Jessie Ralph
Jessie Ralph Patton, known as Jessie Ralph, was an American stage and screen actress, best known for her matronly roles in many classic motion pictures. She was born in Gloucester, Massachusetts, in 1864, she made her acting debut at the age of sixteen. She made it to Broadway, where George M. Cohan cast her in many of his musicals, but she excelled at dramatic roles. Although she made her Hollywood debut in 1916, in a motion picture career that would span 25 years, she only became a permanent Hollywood actress in 1933, she was nearly 70 at this time, so her roles were limited to matronly roles, but her expertise at stealing scenes captured the imagination of cinema-goers of the time. Her best-known roles are as Greta Garbo's maid in Camille, as W. C. Fields' battle-axe of a mother-in-law in The Bank Dick, as Myrna Loy's supercilious aunt Katherine in After the Thin Man, as Nurse Peggotty in David Copperfield, she starred in 55 movies altogether, 52 between 1933 and 1941. Jessie Ralph retired from Hollywood in 1941.
She died four years in her home town of Gloucester at the age of 79. She was buried in Mount Pleasant Cemetery in Massachusetts. Jessie Ralph on IMDb Jessie Ralph at the Internet Broadway Database Jessie Ralph portrait at NY Public Library Billy Rose Collection
Roland Young
Roland Young was an English actor. Born in London, Young was the son of an architect, early indications were that the son would pursue the father's career, he was educated at Sherborne School, Sherborne and University College London before being accepted into the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art. Young made his first stage appearance in London's West End in Find the Woman in 1908, in 1912 he made his Broadway debut in Hindle Wakes, he appeared in two comedies written for him by Clare Kummer, Good Gracious Annabelle! and A Successful Calamity before he served with the United States Army during World War I. He returned to New York when the war ended, married Kummer's daughter, Frances. For the next few years he alternated between New London, he made his film debut in the 1922 silent film Sherlock Holmes, in which he played Watson opposite John Barrymore as Holmes. He signed a contract with Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer and made his talkie debut in The Unholy Night, directed by Lionel Barrymore, he was loaned to Warner Bros. to appear in Her Private Life, with Billie Dove and Fox Film Corporation, winning critical approval for his comedic performance as Jeanette MacDonald's husband in Don't Bet on a Woman.
He was again paired with MacDonald in the film version of Good Gracious Annabelle!, titled Annabelle's Affairs. He appeared in Cecil B. de Mille's The Squaw Man, played opposite Alfred Lunt and Lynn Fontanne in The Guardsman. He appeared with Evelyn Brent in Columbia's The Pagan Pola Negri in RKO's A Woman Commands, his final film under his MGM contract was Lovers Courageous, opposite Robert Montgomery. In 1933 he had a starring role in the risqué comedy for Fox Film called Pleasure Cruise alongside Genevieve Tobin. Young found himself in constant demand, he appeared with Jeanette MacDonald, Genevieve Tobin and Maurice Chevalier in One Hour With You and with Kay Francis in Street of Women. Alexander Korda invited him to return to Britain to make his British film debut in Wedding Rehearsal, he returned to Hollywood and appeared in a diverse group of films that included comedies, murder mysteries, dramas, worked on Broadway. Among his films of this period were Ruggles of Red Gap, David Copperfield, the H.
G. Wells fantasy The Man. In 1937, he achieved one of the most important successes of his career in Topper, as a bank president haunted by the ghosts of his clients, played by Cary Grant and Constance Bennett, it was one of the most successful films of the year, Young was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor. Topper's wife was played by Billie Burke, who wrote in her memoir that Young "was dry and always fun to work with", they appeared together in The Young in Heart, both of the Topper sequels, Topper Takes a Trip and Topper Returns. He continued to play supporting roles in comedies such as Yes, My Darling Daughter, with Fay Bainter and Priscilla Lane, but over the next few years the importance of his roles again decreased, he achieved another success as Uncle Willie in The Philadelphia Story with Katharine Hepburn, Cary Grant and James Stewart. His last starring role was in the final installment of the Topper series, Topper Returns in 1941, with Billie Burke, Joan Blondell and Carole Landis.
He continued working through the 1940s, playing small roles opposite some of Hollywood's leading actresses, such as Joan Crawford, Marlene Dietrich, Paulette Goddard and Greta Garbo in her final film, Two-Faced Woman. In 1945, he began his own radio show and appeared in the film adaption of Agatha Christie's And Then There Were None. By the end of the decade his film career had declined, his final films, including The Great Lover, in which he played a murderer opposite Bob Hope, Fred Astaire's Let's Dance, were not successful. In the 1950s, Young appeared on several episodic television series, including Lux Video Theatre, Studio One, Pulitzer Prize Playhouse and The Chevrolet Tele-Theatre. Young has two stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, one for film at 6523 Hollywood Blvd. and another for television at 6315 Hollywood Blvd. Both were dedicated 8 February 1960. Young was married twice, to Marjorie Krummer from 1921 until 1940, to Patience DuCroz from 1948 until his death in New York City. Hindle Wakes Good Gracious, Annabelle A Successful Calamity The Gipsy Trail Buddies Rollo's Wild Oat The Devil's Disciple Beggar on Horseback The Last of Mrs. Cheyney The Queen's Husband Her Master's Voice Another Love Story List of actors with Academy Award nominations Actors and Others Not For Children: Pictures and Verse Thorne Smith: His Life and Times Shipman, The Great Movie Stars, The Golden Years, Bonanza Books, New York, 1970.
Library of Congress Catalogue Card Number 78-133803 Roland Young at the Internet Broadway Database Roland Young on IMDb Roland Young scrapbook and originals, 1905-1973, held by the Billy Rose Theatre Division, New York Public Library for the Performing Arts Clip of Roland Young on YouTube Roland Young at Find a Grave
Lionel Barrymore
Lionel Barrymore was an American actor of stage and radio as well as a film director. He won an Academy Award for Best Actor for his performance in A Free Soul, remains best known to modern audiences for the role of villainous Mr. Potter in Frank Capra's 1946 film It's a Wonderful Life, he is particularly remembered as Ebenezer Scrooge in annual broadcasts of A Christmas Carol during his last two decades. He is known for playing Dr. Leonard Gillespie in MGM's nine Dr. Kildare films, a role he reprised in a further six films focussing on Gillespie and in a radio series entitled The Story of Dr. Kildare, he was a member of the theatrical Barrymore family. Lionel Barrymore was born Lionel Herbert Blythe in Philadelphia, the son of actors Georgiana Drew Barrymore and Maurice Barrymore, he was the elder brother of Ethel and John Barrymore, the uncle of John Drew Barrymore and Diana Barrymore and the great-uncle of Drew Barrymore, among other members of the Barrymore family. He attended private schools including the Art Students League of New York.
While raised a Roman Catholic, Barrymore attended the Episcopal Academy in Philadelphia. Barrymore graduated from Seton Hall Preparatory School, the Roman Catholic college prep school, in the class of 1891, he was married twice, to actresses Doris Rankin and Irene Fenwick, a one-time lover of his brother, John. Doris's sister Gladys was married to Lionel's uncle Sidney Drew, which made Gladys both his aunt and sister-in-law. Doris Rankin bore Ethel Barrymore II and Mary Barrymore. Neither child survived infancy. Barrymore never recovered from the deaths of his girls, their loss undoubtedly strained his marriage to Doris Rankin, which ended in 1923. Years Barrymore developed a fatherly affection for Jean Harlow, born about the same time as his daughters; when Harlow died in 1937, Barrymore and Clark Gable mourned her. Reluctant to follow his parents' career, Barrymore appeared together with his grandmother Louisa Lane Drew on tour and in a stage production of The Rivals at the age of 15, he recounted that "I didn't want to act.
I wanted to draw. The theater was not in my blood, I was related to the theater by marriage only, he soon found success on stage in character roles and continued to act, although he still wanted to become a painter and to compose music. He appeared on Broadway in his early twenties with his uncle John Drew Jr. in such plays as The Second in Command and The Mummy and the Hummingbird, the latter of which won him critical acclaim. Both were produced by Charles Frohman, who produced other plays for Barrymore and his siblings and Ethel; the Other Girl in 1903–04 was a long-running success for Barrymore. In 1905, he appeared with John and Ethel in a pantomime, starring as the title character in Pantaloon and playing another character in the other half of the bill, Alice Sit-by-the-Fire. In 1906, after a series of disappointing appearances in plays and his first wife, the actress Doris Rankin, left their stage careers and travelled to Paris, where he trained as an artist. Lionel and Doris were in Paris in 1908 where their first baby, was born.
Lionel confirms in his autobiography, We Barrymores, that he and Doris were in France when Bleriot flew the English Channel on July 25, 1909. He did not achieve success as a painter, in 1909 he returned to the US. In December of that year, he returned to the stage in The Fires of Fate, in Chicago, but left the production that month after suffering an attack of nerves about the forthcoming New York opening; the producers gave appendicitis as the reason for his sudden departure. He was soon back on Broadway in The Jail Bird in 1910 and continued his stage career with several more plays, he joined his family troupe, from 1910, in their vaudeville act, where he was happy not to worry as much about memorizing lines. From 1912 to 1917, Barrymore was away from the stage again while he established his film career, but after the First World War, he had several successes on Broadway, where he established his reputation as a dramatic and character actor performing together with his wife, he returned to the stage in Peter Ibbetson with his brother John and achieved star billing in The Copperhead.
He retained star billing for the next 6 years in The Letter of the Law. Lionel gave a short-lived performance as MacBeth in 1921 opposite veteran actress Julia Arthur as Lady MacBeth, but the production encountered negative criticism, his last stage success was in Laugh, Laugh, in 1923, with his second wife, Irene Fenwick. He received negative notices in three productions in a row in 1925. After appearing in Man or Devil in 1926, he signed a film contract with MGM and after the advent of sound films in 1927, he never again appeared on stage. Barrymore joined Biograph Studios in 1909 and began to appear in leading roles by 1911 in films directed by D. W. Griffith. Barrymore made The Battle, The New York Hat and Three Friends. In 1915 he co-starred with Lillian Russell in a movie called Wildfire, one of the legendary Russell's few film appearances, he was involved in writing and directing at Biograph. The last silent film he directed, Life's Whirlpool, starred his sister, Ethel, he acted in more than 60 silent films
Lenore Coffee
Lenore Jackson Coffee was an American screenwriter and novelist. Lenore was born in San Francisco in 1896, was the daughter of Andrew Jackson Coffee Jr. and Ella Muffley. Coffee attended Dominican College in California. Afterward, she began her career when she answered an ad requesting a screen story for the actress Clara Kimball Young and was awarded a one-year contract at $50 a week, she was twice nominated for an Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay. The first time was for Street of Chance in 1929/30, adapted from the story by Oliver H. P. Garrett, in collaboration with Howard Estabrook. Of the studio system, she is quoted as saying: "They pick your brains, break your heart, ruin your digestion – and what do you get for it? Nothing but a lousy fortune." Coffee wrote many stories related to experiences women faced during her time, yet they were not met with commercial success. Coffee spent many years with Warner Bros. which she mentions in her autobiography as to being the only female writer.
One hit that came out of, the film Four Daughters, which she co-wrote with Julius J. Epstein. Outside of the film industry, she wrote a novel, Another Time, Another Place, as well as a play, Family Portrait. Coffee was married to writer-director William J. Cowen. Storyline: Recollections of a Hollywood Screenwriter Another Time, Another Place, 1955 Family Portrait, 1939 Lenore J. Coffee on IMDb Lenore Coffee at the Internet Broadway Database Lenore Coffee at Women Film Pioneers Project https://wfpp.cdrs.columbia.edu/pioneer/ccp-lenore-coffee/
Frank Lawton
Frank Lawton was an English actor. His parents were Frank Lawton, his first major screen credit was Young Woodley. In the mid-1930s, Lawton appeared in some Hollywood films, most significant as the adult David Copperfield in MGM's literature adaption David Copperfield. However, Lawton never made the breakthrough in Hollywood and returned to the British film and theatre, he was married to actress Evelyn Laye until his death. They acted together several times, including in the TV series My Husband and I. Frank Lawton on IMDb
Hugh Walpole
Sir Hugh Seymour Walpole, CBE was an English novelist. He was the son of an Anglican clergyman, intended for a career in the church but drawn instead to writing. Among those who encouraged him were Arnold Bennett, his skill at scene-setting and vivid plots, as well as his high profile as a lecturer, brought him a large readership in the United Kingdom and North America. He was a best-selling author in the 1920s and 1930s but has been neglected since his death. After his first novel, The Wooden Horse, in 1909, Walpole wrote prolifically, producing at least one book every year, he was a spontaneous story-teller, writing to get all his ideas on paper revising. His first novel to achieve major success was his third, Mr Perrin and Mr Traill, a tragicomic story of a fatal clash between two schoolmasters. During the First World War he served in the Red Cross on the Russian-Austrian front, worked in British propaganda in Petrograd and London. In the 1920s and 1930s Walpole was much in demand not only as a novelist but as a lecturer on literature, making four exceptionally well-paid tours of North America.
As a gay man at a time when homosexual practices were illegal for men in Britain, Walpole conducted a succession of intense but discreet relationships with other men, was for much of his life in search of what he saw as "the perfect friend". He found one, a married policeman, with whom he settled in the English Lake District. Having as a young man eagerly sought the support of established authors, he was in his years a generous sponsor of many younger writers, he was a patron of the visual arts and bequeathed a substantial legacy of paintings to the Tate Gallery and other British institutions. Walpole's output was large and varied. Between 1909 and 1941 he wrote thirty-six novels, five volumes of short stories, two original plays and three volumes of memoirs, his range included disturbing studies of the macabre, children's stories and historical fiction, most notably his Herries Chronicle series, set in the Lake District. He worked in Hollywood writing scenarios for two Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer films in the 1930s, played a cameo in the 1935 version of David Copperfield.
Walpole was born in Auckland, New Zealand, the eldest of three children of the Rev Somerset Walpole and his wife, Mildred Helen, née Barham. Somerset Walpole had been an assistant to the Bishop of Truro, Edward White Benson, from 1877 until 1882, when he was offered the incumbency of St Mary's Cathedral Church, Auckland. Mildred Walpole found it hard to settle in New Zealand, something of her restlessness and insecurity affected the character of her eldest child. In 1889, two years after the birth of the couple's daughter, Somerset Walpole accepted a prominent and well-paid academic post at the General Theological Seminary, New York. Robert, the third of the couple's children, was born in New York in 1892. Hugh and Dorothy were taught by a governess until the middle of 1893, when the parents decided that he needed an English education. Walpole was sent to England, where according to his biographer Rupert Hart-Davis the next ten years were the unhappiest time of Walpole's life, he first attended a preparatory school in Truro.
Though he missed his family and felt lonely he was reasonably happy, but he moved to Sir William Borlase's Grammar School in Marlow in 1895, where he was bullied and miserable. He said, "The food was inadequate, the morality was'twisted', Terror – sheer, stark unblinking Terror – stared down every one of its passages... The excessive desire to be loved that has always played so enormous a part in my life was bred I think, from the neglect I suffered there". In 1896 Somerset Walpole discovered his son's horror of the Marlow school and he moved him to the King's School, Canterbury. For two years he was a content, though undistinguished, pupil there. In 1897 Walpole senior was appointed principal of Bede College and Hugh was moved again, to be a day boy for four years at Durham School, he found that day boys were looked down on by boarders, that Bede College was the subject of snobbery within the university. His sense of isolation increased, he continually took refuge in the local library, where he read all the novels of Jane Austen, Henry Fielding and Dickens and many of the works of Trollope, Wilkie Collins and Henry Kingsley.
Walpole wrote in 1924: I grew up... discontented, abnormally sensitive, excessively conceited. No one liked me – not masters, friends of the family, nor relations who came to stay. I was untidy, excessively gauche. I believed that I was profoundly misunderstood, that people took my pale and pimpled countenance for the mirror of my soul, that I had marvellous things of interest in me that would one day be discovered. Though Walpole was no admirer of the schools he had attended there, the cathedral cities of Truro and Durham made a strong impression on him, he drew on aspects of them for his fictional cathedral city of Polchester in Glebeshire, the setting of many of his books. Walpole's memories of his time at Canterbury grew mellower over the years. From 1903 to 1906 Walpole studied history at Cambridge. While there he had his first work published, the critical essay "Two Meredithian Heroes", printed in the college magazine in autumn 1905; as an undergraduate he met and fell under the spell of A. C.
Benson a loved master at Eton, by this time a don at Magdalene College. Walpole's religious beliefs, hitherto an unquestioned part of his life, were fad
Malibu, California
Malibu is a beach city in western Los Angeles County, situated about 30 miles west of Downtown Los Angeles. It is known for its Mediterranean climate and its 21-mile strip of the Malibu coast, incorporated in 1991 into the City of Malibu; the area is known for being the home of Hollywood movie stars, people in the entertainment industry, other affluent residents. Most Malibu residents live within a few hundred yards of Pacific Coast Highway, which traverses the city, with some residents living up to a mile away from the beach up narrow canyons; as of the 2010 census, the city population was 12,645. Nicknamed "the'Bu" by surfers and locals, beaches along the Malibu coast include Surfrider Beach, Zuma Beach, Malibu Beach, Topanga Beach, Point Dume Beach, County Line, Dan Blocker Beach. State parks and beaches on the Malibu coast include Malibu Creek State Park, Leo Carrillo State Beach and Park, Point Mugu State Park, Robert H. Meyer Memorial State Beach, with individual beaches: El Pescador, La Piedra and El Matador.
The many parks within the Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area lie along the ridges above the city along with local parks that include Malibu Bluffs Park, Trancas Canyon Park, Las Flores Creek Park, Legacy Park. Signs around the city proclaim "21 miles of scenic beauty", referring to the incorporated city limits; the city updated the signs in 2017 from the historical 27-mile length of the Malibu coast spanning from Tuna Canyon on the southeast to Point Mugu in Ventura County on the northwest. For many residents of the unincorporated canyon areas, Malibu has the closest commercial centers and they are included in the Malibu ZIP Codes; the city is bounded by Topanga on the east, the Santa Monica Mountains to the north, the Pacific Ocean to the south, Solromar in Ventura County to the west. Malibu is named for the Ventureño Chumash settlement of Humaliwo, which translates to “The Surf Sounds Loudly.” This pre-colonial village is now part of the State Park. Malibu was settled by the Chumash, Native Americans whose territory extended loosely from the San Joaquin Valley to San Luis Obispo to Malibu, as well as several islands off the southern coast of California.
They named it "Humaliwo" or "the surf sounds loudly". The city's name derives from this; the village of Humaliwo was located next to Malibu Lagoon and was an important regional center in prehistoric times. The village, identified as CA-LAN-264, was occupied from 2,500 BCE, it was the second-largest Chumash coastal settlement by the Santa Monica Mountains, with just Muwu being more populated. A total of 118 individuals were baptized in Humaliwo. Humaliwo was considered an important political center, but there were additional minor settlements in today’s Malibu. One village, known as Ta’lopop, was located few miles up Malibu Canyon from Malibu Lagoon. Research have shown that Humaliwo had ties to other villages in pre-colonial times, including Hipuk and Huwam. Explorer Juan Rodríguez Cabrillo is believed to have moored at Malibu Lagoon, at the mouth of Malibu Creek, to obtain fresh water in 1542; the Spanish presence returned with the California mission system, the area was part of Rancho Topanga Malibu Sequit—a 13,000-acre land grant—in 1802.
That ranch passed intact to Frederick Hastings Rindge in 1891. He and his widow, May K. Rindge, guarded their privacy zealously by hiring guards to evict all trespassers and fighting a lengthy court battle to prevent the building of a Southern Pacific railroad line through the ranch. Interstate Commerce Commission regulations would not support a railroad condemning property in order to build tracks that paralleled an existing line, so Frederick H. Rindge decided to build his own railroad through his property first, he died, May K. Rindge followed through with the plans, building the Hueneme and Port Los Angeles Railway; the line started at Carbon Canyon, just inside the ranch's property eastern boundary, ran 15 miles westward, past Pt. Dume. Few roads entered the area before 1929, when the state won another court case and built what is now known as the Pacific Coast Highway. By May Rindge was forced to subdivide her property and begin selling and leasing lots; the Rindge house, known as the Adamson House, is now part of Malibu Creek State Park and is situated between Malibu Lagoon State Beach and Surfrider Beach, beside the Malibu Pier, used to provide transportation to/from the ranch, including construction materials for the Rindge railroad, to tie up the family's yacht.
In 1926, in an effort to avoid selling land to stave off insolvency, May K. Rindge created a small ceramic tile factory. At its height, Malibu Potteries employed over 100 workers, produced decorative tiles which furnish many Los Angeles-area public buildings and Beverly Hills residences; the factory, located one-half mile east of the pier, was ravaged by a fire in 1931. Although the factory reopened in 1932, it could not recover from the effects of the Great Depression and a steep downturn in Southern California construction projects. A distinct hybrid of Moorish and Arts and crafts designs, Malibu tile is considered collectible. Fine examples of the tiles may be seen at the Adamson House and Serra Retreat, a fifty-room mansion, started in the 1920s as the main Rindge home on a hill overlooking the lagoon; the unfinished building was sold to the Franciscan Order in 1942 and is
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