Yesterday, September 29, The Friar's Club honored legendary comedian and humanitarian Jerry Lewis with a Lifetime Achievement Award. Quentin Tarantino was on hand to present Lewis with his honorary bust.
Jerry Lewis is best-known for his slapstick humor in stage, radio, screen, recording and television. He was originally paired up with Dean Martin in 1946, forming the comedy team of Martin and Lewis. In addition to the team's popular nightclub work, they starred in a successful series of comedy films for Paramount Pictures. As an innovative filmmaker, Lewis is credited with inventing the video assist system in cinematography. Lewis is also known for his charity fund-raising telethons and position as national chairman for the Muscular Dystrophy Association (MDA).
Lewis has won several awards for lifetime achievements from The American Comedy Awards, The Golden Camera, Los Angeles Film Critics Association, and The Venice Film Festival, and he has two stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. In 2005, he received the Governors Award of the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences Board of Governors, which is the highest Emmy Award presented. On February 22, 2009, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences awardEd Lewis the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award...
LAS VEGAS – Tony Curtis, the Bronx tailor's son who became a 1950s movie heartthrob and then a respected actor with such films as "Sweet Smell of Success," "The Defiant Ones" and "Some Like It Hot," has died. He was 85.
The actor died about 9:25 p.m. PDT Wednesday at his Las Vegas area home of a cardiac arrest, Clark County Coroner Mike Murphy said Thursday.
In 1958, "The Defiant Ones" brought him an Academy Award nomination as best actor for his portrayal of a white racist escaped convict handcuffed to a black escapee, Sidney Poitier. The following year, he donned women's clothing and sparred with Marilyn Monroe in one of the most acclaimed film comedies ever, Billy Wilder's "Some Like It Hot."
His first wife was actress Janet Leigh of "Psycho" fame; actress Jamie Leigh Curtis is their daughter.
In later years, he returned to film and television as a character actor after battling drug and alcohol abuse. His brash optimism returned, and he allowed his once-shiny black hair to turn silver.
"I'm not ready to settle down like an elderly Jewish gentleman, sitting on a bench and leaning on a cane," he said at 60. "I've got a helluva lot of living to do."
He also became a painter whose canvasses sold for as much as $20,000.
"He was a fine actor ... I shall miss him," said British actor Roger Moore, who starred alongside Curtis in TV's "The Persuaders."
"He was great fun to work with, a great sense of humour and wonderful ad libs," Moore told Sky News. "We had the best of times."
He first attracted critical notice as Sidney Falco, the press agent seeking favor with a sadistic columnist, played by Burt Lancaster, in the 1957 classic "Sweet Smell of Success."
Other prestigious films followed: Stanley Kubrick's "Spartacus," "Captain Newman, M.D.," "The Vikings," "Kings Go Forth," "Operation Petticoat" and "Some Like It Hot." He also found time to do a voice acting gig as his prehistoric lookalike, Stony Curtis, in an episode of "The Flintstones."
"The Defiant Ones" remained his only Oscar-nominated role.
In 2000, an American Film Institute survey of the funniest films in history ranked "Some Like It Hot" at No. 1. Curtis — famously imitating Cary Grant's accent — and Jack Lemmon play jazz musicians who dress up as women to escape retribution after witnessing a gangland massacre.
Monroe was their co-star, and he and Lemmon were repeatedly kept waiting as Monroe lingered in her dressing room out of fear and insecurity. Curtis fumed over her unprofessionalism. When someone remarked that it must be thrilling to kiss Monroe in the film's love scenes, the actor snapped, "It's like kissing Hitler." In later years, his opinion of Monroe softened, and in interviews he praised her unique talent.
In 2002, Curtis toured in "Some Like It Hot" — a revised and retitled version of the 1972 Broadway musical "Sugar," which was based on the film. In the touring show, the actor graduated to the role of Osgood Fielding III, the part played in the movie by Joe E. Brown.
After his star faded in the late 1960s, Curtis shifted to lesser roles. With jobs harder to find, he fell into drug and alcohol addiction.
"From 22 to about 37, I was lucky," Curtis told Interview magazine in the 1980s, "but by the middle '60s, I wasn't getting the kind of parts I wanted, and it kind of soured me. ... But I had to go through the drug inundation before I was able to come to grips with it and realize that it had nothing to do with me, that people weren't picking on me."
One role during that era of struggle did bring him an Emmy nomination: his portrayal of David O. Selznick in the TV movie "The Scarlett O'Hara War," in 1980.
His health remained vigorous, though he did get heart bypass surgery in 1994.
He also had five other children. Daughters Kelly, also with Leigh, and Allegra, with second wife Christine Kaufmann, also became actresses. His other wives were Leslie Allen, Lisa Deutsch and Jill VandenBerg, whom he married in 1998.
He had married Janet Leigh in 1951, when they were both rising young stars; they divorced in 1963.
Curtis was born Bernard Schwartz in the Bronx in 1925, the son of Hungarian Jews who had emigrated to the United States after World War I. His father, Manny Schwartz, had yearned to be an actor, but work was hard to find with his heavy accent. He settled for tailoring jobs, moving the family repeatedly as he sought work.
"I was always the new kid on the block, so I got beat up by the other kids," Curtis recalled in 1959. "I had to figure a way to avoid getting my nose broken. So I became the crazy new kid on the block."
His sidewalk histrionics helped avoid beatings and led to acting in plays at a settlement house. He also grew to love movies. "My whole culture as a boy was movies," he said. "For 11 cents, you could sit in the front row of a theater for 10 hours, which I did constantly."
After serving in the Pacific during World War II and being wounded at Guam, he returned to New York and studied acting under the G.I. Bill. He appeared in summer stock theater and on the Borscht Circuit in the Catskills. Then an agent lined up an audition with a Universal-International talent scout. In 1948, at 23, he signed a seven-year contract with the studio, starting at $100 a week.
Bernie Schwartz sounded too Jewish for a movie actor, so the studio gave him a new name: Anthony Curtis, taken from his favorite novel, "Anthony Adverse," and the Anglicized name of a favorite uncle. After his eighth film, he became Tony Curtis...
Who can forget Jimmy Stewart's daughter in IT'S A WONDERFUL LIFE(1946)?
Karolyn Grimes (born July 4, 1940) is an American actress known for her role as "Zuzu Bailey" in the Frank Capra classic It's a Wonderful Life. Grimes also played Bing Crosby's daughter in the big budget musical BLUE SKIES in 1946. She also played "Debbie" in the 1947 Christmas film, THE BISHOP'S WIFE starring Cary Grant, David Niven, and Loretta Young.
Grimes was born in Hollywood, California. Her mother pushed her into acting, but her acting career declined with her mother's health. The latter died from illness when Grimes was 14, and she lost her father from a car crash a year later. A court ruling sent her from Hollywood to Osceola, Missouri, where she lived in what she called a "bad home" with her aunt and uncle. She went to college, married, raised kids, and became a medical technologist.
Years after her movie stardom, she gave local interviews in the 1980s and national interviews in the 1990s. Her first husband's death in a hunting accident, 18-year-old son's suicide in 1989, and second husband's death from cancer in 1994 made it difficult for Grimes to move on. After she suffered a serious financial setback during the early 2000s recession, she made a career of her advocacy for the film, whose hopeful and optimistic message she now says she can relate to.
Today, she tours big-screen showings of It's a Wonderful Life at dinner theatres worldwide, signing autographs, sharing tidbits, and pointing out small 'goofs'. One such mistake is that she, 6 years old at the time, faked the lyrics to "Auld Lang Syne" in the movie's famous closing scene. "If you watch closely, James Stewart is holding me tightly and he looks at me and begins to laugh because he knows I'm not singing the right words", she says...
Legendary actress Gloria Stuart has died at the age of 100. She made movies from ROMAN SCANDALS(1933) with Eddie Cantor to TITANIC(1997) with Kate Winslet. Not many actors or actresses had the longevity that Gloria Stuart had...
LOS ANGELES – Gloria Stuart, the Hollywood actress of the 1930s who gained an Oscar nomination 60 years later for her role as the spunky survivor in "Titanic," has died. She was 100.
Her grandson, Benjamin Stuart Thompson, says Stuart died in her sleep Sunday night at her Los Angeles home.
In her youth, Stuart was a blond beauty who starred in B pictures as well as higher-profile ones like "The Invisible Man" and two Shirley Temple movies.
She resumed acting occasionally in later years and was selected to play the elderly Titanic survivor portrayed by Kate Winslet as a young woman.
The 1997 "Titanic" became the biggest modern blockbuster up to that point. Both Winslet and Stuart, then 87, were nominated for Oscars.
Grace Bradley has passed away, and although her name will not be known to many, she was a Paramount contract player, starred with Bing Crosby in TOO MUCH HARMONY(1933), and was the widow of Hopalong Cassidy. She was 97.
She was born on September 21, 1913 in Brooklyn, New York. On December 22, 1930 Bradley made her Broadway debut at New York's Hammerstein Theatre in Ballyhoo. Her next stage appearance came one year later at The Music Box Theatre in The Third Little Show. Soon Bradley found herself working in various New York nightclubs and theatres. In March 1933, she apperared in Strike Me Pink at the Majestic Theatre. Soon Bradley decided to give Hollywood a try. After she left Broadway her role in Strike Me Pink was taken over by Dorothy Dare, who would later become a musical film star.
Although she actually made one film in 1932 her real film career did not begin until 1933 when she starred in a lead role in the film Too Much Harmony (1933). In the 1930s she became one of the periods most popular musical stars and her other screen credits include parts in Girl Without a Room (1933), The Cat's Paw (1934), Anything Goes (1936), Wake Up and Live (1937), Larceney on the Air (1937), and The Big Broadcast of 1938.
During her career she co-starred opposite such notable figures as Bob Hope, Bing Crosby, Dorothy Lamour, Alice Faye, Bruce Cabot, William Bendix, Fred MacMurray, Harold Lloyd and W.C. Fields.In May 1937, Bradley submitted to a blind date and met Hopalong Cassidy star William Boyd and the two of them hit it off so well that they were wed in June 1937.
In the 1940s Bradley's star began to wain and in 1943 she starred in her last big role in Taxi, Mister. Following this Bradley had officially played out her Paramount contract and she spent the remainder of the 1940s alongside her beloved husband William Boyd and traveled around the country with him helping to promote his cowboy image. She did come out of her publicty trips with Boyd to make one more film appearance; an uncredited cameo role in Tournament of Roses (1954).
On September 12, 1972, just nine days before her 59th birthday, William Boyd died and Bradley became a widow. Following his death she retired from the entertainment world; however, since she shared such a strong union with her husband she still continued to do things to help keep Boyd's memory alive. Although she never bore children she considered all the children who enjoyed her husbands work as Hopalong Cassidy to be like her children. She also endured years of fighting for the legal rights to her late husbands sixty-six "Hopalong Cassidy" features. With her acting career behind her she devoted her time to a lot of volunteer work at the Laguna Beach Hospital where her husband had spent his final days.
Grace Bradley Boyd died on her 97th birthday; Tuesday, September 21, 2010. She left no survivors. On Thursday, September 23, 2010 private services were held at Forest Lawn Memorial Park in Glendale, CA. She was interred with her husband there...
Connie Francis was a legendary singer in the 1960s, but her life has been filled with tragedy and problems. Here is a recent interview I discovered from June of 2010. Connie is now 71 years old...
1950s singer Eddie Fisher has passed away. Discovered by Eddie Cantor in the late 1940s, Fisher had a troubled career and an even more troubled relationship with his wives and children. He had been out of the spotlight for quite some time...
LOS ANGELES – Pop singer Eddie Fisher, whose clear voice brought him a devoted following of teenage girls in the early 1950s before marriage scandals overshadowed his fame, has died at age 82.
He passed away Wednesday night at his home in Berkeley of complications from hip surgery, his daughter, Tricia Leigh Fisher of Los Angeles, told The Associated Press.
"Late last evening the world lost a true America icon," Fisher's family said in a statement released by publicist British Reece. "One of the greatest voices of the century passed away. He was an extraordinary talent and a true mensch."
The death was first reported by Hollywood website deadline.com.
In the early 50s, Fisher sold millions of records with 32 hit songs including "Thinking of You," "Any Time," "Oh, My Pa-pa," "I'm Yours," "Wish You Were Here," "Lady of Spain" and "Count Your Blessings."
His fame was enhanced by his 1955 marriage to movie darling Debbie Reynolds — they were touted as "America's favorite couple" — and the birth of two children.
Their daughter Carrie Fisher became a film star herself in the first three "Star Wars" films as Princess Leia, and later as a best-selling author of "Postcards From the Edge" and other books.
Carrie Fisher spent most of 2008 on the road with her autobiographical show "Wishful Drinking." In an interview with The Associated Press, she told of singing with her father on stage in San Jose. Eddie Fisher was by then in a wheelchair and living in San Francisco.
When Eddie Fisher's best friend, producer Mike Todd, was killed in a 1958 plane crash, Fisher comforted the widow, Elizabeth Taylor. Amid sensationalist headlines, Fisher divorced Reynolds and married Taylor in 1959.
The Fisher-Taylor marriage lasted only five years. She fell in love with co-star Richard Burton during the Rome filming of "Cleopatra," divorced Fisher and married Burton in one of the great entertainment world scandals of the 20th century.
Edwin Jack Fisher was born Aug. 10, 1928, in Philadelphia, one of seven children of a Jewish grocer. At 15 he was singing on Philadelphia radio.
Fisher's romantic messages resonated with young girls in the pre-Elvis period. Publicist-manager Milton Blackstone helped the publicity by hiring girls to scream and swoon at Fisher's appearances.
After getting out of the Army in 1953 following a two-year hitch, hit records, his own TV show and the headlined marriage to Reynolds made Fisher a top star. The couple costarred in a 1956 romantic comedy, "Bundle of Joy," that capitalized on their own parenthood.
In 1960 he played a role in "Butterfield 8," for which Taylor won an Academy Award. But that film marked the end of his movie career.
After being discarded by Taylor, Fisher became the butt of comedians' jokes. He began relying on drugs to get through performances, and his bookings dwindled. He later said he had made and spent $20 million during his heyday, and much of it went to gambling and drugs.
In 1983, Fisher attempted a full-scale comeback. But his old fans had been turned off by the scandals, and the younger generation had been turned on by rock. The tour was unsuccessful.
He had added to his notoriety that year with an autobiography, "Eddie: My Life, My Loves." Of his first three marriages, he wrote he had been bullied into marriage with Reynolds, whom he didn't know well; became nursemaid as well as husband to Taylor, and was reluctant to marry Connie Stevens but she was pregnant and he "did the proper thing."
Another autobiography, "Been There, Done That," published in 1999, was even more searing. He called Reynolds "self-centered, totally driven, insecure, untruthful, phony." He claimed he abandoned his career during the Taylor marriage because he was too busy taking her to emergency rooms and cleaning up after her pets, children and servants. Both ex-wives were furious, and Carrie Fisher threatened to change her name to Reynolds.
At 47, Fisher married a 21-year-old beauty queen, Terry Richard. The marriage ended after 10 months. His fifth marriage, to Betty Lin, a Chinese-born businesswoman, lasted longer than any of the others. Fisher had two children with Reynolds: Carrie and Todd; and two girls with Stevens: Joely and Tricia.
