1.
Mel Gibson
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Mel Colmcille Gerard Gibson AO is an American actor and filmmaker. He was born in Peekskill, New York, and moved with his parents to Sydney, Australia and he studied acting at the Australian National Institute of Dramatic Art. During the 1980s, he founded Icon Entertainment, a company which independent film director Atom Egoyan has called. Director Peter Weir cast him as one of the leads in the critically acclaimed World War I drama Gallipoli, the film also helped to earn Gibson the reputation of a serious, versatile actor. He later directed and produced the successful and controversial, biblical drama film The Passion of the Christ. He received further critical notice for his work of the action-adventure film Apocalypto. Gibson was born in Peekskill, New York, the sixth of eleven children, and the son of Hutton Gibson, a writer. One of Gibsons younger brothers, Donal, is also an actor, because of his mother, Gibson retains dual Irish and American citizenship. Mel was twelve years old at the time, Gibson was educated by members of the Congregation of Christian Brothers at St Leos Catholic College in Wahroonga, New South Wales, during his high school years. Gibson gained very favorable notices from critics when he first entered the cinematic scene. In 1982, Vincent Canby wrote that Mr. Gibson recalls the young Steve McQueen, I cant define star quality, but whatever it is, Mr. Gibson has it. Gibson has also likened to a combination Clark Gable and Humphrey Bogart. Gibsons roles in the Mad Max series of films, Peter Weirs Gallipoli, later, Gibson expanded into a variety of acting projects including human dramas such as Hamlet, and comedic roles such as those in Maverick and What Women Want. He expanded beyond acting into directing and producing, with, The Man Without a Face, in 1993, Braveheart, in 1995, The Passion of the Christ, in 2004, jess Cagle of Time compared Gibson with Cary Grant, Sean Connery, and Robert Redford. Connery once suggested Gibson should play the next James Bond to Connerys M. Gibson turned down the role, Gibson studied at the National Institute of Dramatic Art in Sydney. The students at NIDA were classically trained in the British-theater tradition rather than in preparation for screen acting. As students, Gibson and actress Judy Davis played the leads in Romeo and Juliet, and Gibson played the role of Queen Titania in an experimental production of A Midsummer Nights Dream. After graduation in 1977, Gibson immediately began work on the filming of Mad Max, but continued to work as a stage actor, and joined the State Theatre Company of South Australia in Adelaide
2.
United States
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Forty-eight of the fifty states and the federal district are contiguous and located in North America between Canada and Mexico. The state of Alaska is in the northwest corner of North America, bordered by Canada to the east, the state of Hawaii is an archipelago in the mid-Pacific Ocean. The U. S. territories are scattered about the Pacific Ocean, the geography, climate and wildlife of the country are extremely diverse. At 3.8 million square miles and with over 324 million people, the United States is the worlds third- or fourth-largest country by area, third-largest by land area. It is one of the worlds most ethnically diverse and multicultural nations, paleo-Indians migrated from Asia to the North American mainland at least 15,000 years ago. European colonization began in the 16th century, the United States emerged from 13 British colonies along the East Coast. Numerous disputes between Great Britain and the following the Seven Years War led to the American Revolution. On July 4,1776, during the course of the American Revolutionary War, the war ended in 1783 with recognition of the independence of the United States by Great Britain, representing the first successful war of independence against a European power. The current constitution was adopted in 1788, after the Articles of Confederation, the first ten amendments, collectively named the Bill of Rights, were ratified in 1791 and designed to guarantee many fundamental civil liberties. During the second half of the 19th century, the American Civil War led to the end of slavery in the country. By the end of century, the United States extended into the Pacific Ocean. The Spanish–American War and World War I confirmed the status as a global military power. The end of the Cold War and the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991 left the United States as the sole superpower. The U. S. is a member of the United Nations, World Bank, International Monetary Fund, Organization of American States. The United States is a developed country, with the worlds largest economy by nominal GDP. It ranks highly in several measures of performance, including average wage, human development, per capita GDP. While the U. S. economy is considered post-industrial, characterized by the dominance of services and knowledge economy, the United States is a prominent political and cultural force internationally, and a leader in scientific research and technological innovations. In 1507, the German cartographer Martin Waldseemüller produced a map on which he named the lands of the Western Hemisphere America after the Italian explorer and cartographer Amerigo Vespucci
3.
Deborah Kerr
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Deborah Kerr CBE was a Scottish film, theatre and television actress. She was also a winner of the New York Film Critics Circle Award for Best Actress. Kerr was nominated six times for the Academy Award for Best Actress and she spent the first three years of her life in the nearby town of Helensburgh, where her parents lived with Deborahs grandparents in a house on West King Street. Kerr had a brother, Edmund, who became a journalist. He was killed in a road incident in 2004. Kerr was educated at the independent Northumberland House School, Henleaze in Bristol, Kerr originally trained as a ballet dancer, first appearing on stage at Sadlers Wells in 1938. After changing careers, she found success as an actress. Her first acting teacher was her aunt, Phyllis Smale, who ran the Hicks-Smale Drama School in Bristol and she adopted the name Deborah Kerr on becoming a film actress. Kerrs first stage appearance was at Weston-super-Mare in 1937, as Harlequin in the mime play Harlequin and she then went to the Sadlers Wells ballet school and in 1938 made her début in the corps de ballet in Prometheus. In 1943, aged 21, Kerr made her West End début as Ellie Dunn in a revival of Heartbreak House at the Cambridge Theatre, stealing attention from such as Edith Evans. She has the gift, wrote critic Beverley Baxter, of thinking her lines. The process of development from a romantic, silly girl to a hard, after her first London success in 1943, she toured England and Scotland in Heartbreak House. Near the end of the Second World War, she also toured Holland, France, and Belgium for ENSA as Mrs Manningham in Angel Street, and Britain in Gaslight. Having established herself as an actress in the meantime, she made her Broadway debut in 1953, appearing in Robert Andersons Tea and Sympathy. Kerr repeated her role along with her stage partner John Kerr in Vincente Minnellis film adaptation of the drama, in 1955, Kerr won the Sarah Siddons Award for her performance in Chicago during a national tour of the play. After her Broadway début in 1953, she toured the United States with Tea, in 1975, she returned to Broadway, creating the role of Nancy in Edward Albees Pulitzer Prize-winning play Seascape. In 1977, she came back to the West End, playing the role in a production of George Bernard Shaws Candida. I dont mean to belittle acting but Im like a child when Im out there performing—shocking the grownups, enchanting them and its an unbelievable terror, a kind of masochistic madness
4.
Television in the United States
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Television is one of the major mass media of the United States. The peak ownership percentage of households with at least one television set occurred during the 1996–97 season, individual broadcast television stations in the U. S. transmit on either VHF channels 2 through 13 or UHF channels 14 through 51. Over-the-air and subscription television networks, however, are not required to file for a license to operate, channels are usually sold in groups, rather than singularly. A la carte subscription services in the U. S, the United States has a decentralized, market-oriented television system, particularly in regard to broadcast television. The nation has a public television service known as the Public Broadcasting Service. Local media markets have their own stations, which may either be affiliated with or owned and operated by a television network. Arrangements in which television stations carried more than one network on its main signal were more common between the 1940s and the 1960s, although some continued as late as 2010. However unlike in other countries, to ensure local presences in television broadcasting, the international programming model is used in the U. S. The five major U. S. broadcast television networks are the National Broadcasting Company, CBS, the American Broadcasting Company, the Fox Broadcasting Company and the CW Television Network. The first and elder three began as radio networks, NBC and CBS respectively began operations in 1924 and 1927, weekday schedules on ABC, CBS, and NBC affiliates tend to be similar, with programming choices sorted by dayparts. Network daytime schedules consist of shows and soap operas, although one network – CBS – still carries game shows. Syndicated talk shows are shown in the afternoon, followed by additional local newscasts in the early evening time period. ABC, CBS and NBC offer network news programs each evening, local newscasts or syndicated programs fill the prime access hour or half-hour, and lead into the networks prime time schedules, which are the days most-watched three hours of television. The traditional prime time runs from 8,00 to 11,00 p. m. in the Eastern. Hour and leave that hour for their affiliates to provide programming of their own, later in the evening, drama series of various types air. Sunday is the night on American television, with many of TVs most popular shows airing on that night. At the end of time, another local news program is broadcast. Saturday mornings usually feature network programming aimed at children, while Sunday mornings include a form of public affairs program known as the Sunday morning talk shows, both of these help fulfill stations legal obligations, respectively to provide educational childrens programs and public service programming
5.
Candice Bergen
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Candice Patricia Bergen is an American actress and former fashion model. She won five Emmy Awards and two Golden Globe Awards for her ten seasons as the character on the CBS sitcom Murphy Brown. She is also known for her role as Shirley Schmidt on the ABC drama Boston Legal and she was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for Starting Over, and for the BAFTA Award for Best Actress in a Supporting Role for Gandhi. Bergen began her career as a model and appeared on the front cover of Vogue magazine. She went on to star in The Sand Pebbles, Soldier Blue, Carnal Knowledge and The Wind and she made her Broadway debut in the 1984 play Hurlyburly. From 2000 to 2002, she appeared in three episodes of the HBO series Sex and the City and her other film roles include Miss Congeniality, Sweet Home Alabama, The Women and Bride Wars. In the 2010s, she returned to Broadway to star in the revivals of The Best Man, Bergen was born in Beverly Hills, California. She weighed seven pounds,12 ounces and her mother, Frances Bergen, was a Powers model who was known professionally as Frances Westcott. Her father, Edgar Bergen, was a famous ventriloquist, comedian and her paternal grandparents were Swedish-born immigrants who anglicized their surname, which was originally Berggren. As a child, Candice was irritated at being described as Charlie McCarthys little sister. She began appearing on her fathers radio program at a young age and she said that when she grew up, she wanted to design clothes. She ultimately received a doctorate from Penn in May 1992. She worked as a model before she took up acting. In 1966, Bergen made her screen debut playing a university student in The Group, the same year, she played the role of Shirley Eckert, an assistant school teacher in The Sand Pebbles opposite Steve McQueen. The movie was nominated for several Academy Awards and she was featured in a 1970 political satire, The Adventurers, playing a frustrated socialite. In 1975 she starred with Sean Connery in The Wind and the Lion, Bergen had roles in Western films including The Hunting Party and Bite the Bullet, both of which starred Gene Hackman. Another Western she starred in was the highly controversial Soldier Blue, a worldwide hit and it led to Bergens being voted by British exhibitors as the seventh most popular star at the British box office in 1971. She was the love interest of Ryan ONeal in the Love Story sequel, Olivers Story, in 1982, Bergen appeared in the Oscar-winning film Gandhi in which she portrayed documentary photographer Margaret Bourke-White
6.
Cinema of Australia
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The Australian film industry has its beginnings with the 1906 production of The Story of the Kelly Gang, the earliest feature film ever made. Since then, many films have produced in Australia, a number of which have received international recognition. Cinema in Australia began with the first public screenings of films in Australia in October 1896, the first Australian exhibition took place at the Athenaeum Hall in Collins Street, Melbourne, to provide alternative entertainment for the dance hall patrons. The venue would continue screenings, but these were all short films, commercially successful Australian films have included Paul Hogans Crocodile Dundee, Baz Luhrmanns Moulin Rouge. Other award winning productions include Picnic at Hanging Rock, Gallipoli, The Tracker, Shine, the Athanaeum Hall in Collins Street, Melbourne, was a dance hall from the 1880s, which from time to time would provide alternative entertainment to patrons. In October 1896, it exhibited the first movie shown in Australia, the Athanaeum would continue screenings, but these early screenings were all short films. The earliest feature length film in the world was the Australian produced The Story of the Kelly Gang. The film was written and directed by Charles Tait and included several of his family, the film was also exhibited in the United Kingdom, and was commercially very successful. Melbourne was also home of one of the worlds first film studios, the Limelight Department produced evangelical material for use by the Salvation Army, as well as private and government contracts. In its 19 years of operation, the Limelight Department produced about 300 films of various lengths, soldiers of the Cross fortified the Limelight Department as a major player in the early film industry. The Limelight Department was commissioned to film the Federation of Australia, the 1910s was a boom period in Australian cinema. While these numbers may seem small, Australia was one of the most prolific film-producing countries at the time, in all, between 1906 and 1928,150 narrative feature films were made, of which almost 90 were made between 1910 and 1912. There are various explanations for the decline of the industry in the 1920s. Some historians point to falling numbers, a lack of interest in Australian product and narratives. Also, there was a ban on bushranger films in 1912. To redress this imbalance, the government imposed a tax on imported film in 1914. Whatever the explanation, by 1923, American films dominated the Australian market with 94% of all exhibited films coming from that country, in 1930, F. W. Thring established the Efftee Studios based in Melbourne to make talking films using optical sound equipment imported from the USA. The first sound films produced were in 1931, when the company produced Diggers, A Co-respondents Course, The Haunted Barn, during the five years of its existence, Efftee produced nine features, over 80 shorts and several stage productions
7.
Event Cinemas
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The Event Cinemas cinema chain has greatly impacted the Australian culture and film industry and has a history of mergers and acquisitions and liquidations that span over a century. From 1906 to 1911, during the silent era, Australia was the most prolific producer of films in the world. This creative and fertile period in Australian film history was created by competition between Wests Pictures, Spencers Pictures and Amalgamated Pictures. On 4 May 1912 the three joined to form The General Film Company of Australasia, the Combine monopoly was highly influential on the early twentieth century Australian film industry. However, it came under criticism for its low interest in producing Australian films, its preference for imported cinema. Historians have traced the decline of the Australian film industry in 1913 to the repercussions of these series of takeovers and mergers. James Sabine has said that the stranglehold of the forced a decline in local production. The Combine continued to grow into the 1920s during the genesis of the Hollywood era with its focus on exhibiting American films, the Great Depression saw Union Theatres being liquidated in 1931 and its assets purchased by newly formed Greater Union Theatres. Due to The Depression, Greater Union Theatres merged into the General Film Corporation with Hoyts, in 1937 Norman Rydge became managing director and removed the company from the previous merger. In 1945 there was a box office boom and the British Rank Organisation purchased a share in Greater Union Theatres. In 1980 billionaire Alan Rydge was appointed Chairman of AHL to become the youngest chairman of an Australian public company, in 1984 AHL regained control over the now defunct Rank Organisations half share, meaning that it once again became fully Australian owned. In 1987 GUO merged with Village Roadshow to form the distribution company Roadshow Film Distributors, in 1991 GUO acquired Birch, Carroll & Coyle. In 2003 AHL and Village Roadshow combined to form Australian Theatres, since 2009 a number of movie theatres have been renamed from Greater Union Cinemas to Event Cinemas. On 22 December 2015 AHL was renamed Event Hospitality and Entertainment, Event Cinemas have over fifty movie theatre venues around Australia, many located in large shopping centres. The cinema complexes comprise multiple screens, in 2005 Event Cinemas banned people from bringing their own food and drink into the cinema. After negative public attention and a threat of investigation by the Fair Trading Commission they were forced to revoke the rule, people complained that Event Cinemas food cost more than double the price in supermarket stores and had less variety. In 2012 Australian journalist Tim Burrowes attended a screening of Skyfall at an Event Cinema, there were various technical difficulties which resulted in the audience being asked to leave and a manager threatening Burrowes for filming the crowds reactions. In the lead up to the 2016 Australian Federal Election Chairman Alan Rydge was reported to have donated to Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbulls controversial political fund the Wentworth Forum
8.
Nine Network
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The Nine Network is one of three main free-to-air commercial networks in Australia. The Nine Network is one of the two highest-rating television networks in Australia, along with the Seven Network and ahead of Network Ten, ABC, and SBS. The Nine Network was overtaken in the ratings in 2007 by its rival, the Seven Network, as a result, Nines slogan Still the One was discontinued. Since 2009, the slogan has been Welcome Home. After a few years in decline, with a period plagued by mass sackings, programme cancellations, and budget cuts. TCN-9 launched on 16 September 1956, john Godson introduced the station and Bruce Gyngell presented the first programme, This Is Television. Before its formation, TCN-9 was then affiliated with HSV-7, by the late 1960s, the network had begun unofficially calling itself the National Nine Network, and became simply the Nine Network in 1989. In 1967, the New South Wales Rugby Football League grand final became the first football final of any code to be televised live in Australia. The Nine Network paid $5,000 for the broadcasting rights, in the late 1980s, STW-9 Perth, which opened in 1965, became a Nine Network owned-and-operated station when Bond Media purchased the network. In 2011 GTV9 Melbourne moved from 22 Bendigo Street, Richmond, to 717 Bourke Street,22 Bendigo Street started out as the Wertheim Piano Factory, then became the Heinz Soup Factory, then GTV9. The building in Bendigo Street still stands, now as luxury apartments, Nine began using the slogan Let Us Be The One in 1977 and became the number-one free-to-air network in Australia, its National Nine News became the most-watched news service. In 1978, Nine switched its slogan to Still the One, during the 1980s, Nines ratings peaked. From 1999 to 2001, the network began losing ground to the Seven network in news and entertainment, the death of CEO Kerry Packer in 2005 triggered more problems for the network. Digital terrestrial television was introduced on 1 January 2001, Nine stayed strong throughout 2004, but was hit hard when Seven introduced a new line-up in 2005, though Nine finished ahead of Seven that year. Meanwhile, National Nine News was overtaken by Seven News, while Today was beaten by Sevens Sunrise, in 2006, Nine continued on its downward trend, losing most news weeks to Seven News and just winning the year thanks to its coverage of the Commonwealth Games in Melbourne. To try to revitalise the network in its 50th anniversary, Nine adopted a new, but critically received, logo removed the nine dots. In May 2007, Nine partially reintroduced the Nine dots, which resulted in the square logo changing into a cube that rotates. After a period of declining ratings, David Gyngell returned to the job of executive officer in October 2007
9.
Colleen McCullough
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Colleen Margaretta McCullough AO was an Australian author known for her novels, her most well-known being The Thorn Birds. McCullough was born in 1937 in Wellington, in the Central West region of New South Wales, to James and her father was of Irish descent and her mother was a New Zealander of part-Māori descent. During her childhood, the family moved around a great deal and her family eventually settled in Sydney where she attended Holy Cross College, Woollahra, having a strong interest in both science and the humanities. She had a brother, Carl, who drowned off the coast of Crete when he was 25 while trying to rescue tourists in difficulty. She based a character in The Thorn Birds on him, before her tertiary education, McCullough earned a living as a teacher, librarian and journalist. In her first year of studies at the University of Sydney she suffered dermatitis from surgical soap and was told to abandon her dreams of becoming a medical doctor. Instead, she switched to neuroscience and worked at Royal North Shore Hospital in Sydney and she spent 10 years researching and teaching in the Department of Neurology at the Yale Medical School in New Haven, Connecticut, United States. While at Yale she wrote her first two books, one of these, The Thorn Birds, became an international best seller that in 1983 inspired one of the most-watched television miniseries of all time. Under his birth name Cedric Newton Ion-Robinson, he was a member of the Norfolk Legislative Assembly and he changed his name formally to Ric Newton Ion Robinson in 2002. McCulloughs 2008 novel, The Independence of Miss Mary Bennet engendered controversy with her reworking of characters from Jane Austens Pride, susannah Fullerton, the president of the Jane Austen Society of Australia, said she shuddered that Elizabeth Bennet was rewritten as weak, and Mr Darcy as savage. McCullough died on 29 January 2015, at the age of 77 and she had suffered from failing eyesight due to hemorrhagic macular degeneration, osteoporosis, trigeminal neuralgia, diabetes and uterine cancer, and was confined to a wheelchair. She was buried in a traditional Norfolk Island funeral ceremony at the Emily Bay cemetery on the island, in 1984, a portrait of McCullough, painted by Wesley Walters, was a finalist in the Archibald Prize. The prize is awarded for the best portrait painting preferentially of some man or woman distinguished in Art, Letters, the depth of historical research for the novels on ancient Rome led to her being awarded a Doctor of Letters degree by Macquarie University in 1993. It covers a 14-year period from the novel which was omitted from the first production, Mary Jean DeMarr, Colleen McCullough, A Critical Companion. Greenwood Publishing Group 1996, ISBN 0-313-29499-2
10.
Piper Laurie
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Piper Laurie is an American stage and screen actress known for her roles in the films The Hustler, Carrie and Children of a Lesser God, all of which brought her Academy Award nominations. She is also known for her performance as Catherine Martell in the television series Twin Peaks. Piper Laurie was born as Rosetta Jacobs on January 22,1932, in Detroit and she was the younger daughter of Charlotte Sadie and Alfred Jacobs, a furniture dealer. Her grandparents were Jewish immigrants from Poland on her fathers side and she was delivered, according to her 2011 autobiography Learning to Live Out Loud, where she lived in a one-bedroom walk-up on Tyler Street in Detroit. Alfred Jacobs moved the family to Los Angeles, California in 1938, to combat her shyness, her parents provided her with weekly elocution lessons, this eventually led to minor roles at nearby Universal Studios. For much of her childhood, her parents placed Laurie and her older sister in a childrens home. In 1949, Rosetta Jacobs signed a contract with Universal Studios, at Universal, she met other unfamiliar actors Julie Adams and Rock Hudson. Her breakout role was in Louisa, with Ronald Reagan whom she dated a few times before his marriage to Nancy Davis, in her autobiography she claimed that she lost her virginity to him. Several other roles followed, Francis Goes to the Races, Son of Ali Baba, to enhance her image, Universal Studios told gossip columnists that Laurie bathed in milk and ate flower petals to protect her luminous skin. Discouraged by the lack of film roles, she moved to New York to study acting and to seek work on the stage. She was again lured to Hollywood by the offer to co-star with Paul Newman in The Hustler and she played Newmans girlfriend, Sarah Packard, and for her performance she received an Academy Award nomination for Best Actress. Substantial movie roles did not come her way after The Hustler, so she and her husband moved to New York State. In 1964, she appeared in two medical dramas — as Alicia Carter in The Eleventh Hour episode My Door Is Locked and Bolted, in 1965, she starred in a Broadway revival of Tennessee Williams The Glass Menagerie, opposite Maureen Stapleton, Pat Hingle and George Grizzard. Laurie did not appear in feature film until she accepted the role of Margaret White in the horror film Carrie. She received an Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actress for her performance in that role and her co-star, Sissy Spacek, praised her acting skill, She is a remarkable actress. She never does what you expect her to do—she always surprises you with her approach to a scene, in 1979, she appeared as Mary Horton in the Australian movie Tim opposite Mel Gibson. After her 1981 divorce, Laurie relocated to California and she received a third Oscar nomination for her portrayal of Mrs. Norman in Children of a Lesser God. That same year, she was awarded an Emmy for her performance in Promise, in 1990-91, she starred as the devious Catherine Martell in David Lynchs television series Twin Peaks
11.
Jean Simmons
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Jean Merilyn Simmons, OBE was an English-born American actress and singer. One of J. Simmons was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for Hamlet, and won a Golden Globe Award for Best Actress for Guys and Dolls. Other notable film appearances included Young Bess, The Robe, Elmer Gantry, Spartacus, and she also won an Emmy Award for the 1983 miniseries The Thorn Birds. Simmons was born in Lower Holloway, London, to Charles Simmons, jean was the youngest of four children with siblings Lorna, Harold and Edna. She began acting at the age of 14, during the Second World War, the Simmons family was evacuated to Winscombe, Somerset. Returning to London and just enrolled at the Aida Foster School of Dance, Simmons was spotted by the director Val Guest, small roles in several other films followed including the high-profile Caesar and Cleopatra, produced by Gabriel Pascal. Pascal saw potential in Simmons and in 1945 he signed her to a seven-year contract, prior to moving to Hollywood, she played the young Estella in David Leans version of Great Expectations and Ophelia in Laurence Oliviers Hamlet, for which she received her first Oscar nomination. She played an Indian girl in the Powell-Pressburger film Black Narcissus, but I figured Id just go off and get married and have children like my mother. It was working with David Lean that convinced me to go on, in 1949 Simmons starred with Stewart Granger in Adam and Evelyne. In 1950 she was voted the fourth most popular star in Britain, in 1951 Rank sold her contract to Howard Hughes, who then owned the RKO Pictures. In 1950 she married Stewart Granger, with whom she appeared in films. She made four films for Hughes, including Angel Face, directed by Otto Preminger, according to David Thomson if she had made only one film – Angel Face – she might now be spoken of with the awe given to Louise Brooks. A court case freed her from the contract with Hughes in 1952, in 1953 she starred alongside Spencer Tracy in The Actress, a film that was one of her personal favourites. In the opinion of film critic Philip French, Home Before Dark saw her give perhaps her finest performance as a housewife driven into a breakdown in Mervyn LeRoys psychodrama, by the 1970s Simmons turned her focus to stage and television acting. She toured the United States in Stephen Sondheims A Little Night Music, then took the show to London, and thus originated the role of Desirée Armfeldt in the West End. Performing in the show for three years, she said she never tired of Sondheims music, No matter how tired or off you felt, the music would just pick you up. She portrayed Fiona Fee Cleary, the Cleary family matriarch, in the 1983 miniseries The Thorn Birds, in 1985-86 she appeared in North and South, again playing the role of the family matriarch as Clarissa Main. She made a late appearance in the Star Trek, The Next Generation episode The Drumhead as a retired Starfleet admiral
12.
Michael Pate
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Michael Pate, born Edward John Pate in Drummoyne, Sydney, was an Australian actor, writer, director and WWII army soldier. For the remainder of the 1930s, he worked primarily in radio drama and he also published theatrical and literary criticism and enjoyed brief success as an author of short stories, publishing works in both Australia and the United States. During World War II, Pate served in the Australian Army in the South West Pacific Area and he was transferred to the 1st Australian Army Amenities Entertainment Unit, known as The Islanders, entertaining Australian troops in various combat areas. After the war, Pate returned to radio, appearing in many plays, between 1946 and 1950 he began breaking into films. In 1949 he appeared in his first leading role in Sons of Matthew, in 1950, he appeared in Bitter Springs with Tommy Trinder and Chips Rafferty. Also in 1950, Pate adapted, produced, and directed two plays — Dark of the Moon and Bonaventure, Pate spent most of the 1950s in the U. S. appearing in over 300 television shows and many films. Most notable among these was a 1954 Climax, live production of Ian Flemings Casino Royale, in which Pate played the role of Clarence Leiter, opposite Barry Nelsons Jimmy Bond. On the big screen, he played the role of Flavius in Julius Caesar. Pate went on to play many Native American roles, in 1956 he appeared in the film The Court Jester. Pate also played the role of a gunfighting vampire in the 1959 horror film Curse of the Undead. Michael Pate also played parts in the 1957 television series Zorro along with Guy Williams in episodes 27 and 28, michael Pate played the role of Puma, the Comanche chief in Andrew V. McLaglens western McLintock. in 1963 playing opposite John Wayne again. During his time in the U. S. Pate became an instructor and lecturer. In 1959, he returned briefly to Australia, where he starred in a TV presentation of Tragedy in a Temporary Town, shown as part of the Shell Presents anthology drama series. Get Smart, Rawhide in Incident of the Power and the Plow, Incident at Superstition Prairie and Incident of the Boomerang, among others, Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, in 1966, he played Frenchy Godey, a scout with Kit Carson and the John C. Fremont expedition in the episode Samaritans, Mountain Style of the series, Death Valley Days. In the story line, Carson and Gody stop to help a settler in dire straits, in an earlier Death Valley Days episode, The Measure of a Man, Pate was cast as the notorious bandit Augustine Chacon. In the story line, Rory Calhoun as Arizona Ranger Burt Mossman captures Chacon with the reluctant aid of another outlaw, Burt Alvord, Mossman handcuffs Chacon and orders Alvord to throw the key into the bushes. Soon Alvord is returned for the hanging which he had avoided some four years earlier, in another 1963 Death Valley Days episode entitled The Peacemaker, Pate played the Navajo Chief Hastele
