imitated and satirized.
Davis was the co-founder of the Hollywood Canteen, and was the first female president of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. She won the Academy Award for Best Actress twice, was the first person to accrue 10 Academy Award nominations for acting, and was the first woman to receive a Lifetime Achievement Award from the American Film Institute. Her career went through several periods of eclipse, and she admitted that her success had often been at the expense of her personal relationships. Married four times, she was once widowed and thrice divorced, and raised her children as a single parent. Her final years were marred by a long period of ill health, but she continued acting until shortly before her death from breast cancer, with more than 100 films, television and theater roles to her credit. In 1999, Davis was placed second, after Katharine Hepburn, on the American Film Institute's list of the greatest female stars of all time.
Read more
Joan Blondell
Biography
Rose Joan Blondell (August 30, 1906 – December 25, 1979) was an American actress.
After winning a beauty pageant, Blondell embarked upon a film career. Establishing herself as a sexy wisecracking blonde, she was a pre-Code staple of Warner Brothers and appeared in more than 100 movies and television productions. She was most active in films during the 1930s, and during this time she co-starred with Glenda Farrell in nine films, in which the duo portrayed gold-diggers. Blondell continued acting for the rest of her life, often in small character roles or supporting television roles. She was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for her work in The Blue Veil (1951).
Blondell was seen in featured roles in two films, Grease (1978) and the remake of The Champ (1979), released shortly before her death from leukemia.
Description above from the Wikipedia article Joan Blondell, licensed under CC-BY-SA, full list of contributors on Wikipedia.
Read more
Chafia Boudraa
Biography
Extrait de Wikipedia, l'Encyclopedie libre.
Née le 22 avril 1930 à Constantine. De son vrai nom Atika Boudraa, veuve de chahid, (un combattant du FLN durant la guerre d'indépendance, mort au combat en 1960 en wilaya VI)2. La comédienne Chafia a été révélée au grand public, grâce au feuilleton télévisé El Hariq (l'incendie) de Mohammed Dib. Elle quitte Constantine, sa ville natale, pour Alger en 1964. Elle a commencé par exercer différents métiers pour subvenir aux besoin d'une famille de onze enfants2 : aide soignante, standardiste, gouvernante, avant de prendre contacte avec la RTA pour y travailler, au cachet dans plusieurs films. Elle interprétera même le rôle de la veuve dans La Mégère apprivoisée montée par le Théâtre national d'Alger. Depuis El hariq, elle s'est confirmée comme une actrice de talent.
Informations extraites de l'article Chafia Boudraa de Wikipedia, licence CC-BY-SA, liste complète des contributeurs sur Wikipedia.
Read more
