In movies, television—and especially on radio—actor William Bendix frequently played a typical blue-collar working stiff. Take his most famous role, Chester A. Riley, of the successful radio/TV s ...
Happy Birthday, Sir John Gielgud!(Post)Sir John Gielgud made his cinematic debut in a 1924 silent film, Who is the Man? Yet the celebrated actor, born in South Kensington, London on this date in 1904, really didn’t commit to a movie c ...
“Friendship, friendship…just a perfect blendship…”(Post)The Golden Age of Radio was always welcoming to dizzy women who marched to the beat of a different drummer—Gracie Allen (with her “illogical logic”) and Jane Ace being two primary examples. But b ...
Happy Birthday, Mickey Rooney!(Post)“I was a 14-year-old boy for 30 years,” Mickey Rooney once jokingly observed of his show business career, which spanned stage, screen, television and radio. He had one of the longest runs in enter ...
Happy Birthday, Damon Runyon!(Post)The Oxford Dictionary defines the term “Runyonesque” as “of, relating to, or characteristic of Damon Runyon or his style, language, or imagery; especially characterized by plot or language suggest ...
Happy Birthday, Jeanne Bates!(Post)Character great Jeanne Bates—born in Berkeley, California on this date in 1918—started her show business career as a billboard and magazine model (while attending San Mateo Junior College)…but it ...
Happy Birthday, Helen Mack!(Post)In 1949, RKO re-released She (1935)—a motion picture based on the series of H. Rider Haggard novels and starring Randolph Scott and Helen Gahagan (as the title character). She, a science fiction-t ...
“When man hunts man!”(Post)The Golden Age of Radio featured many programsthat, despite their excellence, failed to attract a large listening audience. There are any number of reasons to explain their lukewarm receptions—th ...
Happy Birthday, Dick Powell!(Post)Born in Arkansas on this date in 1904, the man christened Richard Ewing Powell would prove to be one of show business’ true chameleons. His career is highlighted by a series of reinventions—both ...
“…and that’s with a U.S. Marshal and the smell of…Gunsmoke!”(Post)“If I had known it would last this long, I would never have created the darn thing.” So observed John Meston, the writer who—along with director-producer Norman Macdonnell—can claim responsibilit ...
Happy Birthday, Ben Wright!(Post)“Ben was one of the last of the true English gentlemen in the Edwardian sense of the word, with an accent on the gentle,” remarked Joe Bandille in 1989 on the passing of his good friend, actor Ben ...
Happy Birthday, Mae West!(Post)It’s a textbook example of how a mediocre movie can be redeemed by the appearance of a personality whose mere presence dominates the motion picture screen. In an otherwise dreary 1932 film entitl ...