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East-German postcard by VEB Progress Filmvertrieb, Berlin, no. 237/70. Photo: publicity still for Columna/Trajan's Column (Mircea Dragan, 1968) .
Last Saturday, 6 June 2015, British stage and screen actor and producer Richard Johnson has died, aged 87. He conferred his dark, handsome, saturnine features, assertive jaw, emphatic eyebrows and air of intelligence on scores of classic parts in the theatre, and on a wide range of film and television roles. Johnson was considered for the role of James Bond in the first Bond film, Dr. No. He declined the part down as he did not favour a lengthy contract.
Richard Keith Johnson was born at Upminster, Essex, in 1927, the son of Frances Louisa Olive (née Tweed) and Keith Holcombe Johnson. He was educated at Parkfield School and Felsted School before training for the stage at Rada. He claimed to have started acting as a child and then became a professional actor because it made him feel alive, and less aware of his ‘insufficiencies’. During the Second World War he served in the Royal Navy. His career began with a walk-on part in John Gielgud’s 1944 production of Hamlet in Manchester. He moved to the West End as part of a classical repertoire at the Haymarket where he took small parts in Love for Love, The Circle, and The Duchess of Malfi. Before and after his National Service in the Navy from 1945 to 1948 he was in repertory at Perth. After a season of old melodrama in Camden Town, he was in two West End productions, The Madwoman of Chaillot and After My Fashion, as well as open-air Shakespeare in Regent’s Park, before a season with the Bristol Old Vic company in 1953. He spent the next season in broadcasting, but in 1955 he got his first real break in Jean Anouilh’s version of the Joan of Arc story, The Lark, playing Warwick, one of his favourite parts, to Dorothy Tutin’s Joan. A few months later he was cast as Laertes in Peter Brook’s production of Hamlet, starring Paul Scofield (1955). After two more West End productions, playing Jack Absolute in The Rivals and Lord Plynlimmon in Plaintiff in a Pretty Hat, he joined the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre at Stratford-upon-Avon. Among his roles were Orlando in As You Like It, Mark Antony in Julius Caesar, Leonatus in Cymbeline and Ferdinand in The Tempest, which transferred to Drury Lane in 1957. The following season he played Romeo and Sir Andrew Aguecheek as well as the title role in Pericles and Don John in Much Ado About Nothing, visiting Moscow and Leningrad as Romeo and Aguecheek. During the 1960s Johnson became involved with Sir Peter Hall’s production of Cymbeline, leading to Hall inviting him to join him in the Royal Shakespeare Company. There, in 1961, he acted Hans in Jean Giraudoux’s Ondine. He also gave one of his finest performances as Urbaine in John Whiting’s The Devils, a study of 17th-century witchcraft directed by Peter Brook.
In 1959, Richard Johnson made his film debut in a major co-star role in the MGM war drama Never So Few (John Sturges, 1959), starring Frank Sinatra and Gina Lollobrigida. Subsequently he was contracted by MGM to appear in 1 film per year over 6 years. There he made his biggest films including Robert Wise’s The Haunting (1963), The Pumpkin Eater (Jack Clayton, 1964) and Khartoum (Basil Dearden, Eliot Elisofon, 1966), starring Laurence Olivier and Charlton Heston. In the early 1960s the director Terence Young had wanted Johnson to play James Bond in preference to Sean Connery. Johnson declined because he was under contract to MGM and did not relish the seven-year commitment. If the stardom for which his career seemed to be heading in the cinema of the early 1960s eluded him, he cut a dashingly romantic figure opposite Kim Novak, whom he married in real life at this time (albeit briefly – they divorced a year later), in the all-star romp, The Amorous Adventures of Moll Flanders (Terence Johnson, 1965). Johnson certainly displayed Bond-like qualities in some of his film roles, notably when he played a modern-day Bulldog Drummond (reimagined as a 007-type hero) in Deadlier Than the Male (Ralph Thomas, 1967) with Elke Sommer and Sylva Koscina and its less satisfactory sequel, Some Girls Do (Ralph Thomas, 1969) with Daliah Lavi. In 1969 he founded a production company called Pageant Entertainments Ltd. Its earliest productions included John Aubrey’s Brief Lives at the Criterion (1969). His feature films included the thriller Danger Route (Seth Holt, 1967), Oedipus the King (Philip Saville, 1968), Le calde notti di Lady Hamilton/Lady Hamilton (Christian Jaque, 1968) starring Michèle Mercier, Julius Caesar (Stuart Burge, 1970), and Hennessy (Don Sharp, 1975) for which he also wrote the original story.
Returning to the Royal Shakespeare Company in 1972, Richard Johnson played (both at Stratford and in London) Mark Antony in Julius Caesar, and Antony in Trevor Nunn’s Antony and Cleopatra (opposite Janet Suzman), a performance variously described as “fruity”, “genial” and “declining into a business ruffian”, but also firmly defining the warrior’s handsome gravity. After starring in a West End musical comedy, Thomas and the King, in 1975, in which he played Thomas, he joined the National Theatre Company for a couple of seasons, showing, again under Peter Hall’s direction, a sharp gift for farce in Noël Coward’s Blithe Spirit, and playing Pontius Pilate in The Passion (1977), Pinchwife in Wycherley’s The Country Wife (1977) and Nendor in The Guardsman in 1978. He went on to appear in such films as The Four Feathers (Don Sharp, 1978). He also appeared in several Italian films, including Lucio Fulci's cult classic, Zombi 2/Zombie (1979) which was banned for some years, and L'isola degli uomini pesce/Island of the Fishmen (Sergio Martino, 1979) with Barbara Bach. In 1983 Johnson became founder, chairman, and joint chief executive of a production company, United Artists, with Diana Rigg as director, and the actors Albert Finney and Glenda Jackson. They promoted such films as Turtle Diary (John Irvin, 1985) starring Glenda Jackson and Ben Kingsley, Castaway (Nicolas Roeg, 1986) with Oliver Reed, and The Lonely Passion of Judith Hearne (Jack Clayton, 1987) starring Maggie Smith. He made something of a comeback at Stratford-on-Avon in 1992 as Antony in Antony and Cleopatra, having two years earlier re-established himself on the television screen in two plays, The Camomile Lawn and Anglo-Saxon Attitudes. In later years, he was a charismatic presence in television productions such as Midsomer Murders, Waking the Dead, Silent Witness and Doc Martin. His later films include Lara Croft: Tomb Raider (Simon West, 2001) and The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas (Mark Herman, 2008). His last known film appearance was in Radiator (Tom Browne, 2014). Richard Johnson was married four times; first, in 1957 to the actress Sheila Sweet, by whom he had a son and daughter (the photographer, Sukey Parnell). After their divorce he married, in 1965, Kim Novak, a marriage which lasted a few months. In 1982 he married Mary-Louise Norlund, by whom he had a daughter. He also had a son with the French actress, Françoise Pascal. His fourth wife was Lynne Gurney, whom he married on a beach in Goa in 2004. She survives him with his four children and his stepson, the actor Paris Arrowsmith. Johnson’s family said he died on Saturday in the Royal Marsden hospital in Chelsea, west London, after a short illness.
Sources: The Telegraph, The New York Times, The Guardian, Wikipedia and IMDb.
French postcard by JRPR, Paris, no. 123. Photo: Erka Prodisco. William Boyd in The Volga Boatman (Cecil B. DeMille, 1926). This image is a pictorial citation of the famous painting Volga Boatmen/ Barge Haulers on the Volga (1870-1873) by Ilia Efimovich Repin (1844-1930).
William Boyd (1895-1972) was an American film actor, best known for his parts in Westerns. He is known primarily as the performer of the cowboy Hopalong Cassidy in the eponymous film series.
William Boyd was born in 1895. In 1918, Boyd arrived in Hollywood and after a series of uncredited parts, he quickly became a sought-after leading actor of the silent movie era. Thanks to saving Cecil B. DeMille's then-favorite actress Julia Faye an awkward situation during the shooting of Saturday Night (1922), when her bathing suit suddenly sprang open, DeMille would give Boyd his chance a few years after. Boyd had his definite breakthrough as Jack Moreland in The Road to Yesterday (Cecil B. DeMille, 1925), also with Joseph Schildkraut, Jetta Goudal, and Vera Reynolds. Critics praised Boyd's performance - as the virile minister Jack who doesn't mind kissing flapper Bess (Vera Reynolds) and knows to use his fists when necessary - while moviegoers loved his easy charm, charisma, and intense good-looks. Due to his growing popularity, DeMille soon cast Boyd as the male lead in the highly successful silent drama, The Volga Boatman (1926). In Tsarist Russia, the Volga boatman Feodor (Boyd) meets Prince Dimitri (Victor Varconi) and his fiancée Vera (Elinor Fair). During the October Revolution, he meets Vera again when he has become a Red Army officer. He receives the order to shoot her but is impressed with her bravery and saves her. Both flee but then have to face the power of Dimitri. After this film, Boyd had definitely become a matinee idol.
At the beginning of the 1930s, William Boyd's career got a kink, as scandals around a certain William Boyd were attributed to him. Despite the fact the culprit was just an actor with the same name, Boyd's contract with Radio Pictures was annulled and for years he had to survive. His rescue came in 1935 when he signed a contract with Paramount Pictures on a Western series, whose character Hopalong Cassidy accompanied him henceforth in his future career. Instead of the hard-drinking, rough character from the pulp magazines on which his character was based, Boyd's film character was a wholesome, chaste cowboy - a confirmed bachelor, quite unlike Boyd's own five marriages. Hopalong Cassidy's white horse was named "Topper". After a move to United Artists, the series was discontinued in 1944. Two years later, however, Boyd continued to do so by producing the films himself.
After 70 movies, William Boyd recognised early on the possibilities of television and switched to the small screen, where from 1952 onwards he did fifty-two half-hour episodes after he had already shown from 1949 on NBC all of his 66 Hopalong Cassidy films. As he had bought the rights of these films (almost ruining him), he became a wealthy man. Boyd also arranged a wealth in merchandising. In addition, he marketed the character in the circus, variety and on promotional tours. In the November 27, 1950 issue, Boyd was put on Time magazine's front page and got a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. In 1972, Boyd died from complications related to Parkinson's disease and congestive heart failure. In 1995, he was immortalized in the Western Performers Hall of Fame at the National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum in Oklahoma City. There is also a Hopalong Cassidy Museum in Cambridge, Ohio. Boyd was married five times, first to wealthy heiress Laura Maynard, then to the actresses Ruth Miller, Elinor Fair, Dorothy Sebastian, and Grace Bradley.
Source: Wikipedia (English and German), and IMDb.
And, please check out our blog European Film Star Postcards.
Actor Kellan Lutz attends The Cinema Society & D&G screening of "The Twilight Saga: New Moon" at Landmark's Sunshine Cinema on November 19, 2009 in New York City.
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Artist?
Printed on the back-
"Harry Potter E A Pedra Filosofal."
‘Harry Potter and the Philosophers' Stone, was the original UK. title.
It was changed to "Sorcerer's Stone."
Thanks to Missive Maven's info.
November 1986: Actor Michael Parris Newman portrays Howard Hughes in a one-person, two-act musical in Los Angeles. He posed for me next to a retired Lockheed Constellation aircraft at Camarillo Airport. #howardhughes #camarilloairport #lockheedconstellation
#bnw #bnwphotography #bnwlovers #bw #monochrome #bw_lover #greatestbnw #bnw_greatshots #world_bnw
German postcard by Ross Verlag, no. 4877/1, 1929-1930. Photo: Atelier Ernst Schneider, Berlin / Tauber Tonfilm G.m.b.H.
Austrian opera singer Richard Tauber (1891-1948) was one of the world's finest Mozartian tenors of the 20th century. Some critics commented that "his heart felt every word he sang". He also tested the then-new talking pictures in such popular musical films as Ich küsse Ihre Hand, Madame (1929) with Marlene Dietrich, Das Land des Lächelns (1930) and Melodie der Liebe (1932).
Richard Tauber was the illegitimate son of soubrette Elisabeth Seiffert and actor Richard Anton Tauber. In 1913 he made his stage debut in Mozart's 'The Magic Flute' and he worked up a rich repertoire of roles in such operas as 'Don Giovanni', 'Tosca', and 'Carmen'. Franz Lehár composed several new operettas specifically designed for Tauber's voice, including 'Der Zarewitsch' (1926), 'Friederike' (1928) and 'Das Land des Lächelns' (1929). He made over seven hundred gramophone records, mainly for the Odeon Records label. He also tested the then new talking pictures in such popular musical films as Ich küsse Ihre Hand, Madame (Robert Land, 1929) with Marlene Dietrich, Das Land des Lächelns (Max Reichmann, 1930) and Melodie der Liebe (Georg Jacoby, 1932). He was elegant in appearance. He had a slight squint in his right eye and disguised it by wearing a monocle which, when accompanied by a top hat, added to the elegant effect. For many people he became the epitome of Viennese charm.
In 1933, Richard Tauber was assaulted by a group of Nazi Brownshirts because of his Jewish ancestry, and he decided to leave Germany for his native Austria. Eventually he emigrated to London and appeared in some British musical films. He earned fine notices for his portrayal of composer Franz Schubert in Blossom Time (Paul L. Stein, 1934), as well as for his work in Heart's Desire (Paul L. Stein, 1935), and Land Without Music (Walter Forde, 1936). He married his British co-star Diana Napier. In 1947, Tauber sought help for an aggravated cough which was subsequently diagnosed as lung cancer. He gave a bravura performance as Don Ottavio in Don Giovanni at Covent Garden and fulfilled this engagement the following day at the Camden Theatre, having begun and ended his formidable career performing Mozart. He died in January 1948. In the musical bio Du bist die Welt für mich (Ernst Marischka, 1953) Rudolf Schock acted and sang the role of Tauber.
Sources: Wikipedia and IMDb.
And, please check out our blog European Film Star Postcards.
Actor Richard Roy Sutton, of Kingston Ontario. These Headshot and profile photos were shot on the beautiful grounds of the old Psychiatric Hospital, on the Lake Ontario Waterfront.
Vintage postcard.
German actor Raimund Harmstorf (1939-1998) became famous as the protagonist of the German TV mini series Der Seewolf/The Sea-Wolf (1971), based on Jack London's classic novel. Later on, he starred successfully in another German TV series Michael Strogoff: Der Kurier des Zaren/Michel Strogoff (1975), based on Jules Verne's adventure novel. Harmstorf was unforgettable as the handsome hero with a secret mission in an old Russia threatened by Kozaks and frozen rivers, wearing woolly hats and serious faces. Both series were sold to many countries. Harmstorf was also a star of the Eurowestern and his life ended as a tragedy. We will soon make another post on his interesting career and life.
Sources: Wikipedia and IMDb. For more postcards of classic TV shows, check out our set Vintage TV Heroes.
British Real Photograph postcard, no. 168A. Photo: Paramount Pictures.
Fred MacMurray (1908-1991) was an American actor and singer who appeared in more than 100 films and a successful television series during a career that spanned nearly a half-century, from 1935 to the 1970s. He often played the quintessential nice guy, but some of his strongest and best-remembered performances cast him against type as a villain such as in director Billy Wilder's Film Noir Double Indemnity (1944), with costars Barbara Stanwyck and Edward G. Robinson. From 1959 through the 1960s, MacMurray appeared in numerous Disney films, including The Absent-Minded Professor, The Happiest Millionaire, and The Shaggy Dog. In 1960, he turned to television as Steve Douglas, the widowed father on My Three Sons, which ran on ABC from 1960 to 1965 and CBS from 1965 to 1972.
Fred Martin MacMurray was born in Kankakee, Illinois in 1908. He was the son of Maleta (née Martin) and concert violinist Frederick Talmadge MacMurray. His aunt, Fay Holderness, was a vaudeville performer and actress. Before MacMurray was two years old, his family moved to Madison, Wisconsin, where his father taught music. They then relocated within the state to Beaver Dam, where his mother had been born. He later attended school in Quincy, Illinois before earning a full scholarship to Carroll College in Waukesha, Wisconsin. At Carroll, MacMurray played the saxophone in numerous local bands. He did not graduate from college. In 1930, he played saxophone in the Gus Arnheim and his Coconut Grove Orchestra when Bing Crosby was the lead vocalist and Russ Columbo was in the violin section. As a featured vocalist, he recorded in 1930 with the Gus Arnheim Orchestra on 'All I Want Is Just One Girl' on the Victor label. and with George Olsen on 'I'm In The Market For You' and 'After a Million Dreams'. MacMurray's musical aspirations eventually led him to Hollywood, where he frequently worked as an extra. He later joined the California Collegians and with them, he appeared on Broadway in the hit production 'Three's a Crowd'' (1930-1931) starring Sydney Greenstreet, Clifton Webb, and Libby Holman. He joined Holman on a duet of 'Something to Remember Me By'. He subsequently appeared in 'The Third Little Show' and alongside Sydney Greenstreet and Bob Hope in another hit show, 'Roberta' (1933-1934). In 1934, he signed with Paramount Pictures for the then-standard 7-year contract. At Paramount, he rose to fame in The Gilded Lily (Wesley Ruggles, 1935), a romantic comedy with Claudette Colbert. Seemingly overnight he was among the hottest young actors in town, and he quickly emerged as a favorite romantic sparring partner with many of Hollywood's leading actresses. Although the majority of his films of the 1930s can largely be dismissed as standard fare there are exceptions. Later in the 1930s, MacMurray worked with film directors Billy Wilder and Preston Sturges and actors Barbara Stanwyck, Henry Fonda, Humphrey Bogart, Marlene Dietrich and, in seven films, Claudette Colbert. He co-starred with Katharine Hepburn in Alice Adams (George Stevens, 1935), with Joan Crawford in Above Suspicion (Richard Thorpe, 1943), and with Carole Lombard in four productions: the screwball comedy Hands Across the Table (Mitchell Leisen, 1935), the mystery-comedy The Princess Comes Across (William K. Howard, 1936), the comedy-drama Swing High, Swing Low (Mitchell Leisen, 1937), and the screwball comedy True Confession (Wesley Ruggles, 1937). Usually, he was cast in light comedies as a decent, thoughtful character such as in The Trail of the Lonesome Pine (Henry Hathaway, 1936), an ambitious early outdoor 3-strip Technicolor hit with Henry Fonda. MacMurray spent the decade learning his craft and developing a reputation as a solid actor. In 1939, artist C. C. Beck used MacMurray as the initial model for the superhero character who became Fawcett Comics' Captain Marvel. The 1940s gave him his chance to shine. MacMurray became one of Hollywood's highest-paid actors of the period. By 1943, his annual salary had reached $420,000, making him the highest-paid actor in Hollywood and the fourth-highest-paid person in the nation. He scored a huge hit with the thoroughly entertaining The Egg and I (Chester Erskine, 1947), again teamed with Claudette Colbert and today largely remembered for launching the long-running Ma and Pa Kettle franchise.
Despite being typecast as a "nice guy", Fred MacMurray often said his best roles were when he was cast against type, such as under the direction of Billy Wilder and Edward Dmytryk. Perhaps his best known "bad guy" performance was that of Walter Neff, an insurance salesman who plots with a greedy wife (played by Barbara Stanwyck) to murder her husband in the Film Noir classic Double Indemnity (Billy Wilder, 1944). Another stellar turn in this category is MacMurray's cynical, spineless Lieutenant Thomas Keefer in Edward Dmytryk's The Caine Mutiny (1954). Six years later, MacMurray played Jeff Sheldrake, a two-timing corporate executive in Wilder's Oscar-winning romcom The Apartment (Billy Wilder, 1960) with Jack Lemmon and Shirley MacLaine. Throughout the mid-1950s he appeared primarily in low-budget action pictures, most of them Westerns. In 1958, he guest-starred in the premiere episode of NBC's Cimarron City Western series, with George Montgomery and John Smith. MacMurray's career continued upward the following year when he was cast as the father in the Disney Studios live-action comedy, The Shaggy Dog (Charles Barton, 1959). The film was an enormous hit. Then, from 1960 to 1972, he starred on television in My Three Sons, a long-running, highly rated series. Concurrent with My Three Sons, MacMurray stayed busy in films, starring as Professor Ned Brainard in Disney's The Absent-Minded Professor (Robert Stevenson, 1961) and in the sequel Son of Flubber (Robert Stevenson, 1963). MacMurray was nominated for a Golden Globe for The Absent-Minded Professor (Robert Stevenson, 1961). Using his star-power clout, MacMurray had a provision in his My Three Sons contract that all of his scenes on that series were to be shot in two separate month-long production blocks and filmed first. That condensed performance schedule provided him more free time to pursue his work in films, maintain his ranch in Northern California, and enjoy his favorite leisure activity, golf. Over the years, MacMurray became one of the wealthiest actors in the entertainment business, primarily from wise real estate investments and from his "notorious frugality". After the cancellation of My Three Sons in 1972, MacMurray made only a few more film appearances and one last feature, The Swarm (Irwin Allen, 1978), before retiring. HA lifelong heavy smoker, MacMurray suffered from throat cancer in the late 1970s, and it reappeared in 1987. He also suffered a severe stroke during Christmas 1988 which left his right side paralysed and his speech affected, although with therapy he was able to make a ninety percent recovery. After suffering from leukemia for more than a decade, Fred MacMurray died from pneumonia at age 83 in 1991 at his home in Santa Monica, California. His body was entombed in Holy Cross Cemetery. In 2005, his widow, actress June Haver, died at aged 79, and her body was entombed with him. MacMurray was married twice. He married dancer Lillian Lamont (legal name Lilian Wehmhoener MacMurray) in 1936, and the couple adopted two children, Susan (1940) and Robert (1946). After Lamont died of cancer in 1953, he married actress June Haver the following year. The couple subsequently adopted two more children - twins born in 1956 - Katherine and Laurie. MacMurray and Haver's marriage lasted 37 years, until Fred's death.
Sources: Jason Ankeny (AllMovie), Wikipedia, and IMDb.
And, please check out our blog European Film Star Postcards.
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attends the 2009 World Football Challenge game Chelsea FC vs Inter Milan, at the Rose Bowl stadium in Pasadena, California, on July 21, 2009