Each year, Cinema Paradiso reflects on the achievements of those film folk who were born one hundred years ago. Welcome to the third part of the 2024 edition of the Centenary Club, which takes us from September to December.
We have already covered births between January and August 1924. So, do check out the first article to learn more about Sergei Parajanov, Benny Hill, Dorothy Malone, Lee Marvin, Bonar Colleano, Freddie Bartholomew, Henry Mancini, Ghislain Cloquet, Nina Foch, and many more. And before you ask, Marlon Brando, Doris Day, and Leslie Phillips have articles of their own.
As do Sidney Lumet and Eva Marie Saint from our second batch of inductees. At first sight, they might not seem so stellar. But there are still intriguing stories to tell about Tony Hancock, Faith Domergue, Audie Murphy, Raoul Coutard, Lola Albright, and James Baldwin. Moreover, there are dozens of unmissable films that are all available with a single click from Cinema Paradiso.
SEPTEMBER
The daughter of a sea captain, Hazel Brooks was born in Cape Town on 8 September 1924. Her widowed mother moved to Brooklyn three years later and Brooks broke into pictures when an MGM talent scout spotted her modelling. Despite marrying the studio's legendary production designer, Cedric Gibbons (in spite of a 25-year age gap) in 1944, most of her roles were uncredited bits, such as the dance-hall girl in George Sidney's The Harvey Girls (1946). But Brooks impressed as the gold-digging Alice tempting John Garfield in Abraham Polonsky's noirish boxing classic, Body and Soul (1947).
Born the following day, Jane Greer also had a famous husband (albeit briefly) in crooner, Rudy Vallee. Hailing from Washington, D.C., she had sung and modelled before Howard Hughes saw her in Life magazine. He loaned her to RKO, who billed Greer as 'The Woman With the Mona Lisa Smile' after she had excelled as Kathie Moffat, the femme fatale whom gambling bigwig Kirk Douglas hires private eye Robert Mitchum to find in Jacques Tourneur's Out of the Past (1947). She helped Mitchum's soldier clear his name as Joan Graham in Don Siegel's The Big Steal (1949), but Hughes interfered in her career and she was off the screen for a while. Greer resurfaced in the likes of Roy Boulting's Run For the Sun (1956) and Joseph Peveney's Man of a Thousand Faces (1957) before drifting into television. When Taylor Hackford remade Out of the Past as Against All Odds (1984), he cast Greer as the mother of the character she had played in the original noir.
Also born on 9 September, in New York City, Sylvia Miles trained at the Actors Studio while making her name on stage and in television. She has the distinction of earning two Academy Award nominations for a grand total of 14 minutes worth of acting, as Cass, the Park Avenue vamp in John Schlesinger's Midnight Cowboy (1969), and as Charlotte Rampling's murdered nightclub friend, Jessie Florian, in Dick Richards's Farewell, My Lovely (1975), which starred Robert Mitchum as Philip Marlowe. Famed in later life for her social activities, Miles kept working, notably essaying Meryl Streep's mother in Susan Seidelman's She-Devil (1989) and Dolores the estate agent in Oliver Stone's Wall Street (1987) and Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps (2010).
Dubliner Dermot Walsh (10 September) became a familiar face in postwar British films after being signed by Rank. Notably teamed with Glynis Johns as a gambler named Lucky in Gordon Parry's Third Time Lucky (1948), Walsh co-starred with wife Hazel Court in Vernon Sewell's Counterspy (1953). After a spell on the Irish stage, he returned to alternate crime Bs like Chain of Events (1958) and Echo of Diana (1963) with such diverse titles as Sea Fury (1958), The Flesh and the Fiends, and Make Mine a Million (both 1959). Junior viewers got to know him in the title role of the ITV series that spawned Ernest Morris's Richard the Lionheart (1963). Use the Cinema Paradiso Searchline to discover Walsh's other credits, which include his swan song as Lord Marwood, opposite Faye Dunaway, in Michael Winner's The Wicked Lady (1983), which revisited the 1945 Leslie Arliss original starring Margaret Lockwood, who had headlined Walsh's debut feature, Lance Comfort's Bedelia (1946).
The Searchline is also the best way to navigate your way through the career of John Barrard (12 September), a South African who became ubiquitous on British television during a five-decade career. You name it, he was in it, but usually in one-off roles in everything from crime shows to sitcoms and children's programmes to Doctor Who (' The Reign of Terror, 1964). Barrard also worked with Alfred Hitchcock ( The Man Who Knew Too Much, 1956) and Michael Powell ( Peeping Tom, 1960) before playing Dooley the North Pole assistant in Jeannot Szwarc's Santa Claus: The Movie (1985). He kept working to his death at 89, although there was quite a gap between his last two films, Buster (1988) and Swinging With the Finkels (2011).
Born in Lyon on 13 September 1924, composer Maurice Jarre would also enjoy a lengthy career that brought him three Academy Awards, three BAFTAs, four Golden Globes, and a Grammy. In addition to his winning trio for David Lean - Lawrence of Arabia (1962), Doctor Zhivago (1965), and A Passage to India (1984) - Jarre was also Oscar-nominated for Sundays and Cybèle (1962), The Message (1976), Witness (1985), Gorillas in the Mist (1988), and Ghost (1990). Writing for the screen from 1951, his music can be heard in almost 400 films and TV shows, with Luchino Visconti's The Damned (1969), John Huston's The Man Who Would Be King (1975), Franco Zeffirelli's Jesus of Nazareth (1977), George Miller's Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome (1985), Adrian Lyne's Fatal Attraction (1987), and Peter Weir's Dead Poets Society (1989) among the best known. Son Jean-Michel Jarre has been a major figure on the electronic music scene since the 1970s.
Sharing Jarre's birthday, Scott Brady was born Gerard Kenneth Tierney in Brooklyn. Younger brothers Lawrence and Edward would retain the family name in becoming Hollywood stalwarts in their own right. But, while they prowled the urban jungle, Brady was often found out West, after fronting up to Joan Crawford as The Dancin' Kid in Nicholas Ray's Johnny Guitar (1954). Following Westerns like Mohawk (1956) and Restless Breed (1957), Brady took his chances in television, guesting in several top-rated shows. In addition to cult items like Al Adamson's Satan's Sadists (1969), he also landed roles like Herman De Young in James Bridges's The China Syndrome (1979) and Joe Dante's Gremlins (1984), which saw Brady bow out as Sheriff Frank.
New Yorker Betty Joan Perske (16 September) remained known by her first name long after director Howard Hawks had renamed her Lauren Bacall when she moved from modelling to acting. His wife had noticed her in a magazine and Hawks cast Bacall in To Have and Have Not (1944), in which her speech about whistling launched an on-and-off-screen partnership with Humphrey Bogart. Following Hawks's The Big Sleep (1946), Delmer Daves's Dark Passage (1947), and John Huston's Key Largo (1948), however, Bacall decided to fly solo, excelling in Jean Negulesco's How to Marry a Millionaire (1953) and Douglas Sirk's Written on the Wind (1956).
Widowed by Bogart in 1957, Bacall became close to Frank Sinatra before marrying Jason Robards, Jr. in 1961. She won two Tonys during a spell away from the screen, returning as Mrs Hubbard in Stanley Lumet's Murder on the Orient Express (1974). After partnering John Wayne in Don Siegel's The Shootist (1976), Bacall returned to Agatha Christie in Michael Winner's Appointment With Death (1988). Always choosing her roles with care, she played Barbra Streisand's mother in The Mirror Has Two Faces (1996), which earned her a Golden Globe, as well as Oscar and BAFTA nominations. Bacall twice teamed with Lars von Trier on Dogville (2003) and Manderlay (2006), while also excelling in Jonathan Glazer's Birth (2004) and Paul Schrader's The Walker (2007). An honorary Oscar was bestowed in 2009, as Bacall found a new niche as a voiceover artist, playing the Witch of the Waste in the English take on Hayao Miyazaki's Howl's Moving Castle (2004), the Grey One in the dubbed version of Ernest & Celestine (2012), and as the amorous Evelyn in the 'Mom's the Word' episode of Family Guy (1999-).
Born in Chicago on 21 September, Gail Russell was signed by Paramount as a teenager and became a star as Stella Meredith in Lewis Allen's The Uninvited (1944). She was paired with Alan Ladd in John Farrow's Calcutta (1946) and John Wayne in James Edward Grant's Angel and the Badman (1947) and Edward Ludwig's Wake of the Red Witch (1948). Sadly, Russell started drinking to ease her stage fright and she was off screen following a series of drunk driving incidents and a high-profile divorce from actor Guy Madison. Wayne arranged for her to be cast opposite Randolph Scott in Budd Boetticher's Seven Men From Now (1956), but she died alone at the age of 36 in 1961.
This was the year that Marcello Mastroianni (28 September) became a global superstar, as Federico Fellini's La dolce vita (1960) became an arthouse hit and socio-cultural phenomenon. Born in Fontana Liri, Mastroianni made the first of his 147 films as a 14 year-old in 1939. But he first came to wider notice as one of the bungling robbers in Mario Monicelli's much-imitated caper, Big Deal on Madonna Street (1958). He appeared in 14 features with Sophia Loren, including Vittorio De Sica's Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow (1963) and Marriage Italian Style (1964), Ettore Scola's A Special Day (1977), and Robert Altman's Pret à Porter (1994).
While Mastroianni gave one of his best performances in Michelangelo Antonioni's La notte (1962), he became renowned for his collaborations with Fellini on 8½ (1963), Roma (1972), City of Women (1980), and Ginger and Fred (1988). Nowhere near enough of his pictures are available on disc in this country, but Cinema Paradiso users are encouraged to check out such eclectic classics as Elio Petri's The Assassin (1961) and The 10th Victim (1965), Marco Ferreri's La Grande bouffe, Jacques Demy's A Slightly Pregnant Man (both 1973), Paolo and Vittorio Taviani's Allonsanfan (1974), Luigi Comencini's The Sunday Woman (1975), and Theo Angelopoulos's The Beekeeper (1988) and The Suspended Step of the Stork (1991).
Truman Capote also worked with Vittorio De Sica, as he contributed to the screenplay of Indiscretion of an American Wife (1954), which teamed Montgomery Clift and Jennifer Jones, with whom Capote had also collaborated on John Huston's Beat the Devil (1953). Born Truman Streckfus Persons in New Orleans on 30 September 1924, Capote acquired his more familiar surname when his mother remarried in 1932. Enduring a lonely childhood, he started writing short stories at the age of eight. Prime among the films based on his prose are Blake Edwards's Breakfast At Tiffany's (1961) and Richard Brooks's In Cold Blood (1967). But Tom Gries and Charles Matthau respectively adapted The Glass House (1972) and The Grass Harp (1995), while Capote himself acted in Robert Moore's Murder By Death (1976), earning himself a Golden Globe nomination, and Woody Allen's Annie Hall (1977). He was played by Louis Negin in Mark Christopher's 54 (1998), Michael J. Burg in Steven Robman's The Audrey Hepburn Story (2000), the Oscar-winning Philip Seymour Hoffman in Bennet Miller's Capote (2005), and Toby Jones in Douglas McGrath's Infamous (2006).
OCTOBER
Skibbereen's own Kieron Moore was born Ciarán Ó hAnnracháin on 5 October 1924. Spotted on stage by producer Alexander Korda, he had his name changed for Leslie Arliss's A Man About the House and made such a good impression in Anthony Kimmins's Mine Own Executioner (both 1947) that Korda cast Moore as Count Vronsky opposite Vivien Leigh in Julien Duvivier's Anna Karenina (1948). Poor reviews and a failure to find a niche in Hollywood left Moore making crime Bs like John Gilling's Recoil (1953). However, his fortunes improved after tussling with Sean Connery as Pony Sugrue in Robert Stevenson's Darby O'Gill and the Little People (1959) and playing gay thief, Captain Stevens, in Basil Dearden's The League of Gentlemen (1960). Having taken the title role in Sidney J. Furie's Doctor Blood's Coffin (1961), Moore closed his career with a series of collaborations with American writer-producer, Philip Yordan, that included The Day of the Triffids (1962), The Thin Red Line (1964), Crack in the World (1965), and Custer of the West (1967).
Several other Moore assignments can be found using the Cinema Paradiso Searchline. Frustratingly, we have nothing featuring Joyce Reynolds (7 October), the Warners starlet from San Antonio, Texas who debuted opposite an Oscar-winning James Cagney in Michael Curtiz's Yankee Doodle Dandy (1942). The same director guided Reynolds through her sole starring venture, Janie (1944), but her breakthrough never came and she quit Hollywood after just 10 pictures, one of which, Always Together (1947), saw Humphrey Bogart cameo as a priest.
Born Monique Tchemerzine in Paris on 10 October, ballerina Ludmilla Tchérina was seen more on the stage than on screen. But she played a princess in Douglas Sirk's Sign of the Pagan (1954), while Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger made exquisite use of her gifts in The Red Shoes (1948), The Tales of Hoffmann (1951), Oh...Rosalinda!! (1955), and Honeymoon (1959).
Also born on 10 October was Edward D. Wood, Jr., the Poughkeepsie native whose life and oeuvre will be familiar to many via Tim Burton's Ed Wood (1994). His friendship with Bela Lugosi enabled Wood to complete a series of low-budget pictures, which are frequently listed among the worst of all time. Bafflingly, Night of the Ghouls (1958) isn't on disc. But Cinema Paradiso does have Glen or Glenda (1953), Jail Bait (1954), Bride of the Monster (1955), and Plan 9 From Outer Space (1957) among its 100,000 titles on high quality DVD, Blu-ray, and 4K. Wood's later blue movies are best left forgotten, but some claim he was also involved in Evan Lee's Meatcleaver Massacre (1977).
Born Elizabeth Shaubell in Iola, Kansas on 12 October, Randy Stuart made her mark as Lieutenant Eloise Billings in Howard Hawks's I Was a Male War Bride (1949). She joined Fox dance classmate Marilyn Monroe for a brief boarding house appearance in Joseph L. Mankiewicz's All About Eve (1950), but is best known for playing Grant Williams's anxious wife in Jack Arnold's sci-fi classic, The Incredible Shrinking Man (1957).
The same year saw Robert Webber (14 October) play Juror #12 in Sidney Lumet's 12 Angry Men. Always busy on the small screen, where he eventually played Cybill Shepherd's father in Moonlighting (1985-89), Webber had a varied career in films. After baiting Paul Newman as a lowlife in Jack Smight's Harper (1966), he appeared as the general riling Lee Marvin in Robert Aldrich's The Dirty Dozen (1967). He also played killers in Phil Karlson's The Silencers (1966) and Sam Peckinpah's Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia (1974) and came to Europe to make Jean Aurel's Manon 70 (1968) and Just Jaeckin's Madame Claude (1977). But Webber's most enduring relationship in his later career was with director Blake Edwards, who cast him in Revenge of the Pink Panther (1978), 10 (1979), and S.O.B. (1981).
Although born in Pretoria, Nigel Green (15 October) was raised in London and trained at RADA. Michael Powell predicted great things when he directed Green in the West End and his 6ft 4in frame made him a natural for Little John in Terence Fisher's Sword of Sherwood Forest (1960) and Hercules in Don Chaffey's Jason and the Argonauts (1963). However, Green will forever be known as Colour Sergeant Frank Bourne in Cy Endfield's Zulu (1964), even though he also stood out as Inspector Sir Denis Nayland Smith in Don Sharp's The Face of Fu Manchu and Major Dalby in Sidney J. Furie's The Ipcress File (both 1965). Aristocratic, but never quite trustworthy, Green stole scenes as Carl Petersen in Ralph Thoma's Deadlier Than the Male (1967), Count Contini in Phil Karlson's The Wrecking Crew (1969), and 'Lord Ashley's Whore' in John Huston's The Kremlin Letter (1969). He was also effective in such horrors as Roger Corman's The Masque of the Red Death (1964) and Peter Sasdy's Countess Dracula (1971), while proving surprisingly adept at comedy as McKyle the 'Electric Messiah' in Peter Medak's The Ruling Class (1972). Sadly, he died of an overdose of sleeping pills shortly afterwards at the age of 47.
Londoner Alan Hume (16 October) spent a lifetime in British movies, having started as the clapper boy on Leslie Howard's The First of the Few (1942). Having served as Guy Green's assistant on David Lean's Great Expectations (1946) and Oliver Twist (1948), Hume became a trusted camera operator, the role he performed on Carry On Sergeant (1958). Producer Peter Rogers promoted him to director of photography on Carry On Regardless (1961) and he kept the job on every franchise entry through to Carry On Columbus (1992). Moreover, he also worked with director Gerald Thomas on No Kidding (1960), Raising the Wind (1961), Twice Round the Daffodils, The Iron Maiden (both 1962), Nurse on Wheels (1963), The Big Job (1965), and Bless This House (1972). In addition to horrors like Don Sharp's Kiss of the Vampire (1963), Freddie Francis's Dr Terror's House of Horrors (1965), John Hough's The Legend of Hell House, and Kevin Connor's From Beyond the Grave (both 1973), Hume also shot second unit footage for Lewis Gilbert's The Spy Who Loved Me (1977) before returning to photograph John Glen's Bond movies, For Your Eyes Only (1981), Octopussy (1983), and A View to a Kill (1985). During this period, he also managed to get himself fired off Return of the Jedi (1983) for daring to object to the treatment of director Richard Marquand. Having surpassed himself on Andrei Konchalovsky's Runaway Train (1985), Hume enjoyed bowing out gracefully on Charles Crichton's A Fish Called Wanda (1988) and Lewis Gilbert's Shirley Valentine (1989).
Julie Wilson was born in Omaha, Nebraska on 21 October, but she trained at RADA in London after making her initial mark on Broadway. Cinema Paradiso users can see her as Rosebud in Jack Garfein's The Strange One (1957), but her best work came on stage, where she was billed as 'the Queen of Cabaret'.
William Bertanzetti (25 October 25) from Millsboro, Pennsylvania is better known as Billy Barty, the 3ft 9in actor who started out playing infants alongside the Marx Brothers in Monkey Business (1931) and Ginger Rogers in Gold Diggers of 1933 (1933). Among numerous TV roles (use the Searchline to learn more), Barty guested eight times as Babby the pool hustler in Peter Gunn (1958-61) and cropped up briefly alongside Elvis Presley in Roustabout (1964) and Harum Scarum (1965). A regular in Sid and Marty Croft's children's shows, Barty played Googy Gopher and Orville Pelican in Pufnstuf (1970) before going on to take the cult roles of Screwball the elf in Ridley Scott's Legend (1985), Gwildor in Gary Goddard's Masters of the Universe (1987), High Aldwin in Ron Howard's Willow (1988), and cameraman Noodles MacIntosh in 'Weird Al' Yankovic's UHF (1989).
Hailing from Coalville in Leicestershire, Norman Bird (30 October) was busy from the moment he debuted in Guy Hamilton's take on J.B. Priestley's An Inspector Calls (1954). If anyone needed a man with a moustache and a cardigan to express disapproval or convey downtrodden disappointment, they sent for Bird. RADA buddy Bryan Forbes called on him for Whistle Down the Wind (1961), The Wrong Box (1966), and The Raging Moon (1970). But he also showed well in Guy Green's The Angry Silence, Basil Dearden's The League of Gentlemen (both 1960) and Victim (1961), Peter Glenville's Term of Trial (1962), Sidney Lumet's The Hill (1965), and Christopher Miles's The Virgin and the Gypsy (1970). In addition to 50 films, Bird also appeared in over 200 TV episodes, notably playing Mr Braithwaite in Worzel Gummidge (1979-81). The Cinema Paradiso Searchline will take you through his drama and sitcom credits. But don't overlook his voicing Bilbo Baggins in Ralph Bakshi's animated version of The Lord of the Rings (1978).
Born in Galvez, Louisiana, Cleo Moore (31 October) had to be content with far fewer credits. After failing to make the grade at RKO, she was signed by Columbia and groomed to be the studio's equivalent to Marilyn Monroe. But it never quite happened for 'The Next Big Thing', despite solid displays in Joseph M. Newman's 711 Ocean Drive (1950) and Nicholas Ray's On Dangerous Ground (1952). Before she quit acting in 1957, Moore had a run of eight fine noirs with actor-director Hugo Haas, none of which are on disc. More's the pity, as she's very good in Bait and The Other Woman (both 1954).
NOVEMBER
While starring with Lon Chaney, Jr. in The Indestructible Man (1956), Joe Flynn (8 November) realised he was getting laughs in a straight role. So, he switched to comedy and found fame as Captain Wallace Binghamton in the classic sitcom, McHale's Navy (1962-66). A regular on television, Flynn became a Disney stalwart after a minor role in Son of Flubber (1963). Having been David Tomlinson's sidekick in The Love Bug (1968), he played Medfield College's Dean Higgins opposite Kurt Russell in The Computer Wore Tennis Shoes (1969), Now You See Him, Now You Don't (1972), and The Strongest Man in the World (1975). These should all be on disc, but Flynn can be heard as Mr Snoops in The Rescuers (1977), a part he had recorded just weeks before his sudden death at the age of 49.
By contrast, Swiss-born photographer-cum-director Robert Frank (9 November) lived to be 94. His 1958 tome, The Americans, is regarded as a photo classic, while his 1959 film. Pull My Daisy, provides unique insights into the influential Beat writers. The Rolling Stones blocked the release of a 1972 documentary for being too near the knuckle, but Frank was acclaimed for Me and My Brother (1968), which afforded Sam Shepard and Christopher Walken their film debuts. Sadly, none of these significant titles is currently available, as is the case with Gerard Fox's Leaving Home, Going Home: A Portrait of Robert Frank (2004).
Daughter of Mexican silent actor Don Alvarado, Joy Page (9 November) was 17 when she landed her best-known role, as Bulgarian refugee Annina Brandel in Michael Curtiz's Casablanca (1942). It should have helped that her stepfather was Jack L. Warner. But the studio chief disapproved of her acting and she found roles hard to come by elsewhere in Hollywood, despite showing well opposite Marlene Dietrich in William Dieterle's Kismet (1944) and Robert Stack in Budd Boetticher's Bullfighter and the Lady (1950). Sometimes billed as Joanne Page, she retired after marrying actor William T. Orr.
Born in Ashley, Pennsylvania on 10 November 1924, Russell Johnson also got to co-star with Marlene Dietrich in Fritz Lang's Rancho Notorious (1952). A friend of fellow war hero Audie Murphy, Johnson teamed with him in Column South (1953) and Ride Clear of Diablo (1954). Although he made several more Westerns, he also figured in Hollywood's burgeoning fascination with science fiction, via Jack Arnold's It Came From Outer Space (1953), Joseph Newman's This Island Earth (1955), and Roger Corman's Attack of the Crab Monsters (1956). The middle film of this trio was mercilessly mocked in Mystery Science Theater 3000: The Movie (1996). Although he continued to make features, Johnson became known for his TV work, notably guesting in The Twilight Zone (1959-64) and The Outer Limits (1963-64) before playing The Professor in Gilligan's Island (1964-67).
Mike Raven was born in London on 15 November as Austin Churton Fairman. Following a postwar stint as a ballet dancer, Raven became a radio DJ and featured in the first-day line-up on Radio One. Having previously tried his hand at acting, he had his voiced dubbed by Hammer for his debut performance as Count Karnstein in Jimmy Sangster's Lust For a Vampire. He was no more successful at Amicus in Stephen Weeks's I, Monster. However, he discovered Cornwall while making Ted Hooker's Crucible of Terror (all 1971) and took up sculpting under his own name.
Sadly, William Russell (19 November) failed to reach his centenary, as he died at the age of 99 on 3 June 2024. He did make it into the Guinness Book of World Record, however, as his 2022 cameo in 'The Power of the Doctor' meant that he set a record for character gaps in a TV series, after he had played science teacher Ian Chesterton in Doctor Who 's first two years on the BBC (1963-65). The Sunderland-born actor already had his spot in TV folklore, having taken the lead in The Adventures of Sir Lancelot (1957). But the Cinema Paradiso Searchline reveals how busy Russell went on to be during a seven-decade career that also saw him play Gloria Grahame's fiancé in Ronald Neame's The Man Who Never Was (1956). He was billed as Russell Enoch, a name to which he periodically resorted and which son Alfred Enoch employed while playing Dean Thomas in the Harry Potter pictures. Among Russell's other features worth noting are John Paddy Carstairs's One Good Turn (1955), John Sturges's The Great Escape (1963), Richard Donner's Superman (1978), and Bertrand Tavernier's Death Watch (1980).
Racking up over 200 shows, New Yorker Joseph Campanella (21 November) was a mainstay of American television for six decades. His series included Mannix (1967-68), The Colbys (1987), Days of Our Lives (1987-92), and The Bold and the Beautiful (1996-2005). There were also film roles in the lkes of Roger Corman's The St Valentine's Day Massacre (1967) and Phil Karlson's Ben (1971), while he also voiced Neal, the captain of the space freighter, 'Berkshire', in Douglas Trumbull's Silent Running (1972).
No one else from Kirksville, Missouri has four Tony Awards, two Emmys, two Golden Globes, a BAFTA, and an Oscar. All that Geraldine Page (22 November) needed for EGOT status was a Grammy. And all this after being blacklisted for eight years during the HUAC era because of her association with left-leaning drama coach, Uta Hagen. Page also studied with Lee Strasberg before becoming the darling of Broadway in the early 1950s after having been nominated for Best Supporting Actress as Angie Lowe in John Farrow's Hondo (1953). She drew a Best Actress nod, as she and Paul Newman reprised their stage roles as Alexandra Del Lago and Chance Wayne in Richard Brooks's take on Tennessee Williams's Sweet Bird of Youth (1962). Further nominations came for Peter Glenville's Summer and Smoke (1961), Francis Ford Coppola's You're a Big Boy Now (1966), Martin Ritt's Pete 'n' Tillie (1972), Woody Allen's Interiors (1978), and Bob Rafelson's The Pope of Greenwich Village (1984). Elsewhere, Page revelled in her wickedness in Lee H. Katzin's What Ever Happened to Aunt Alice? (1969), gave Clint Eastwood plenty to think about in Don Siegel's The Beguiled (1971), and voiced Madame Medusa in Disney's The Rescuers (1977) before finally winning her Oscar as Carrie Watts heading home to Texas in Peter Masterson's take on Horton Foote's The Trip to Bountiful (1985).
Born a day later as Paula Ramon Wright in San Francisco, Paula Raymond made her film debut in Keep Smiling (1938) before becoming a model. Signed by MGM, she took numerous uncredited roles in the likes of George Cukor's Adam's Rib (1949). Having co-starred with Cary Grant in Richard Brooks's Crisis (1950), Raymond found herself in Eugène Lourié's The Beast From 20,000 Fathoms (1952) before descending into horror cheapies like Hand of Death (1961) and Blood of Dracula's Castle (1972) while still regretting the decision to turn down the role of saloon keeper Kitty Russell in Gunsmoke (1952-74), as Amanda Blake appeared in over 500 episodes.
We'll end our November segment with a brief mention of Erik Balling (29 November), who is best known outside his native Denmark for Qivitoq (1956), in which Astrid Villaume plays a Danish teacher who falls for a trader in Greenland. However, Balling's reputation rests on The Olsen Gang (1968), a crime comedy that spawned 13 sequels over the next 30 years and which remain popular on television.
DECEMBER
Stockholmer Vilgot Sjöman was born on 2 December 1924. While studying at UCLA, he assisted George Seaton on The Proud and the Profane (1956). But the influence of Ingmar Bergman was evident on his debut, The Mistress (1961), which starred Bibi Andersson and Max von Sydow. Having assisted Bergman on Winter Light (1963), Sjöman provoked controversy with 491 (1964) and My Sister My Love (1965), which revealed the influence of the nouvelle vague. His most infamous offering, however, was I Am Curious (Yellow) (1968), an investigation into Swedish attitudes to sex and politics that he followed with I Am Curious (Blue) (1969), with the titles referencing the colours of the national flag. He took a cameo as the interviewer in Bergman's Shame (1968), but Sjöman made fewer headlines, even though he continued to direct up to Alfred (1995), a biopic of Alfred Nobel.
Brummie Mona Bruce (3 December) was one of those familiar faces few people could put a name to. On television from the late 1950s, she played Mrs Dean in Peter Sasdy's Wuthering Heights and Josie Dawes in James Clavell's To Sir, With Love (both 1967). She was Mrs Houchin in 10 episodes of The Mind of Mr J.G. Reeder (1969-71), but found her niche as Mrs Armitage alongside Googie Withers in the women's prison saga, Within These Walls (1974-78). Use the Cinema Paradiso Searchline to find more small-screen gems, including Agatha Christie's Miss Marple: 4:50 From Paddington (1987), which cast Bruce as Mrs McGillicuddy, and Hamish Macbeth (1995-97), in which she spent 16 episodes as Edie, alongside Robert Carlyle.
Suzanne DeLee Flanders Larson was born in Chicago on 6 December. Such was her singing talent that MGM signed her at the age of 12, only to discard her before she could make a film. Paramount changed her name to Susanna Foster, after Stephen Foster's song, 'Oh Susanna'. After debuting in The Great Victor Herbert (1939), she was let go and found herself at Universal, where she famously played Christine opposite Nelson Eddy in Arthur Lubin's Phantom of the Opera (1943). Having rejected a joint contract with Eddy, Foster struggled to make an impact opposite Boris Karloff in George Waggner's The Climax and she quit films shortly after cameoing as herself in A. Edward Sutherland's Follow the Boys (both 1944).
Trained at the Royal Dramatic Theatre in her home city of Stockholm, Maj-Britt Nilsson (11 December) was briefly part of Ingmar Bergman's stock company, playing Marta the violinist in To Joy (1950), Marie the ballerina in Summer Interlude (1951), and the pregnant Marta in Waiting Women (1952). She went on to work regularly with Arne Mattsson and Hasse Ekman before retiring in 1977.
Always a dependable presence, Rosemarie Dunham (13 December) often cropped up in single episodes of hit TV shows, such as Sergeant Cork (1963-68) and Gideon's Way (1964-66). She made more impact, however, as Michael Caine's landlady, Edna, in Mike Hodges's Get Carter (1971). Dunham would reunite with the director for a walk-on in Croupier (1998), which was released the same year she played Mrs Drax in Will Gould's The Wolves of Kromer. Frustratingly, her appearances in the likes of Mistress Pamela (1973) and The Incredible Sarah (1976) are not on disc.
Born in Peshawar on 14 December, Raj Kapoor was the son of actor Prithviraj Kapoor. His hero, however, was Charlie Chaplin and there are echoes of The Little Tramp in Raju in Awara (1951) and Raj in Shree 420 (1955), each of which Kapoor directed and headlined opposite his favourite co-star, Nargis. Often serving as his own director and producer, he first paired with Nargis in Aag (aka Fire, 1948). But their first box-office smash was Mehboob Khan's Andaz (1949), although its success was exceeded by Anhonee (1952), a psychological drama that was a huge hit across Southern Asia and the Soviet Union.
The partnership ended with Chori Chori (1956) and Kapoor took roles for hire in L.V. Prasad's Sharada (1957), Manmohan Desai's Chhalia (1960) and Naseeb (1981), Basu Bhattacharya's Teesri Kasam (1966), son Randhir Kapoor's Kal Aaj Aur Kal (1971) and Dharam Karam (1975), and John Davies's Kim (1984), which co-starred Peter O'Toole. Kapoor also directed himself in Sangam (1964) and the misfiring Mera Naam Joker (1970), which has since been reclaimed as a cult classic. He also remained behind the camera to direct younger brother Shashi Kapoor in Satyam Shivam Sundaram (akaLove Sublime, 1978), Rishi Kapoor in Prem Rog (aka Love Sickness, 1982), and son Rajiv Kapoor in Ram Teri Ganga Maili (1985). 'The Greatest Showman of Indian Cinema' was set to make Henna (1991) when he died at the age of 63 and it was directed instead by his son Randhir.
While we're in Bollywood, we should also mark the centenary of Mohammad Rafi (24 December), the king of the playback singers who provide the vocals for the songs that make masala movies so distinctive. Working on over 1000 films, he sang around 7000 songs, many of which were written by Naushad Ali. Music director S.D. Burnam hired Rafi to sing for superstars Dev Anand and Guru Dutt, while he was also a favourite of O.P. Nayyar, Ravi Shankar Sharma, Kalyanji Anandji, and Madan Mohan, as well as the composing duos of Shankar-Jaikishan and Laxmikant-Pyarelal. Rafi died of a heart attack at the age of 55, with only sisters Lata Mangeshkar and Asha Bhosle having sung more filmi songs.
Considering her brilliance, too few of Cicely Tyson's films are available in this country, as she was the finest African American actress of her generation. Born in New York on 19 December 1924, Tyson started out modelling, but was soon finding roles in such landmark films as Robert Wise's Odds Against Tomorrow (1959). Claiming a number of television firsts for Black performers in 1960s soap operas, Tyson followed film parts in Leo Penn's A Man Called Adam (1966) and Peter Glenville's The Comedians (1967) by excelling in an Oscar-nominated display as Rebecca Morgan in Martin Ritt's Sounder (1972). She was equally good in John Korty's teleplay, The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman (1974), for which she won an Emmy and a BAFTA. Her work as Binta in Roots (1977) and Carlotta Scott King in King (1978) was also acclaimed, but she will be more familiar to many as Sipsey in Jon Avnet's Fried Green Tomatoes (1991), Myrtle Simmons in Tyler Perry's Diary of a Mad Black Woman, Gloria Dump in Wayne Wang's Because of Winn-Dixie (both 2005), and Constantine Jefferson in Tate Taylor's The Help (2011). Acting to into her nineties, Tyson also played Viola Davis's mother, Ophelia Harkness, in How to Get Away With Murder (2014-20).
Robert M. Young (22 November) was one of the world's oldest living film directors before he passed away in February 2024 at the age of 99. The New Yorker was a leading figure in the independent sector, notably casting James Edward Olmos in Alambrista! (1977) and Talent For the Game (1991) among a nine-film collaboration that also saw Young produce Olmos's directorial debut, American Me (1992), Cinema Paradiso users can also enjoy Young's writing efforts on Michael Roemer's Nothing But a Man (1964) and John Hough's Escape to Witch Mountain (1975), as well as such directing assignments as Short Eyes (1977) and Extremities (1986).
Born in Syracuse, New York on Christmas Day 1924, Rod Serling would live half a long as Young. As the creator of one of the greatest programmes in American TV history, however, he made much more of an impact. Following heroic war service in the Pacific, Serling cut his teeth in radio before being acclaimed for teleplays like Patterns and Requiem For a Heavyweight, which were filmed by Fielder Cook and Ralph Nelson in 1956 and 1962 respectively. By this time, however, Serling was a household name because of The Twilight Zone (1959-64), an anthology series whose tales of the unexpected remain compelling viewing six decades on. Indeed, their DNA informs each episode of the 1985, 2002, and 2019 reboots. Serling also contributed to the screenplays of such significant features as John Frankenheimer's Seven Days in May (1964) and Franklin J. Schaffner's Planet of the Apes (1968) before he moved on to create the equally influential series, Night Gallery (1969-72). He died of a heart attack at the age of 50 in June 1975.
Rounding off our three-part commemoration is Sunderland's Mary Lydia Thornton (28 December), who came to be known as Christine Norden, while her younger sister acted as June Mitchell. Famously, the first entertainer to set foot on a Normandy beach on D-Day, she was discovered in a cinema queue and given her film debut by Sir Alexander Korda in Harold Huth's Night Beat. Korda directed her as Margaret Marchmont in his adaptation of Oscar Wilde's An Ideal Husband (both 1947), which earned her the Most Promising Actress prize at the Venice Film Festival, before she held her own as Barbara Edge in Anthony Kimmins's take on Nigel Balchin's Mine Own Executione (1948). On reuniting with Kieron Moore, Norden won a won a British National Film Award as Blanche in Leslie Arliss's Saints and Sinners (1949). But 10 films were enough for Norden, who became a US citizen in 1960 before scandalising New York Theatreland by becoming the first actress to go topless in an Off-Broadway production, Bruce Jay Friedman's comedy, Scuba Duba (1967).
