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Robertson Hare
Biography
John Robertson Hare, OBE (17 December 1891 – 25 January 1979) was an English actor, who came to fame in the Aldwych farces. He is remembered by modern audiences for his performances as the Archdeacon in the popular BBC sitcom, All Gas and Gaiters.
Short in stature and of unheroic appearance, Hare made his stage career in character roles. From his early days as an actor he was cast as older men. One of his favourite parts, which he played in the provinces before achieving West End success, was "Grumpy", a retired lawyer, in which he toured before the First World War.
After war service in the army, Hare got his big break. He was cast in a long-running farce with Ralph Lynn and Tom Walls. His meek and put-upon character was repeated in various incarnations in the eleven Aldwych farces presented by Walls between 1923 and 1933. He also appeared in film versions of most of the farces. After the Aldwych series came to an end, Hare continued to be cast in similar roles in new plays by Ben Travers and many others.
Occasionally Hare took a break from farce, appearing in revue with Benny Hill and in a musical with Frankie Howerd. His final major role was on television in the late 1960s, as the Archdeacon of St Ogg's in the BBC comedy series All Gas and Gaiters.
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Walter Hampden
Biography
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Walter Hampden is the artist name of Walter Hampden Dougherty (June 30, 1879 in Brooklyn – June 11, 1955 in Los Angeles) was a U.S. actor and theatre manager. He was the younger brother of the American painter Paul Dougherty (1877-1947).
He went to England for apprenticeship for six years. Later, he played Hamlet, Henry V and Cyrano de Bergerac on Broadway. In 1925, he became manager of the Colonial Theatre on Broadway. He became noted for his Shakespearean roles as well as for Cyrano, which he played in several productions between 1923 and 1936. Hampden's last stage role was as Danforth in the original Broadway production of Arthur Miller's The Crucible.
Hampden appeared in a few silent films, but did not really begin his film career in earnest until 1939, when he played the good Archbishop of Paris[1] (Frollo's brother) in The Hunchback of Notre Dame, starring Charles Laughton as Quasimodo. This was Hampden's first sound film ; he was sixty at the time he made it. Several other roles followed—Jarvis Langdon in the 1944 film The Adventures of Mark Twain among them, but all were supporting character roles, not the lead roles that Hampden played onstage. He had a small, but notable role as the long-winded dinner speaker in the first scene of All About Eve (1950), and played the father of Humphrey Bogart and William Holden in Billy Wilder's 1954 comedy Sabrina. These last two films are arguably the ones that Hampden is most well known to modern audiences for. He also played long-bearded patriarchs in biblical epics like The Silver Chalice (1954) and The Prodigal (1955). (In The Silver Chalice, he was Joseph of Arimathea.)
Hampden reprised his legendary portrayal of Hercule Savinien Cyrano de Bergerac in the first episode of the radio program Great Scenes from Great Plays, which Hampden hosted from 1948-1949. In addition to his radio roles (The Adventures of Leonidas Witherall), Hampden also appeared in several dramas during the early days of television. He made his TV debut in 1949, playing Macbeth for the last time at the age of 69.
His last role was the non-singing one of King Louis XI of France, considered by some to be one of his best performances, in the otherwise unremarkable 1956 Technicolor remake of Rudolf Friml's 1925 operetta The Vagabond King. It was released posthumously, more than a year after Hampden's death.
For 27 years, Walter Hampden was president of the Players' Club. The club's library is named for him.
Description above from the Wikipedia article Walter Hampden, licensed under CC-BY-SA, full list of contributors on Wikipedia.
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Edgar Neville
Biography
Edgar Neville Romrée, Count of Berlanga de Duero (1899-1967) was a Spanish diplomat, playwright, and film director. He is considered one of the best directors of post-war Spain. Neville's life could be regarded as eventful. After a short participation in the Rif War as a hussar, Neville entered the artistic world, making friends with figures such as José López Rubio, Luis Buñuel, Federico García Lorca, Manuel de Falla, and Salvador Dalí. At the same time, in 1922 he became a diplomat, thanks to which he travelled the world until he settled in Los Angeles. There he met Charles Chaplin, who introduced him to the industry as a writer. In the 1930s, he returned to Spain and became romantically involved with Conchita Montes, with whom he would make most of his films. However, the Civil War broke out and Neville served the Republic as a diplomat in London while also working as a spy for the rebel side. Once discovered, he fled until he ended up in the rebel zone, where he carried out propaganda services. Once the war was over, and after a period in Italy, he settled in Marbella, recording excellent films and plays in all genres, the most outstanding examples being Life on a Thread (1945), The Tower of the Seven Hunchbacks (1944), The Crime of Bordadores' Street (1946), the acclaimed documentary Flamenco (1952), and the successful play The Dance (1952), then made into a film. Neville's talent has often gone unrecognised both because of his alleged political views and the fact that much of his oeuvre has been considered lost for decades. However, thanks to the efforts of Filmoteca Española, it has been possible to recover many of his films and discover the originality behind this interesting figure.
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Carlos Cunha Filho
Biography
Carlos Cunha Filho (Porto Alegre, 1950) é um ator brasileiro, que construiu sua carreira no teatro, cinema e televisão do Rio Grande do Sul. Em alguns trabalhos, foi creditado como Carlos Cunha.
Formado em Direção Teatral (1977) e Educação Artística (1986) pela UFRGS, começou a fazer teatro na metade dos anos 1970, no Grêmio Dramático Açores, grupo experimental do Teatro de Arena.
Desde então, participou de mais de trinta espetáculos, passando a destacar-se a partir de sua interpretação do imigrante italiano Giovanni Baracheta, em "Bella Ciao" (1989), peça de Dario Fo dirigida por Néstor Monasterio. Por este espetáculo, Cunha recebeu o Prêmio Quero-quero de melhor ator da temporada, concedido pelo SATED, sindicato dos artistas do Rio Grande do Sul, além do prêmio máximo de interpretação no Festival Nacional de Teatro de São José do Rio Preto. Foi duas vezes vencedor do Troféu Açorianos, principal premiação teatral de Porto Alegre: como melhor ator por "King Kong Palace" (1996), peça do autor chileno Marco Antonio de la Parra; e como melhor ator coadjuvante por "Édipo" (2008), peça de Sófocles adaptada e dirigida por Luciano Alabarse.
Cunha tem ainda mais de trinta atuações em filmes e especiais de televisão, incluindo os longas-metragens "O Homem que copiava" (2003), de Jorge Furtado, em que interpreta o pervertido pai da personagem de Leandra Leal; e "Antes que o mundo acabe" (2010), de Ana Luiza Azevedo, em que faz o acaciano padre-diretor da escola onde os protagonistas estudam.
Em 2004, Carlos Cunha Filho interpretou Getúlio Vargas no especial "O dia em que o Brasil parou", da RBS TV, que lembrava os 50 anos do suicídio do presidente. Desde 2007, faz parte do elenco de peças radiofônicas da Radioativa Produtora.
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Sean Connery
Biography
Sir Thomas Sean Connery (August 25, 1930 – October 31, 2020) was a Scottish actor and producer. He won an Academy Award, two BAFTA Awards (one being a BAFTA Academy Fellowship Award), and three Golden Globes, including the Cecil B. DeMille Award and a Henrietta Award. Connery was the first actor to portray the character James Bond in film, starring in seven Bond films (every film from Dr. No to You Only Live Twice, plus Diamonds Are Forever and Never Say Never Again), between 1962 and 1983. In 1988, Connery won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his role in The Untouchables. His films also include Marnie (1964), Murder on the Orient Express (1974), The Man Who Would Be King (1975), A Bridge Too Far (1977), Highlander (1986), Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1989), The Hunt for Red October (1990), Dragonheart (1996), The Rock (1996), and Finding Forrester (2000).
Connery was polled in a 2004 The Sunday Herald as "The Greatest Living Scot" and in a 2011 EuroMillions survey as "Scotland's Greatest Living National Treasure". He was voted by People magazine as both the “Sexiest Man Alive" in 1989 and the "Sexiest Man of the Century” in 1999. He received a lifetime achievement award in the United States with a Kennedy Center Honor in 1999. Connery was knighted in the 2000 New Year Honours for services to film drama.
On October 31, 2020, Connery died at the age of 90.
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Maurizio Lucidi
Biography
Maurizio Lucidi was an Italian director, screenwriter, and editor, sometimes credited as Mark Lender. He started his career as a film editor in the early 1960s and served as an assistant director for Pier Paolo Pasolini on The Gospel According to St. Matthew in 1964. Lucidi made his directorial debut in 1966 with Hercules the Avenger and later directed several genre films, especially Spaghetti Westerns. His notable works include My Name Is Pecos (1966), Pecos Cleans Up (1967), and It Can Be Done Amigo (1971).
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Denise Grey
Biography
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Denise Grey, real name Édouardine Verthuy, was a French actress.
Édouardine Grey was born Châtillon, in the Aosta Valley in north-west Italy, close to the French border. The city was almost totally French-speaking at the time. She was naturalized French on July 13, 1922. She started working in the film industry in 1915 in the silent film En famille, an adaptation of the novel by Hector Malot, before dedicating herself to theatre. She went back to working in films, now talkies, in the 1930s. She came to fame in the 1940s with films such as Monsieur Hector (1940), Boléro (1942) or Devil in the Flesh (1947). Old age did not put an end to her career. For example, in 1972, she starred in a French television series called Les Rois maudits. Thanks to the film La Boum, in which she plays "Poupette", the great-grandmother of Sophie Marceau, she gained recognition from a new audience growing up in the 1980s.
She was a member of the Comédie-Française between 1944 and 1946 and between 1957 and 1958.
She had a daughter: Suzanne Grey, also an actress, who was born on 28 June 1917 and died on 13 December 2005.
In 1986, she sang Devenir vieux (Becoming Old). She died in 1996, a few months before reaching the age of 100. She rests next to her husband in the cemetery of Arradon (Morbihan).
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Anita Adam Gabay
Biography
After moving to England from her native Paris at age fourteen, determined to be bilingual and train at LAMDA. Having achieved both she went on to study further at the Giles Foreman Centre for Acting. Her story with the stage starts as a child, working with the likes of Julie Brochen, and continuing in London with her last part being Beatrice in John and Beatrice (dir. Carole Frechette)"Part of Me" was Anita's first short film and she has gone on to film "Julia" in the BBC series "Baptiste" Anita originally trained as a dancer and musician as a child, and she employs both movement and singing as artistic languages that feed her craft as much at Yat Malmgren's movement psychology
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Nick Adams
Biography
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Nick Adams (July 10, 1931 – February 7, 1968) was an American film and television actor. He has been noted for his supporting roles in successful Hollywood films during the 1950s and 1960s along with his starring role in the ABC television series The Rebel (1959). Decades after Adams' death from a prescription drug overdose at the age of 36, his widely publicized friendships with James Dean and Elvis Presley would stir speculation about both his private life and the circumstances of his death. In an Allmovie synopsis for Adams' last film, reviewer Dan Pavlides wrote, "Plagued by personal excesses, he will be remembered just as much for what he could have done in cinema as what he left behind."
Description above from the Wikipedia article Nick Adams (actor), licensed under CC-BY-SA, full list of contributors on Wikipedia.
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Syd Ralph
Biography
Syd trained initially as a dancer and then went on to act, choreograph and direct both in the UK and in Canada and work regularly for CBC radio and television.
She returned to the UK and met her composer/MD husband whilst playing Crissy on the national tour of Hair. She choreographed Godspell at the Young Vic and a number of repertory productions for the Manchester Library Theatre and the Crucible, Sheffield.
As well as working in musical theatre, she played a number of television roles for the BBC and ITV. She was also a freelance actor for BBC School Radio and later a member of the BBC radio repertory company.
As a director, she started working for the National Youth Music Theatre and then went on to become a founding Artistic Associate of Youth Music Theatre:UK. She also directed regularly for Music Theatre 4 Youth, based in Belfast. Working over in Northern Ireland was one of the reasons she returned to live there in 2012.
Before leaving England, she had directed productions for the London Savoy Theatre, the Royal Opera House and on a BBC2 documentary filmed inside Wandsworth Prison. She also wrote and had published 5 youth theatre musicals and an opera, co-written with Mark Dougherty and performed at the Theatre Royal, Margate as part of the Canterbury Festival.
Since moving to Northern Ireland she has worked on television series, most memorably Game of Thrones, short films, corporate films, and the feature film A Christmas Star for Cinemagic. She also appeared in the stage tour of Talking Heads. She also directed a Milennium Theatre production of Sorcha’s Story and a production of Oliver! at the Belfast Opera House.
She was awarded an MBE in 2016 for services to youth theatre
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