Gale Storm
Gale Storm was an American actress and singer who starred in two popular television programs of the 1950s, My Little Margie and The Gale Storm Show. Six of her songs were top ten hits, her biggest success was a cover version of "I Hear You Knockin'," which hit #2 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart in 1955. Storm was born in Bloomington in Victoria County in South Texas; the youngest of five children, she had two sisters. Her father, William Walter Cottle, died after a year-long illness when she was just 17 months old, her mother, Minnie Corina Cottle, struggled to rear the children alone, her elder sister Lois gave her baby sister the middle name "Owaissa", a Norridgewock Native American word meaning "bluebird." Her mother took in sewing opened a millinery shop in McDade, which failed, moved her family to Houston. Storm learned to be an accomplished dancer and became an excellent ice skater at Houston's Polar Palace, she performed in the drama club at both Albert Sidney Johnston Junior High School and San Jacinto High School.
When she was 17, two of her teachers urged her to enter a contest on Gateway to Hollywood, broadcast from the CBS Radio studios in Hollywood. First prize was a one-year contract with a movie studio, she won and was given the stage name Gale Storm. Her performing partner, Lee Bonnell from South Bend, became known as Terry Belmont. Storm had a role in the radio version of Big Town. After winning the contest in 1940, Storm made several films for RKO Radio Pictures, her first was Tom Brown's School Days, playing opposite Jimmy Freddie Bartholomew. She worked in low-budget films released during this period. In 1941, she sang in several Soundies, three-minute musicals produced for "movie jukeboxes", she acted and sang in Monogram Pictures' popular Frankie Darro series, played ingénue roles in other Monogram features with the East Side Kids, Edgar Kennedy, the Three Stooges, most notably in the film Swing Parade of 1946. Monogram had always relied on established actors with reputations, but in Gale Storm, the studio had a star of its own.
She played the lead in the studio's most elaborate productions, both dramatic. She shared top billing in Monogram's Cosmo Jones, Crime Smasher, opposite Edgar Kennedy, Richard Cromwell, Frank Graham in the role of Jones, a character derived from network radio. Storm starred in a number of films, including the romantic comedies G. I. Honeymoon and It Happened on Fifth Avenue, the Western Stampede, the 1950 film-noir dramas The Underworld Story and Between Midnight and Dawn. U. S. audiences warmed to Storm and her fan mail increased. She performed in more than three dozen motion pictures for Monogram, experience which made possible her success in other media, she became a television icon of the 1950s, starring in two successful series. In this decade, her singing career took shape, she appeared on such variety programs as The Pat Boone Chevy Showroom. In 1950, Storm made her television debut in Hollywood Premiere Theatre on ABC. From 1952 to 1955, she starred in My Little Margie, with former silent film actor Charles Farrell as her father.
The series began as a summer replacement for I Love Lucy on CBS, but ran for 126 episodes on NBC and CBS. The series was broadcast on CBS Radio from December 1952 to August 1955 with the same actors, her popularity was capitalized on when she served as hostess of the NBC Comedy Hour in the winter of 1956. That year, she starred in another situation comedy, The Gale Storm Show, featuring another silent movie star, ZaSu Pitts; the show ran for 143 episodes on CBS and ABC between 1956 and 1960. Storm appeared on other television programs in the 1950s and 1960s, she was both a panelist and a "mystery guest" on CBS's What's My Line? In Gallatin, Tennessee, in November 1954, a 10-year-old girl, Linda Wood, was watching Storm on a Sunday night television variety show, NBC's Colgate Comedy Hour, hosted by Gordon MacRae, singing one of the popular songs of the day. Linda's father asked her, singing and was told it was Gale Storm from My Little Margie. Linda's father Randy Wood was president of Dot Records, he liked Storm so much that he called to sign her before the end of the television show.
Her first record, "I Hear You Knockin'", a cover version of a rhythm and blues hit by Smiley Lewis, sold over a million copies. The follow-up was a two-sided hit, with Storm covering Dean Martin's "Memories Are Made of This" backed with her cover of Gloria Mann's "Teen Age Prayer"; that was followed by a hit cover of Frankie Lymon's "Why Do Fools Fall in Love". Storm's subsequent record sales began to slide but soon rebounded with a cover of her own labelmate Bonnie Guitar's haunting ballad "Dark Moon" that went to No. 4 on the Billboard Hot 100. Storm headlined in Las Vegas and appeared in numerous stage plays. Storm recorded for only about two years with Dot and gave up recording because of her husband's concerns with the time she had to devote to that career. Storm was married and widowed twice. In 1941, while still a teenager, she married Lee Bonnell an actor and a businessman, they had four children: Peter, Phillip and Susanna. In 1988, two years after she was widowed, she married Paul Masterson, who predeceased her.
In her years she struggled with alcoholism, in her own words: During the 1970s I experienced a low and painful time of dealing with alcoholism. I had Lee's unfailing support through the entire ordeal. My treatment and recovery were more than rugged. At that time, there was such a stigma attached to alcoholism for women, t
Cyd Charisse
Tula Ellice Charisse, known professionally as Cyd Charisse, was an American dancer and actress. After recovering from polio as a child and studying ballet, Charisse entered films in the 1940s, her roles featured her abilities as a dancer, she was paired with Fred Astaire and Gene Kelly. She stopped dancing in films in the late 1950s, but continued acting in film and television, in 1992 made her Broadway debut. In her years, she discussed the history of the Hollywood musical in documentaries, was featured in That's Entertainment! III in 1994, she was awarded the National Medal of the Arts and Humanities in 2006. Cyd Charisse was born Tula Ellice Finklea in Amarillo, the daughter of Lela and Ernest Enos Finklea, Sr., a jeweler. Her nickname "Sid" was taken from her younger brother, Thomas Jarrell Finklea, who tried to say "Sis", she was a sickly girl who started dancing lessons at six to build up her strength after a bout of polio. At 12, she studied ballet in Los Angeles with Adolph Bolm and Bronislava Nijinska, at 14, she auditioned for and subsequently danced in the Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo as "Felia Siderova" and "Maria Istomina".
During a European tour, she met up again with Nico Charisse, a young dancer she had studied with for a time in Los Angeles. They married in Paris in 1939 and had a son, born in 1942, she appeared uncredited in some films like Escort Girl and was in a short for Warner Bros, The Gay Parisian. The outbreak of World War II led to the breakup of the company, when Charisse returned to Los Angeles, David Lichine offered her a dancing role in Gregory Ratoff's Something to Shout About at Columbia; this brought her to the attention of choreographer Robert Alton – who had discovered Gene Kelly – and soon she joined the Freed Unit at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, where she became the resident MGM ballet dancer. Charisse made some uncredited appearances in Mission to Thousands Cheer, she was borrowed by Warners for In Our Time. Charisse was a ballerina in Ziegfeld Follies, dancing with Fred Astaire. Feedback was positive and Charisse was given her first speaking part supporting Judy Garland in the 1946 film The Harvey Girls.
She followed it with Three Wise Fools and she danced with Gower Champion to "Smoke Gets in Your Eyes" in Till the Clouds Roll By. She had a supporting role in the Esther Williams musical Fiesta. Charisse was second billed in The Unfinished Dance with Margaret O'Brien but the film was a box office flop, she had a good supporting part in On an Island with You with Williams and danced in The Kissing Bandit. She had a supporting part in Music. Charisse was given another opportunity in a "B" movie, where she was third billed, but it was a box office disappointment, she was billed fifth in the prestigious East Side, West Side and was borrowed by Universal to play the female lead in The Mark of the Renegade. Back at MGM Charisse was the leading lady in The Wild North with Stewart Granger, a huge hit; because Debbie Reynolds was not a trained dancer, Gene Kelly chose Charisse to partner with him in the celebrated "Broadway Melody" ballet finale from Singin' in the Rain, acknowledged soon after release as one of the greatest musicals of all time.
Charisse had an excellent role in Sombrero as well as the lead female role in The Band Wagon, where she danced with Astaire in the acclaimed "Dancing in the Dark" and "Girl Hunt Ballet" routines. Vincent Minnelli directed. Critic Pauline Kael said that "when the bespangled Charisse wraps her phenomenal legs around Astaire, she can be forgiven everything her three minutes of'classical' ballet and the fact that she reads her lines as if she learned them phonetically; the film was another classic but lost money to MGM. Charisse had a cameo in Easy to Love co-starred with Kelly in the Scottish-themed musical film Brigadoon, directed by Minnelli, it was a box office disappointment. She again took the lead female role in his MGM musical. In between she made an appearance in Deep in My Heart. Charisse co-starred with Dan Dailey in Meet Me in Las Vegas, which lost money, she rejoined Astaire in the film version of Silk Stockings, a musical remake of 1939's Ninotchka, with Charisse taking over Greta Garbo's role.
Astaire paid tribute to Charisse in his autobiography, calling her "beautiful dynamite" and writing: "That Cyd! When you've danced with her you stay danced with." The film was well received but lost money to MGM. In her autobiography, Charisse reflected on her experience with Astaire and Kelly: "As one of the handful of girls who worked with both of those dance geniuses, I think I can give an honest comparison. In my opinion, Kelly is the more inventive choreographer of the two. Astaire, with Hermes Pan's help, creates fabulous numbers -- for his partner, but Kelly can create an entire number for somebody else... I think, that Astaire's coordination is better than Kelly's... his sense of rhythm is uncanny. Kelly, on the other hand, is the stronger of the two; when he lifts you, he lifts you!... To sum it up, I'd say they were the two greatest dancing personalities who were on screen, but it's l
Rudy Vallée
Hubert Prior "Rudy" Vallée was an American singer, actor and radio host. He was one of the first modern pop stars of the teen idol type; the son of Charles Alphonse Vallée and Catherine Lynch, Rudy Vallée was born Hubert Prior Vallée in Island Pond, Vermont. His parents were born and raised in Vermont; the Vallées were Francophone Canadians from Quebec. Vallée grew up in Maine. In 1917, he enlisted for World War I but was discharged when United States Navy authorities discovered he was only 15 years old, he enlisted in Portland, Maine, on March 29, 1917, under the false birthdate of July 28, 1899. He was discharged at the Naval Training Station, Rhode Island, on May 17, 1917, with 41 days of active service. After playing drums in his high school band, Vallée played clarinet and saxophone in bands around New England as a teenager. From 1924 through 1925, he played with the Savoy Havana Band at the Savoy Hotel in London, where band members discouraged his attempts to become a vocalist, he returned to the United States attending the University of Maine.
He received a degree in philosophy from Yale University, where he played in the Yale Collegians with Peter Arno, who became a cartoonist for The New Yorker magazine. After graduation, he formed Rudy Vallée and the Connecticut Yankees, having named himself after saxophonist Rudy Wiedoeft. With this band, which included two violins, two saxophones, a piano, a banjo, drums, he started singing, he seemed more at home singing sweet ballads than jazz songs. But his singing, suave manner, boyish good looks attracted attention from young women. Vallée was given a recording contract, in 1928 he started performing on the radio, he became one of the first crooners. Singers needed strong voices to fill theaters in the days before microphones. Crooners had soft voices. Vallée's trombone-like vocal phrasing on "Deep Night" would inspire Bing Crosby, Frank Sinatra, Perry Como to model their voices on jazz instruments. Vallée was one of the first celebrity pop stars. Flappers pursued him, his live appearances were sold out.
Among screaming female fans, his voice failed to project in venues without microphones and amplification, so he sang through a megaphone. A caricature of him singing this way was depicted in the Betty Boop cartoon Poor Cinderella. Another caricature is in Crosby and Vallee, which parodies him, Bing Crosby, Russ Columbo. In the words of a magazine writer in 1929, At the microphone he is a romantic figure. Faultlessly attired in evening dress, he pours into the radio's delicate ear a stream of mellifluous melody, he appears to be coaxing, pleading and at the same time adoring the invisible one to whom his song is attuned. Vallée had his share of detractors as well as fans. Radio Revue, a radio fan magazine, held a contest in which people wrote letters explaining his success; the winning letter, written by a man who disliked Vallee's music, said, "Rudy Vallee is reaping the harvest of a seed, sown this day and age: LOVE. The good-looking little son-of-a-gun and LOVES his audience and his art, he LOVES to please listeners—LOVES it more than he does his name in the big lights, his mug in the papers.
He loved all those unseen women as passionately as a voice can love, long before they began to purr and to caress him with two-cent stamps."Vallée made his first records in 1928 for Columbia's low-priced labels Harmony, Velvet Tone, Diva. He signed to RCA Victor in February 1929 and remained with the company through 1931, leaving after a heated dispute with executives over title selections, he recorded for the short-lived Hit of the Week label which sold records laminated onto cardboard. In August 1932, he signed with Columbia and stayed with the label through 1933, his records were issued on Victor's low-priced Bluebird label until November 1933, when he was back on the Victor label. He remained with Victor until signing with ARC in 1936. ARC issued his records on the Perfect, Melotone and Romeo labels until 1937, when he again returned to Victor. With his group the Connecticut Yankees, Vallée's best-known recordings include "The Stein Song" in 1929 and "Vieni, Vieni" in the latter 1930s, his last hit record was a reissue of "As Time Goes By", popularized in the 1942 film Casablanca.
Due to the mid-1940s recording ban, RCA Victor reissued the version he had recorded in 1931. During World War II, he enlisted in the United States Coast Guard to help direct the 11th district Coast Guard band as a Chief Petty Officer, he was led the 40 piece band to great success. In 1944 he was returned to radio. According to George P. Oslin, Vallée on July 28, 1933 was the recipient of the first singing telegram. A fan telegraphed birthday greeting, Oslin had the operator sing "Happy Birthday to You". In 1995, a Golden Palm Star on the Palm Springs, Walk of Stars was dedicated to him. In 1929, Vallée began hosting The Fleischmann's Yeast Hour, a popular radio show with guests such as Fay Wray and Richard Cromwell in dramatic skits. Vallée continued hosting radio shows such as the Royal Gelatin Hour, Vallee Varieties, The Rudy Vallee Show through the 1930s and 1940s; when Vallée took his contractual vacations from his national radio show in 1937, he insisted his sponsor hire Louis Armstrong as his substitute This was the first instance of an African-American hosting a national radio program.
Vallée
Ignacy Jan Paderewski
Ignacy Jan Paderewski was a Polish pianist and composer, politician and spokesman for Polish independence. He was a favorite of concert audiences around the world, his musical fame opened access to the media. Paderewski played an important role in meeting with President Woodrow Wilson and obtaining the explicit inclusion of independent Poland as point 13 in Wilson's peace terms in 1918, called the Fourteen Points, he was the Prime Minister of Poland and Poland's foreign minister in 1919, represented Poland at the Paris Peace Conference in 1919. He served 10 months as prime minister, soon thereafter left Poland, never to return. Paderewski was born to Polish parents in the village of Kuryłówka, Litin uyezd in the Podolia Governorate of the Russian Empire, part of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth for centuries; the village today is part of the Khmilnyk raion of Vinnytsia Oblast in Ukraine. His father, Jan Paderewski, was an administrator of large estates, his mother, Poliksena, née Nowicka, died several months after Paderewski was born, he was brought up by distant relatives.
From his early childhood, Paderewski was interested in music while living at the private estate near Żytomir, where he moved with his father. However, soon after his father's arrest in connection with the January Uprising, he was adopted by his aunt. After being released, Paderewski's father married again and moved to the town of Sudylkov, near Shepetovka, he took piano lessons with a private tutor. At the age of 12, in 1872, he was admitted to the Warsaw Conservatory. After graduating in 1878, he was asked to become a tutor of piano classes at his alma mater, a position he accepted. In 1880, Paderewski married a fellow student at the conservatory Antonina Korsakówna; the following year, their son was born handicapped. Paderewski decided to devote himself to music. A chance meeting in 1884 with a famous Polish actress, Helena Modrzejewska, set him on a course of a career as a virtuoso pianist. Modrzejewska arranged for a public concert and appearance together in Kraków's Hotel Saski to raise funds for Paderewski's further piano study.
The scheme was a tremendous success and he moved to Vienna, where he became a pupil of the pre-eminent pedagogue of Polish descent, Theodor Leschetizky. After three years of diligent study and a teaching appointment in Strasbourg arranged for by Leschetizky, Paderewski made his concert debut in Vienna in 1887, he soon gained his subsequent appearances were major successes. His brilliant playing created a furor that reached to extravagant lengths of admiration. A large part of his great success stemmed from his striking looks. Paderewski had immense charisma, which would prove important in his political and charitable activities. In 1891 the pianist set for a tour of the United States, which brought him great acclaim and fortune as well as access to the halls of power, his name at once became synonymous with the highest level of piano virtuosity. Not everyone was impressed, however. After hearing Paderewski for the first time, Moriz Rosenthal said: "Yes, he plays well, I suppose, but he's no Paderewski".
America became the place he toured most and his second home. Paderewski kept up a furious pace of touring and composition, including many of his own pieces for piano in his concerts, he wrote an opera, which to date has been the only opera by a Polish composer performed in the Metropolitan Opera's 135-year history. A “lyric drama,” Manru is an ambitious work formally inspired by Wagner's music dramas; the story centers on a doomed love triangle, social inequality and racial prejudice and is set in the Tatra Mountains. In addition to the Met, Manru was staged in Dresden, Prague, Zurich, Philadelphia, Chicago and Baltimore, Kiev. In 1904, accompanied by his second wife, entourage and Erard piano, gave concerts in Australia and New Zealand, in collaboration with Polish-French composer, Henri Kowalski. Paderewski toured tirelessly around the world, was the first to give a solo performance at the new 3,000-seat Carnegie Hall. In 1909 came the premiere of his Symphony in B minor "Polonie", a massive work lasting 75 minutes.
Paderewski's compositions were quite popular during his lifetime and for a time entered the orchestral repertoire, in particular his Fantaisie polonaise sur des thèmes originaux for piano and orchestra, piano Concerto in A minor, Polonie symphony. His piano miniatures became popular, and though his relentless touring schedule and his more valuable and urgent political and charitable engagements imposed on his composition, Paderewski left a legacy of over 70 orchestral and vocal works. In 1896, Paderewski donated US$10,000 to establish a trust fund to encourage American-born composers; the fund underwrote a triennial competition that began in 1901 ca
Jimmie Dodd
James Wesley Dodd was an American actor and songwriter, best known as the MC of the popular 1950s Walt Disney television series The Mickey Mouse Club, as well as the writer of its well-known theme song, "The Mickey Mouse Club March." A slowed-down version of this march, with different lyrics, became the alma mater that closed the show. Dodd had some early film roles in The Three Mesquiteers series of westerns. Coincidentally, he performed in two unrelated series whose names were plays on "musketeers", he made his first screen appearance in the 1940 William Holden film Those Were the Days! in a minor role. He appeared in many theatrical films in the 1940s and 1950s uncredited, he appeared with John Wayne in the war films Flying Tigers, Janie, in which he sings a bit of Keep Your Powder Dry with star Joyce Reynolds, with Harry Carey in China's Little Devils, another film involving the Flying Tigers. He played the taxi driver in the MGM film Easter Parade, starring Fred Astaire and Judy Garland.
Dodd had a important part in the Mickey Rooney hit Quicksand. Two of his films were biographies of baseball players: The Jackie Robinson Story, in which Jackie Robinson played himself, The Winning Team, in which future president Ronald Reagan portrayed pitcher Grover Cleveland Alexander, he played a taxi driver again in Phffft. In addition to his small role in an early episode of Adventures of Superman titled "Double Trouble," Dodd appeared as a deputy in the 1955 episode "Sontag and Evans" of the syndicated television series Stories of the Century; the segment was based on the California train robbers Chris John Sontag. The Mickey Mouse Club aired each weekday. Dodd always wore "Mouseke-ears", played his "Mouse-guitar", sang self-composed songs, his tunes contained positive messages for kids. In addition, among his other musical contributions is a song that a generation of kids has used for nearly a half century to spell "encyclopedia", he performed a regular segment on the show singing "Proverbs Proverbs they're so true"...and would expound on a Proverb from the Bible and give an explanation of its value in everyday life.
He performed songs in several of his movies. The original Mouseketeers, frequent guests at the Dodd home for backyard barbecues and sing-alongs, said Dodd treated them as part of his own extended family. Dodd died of cancer on November 10, 1964, in Honolulu, aged 54. Cheryl Holdridge was the last Mouseketeer to see Dodd alive. Holdridge visited Dodd in his final hours because she and her new husband Lance Reventlow had flown to Hawaii for their honeymoon, they came to the hospital. He is interred at Forest Lawn Memorial Park in the Hollywood Hills of Los Angeles. Jimmie Dodd on IMDb Jimmie Dodd at the Internet Broadway Database
Ricardo Montalbán
Ricardo Gonzalo Pedro Montalbán y Merino, KSG was a Mexican actor. His career spanned seven decades, during which he became known for many different performances in a variety of genres, from crime and drama to musicals and comedy. Among his notable roles was Armando in the Planet of the Apes film series from the early 1970s, wherein he starred in Escape from the Planet of the Apes and Conquest of the Planet of the Apes. Ricardo Montalbán played Mr. Roarke on the television series Fantasy Island, Khan Noonien Singh in both the original Star Trek series and the film Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, he won an Emmy Award for his role in the miniseries How the West Was Won, a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Screen Actors Guild in 1993. Montalbán was professionally active into his 80s, when he provided voices for animated films and commercials, appeared as Grandfather Valentin in the Spy Kids franchise. During the 1970s and 80s he was a spokesman in automobile advertisements for Chrysler, including those in which he extolled the "rich Corinthian leather" used for the Cordoba's interior.
Montalbán was born on November 25, 1920, in Mexico City and grew up in Torreón, the son of Spanish immigrants Ricarda Merino Jiménez and Genaro Balbino Montalbán Busano, a store manager, who raised him as a Roman Catholic. He was born with an arteriovenous malformation in his spine. Montalbán had a sister and two brothers and Carlos; as a teenager, he moved to Los Angeles to live with Carlos. They moved to New York City in 1940, Montalbán earned a minor role in the play Her Cardboard Lover. In 1941, Montalbán appeared in three-minute musicals produced for the Soundies film jukeboxes, he appeared in many of the New York–produced Soundies as an extra or as a member of a singing chorus, although he had the lead role in He's a Latin from Staten Island, in which he played the title role of a guitar-strumming gigolo, accompanied by an offscreen vocal by Gus Van. Late in 1941, Montalbán returned to Mexico after learning. There, he became a star in his homeland. Montalbán recalled that when he arrived in Hollywood in 1943, studios wanted to change his name to Ricky Martin.
He appeared with swimming star Esther Williams in three of Williams' movies: Fiesta, On an Island with You, Neptune's Daughter. His first leading role was in the film noir Border Incident with actor George Murphy, he was the first Hispanic actor to appear on the front cover of Life magazine on November 21, 1949. Many of his early roles were in Westerns in which he played character roles as Native Americans or as Latin Lovers, but he was cast against type in the film noir Mystery Street, playing a Cape Cod police officer. From 1957 to 1959, he starred in the Broadway musical Jamaica, singing several light-hearted calypso numbers opposite Lena Horne. During the 1950s and 1960s, he was one of only a handful of working Hispanic actors in Hollywood, although he portrayed several ethnicities – of Japanese background, as in with the character of Nakamura in the film Sayonara, as Tokura in the Hawaii Five-O episode "Samurai". In the romance comedy Love Is a Ball, he played a naive, penniless French duke being groomed as a potential husband for a rich American woman.
Montalbán starred in radio, such as on the internationally syndicated program "Lobo del Mar", in which he was cast as the captain of a vessel which became part of some adventure at each port it visited. This 30-minute weekly show aired in many Spanish-speaking countries until the early 1970s. In 1972, Montalbán co-founded the Screen Actors Guild Ethnic Minority Committee with actors Carmen Zapata, Henry Darrow and Edith Diaz. In 1975, he was chosen as the television spokesman for the new Chrysler Cordoba; the car became a successful model, over the following several years, was advertised. For example, Eugene Levy impersonated him on SCTV. In 1986, he was featured in a magazine advertisement for the new Chrysler New Yorker. Montalbán's best-known television role was that of Mr. Roarke on the television series Fantasy Island, which he played from 1977 until 1984. For a while the series was one of the most popular on television, his character as well as that of his sidekick, became popular icons.
Before that he appeared on American television in the 1976 Columbo episode "A Matter of Honor". Another of his well-known roles was that of Khan Noonien Singh in Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, in which he reprised a role that he had originated in the 1967 episode of Star Trek titled "Space Seed". Early rumors suggested Montalbán wore prosthetic muscles on his chest during filming of Star Trek II to appear more muscular. Director Nicholas Meyer replied that in his sixties Montalbán, who had a vigorous training regimen, was "one strong cookie", that his real chest was seen on film. Khan's costume was designed to display Montalbán's physique. Critic Christopher Null called Khan the "greatest role of Montalbán's career". New Yorker critic Pauline Kael said Montalbán's performance as Khan "was the only validation he has had of his power to command the big screen". Montalbán agreed to take the role for a significant pay cut, since
Big Joe Turner
Joseph Vernon "Big Joe" Turner Jr. was an American blues shouter from Kansas City, Missouri. According to songwriter Doc Pomus, "Rock and roll would have never happened without him." His greatest fame was due to his rock-and-roll recordings in the 1950s "Shake and Roll", but his career as a performer endured from the 1920s into the 1980s. Turner was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1987, with the Hall lauding him as "the brawny voiced'Boss of the Blues'". Turner was born May 1911 in Kansas City, his father was killed in a train accident. He sang in his church, on street corners for money, he left school at age fourteen to work in Kansas City's nightclubs, first as a cook and as a singing bartender. He became known as "The Singing Barman", worked in such venues as the Kingfish Club and the Sunset, where he and his partner, the boogie-woogie pianist Pete Johnson, became resident performers; the Sunset was managed by Piney Brown. It featured "equal" facilities for white patrons. Turner sang it throughout his career.
At that time Kansas City nightclubs were subject to frequent raids by the police. We'd sign our names and walk right out. We would cabaret until morning."His partnership with Johnson proved fruitful. Together they went to New York City in 1936, where they appeared on a playbill with Benny Goodman, but as Turner recounted, "After our show with Goodman, we auditioned at several places, but New York wasn't ready for us yet, so we headed back to K. C." They were seen by the talent scout John H. Hammond in 1938, who invited them back to New York to appear in one of his From Spirituals to Swing concerts at Carnegie Hall, which were instrumental in introducing jazz and blues to a wider American audience. In part because of their appearance at Carnegie Hall and Johnson had a major success with the song "Roll'Em Pete"; the track was a collection of traditional blues lyrics. It was a song that Turner recorded many times, over the ensuing years. In 1939, along with the boogie-woogie pianists Albert Ammons and Meade Lux Lewis, they began a residency at Café Society, a nightclub in New York City, where they appeared on the same playbill as Billie Holiday and Frankie Newton's band.
Besides "Roll'Em, Pete", Turner's best-known recordings from this period are "Cherry Red", "I Want a Little Girl" and "Wee Baby Blues". "Cherry Red" was recorded in 1939 for the Vocalion label, with Hot Lips Page on trumpet and a full band in attendance. During the next year Turner contracted with Decca and recorded "Piney Brown Blues" with Johnson on piano. In 1941, he performed in Duke Ellington's revue Jump for Joy in Hollywood, he appeared as a singing policeman in a comedy sketch, "He's on the Beat". Los Angeles was his home for a time, during 1944 he worked in Meade Lux Lewis's Soundies musical movies, he sang on the soundtrack recordings but was not present for filming, his vocals were mouthed by the comedian Dudley Dickerson for the camera. In 1945 Turner and Pete Johnson established the Blue Moon Club, a bar in Los Angeles. In 1945, he signed a recording contract with National Records, for which he recorded under the supervision of Herb Abramson, his first hit single was a cover of Saunders King's "S.
K. Blues", he recorded the songs "My Gal's a Jockey" and the risqué "Around the Clock" the same year, Aladdin Records released "Battle of the Blues", a duet with Wynonie Harris. Turner stayed with National until 1947. In 1950, he recorded released by Freedom Records. Turner made many albums with Johnson, Art Tatum, Sammy Price, other jazz groups, he recorded for several record companies. He performed with the Count Basie Orchestra. During his career, Turner was part of the transition from big bands to jump blues to rhythm and blues to rock and roll, he was a master of traditional blues verses, at Kansas City jam sessions he could swap choruses with instrumental soloists for hours. In 1951, while performing with the Count Basie Orchestra at Harlem's Apollo Theater as a replacement for Jimmy Rushing, he was spotted by Ahmet and Nesuhi Ertegün, who contracted him to their new recording company, Atlantic Records. Turner recorded a number of successes for them, including the blues standards, "Chains of Love" and "Sweet Sixteen".
Many of his vocals are punctuated with shouts to the band members, as in "Boogie Woogie Country Girl" and "Honey Hush". Turner's records reached the top of the rhythm-and-blues charts; some of his songs were so risqué that some radio stations refused to play them, but they received much play on jukeboxes and records. Turner had great success during 1954 with "Shake and Roll", which boosted his career, turning him into a teenage favorite, helped to transform popular music. During the song, Turner yells at his woman to "get outta that bed, wash yo' face an' hands" and comments that she's "wearin' those dresses, the sun comes shinin' through! I can't believe my eyes, all that mess belongs to you." He sang it on film for Blues Revue. Although the cover version of the song by Bill Haley & His Comets, with the risqué lyrics omitted, was a greater sales success, many listeners sought out Turner's version and were introdu
