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Sheb Wooley – Co-Star and Drinking Buddy

15 Mar

Shelby F. Wooley (Sheb Wooley), actor, singer and musician: born Erick, Oklahoma 10 April 1921; married first Beverly Addison (one daughter), second Linda Dotson (one daughter); died Nashville, Tennessee 16 September 2003

Wooley was born on a farm in Erick, Oklahoma, in 1921. As an adolescent, he roped steers with his brothers and rode in rodeos; the injuries he thus sustained stopped him from active service during the Second World War and instead he worked in a defence plant. In 1950 he was given a role in the western film Rocky Mountain, which starred Errol Flynn. When an attractive girl mistook him for Flynn, he took advantage of the mistake, later admitting, “You can imagine I did some of my best acting that night, although I had a hell of a time with the Australian accent.”

With his riding abilities, Wooley was ideal for westerns. He appeared in Distant Drums (1951) with Gary Cooper and was featured in two films about General Custer, Little Big Horn (1951) and Bugles in the Afternoon (1952). In 1952 Wooley played Ben Miller, one of the brothers wanting to gun down Gary Cooper in Fred Zinnemann's epoch-making western High Noon. Other westerns included Johnny Guitar (1953), Man Without a Star (1955) and Rio Bravo (1959), with John Wayne and Dean Martin. He appeared in the film musical Seven Brides for Seven Brothers (1954) and the now legendary Giant (1956), with Rock Hudson, Elizabeth Taylor and James Dean.

In 1958 Wooley became a regular member of the cast of Rawhide, a western television series about a cattle drive, starring Eric Fleming and Clint Eastwood. Playing the role of Pete Nolan, Wooley remained with the series for several years, writing some of the later scripts. He recorded an album, Songs from the Days of Rawhide (1961) and, in a similar vein, Tales of How the West Was Won (1963).

In 1969 Wooley wrote the theme music for a new CBS TV country show, Hee Haw, and he performed many times on the programme, either as himself or Ben Colder. He was reunited with Clint Eastwood for a small role in The Outlaw Josey Wales (1976) and also appeared in Starman (1984) with Jeff Bridges and Silverado (1985) with Kevin Kline and John Cleese. He starred alongside Gene Hackman and Dennis Hopper in the basketball film Hoosiers (1987), while a film of his song, Purple People Eater, was made in 1988 with Chubby Checker and Little Richard.

 He left instructions that his funeral service should be held at “high noon”.

— Kathleen

 

Buster Wiles

15 Mar
July 26, 1990

Vernon (Buster) Wiles; Stunt Man, 79

PORTLAND, Ore., July 25— Vernon (Buster) Wiles, who worked as a movie stunt man in Hollywood and as a double for Errol Flynn, died Friday. He was 79 years old.

Mr. Wiles spent 22 years as a stunt man and 13 years as Mr. Flynn's double, appearing in such movies as ''The Adventures of Robin Hood,'' ''Objective: Burma'' and ''They Died With Their Boots On.''

His last film was ''Brass Legend,'' in which he doubled for Raymond Burr. He also worked as a double for Humphrey Bogart and George Raft.

Mr. Wiles was co-writer of the book, ''My Days With Errol Flynn.''

Surviving are his wife, Donalda, a son and three daughters.

— Kathleen

 

Ida Lupino

15 Mar
August 5, 1995

Ida Lupino, an earthy, intelligent movie actress who created a luminous gallery of worldly wise villainesses, gangster's molls and hand-wringing neurotics, died on Thursday night at her home in Burbank, Calif. She was 77 years old. Miss Lupino had cancer and had recently suffered a stroke, Mary Ann Anderson, her former secretary, said yesterday.

Ida Lupino was born in London on Feb. 4, 1918, during a German zeppelin bombing. Miss Lupino was petite, standing only 5 feet 2 inches tall and weighing 112 pounds. She had auburn hair and violet eyes framed by half-inch-long lashes. Her leisure pursuits included skin diving, writing short stories and children's books, and composing music. One work, “Aladdin Suite,” was performed by the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra.

Miss Lupino is survived by a daughter, Bridget Duff, and a sister, Rita Lupino.

(Escape Me Never)

— Kathleen

 
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Brenda Marshall

12 Mar
Date of Birth

29 September 1915, Island of Negros, Philippines

Date of Death

30 July 1992, Palm Springs, California, USA (throat cancer)

Birth Name

Ardis Ankerson Gaines

Mini Biography

Brenda wanted to be a film actress, all right; it's just that she didn't want to be Brenda Marshall. Throughout her years in Hollywood, she insisted that her friends and co-workers address her not by her studio-fabricated cognomen, but by her given name of Ardis Anderson Gaines. A Warner Bros. contractee of the early 1940s, Anderson/Marshall did her best work opposite Errol Flynn in The Sea Hawk (1940) and Footsteps in the Dark (1941). From 1941 through 1973, Brenda Marshall was married to actor William Holden, a curious union that evidently soured early on (Holden's friends blamed Marshall, and vice versa), and was distinguished by extended separations and numerous extracurricular romances

— Kathleen

 
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Patric Knowles

12 Mar

Reginald Lawrence Knowles (11 November 1911 – 23 December 1995) was an English film actor who renamed himself Patric Knowles, a name which reflects his Irish descent. He appeared in films of the 1930s through the 1970s. He made his film debut in 1933, and played either first or second film leads throughout his career.

In his first American film, Give Me Your Heart (1936), released in Great Britain as Sweet Aloes, Knowles was cast as a titled Englishman of means.

While making The Charge of the Light Brigade (1936) at Lone Pine, California, he befriended Errol Flynn, whose acquaintance he had made when both were under contract to Warner Bros. in England. Since that film, in which Knowles played the part of Capt. Perry Vickers, the brother of Flynn's Maj. Geoffrey Vickers, he was cast more frequently as straitlaced characters alongside Flynn's flamboyant ones, notably as Will Scarlet in The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938). More than two decades after Flynn's death, biographer Charles Higham sullied Flynn's memory by accusing him of having been a fascist sympathizer and Nazi spy. Knowles, who had served in World War II as a flying instructor in the RCAF, came to Flynn's defense, writing Rebuttal for a Friend as an epilogue to Tony Thomas' Errol Flynn: The Spy Who Never Was (Citadel Press, 1990) ISBN 080651180X.

Knowles was a freelance film actor from 1939 until his last film appearance in 1973. In the 1940s, he was known for playing protagonists in a number of horror films, including The Wolf Man (1941) and Frankenstein Meets the Wolfman (1943).

Knowles was also cast as comic foils in a number of comedies such as Abbott and Costello's Who Done It? (1942) and Hit The Ice (1943). He also appeared opposite Jack Kelly in a 1957 episode of the television series Maverick called “The Wrecker”, which was based on a Robert Louis Stevenson adventure and co-starred James Garner.

Knowles was inducted into the Hollywood Walk of Fame and wrote a novel called Even Steven (Vantage Press, 1960) ASIN B0006RMC2G. He was cremated. His ashes were either given to a friend or family.

— Kathleen

 
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Jim Fleming

12 Mar

news.google.com…

 

news.google.com…

 

— Kathleen

 

Ann Sheridan

12 Mar

 

Ann Sheridan, born Clara Lou Sheridan on Feb. 21, 1915 in Denton, TX
Died Jan. 21,  1967 of cancer in Los Angeles, CA  She was the movies' sultry “Oomph Girl” of the 1940s and later Grandma Hanks on television's “Pistols 'n' Petticoats.”

Her sister Kitty Kent, by dint of a practical joke, landed her shapely, titan-haired sister in Hollywood during the 1930s, launching her into famous film roles opposite Gary Cooper, Cary Grant, Humphrey Bogart, James Cagney and Errol Flynn.

Dodge City, Silver River, Edge of Darkness, Without Incident (Playhouse 90)

 

— Kathleen

 
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Alexis Smith – Errol was best man at her wedding

12 Mar
LOS ANGELES – Alexis Smith, the statuesque actress who co-starred with Cary Grant, Clark Gable and Errol Flynn in the 1940s and '50s and made a comeback in a Tony Award-winning performance in “Follies,” died Wednesday. She was 72.

Miss Smith died at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center from cancer, her husband, Craig Stevens, said.

She was still in college when a talent scout spotted her and got her a screen test for Warner Bros. Between 1940 and 1959, she appeared as lead or second lead in a string of films such as “Dive Bomber,” “The Doughgirls” and “The Woman in White.”

Among her leading men were Gable (“Any Number Can Play”), Grant (“Night and Day”), Ronald Reagan (“Stallion Road”), Flynn (“San Antonio,” among others) and Jack Benny (“The Horn Blows at Midnight”).

But the high point of her career came later, on stage and a decade after she had largely retired from the screen. In 1971, Miss Smith scored a personal triumph in “Follies,” an ambitious Stephen Sondheim musical centered around the reunion of aging showgirls in a soon-to-be-demolished Broadway theater.  The performance won her a Tony Award for best actress.

Miss Smith was born in Canada and reared in Los Angeles. In 1944, she married Stevens, perhaps best known for playing the title role in the 1950s television series “Peter Gunn.”

www.youtube.com…  Her performance in Follies

Gentlemen Jim, Thank Your Lucky Stars, Montana

— Kathleen

 
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Ruth Roman – September 6, 1999

04 Mar

Ruth Roman, '50s film actress

LAGUNA BEACH, Calif. — Ruth Roman, who starred opposite Gary Cooper and Errol Flynn and survived the Andrea Doria wreck at sea, died in her sleep Thursday. She was 75.
In 1956, she and her 3-year-old son were returning from Italy aboard the luxury passenger liner Andrea Doria when it was struck by another ship. More than fifty people died and 760 survived after the ship went down.
The Boston-born actress got her start in community plays at age 9. She attended drama school and later moved to Hollywood.
Roman appeared in some minor films before her big break in Stanley Kramer's 1949 “Champion,” which featured Kirk Douglas as an unscrupulous boxer. Following the film, Warner Bros. offered Roman a contract and she starred in nine films in less than two years opposite Cooper, Flynn and James Stewart.
Roman also appeared in “Beyond the Forest” with Bette Davis, “Three Secrets” with Patricia Neal and “Mara Maru” with Flynn. Roman appeared in more than 30 movies, most of them in the 1950s, and a number of television shows in the 1960s and 1970s.

— Kathleen

 
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Some More Sunday Night Reading Material

01 Mar

www.classicimages.com…

www.nytimes.com…

Let me know what you think of these articles.

Okay, now this one is quite interesting.  It is from a blog, but it has some interesting tales about the Zaca.  If you go down into the posts, there is banter back and forth about Errol.  Andrea (much like Tina!) comes to his defense.  At the very end there are two posts made on OCTOBER 14, 2009–very eery when I realized this.  Have fun.

billanddave.wordpress.com…

— Kathleen

 
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