1.
W. S. Van Dyke
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Known as a reliable craftsman who made his films on schedule and under budget, he earned the name One Take Woody for his quick and efficient style of filming. Woodbridge Strong Van Dyke II was born on March 21,1889 in San Diego and his father was a Superior Court judge who died the day his son was born. His mother, Laura Winston, returned to her acting career. As a child actor, Van Dyke appeared with his mother on the circuit with traveling stock companies. They traveled up and down the coast and into the Middle West, when he was five years old, they appeared at the old San Francisco Grand Opera House in Blind Girl. He would later remember his unusual education, I think Ive been to school in state in the Union. Whenever the company stopped off long enough in any city I went back behind a school desk, the rest of the time my mother taught me. When Van Dyke was fourteen years old, he moved to Seattle to live with his grandmother, while attending business school, he worked a number of part-time jobs, including janitor, waiter, salesman, and railroad attendant. Van Dykes early adult years were unsettled, and he moved from job to job, in 1909, he married actress Zelda Ashford, and the two joined various touring theater companies, finally arriving in Hollywood in 1915. In 1915, Van Dyke found work as an assistant director to D. W. Griffith on the film The Birth of a Nation, the following year, he was Griffiths assistant director on Intolerance. That same year he worked as an assistant director to James Young on Unprotected, The Lash, in 1917, Van Dyke directed his first film, The Land of Long Shadows for Essanay Studios. That same year he directed five films, The Range Boss, Open Places, Men of the Desert, Gift O Gab. In 1927, he traveled to Tacoma to direct two silent films for the new H. C, weaver Productions, Eyes of the Totem and The Heart of the Yukon. During the silent era he learned his craft and by the advent of the talkies was one of MGMs most reliable directors, many of his films were huge hits and top box office in any given year. He received Academy Award for Best Director nominations for The Thin Man and San Francisco and he also directed the Oscar-winning classic Eskimo, in which he also has a featured acting role. The earthquake sequence in San Francisco is considered one of the best special-effects sequences ever filmed, to help direct, Van Dyke called upon his early mentor, D. W. Griffith, who had fallen on hard times. Van Dyke was also known to hire old-time, out-of-work actors as extras, because of his loyalty, he was much beloved and admired in the industry. Van Dyke was known for allowing ad-libbing and for coaxing natural performances from his actors and he made stars of Nelson Eddy, James Stewart, Myrna Loy, Johnny Weissmuller, Maureen OSullivan, Eleanor Powell, Ilona Massey, and Margaret OBrien
2.
Hunt Stromberg
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Hunt Stromberg was a film producer during Hollywoods Golden Age. Hunt Stromberg was born in Louisville, Kentucky in 1894 and he promptly resigned from Inces staff to form Hunt Stromberg Productions. From his first independent film, The Foolish Age, Stromberg quickly made his mark by turning out independent, low-budget films in increasing quantity and quality. When Sid Grauman saw a cut of the resulting A Ladies Man. Stromberg continued his string of successes with Breaking into Society, which he wrote, Stromberg joined newly formed Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer in 1925 and became one of its key executives, listed as one of the studios Big Four with Louis B. Mayer, Irving Thalberg, and Harry Rapf—later with Thalberg, David O. Selznick and he was the first production supervisor to get a produced by credit on-screen, well deserved considering his achievements. At the height of his career, MGM was producing 52 films a year, or an average of one film a week, Stromberg was one of the top ranked money makers of Hollywood, with a salary to match, US $8,000 a week, guaranteed. In 1937, he was included in managements inner circle and received an additional 1. 5% of Loews Theaters profits, the Treasury Department listed Stromberg as one of the ten highest paid executives in the United States. But there were changes in those years. Thalberg died in 1936, while Selznick and Wanger left MGM in 1937, leaving Mayer in sole, Selznick, Walter Wanger, and Orson Welles.85 million. His subsequent films were not as successful and he retired in 1951, in the same year his wife, Katherine Kerwin. An avid horseman and a businessman, Stromberg was independently wealthy by this time as well as a founding investor in Santa Anita Park. Stromberg died on August 23,1968 and he was survived by his son Hunt Stromberg Jr. a Broadway and television producer in his own right. Roaring Rails, screenwriter Soft Shoes, screenwriter The White Sister, director Hunt Stromberg at the Internet Movie Database Hunt Stromberg at Find a Grave Clip of Stromberg logo c.1943 on YouTube
3.
Anita Loos
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Anita Loos was an American screenwriter, playwright and author, best known for her blockbuster comic novel, Gentlemen Prefer Blondes. She wrote film scripts from 1912, and became arguably the first-ever staff scriptwriter and she went on to write many of the Douglas Fairbanks films, as well as the stage adaptation of Colette’s Gigi. Anita Loos was born Corinne Anita Loos in Sisson, California, to Richard Beers Loos, Loos had two siblings, Gladys and Clifford, a physician and co-founder of the Ross-Loos Medical Group. On pronouncing her name, Loos is reported to have said, however, I myself pronounce my name as if it were spelled luce, since most people pronounce it that way and it was too much trouble to correct them. Loos father, R. Beers Loos, founded a tabloid for which her mother, while living in San Francisco, Loos followed her dissolute alcoholic father as they explored the citys underbelly. Together they would sit on the pier, fishing and making friends with the locals, feeding into Loos lifelong fascination with lowlifes, in 1897, at their fathers urging, she and her sister performed in the San Francisco stock company production of Quo Vadis. Gladys died, aged eight, of appendicitis while their father was on one of his drinking and philandering fishing trips, Anita continued appearing on stage, sometimes being the familys sole breadwinner. Eventually Beers Loos spendthrift ways caught up with them, and in 1903, there, Anita performed simultaneously in her fathers stock company, and under another name with the more legitimate stock company in town. It was around this time that she started shaving years off her true age, Loos had known she wanted to be a writer since she was six, and she also wanted to free herself of the shackles of stock performance. Her father had turned out some one-act plays for the stock company and she wrote The Ink Well, a successful piece for which she would receive periodic royalties. In 1911, the theater was running one-reel films after each nights performances, Anita would take a perfunctory bow and she sent her first attempt at a screenplay, He Was A College Boy, to the Biograph Company, for which she received $25. The New York Hat, starring Mary Pickford and Lionel Barrymore and directed by D. W. Griffith, was her third screenplay, by 1912, Loos had sold scripts to both the Biograph and Lubin studios. Between 1912 and 1915, she turned out 105 scripts, only four of which went unproduced and her mother had objected to Loos working in Hollywood. In 1915, trying to escape her influence, Loos married her first husband, Frank Pallma, Jr. the son of the band conductor. But Frank proved to be penniless and dull – after six months, Anita sent him out for hair pins, after that, Minnie rethought her position on a Hollywood career. Many of the scripts she turned out for Griffith went unproduced, some he considered unfilmable because the laughs were all in the lines, there was no way to get them onto the screen, but he encouraged her to continue, because reading them amused him. Her first screen credit was for an adaptation of Macbeth in which her billing came right after Shakespeares, when Griffith asked her to write the subtitling for his epic Intolerance, she traveled to New York City for the first time to attend its premiere. Instead of returning to Hollywood, Loos spent the fall of 1916 in New York and they had an instant rapport, and Loos would remain a Vanity Fair contributor for several decades
4.
Albert Hackett
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Albert Maurice Hackett was an American dramatist and screenwriter most noted for his collaborations with his partner and wife Frances Goodrich. Hackett was born in New York City, the son of actress Florence Hackett and he attended Professional Childrens School and started out as a child actor, appearing on stage and in films. His brother was actor Raymond Hackett and their stepfather was the early film actor Arthur V. Johnson who married their mother Florence circa 1910. His sister-in-law was Blanche Sweet who was Raymonds wife for a time, not long after marrying screenwriter Frances Goodrich, the couple went to Hollywood in the late 1920s to write the screenplay for their stage success Up Pops the Devil for Paramount Pictures. In 1933 they signed a contract with MGM and remained with them until 1939, among their earliest assignments was writing the screenplay for The Thin Man. The resulting film was one of the hits of the year. However this is only because it was written and released before the enactment of the Hollywood Production Code, the other Nick and Nora films show a steep decline regarding the groundbreaking maturity of the Charles marriage. They received Academy Award for Screenplay nominations for The Thin Man, After the Thin Man, Father of the Bride and they also won a Pulitzer Prize for Drama and the New York Drama Critics Circle award for their original play The Diary of Anne Frank. Some of their films include, Another Thin Man and Its a Wonderful Life. The Moving Picture Boy, An International Encyclopaedia from 1895 to 1995, Norwich, Michael Russell,1996, Albert Hackett at the Internet Broadway Database Albert Hackett at the Internet Movie Database Albert Hackett at the Internet Off-Broadway Database
5.
Dashiell Hammett
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Samuel Dashiell Hammett was an American author of hard-boiled detective novels and short stories, screenwriter, and political activist. Among the enduring characters he created are Sam Spade, Nick and Nora Charles, in his obituary in The New York Times, he was described as the dean of the. Time magazine included Hammetts 1929 novel Red Harvest on its list of the 100 best English-language novels published between 1923 and 2005 and his novels and stories also had a significant influence on films. Hammett was born on a farm in Saint Marys County, Maryland and his parents were Richard Thomas Hammett and Anne Bond Dashiell, his mother belonged to an old Maryland family, whose name in French was De Chiel. Known as Sam, Hammett was baptized a Catholic, and grew up in Philadelphia and he left school when he was 13 years old and held several jobs before working for the Pinkerton National Detective Agency. He served as an operative for Pinkerton from 1915 to February 1922, the agencys role in union strike-breaking eventually left him disillusioned. Hammett enlisted in the Army in 1918 and served in the Motor Ambulance Corps and he was afflicted during that time with the Spanish flu and later contracted tuberculosis. He spent most of his time in the Army as a patient at Cushman Hospital in Tacoma, Washington, where he met a nurse, Josephine Dolan, Hammett and Dolan had two daughters, Mary Jane and Josephine. Shortly after the birth of their child, Health Services nurses informed Dolan that due to Hammetts TB, she. Dolan rented a home in San Francisco, California, where Hammett would visit on weekends, the marriage soon fell apart, but he continued to financially support his wife and daughters with the income he made from his writing. Hammett was first published in 1922 in the magazine The Smart Set, known for the authenticity and realism of his writing, he drew on his experiences as a Pinkerton operative. Hammett wrote most of his fiction while he was living in San Francisco in the 1920s, streets. He said that All my characters were based on people Ive known personally, Raymond Chandler, often considered Hammetts successor, summarized his accomplishments in The Simple Art of Murder, Hammett was the ace performer. He is said to have lacked heart, yet the story he himself thought the most of and he was spare, frugal, hard-boiled, but he did over and over again what only the best writers can ever do at all. He wrote scenes that seemed never to have written before. In 1929 and 1930, he was involved with Nell Martin. He dedicated The Glass Key to her, and in turn, in 1931, Hammett embarked on a 30-year affair with the playwright Lillian Hellman. Though he sporadically continued to work on material, he wrote his novel in 1934
6.
William Powell
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William Horatio Powell was an American actor. A major star at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, he was paired with Myrna Loy in 14 films, including the Thin Man series based on the Nick and Nora Charles characters created by Dashiell Hammett. Powell was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actor three times, for The Thin Man, My Man Godfrey, and Life with Father, an only child, Powell was born in Pittsburgh to Nettie Manila and Horatio Warren Powell, on July 29,1892. His father was born in West Middlesex, Pennsylvania, to William S. in 1907, he moved with his family to Kansas City, Missouri, where he graduated from Central High School in 1910. After high school, he left home for New York and the American Academy of Dramatic Arts at the age of 18, in 1912, Powell graduated from the AADA, and worked in some vaudeville and stock companies. Powells most famous role was that of Nick Charles in six Thin Man films, beginning with The Thin Man in 1934, Myrna Loy played his wife, Nora, in each of the Thin Man films. Their on-screen partnership, beginning alongside Clark Gable in 1934 with Manhattan Melodrama, was one of Hollywoods most prolific, Loy and Powell starred in the Best Picture of 1936, The Great Ziegfeld, with Powell in the title role and Loy as Ziegfelds wife Billie Burke. That same year, he received his second Academy Award nomination. In 1935, he starred with Harlow in Reckless, a serious romance developed between them, and in 1936, they were reunited on screen and with Loy and Spencer Tracy in the screwball comedy Libeled Lady. Harlow died from uremia at the age of 26 in June 1937 before they could marry and his distress over her death, as well as a cancer diagnosis, caused him to accept fewer acting roles. Powells career slowed considerably in the 1940s, although he received his third Academy Award nomination in 1947 for his role as the cantankerous Clarence Day and his last film was 1955s Mister Roberts. In 1915, he married Eileen Wilson who was born Julia Tierney, with whom he had his child, William David Powell. Powells son became a writer and producer before a period of ill health led to his suicide in 1968. On June 26,1931, Powell married actress Carole Lombard, the marriage lasted just over two years. They were divorced in 1933, though they, too, remained on good terms, Powell was devastated when he learned of her death in 1942. In 1937, Powell was diagnosed with cancer and he underwent surgery and experimental radium treatment which put the disease in full remission within two years. Given his own health and sorrow over Jean Harlows death, Powell did not undertake any film roles for over a year during this period, three weeks after they met, on January 6,1940, Powell married actress Diana Lewis, whom he called Mousie. Powell died in Palm Springs, California, on March 5,1984, at the age of 91 and he is buried at the Desert Memorial Park in Cathedral City, California, near his son William David Powell and wife Diana Lewis
7.
Myrna Loy
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Myrna Loy was an American film, television and stage actress. Trained as a dancer, Loy devoted herself fully to a career following a few minor roles in silent films. She was originally typecast in roles, often as a vamp or a woman of Asian descent. During World War II, Loy served as assistant to the director of military and she was later appointed a member-at-large of the U. S. While the height of her popularity was during the 1930s and 40s, she continued to pursue stage, television. Loy was born in Helena, Montana, the daughter of Adelle Mae and rancher David Franklin Williams and she had a younger brother, David Williams. Loys paternal grandparents were Welsh, and her grandparents were Scottish and Swedish. Her first name was derived from a stop near Broken Bow, Nebraska. Her father was also a banker and real estate developer and the youngest man elected to the Montana state legislature. Her mother studied music at the American Conservatory of Music in Chicago, during the winter of 1912, Loys mother nearly died from pneumonia, and her father sent his wife and daughter to La Jolla, California. Loys mother saw great potential in Southern California, and during one of her husbands visits, among the properties he bought was land he later sold at a considerable profit to Charlie Chaplin so the filmmaker could construct his studio there. Although her mother tried to persuade her husband to move to California permanently, he preferred ranch life and the three eventually returned to Montana. Loys father died on November 7,1918, of Spanish influenza, and Loys mother was able to realize her dream to permanently relocate her family to California. Loy attended the exclusive Westlake School for Girls in Los Angeles, California, when her teachers objected to her participating in theatrical arts, her mother enrolled her in Venice High School, and at 15, she began appearing in local stage productions. In 1921, Loy posed for Venice High School sculpture teacher Harry Fielding Winebrenner for the central figure Inspiration in his sculpture group Fountain of Education. Completed in 1922, the group was erected in front of the campus outdoor pool in May 1923 where it stood for decades. Fountain of Education can be seen in the scenes of the 1978 film Grease. Loy left school at the age of 18 to help with the familys finances and she obtained work at Graumans Egyptian Theatre, where she performed in elaborate musical sequences that were related to and served as prologues for the feature film
8.
Virginia Grey
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Virginia Grey was an American actress who appeared in over 100 films and a number of television shows from the 1930s through to the early-1980s. Born in Edendale, California, Grey was the youngest of three daughters of the director Ray Grey, one of her early babysitters was movie star Gloria Swanson. Grey debuted at the age of 10 in the silent film Uncle Toms Cabin as Little Eva and she continued acting for a few more years, but then left movies for three years in order to finish her education. She left MGM in 1942, and signed with different studios over the years. During the 1950s and 1960s, producer Ross Hunter frequently included Grey in his popular soap melodramas, such as All That Heaven Allows, Back Street and she had an on again/off again relationship with Clark Gable in the 1940s. After Gables wife Carole Lombard died and he returned from service, Gable and Grey were often seen at restaurants. Many, including Virginia herself, expected him to marry her with the tabloids expecting a wedding announcement and it was a great surprise when he hastily married Lady Sylvia Ashley in 1949, leaving Grey heartbroken. However, Gable never rekindled their romance and Greys friends say that her hoping and waiting for Gable was the reason she never married and she was also a staunch conservative Republican. She was portrayed by Anna Torv in the HBO Mini-series The Pacific, Virginia Grey at the Internet Movie Database Virginia Grey at the Internet Broadway Database Virginia Grey at Find a Grave
9.
Otto Kruger
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Otto Kruger was an American actor, originally a Broadway matinee idol, who established a niche as a charming villain in films, such as Hitchcocks Saboteur. He also appeared in CBSs Perry Mason and other TV series and he was the grandnephew of South African president Paul Kruger. Born in Toledo, Ohio, Kruger was of German descent and he was the son of Bernard Alben Kruger and Elizabeth Winers Kruger and the grandnephew of South African pioneer and president Paul Kruger. Otto was musically trained, but switched careers and became an actor, after studying engineering at the University of Michigan, he studied briefly at Columbia University. Making his Broadway debut at the age of fifteen, Kruger quickly became a matinee idol, though he started to get noticed in the early 1920s, it was the 1930s when his career was at its height. His screen debut came in Turn Back the Clock and he made an appearance in the film Chained, though he played the hero on occasion, for most of his career, he played the main villain or a charming or corrupt businessman. One of his best known roles was in the Douglas Sirk film Magnificent Obsession, Kruger played the supporting role of Judge Percy Mettrick, who unsuccessfully urges Will Kane to leave town in High Noon. Kruger is also remembered for playing the villain Tobin in Alfred Hitchcocks spy film Saboteur and his television roles included those of Dr. Jones. Kruger made four guest appearances on CBSs Perry Mason, in his first two appearances, The Case of the Grumbling Grandfather in 1961, and The Case of the Counterfeit Crank in 1962, he was cast as Masons client, and in both episodes was the title character. In his final appearance in 1964, he played Judge Norris in The Case of the Missing Button, on March 20,1920, Kruger secretly married Broadway actress Susan Sue MacManamy. Their daughter, Ottilie, was also an actress and was the first wife of pioneering cinematographer Gayne Rescher, Kruger died at the Motion Picture and Television Country House in Woodland Hills, California, on his 89th birthday. Kruger was granted two stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, one for TV and one for film, Mr. Kruger appeared as Mr. Hardecker in After Dinner Story from the Suspense radio program series. Otto Kruger at the Internet Movie Database Otto Kruger at the Internet Broadway Database Otto Kruger at Find a Grave
