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Dave Willock
Biography
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Dave Willock (August 13, 1909 – November 12, 1990) was an American character actor. Willock appeared in 181 films and television series from 1939 to 1989. Born in 1909, Willock began his professional career in vaudeville in 1931, teaming with his boyhood friend Jack Carson in a comedy song and dance routine. For a time in the mid-1930s he was a reporter and editor for a Milwaukee newspaper. He first appeared on screen in Good Girls Go to Paris (1939), in an uncredited bit part.
He teamed with Carson again when Carson invited him to write for his radio show; Willock wrote and played the part of Carson's nephew Tugwell on The Jack Carson Show from 1943–1949. Willock and Cliff Arquette had their own radio and television shows in the early 1950s. Both versions were called Dave and Charley; the radio version was heard circa 1950, but the television version of it was on the air for only three months in early 1952.
In the 1961–1962 season, he played Harvey Clayton, father of the 1920s teenager Margie Clayton, portrayed by Cynthia Pepper in ABC's Margie. He appeared on an episode of Dragnet as an ex-vaudevillean who is cheated out of $9,000 that he found on a sidewalk. In 1966, he had an uncredited role as the bartender in the Elvis Presley vehicle Frankie and Johnny. Willock is probably most familiar to modern audiences from his performance as Baby Jane Hudson's father in the opening scenes of the cult classic What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? (1962). He played seven different characters on CBS's Green Acres with Eddie Albert and Eva Gabor, mostly portraying clerks or elevator operators.
Willock also did voice acting for animated roles, such as the offscreen narrator on Wacky Races (1968) and as father Augustus "Gus" Holiday on The Roman Holidays (1972). He appeared in a television commercial for "The Great American Soups", directed by American satirist Stan Freberg, alongside tap-dancing star Ann Miller.
He died of complications due to stroke on November 12, 1990 at the age of 81. He is buried in Valhalla Memorial Park Cemetery. For his contribution to the television industry, Dave Willock has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 6358 Hollywood Boulevard.
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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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John Warnaby
Biography
John Warnaby (6 November 1960 – 13 April 2024) was a British actor on stage, television and in films. In later life he became a Catholic priest.
John Michael Warnaby was born on 6 November 1960. He attended St Teresa’s Primary School in the Birmingham suburb of Handsworth Wood, before going to St Philip’s College in Edgbaston from 1971 to 1979. Between 1979 and 1982 he read theology at Oriel College, Oxford.
After university Warnaby worked for the Corporation of Lloyd’s as a regulator in the area of solvency and financial reporting. He set up an office in Atlanta, Georgia in the USA, where he worked with investors for two years. He continued to work in this field until 2000.
While still working for Lloyd's, Warnaby embarked on a career as an actor.
His breakthrough came in 1988 in a stage adaptation of Tom Stoppard's radio play Artist Descending a Staircase, directed by Tim Luscombe, in which Warnaby played the young version of the character Donner (the older version being played by Frank Middlemass). It was first performed at the Kings Head, Islington, London, later transferring to the Duke of York's Theatre in the West End.
Warnaby joined the RSC for the 1990/91 season in The Swan in Stratford and the Pit at the Barbican in London. He played Paris in Sam Mendes' production of Troilus and Cressida (played by Ralph Fiennes and Amanda Root) and doubled as the Earl of Lancaster and the Abbot of Neath in Gerard Murphy's production of Edward II (played by Simon Russell Beale). He also appeared in Richard Nelson's Two Shakespearean Actors, directed by Roger Michell, and The Shakespeare Revue, devised by Chris Luscombe.
In 1996 Warnaby appeared at the National Theatre, playing Napoleon Bonaparte and Boris Dubretskoy in Helen Edmundson's adaptation of Tolstoy's War and Peace, directed by Nancy Meckler.
In 2001 Warnaby played Freddie in Laurence Boswell's revival of Peter Nichols’ play A Day in the Death of Joe Egg at the Comedy Theatre in a cast which included Eddie Izzard, Victoria Hamilton and Prunella Scales.
In 2006 he appeared in the television adaptation of Alan Hollinghurst’s novel The Line of Beauty.
In Nicholas de Jongh's 2009 stage hit in London Plague Over England, Warnaby played both 1950s Home Secretary David Maxwell Fyfe and an acerbic theatre critic.
In later life, Warnaby retired from acting and trained as a Catholic priest. In 2013 he was sent to the Pontifical Beda College in Rome. On his ordination in 2017, his first appointment was as Assistant Priest at St Monica’s, Palmers Green. In 2019 he moved to St George’s, Sudbury as Assistant Priest. The following year he moved to St Joseph’s, Carpenders Park, initially as Assistant Priest and, from 2022, as Parish Priest.
Warnaby died after a short illness on 13 April 2024, at the age of 63. His funeral took place in his own parish of St Joseph's. Cardinal Vincent Nichols, Archbishop of Westminster, presided over the Requiem Mass
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Jennifer Lynn Warren
Biography
Born and raised in Altoona, Pennsylvania, Jennifer attributes her youthful appearance to her beautiful grandmother, Joan Keith. She got her degree in Theater from Indiana University of Pennsylvania with a minor in dance. She has also obtained her certificate from the Society of American Fight Directors and is Proficient in Unarmed, Rapier & Dagger, and Quarterstaff. Jennifer's career soon took off in Hollywood south, where she made her premier in the film business before moving out to California.
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Anne Gwynne
Biography
Anne Gwynne was signed by Universal Pictures when she was 20 yrs old, and co-starred in "Flash Gordon Conquers the Universe" with Buster Crabbe soon thereafter . Over the next years, Miss Gwynne would be featured in some thirty-eight Universal films, and become one of the studio’s most recognizable stars. She co-starred in an additional 20 films, for MGM, Allied Artists, and RKO Pictures among other studios.
Anne Gwynne co-starred in what was the first filmed dramatic series for television, 1947-1948's "Public Prosecutor", filming 26 episodes for NBC (also known as "Crawford Mystery Theatre"). Anne Gwynne's motion picture and television career spanned the years 1939 through 1970.
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Valentina Titova
Biography
Valentina Titova is a Soviet and Russian theater and film actress.
In 1964, she graduated from the studio of Tovstonogov Bolshoi Drama Theater in Leningrad. In 1970-1992 she was an actress of the National Film Actors' Theatre in Moscow. Her film debut was an episodic role in the 1963 drama All Remains to People by Georgy Natanson.
In her graduation year, Valentina Titova played her first major film role in the drama The Blizzard (1964) directed by Vladimir Basov, based on the story of the same name by Alexander Pushkin. In 1968 she got a role in the popular movie The Shield and the Sword, which brought her more recognition. Titova's other famous roles were in the films The Dangerous Turn (1972), The Days of the Turbins (1976), Father Sergius (1978), Petrovka, 38 (1979), Carnival (1981), Professor Dowell's Testament (1984), It is not Recommended to Offend Women (2000)
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Youssef Wahby
Biography
Egyptian actor, director and author, began his education in the city of Fayoum traveled to Italy after the First World War, where he studied acting and studied at the hands of the Italian actor Cantoni, to return to Egypt and worked in Hassan Fayek’s Theater, and then founded his own theater and Ramses Film Production Company, and participated in the establishment of Nahas studios and took over the management of the Studio, In the cinema, he wrote and directed his film scenarios. He received many awards in Egypt and many honors such as the Grand Order of the Cisé from the King of Morocco. He received an honorary doctorate from the Academy of Arts. He married and did not have children.
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Patrick McGoohan
Biography
Patrick Joseph McGoohan (March 19, 1928 – January 13, 2009) was an American-born actor, raised in Ireland and England, with an extensive stage and film career, most notably in the 1960s television series Danger Man (renamed Secret Agent when exported to the US), and The Prisoner. McGoohan wrote and directed several episodes of The Prisoner himself, occasionally using the pseudonyms Joseph Serf and Paddy Fitz. He subsequently appeared in several Columbo episodes, winning the Emmy twice, David Cronenberg's Scanners, and in Mel Gibson's Braveheart as King Edward I.
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Ken Dodd
Biography
Sir Kenneth Arthur Dodd was born on 8 November 1927 in a former farmhouse in Knotty Ash, a suburb of Liverpool, to Arthur Dodd and Sarah (née Gray); where his parents lived. He had an older brother, William and a younger sister, June. He went to the Knotty Ash School and sang in the local church choir of St John's Church, Knotty Ash. He was to live in Knotty Ash all his life, dying in the house in which he was born, and often referred to the area—as well as its mythical "jam butty mines" and "black pudding plantations"—in his act.
He then attended Holt High School, a grammar school in Childwall, Liverpool, but left at the age of 14 to work for his father, a coal merchant. Around this time he became interested in show business after seeing an advert in a comic: "Fool your teachers, amaze your friends—send 6d in stamps and become a ventriloquist!" and sending off for the book. Not long after, his father bought him a ventriloquist's dummy and Ken called it Charlie Brown. He started entertaining at the local orphanage, then at various other local community functions. His distinctive bucked teeth were the result of a cycling accident after a group of school friends dared him to ride a bicycle with his eyes closed. Aged 18, he began working as a traveling salesman and used his work van to travel to comedy clubs in the evenings.
He gained his big break at age 26 when, in September 1954, he made his professional show-business debut as Professor Yaffle Chucklebutty, Operatic Tenor and Sausage Knotter at the Nottingham Empire. He later said, "Well at least they didn't boo me off". He continued to tour variety theatres up and down the UK, and in 1955 he appeared at Blackpool, where, in the following year, he had a part in Let's Have Fun. His performance at the Central Pier was part of a comedy revue with Jimmy James and Company. Also on the same bill were Jimmy Clitheroe and Roy Castle. Dodd first gained top billing at Blackpool in 1958.
Dodd was described as "the last great music hall entertainer". His stand-up comedy style was fast and relied on the rapid delivery of one-liner jokes. He said that his comic influences included other Liverpool comedians like Arthur Askey, Robb Wilton, Tommy Handley and the "cheeky chappy" from Brighton, Max Miller. He interspersed the comedy with occasional songs, both serious and humorous, in an incongruously fine light baritone voice, and with his original specialty, ventriloquism. Part of his stage act featured the Diddy Men ("diddy" being local slang for "small"). At first, an unseen joke conceived as part of Dodd's imagination, they later appeared on stage, usually played by children.
Dodd worked mainly as a solo comedian, including in a number of eponymous television and radio shows and made several appearances on BBC TV's music hall revival show, The Good Old Days. Although he enjoyed making people laugh, he was also a serious student of comedy and history and was interested in Sigmund Freud and Henri Bergson's analysis of humour. Occasionally, he appeared in dramatic roles, including Malvolio in William Shakespeare's Twelfth Night on stage in Liverpool in 1971; on television in the cameo role of 'The Tollmaster' in the 1987 Doctor Who story Delta and the Bannermen.
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Jun
Biography
Wen Junhui (文俊輝; born June 10, 1996), known professionally as Jun (준), is a Chinese singer, songwriter, dancer and actor under Pledis Entertainment. He is a member of the boy group SEVENTEEN and its Performance Team sub-unit.
Before debuting as a member of Seventeen, Jun was a child actor who starred in multiple films including The Pye Dog (2007), for which he won the 2nd Hong Kong Film Directors' Guild's Best New Actor Silver Award, and The Legend Is Born: Ip Man (2010). In 2023, Jun returned to acting with a lead role in iQiyi's Exclusive Fairytale.
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