BORN ON THIS DAY: DEAN MARTIN

Born on this day - June 7 in 1917 was one of the coolest entertainers ever to grace this world - Dean Martin. Dean was born Dino Paul Crocetti in Steubenville, Ohio, to Italian parents, Gaetano and Angela Crocetti (née Barra). His father was from Abruzzo, Italy, and his mother was an Italian of part Neapolitan and part Sicilian ancestry. Martin was the younger of two sons. His brother was named Bill.

Martin spoke only Italian until he started school. He attended Grant Elementary School in Steubenville, and took up the drums as a hobby as a teenager. He was the target of much ridicule for his broken English and ultimately dropped out of Steubenville High School in the 10th grade because he thought that he was smarter than his teachers. He delivered bootleg liquor, served as a speakeasy croupier, was a blackjack dealer, worked in a steel mill and boxed as welterweight. He grew up a neighbor to Jimmy the Greek.

At the age of 15, he was a boxer who billed himself as "Kid Crochet". His prizefighting years earned him a broken nose (later straightened), a scarred lip, and many sets of broken knuckles (a result of not being able to afford the tape used to wrap boxers' hands). Of his twelve bouts, he would later say "I won all but eleven." For a time, he roomed with Sonny King, who, like Martin, was just starting in show business and had little money. It is said that Martin and King held bare-knuckle matches in their apartment, fighting until one of them was knocked out; people paid to watch.

Eventually, Martin gave up boxing. He worked as a roulette stickman and croupier in an illegal casino behind a tobacco shop where he had started as a stock boy. At the same time, he sang with local bands. Calling himself "Dino Martini" (after the then-famous Metropolitan Opera tenor, Nino Martini), he got his first break working for the Ernie McKay Orchestra. He sang in a crooning style influenced by Harry Mills (of the Mills Brothers), among others. In the early 1940s, he started singing for bandleader Sammy Watkins, who suggested he change his name to Dean Martin.

In October 1941, Martin married Elizabeth Anne McDonald. During their marriage (ended by divorce in 1949), they had four children. Martin worked for various bands throughout the early 1940s, mostly on looks and personality until he developed his own singing style. Martin famously flopped at the Riobamba, a high class nightclub in New York, when he succeeded Frank Sinatra in 1943, but it was the setting for their meeting.

Drafted into the United States Army in 1944 during World War II, Martin served a year stationed in Akron, Ohio. He was then reclassified as 4-F (possibly because of a double hernia; Jerry Lewis referred to the surgery Martin needed for this in his autobiography) and was discharged.

By 1946, Martin was doing relatively well, but was still little more than an East Coast nightclub singer with a common style, similar to that of Bing Crosby. He drew audiences to the clubs he played, but he inspired none of the fanatic popularity enjoyed by Sinatra.

Martin attracted the attention of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer and Columbia Pictures, but a Hollywood contract was not forthcoming. He met comic Jerry Lewis at the Glass Hat Club in New York, where both men were performing. Martin and Lewis formed a fast friendship which led to their participation in each other's acts and the ultimate formation of a music-comedy team. Martin and Lewis's official debut together occurred at Atlantic City's 500 Club on July 24, 1946 and the rest is history...

DORIS DAY TO RELEASE NEW ALBUM

Hollywood star Doris Day is to release her first studio album for nearly 20 years, featuring nine previously unreleased recordings made in 1985.

My Heart, out on 5 September, is the 87-year-old's first release since 1994's Love Album.

The unheard recordings were produced by Day's son Terry Melcher prior to his death in 2004.

These include cover versions of the Joe Cocker ballad You Are So Beautiful and the Beach Boys track Disney Girls.

"I had to sing some modern songs because I had already done all the old ones," the singer said in a statement.

The album also features three Day classics, among them My Buddy - a song she sang in her 1951 film I'll See You In My Dreams and which she dedicates to her late son.

Day had more than 20 Top 10 hits in the UK and US during her career, including Que Sera, Sera and Secret Love.

She had her first hit record in 1945 with Sentimental Journey as vocalist for the Les Brown Big Band Orchestra.

Day went on be one of the most popular actresses of the 1950s and 1960s, starring in 39 films opposite the likes of Clark Gable and Rock Hudson.

She also recorded more than 600 songs and fronted two US TV series during her career.

Day left the world of showbusiness more than 30 years ago to found the Doris Day Animal Foundation in 1978.

Yet she continued to be recognised, receiving a Golden Globe for lifetime achievement in 1989 and an honorary Grammy in 2008...

SOURCE

LARRY FINE: MY FAVORITE STOOGE

I grew up watching the reruns of The Three Stooges on television after school. My parents were not wild I was watching it, but compared to what is the norm on television now, I think The Three Stooges was pretty mild entertainment. My favorite stooge was the stooge who always was in the mild...Larry Fine.

Fine was born to a Jewish family as Louis Feinberg on October 5, 1902 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, at the corner of 3rd and South Streets. His father, Joseph Feinberg (who was Russian-Jewish), and mother, Fanny Lieberman, owned a watch repair and jewelry shop. When Larry was a child he burned his arm with some acid that his father used to test whether or not gold was real: having mistaken it for a beverage, Larry had the acid bottle to his lips when his father noticed and knocked it from his hand, accidentally splashing Larry's forearm. Later Larry received violin training to help strengthen his damaged muscles; this skill would be put to use in many of the Stooges' films. He became proficient on the instrument, and his parents wanted to send him to a European music conservatory, but the outbreak of World War I prevented this. In scenes where all three Stooges are playing fiddles, only Larry is actually playing his instrument; the others are pantomiming. To further strengthen his arm, Larry took up boxing as a teenager. He fought and won one professional bout. His career as a pugilist was stopped by his father, who was opposed to Larry's fighting in public.

As Larry Fine, he first performed as a violinist in vaudeville at an early age. In 1925, he met Moe Howard and Ted Healy. Howard and his brother Shemp had been working as audience stooges for Healy. Shemp left soon after to attempt a solo career and was in turn replaced by another brother, Curly. Larry's trademark bushy hair came out, according to rumor, from his first meeting with Healy, in which he had just wet his hair in a basin, and as they talked, it dried oddly. Healy told him to keep the zany hairstyle. Beginning in 1933, The Three Stooges made 206 short films, and several features, with their most prolific period featuring the characters of Larry, Moe and Curly. Their career with Healy was marked by disputes over pay, film contracts, and Healy's drinking and abuse. They left Healy for good in 1934.

Offstage, Larry was a social butterfly. He liked a good time and surrounded himself with friends. Larry and his wife, Mabel, loved having parties and every Christmas threw lavish midnight suppers. Larry was what some friends have called a "yes man," since he was always so agreeable, no matter what the circumstances.

Larry's devil-may-care personality carried over to the world of finance. He was a terrible businessman and spent his money as soon as he earned it. He had a serious gambling addiction, and would gamble away all of the money he had on him either at the horserace track or at high-stakes gin rummy card games. In an interview, Fine even admitted that he often gave money to actors and friends who needed help and never asked to be reimbursed. Joe Besser and director Edward Bernds remember that because of his constant and free spending and gambling, Larry was almost forced into bankruptcy when Columbia terminated the Three Stooges comedies in December 1957.

Because of his profligate ways and his wife's dislike for housekeeping, Larry and his family lived in hotels — first in the President Hotel in Atlantic City, New Jersey, where his daughter Phyllis was raised, then the Knickerbocker Hotel in Hollywood. Not until the late 1940s did Larry buy a home in the Los Feliz area of Los Angeles, California.

The Stooges became a big hit in 1959 on television, when Columbia Pictures released a batch of the trio's films. The popularity brought the Stooges to a new audience and revitalized their careers.

On May 30, 1967, Fine's wife, Mabel, died of a sudden heart attack. Mabel's death came nearly six years after the death of their only son, John, in a car accident on November 17, 1961 at age 24. The couple's daughter, Phyllis, died of cancer at the age of 60 in 1988.

Returning to work, Fine and the Stooges were working on a new TV series entitled Kook's Tour in January, 1970, when Larry suffered a debilitating stroke that paralyzed the left side of his body. He eventually moved to the Motion Picture House, an industry retirement community in Woodland Hills, where he spent his remaining years. In spite of his paralyzed condition, he did what he could to entertain the other patients, and was visited regularly by his friend Moe Howard.

Fine used a wheelchair during the last five years of his life. Like Curly Howard, Fine suffered several additional strokes before his death on January 24, 1975. He was entombed in Glendale's Forest Lawn Memorial Park Cemetery in the Freedom Mausoleum, Sanctuary of Liberation...

RIP: JAMES ARNESS

James Arness, who burnished the legend of America’s epic West as Marshal Matt Dillon, the laconic peacemaker of Dodge City on “Gunsmoke,” one of the longest-running dramatic series in television history, died on Friday at his home in Los Angeles. He was 88.

A family spokeswoman, Ginny Fazer, confirmed the death. Mr. Arness was terribly shy and had almost no training as an actor. A wartime leg wound made it painful for him to mount a horse. But he became the best-known tin star of his era, portraying the towering, weathered marshal for 20 years, from 1955 to 1975. He also made some 50 films and television movies, mostly westerns, in a career that stretched across five decades.

To a generation of television viewers, Mr. Arness and “Gunsmoke” embodied a new, more adult vision of the mythic Old West: a quiet, vulnerable lawman facing not stereotyped villains and clichéd situations but a chaotic frontier freighted with moral judgments and occasional failure. He might be too late to stop a killing. He could save a girl from kidnappers, but not from her father’s brutality.

Audiences had long been accustomed to Western heroes who never were, having been sanitized by the trail songs of Gene Autry and Roy Rogers and the righteous gunplay of the Lone Ranger and Hopalong Cassidy. But Marshal Dillon never got the girl, did not love his horse, wore only one gun and fired it reluctantly, usually drawing last but shooting straightest in dusty street duels. Over the years, the marshal was shot 30 times.

Mr. Arness was ideal for the part, a 6-foot-7 giant whose stoic personality was remarkably like his character’s. He had been reared in a family of Norwegian descent in Minnesota, an outdoorsman who loved fishing and hunting. He came home from World War II a wounded, decorated and aimless veteran. He worked menial jobs, tried radio and was collecting veterans’ benefits when he drifted to Hollywood.

He developed slowly, appearing in 30 movies before his mentor, John Wayne, rejected the Dillon role and recommended him instead. “Gunsmoke,” which began in 1952 as a radio show with William Conrad, landed on the CBS television network as a half-hour black-and-white drama set in a raw Kansas town in 1873.

In the tone-setting premiere, Marshal Dillon faced a gunslinger who had killed an unarmed man. The outlaw insists on a showdown, and the marshal, always a moral touchstone, must accommodate him.

“He’s a gunman, Doc,” Dillon says. “He has got to be eliminated.”

The supporting cast was a snug, Platonic family, stock but multilayered characters who spent much time talking: the beer-drinking philosopher, Doc Adams (Milburn Stone); the careworn Long Branch saloonkeeper, Miss Kitty (Amanda Blake), her love unrequited; and the lame sidekick, Chester Goode (Dennis Weaver). Characters and actors came and went in tales that often focused on travelers passing through on their way west.

“Gunsmoke” was not an instant success. But from 1957 to 1961, when it became a one-hour program, it was the top-rated show on television, seen every week by 40 million Americans and millions more in Britain, where it was called “Gun Law.” It bred dozens of copycats, including “Have Gun, Will Travel,” “Wagon Train,” “Rawhide,” “The Rifleman” and “Bonanza.”

The ratings declined until 1967, when color and a new time slot sent it back into the Top 10 until the 1973-74 season. It was still in the Top 30 when it was canceled in 1975. In its 20-year run, there had been 635 episodes. Mr. Arness had been in the saddle for all of them, and would ride again through decades of reruns and sequels.

He was born James King Aurness in Minneapolis on May 26, 1923, one of two sons of Rolf Aurness, who sold medical supplies, and the former Ruth Duesler. (His parents divorced in the 1940s.)

WHERE ARE THEY NOW: AILEEN QUINN

You may not recognize the name Aileen Quinn, but you know her better as "Annie". Quinn starred in the 1982 movie version of the hit broadway musical ANNIE. The movie version, directed by John Huston, was not considered a hit when it came out, but it has developed a cult following.

Aileen Quinn was born in Yardley, Pennsylvania, United States in 1971, to a Helenann Quinn, a theater actress, from whom she drew the inspiration to also become an actress. Raised in both Pennsylvania and New Jersey, Quinn was a swing (covering multiple orphan roles) in the Broadway company of Annie before moving on to the title role at age 10 in the film production of Annie (1982).

She was chosen to be Annie in the film version from 8,000 girls. The announcement was made in January 1981 by director John Huston, who introduced Aileen as his Annie to the world on nationwide TV. In 1985 she was Dorothy in 'The Wizard Of Oz', and in 1986 she was Annie once again, except this time it was the stage musical. Opposite her as Daddy Warbucks was Harve Presnell, who had played the role for years on Broadway and in one of the National Tours. When Aileen was a senior in high school, she starred in 'A Day In Hollywood, A Night In The Ukraine' in Bristol, Pennsylvania.

Aileen graduated in the spring of 1989 and did one year at Pitzer College in southern California before transferring to Drew University nearer home in New Jersey. (B.A. with honors in Spanish from Drew University) Like numerous child stars before her, Aileen chose not to study show biz in college; instead she took a few years away from it and studied languages, especially Japanese and Spanish. She spent six months with a family in Chile as part of an exchange program in college and considered it one of her life's most rewarding experiences.

 

After graduation from Drew, Aileen once again took to the stage and in 1994 she played Bette in 'Oliver!' at the famous Paper Mill Playhouse in Millburn, New Jersey. And at the end of 1995 she went out on tour in 'Fiddler On The Roof'. In 1997 Aileen was in two off-Broadway shows, 'Dreamstuff' and 'Yiddle With a Fiddle'. In 1998 she was on Broadway in 'Peter Pan', but in early 1999, Aileen left the show and moved to Los Angeles for a couple of years.

 

Quinn hosted Generation Gap, an interactive sitcom used to teach kids how to resolve conflicts. It was written and directed by filmmaker Edna Harris and aired on PBS in 2004. Quinn played a minor role in the 2009 film Multiple Sarcasms, starring Timothy Hutton and Mira Sorvino. Quinn is an adjunct theater professor at Monmouth University in West Long Branch, New Jersey.

Other than doing occasional acting work, Quinn is also a Spanish, Drama and Dance teacher at Hudson Catholic Regional High School in Jersey City, New Jersey.

FOR MORE ON AILEEN QUINN AND ANNIE - PLEASE GO HERE

CHRISTOPHER PLUMMER AT 81

NEW YORK – Ewan McGregor was having a hard time keeping up with Christopher Plummer.

At the suggestion of director Mike Mills, McGregor had brought his 81-year-old co-star to Barney's in Los Angeles to pick up a scarf for Plummer's elderly gay character in their film "Beginners." But Plummer had other designs.

"Christopher only wanted to get skinny black jeans," recalls McGregor. "That was his main goal in life. When we got there, he asked where the jeans department was, and off he went to find skinny jeans."

That one of the finest living interpreters of Shakespeare and one of the few remaining greats of classical acting was hell-bent on procuring a hipster staple might seem odd. But then again, Plummer has seldom acceded to the stereotypes of old age.

"I'm glad (my ambition) is still there," he says in a recent interview. "If it faded, what's there to live for? It makes you appreciate other things if you keep working at your job and you love your job. Too many people in the world are unhappy with their lot. And then they retire and they become vegetables. I think retirement in any profession is death, so I'm determined to keep crackin'."

Plummer's remarkable late period began with his acclaimed performance as Mike Wallace in Michael Mann's 1999 film "The Insider," continued in films such as 2009's "The Last Station" (his performance as a fiery yet deteriorating Tolstoy was nominated for an Oscar) and perhaps culminated with his staggering "King Lear" at Lincoln Center in 2004.

In "Beginners," which opens in theaters Friday, Plummer gives yet another career-capping performance. He plays Hal, a 75-year-old who comes out of the closet after his longtime wife dies, and shortly before terminal cancer sets in. McGregor stars as his son in a film largely based on Mills' own family.

The role suits Plummer particularly well because Hal, like Plummer, is randy, funny and undimmed.

"The wonderful thing about Hal is that he has such a ball at the end of his life," says Plummer. "It was a charming script, I thought, and so lacking in sentimentality and self-pity. ... Usually, when scripts like that come along, you have to work so hard to play against them because they're just so saccharine. And the writers and producers will tell you that's what the public wants. Blow it out your bum!"

Plummer long chaffed at less dynamic roles, none more than his most famous part: Capt. Von Trapp in "The Sound of Music." In his rollicking 2008 memoir, "In Spite of Myself," he surveys a life begun amid Montreal privilege, carried through boozy 1950s New York and swinging 1960s London, and ultimately spent in reverence of, as he says, "the Thee-ah-tah." He also refers to "The Sound of Music" as "S&M" and laments the "humorless and one-dimensional" Von Trapp.

"We tried so hard to put humor into it," he says. "It was almost impossible. It was just agony to try to make that guy not a cardboard figure."

The role catapulted Plummer to stardom, but he never took to leading men parts.

"I hated playing them," he says. "They were so innocuously and badly written and cardboard figures, most of them. In my 40s, I began to suddenly enjoy making movies because the character parts are so much more interesting. I started having a ball and working with much better directors — John Huston, for example, and Anatole Litvak from the old school. After Michael Mann's `The Insider,' then the scripts improved. I was upgraded! Since then, they've been first-class scripts. Not all successful, but worth doing."

All the while, though, Plummer returned to the stage. The Canadian-born actor has performed most of the major Shakespeare roles (among them Hamlet, Macbeth, Henry V and Iago), often at the Stratford Shakespeare Festival in Canada. Plummer, who lives with his wife of 41 years, Elaine Taylor, in Weston, Conn., last year played Prospero in "The Tempest" at Stratford.

"I've become simpler and simpler with playing Shakespeare," he says. "I'm not as extravagant as I used to be. I don't listen to my voice so much anymore. All the pitfalls of playing the classics — you can fall in love with yourself."

"I'm determined to finish playing all the great parts," says Plummer. "I think I have, actually."

Actors who have recently worked with Plummer speak of his unceasing joy in his work and his commitment to still growing as an actor.

"That was the surprising thing about Christopher, just how contemporary he is as an actor, how modern it feels when you're working with him," says McGregor. "Acting was very different and it's evolved. But what's very clear is that so has Christopher's acting. He gives an amazing performance in this film, but ... we were never aware of his performance. It just felt like I was in a scene with my dad."

Mills, whose only previous feature was 2005's "Thumbsucker," calls Plummer "a bit of a rascal, in the best sense of the word."

"It's really contagious being around a 79-year-old man (during filming two years ago) that loves what he's doing and isn't taking it for granted," says Mills. "There's something really magical and special about that. Ewan and I both talked about that a lot, like, `Wow, I want to be like that.'"

Plummer has been working at a pace of about three films and a play every year. He co-stars in the highly anticipated "The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo," due out later this year, and is currently prepping roles in two films and one play (though he declines to name them).

He says he relishes finding "new ways of simplifying things," and is enjoying acting more than ever.

"It's cliche, but you know that you have to," he says. "You appreciate life much more because there's so little of it left. I must say there's a sort of panic, too, that takes over when you hit 80. Am I going to be able to do all the things that I want to do, starting now? "Rather like Hal, in that respect, that he starts his life when it's too late. But never too late because even five minutes is glorious."

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FIRST ANNUAL DEAN MARTIN CONTEST

Dean Martin was more than a crooner. In his almost 50 year career, Dino proved he could not only sing but act, dance, and entertain millions of fans. He made it look so effortlessly that often his talent is overlooked. Dino would have turned 94 on June 7th this month. To honor his birthday, I am having a little contest. It is a laid back contest - laid back and easy like old Dino was.

Here are the rules:
-Simply send me an email at dlobo74@gmail.com. Put the name Dino in the subject. In the email just give me your name and favorite Dean Martin recording. That is all!
-I will randomly pull a name on June 15th and announce the winner on my blog. I will also notify you via email.

The Prize:
-I recently put together a private CD called DEAN MARTIN:THE TELEVISION YEARS.
-It contains more than 25 songs from television appearances that Dean made through the years like his rendition of "Three Coins In The Fountain" from the 1955 Academy Awards, as well as songs he sang on his great television show which aired from 1965-1974.
-The CD also have some great duets Dino did with stars such as The McGuire Sisters, Gisele MacKenzie, Phil Harris, and of course Frank Sinatra.

Hope you all have fun with this little contest, and remember Dean Martin in June! Check back to the blog from time to time for some Dino related articles in June as well!