Charles Boyer will be remembered as one of Hollywood’s most romantic leading men. Starring opposite some of the silver screen’s most desirable leading ladies – Hedy Lamarr, Marlene Dietrich, Merle Oberon – Charles was a first class charmer. He succeeded in making the female members of the audience swoon along with his female co-stars. Warner …
She was Hollywood’s first cowgirl. Mary Louise “Texas” Guinan burst out of Waco, Texas and kept her home state’s name as a moniker when she appeared in a slew of silent films in the early part of the twentieth century. She earned herself the nickname “Queen of the West.” but soon, the always opportunistic “Texas” …
Meredith MacRae was born with show business in her blood. She was the eldest daughter of actor-singer Gordon MacRae, the star of movie musicals Oklahoma and Carousel and his wife, actress Sheila MacRae, best remembered as succeeding Audrey Meadows in the role of “Alice Kramden” in The Honeymooners, as performed in sketches on Jackie Gleason’s …
Desiderio Alberto Arnaz y de Acha III was born in Santiago, Cuba to the city’s youngest mayor. After the 1933 Cuban Revolution led by Fulgencio Batista, Desi’s grandfather, a wealthy executive with the Bacardi Rum Company, was jailed and his assets confiscated. He was released six months later and the Arnaz family fled to Miami. …
“Are there any requests?” “Yes, how about ‘the refrain from singing’?” Florence Foster took music lessons and expressed an interest in singing opera. Her father refused to subsidize his daughter’s dream, so she ran off at the age of 22 and eloped with physician Frank Thornton Jenkins. The marriage lasted seven years, ending in divorce in …
Born to a Secret Service officer who had protected President Woodrow Wilson, Whitney Blake attended sixteen different schools as she traveled the country with her family. An appearance in an amateur stage production led to a role in the 1957 film My Gun is Quick, a big-screen version on Mickey Spillane’s gritty Mike Hammer mystery. …
“A man who carries a cat by the tail learns something he can learn in no other way.” — Mark Twain
Olive Borden (a distant relative of Lizzie Borden) knew she could make it. As a teenager, she persuaded her mother to move from their native Richmond, Virginia to Hollywood, where she knew she could be a star. The family made ends meet by running a candy store until Olive’s star took off. And soon it …
“Listen, you pointy-eared bastard — the blasted dilithium crystals can’t regenerate! Now, hand me that bottle of Johnnie Walker Black… I need some energy!”
Bea Benaderet worked and worked and worked. Early in her career, Bea appeared on countless popular radio shows in various character roles – telephone operators, landladies, sales clerks and most often “the neighbor.” Her keen knack for vocal inflection and dialects allowed her to portray several characters in one show, unbeknown to the radio audience. …
