Advanced search

Mickey Rooney was born Joe Yule Jr. on September 23, 1920 in Brooklyn, New York. He first took the stage as a toddler in his parents vaudeville act at 17 months old. He made his first film appearance in 1926. The following year, he played the lead character in the first Mickey McGuire short film. It was in this popular film series that he took the stage name Mickey Rooney. Rooney reached new heights in 1937 with A Family Affair, the film that introduced the country to Andy Hardy, the popular all-American teenager. This beloved character appeared in nearly 20 films and helped make Rooney the top star at the box office in 1939, 1940 and 1941. Rooney also proved himself an excellent dramatic actor as a delinquent in Boys Town (1938) starring Spencer Tracy. In 1938, he was awarded a Juvenile Academy Award.

Teaming up with Judy Garland, Rooney also appeared in a string of musicals, including Babes in Arms (1939) the first teenager to be nominated for an Oscar for Best Actor in a leading role, Strike Up the Band (1940), Babes on Broadway (1941), and Girl Crazy (1943). He and Garland immediately became best of friends. "We weren't just a team, we were magic," Rooney once said. During that time he also appeared with Elizabeth Taylor in the now classic National Velvet (1944). Rooney joined the service that same year, where he helped to entertain the troops and worked on the American Armed Forces Network. He returned to Hollywood after 21 months in Love Laughs at Andy Hardy (1946), did a remake of a Robert Taylor film, The Crowd Roars (1932) called Killer McCoy (1947) and portrayed composer Lorenz Hart in Words and Music (1948). He also appeared in Breakfast at Tiffany's (1961), starring Audrey Hepburn and George Peppard. Rooney played Hepburn's Japanese neighbor, Mr. Yunioshi. A sign of the times, Rooney played the part for comic relief which he later regretted feeling the role was offensive. He once again showed his incredible range in the dramatic role of a boxing trainer with Anthony Quinn and Jackie Gleason in Requiem for a Heavyweight (1962). In the late 1960s and 1970s Rooney showed audiences and critics alike why he was one of Hollywood's most enduring stars. He gave an impressive performance in Francis Ford Coppola's 1979 film The Black Stallion (1979), which brought him an Academy Award nomination as Best Actor in a Supporting Role. He also turned to the stage in 1979 in Sugar Babies with Ann Miller, and was nominated for a Tony Award. During that time he also portrayed the Wizard in The Wonderful Wizard of Oz with Eartha Kitt at New York's Madison Square Garden, which also had a successful run nationally.

Rooney appeared in four television series': The Mickey Rooney Show (1954) (1954-1955), a comedy sit-com in 1964 with Sammee Tong called Mickey, One of the Boys in 1982 with Dana Carvey and Nathan Lane, and The New Adventures of the Black Stallion (1990) from 1990-1993. In 1981, Rooney won an Emmy Award for his portrayal of a mentally challenged man in Bill (1981). The critical acclaim continued to flow for the veteran performer, with Rooney receiving an honorary Academy Award "in recognition of his 60 years of versatility in a variety of memorable film performances". More recently he has appeared in such films as Night at the Museum (2006) with Ben Stiller and The Muppets (2011) with Amy Adams and Jason Segel.

Rooney's personal life, including his frequent trips to the altar, has proved to be just as epic as his on-screen performances. His first wife was one of the most beautiful women in Hollywood, actress Ava Gardner. Mickey permanently separated from his eighth wife Jan in June of 2012. In 2011 Rooney filed elder abuse and fraud charges against stepson Christopher Aber and Aber's wife. At Rooney's request, the Superior Court issued a restraining order against the Aber's demanding they stay 100 yards from Rooney, as well as Mickey's other son Mark Rooney and Mark's wife Charlene. Just prior, Rooney mustered the strength to break his silence and appeared before the Senate in Washington D.C. telling of his own heartbreaking story of abuse in an effort to live a peaceful, full life and help others who may be similarly suffering in silence.

Rooney requested through the Superior Court to permanently reside with his son Mark Rooney, who is a musician and Marks wife Charlene, an artist, in the Hollywood Hills. He legally separated from his eighth wife in June of 2012. Ironically, after eight failed marriages he never looked or felt better and finally found happiness and peace in the single life. Mickey, Mark and Charlene focused on health, happiness and creative endeavors and it showed. Mickey Rooney had once again landed on his feet reminding us that he was a survivor. Rooney died on April 6th 2014. He was taking his afternoon nap and never woke. One week before his death Mark and Charlene surprised him by reunited him with a long lost love, the racetrack. He was ecstatic to be back after decades and ran into his old friends Mel Brooks and Dick Van Patten.

Quinn was born in Dublin, Ireland, and moved to the United States with his mother and two sisters in 1988. His first role was as a pool shark in the Richard Marx video Satisfied. He later landed a major role in the John Travolta film Shout (1991), where he shared a screen kiss with Gwyneth Paltrow. He went on to have roles in a number of other movies and television series. His most notable roles were as Becky's husband, Mark, on Roseanne (1988) and half-demon Doyle on the WB's Angel (1999). He died of a heroin overdose in 2002.

Hervé Villechaize was born in Montauban, France on April 23, 1943. He stopped growing very early and his father (who was a surgeon) tried to find a cure by visiting several doctors and hospitals. But there was none, so Hervé had to live with his small height and also with undersized lungs. He studied at the Beaux-Arts in Paris and made an exhibition of his own paintings, which were well received. At 21, he left France for the USA where he continued to paint and to make photographs. He also started to participate in some movies and was quickly offered several roles for plays and then for cinema. His first big success was The Man with the Golden Gun (1974) where he was a killer associated to the villain Scaramanga (played by Christopher Lee). He inspired the TV-series Fantasy Island (1977) where he took the role of "Tattoo", the faithful servant of "Mr. Roarke" (Ricardo Montalban). This series was a great success and, thanks to it, Villechaize became famous and rich, mostly because of his enigmatic and charming smile.

In 1983, he argued with the producers of the show in order to earn as much money as Montalban but, instead, he was fired; he also lost his model-actress wife. The series continued without him but stopped one year later, when the media response meter decreased because of the lack of Tattoo's character!

Villechaize became alcoholic and depressed, so he missed several roles that he was offered. His health problems also increased (mostly suffering from ulcers and a spastic colon), and he nearly died of pneumonia in 1992. On the afternoon of Saturday September 4th, 1993, after having watched a movie, he wrote a note and made a tape recording before shooting himself in his backyard. His common-law wife, Kathy Self, discovered his body and called the ambulance which took him to the Medical Center of North Hollywood where he died at 3:40 pm. Villechaize was cremated and his ashes were scattered off Point Fermin, in Los Angeles.

William Conrad became a television star relatively late in his career. In fact, the former Army Air Corps World War II fighter pilot began his screen career playing heavies. He was Max, one of The Killers (1946) hired to finish off Burt Lancaster in his dingy lodgings. He was the corrupt state inspector Turck working for the syndicate in The Racket (1951). He was a mobster in Sorry, Wrong Number (1948), the murderous gunslinger Tallman in Johnny Concho (1956) and sleazy nightclub owner Louie Castro who claimed to be 60% legitimate in Cry Danger (1951).

When not essaying outright villainy, Bill played characters like the tough fight promoter Quinn in Body and Soul (1947) or the doom-laden province commissioner in The Naked Jungle (1954). The portly, balding, crumple-faced, self-confessed gourmand had an ever-present weight problem (at one time 260 lbs.) which proved to be a natural obstacle to progressing to more substantial leading film roles. That, however, didn't hinder a very successful career in radio. In fact, Bill himself estimated that he had played in excess of 7,000 radio parts. Even if that was an exaggeration, his gravelly, resonant voice was certainly heard on countless broadcasts from "Buck Rogers" to "The Bullwinkle Show," from portraying Marshall Matt Dillon in "Gunsmoke" on the radio (before James Arness got the part on screen) to narrating the adventures of Richard Kimball in the television program The Fugitive (1963). In "The Wax Works," an episode of the anthology series Suspense (1949) in 1956, he voiced each and every part.

Since his corpulence effectively precluded playing strapping characters like Matt Dillon, Bill began to concentrate on directing and producing by the early 1960's. This, ironically, included episodes of Gunsmoke (1955). In 1963, he contributed to saving 77 Sunset Strip (1958) for yet another season. Later in the decade, he produced and directed several films for Warner Brothers, including the thriller Brainstorm (1965) with Jeffrey Hunter and Anne Francis. He returned to acting in 1971 to become the unlikely star of the Quinn Martin production Cannon (1971), for which he is chiefly remembered. Bill imbued the tough-talking, no-nonsense character of Frank Cannon with enough humanity and wit to make the series compelling but, despite the show's popularity, he made his views clear in a 1976 Times interview that he found himself poorly served by the scripts he had been given. A planned sequel, The Return of Frank Cannon (1980) failed to get beyond the movie-length pilot, but the actor's popularity resulted in another starring role in Jake and the Fatman (1987) as District Attorney McCabe, co-starring with Joe Penny) and a brief run as eccentric detective Nero Wolfe (1981). A self-effacing man with a good sense of humor and never afraid to speak his mind, Bill Conrad died of heart failure in February 1994. He was elected to the Broadcasting and Cable Hall of Fame and (posthumously) to the Radio Hall of Fame in 1997.

Trevor Goddard was born in Croydon, Surrey, England on October 14, 1962. His parents, Eric and Clara, and baby Trevor moved to Bromley, Kent, where he grew up. As a natural athlete, Trevor was highly interested in sports. As a youngster, he played football (soccer) and cricket and enjoyed running as well as many other recreational activities. But his greatest passion was boxing. He was a light heavyweight with a 58-1-1 record out of a total of 60 fights. He had also been invited to fight in the U.S.

And come to America he did, in 1986, with a couple of his friends. Trevor and his mates enjoyed a great deal during their stay in New York. Trevor even bought a car. After three weeks of entertainment and relaxation, Trevor phoned his father and, with a heavy heart, told him "I'm going to try to make it here, Dad. I like it very much. I'm in love with the country, I like the people." His friends returned home, and Trevor remained in the U.S.

In the early '90s, he began a career as an actor. Trevor worked regularly on TV. He made guest appearances on such TV series as "Baywatch" (1989) and "Silk Stalkings" (1991). Eventually he landed a leading role as the villainous, psychotic, yet charismatic, "Keefer" in Men of War (1994), opposite action star Dolph Lundgren, as well as Kevin Tighe, Catherine Bell, Tom Wright and BD Wong. From that moment on, Trevor was usually typecast as crazy, offbeat villains. That was borne out again in the popular video-game-based motion picture Mortal Kombat (1995), in which Trevor played a criminal called "Kano". With his rugged looks, muscular physique and gruff voice, he made this "Kano" internationally famous, even providing him with an Australian accent. Although he was English-born, Trevor had quite an ability to disguise his accent as Australian, which he continued to do in voice acting roles for subsequent video games.

Trevor played supporting roles in such movies (usually action films) as Illegal in Blue (1995) (V), Yesterday's Target (1996) (TV), Fast Money (1996), Prey of the Jaguar (1996) (V), and Assault on Devil's Island (1997) (TV) in which he costarred with Hulk Hogan, Carl Weathers, Billy Drago and Martin Kove. He appeared in a few dramatic comedies such as She's Too Tall (1999) as a crazy-in-love parking lot attendant and in Some Girl (1998) as "Ravi". He appeared in an uncredited role in Gone in Sixty Seconds (2000), opposite such famous names as Nicolas Cage, Angelina Jolie, Robert Duvall, Vinnie Jones, Timothy Olyphant and Delroy Lindo, and also in When Billie Beat Bobby (2001) (TV).

Once again, Trevor achieved international fame with the popular TV series "JAG" (1995), where he appeared from 1998 to 2001 as "Lt. Cmdr. Mic Brumby". This show made Trevor a well-known personality to the world audience and greatly increased his fan base.

Trevor played his first and only leading role in Hollywood Vampyr (2002) as a gothic vampire called "Blood". His last film was the blockbuster Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl (2003), where he utters the line "Say good-bye" to Orlando Bloom's character. Alas, "Grapple" (Goddard) was dispensed of pretty rapidly in the film.

Prior to his death, Trevor was considered to replace Pierce Brosnan as James Bond in Casino Royale (2006).

On June 7, 2003, Goddard was found dead in his home in North Hollywood, Los Angeles, California. He was 40 years old. Initial reports indicated that Goddard was in the process of getting a divorce and that suicide was suspected. An autopsy later showed that Goddard died from a drug overdose of heroin, cocaine, temazepam and vicodin. However, his death was ruled accidental.

James Grover Franciscus graduated magna cum laude from Yale University in 1957 with a B.A. in English and theater. His father, John Allen Franciscus, was a pilot killed in action during WWII. His mother was named Loraine (nee Grover) and he had one sibling, a brother named John. Mr. Franciscus is best known for his work in television, including Naked City (1958), The Investigators (1961), Mr. Novak (1963) and Longstreet (1971). He also made numerous guest appearances in other popular television programs, starred in numerous television movies, and appeared in numerous feature films. In the mid 1980s, he became dissatisfied with the roles offered to him and turned his attention to screen writing. As co-founder of Omnibus Productions, he produced many classic films, such as Heidi (1968), Jane Eyre (1970), David Copperfield (1970), Kidnapped (1971), and The Red Pony (1973). An avid tennis player, he founded the James Franciscus Celebrity Tennis Tournament in the mid 1970s to raise money for multiple sclerosis research and victims (his mother suffered from this disease). He also enjoyed sky diving and scuba diving. He married Kathleen 'Kitty' Wellman, daughter of director William A. Wellman, on March 28, 1960, and fathered four daughters (Jamie, Kellie, Corie and Jolie). A devoted family man, his contracts often stipulated that he not be required to work past 6:00 pm. After his divorce from Wellman, he married second wife Carla in 1980 and continued to live on his two acre North Hollywood estate until his death.

Hacks are nothing new in Hollywood. Since the beginning of the film industry at the turn of the 20th century, thousands of untalented people have come to Los Angeles from all over America and abroad to try to make it big (as writers, producers, directors, actors, talent agents, singers, composers, musicians, artists, etc.) but who end up using, scamming and exploiting other people for money as well as using their creative ability (either self-taught or professional training), leading to the production of dull, bland, mediocre, unimaginative, inferior, trite work in the forlorn hope of attaining commercial success. Had Edward D. Wood, Jr. been born a decade or two earlier, it's easy to imagine him working for some Poverty Row outfit in Gower Gulch, competing with the likes of no-talent and no-taste producers and directors--such as Victor Adamson, Robert J. Horner and Dwain Esper--for the title of all-time hack. He would have fit in nicely working at Weiss Brothers-Artclass Pictures in the early 1930s in directing low budget Western-themed serials, or directing low budget film noir crime drama features at PRC (Producers Releasing Corporation) in the following decade from 1940 to 1946. Ed Wood is the probably the most well known of all the Hollywood hacks because he is imprisoned in his own time, and in the 1950s, Ed Wood simply had no competition. He was ignored throughout his spectacularly unsuccessful film making career and died a penniless alcoholic, only to be "rediscovered" when promoters in the early 1980s tagged him "The Worst Director of All Time" (mostly thanks to the Medveds' hilarious book, "Golden Turkey Awards") and he was given the singular honor of a full-length biopic by Tim Burton (Ed Wood (1994)). This post-mortem celebrity has made him infinitely more famous today than he ever was during his lifetime.

Wood was an exceedingly complex person. He was born on October 10, 1924, in Poughkeepsie, NY, where he lived most of his childhood. He joined the US Marine Corps in 1943 at the height of World War II and was, by all accounts, an exemplary marine, wounded in ferocious combat in the Pacific theater (a transgender, he claimed to have been wearing a bra and panties under his uniform while storming ashore during the bloody beachhead landing at Tarawa in November 1943). He was habitually optimistic, even in the face of the bleak realities that would later consume him. His personality bonded him with a small clique of outcasts who eked out life on the far edges of the Hollywood fringe.

After settling in Los Angeles in the late 1940s, Wood attempted to break into the film industry, initially without success, but in 1952 he landed the chance to direct a film based on the real-life Christine Jorgensen sex-change story, then a hot topic. The result, Glen or Glenda (1953), gave a fascinating insight into Wood's own personality and shed light on his transgender identity (an almost unthinkable subject for an early 1950s mainstream feature). Although devoutly heterosexual, Wood was an enthusiastic cross-dresser, with a particular fondness for angora. On the debit side, though, the film revealed the almost complete lack of talent that would mar all his subsequent films, his tendency to resort to stock footage of lightning during dramatic moments, laughable set design and a near-incomprehensible performance by Bela Lugosi as a mad doctor whose presence is never adequately explained. The film deservedly flopped miserably but Wood, always upbeat, pressed ahead.

Wood's main problem was that he saw himself as a producer-writer-director, when in fact he was spectacularly incompetent in all three capacities. Friends who knew Wood have described him as an eccentric, oddball hack who was far more interested in the work required in cobbling a film project together than in ever learning the craft of film making itself or in any type of realism. In an alternate universe, Wood might have been a competent producer if he had better industry connections and an even remotely competent director. Wood, however, likened himself to his idol, Orson Welles, and became a triple threat: bad producer, poor screenwriter and God-awful director. All of his films exhibit illogical continuity, bizarre narratives and give the distinct impression that a director's job was simply to expose the least amount of film possible due to crushing budget constraints. His magnum opus, Plan 9 from Outer Space (1957), features visible wires connected to pie-pan UFOs, actors knocking over cardboard "headstones", cars changing models and years during chase sequences, scenes exhibiting a disturbing lack of handgun safety and the ingenious use of shower curtains in airplane cockpits that have virtually no equipment are just a few of the trademarks of that Edward D. Wood Jr. production. When criticized for their innumerable flaws, Wood would cheerfully explain his interpretation of the suspension of disbelief. It's not so much that he made movies so badly without regard to realism--the amazing part is that he managed to get them made at all.

His previous film with Lugosi, Bride of the Monster (1955), was no better (unbelievably, it somehow managed to earn a small profit during its original release, undoubtedly more of a testament to how cheaply it was produced than its value as entertainment), and Wood only shot a few seconds of silent footage of Lugosi (doped and dazed, wandering around the front yard of his house) for "Plan 9" before the actor died in August 1956. What few reviews the film received were brutal. Typically undaunted, Wood soldiered on despite incoherent material and a microscopic budget, peopling it with his regular band of mostly inept actors. Given the level of dialog, budget and Wood's dismal directorial abilities, it's unlikely that better actors would have made much of a difference (lead actor Gregory Walcott made his debut in this film and went on to have a very respectable career as a character actor, but was always embarrassed by his participation in this film)--in fact, it's the film's semi-official status as arguably the Worst Film Ever Made that gives it its substantial cult following. The film, financed by a local Baptist congregation led by Wood's landlord, reaches a plateau of ineptitude that tends to leave viewers open-mouthed, wondering what is it they just saw. "Plan 9" became, whether Wood realized it or not, his singular enduring legacy. Ironically, the rights to the film were retained by the church and it is unlikely that Wood ever received a dime from it; his epic bombed upon release in 1959 and remained largely forgotten for years to come.

After this career "peak," Wood went into, relatively speaking, a decline. Always an "enthusiastic"--for lack of a better word--drinker, his alcohol addiction worsened in the 1960s due to his depression of not achieving the worldwide fame he had always sought. He began to draw away from film directing and focused most of his time on another profession: writing. Beginning in the early 1960s up until his death, Wood wrote at least 80 lurid crime and sex paperback novels in addition to hundreds of short stories and non-fiction pieces for magazines and daily newspapers. Thirty-two stories known to be written by Wood (he sometimes wrote under pseudonyms such as "Ann Gora" and "Dr. T.K. Peters") are collected in 'Blood Splatters Quickly', published by OR Books in 2014. Novels include Black Lace Drag (1963) (reissued in 1965 as Killer in Drag), Orgy of the Dead (1965), Devil Girls (1967), Death of a Transvestite (1967), The Sexecutives (1968), The Photographer (1969), Take It Out in Trade (1970), The Only House in Town (1970), Necromania (1971), The Undergraduate (1972), A Study of Fetishes and Fantasies (1973) and Fugitive Girls (1974).

In 1965, Wood wrote the quasi-memoir 'Hollywood Rat Race', which was eventually published in 1998. In it, Wood advises new writers to "just keep on writing. Even if your story gets worse, you'll get better", and also recounts tales of dubious authenticity, such as how he and Bela Lugosi entered the world of nightclub cabaret.

In the 1970s, Wood directed a number of undistinguished softcore and later hardcore adult porno films under various aliases, one of which is the name "Akdov Telmig" ("vodka gimlet" spelled backwards; it helps to imagine that you're a boozy dyslexic, as Ed Wood was). His final years were spent largely drunk in his apartment and occasionally being rolled stumbling out of a local liquor store. Three days before his death, Wood and his wife Kathy were evicted from their Hollywood apartment due to failure to pay the rent and moved into a friend's apartment shortly before his death on the afternoon of December 10, 1978, at age 54. He had a heart attack and died while drinking in bed.

Due to his recent resurgence in popularity, many of his equally interesting transgender - themed sex novels have been republished. The gravitational pull of Planet Angora remains quite strong.

Denver-born supporting actress Irene Tedrow is another in a long line of "I know the face...but not the name" character actors whose six-decade career was known more for its durability than for the greatness of roles she played. Born in 1907, she was a lady primarily of the stage, beginning her acting career as a teen. She trained in drama at Carnegie Tech in Pittsburgh, PA, graduating with a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1929. A slim, handsome woman in her early days, her features grew more severe with age, which ultimately typed her as puritanical meddlers and no-nonsense matrons practically from her entrance into film in 1937. She seldom, if ever, found a meaty part, appearing way, way down the list of credits, if at all. A founding member of the Old Globe Theatre, she was featured in such classical productions as "Richard III," "Hamlet" and "Henry IV, Part I." She became a primary player on radio during the war years, notably for the maternal role of Mrs. Janet Archer in the popular serial Meet Corliss Archer (1950), which she transferred to TV for one season. Her radio role lasted for nine years (43-52). Irene appeared in hundreds of episodic guest appearances for nearly 35 years in everything Dragnet (1951), The Andy Griffith Show (1960), and The Twilight Zone (1959) to the more recent The Facts of Life (1979), St. Elsewhere (1982) and L.A. Law (1986). Never a regular series player, she is probably best remembered as the kindly Mrs. Elkins who appeared occasionally on the Dennis the Menace (1959) sitcom. Over the years, Irene never abandoned the stage, gracing a number of shows in her senior years including "Our Town" on Broadway, plus "Foxfire," "The Hot L. Baltimore" and "Pygmalion." Continuing to work as an octogenarian, she died of a stroke at age 87 in the Los Angeles area.

Eleanor Audley was an American actress, with a distinctive voice that helped her find work as a voice actress in radio and animation. She is primarily remembered as the first actress to voice Lady Tremaine and Maleficent, two of the most memorable Disney villains.

Audley's real name was Eleanor Zellman, and she was from New York City. She was Jewish, but little is known about her family background and she apparently never married.

She made her acting debut in 1926, aged 20, at the Broadway production of "Howdy, King". She remained primarily a theatrical actress through the 1920s and the 1930s. During the 1940s, Audley started playing a number of prominent roles in radio serials. Among them was mother-in-law Leticia Cooper in "My Favorite Husband" (1948-51), receptionist Molly Byrd in "The Story of Dr. Kildare" (1949-51), and neighbor, Elizabeth Smith in "Father Knows Best" (1949-54).

Audley was hired by Disney to play the role of wealthy widow Lady Tremaine in the animated feature film "Cinderella" (1950). Audley was also used as the live-action model of the character, and her facial features were used by the animators who designed the character. In the film, Lady Tremaine is depicted as the abusive stepmother of Cinderella (voiced by Ilene Woods) and the domineering mother of Anastasia Tremaine (voiced by Lucille Bliss) and Drizella Tremaine (voiced by Rhoda Williams). The film was a box office hit, and its profits helped rescue the Disney studio from a financial decline that had lasted for almost a decade.

For the rest of the decade, Audley appeared regularly in supporting roles in film, and guest roles in television. She returned to animation when hired to voice the evil fairy Maleficent in "Sleeping Beauty" (1959). As before, Audley was also used as a live-action model for the character. During the film's production, Audley was struggling with tuberculosis. While nominally the villain, Maleficent received more screen-time in the finished film than titular protagonist Princess Aurora (voiced by singer Mary Costa).

"Sleeping Beauty" had box office receipts of more than $51 million in the U.S. and Canada, against a budget of $6 million. It finished the year second in ticket sales, behind the number one film, "Ben-Hur." Audley was not invited to voice other villains. The film earned critical and popular acclaim through later re-releases, and Maleficent has been revived many times by Disney. But never with her original voice actress.

In the 1960s, Audley played supporting roles in then-popular television series. Among her most prominent roles were Irma Lumpkin in "The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis", Peggy Billings in "The Dick Van Dyke Show", Millicent Schuyler-Potts in "The Beverly Hillbillies" , Aunt Martha in "Mister Ed", Jenny Teasley in "Pistols 'n' Petticoats", Eunice Douglas in "Green Acres", and Beatrice Vincent in "My Three Sons".

Audley worked with Disney again to voice psychic medium Madame Leota in the Haunted Mansion attractions in Disneyland and Walt Disney World. Leota is depicted as a ghost who communicates with the living, and other actresses have since voiced the character.

Her long career ended prematurely in the 1970s, due to increasingly poor health. She lived in retirement until her death in 1991, at the age of 86. The cause of death was respiratory failure. Audley was interred at the Mount Sinai Memorial Park Cemetery in Los Angeles. Her character of Madame Leota received its own tombstone in 2001. The epitaph reads: "Dear sweet Leota, beloved by all. In regions beyond now, but having a ball."

The 14th of 16 children born to an air conditioning repairman, Henry Richard Hall (he got the name "Huntz" from a brother who said his large nose made him look German) was anything but the tough street kid he played in the East Side Kids/Bowery Boys films. He made his stage debut at the age of 1 in a play called "Thunder on the Left"; after graduating from a Catholic grammar school, he attended New York's famous Professional Children's School, was a boy soprano with the Madison Square Quintette, and appeared in an experimental 1932 television broadcast. Actor/director Martin Gabel got him an audition for the play "Dead End", and Hall got the part because he could imitate a machine gun to playwright Sidney Kingsley's satisfaction. Hall appeared in a total of 81 East Side Kids/Bowery Boys features and serials, more than any other actor. In 1940 he married 18-year-old dancer Elsie May Anderson (they divorced in 1944). During WWII Hall enlisted in the Army, and after his discharge returned to Hollywood, where his first jobs were in war films playing soldiers (for his impressive work in A Walk in the Sun (1945) he received the New York Theatre Critics Circle Blue Ribbon Award).

In 1948 Hall found himself in the same kind of jam as did Robert Mitchum -- getting arrested for possession of marijuana, but he was acquitted by a jury. After the trial Hall married showgirl Leslie Wright. In the early 1950s, Hall and former Bowery Boys actor Gabriel Dell teamed up and for a "Hall and Dell" nightclub act that was so successful it cost both men their marriages; in 1953 Hall's and Dell's wives both sued for divorce, claiming the men thought more of the act than they did of them. In 1954 Hall was arrested for fighting with the manager of a building where he was attending a party; apparently the party was too noisy and the manager told the occupants to quiet down. Hall took offense at this, a fight ensued and Hall was arrested for assault, for which he paid a $50 fine and was put on probation. In 1959 he was arrested on a drunk driving charge. Having stayed out of trouble for quite some time now, Hall has been content in retirement, with occasional film and television work (not that he needed the money; in addition to owning 10% of the Bowery Boys pictures, Hall made some wise oil and gas investments that paid off handsomely).

Excellent, prolific and versatile character actor Michael Pataki had a long, varied and impressive career in both movies and TV shows, alike, that spanned a little over 50 years. Pataki was born on January 16, 1938 in Youngstown, Ohio. He attended the University of Southern California as a double major in Drama and Political Science. Michael made his film debut with an uncredited small part in the 1958 feature, Ten North Frederick (1958). However, it was his acclaimed acting on stage in 1966 at a summer stock festival in Edinburgh that really launched Pataki's career. Although usually cast as mean and unlikable antagonistic characters, Michael on occasion portrayed more appealing folks with equal skill and conviction. Pataki gave a superbly chilling and compelling performance as vicious bloodsucker "Caleb Croft" in the creepy horror winner, Grave of the Vampire (1972). Other memorable roles included nasty biker "Snake" in The Dirt Gang (1972), Marianna Hill's weak masochistic boyfriend "Dennis" in the perverse The Baby (1973), the lecherous "Sergeant Ward" in the crummy, The Bat People (1974), hi-jacker "Wilson" in Airport '77 (1977), Dracula's modern-day descendant "Michael Drake" in the hilariously horrible Dracula's Dog (1977), sleazy bounty hunter "Harry Iverson" in The Glove (1979), hard-nosed "District Attorney Dino Fulgoni" in the splendidly gritty The Onion Field (1979), oddball cemetery caretaker "Sam" in the offbeat zombie doozy Dead & Buried (1981), ramrod Russian sports official "Nicoli Koloff" in Rocky IV (1985) and the stern "Dr. Hoffman" in Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers (1988). Pataki had a recurring role on the TV series, The Amazing Spider-Man (1977); he also appeared in the two spin-off theatrical pictures, Spider-Man (1970) and Spider-Man Strikes Back (1978). Among the numerous TV shows Michael made guest appearances on are The Twilight Zone (1959), Star Trek (1966), Combat! (1962), Rawhide (1959), My Favorite Martian (1963), Ben Casey (1961), Batman (1966), Mission: Impossible (1966), The Flying Nun (1967), Baretta (1975), Happy Days (1974), McCloud (1970), Barney Miller (1975), Little House on the Prairie (1974), Charlie's Angels (1976), T.J. Hooker (1982), WKRP in Cincinnati (1978), Laverne & Shirley (1976), The Jeffersons (1975), The Fall Guy (1981), Airwolf (1987), St. Elsewhere (1982) and Star Trek: The Next Generation (1987). Moreover, Pataki provided voices for cartoon television programs; he was especially notable as the voice of the demented "George Liquor" on The Ren & Stimpy Show (1991). Michael directed two low-budget 70s drive-in exploitation features for producer Charles Band: the potently unnerving horror shocker, Mansion of the Doomed (1976), and the amusingly silly soft-core comedy musical, Cinderella (1977). In addition, Pataki also worked as an acting coach. Michael died of cancer at age 72 on April 15, 2010 in North Hollywood, California.

American stage actor who appeared frequently on television and occasionally but impressively in films. A Marine Corps veteran of the Second World War, he worked on Broadway and on tour in stage productions after the war. In the late 1950s, he became an increasingly familiar face on American television, following a strong performance in the film Sweet Smell of Success (1957), in which he played the smarmy fellow who gets a dalliance with the unwilling Barbara Nichols in exchange for a favor to Tony Curtis's Sidney Falco. Cads and pompous politicians became White's strong suit, but he achieved his greatest fame as the unctuous Larry Tate on the hit TV series Bewitched (1964). He continued to work in the theatre, particularly as a member of acclaimed Theatre West company in Los Angeles and at the Mark Taper Forum there. In December, 1988, White's 33-year-old son, Jonathan, was killed in the terrorist bombing of Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, UK. White, who had been widowed soon after Jonathan's birth, was embittered and enraged by this new tragedy. He became reclusive for a time, but was returning to some social activity and theatre work when he died of a massive heart attack in 1990, just a few days prior to the second anniversary of his son's death. He was survived by his daughter.

Verna Felton had extensive experience on the stage and in radio before she broke into film and television. Her trademarks was her distinctive husky voice and her no-nonsense attitude. She was quite in demand for voiceover work, as evidenced by her roles in Cinderella (1950), Alice in Wonderland (1951) and Lady and the Tramp (1955). She appeared in many films, but is best remembered as Hilda Crocker in the TV series December Bride (1954), a character she carried over into its spinoff, Pete and Gladys (1960). Verna died in 1966 at 76 years of age of a stroke.

Although his parents were never in show business, as a young boy Oliver Hardy was a gifted singer and, by age eight, was performing with minstrel shows. In 1910 he ran a movie theatre, which he preferred to studying law. In 1913 he became a comedy actor with the Lubin Company in Florida and began appearing in a long series of shorts; his debut film was Outwitting Dad (1914). He appeared in he 1914-15 series of "Pokes and Jabbs" shorts, and from 1916-18 he was in the "Plump and Runt" series. From 1919-21 he was a regular in the "Jimmy Aubrey" series of shorts, and from 1921-25 he worked as an actor and co-director of comedy shorts for Larry Semon.

In addition to appearing in two-reeler comedies, he found time to make westerns and even melodramas in which he played the heavy. He is most famous, however, as the partner of British comic Stan Laurel, with whom he had played a bit part in The Lucky Dog (1921). in the mid-1920s both he and Laurel wee working for comedy producer Hal Roach, although not as a team. In a moment of inspiration Roach teamed them together, and their first film as a team was 45 Minutes from Hollywood (1926). Their first release for Roach through MGM was Sugar Daddies (1927) and the first with star billing was From Soup to Nuts (1928). They became a huge hit as a comedy team, and after several years of two-reelers, Roach decided to star them in features, their first of which was Pardon Us (1931).

They clicked with audiences in features, too, and starred in such classics as Way Out West (1937), March of the Wooden Soldiers (1934) and Block-Heads (1938). They eventually parted ways with Roach and in the mid-1940s signed on with Twentieth Century-Fox.

Unfortunately, Fox did not let them have the autonomy they had at Roach, where Laurel basically wrote and directed their films, though others were credited, and their films became more assembly-line and formulaic. Their popularity waned and less popular during the war years, and they made their last film for Fox in 1946.

Several years later they made their final appearance as a team in a French film, a troubled and haphazard production eventually, after several name changes, called Utopia (1951), generally regarded to be their worst film. Hardy appeared without Laurel in a few features, such as Zenobia (1939) with Harry Langdon, The Fighting Kentuckian (1949) in a semi-comedic role as a frontiersman alongside John Wayne and Riding High (1950), in a cameo role. He died in 1957.

Jane Morgan was born on 6 December 1880 in Warmley, Gloucestershire, England, UK. She was an actress, known for Our Miss Brooks (1952), Our Miss Brooks (1956) and Wendy and Me (1964). She was married to Leo Cullen Bryant. She died on 1 January 1972 in North Hollywood, California, USA.

Helen Walker was a beautiful and bright actress whose career never reached its full potential, in spite of her evident talent. She was a successful actress on Broadway, and in 1942 her performance in the play "Jason" was so impressive that she was signed up to act in films. She immediately earned good notice and received star billing in her film debut, Lucky Jordan (1942), starring Alan Ladd. During the mid-1940s she had continued success with strong performances in offbeat but entertaining and successful films like The Man in Half Moon Street (1944), the satirical Brewster's Millions (1945), and the murder spoof Murder, He Says (1945), which starred Fred MacMurray. Achieving both artistic and box office success, she was clearly on the brink of major stardom. She won the starring role in the prestigious film Heaven Only Knows (1947). But all that changed on New Year's Eve of 1946 when she picked up three hitchhiking World War II veterans while driving to Los Angeles from Palm Springs, where she had been vacationing. She had a terrible accident, hitting a divider and wrecking the car, which flipped several times. One of the soldiers died and the other two were severely injured. Walker herself was seriously injured, including a broken pelvis. But her career suffered even greater and longer-lasting damage. The survivors of the accident accused her of driving drunk and speeding, and she was brought to trial. She suffered bad press and faced a public that was grateful to World War II veterans for having won the war, and was replaced in Heaven Only Knows (1947). Although she was acquitted of criminal charges, many fans turned against her and major studios were hesitant to hire her. She tried to adapt by portraying ruthless and manipulative women in dark murder mysteries, in which she again showed great talent. She performed with great aplomb in Nightmare Alley (1947), the gritty urban police drama Call Northside 777 (1948), and Impact (1949), an unconventional murder drama that featured a fatal automobile accident her character helped cause. But she could not overcome the stigma of the veteran's death. By the 1950s, she was reduced to low-budget films that received little notice. After winning a minor role in the Cornel Wilde police drama The Big Combo (1955), her film career ended and she only appeared in a few television shows. In 1960, she made her last television appearance, and that same year her house burned down. Some remaining friends from show business helped her, with some fellow actresses staging a benefit for her, which touched her deeply. She faded from the public view and during the 1960s she experienced health problems. In 1968, she died of cancer. She was 47 years old.

Rudy Vallee started his career as a saxophone player and singer and later became a bandleader. In the 1920s and early '30s he had a hit radio program, The Fleishmann's Yeast Hour (although his explosive, ego-driven personality made his cast and crew hate him). In the early 1930s he was ranked with the likes of Bing Crosby and the tragic Russ Columbo in the Hit Parade. A huge hit on radio in 1933 with his program, initially known as 'The Fleischmann's Yeast Hour,' Vallee was considered a slavedriver by his staff. He was known to instigate fist fights with virtually anyone who got on his nerves. During his show's run he slugged photographers, threw sheet music at pianists' heads, and socked hecklers in their noses. While audiences loved him, most of his staff hated him. As a very popular star in nightclubs, on records, and in movies, he helped other singers, such as Alice Faye--who was his band singer for a while--and Frances Langford to start their careers. In his early movies he often played the romantic lead, but later he switched to stuffy and comic parts. He also appeared on Broadway. The mid-'60s Broadway hit "How To Succeed in Business Without Really Trying" was filmed in 1967 with him in his original Broadway role.

At the age of 13, Howard Caine (family name Cohen) moved with his family from his hometown of Nashville, Tennessee, to New York City, where he began studying acting. Learning to erase his Southern accent, he went on to became a master of 32 foreign and American dialects. After service in the Navy during WWII, Caine continued his studies at The School of Drama, Columbia University, where he graduated Summa Cum Laude.

He was featured on Broadway in "Wonderful Town", "Inherit the Wind", "Lunatics and Lovers", and "Tiger at the Gates". He replaced Ray Walston as "Mr. Applegate" (an incarnation of the Devil) in Broadway's "Damn Yankees". He was featured in such films as From the Terrace (1960), Pay or Die! (1960), Judgment at Nuremberg (1961), The Man from the Diners' Club (1963), Pressure Point (1962) and Alvarez Kelly (1966). He co-starred with Godfrey Cambridge and Estelle Parsons in Watermelon Man (1970), and played Lewis Morris of New York in 1776 (1972). He was a member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Science.

He acted in more than 750 live and filmed TV shows, but is perhaps best remembered as Gestapo Maj. Hochstetter on the classic Hogan's Heroes (1965), a role he played for the series' entire six-year run. He was featured as Everett Scovill, a thinly disguised portrait of Charles Manson's attorney Irving Kanarek, on the CBS two-part TV Movie of the Week, Helter Skelter (1976).

He had always been fascinated with the Appalachian five-string banjo, and began mastering it in the mid-1960s. Since the summer of 1970 until his untimely death in 1993, he had taken trophies at 29 prominent banjo and fiddle contests in the Southland for both Best Traditional Banjo and Traditional Singing. He was also a popular folk singer and appeared at a number of prominent folk clubs and folk festivals.

Starting out as a rodeo cowboy and then becoming a stuntman in silent westerns, Yakima Canutt later doubled for such stars as Clark Gable and John Wayne, among others, in such dangerous activities as jumping off the top of a cliff on horseback, leaping from a stagecoach onto its runaway team, being "shot" off a horse at full gallop and other such potentially life-threatening activities. He became expert at staging massive events involving livestock, such as cattle stampedes and covered-wagon races, as well as Indians-vs.-cavalry battles on a grand scale. Canutt's most noteworthy achievement as a second-unit director came in his staging and direction of the chariot-race sequence in William Wyler 's Ben-Hur (1959)--which, from initial planning to final execution, took two years.

Tom Neal is best remembered for his off-screen exploits, which involved scandal, mayhem and a charge of murder. Before his 1938 screen debut in MGM's Out West with the Hardys (1938), Neal had been a member of the boxing team at Northwestern University, had debuted on the Broadway stage in 1935 and had received a law degree from Harvard, also in 1938. Throughout the 1940s and into the 1950s, he appeared mostly as tough guys in Hollywood low-budgeters. In 1951, in a dispute over the on-again / off-again affections and the wavering allegiance of notorious actress / "party girl" Barbara Payton, he mixed it up with Payton's paramour, the aristocratic actor Franchot Tone. The former college boxer Neal inflicted upon Tone a smashed cheekbone, a broken nose and a brain concussion. Hollywood essentially blackballed Neal thereafter, but he would come to find a livelihood in gardening and landscaping. He was brought to trial in 1965 for the murder of his wife Gale, who had been shot to death with a .45-caliber bullet to the back of her head. Prosecutors sought the death penalty for Neal, which at the time meant a trip to the cyanide-gas chamber. The trial jury, however, convicted him only of "involuntary manslaughter", for which he was sentenced to 10 years in jail.

On 7 December 1971 he was released on parole, having served exactly six years to the day. Eight months later, Tom Neal was dead of heart failure.

Achieving both film and TV notice during his lengthy career, this diminutive Asian-American character was born Victor Cheung Young on October 18, 1915 in San Francisco to Chinese emigrants. When his mother died during the influenza epidemic of 1918-19, his father placed Victor and his sister in a children's shelter and returned to China, returning to the USA in the mid-1920s, having remarried. The two children were released back to his guardianship, and began learning Chinese. To contribute to the family income, young Sen Yew was employed as a houseboy at age 11 and managed to earn his way through college at the University of California at Berkeley with an interest in animal husbandry and receiving a degree in economics.

Following a move to Hollywood for some post graduate work at UCLA and USC, Victor gained an entrance into films via extra work, where he was in such roles as a peasant boy in The Good Earth (1937), and a soldier in Mr. Moto Takes a Chance (1938), among others. During this early period he also worked as a salesman for a chemical firm. In one of Hollywood's more interesting tales of being "discovered", the story goes that Victor (as he would become known) was on the 20th Century-Fox studio lot at the time trying to pitch one of his company's flame retardant compounds to industry techies when one of them suggested he check out casting. The original actor who had played Charlie Chan, Warner Oland, died and the series was undergoing a major casting overhaul. In the end, Sidney Toler, received cast approval, chose the fledgling actor following a screen test to play his #2 son, Jimmy Chan, for the film Charlie Chan in Honolulu (1938). Victor went on to play the role for seventeen other "Charlie Chan" features. Needless, to say he quit the sales business for good.

Victor enjoyed playing Jimmy, the earnest rookie detective who, to his chagrin, was always under the watchful eye of his famous father while trying to help solve murder cases. Outside the role, however, Victor (billed variously as Sen Yung, Victor Yung, and Victor Sen Yung at different times) found the atmosphere oppressive. Usually cast in nothing-special Asian stereotypes, sometimes villainous, in war-era films, parts in such movies as The Letter (1940) starring Bette Davis, Secret Agent of Japan (1942), Little Tokyo, U.S.A. (1942), Moontide (1942), Across the Pacific (1942), Manila Calling (1942), China (1943) and Night Plane from Chungking (1943), did little to advance his stature in Hollywood. His career was interrupted for U.S. Air Force duty as a Captain of Intelligence during WWII. His part in the Chan pictures was taken over by actor Benson Fong.

Victor was able to pick up where he left off in Hollywood following the war and returned to his famous role as #2 son. The character's name, however, was eventually changed from "Jimmy" to "Tommy" after a third installment of Charlie Chan pictures were filmed with Roland Winters now the title sleuth after the death of Toler in 1947. While Victor's workload was fairly steady, again the roles themselves were meager and hardly inspiring. Most were in "B" level crime mysteries and war pictures and many were uncredited roles. Reduced often to playing middle-age servile roles (houseboys, laundrymen, valets, clerks, dock workers and waiters), some of his slightly more prominent roles include those in Woman on the Run (1950), Forbidden (1953), Target Hong Kong (1953), and Trader Tom of the China Seas (1954). His last film appearance was in The Man with Bogart's Face (1980).

On TV, he appeared in two familiar recurring roles. On the John Forsythe series, Bachelor Father (1957), he showed up as "Peter Fong" on the final season of the sitcom. He played the cousin to houseboy Sammee Tong's regular character. Victor is better remembered, however, for the part of Hop Sing, the earnest, volatile cook to the Cartwright clan, provided sporadic comic relief on Bonanza (1959). He also appeared in the TV pilot and in several episodes of Kung Fu (1972), as well as popping up in dramatic episodes of Hawaiian Eye (1959), The F.B.I. (1965). and Hawaii Five-O (1968). Sitcoms gave a hint of his gentle, humorous side in Here's Lucy (1968), Get Smart (1965) and Mister Ed (1961).

Married and divorced with one child, he sought work outside of acting by the mid-1970s. At one point he was giving cooking demonstrations in department stores. An accomplished chef who specialized in Cantonese-style cooking, in 1974, he published the 1974 Great Wok Cookbook and dedicated the book to his father, Sen Gam Yung.

Victor Sen Yung was working on a second cookbook when he was suddenly found dead in November of 1980 under initially "mysterious circumstances" in his modest San Fernando Valley bungalow. Following an investigation it was determined that Victor was accidentally asphyxiated in his sleep after turning on a faulty kitchen stove for heat. He was survived by his son, Brent Kee Young, and two grandchildren.

Kathleen Case was born on 31 July 1933 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA. She was an actress, known for Human Desire (1954), Running Wild (1955) and Junction City (1952). She died on 22 July 1979 in North Hollywood, California, USA.

Ramon Novarro was born José Ramón Gil Samaniego on February 6, 1899 in Durango, Mexico, to Leonor (Gavilan) and Dr. Mariano N. Samaniego Siqueiros, a prosperous dentist. Ramon and his family moved to Los Angeles in 1913, as refugees from the Mexican Revolution. After stints as a ballet dancer, piano teacher and singing waiter, he became a film extra in 1917. For five years he remained an extra until director Rex Ingram cast him as Rupert in The Prisoner of Zenda (1922). He was cast with Lewis Stone and Ingram's wife, Alice Terry (Ingram was also the person who suggested that he change his name to Novarro). He worked with Ingram in his next four films and was again teamed with Terry in the successful Scaramouche (1923). Novarro's rising popularity among female moviegoers resulted in his being billed as the "New Valentino". In 1925 he appeared in his most famous role, as the title character in Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ (1925), and later co-starred with Norma Shearer in The Student Prince in Old Heidelberg (1927). His first talking picture was Call of the Flesh (1930), where he sang and danced the tango. He continued to appear in musicals, but his popularity was slipping. He starred with Greta Garbo in the successful Mata Hari (1931), but his career began to fade fast. In 1935 he left MGM and appeared on Broadway in a show that quickly flopped. His later career, when he was able to find work in films, consisted mostly of cameos. On October 30th, 1968, Ramon Novarro was savagely beaten in his North Hollywood home by two young hustlers. They had heard - in error - that he had thousands of dollars locked away somewhere in his home. They never found any money, and Ramon was discovered dead the next day by his servant.

The man behind the low woodwinds that open Citizen Kane (1941), the shrieking violins of Psycho (1960), and the plaintive saxophone of Taxi Driver (1976) was one of the most original and distinctive composers ever to work in film. He started early, winning a composition prize at the age of 13 and founding his own orchestra at the age of 20. After writing scores for Orson Welles's radio shows in the 1930s (including the notorious 1938 "The War of the Worlds" broadcast), he was the obvious choice to score Welles's film debut, Citizen Kane (1941), and, subsequently, The Magnificent Ambersons (1942), although he removed his name from the latter after additional music was added without his (or Welles's) consent when the film was mutilated by a panic-stricken studio. Herrmann was a prolific film composer, producing some of his most memorable work for Alfred Hitchcock, for whom he wrote nine scores. A notorious perfectionist and demanding (he once said that most directors didn't have a clue about music, and he blithely ignored their instructions--like Hitchcock's suggestion that Psycho (1960) have a jazz score and no music in the shower scene). He ended his partnership with Hitchcock after the latter rejected his score for Torn Curtain (1966) on studio advice. He was also an early experimenter in the sounds used in film scores, most famously The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951), scored for two theremins, pianos, and a horn section; and was a consultant on the electronic sounds created by Oskar Sala on the mixtrautonium for The Birds (1963). His last score was for Martin Scorsese's Taxi Driver (1976) and died just hours after recording it. He also wrote an opera, "Wuthering Heights", and a cantata, "Moby Dick".

Former stage actor and playwright - he wrote over 150 plays and vaudeville sketches - Hugh Herbert went, in the early 1930s to Hollywood, as a comedian. In the 1930s he worked mostly for Warner Bros., impersonating often eccentric millionaires, tycoons and dimwitted professors. In a few movies he collaborated on the screenplays, e.g. on "Gold Diggers of 1935" and "Hit Parade of 1941".