Ruta Lee
Ruta Lee is a Canadian-American actress and dancer who appeared as one of the brides in the musical Seven Brides for Seven Brothers. She had roles in films including Billy Wilder's crime drama Witness for the Prosecution and Stanley Donen's musical comedy Funny Face and is remembered for her guest appearance in a 1963 episode of Rod Serling's sci-fi series The Twilight Zone called "A Short Drink from a Certain Fountain". Lee guest-starred on many television series, was featured on a number of game shows, including Hollywood Squares, What's My Line?, as Alex Trebek's co-host on High Rollers. She is of Lithuanian descent. Ruta Lee was born Ruta Mary Kilmonis in Montreal, the only child of Lithuanian immigrants, her father was her mother a homemaker. On March 1, 1948, her family moved to the United States and ended up settling in Los Angeles, where she graduated in 1954 from Hollywood High School and began studying acting and appearing in school plays, she attended the University of California at Los Angeles.
She worked as a cashier and candy girl at Grauman's Chinese Theater. She is a naturalized United States citizen. Lee got a break as a guest on two episodes of CBS's The George Burns and Gracie Allen Show, she soon found an agent, who landed her a job in an episode of The Roy Rogers Show, followed by a spot in 1953 on the series Adventures of Superman. That same year, while acting in a small theater production of On the Town, she landed a role as bride Ruth in the Academy Award-nominated musical Seven Brides for Seven Brothers, still billed as Ruta Kilmonis. After that success, Lee appeared in several films including Anything Goes, Funny Face, Witness for the Prosecution, Marjorie Morningstar. In 1962, Lee had the female lead in the Rat Pack comedy/Western film Sergeants 3 starring Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Sammy Davis Jr. and Peter Lawford. She co-starred with Audie Murphy and Darren McGavin in a Western, Bullet for a Badman. In addition to films, Lee has appeared in dozens of guest-starring roles on television.
For a number of years, she seemed to be everywhere on the screen. From 1957 to 1959, she was cast in different roles in eight episodes of the CBS crime drama series, The Lineup and played the leading lady in three episodes of Maverick, "The Comstock Conspiracy" with James Garner and "The Plunder of Paradise," and "Betrayal" with Jack Kelly. In 1959 and 1960, she was cast in four episodes of John Bromfield's syndicated crime drama, U. S. Marshal, she appeared as Ellen Barton in the 1960 episode "Grant of Land" of the ABC Western series, The Rebel, starring Nick Adams. She made five guest appearances on the CBS courtroom drama series Perry Mason between 1958 and 1965, including murderer Connie Cooper in "The Case of the Screaming Woman", defendant Millie Crest in "The Case of the Foot-Loose Doll" in 1959, she appeared as Vita Culver in "The Case of the Prudent Prosecutor". Lee starred as Vivian Cosgrave in the episode "The Case of the Libelous Locket". On December 10, 1962, Lee was cast as Lenore Walton Hanford in "Wanted for the Murder of Cheyenne Bodie", the penultimate episode of the ABC/Warner Bros.
Western series, with Clint Walker in the starring role. In the storyline, Bodie is framed for his "own" murder. Others appearing in the episode are Gregg Palmer and Dick Foran. In 1963, Lee guest starred as Lucy Tolliver in the twelfth episode "Enough Rope" of the NBC/WB Western series, Temple Houston, with Jeffrey Hunter as an historical figure, the frontier lawyer Temple Lea Houston, youngest son of Sam Houston. Temple Houston was canceled after twenty-six weeks. Of Hunter, Lee said, "He was one of the prettiest people, put on the screen, God, he was gorgeous."Lee was further cast on Richard Diamond, Private Detective, Alfred Hitchcock Presents, Mickey Spillane's Mike Hammer, Sugarfoot, M Squad, Gunsmoke, 77 Sunset Strip, The Alaskans, Colt.45, Wagon Train, Hawaiian Eye, The Wild Wild West, The Fugitive and three episodes of Hogan's Heroes. Lee appeared in two guest spots of The Andy Griffith Show in 1962 and 1965. In 1963, she was cast in CBS's The Twilight Zone in the episode "A Short Drink from a Certain Fountain", as a woman whose elderly husband undergoes a scientific experiment and ages backward.
Lee began appearing on game shows such as Hollywood Squares, You Don't Say and Match Game. In the early 1970s, Lee continued to perform in both films and television roles on Love, American Style, The Mod Squad, a role in the film The Doomsday Machine. By 1974, Lee had grown frustrated by an increasing lack of roles, took a job co-hosting the daytime game show High Rollers, she remained with the show until 1976. During the 1980s, she lent her voice to episodes of The Flintstone Comedy Show and The Smurfs, in addition to guest roles on CHiPs, Fantasy Island, The Love Boat and Charles in Charge. Lee performed extensively in the mid-1980s on stage, including the title character in the musical Peter Pan. From 1988 to 1989, Lee had a recurring role on Coming of Age. In 1989, she played the role of Sally Powers in the television movie Sweet Bird of Youth with Elizabeth Taylor. In the 1990s, Lee continued to appear in episodic television, most notably on the sitcom Roseanne. Lee appeared as the girlfriend of Bev Harris.
She played the wife of comedian Jerry Lewis in the British comedy-drama Funny Bones, in which they play the parents of the Oliver Platt's character. In 2002, Lee was p
Patrick O'Neal (actor)
Patrick Wisdom O'Neal was an American television and film actor and New York restaurateur. O'Neal was born in Florida to Martha and Coke Wisdom O'Neal, he attended the Riverside Military Academy in Gainesville and Ocala High School. Upon graduation, he enrolled at the University of Florida in Gainesville. During college, O'Neal joined a theatre troupe, he was a member of the Sigma Alpha Epsilon fraternity and was the editor of the university yearbook. After earning a bachelor's degree, O'Neal enlisted in the United States Air Force and served during the Korean War. During the war, he directed short training films. After 15 months service, he moved to New York and studied at the Actors Studio and Neighborhood Playhouse. O'Neal was seen as a guest star on television throughout four decades, beginning in the 1950s. In the early 1960s, he received critical praise for his leading role on Broadway in Tennessee Williams' The Night of the Iguana but the starring role for the 1964 film version went to Richard Burton.
In 1969, he had a leading role in John Huston's The Kremlin Letter and a supporting role in the western El Condor. He appeared in the 1973 hit The Way. In 1972, he portrayed a murderous architect in the Columbo episode "Blueprint for Murder". In 1990, he played the corrupt Police Commissioner Kevin Quinn in Sidney Lumet's Q&A. With his wife and his brother Michael, O'Neal co-owned a number of successful restaurants, including the Ginger Man and the Landmark Tavern, both in Manhattan. O'Neal married actress Cynthia Baxter in 1956, they had two sons and Fitzjohn, remained married until O'Neal's death. O'Neal died on September 9, 1994, of respiratory failure at Saint Vincent's Catholic Medical Center in Manhattan, 17 days short of his 67th birthday. At the time of his death, O'Neal was suffering from cancer and tuberculosis. A Far Country The Night of the Iguana Patrick O'Neal at the Internet Broadway Database Patrick O'Neal at the Internet Off-Broadway Database Patrick O'Neal on IMDb Patrick O'Neal at the University of Wisconsin's Actors Studio audio collection
One for the Angels
"One for the Angels" is the second episode of the American anthology television series The Twilight Zone. It aired on October 9, 1959 on CBS. Lou Bookman is a kindly sidewalk pitchman who sells and repairs toys and trinkets, is adored by the neighborhood children. One day, Bookman is visited by Mr. Death, who tells him that he is to die at midnight of natural causes. Unable to dissuade Death, Bookman instead convinces him to wait until Bookman has made his greatest sales pitch: "one for the angels". Death agrees, Bookman announces he is retiring, smug that he has cheated Death. Death concedes Bookman has found a loophole in their agreement, but warns Bookman that someone else now has to die in his place. Death chooses Maggie, a little girl who lives in Bookman's apartment building and is a friend of his. Maggie falls into a coma. Bookman begs Death to take him instead. Bookman gets out his wares and begins to eloquently boast one item after or another, making the greatest sales pitch of his life—one so great that he entices Death himself.
Death buys item after item and does not remember his appointment with Maggie until it is past midnight, when he has missed it. When Maggie awakens, her doctor leaves the apartment and sees Bookman, assuring him that Maggie will live. Death observes that by making that great sales pitch, Bookman has met the original terms of their deal. Now content and willing to accept his fate, Bookman packs his things and leaves with Death toward Heaven, remarking that "you never know who might need something up there", he looks to Death, adding "Up there?" and Death replies, "Up there, Mr. Bookman. You made it." Ed Wynn as Lewis J. "Lou" Bookman Murray Hamilton as Mr. Death Dana Dillaway as Maggie Polanski Zicree, Marc Scott: The Twilight Zone Companion. Sillman-James Press, 1982 DeVoe, Bill.. Trivia from The Twilight Zone. Albany, GA: Bear Manor Media. ISBN 978-1-59393-136-0 Grams, Martin.. The Twilight Zone: Unlocking the Door to a Television Classic. Churchville, MD: OTR Publishing. ISBN 978-0-9703310-9-0 Sander, Gordon F. Serling: the rise and twilight of television's last angry man.
New York: Penguin Books, 1992. ISBN 0-525-93550-9 "One for the Angels" on IMDb "One for the Angels" at TV.com
Television in the United States
Television is one of the major mass media of the United States. As of 2011, household ownership of television sets in the country is 96.7%, with 114,200,000 American households owning at least one television set as of August 2013. The majority of households have more than one set; the peak ownership percentage of households with at least one television set occurred during the 1996–97 season, with 98.4% ownership. As a whole, the television networks that broadcast in the United States are the largest and most distributed in the world, programs produced for U. S.-based networks are the most syndicated internationally. Due to a recent surge in the number and popularity of critically acclaimed television series during the 2000s and the 2010s to date, many critics have said that American television is undergoing a modern golden age. In the United States, television is available via broadcast – the earliest method of receiving television programming, which requires an antenna and an equipped internal or external tuner capable of picking up channels that transmit on the two principal broadcast bands high frequency and ultra high frequency, in order to receive the signal – and four conventional types of multichannel subscription television: cable, unencrypted satellite, direct-broadcast satellite television and IPTV.
There are competing video services on the World Wide Web, which have become an popular mode of television viewing since the late 2000s with younger audiences as an alternative or a supplement to the aforementioned traditional forms of viewing television content. Individual broadcast television stations in the U. S. transmit on either VHF channels 2 through 13 or UHF channels 14 through 51. During the era of analog television, broadcast stations transmitted on a single universal channel; the UHF band spanned from channels 14 to 83, though the Federal Communications Commission has twice rescinded the high-end portions of the band from television broadcasting use for emergency and other telecommunications purposes in 1983 and 2009. As in other countries, television stations require a license to broadcast and must comply with certain requirements in order to retain it. Free-to-air and subscription television networks, are not required to file for a license to operate. Over-the-air and free-to-air television do not necessitate any monthly payments, while cable, direct broadcast satellite, IPTV and virtual MVPD services require monthly payments that vary depending on the number of channels that a subscriber chooses to pay for in a particular package.
Channels are sold in groups, rather than singularly. Most conventional subscription television services offer a limited basic tier, a minimum base package that includes only broadcast stations within the television market where the service is located, public and government access cable channels. Elevated programming tiers start with an expanded basic package, offering a selection of subscription channels intended for wide distribution. A la carte subscription services in the U. S. are limited to pay television channels that are offered as add-ons to any programming package that a customer of a multichannel video programming distributor can subscribe to for an additional monthly fee. The United States has a "decentralized", market-oriented television system in regard to broadcast television; the nation has a national publi
Lou Holtz (actor)
Lou Holtz was an American vaudevillian, comic actor, theatrical producer. He was discovered by vaudevillian Elsie Janis in San Francisco when still in his teens, came to New York. In 1913, he appeared in his first Broadway show, titled'World of Pleasure, he appeared on Broadway in other shows with small parts became a star in George White's Scandals of 1919. He reappeared in the Scandals in 1920 and 1921. Holtz became a close good friend of George Gershwin when appearing in the Scandals, which Gershwin wrote the music for. Gershwin wrote Tell Me More, a musical, for Holtz in 1925, not received favorably and was short-lived on Broadway. Several years Holtz had a big hit on Broadway in 1931 when he hired his pianist to write a show for him; the pianist, Harold Arlen, would go on to write the music for The Wizard of Oz in 1939. Holtz produced. In the 1920s, Holtz became the highest paid entertainer on Broadway, with articles touting his salary as an unheard of $6,000 per week. For Holtz, all of that money was invested in the stock market.
He told friends that he came out of the 1929 crash with $500, while he had been worth more than $1 million the previous year. In the 1920s, Holtz' career alternated between musical comedies and vaudeville shows where he was the headliner, he reached one of his career milestones in 1925. The Palace was the most prestigious theatre in the country, Holtz broke all records there by playing for 10 weeks. In 1931-1932, Holtz repeated this feat at the Palace a second time, he starred in and produced a similar show at the competing Hollywood Theater that outgrossed the Palace Show. In vaudeville shows and radio, Holtz' comedy was based in telling long, character stories with at least one character having a strong Jewish dialect, his most famous character, Sam Lapidus, stayed with Holtz for his entire career, including Holtz' guest stints on the Merv Griffin Show in the 1970s. In the 1930s, while still appearing on Broadway, Holtz left New York twice for London and appeared in two hits at the London Palladium: Laughter Over London and Transatlantic Rhythm.
In the 1930s, Holtz became a regular on radio. He had long stints on The Paul Whiteman Show and others. Holtz ended including The Lou Holtz Laugh Club. One of the regulars on that show was Fanny Brice. Holtz' last two shows on Broadway were Priorities of Star Time. After the latter, Holtz was 51 years old, he went through a bitter divorce at that time, decided to cut down on his work schedule and appearances. In an interview with the Los Angeles Times in 1989, George Burns was asked who the greatest comedian was that he saw. Burns replied that it was Jack Benny, but Burns named Holtz and several others as coming right after Benny. Holtz' career after the mid-1940s consisted of high-end club dates, including headlining in Las Vegas, television appearances on variety shows, he appeared on The Ed Sullivan Show twice in 1957 and The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson twice in the 1960s. He appeared on Jack Paar's Tonight Show more than 20 times, appeared on Steve Allen's Tonight Show seven times. In 1973, Holtz still appeared on the Merv Griffin Show throughout the 1970s.
Holtz's other credits include the feature film "Follow The Leader" from 1930. This film starred Ed Wynn with a large supporting role for Holtz; the film was based on the musical that Wynn and Holtz starred in on Broadway called Manhattan Mary. The film was the first movie that stars Ginger Rogers and Ethel Merman appeared. Holtz starred in the Columbia musical short School for Romance in 1934, which co-starred a unknown Betty Grable. Holtz' early standup comedy routine was memorialized in a 1929 Vitaphone short. While semi-retired in New York in the late 1950s, Holtz met his third and final wife, who remained with him until his death in 1980. In 1963, at the age of 70, Holtz and his wife gave birth to a son, Lou Jr.. In 1965, the couple had Richard. Holtz' final years were spent doing what he'd done on and off for more than 50 years: going to Hillcrest Country Club in Los Angeles for lunch daily and sitting at the famous round table of comedians, which included performers like Burns, the Marx Brothers, Milton Berle, George Jessel.
Lou Holtz on IMDb Lou Holtz at Find a Grave
The Twilight Zone (1959 TV series)
The Twilight Zone is an American anthology television series created and presented by Rod Serling, which ran for five seasons on CBS from 1959 to 1964. Each episode presents a stand-alone story in which characters find themselves dealing with disturbing or unusual events, an experience described as entering "the Twilight Zone," ending with a surprise ending and a moral. Although predominantly science-fiction, the show's paranormal and Kafkaesque events leaned the show towards fantasy and horror; the phrase “twilight zone,” inspired by the series, is used to describe surreal experiences. The series featured both established stars and younger actors who would become much better known later. Serling served as executive head writer, he was the show's host and narrator, delivering monologues at the beginning and end of each episode. Serling's opening and closing narrations summarize the episode's events encapsulating how and why the main character had entered the Twilight Zone. In 1997, the episodes "To Serve Man" and "It's a Good Life" were ranked at 11 and 31 on TV Guide's 100 Greatest Episodes of All Time.
Serling himself stated that his favorite episodes of the series were "The Invaders" and "Time Enough at Last". In 2016, the series was ranked No. 7 on Rolling Stone's list of the 100 greatest shows of all time. In 2002, The Twilight Zone was ranked No. 26 on TV Guide's 50 Greatest TV Shows of All Time. In 2013, the Writers Guild of America ranked it as the third best-written TV series and TV Guide ranked it as the fourth greatest drama and the fifth greatest show of all time. By the late 1950s, Rod Serling was a prominent name in American television, his successful television plays included Patterns and Requiem for a Heavyweight, but constant changes and edits made by the networks and sponsors frustrated Serling. In Requiem for a Heavyweight, the line "Got a match?" had to be struck because the sponsor sold lighters. But according to comments in his 1957 anthology Patterns, Serling had been trying to delve into material more controversial than his works of the early 1950s; this led to Noon on Doomsday for the United States Steel Hour in 1956, a commentary by Serling on the defensiveness and total lack of repentance he saw in the Mississippi town where the murder of Emmett Till took place.
His original script paralleled the Till case was moved out of the South and the victim changed to a Jewish pawnbroker, watered down to just a foreigner in an unnamed town. Despite bad reviews, activists sent numerous wires protesting the production. Serling thought that a science-fictional setting, with robots and other supernatural occurrences, would give him more freedom and less interference in expressing controversial ideas than more realistic settings. "The Time Element" was Serling's 1957 pilot pitch for his show, a time travel adventure about a man who travels back to Honolulu in 1941 and unsuccessfully tries to warn everyone about the impending attack on Pearl Harbor. The script, was rejected and shelved for a year until Bert Granet discovered and produced it as an episode of Desilu Playhouse in 1958; the show was a great success and enabled Serling to begin production on his anthology series, The Twilight Zone. Serling's editorial sense of ironic fate in the writing done for the series was identified as significant to its success by the BFI Film Classics library which stated that for Serling "the cruel indifference and implacability of fate and the irony of poetic justice" were recurrent themes in his plots.
There is a fifth dimension, beyond that, known to man. It is a dimension as timeless as infinity, it is the middle ground between light and shadow, between science and superstition, it lies between the pit of man's fears and the summit of his knowledge. This is the dimension of imagination, it is an area. The Twilight Zone premiered the night of October 1959, to rave reviews. "Twilight Zone is about the only show on the air that I look forward to seeing. It's the one series that I will let interfere with other plans", said Terry Turner for the Chicago Daily News. Others agreed. Daily Variety ranked it with "the best, accomplished in half-hour filmed television" and the New York Herald Tribune found the show to be "certainly the best and most original anthology series of the year"; as the show proved popular to television's critics, it struggled to find a receptive audience of television viewers. CBS was banking on a rating of at least 21 or 22; the series' future was jeopardized when its third episode, "Mr. Denton on Doomsday" earned a 16.3 rating.
Still, the show attracted a large enough audience to survive a brief hiatus in November, after which it surpassed its competition on ABC and NBC and convinced its sponsors to stay on until the end of the season. With one exception, the first season featured scripts written only by Rod Serling, Charles Beaumont or Richard Matheson; these three were responsible for 127 of the 156 episodes in the series. Additionally, with one exception, Serling never appeared on camera during any first-season episode (as he woul
Mirror Image (The Twilight Zone)
"Mirror Image" is episode 21 of the American television anthology series The Twilight Zone. It aired on February 26, 1960 on CBS. Millicent Barnes waits in a bus depot in Marathon, New York, for a bus to Cortland, en route to a new job. Looking at a wall clock she notices, she asks the ticket agent when the bus will arrive, he gruffly complains that this is her third time asking. Millicent denies this. While speaking with the ticket agent, she notices a bag just like hers in the luggage pile behind her, she mentions this to the ticket agent. She does not believe this, she washes her hands in the restroom and the cleaning lady there insists this is her second time there. Again, Millicent denies this. Upon leaving the restroom, she glances in the mirror and sees, in addition to her reflection, an exact copy of herself sitting on the bench outside, she meets a young man from Binghamton named Paul Grinstead, waiting for the same bus. Millicent tells Paul about encountering her double. Paul, attempting to calm Millicent, says it is either a joke or a misunderstanding caused by a look-alike.
When the bus arrives and the two of them prepare to board, Millicent looks in the window and sees the copy of herself seated on the bus. In shock, she faints. Millicent lies unconscious on a bench inside the depot while Paul and the cleaning lady attend to her. Paul agrees to wait for the 7:00 bus. While they wait, now coming to, insists the strange events are caused by an evil double from a parallel world - a nearby, yet distant alternative plane of existence that comes into convergence with this world by powerful forces, or unnatural, unknown events; when this happens, the impostors enter this realm. Millicent's doppelgänger can survive in this world only by replacing her. Paul says the explanation is "a little metaphysical" for him, believes that Millicent's sanity is beginning to unravel. Paul tells Millicent he will call a friend in Tully who has a car and may be able to drive them to Syracuse. Instead, he calls the police. After Millicent is taken away by two policemen, Paul begins to settle himself.
After drinking from a water fountain, Paul notices. Looking up towards the doors, Paul notices another man running out the door of the bus depot. Pursuing this individual down the street, Paul discovers that he is chasing his own copy, whose face shows excited delight, his copy disappears as Paul calls out "Where are you?" while looking around in confusion and shock. Vera Miles as Millicent Barnes Martin Milner as Paul Grinstead Joe Hamilton as Ticket agent Naomi Stevens as Washroom Attendant In a short film pitching the Twilight Zone series to a Dutch television station, creator Rod Serling claimed to have gotten the idea for "Mirror Image" following an encounter at an airport. Serling noticed a man at the other side of the terminal who wore the same clothes and carried the same suitcase as himself. However, the man turned out to be younger and "more attractive"; this is one of several episodes from season one with its opening title sequence plastered over with the opening for season two. This was done during the Summer of 1961 as to help the season one shows fit in with the new look the show had taken during the following season.
This episode inspired Jordan Peele's 2019 film Us. DeVoe, Bill.. Trivia from The Twilight Zone. Albany, GA: Bear Manor Media. ISBN 978-1-59393-136-0 Grams, Martin.. The Twilight Zone: Unlocking the Door to a Television Classic. Churchville, MD: OTR Publishing. ISBN 978-0-9703310-9-0 "Mirror Image" on IMDb
