Our Classic Past

Bebe Daniels made over 230 films

2012-02-07T23:32:00.562-08:00

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Bebe Daniels (January 14, 1901 – March 16, 1971) was an American actress, singer, dancer, writer and producer. She began her career in Hollywood during the silent movie era as a child actress, became a star in musicals like 42nd Street, and later gained further fame on radio and television in Britain. In a long career, Bebe Daniels made over 230 films. Daniels was born Phyllis Virginia Daniels (Bebe was a childhood nickname) in Dallas, Texas. Her father was a theater manager and her mother a stage actress. The family moved to Los Angeles, California in her childhood and she began her acting career at the age of four in the first version of The Squaw Man. That same year she also went on tour in a stage production of Shakespeare's Richard III. The following year she participated in productions by Morosooa and David Belasco. By the age of seven Daniels had her first starring role in film as the young heroine in A Common Enemy. At the age of nine she starred as Dorothy Gale in 1910

Suzanne Danielle English film and television actress

2012-01-27T18:51:10.943-08:00

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Suzanne Danielle (born 14 January 1957) is an English film and television actress, the wife of the golfer Sam Torrance. Danielle is a stage name; while growing up she was Suzanne Morris. Danielle trained as a dancer at the Bush Davies School of Theatre Arts in Romford, Essex, which was her home town, and also went to the Bedfords Park Community School in Straight Road, Harold Hill. At the age of 16, she appeared in the West End musical Billy (1974), starring Michael Crawford. As a result of that, she was invited to appear as a dancer on a Bruce Forsyth show called Bruce and More Girls. An admirer of Cyd Charisse, after leaving school Danielle joined a dance group called The Younger Generation. Danielle's first screen role as an actress was as a guest in an episode of The Professionals (Killer With A Long Arm), broadcast in January 1978. Her first film role was in The Wild Geese (1978), but her first credited part, in the same year, was for Carry On Emmannuelle

Maria Schell won Best Actress at the Venice Film Festival in 1956

2012-02-01T22:53:00.116-08:00

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Maria Margarethe Anna Schell (15 January 1926, Vienna – 26 April 2005, Preitenegg, Carinthia) was an Austrian/Swiss actress, who won the Volpi Cup for Best Actress at the Venice Film Festival in 1956 for Gervaise. The daughter of a Swiss author and an Austrian actress, she was the older sister of actor Maximilian Schell, and lesser-known actors Carl Schell and Immy (Immaculata) Schell. She starred in such films as Dr. Holl (1951), So Little Time (1952), The Heart of the Matter (1953), Gervaise (1956), Le notti bianche (1957), Rose Bernd (1957), The Brothers Karamazov (1958) playing the role of Grushenka, The Hanging Tree (1959), Cimarron (1960), and Superman (1978). She played Mother Maria in the sequel to Lilies of the Field called Christmas Lilies of the Field. She starred opposite such actors as Yul Brynner, Marcello Mastroianni, Suzy Delair, Gary Cooper and Marlon Brando. She also had five guest appearances in the television series, Der Kommissar and Derrick: Yellow He (1977)

Phyllis Coates best known for her portrayal of reporter Lois Lane

2012-01-26T22:39:47.029-08:00

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Phyllis Coates (born Gypsie Ann Evarts Stell on January 15, 1927) is an American film and television actress. She is perhaps best known for her portrayal of reporter Lois Lane in the 1951 film Superman and the Mole Men, and during the first season of the Adventures of Superman television series. After graduating from high school in Wichita Falls, Texas, Coates went to Los Angeles, intending to study at UCLA. However, a chance meeting with entertainer Ken Murray resulted in her working in his vaudeville show as a chorus girl. She later performed as one of Earl Carroll's showgirls at his Earl Carroll Theatre. She signed a movie contract with Warner Brothers in 1948, and she co-starred with George O'Hanlon in the studio's popular Joe McDoakes short-subject comedies. She married the series' director, Richard L. Bare, and continued to appear in the films after their divorce. In 1955, Coates played Madge, a neighbor of child psychologist Dr. Tom Wilson, played by Stephen Dunne

Martine Beswick a 60s sex siren

2011-12-24T17:29:07.825-08:00

Martine Beswick (born 26 September 1941) is an English actress and model, best known for her roles in two James Bond films. Beswick was born on 26 September 1941 in Port Antonio, Jamaica to English parents. Beswick is best known for her two appearances in the James Bond film series. Although she auditioned for the first Bond film Dr. No, she was cast in the second film From Russia with Love as the fiery gypsy girl, Zara. She engaged in the famous "catfight" scene with her rival Vida (played by former Miss Israel Aliza Gur). She was incorrectly billed as "Martin Beswick" in the title sequence. Beswick then appeared as the ill-fated Paula Caplan in Thunderball. She had been away from the Caribbean so long that she was required to sunbathe constantly for two weeks before filming, in order to look like a local. Martine went on to appear in One Million Years B.C. opposite Raquel Welch, with whom she also engaged in a catfight. She then appeared in various Hammer Studio low budget films[...]

Margaret Lockwood, 1940

2011-12-15T12:03:31.661-08:00

Connie Francis American pop singer

2011-12-14T04:10:26.710-08:00

Connie Francis (born Concetta Rosa Maria Franconero; December 12, 1938) is an American pop singer of Italian heritage and the top-charting female vocalist of the 1950s and 1960s. Although her chart success waned in the second half of the 1960s, Francis remained a top concert draw. Despite several severe interruptions in her career, Francis is still active as a recording and performing artist (as of November 2011). Concetta Rosa Maria Franconero was born in the Italian Down Neck, or Ironbound, neighborhood of Newark, New Jersey, as first child to George Franconero, sr, and Ida Franconero née Ferrari-di Vito, spending her first years in a Brooklyn neighborhood on Utica Avenue/St. Marks Avenue before the family moved to New Jersey. In her autobiography Who's sorry now?, published in 1984, Francis recalls that she was encouraged by her father, George Franconero, Sr., to appear regularly at talent contests, pageants and other neighborhood festivities from the age of 4

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Shelley Long where everybody knows your name

2011-09-07T11:28:00.417-07:00

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Shelley Lee Long (born August 23, 1949) is an American actress best known for her role as Diane Chambers in the popular sitcom Cheers, for which she won the Emmy Award for Outstanding Lead Actress and two Golden Globe Awards for Best Actress. Shelley Long was born in Fort Wayne, Indiana at 7:15 AM on Tuesday, August 23, 1949. She is the daughter of Ivadine, a school teacher, and Leland Long, who worked in the rubber industry before becoming a teacher. She was active on her high school speech team, competing in the Indiana High School Forensic Association, and in 1967 she won the National Forensic League National Championship in Original Oratory. She delivered a speech on the need for sex education in high school entitled "Sex Perversion Weed." After graduating from South Side High School in Fort Wayne, she studied drama at Northwestern University, but left before graduating to pursue a career in acting and modelling

Barbara Eden remembering the genie

2011-08-30T11:24:00.284-07:00

Barbara Eden (born Barbara Jean Morehead; August 23, 1934) is an American film and television actress and singer who is best known for her starring role in the sitcom I Dream of Jeannie. Eden was born Barbara Jean Morehead in Tucson, Arizona, the daughter of Alice Mary (née Franklin) and Hubert Henry Morehead. Her parents divorced when she was three; she and her mother Alice moved to San Francisco where later her mother married Harrison Connor Huffman, a telephone lineman. The Great Depression deeply affected the Huffman family, and as they were unable to afford many luxuries, Barbara's mother entertained the children by singing songs. This musical background left a lasting impression on the actress, who began taking acting classes because she felt it might help her improve her singing. Her first public performance was singing in the church choir. She was always doing the solos. When she was 14 she was singing in local bands for $10 a night in night clubs.[...]

Betty Page was an American model

2011-08-24T11:24:15.934-07:00

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Bettie Page (April 22, 1923 – December 11, 2008) was an American model who became famous in the 1950s for her fetish modeling and pin-up photos. She has often been called the "Queen of Pinups". Her look, including her jet black hair, blue eyes and trademark bangs, has influenced many artists. She was "Miss January 1955", one of the earliest Playmates of the Month for Playboy magazine. "I think that she was a remarkable lady, an iconic figure in pop culture who influenced sexuality, taste in fashion, someone who had a tremendous impact on our society," Playboy founder Hugh Hefner told the Associated Press. In 1959, she converted to born-again Christianity, and later worked for Billy Graham. Her later life was marked by depression, violent mood swings and several years in a state psychiatric hospital. After years of obscurity, she experienced a resurgence of popularity in the 1980s. Page was born Betty Mae Page in Nashville, Tennessee, the second of six children born to Walter Roy Page

Danielle Darrieux past film characters

2011-05-30T20:29:54.234-07:00

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Danielle Darrieux past film characters

Ann Margret Swedish-American actress

2011-05-23T13:19:34.517-07:00

Ann-Margret Olsson (born April 28, 1941) is a Swedish-American actress, singer and dancer whose professional name is Ann-Margret. She became famous for her starring roles in Bye Bye Birdie, Viva Las Vegas, The Cincinnati Kid, Carnal Knowledge, and Tommy. Her later career includes character roles in Grumpy Old Men, Any Given Sunday, The Santa Clause 3, and The Break-Up. She has won five Golden Globe Awards and been nominated for two Academy Awards, two Grammy Awards, a Screen Actors Guild Award, and six Emmy Awards. On August 21, 2010, she won her first Emmy Award for her guest appearance on Law & Order: SVU. Ann-Margret was born in Stockholm, the daughter of Anna (née Aronsson) and Gustav Olsson, a native of Örnsköldsvik. While young she moved with her parents to Valsjöbyn, Jämtlands län, which she later described as a small town "of lumberjacks and farmers high up near the Arctic Circle". Her father worked in the United States during his youth and moved there again in 1942[...]

Nancy Kwan played a pivotal role in the acceptance of actors of Asian descent

2011-05-19T21:15:36.768-07:00

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Nancy Kwan (born May 19, 1939) is an American actress, who played a pivotal role in the acceptance of actors of Asian descent in major Hollywood film roles. Widely praised for her beauty, Kwan was considered a sex symbol in the 1960s. Nancy Kwan was born in Hong Kong to a Cantonese father, architect Kwan Wing Hong, and Scottish mother, model Marquita Scott. Her parents divorced when she was two years old. During the Japanese invasion of Hong Kong, in December 1941, Kwan's father, who worked for British intelligence, fled the city on foot along with Nancy and her brother, Ka Keung, and hid out in western China. The family returned to Hong Kong at the end of World War II. Kwan later studied at the Royal Ballet School in England, performing in Swan Lake and Sleeping Beauty at Covent Garden. She completed her studies with a certificate to teach ballet. While she was in England, producer Ray Stark discovered her. At the time, Asian film characters, particularly those in major film roles

Geraldine McEwan diverse history in theatre and film

2011-05-10T07:46:51.580-07:00

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Geraldine McEwan (born Geraldine McKeown on 9 May 1932) is an English actor with a diverse history in theatre, film, and television. From 2004 to 2009 she appeared as Miss Marple, the Agatha Christie sleuth, for the series Marple, shown on ITV1 in the UK and on PBS in the U.S.. She was born Geraldine McKeown on 9 May 1932 in Old Windsor, Berkshire, England, the daughter of Donald McKeown and his wife, Nora (Burns). She was married to the former principal of RADA, Hugh Cruttwell, who died in 2002. McEwan attended Windsor County Girls' School, and her extensive theatrical career began at 14 as assistant stage manager at the Theatre Royal, Windsor. She made her first appearance on the Windsor stage in October 1946 as an attendant of Hippolyta in A Midsummer Night's Dream and played many parts with the Windsor Repertory Company from March 1949 to March 1951, including a role in the Ruth Gordon bio play Years Ago opposite guest player John Clark

Belle Bennett was a stage and screen actress

2011-05-09T09:57:01.414-07:00

Belle Bennett (April 22, 1891 – November 4, 1932) was a stage and screen actress who started her professional career in vaudeville. She was born in Milaca, Minnesota. Bennett appeared in circus performances during her childhood. Her father was Billie Bennett, owner of a circus. He trained her to be a trapeze performer after she spent some years in the Sacred Heart Convent in Minneapolis, Minnesota. By age thirteen she was appearing in public. Performances with stock companies led Bennett to Broadway. There she appeared in theatrical productions staged by David Belasco. Bennett was cast in numerous minor Hollywood motion pictures like the western film A Ticket to Red Horse Gulch (1914). Then Samuel Goldwyn selected her from among seventy-three actresses for the leading role in Stella Dallas (1925). The film has been ranked as one of the finest movies of all time. While filming the movie her son, sixteen-year-old William Howard Macy, died


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Barbara Rush American stage, film, and television actress

2011-05-04T21:26:10.397-07:00

Barbara Rush (born January 4, 1927) is a American stage, film, and television actress. A student at the University of California, Santa Barbara, Barbara Rush performed on stage at the Pasadena Playhouse before signing with Paramount Pictures. She made her screen debut in the 1951 movie The Goldbergs and went on to star opposite the likes of James Mason, Marlon Brando, Paul Newman, Richard Burton, Dean Martin, Frank Sinatra and Kirk Douglas. In 1954 she won the Golden Globe Award for "Most Promising Newcomer - Female" for her performance in It Came from Outer Space. Rush began her career on stage and it has always been a part of her professional life. In 1970, she earned the Sarah Siddons Award for dramatic achievement in Chicago theatre for her leading role in Forty Carats and brought her one-woman play A Woman of Independent Means to Broadway in 1984. She began working on television in the 1950s. She later became a regular performer in TV movies, miniseries [...]

Leila Hyams an unforgotten silent movie star

2011-05-01T13:48:19.180-07:00

Leila Hyams (1 May 1905 – 4 December 1977) was an American film actress. Her relatively short film career began in silent films, and ended in the mid 1930s. Born in New York, New York to vaudeville comedy performers John Hyams and Leila McIntyre, Hyams appeared on-stage with her parents while still a child. As a teenager she worked as a model and become well known across the United States after appearing in a successful series of newspaper advertisements. This success led her to Hollywood. She made her first film in 1924, and with her blonde hair, delicate features, and good natured demeanour, was cast in a string of supporting roles, where she was required to do very little but smile and look pretty. She proved herself capable of handling the small roles she was assigned, and over a period of time she came to be taken seriously as an actress. By 1928 she was playing starring roles, achieving success in MGM's first talkie release, Alias Jimmy Valentine (1928) opposite William Haines

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Celeste Holm an unforgettable face from the past

2011-04-29T21:05:23.509-07:00

Celeste Holm (born April 29, 1917) is an American stage, film, and television actress, known for her Academy Award-winning performance in Gentleman's Agreement (1947), as well as for her Oscar-nominated performances in Come to the Stable (1949) and All About Eve (1950). Born and raised in New York City, Holm grew up as an only child. She attended Friends Seminary. Her mother, Jean Parke, was an American portrait artist and author; her father, Theodor Holm, was a Norwegian insurance adjuster for Lloyd's of London. Holm studied acting at the University of Chicago before becoming a stage actress in the late 1930s following a brief first marriage, which produced her first child, son Ted Nelson. Holm's first professional theatrical role was in a production of Hamlet starring Leslie Howard. Holm's first major Broadway part was as Mary L. in William Saroyan's 1940 revival of The Time of Your Life co-starring fellow newcomer Gene Kelly


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Carolyn Jones

2011-04-28T18:49:35.482-07:00

Carolyn Sue Jones (April 28, 1930 – August 3, 1983) was an American actress. Jones began her film career in the early 1950s, and by the end of the decade had achieved recognition with a nomination for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for The Bachelor Party (1957) and a Golden Globe Award as one of the most promising actresses of 1959. Her film career continued for a few years, and in 1964 she began playing the role of Morticia Addams in the television series The Addams Family, receiving a Golden Globe Award nomination for her work. Jones was born in Amarillo, Texas, the daughter of Julius Alfred and Cloe Jeanette (née Southern) Jones. She had some Native American ancestry In 1934 her father abandoned the family and her mother moved her and the two children to her parents' home. Carolyn grew up living in her grandparents' home in Amarillo. She suffered from severe asthma that often restricted her from childhood activities


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Danielle Darrieux

2011-04-28T18:52:06.826-07:00

Danielle Darrieux, originally uploaded by Truus, Bob & Jan too!.German postcard. Starfoto, Progress, Nr. 1292. The card refers to the films Le rouge et le noir (1954) and Pot-Bouille (1957).

French actress and singer Danielle Darrieux (1917) is an enduringly beautiful, international leading lady. From her film debut in 1931 on she progressed from playing pouty teens to worldy sophisticates. In the early 1950’s she starred in three classic films by Max Ophüls, and she played the mother of Catherine Deneuve in five films

Liz Taylor

2012-01-27T18:45:15.664-08:00

Elizabeth Taylor's 3rd film

2012-01-27T18:45:48.795-08:00

Jane Eyre (1944) - seen here with Peggy Ann Garner

Jane Russell

2011-02-14T09:11:02.544-08:00

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Jane Russell (born June 21, 1921) is an American film actress and was one of Hollywood's leading sex symbols in the 1940s and 1950s. Jane Russell was born Ernestine Jane Geraldine Russell in Bemidji, Minnesota, she was eldest child and only daughter of the five children of Roy William Russell (January 5, 1890 – July 18, 1937) and Geraldine Jacobi (January 2, 1891 – December 26, 1986). Her parents were both born in North Dakota. Three of her grandparents were born in Canada, while her paternal grandmother was born in Germany. Her parents married in 1917. Her father was a First Lieutenant in the U.S. Army and her mother was a former actress with a road troupe. Her parents spent the early years of their marriage in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. For her birth her mother temporarily moved back to the U.S. to ensure she was born a U.S. citizen. Later the family moved to the San Fernando Valley of Southern California. They lived in Burbank in 1930 and her father worked as an office manager source

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Steve McQueen The King of Cool

2011-02-14T05:01:55.957-08:00

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Steve McQueen was always a highly respected actor, often doing all of his dangerous stunts and high-speed chase scenes himself, and this combined with his great fashion sense even earned him the nickname "The King of Cool". He wore the Persol 714 in films such as The Thomas Crown Affair but they were also his favourite pair of sunglasses and quickly became his trademark look. His original pair sold for $70,000 at auction

Vittorio de Sica

2011-02-14T04:41:45.570-08:00

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