Josephine Hull ~ Supporting Actress 1950

Josephine Hull only made five films, beginning with the 1929 film The Bishop’s Candlesticks. That was followed by two 1932 Fox features, After Tomorrow (recreating her stage role) and The Careless Lady. She missed out on recreating her You Can’t Take It With You role in 1938, as she was still onstage with the show. Spring Byington appeared in the film version). Hull and Canadian-born Jean Adair did play the Brewster sisters in the 1944 film Arsenic and Old Lace (starring Cary Grant), and Hull was in the screen version of Harvey as well, playing Jimmy Stewart’s sister. It is for that role that she won her Best Supporting Actress Oscar. Variety said that Hull, as “the slightly balmy aunt who wants to have Elwood committed, is immense, socking the comedy for every bit of its worth.

Hull made only one more film, The Lady from Texas (1951); she had also appeared in the CBS-TV version of Arsenic and Old Lace in 1949, with Ruth McDevitt (an actress who often succeeded Hull in her Broadway roles) as her sister.

Moving to The Bronx, Hull had been retired for some years before her death in 1957 from a cerebral hemorrhage.

George Sanders ~ Addison DeWitt

George Sanders was born in Saint Petersburg, Russia, of British parents. In 1917, at the outbreak of the Russian Revolution, when Sanders was 11, the family returned to Britain and, like his brother, he attended Brighton College, a boys’ independent school in Brighton. After graduation he worked in an advertising agency. It was there that the company secretary, an aspiring actress named Greer Garson, suggested to him a career in acting.

He made his British film debut in 1934 and, after a series of British films, made his American debut in 1936 with a role in Lloyd’s of London. His British accent and sensibilities, combined with his suave, snobbish, and somewhat menacing air, were utilised in American films during the next decade. He played supporting roles in prestige productions such as Rebecca, in which he joined forces with Judith Anderson in her persecution of Joan Fontaine. He also played leading roles in such less high-profile pictures as Rage in Heaven. During this time he was also the lead in both The Falcon and The Saint film series, and also played Lord Henry Wotton in a film version of The Picture of Dorian Gray. In 1947 he co-starred with Gene Tierney and Rex Harrison in The Ghost and Mrs. Muir.

In 1950 he gave his most widely recognised performance, and achieved his greatest success, as the acerbic, cold-blooded theatre critic Addison DeWitt in All About Eve, winning an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor.

He moved into the field of television and was responsible for the successful series George Sanders Mystery Theatre. Sanders played an upper crust English villain, G. Emory Partridge, in a 1965 The Man From U.N.C.L.E. episode, “The Gazebo in the Maze Affair”, and reprised the role later that year in “The Yukon Affair”. He also portrayed Mr. Freeze in two episodes of the 1960s live-action Batman TV series.

Later, he provided the voice for the malevolent Shere Khan in the Walt Disney production of The Jungle Book.

In 1940, he married Susan Larson; the marriage ended in divorce in 1949. From 1949 until 1954, he was married to the Hungarian actress Zsa Zsa Gabor, whose previous marriage had been to Conrad Hilton. (In 1956 Sanders and Gabor starred together in the film Death of a Scoundrel.) Sanders was then married to actress Benita Hume, widow of actor Ronald Colman, from 1959 until her death in 1967. His last wife was Magda Gabor, the older sister of his second wife; the marriage lasted only 6 weeks. Following this he began to drink heavily.

After being convinced by a woman he had taken up with, George Sanders sold his beloved house in Majorca, Spain. Soon after, he checked into a hotel in Castelldefels, a coastal town near Barcelona, Spain. His body was discovered two days later, along with five empty bottles of Nembutal. He left behind a suicide note that read:

“Dear World, I am leaving because I am bored. I feel I have lived long enough. I am leaving you with your worries in this sweet cesspool. Good luck.”

His friend David Niven recorded in his autobiography Bring On The Empty Horses that Sanders had long predicted that he would commit suicide at the age of 65.

His body was cremated and the ashes scattered in the English Channel.

Judy Holliday ~ An Unlikely Film Star

Born Judith Tuvim (“Tuvim” is Hebrew for “Holiday”) in New York City, she was the only child of Abe and Helen Tuvim, Jewish immigrants from Russia. she attended elementary school at PS 150, a school in Sunnyside, Queens, New York. Her first job was as an assistant switchboard operator at the Mercury Theatre run by Orson Welles and John Houseman.

Holliday began her show business career in December, 1938, as part of a nightclub act called “The Revuers.” The other four members of the group were Betty Comden, Adolph Green, Alvin Hammer and John Frank. The Revuers were a staple of the New York nightlife scene until they disbanded in early 1944.

Holliday made her Broadway debut on March 20, 1945, at the Belasco Theatre in Kiss Them for Me and was one of the recipients that year of the Clarence Derwent Award. In 1946, she was back on Broadway, as the scatterbrained Billie Dawn in Born Yesterday. Author Garson Kanin had written the play specifically for his friend, the brilliant but difficult Jean Arthur. Arthur played the role of Billie out-of-town, but after many complaints and illnesses, resigned. Kanin chose Holliday as her replacement.

It has been widely reported^[who?] that when Columbia bought the rights to film Born Yesterday, studio boss Harry Cohn wouldn’t consider casting the unknown (outside of Broadway) Holliday. Kanin, together with George Cukor, Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn, conspired to promote Holliday by offering her a key part in the 1949 film Adam’s Rib. She got rave reviews and Cohn offered her the chance to repeat her part for the film version of Born Yesterday. She won the Golden Globe and Academy Award for Best Actress, beating out such formidable competitors as Gloria Swanson, who was nominated for Sunset Boulevard and Bette Davis for All About Eve.

Holliday died from breast cancer, in 1965 at the age of 43. She was survived by her young son, Jonathan Oppenheim, and by her ex-husband, clarinetist and conductor David Oppenheim.

Jose Ferrer ~ Best Actor 1950

Husband to Rosemary Clooney, uncle to George Clooney and father in law to singer Debbie Boone, Jose Ferrer received his Oscar for playing the famous poetic swordsman with the huge nose CYRANO DE BEFRGERAC.

Ferrer, who was born in the Santurce district of San Juan, Puerto Rico. In 1933 he graduated from Princeton University, where he wrote a senior thesis titled French Naturalism and Pardo Bazán and was a member of the Princeton Triangle Club. Ferrer made his Broadway debut in 1935. In 1940, he played his first starring role on Broadway, the title role in Charley’s Aunt — part of it in drag. He played Iago in Margaret Webster’s 1943 Broadway production of Othello, starring Paul Robeson in the title role, Webster as Emilia, and Ferrer’s wife at the time, Uta Hagen, as Desdemona. It became the longest-running production of a Shakespeare play staged in the U.S., a record it still holds. Then, in 1946, he played the title role in Edmond Rostand’s Cyrano de Bergerac, a performance which won him a Tony Award and then took the role to the big screen where he won the Oscar.

Ferrer made his film debut with Ingrid Bergman in Joan of Arc in 1948, for which he received his first Academy Award nomination, for “Best Supporting Actor”. Ferrer won an Academy Award as “Best Actor” for his portrayal of Cyrano de Bergerac in the 1955 film version of Cyrano de Bergerac, becoming the first Puerto Rican to win the award, only weeks after being subpoenaed to appear before the House Un-American Activities Committee as a suspected Communist, charges that Ferrer vehemently denied.

Ferrer had five children with singer-actress Rosemary Clooney: Miguel was born in 1955, Maria in 1956, Gabriel in 1957, Monsita in 1958, and Rafael in 1960. Clooney was Ferrer’s third wife. The two were married in 1953, divorced in 1961, and remarried in 1964, only to be divorced again in 1967. Ferrer had previously been married to famed actress and acting teacher Uta Hagen (1938–1948), by whom he had a daughter, Leticia (Lettie), and actress Phyllis Hill (1948–1953). At the time of his death, Ferrer was married to Stella Magee, whom he married in the late sixties.

José Ferrer died following a brief battle with colon cancer on January 26, 1992 in Coral Gables, Florida at the age of 83. He was laid to rest in Santa Maria Magdalena de Pazzis Cemetery in Old San Juan.

Broderick Crawford ~ All the King’s Men

Broderick Crawford was stereotyped early in his career as a rough-talking tough guy, frequently playing the villain. He gained fame in 1937, when he starred as Lenny in Of Mice and Men on Broadway. He moved to Hollywood afterward, but did not get the role in the film version. (The role instead went to Lon Chaney, Jr., who was himself thereafter typecast as a hulking brute.)

In 1949, Crawford was cast as Willie Stark, a character based on Louisiana politician Huey Long in All the King’s Men, for which Crawford won the Academy Award for Best Actor. The following year he starred in another smash hit film, Born Yesterday.

Despite these successes, Crawford’s career suffered because of his typecasting and also his own sometimes belligerent personality. In 1955, prominent television producer Frederick Ziv decided the Academy Award winner was worth taking a chance on and offered Crawford the lead role as “Chief” Dan Mathews in the police drama Highway Patrol. This program became highly popular during its four-year (1955-1959) period of first-run syndication and remained a fixture on local stations for many years afterward. The role revived Crawford’s career, and he concentrated on television for most of the remainder of his life.

Crawford died in 1986 at the age of 74 in Rancho Mirage, California, after suffering a stroke. He is one of a handful of performers who have two stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame — a star for motion pictures at 6901 Hollywood Boulevard and another star for television at 6734 Hollywood Boulevard.

Olivia de Haviland ~ The Heiress

Olivia de Haviland was the actress that had the courage and sued Warner Brothers in 1943 and essentially broke the studio system that kept actors and actresses in virtual slavery to companies like WB. She should be applauded if only for that.
But, of course, there’s much more to this Duchess of Hollywood. Olivia earned five Academy Award nominations and two Best Actress Oscars, for To Each His Own (1946) and The Heiress (1949). Her first Best Actress nomination came for Hold Back the Dawn (1941), but she lost to her younger sister, Joan Fontaine. Her first nomination of any kind came for her supporting role in Gone With the Wind in 1939, and it is probably for that performance, as Melanie, that she is most remembered.

In her second win and last nomination, de Haviland plays a woman who is the daughter of a wealthy widower and lacks most of the social graces expected of a women in her time. She falls in love with Morris Townsend whom her father thinks is a shallow interloper only after her fortune. The changes that take place within the character played by Olivia DeHavilland are amazing. There is one particular scene I love when she walks through an alcove where years before, she and Morris have kissed. When she stops you can feel what she is thinking and know that she is remembering, another and happier time. The cinemetography is exceptional by Leo Tover. Every scene is like a painting beautifully staged.

She was born in Tokyo as Olivia Mary De Havilland on July 1, 1916. Her parents were British. Her sister, Joan Fontaine, was born a year later. After her parents divorced when she was very young, she moved to Los Angeles. Growing up there convinced both her and her sister to pursue acting careers, and Olivia was discovered after appearing in a performance of A Midsummer Night’s Dream in college. That eventually led to the WB film version of the Shakespeare play in 1935, after which she signed a seven-year contract with the studio. She co-starred with Errol Flynn in several films, including Captain Blood. In 1939, she convinced David Selznick to give her the part of Melanie in Gone With The Wind, and then convinced Warner Brothers to loan her out to them. It proved to be a smart decision on all parts.

Following another Oscar nomination, Olivia asked WB for better parts, but instead they placed her on a six-month suspension. Later, when the contract expired, Warner said it would have to be extended to make up for that time. She sued and won. The court also said that all contracts with performers had to be limited to seven years, which became known as the De Havilland Law. It didn’t hurt her career any, and the 1940s were very good for her. However, after 1952, she concentrated more on Broadway and TV. The Fifth Musketeer (1979) was her final film. Today she lives in Paris, where she has been since the mid-50s. She had kept a low profile until June 15, 2006 when she took part in a special tribute in her honor in Hollywood by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.

Dean Jagger ~ Character Actor

Born Ira Dean Jagger in Columbus Grove, Ohio, Jagger made his film debut in The Woman from Hell (1929) with Mary Astor. He became a successful character actor, without becoming a major star, and appeared in almost 100 films in a career that lasted until shortly before his death.

He received an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his role in Twelve O’Clock High (1949). Jagger made his breakthrough to major roles in film with his portrayal of Brigham Young in Brigham Young (1940).^[1]According to George D. Pyper a technical consultant on the film, who had personally known Brigham Young, said that Jagger not only looked much like Brigham Young, but he also spoke like him and had some of his same mannerisms of walking.^[2]

Jagger then played prominent roles in Western Union (1941), Sister Kenny (1946), White Christmas (1954), Bad Day at Black Rock (1955), Vanishing Point (1971), and the 1956 British science-fiction film X the Unknown, although there was controversy when he refused to work with director Joseph Losey on this film because Losey was on the Hollywood blacklist. Losey was removed from the project after a few days shooting and replaced with Les Norman.

Jagger also achieved success in the television series Mr. Novak, winning Emmy Award nominations for his role, in 1964 and 1965. Though he won a Daytime Emmy award for a guest appearance in the religious series This Is the Life.

Mercedes McCambridge ~ Hollywood Tough Lady

I first saw McCambridge in Giant, where she played Rock Hudson’s, older sister, and was soon one of my favorite film stars.  In this film, for which she was also nominated for a supporting actress award, she played a strong, driven tough cattle woman. In the film for which she won her Academy Award she played Broderick Crawford’s nemesis in All the King’s Men.

Born Carlotta Mercedes Agnes McCambridge on March 17, 1916 (possibly 1918), on the family farm at Joliet, Ill. She was of Irish Catholic extraction and educated at Catholic schools. After graduation from Mundelein College in Chicago, she acted in Chicago radio, which then produced several network soap operas and nighttime shows. She married her first husband, William Fifield, at 23.

She was a very in demand radio star in the 40s and 50s, before finding success in film. Among the popular radio programs McCambridge was heard on were Inner Sanctum Mysteries, Big Sister, The Ford Theater, Studio One, Murder At Midnight, One Man’s Family, The Guiding Light, Carlton E. Morse’s classic I Love a Mystery, and others.

McCambridge was also a member of Orson Welles’ Mercury Theater, as was Agnes Moorehead (with whom she appeared as Endora’s old nemesis, Carlotta, in an episode of “Bewitched”).

From 1950 to 1962, McCambridge was married to Canadian-born Fletcher Markle, a film and radio director who became well-known in the U.S. during the years of live television drama. During the marriage and afterward, she was sometimes hospitalized after episodes of heavy drinking. After years with Alcoholics Anonymous, she achieved sobriety.

McCambridge’s strong, radio-trained voice made her an ideal film portrayer of hard-driving women. She won a Best Supporting Actress Oscar for her screen debut as Broderick Crawford’s hard-boiled nemesis/ secretary/ lover/ reporter in All the King’s Men (1949). Broderick Crawford was named best actor for his role as populist Southern governor, Willie Stark, a close replica of Louisiana’s Huey Long, and the drama was honored with a best picture Oscar.

Despite All the King’s Men, she may be even better remembered as the icy villainess who locked horns with Joan Crawford in the role-reversal Western Johnny Guitar (1954) and Rock Hudson’s strong-willed sister in Giant . (Interesting side-note: The hat McCambridge wore in Giant was given to her by Gary Cooper.)

In recent years she has become something of a cult figure. Her memorable voice-over for the demon child in The Exorcist(1973) — has secured her place in movie history. Because of her great vocal skills, McCambridge was hired to portray The Demon in William Friedkin’s 1973 smash hit The Exorcist. After weeks of what she called the hardest work she had done for a film, she had been promised prominent mention in the credits. But when she attended the preview, her name was missing. As she left the theater in tears, Friedkin tried to explain that there had been no time to insert her credit. The Screen Actors Guild intervened and forced her inclusion in the credits.

McCambridge died from natural causes on March 2, 2004

Charleton Heston ~ Epic Actor

In a long career, Heston was known for playing heroic roles, such as Harry Steele in Secret of the Incas , Moses in The Ten Commandments, Colonel George Taylor in Planet of the Apes and Judah Ben-Hur in Ben-Hur. Early in his career, he was one of a handful of Hollywood stars to publicly speak out against racism and was active in the civil rights movement. During the latter part of his movie career, he starred in films such as The Omega Man and Soylent Green that had a strong environmental message. He was president of the National Rifle Association from 1998 to 2003.

Heston was born on October 4, 1924, in Evanston, Illinois, and his original name was John Charlton Carter.

He was renowned for his chiseled features and compelling speaking voice and for his numerous roles as historical figures and famous literary characters.

“I have a face that belongs in another century,” he often remarked.

Ben Hur won 11 Academy Awards, tying it for the record with the more recent Titanic (1997) and The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (2003).

Heston liked to cite the number of historical figures he had portrayed: Andrew Jackson (`The President’s Lady, The Buccaneer), Moses (The Ten Commandments), title role of El Cid, John the Baptist (The Greatest Story Ever Told, Michelangelo (The Agony and the Ecstasy), General Gordon (Khartoum‘), Marc Antony (Julius Caesar, Antony and Cleopatra), Cardinal Richelieu (The Three Musketeers), Henry VIII (The Prince and the Pauper).

Heston decided to become an actor after impulsively auditioning for a high-school play. His stage experience in high school resulted in a scholarship to Northwestern University.

After serving in the United States Air Force (1944-1947), he went into theatre and radio, making his Broadway stage debut in Antony and Cleopatra in 1947. He also performed on television in the late 1940s, making notable appearances in televised productions of Julius Caesar, Wuthering Heights (1950), and The Taming of the Shrew.

Heston made his movie debut in the 1940s in two independent films by a college classmate, David Bradley, who later became a noted film archivist.

He had the title role in Peer Gynt in 1942 and was Marc Antony in Bradley’s 1949 version of Julius Caesar, for which Heston was paid $50 a week.

Film producer Hal B. Wallis (Casablanca) spotted Heston in Wuthering Heights and offered him a contract.

When his wife reminded him that they had decided to pursue theatre and television, he replied, “Well, maybe just for one film to see what it’s like”.

Heston made his Hollywood film debut with star billing as a tormented, cynical young man in Dark City (1950), a crime thriller, and then gained wide commercial and critical success with a role as the circus manager in the all-star The Greatest Show on Earth (1952), by American director Cecil B. DeMille.

The Greatest Show On Earth was named by the Motion Picture Academy as the best picture of 1952.

In the 1950s and 1960s Heston achieved tremendous fame by playing larger-than-life roles in historical epics that featured his rugged resolve and commanding physical presence, including The President’s Lady (1953), DeMille’s The Ten Commandments (1956), Ben Hur (1959), El Cid (1961), and The Greatest Story Ever Told (1965). In 1959 he won an Academy Award for best actor for his performance in Ben Hur.

During this period Heston also starred in several films made on a more modest scale, including Touch of Evil (1958), 55 Days at Peking (1963), and Major Dundee (1965).

In the late 1960s and early 1970s he adapted his powerful screen presence to star in several science-fiction and disaster films, such as Planet of the Apes (1968), Beneath the Planet of the Apes (1970), The Omega Man (1971), Soylent Green (1973), Earthquake (1974), and Airport 1975 (1974). Most of his later roles are as indomitable authority figures in war sagas and Westerns.

Heston also directed Mother Lode (1982) and A Man for All Seasons (1988), a film he made for television.

An influential member of the Hollywood film community, Heston served six terms as president of the Screen Actors Guild, from 1966 to 1971. He also became an outspoken supporter for a number of conservative political causes.

In 1998 Heston was elected president of the National Rifle Association (NRA), becoming a popular symbol for the pro-gun political lobby, for which he had posed for ads holding a rifle.

He delivered a jab at then-President Bill Clinton, saying, “America doesn’t trust you with our 21-year-old daughters, and we sure, Lord, don’t trust you with our guns.”

Heston stepped down as NRA president in April 2003, telling members his five years in office were “quite a ride. … I loved every minute of it”.

That same year, Heston was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the United States’ highest civilian honour.

“The largeness of character that comes across the screen has also been seen throughout his life,” President George W. Bush said at the time.

Heston died on April 5, 2008 at his home in Beverly Hills, California with Lydia, his wife of 64 years by his side. Heston was 83. Heston had been given the diagnosis of Alzheimer’s Disease in 2002

David Niven ~ English Actor

David Niven arrived in Hollywood to try to break into the movies by first finding work as an extra. He was given lodgings with the Belzer family, one of whose daughters – Gretchen – was already a major Hollywood star, under her stage name of Loretta Young. When he presented himself at the doors of Central Casting, he found out that he had to have a work permit, to allow him to reside and work in the U.S. Luckily for him, he was given the chance to do a screen test for director Edmund Goulding. Unfortunately, it was not long after this that he was paid a visit by the U.S. Immigration Service and told he had to apply for a Resident Alien Visa.

This meant that Niven had to leave U.S. soil in the meantime, and again, according to his autobiography, he left for Mexico – specifically Mexicali – where he worked as a “gun-man”, cleaning and polishing the rifles of the visiting Americans who came there to hunt Quail and various other game. After a lengthy wait for his birth certificate to be sent out from England, he successfully applied – and received – his Resident Alien Visa from the American Consulate. He then returned to the U.S. and was accepted by Central Casting as “Anglo-Saxon Type No. 2008.”

His first work as an extra was as a Mexican in a Western. This inauspicious start notwithstanding, he then found himself an agent – Bill Hawks. After this, he was then signed up for a non-speaking part in MGM’s “Mutiny On The Bounty” (1935), starring Clark Gable as Fletcher Christian and Charles Laughton as Captain Bligh.

He then landed a longterm contract as a supporting player with independent film producer Samuel Goldwyn, which firmly established his career and enabled him to become a leading man in many films.

Niven won the Academy Award for Best Actor for his performance in Separate Tables (1958). Niven had a long and complex relationship with Samuel Goldwyn, who had first given him his start, but whom Niven believed had been treating him unfairly. Despite their long business history, Niven and Goldwyn went through an eight year estrangement in which Niven was essentially blacklisted from the movie industry after demanding greater compensation for his work.

Perhaps one of Niven’s finest moments came when he had to present the 46th Annual Oscars ceremony, and a naked man appeared behind him, running across the stage. Not to be outclassed or nonplussed even for a moment, Niven came back with the one liner “Isn’t it fascinating to think, that probably the only laugh that man will ever get in his life, is by stripping off and showing his shortcomings!”In February 1983, using a false name to avoid publicity, Niven was hospitalised for ten days for treatment, ostensibly for a digestive problem. Afterwards, he returned to his chalet at Chateau d’Oex in Switzerland, where his condition continued to decline. He refused to return to the hospital, and his family supported his decision. Niven died in Switzerland on July 29, 1983 of motor neurone disease (Lou Gehrig’s Disease) at age 73.