The Gallery presents…

Born:  August 28, 1899 in Figeac, France
Died:  August 26, 1978  in Phoenix, Arizona at age 78
Cause of death:  Suicide two days after the death of his wife.
Marriages:  One to British actress Pat Paterson that lasted until her death.  They had one son, Michael who also died by his own hand.

Remarks:  On screen he was a suave, charming matinee idol with hordes of adoring fans and a star on the Hollywood Walk of fame. Off screen, he was a short, balding and bookish  Frenchman so unlike his screen image that Bette Davis once tried to have him removed from the set of “All This and Heaven, Too”.  He met his wife at a dinner party in 1934 and married her 3 months later. “That love at first sight should happen to me was
Life’s most delicious revenge on a self-opinionated fool”.

Born:  December 20,1898 in Louisville, Kentucky
Died:   September 4, 1990 in Los Angeles, California at age 91
Cause of death:  heart failure
Real name:  Irene Marie Dunne
Marriages:  One to dentist Dr. Francis Dennis Griffith (1928-1965) until his death. They adopted a daughter.

Remarks:  She made her stage debut in the 1922 Broadway production of“The Clinging Vine” but gave up her career for Griffith. That promise lasted until the day after the honeymoon when she met Florenz Ziegfeld in the elevator and decided to play the role of Magnolia in “Show Boat” For more on this, see the Gallery in Issue #33.

Born:  July 29, 1876 in Tula,  Russia
Died:  December 3, 1949 in Los Angeles, California at age 73
Cause of death:  a stroke after suffering severe burns in a house fire.
Real Name:  Мария Успенская
Marriages:  None listed

Remarks:  See Character Actor this issue.

Born:  December 28, 1914 in Cincinnati, Ohio
Died:   December 25, 1979 in Brentwood, California at age 64
Cause of death:  a heart attack on Christmas Day 3 days before his 65th birthday.
Marriages:  One to Helene Fleming, director Victor Fleming’s daughter. They had two children.

Remarks:  Lee spent his film career as a second stringer in the romance Department,  very rarely winning the lady fair. He missed out on “Flamingo Road” because Joan Crawford preferred the blond looks of David Brian. He lost a Bette Davis film because Bette thought he looked too young. But, most cutting of all, he couldn’t land the Dauphin role in “Joan of Arc” even though the director was his father-in-law! Television gave him a break and let him win once in a while and he got to play private eye Ellery Queen. But in the 1970s he gave it all up to coach corporate executives in public speaking.

Born:  January 18, 1904 in Horfield, Bristol, England
Died:   November 29, 1986 in Davenport, Iowa at age 82.
Cause of death:  a cerebral hemorrhage before a performance of his  one-man show “An Evening with Cary Grant”.
Real name:  Archibald Alexander Leach
Marriages:  Five, The fifth to actress Dyan Cannon produced a daughter.

Remarks:  It was Leo McCarey’s Oscar-winning direction in “The Awful Truth” that launched Cary’s career so he lost no time in accepting this role. As writer-director Peter Bogdanovich remarked “After The Awful Truth,  when it came to light comedy, there was Cary Grant and then everyone else was an
also-ran.” But the best quote of all came from Cary himself. When he was told “Everyone would like to be Cary Grant” he answered “So would I”.

Born:  September 30, 1921 in Helensburgh, Scotland
Dead:  October 16, 2007 in Suffolk, England at age 86
Cause of death:  complications from Parkinson’s disease
Real name:  Deborah Jane Kerr-Trimmer
Marriages:  Two. The first to Anthony Bartley ended in divorce after 14 years and produced 2 children. The second to Peter Viertel lasted 47 years until her death.

Remarks:  When Deborah did this film her resume already included “Quo Vadis” , “The King and I” and “From Here to Eternity” leaving no doubt that the Scottish lassie could really act!  She would also achieve the record of Oscar nominations without a win. That was remedied in 1994 when she received an honorary Oscar for Lifetime Achievement. In 1968 after completing 46 feature films, Deborah Kerr retired from the screen finding the new emphasis on explicit sex and violence distasteful.

Born:  November 24, 1888 in Cheshire, England
Died:   August 2, 1982 in London, England at age 93
Cause of death:   natural causes
Marriages:  One to actor Cecil Ramage that lasted 62 years until her death although they lived apart many years. They had 3 children.

Remarks:  Cathleen was one of the great beauties of her day and became
engaged to English poet Rupert Brooks who wrote sonnets to her. Brooks was killed in WWI. After her film debut in the silent“A Star Over Night” in 1919, she met and married actor Cecil Ramage. Her first American film was in “Three Coins in the Fountain” in 1954 but she kept busy on the stage as well. In 1956 she played Mrs. Higgins in “My Fair Lady” with Julie
Andrews and Rex Harrison on Broadway and reprised the same role in 1980 at 92.

Born:  March 27, 1914 in Poughkeepsie, New York
Died:   October 11, 1998 in Escondido, California at age 84
Cause of death:  cardiac arrest
Real name:  Louis Albert Heindrich Denninger, Jr.
Marriages:  Two. The first to actress Evelyn Ankers lasted 43 years until her death from cancer in 1985. They had one daughter. In 1986 he married Patricia Leffingwell who survived him.

Remarks:  He graduated cum laude in accounting but the young man with the long name had no heart for numbers. He won a radio contest and a Warner contract where they changed his name because it sounded too much like arch-criminal John Dillinger. Richard made over 91 feature films but is best remembered for his role as Governor of Hawaii Paul Jameson on the CBS series “Hawaii
Five-O” from 1968 to 1980.

Born:  March 30, 1937 in Richmond, Virginia
Real name:  Henry Warren Beaty
Marriages:  One to actress Annette Bening in 1992. They have 4 children.

Remarks:  Warren was playing to type in this role since he had been a star football player in high school. From a family of teachers, his acting genes came from his mother, Kathlyn, a former drama teacher, who also passed them on to sister Shirley MacLaine. Warren won a best Actor Tony nomination for his one and only Broadway appearance in William Inge’s “A Loss of Roses”. His film career is studded with critically acclaimed films like “Bonnie and Clyde” (1967), “Shampoo” (1975) and “Reds’ (he received a Best Director Oscar for that one). Warren Beatty will receive the 36th AFI Lifetime Achievement Award on June 12th,  2008.

Warren Beatty…
….as Mike Gambril

Born:  May 29, 1958 in Topeka, Kansas
Real name:  Annette Francine Bening
Marriages:  Two. The first to choreographer J. Steve White in 1985 lasted only one year. The second to Beatty in 1992 has produced a son and 3 daughters.

Remarks:     By junior high school, Annette was already on her way with  the lead in “Sound of Music” and later went on to earn an academic theater arts degree playing Shakespeare’s Lady Macbeth. She tackled off-Broadway as Holly Dancer in Tina Howe’s “Coastal Disturbances” opposite Tim Daly and then made her film debut in “The Great Outdoors” (1988) with Dan Aykroyd and John Candy. But it was her role as Myra Langtry in “The Grifters” that won her a first Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actress and “Being Julia” won her a second for Best Actress.

Born:  May 12, 1907 in Hartford, Connecticut
Died:   June 29, 2003 in Old Saybrook, Connecticut at age 96
Cause of death:  natural causes
Real name:  Katharine Houghton Hepburn
Marriages:   One to S. Ogden Ludlow that ended in divorce. But her love affair with Spencer Tracy lasted 27 years until his death.

Remarks:  Hepburn’s wit and talent were considered to be one of the bright spots in this film. For more on Kate, see Issue# 32