Movie, TV and stage actor Robert Horton has died » Boyd Magers at the Western Clippings website has reported that Robert Horton, an actor best known for the western TV series “Wagon Train” has died. He was 91 years old. Horton played scout Flint McCullough on “Wagon Train” from 1957-1962, quitting the series to explore other pursuits as an actor. He left the show right around the time the star, Ward Bond, died in 1961 [actually he died in 1960], and the series moved from NBC to ABC. He was replaced by Robert Fuller. [Technically Horton was not replaced by Fuller. Horton left in 1962, Fuller joined the show in 1963.] Horton made many film appearances, including Lewis Milestone’s “A Walk in the Sun” and the cult sci-fi favorite, “The Green Slime.” He was on such TV shows as “The Lone Ranger,” and also several dramatic anthology series. On one of these, “King’s Row,” he played the role Ronald Reagan made famous in the movie version. Another interesting television appearance was as an amnesiac in the series “A Man Called Shenandoah.” Along with his TV and movie work, Horton appeared often on stage. Possessing a fine singing voice, Horton enjoyed success in musical theater, including a 330-performance run on Broadway in a musical version of “The Rainmaker.” Receiving many lifetime awards for television, including the Golden Boot Award honoring western actors, Horton stopped acting in 1989 and quit making personal appearances in 2009. Horton died in a Los Angeles rehabilitation center. Robert Horton always seemed to me like the prototype for a TV (as opposed to movie) western star. His face was rugged, but his voice was soft and his manner low-key -- perfect for the cool medium of television.
Joe Santos, best remembered as Sgt. Dennis Becker on The Rockford Files, has died at the age of 84. Santos proved to have excellent chemistry with Rockford star James Garner, and he was an important part of TV's greatest private eye show. http://www.tmz.com/2016/03/18/joe-santos-the-rockford-files-dead/#ixzz43HC8lvz8
Oscar-winning film editor Jim Clark Jim Clark obituary » Jim Clark (right) with John Schlesinger Why film editor Jim Clark was Hollywood’s greatest repairman » One of the many adages that circulate in the movie business is that every film is made three times: once when it is written, once when it is shot and once, finally, when it is edited. Like many an old saw it is true, but I believe that it is a truth that can only really be recognised by people who have been physically involved in the making of a film. I don’t think audiences, or film critics or film theorists, for that matter, have any real idea of how a film can be totally reshaped and reinvented in the cutting room. As a film-maker, you hope that the editing process is merely an enhancement of your original vision – but sometimes what occurs in the cutting room can be something entirely new. In that regard great editors can be as important as great film directors or great screenwriters. They can be equal auteurs of a film, when called on – but that is usually when a film is in deep trouble. Jim Clark (who died on 25 February at the age of 84) was a great editor – a great British editor – and, indeed, something of a legend in the industry. His career spans a vast swath of British and American film history, from Ealing comedies in the 1950s, to Stanley Donen’s Charade with Cary Grant and Audrey Hepburn, to a Brosnan Bond, all the way to Mike Leigh’s Happy-Go-Lucky in 2008, the last film he edited. He was known in the business as “Dr Clark” because very frequently he was called on when a film was sick and he was needed to make it well again. His most famous work of doctoring was for Midnight Cowboy (1969). John Schlesinger was the director, and he realised, when he tried to cut the film together, that it was in dire straits. Jim was called (he and Schlesinger had collaborated on other films) and went to work. He recut the film in its entirety, and it was his idea to put Harry Nilsson singing “Everybody’s Talkin’” on the soundtrack. It is impossible to imagine Midnight Cowboy without Nilsson singing that song. Jim’s new cut won the film three Oscars – including one for Schlesinger’s direction and one for “Best Film”. If there was ever an instance of a film being remade a third time in the cutting room, then Midnight Cowboy is the shining exemplar. Everybody thinks Jim also won an Oscar for his heroic editing job, but his credit on the finished movie is only “creative consultant”. There are no Oscars for creative consultants, however vital they are. Jim did win an Oscar later, however, for The Killing Fields in (1984). So Clark was responsible for Midnight Cowboy's greatest scene? (The montage after Joe Buck is first conned by Ratso)
Boot Hill: RIP Peter Brown » Producer Rob Word and actress Barbara Luna have passed on word that actor Peter Brown died Monday March 21st in Phoenix, Arizona. Peter had been suffering from complications of Parkinson’s Disease, Cancer and Dementia. He was 81. Brown is best remembered as Deputy Johnny McKay on TV’s Lawman (1958-1962) and as Chad Cooper on Laredo (1965-1967).
Rita Gam Dead: Glamorous Actress Was 88 » Rita Gam, a glamorous actress who starred in such exotic films as Saadia with Cornel Wilde, Sign Of The Pagan with Jack Palance as Attila the Hun and Nicholas Ray's biblical King of Kings, died Tuesday. She was 88. Gam, who was director Sidney Lumet's first wife and a bridesmaid at Grace Kelly's 1956 wedding to Prince Rainier, died of respiratory failure at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, publicist Nancy Willen said. Gam also appeared opposite Gregory Peck in Night People (1954) and Shoot Out (1971), in William Dieterle's Magic Fire (1955), with Victor Mature in Hannibal (1959) and with Jane Fonda in Alan J. Pakula's Klute (1971).
Movie and TV actor Richard Bradford has died » Texas-born actor Richard Bradford has died at the age of 81. He appeared in several notable films including The Chase (1966), The Missouri Breaks (1976), The Trip to Bountiful (1985), The Untouchables (1987), and The Crossing Guard (1995), among his over 80 film and TV credits. Bradford played the lead in the Medical Center pilot, but was replaced for the series by Chad Everett. Could this have been b/c Bradford rocked the premature gray look a la Jeff Chandler, and the studio wanted to skew younger? I understand Bradford has something of a cult following in the UK thanks to his late '60s TV series Man In A Suitcase. I've never seen the show -- perhaps one of our British posters could give more details.
Bradford's image was used on the cover of The Smith's Panic. RIP: FRIDAY NIGHT BOYS: Richard Bradford RIP »
Actress Margaret Blye, Star of the Original ‘The Italian Job,’ Dies at 73 » Houston-born actress Margaret "Maggie" Blye has died at the age of 73. Every obit I've seen leads with her playing Michael Caine's girlfriend in The Italian Job: But IMHO her best roles were in two 1967 westerns. With James Coburn in the offbeat black comedy Waterhole #3: And as the flirtatious newlywed on the stagecoach in the classic Hombre:
William Schallert Dead: ‘Patty Duke Show's’ Dad Was 93 » The prolific character actor also was memorable on 'The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis,' 'Star Trek' and 'In the Heat of the Night.' William Schallert, an amazingly busy “everyman” character actor for nearly seven decades who had trouble on television with Tribbles, Dobie Gillis and those identical two-of-a-kind cousins played by Patty Duke, has died. He was 93. “In 1959, I probably set an individual record. I worked 57 times in [that] year; that’s more than once a week!” he told the Archive of American Television in a 2012 interview. He noted there were 105 TV series in production in L.A. that year, many doing 39 episodes a season (and no reruns ever aired). “The variety of television parts available is fantastic,” he told The Milwaukee Journal in 1960. “In the past year, for instance, I have appeared as an old, feuding hillbilly; a vicious prosecuting attorney; an intelligent psychiatrist; a submarine commander; a blind ex-tennis player; a priest; a bartender; a hard-bitten Civil War major; an acidulous high-school teacher; a Bowery bum; and now [a police lieutenant.]” Oh, and later he was the voice of Milton the Toaster, the long-running spokesman in commercials for Kellogg’s Pop-Tarts.
(He was a father of the "auteur theory", so IMHO his influence was ultimately quite damaging. But attention must be paid.) R.I.P. Alexandre Astruc, “the uncle of the French New Wave” » The French critic, filmmaker, and novelist Alexandre Astruc, an important influence on the New Wave and on the artistic innovations that defined American and European cinema in the 1960s and ’70s, died in Paris earlier today. A dandy and intellectual omnivore, Astruc was equally passionate about beautiful women and mathematics, great literature and good food, but he left his biggest mark on film, where his eloquent early writings laid the groundwork for the cult of the auteur. He was 92. Born in Paris, Astruc fell in with the city’s intellectual and literary circles during the years of the Occupation, eventually establishing himself as a prolific journalist and critic in Paris’ post-war Left Bank scene. This was the romanticized era of smoky cafes and existentialists—but also of film clubs, small membership-based screening and discussion groups in which many of the values we now associate with both film criticism and filmmaking first formed. Astruc himself was a co-founder of Objectif 49, run by a group of Parisian critics that included André Bazin, the critic whose brief, remarkable career effectively changed the course of film in the West. Other members included filmmakers Jean Cocteau and Robert Bresson, writer Raymond Queneau, and a teenage François Truffaut. Objectif 49—where the likes of Orson Welles, Roberto Rossellini, and Preston Sturges would come in to present their films—was one of the most influential film clubs of the era, and would eventually merge with Éric Rohmer’s Ciné-club Du Quartier Latin to create the seminal film magazine Cahiers Du Cinéma. Around the start of Objectif 49, Astruc published what would be his most influential piece of criticism, an essay in the magazine L’Écran Français called “The Birth Of A New Avant-Garde: The Camera-Pen,” which outlined an ideal of filmmaking in which the director “writes with his camera as a writer writes with his pen.” (Those who’ve never read the essay—one of the most important film texts of its time—are advised to now.) Astruc’s explicitly literary formulation would have a tremendous impact on the next decade of film theory, leading to the ideal of the auteur (French for author), a director able to express a novelist’s depth through their control of film style.
Voice of Judy Jetson, Janet Waldo, dies at age 96 » Voice actress Janet Waldo, best known for such cartoon characters as Judy Jetson, Penelope Pitstop and Josie (of the Pussycats) has died. She was 96 years old. Janet was born in Yakima Washington and got into acting in 1938 with small roles in several films. She was leading lady in some westerns featuring Tim Holt at RKO, being loaned out from her home studio of Paramount. In the early 1940s, Janet’s distinctive voice got her a radio contract. She appeared in regular roles on such series as “One Man’s Family,” “The Gallant Heart,” “The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet.” “The Eddie Bracken Show,” and in the title role on “Meet Corliss Archer.” Janet also worked extensively on television, reprising her regular role on Ozzie and Harriet’s show, as well as in a memorable performance as Peggy Dawson on “I Love Lucy.” She started doing cartoon voiceovers in 1962 with Judy Jetson on “The Jetsons,” and continuing to do voice work on several other animated series. Her other most noted cartoon role would be Penelope Pitstop. While voicing cartoons, Waldo continued to appear on TV in episodes of such programs as “The Andy Griffith Show,” “Get Smart,” and “Petticoat Junction,” but by the 1970s, she was almost exclusively concentrating on animation. Janet Waldo remained active into the 1990s on animated series (including a guest voiceover stint on “King of the Hill”) and radio “Adventures in Odyssey.”
Ann Morgan Guilbert of 'The Dick Van Dyke' show dies » NEW YORK (AP) — Veteran actress Ann Morgan Guilbert, beloved as the next-door neighbor on The Dick Van Dyke Show and seen recently on CBS' comedy Life in Pieces, has died. Guilbert died of cancer in Los Angeles on Tuesday, her daughter Nora Eckstein said. She was 87. She marked her first TV appearance in 1961 on My Three Sons. Recent TV appearances included Getting On and a guest shot on Grey's Anatomy. Having endeared herself to audiences playing neighbor Millie Helper on the acclaimed Van Dyke comedy in the early 1960s, some 30 years later she was a regular (and memorable) as feisty Grandma Yetta on the 1990s sitcom The Nanny. A graduate of Stanford, Guilbert also had extensive theater credits, including the 2005 Broadway play The Naked Girl on the Appian Way, and productions of The Matchmaker, Arsenic and Old Lace and Harvey. She was married twice. After her marriage to producer-writer George Eckstein ended in divorce, she married actor Guy Raymond, who died in 1997.
Bud Spencer The Italian actor and film maker Bud Spencer has died at the age of 86 in Rome. Starring in a series of comedies and spaghetti westerns in the 1960 and 70s, Spencer became a household name. Born Carlo Pedersoli in 1929 in Naples, Spencer was a professional swimmer in his youth and became the first Italian to swim 100 metres freestyle in less than a minute. ------ It wasn’t until the late 1960s that his acting career took off when he teamed up with Terence Hill in over 20 films, beginning with God Forgives..I don’t! The duo went on to make international hits such as Ace High in 1968 and They Call Me Trinity in 1970.
Patty Duke (1946–2016) Actress | Soundtrack | Producer Patty Duke was born Anna Marie Duke on December 14, 1946 in Elmhurst, New York, to Frances Margaret (McMahon), a cashier, and John Patrick Duke, a cab driver and handyman. She is of Irish, and one eighth German, descent. Her acting career began when she was introduced to her brother Ray Duke's managers, John and Ethel Ross. Soon after, Anna Marie ...See full bio Born: December 14, 1946 in Elmhurst, New York, USA Died: March 29, 2016 (age 69) in Coeur d'Alene, Idaho, USA
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/21/a...griffiths-talent-manager-dies-at-98.html?_r=1 Richard Linke, the talent manager who helped transform Andy Griffith from a high school music teacher into an exemplar of folksy American small-town values on one of the most successful television shows of the convulsive 1960s, died on Wednesday at his home on the island of Hawaii. He was 98. Mr. Linke all but discovered Mr. Griffith. He gave him entree to Broadway and Hollywood and collaborated with the producer Sheldon Leonard to create “The Andy Griffith Show,” which stamped Mr. Griffith indelibly as Andy Taylor, the judicious, widowed sheriff who dispensed commonsensical wisdom in the fictional town of Mayberry, N.C. Mr. Linke helped make Mr. Griffith’s “’preciate it” a household phrase. He later did the same with the elongated “Goll-ly!” of another client, Jim Nabors, a lounge singer with a booming baritone who was introduced to a national audience on Mr. Griffith’s show in the role of the bumpkin Gomer Pyle. “The Andy Griffith Show” and later “Matlock,” on which Mr. Griffith starred as a homespun but deceptively savvy defense lawyer, were network television staples for 17 years. Long before he became a television personality, Mr. Griffith, transplanted from North Carolina to New York, had breakout roles on Broadway, in “No Time for Sergeants” in 1955, and in film, in “A Face in the Crowd,” in 1957. In that movie, written by Budd Schulberg and directed by Elia Kazan, he played Lonesome Rhodes, a hillbilly singer who metamorphoses into a megalomaniacal television personality. ===== Mr. Griffith credited Mr. Linke with launching and sustaining a show business career that otherwise might never have gotten gone beyond regional radio. “He led me to agents, he personally took me to auditions,” Mr. Griffith told The New York Times Magazine in 1970. “If there is ever a question about something, I will do what he wants me to do; had it not been for him, I would have gone down the toilet.” Mr. Linke was handling publicity at Capitol Records in 1953 when he became captivated by “What It Was, Was Football,” a recorded comedy routine on which Mr. Griffith narrated a football game from the perspective of a flummoxed first-time spectator. Mr. Linke heard it late one night when, through a crystal-clear sky, his radio picked up the signal of a distant station in the South. Mr. Linke and Hal Cook of Capitol, who had received a copy of the record separately, flew to North Carolina. They bought the rights to the record for the label for $10,000 and negotiated a contract with Mr. Griffith that called for him to receive $300 a week. Mr. Linke signed on as Mr. Griffith’s personal manager while still working for Capitol and eventually became his business partner. He introduced Mr. Griffith to Abe Lastfogel at the William Morris Agency, who booked him on Ed Sullivan’s television variety show, “Toast of the Town,” following a trained camel act — hardly the ideal lead-in. Mr. Griffith survived his debut, and his career soared, especially when Mr. Leonard cast him as Sheriff Taylor and named the show after him. (Mr. Linke was associate producer at the time.) “The Andy Griffith Show” also featured the comic actor Don Knotts as Mr. Griffith’s neurotic deputy, Barney Fife; Ron Howard as his son, Opie; Frances Bavier as his maiden Aunt Bee; and Mr. Nabors as Gomer, the goofball gas station attendant. ===== Mr. Linke once told an advertising salesman from Lever Brothers that his clients were like any other merchandise. “Listen, my business is just like yours,” he recalled explaining in an interview with The New York Times. “A client is like a product: You wrap your package up, merchandise it, and hope it moves off the shelves. Fast.” How fast? “A shortcut to success, that’s what I can give an artist,” he said. “I can save him five, seven years. The big guys at CBS or the William Morris Agency are not gonna hotfoot it out to the Horn in Santa Monica where some unknown guy talks like a hillbilly and sings ‘Pagliacci.’ That’s where I come in. I open all the doors, and that’s what I did with Jim Nabors.” After a while, Hollywood’s heavy hitters were holding doors for him. “I like to be important,” he acknowledged. “I don’t want people, when they hear my name, to say, ‘Who is Dick Linke?’”
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/26/arts/music/marni-nixon-singer-soprano-dies-86.html?_r=0 Marni Nixon, the American cinema’s most unsung singer, died on Sunday in Manhattan. She was 86. Classically trained, Ms. Nixon was throughout the 1950s and ’60s the unseen — and usually uncredited — singing voice of the stars in a spate of celebrated Hollywood films. She dubbed Deborah Kerr in “The King and I,” Natalie Wood in “West Side Story” and Audrey Hepburn in “My Fair Lady,” among many others. =========== At midcentury, Hollywood was more inclined to cast bankable stars than trained singers in films that called for singing. As a result, generations of Americans have grown accustomed to Ms. Nixon’s voice, if not her face, in standards like “Getting to Know You,” from “The King and I”; “I Feel Pretty,” from “West Side Story”; and “I Could Have Danced All Night,” from “My Fair Lady.” Deborah Kerr was nominated for an Academy Award in 1956 for her role as Anna in “The King and I”; the film’s soundtrack album sold hundreds of thousands of copies. For singing Anna’s part on that album, Ms. Nixon recalled, she received a total of $420. Continue reading the main story “You always had to sign a contract that nothing would be revealed,” Ms. Nixon told the ABC News program “Nightline” in 2007. “Twentieth Century Fox, when I did ‘The King and I,’ threatened me.” She continued, “They said, if anybody ever knows that you did any part of the dubbing for Deborah Kerr, we’ll see to it that you don’t work in town again.” Though Ms. Nixon honored the bargain, her work soon became one of Hollywood’s worst-kept secrets. She became something of a cult figure, appearing as a guest on “To Tell the Truth” and as an answer to clues featured by “Jeopardy!,” Trivial Pursuit and at least one New York Times crossword puzzle. ========== Ms. Nixon, who continued singing until she was in her 80s, eventually came to regard her heard-but-not-seen life with affection. She paid it homage in a one-woman show, “Marni Nixon: The Voice of Hollywood,” with which she toured the country for years. She did likewise in a memoir, “I Could Have Sung All Night,” published in 2006. (The memoir was written with a ghost, Stephen Cole, whom Ms. Nixon credited prominently on the cover and the title page.) Myles Eason as Henry Higgins and Marni Nixon as Eliza Doolittle in “My Fair Lady” onstage in 1964.
