As a pre-teen, pretty Diane McBain started her career modeling for print as well as in television commercials. She was signed to Warner Brothers Studios as a contract player and made her acting debut in 1955 at the age of 17 in an episode of the TV Western Maverick opposite James Garner. She went on …
For five years now, I have been participating in the year-end Faces of Death Drawing Project. This online gathering of artists from all over the world honors those of notoriety who have passed on during the previous year. So, this is right up my alley! My first year, I drew actor-dancer Ken Berry. The next …
I will not pretend that Doyle Hamm wasn’t a piece of shit. He was. He was also a human being. Born on Valentines Day in 1957, Doyle’s father and six older brothers had all served prison terms for multiple crimes. Doyle, himself, struggled in school ― dropping out in the ninth grade and turning to …
‘Cause when the loving starts and the lights go down,And there’s not another living soul around,You woo me until the sun comes up,And you say that you love me.
I only remember Maria Ouspenskaya from two movies — Universal’s 1941 horror classic The Wolf Man with Lon Chaney Jr. and its sort-of sequel Frankenstein Meets The Wolf Man two years later. The diminutive actress played the same role in both films. She was the mysterious “Maleva,” an omniscient Gypsy woman who explains to poor …
For his follow-up to the celebrated Dracula, director Tod Browning recruited a number of real-life sideshow performers for the decidedly darker Freaks. The film shocked 1932 movie audiences. It was banned in the Untied Kingdom for over thirty years and was labeled “brutal and grotesque” by Canadian critics. However, in 1994, Freaks was added to …
After making her stage debut in Pittsburgh at the age of 17, Myrna J. Darby moved to New York City. She won a beauty contest that was sponsored by a newspaper. Showbiz impresario Florenz Ziegfeld saw Myrna’s photograph and hired her to appear in his 1926 production No Foolin’ on Broadway. The following year, Myrna …
Leo Gallagher Jr, better known by his single stage name “Gallagher,” died this past week at the age of 76. At the height of his popularity in the early 1980’s, Gallagher was arguably one of the hottest comedians in show business. He pioneered the stand-up comedy cable TV special, producing more than a dozen of …
In a career that spanned an unprecedented nine decades, Angela Lansbury did it all. She sang. She danced. She played dramatic roles. She played comedic roles. She lit up movie screens with her delightful characters in family classics like Bedknobs & Broomsticks and Mary Poppins Returns. She chilled audiences with her sinister turn in The …
