Based on his excellence in high school, Kevin Peter Hall was awarded a basketball scholarship to George Washington University. At 7′ 2″, Kevin dominated the game, but despite his athletic prowess, he decided his major would be theatrical arts. After abandoning a brief basketball career in Venezuela, Kevin landed his first role in the 1979 …
Seventeen-year old Germaine Hélène Irène Lefebvre was riding in a carriage in Paris when she was spotted by a fashion photographer. With a little encouragement, she used that chance meeting to kick off a career as a model for the likes of Givenchy and Christian Dior. She changed her name to the mysterious Capucine (French …
In 1963, The State Mutual Life Assurance Company of Worcester, Massachusetts purchased Guarantee Mutual Company of Ohio. As a result of the takeover, employee morale plummeted. Freelance artist Harvey Ross Ball was hired to create something as a confidence builder for distribution among the distraught employees. Harvey’s creation would be plastered everywhere — cards, posters …
Thelma Todd, Hollywood’s “Ice Cream Blond”, was most famous for the comedy short subjects she made for producer Hal Roach starring opposite Laurel and Hardy. She appeared with the Marx Brothers in their classic Monkey Business and Horse Feathers. One of Hollywood’s original “party girls,” Thelma was in a tumultuous marriage with gangster Pat DiCicco. Many nights with …
Walter Slezak was working as a bank teller in his native Austria when he was talked into a role in the 1922 silent biblical epic Sodom and Gomorrah by his friend, director Michael Curtiz. Walter was one of over 14,000 performers in the film, which was the largest and most expensive production in Austrian film …
This week’s Illustration Friday word is “puzzled”. This is one of two illustration that fit the topic. HERE is the other. Where ever she was — whether it was on the front lawn with the other evacuees or in her home watching it all unfold on the live local news coverage — Robyn Anderson was …
British-born Rod Hull moved to Australia in the early 1960s and got a job as a lighting technician on Sydney’s Channel 9 Network. Soon, he was appearing as Constable Clot, a popular daydreaming character on daytime television aimed at children. At the request of the show’s producer, Rod began performing with an ingenious emu puppet. …
In the end, Wendy O. Williams had just about enough of the world’s shit. As a child in Webster, New York, Wendy was a student of music, studying the clarinet and even making an appearance on The Howdy Doody Show. At 16, she ditched school and hitchhiked her way across the country, selling crocheted bikinis …
For aspiring model Barbara Bates, the world was her oyster. As a teenager, she won a train ticket to Hollywood as a prize in a beauty contest in hometown Denver. During her whirlwind trip, she met Cecil Coan, a publicist for United Artists. 45-year old Cecil was smitten with 19-year old Barbara. Through his show business …
In the late 1940s, Spade Cooley had one of the highest rated TV shows in local Los Angeles television. With his infectious take on a blend of Western honky-tonk and danceable Big Band, the “King of Western Swing” was also the king of Saturday nights on KTLA in Los Angeles, attracting 75 percent of viewership …
