William Bendix
William Bendix was an American film and television actor, who played rough, blue-collar characters. He is best remembered in films for the title role in The Babe Ruth Story, he portrayed the clumsily earnest aircraft plant worker Chester A. Riley in both the radio and television versions of The Life of Riley, he received an Academy Award nomination as Best Supporting Actor for Wake Island. Bendix, named William after his paternal German grandfather, was born in Manhattan, the only child of Oscar and Hilda Bendix, his uncle was composer and violinist Max Bendix. In the early 1920s, Bendix was a batboy for the New York Yankees and said he saw Babe Ruth hit more than a hundred home runs at Yankee Stadium. However, he was fired after fulfilling Ruth's request for a large order of hot dogs and soda before a game, which resulted in Ruth being unable to play that day. In 1927, Bendix married Theresa Stefanotti, he worked as a grocer until the Great Depression. Bendix began his acting career at age 30 in the New Jersey Federal Theatre Project.
He made his film debut in 1942. He played in supporting roles in dozens of Hollywood films as a warm-hearted gangster, detective or serviceman, he began with appearances in film noir, including a supporting role in The Glass Key, which featured Brian Donlevy, Alan Ladd and Veronica Lake in the leads. He soon gained attention after appearing in Alfred Hitchcock's Lifeboat as Gus, a wounded and dying American sailor. Bendix's other well-known movie roles include his portrayal of Babe Ruth in The Babe Ruth Story – a film roundly considered one of the worst sports biopics in film history and Sir Sagramore opposite Bing Crosby in A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court, in which he took part in the trio, "Busy Doing Nothing", he played Nick the bartender in the film version of William Saroyan's The Time of Your Life starring James Cagney. Bendix had in the role of Officer Krupp, he was cast in The Blue Dahlia, appearing for the second time alongside Ladd and Lake. Bendix starred in a film adaptation of his radio program The Life of Riley.
It was Bendix's appearance in the Hal Roach-produced film The McGuerins from Brooklyn, playing a rugged blue-collar man, that led to his best remembered role. Producer and creator Irving Brecher saw Bendix as the perfect personification of Chester A. Riley, giving a second chance to a show whose audition failed when the sponsor spurned Groucho Marx for the lead. With Bendix stumbling and skating perpetually on thin ice, stretching the patience of his otherwise loving wife and children, The Life of Riley was a radio hit from 1944 through 1951, Bendix brought an adaptation of the film version to Lux Radio Theatre; the show began as a proposed Groucho Marx radio series, The Flotsam Family, but the sponsor balked at what would have been a straight head-of-household role for the comedian. Creator and producer Irving Brecher saw Bendix as taxicab company owner Tim McGuerin in The McGuerins from Brooklyn. Brecher stated, "there was something about him. I thought, This guy could play it. He'd made a few films, like Lifeboat.
So I took The Flotsam Family script, revised it, made it a Brooklyn Family, took out the flippancies and made it more meat-and-potatoes, thought of a new title, The Life of Riley. Bendix's delivery and the spin he put on his lines made it work." The reworked script cast Bendix as blundering Chester A. Riley, a wing riveter at the fictional Cunningham Aircraft plant in California, his frequent exclamation of indignation—"What a revoltin' development this is!"—became one of the catchphrases of the 1940s. It was reused by Benjamin J. Grimm of the Fantastic Four. Bendix was not able to play the role on television because of a contracted film commitment; the part instead went to Jackie Gleason and aired a single season beginning in October 1949. Despite winning an Emmy award, the show was cancelled, in part because Gleason was less acceptable as Riley, since Bendix had been so identified with the part on radio. In 1953, Bendix became available for a new television version, this time the show was a hit.
The second television version of The Life of Riley ran from 1953 to 1958, long enough for Riley to become a grandfather. On the 1952 television program This Is Your Life, hosted by Ralph Edwards, Bendix was claimed to be a descendant of the 19th century composer Felix Mendelssohn. Bendix played the lead in Rod Serling's "The Time Element", a time-travel adventure episode about a man who travels back to 1941 and unsuccessfully tries to warn everyone in Honolulu about the impending attack on Pearl Harbor. Bendix appeared on NBC's The Ford Show, Starring Tennessee Ernie Ford, he returned for a second appearance on October 1, 1959, the fourth-season premiere of the series, in which he and Tennessee Ernie performed a comedy skit about a safari. In NBC's Wagon Train, Bendix played the captain of a sailing cargo ship who shanghaied Major Adams, Bill Hawks and Charlie Wooster, forcing them to work on his ship. On November 16, 1959, Bendix appeared on NBC's color broadcast of The Steve Allen Plymouth Show with Jack Kerouac.
A color videotape of the broadcast survives. Bendix starred in all seventeen episodes of the NBC western series Overland Trail in the role of Frederick Thomas "Fred" Kelly, the crusty superintendent of the Overland Stage Company. Doug McClure Trampas on NBC's The Virginian, co-starred as his young understudy, Frank "Flip" Flippen, he guest-starred in an episode of
Johnny Green
John Waldo Green was an American songwriter, musical arranger and pianist. He was given the nickname "Beulah" by colleague Conrad Salinger, his most famous song was one of his earliest, "Body and Soul". Green won four Academy Awards for his film scores and a fifth for producing a short musical film, he was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame in 1972, he was honored with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. John Waldo Green was born in New York City, the son of musical parents Vivian Isidor Green and Irina Etelka Jellenik, a.k.a. Irma Etelka Jellenik. Vivian and Irina wed on December 1907 in Manhattan. John attended Horace Mann School and the New York Military Academy, was accepted by Harvard at the age of 15, entering the University in 1924, his musical tutors were Ignace Hilsberg and Walter Spalding. Between semesters, bandleader Guy Lombardo heard Green's Gold Coast Orchestra and hired him to create dance arrangements for his nationally famous orchestra, his first song hit, was written for Lombardo.
John's father, compelled him to take a job as a stockbroker. Disliking the job, encouraged by his wife, the former Carol Faulk, John left Wall Street to pursue a musical career. Green wrote a number of songs which have become jazz standards, including "Out of Nowhere" and "Body and Soul", he wrote the scores for various films and TV programs. His earliest songs appeared with the billing "John W. Green," a styling. After that anyone addressing "Johnny" was put right with the statement, "You can call me John – or you can call me Maestro!" At the beginning of his musical career, he arranged for dance orchestras, most notably Jean Goldkette on NBC. He was accompanist/arranger to musicians such as Libby Holman and Ethel Merman, it was while writing material for Gertrude Lawrence in 1930 that he composed "Body and Soul", the first recording of, made by Jack Hylton & His Orchestra eleven days before the song was copyrighted. Between 1930-33, Green was the arranger and conductor for Paramount Pictures and worked with such singers as Ethel Merman, Gertrude Lawrence and James Melton.
He composed many of his hit standards during the 1930s, including Bing Crosby's first number one hit recording, "Out of Nowhere", "Rain Rain Go Away", "I Cover the Waterfront", "You're Mine You", "I Wanna Be Loved", "Easy Come Easy Go" and "Repeal The Blues". He composed the theme for Max Fleischer's Betty Boop cartoons in 1932, with Edward Heyman as lyricist. After 1933, Green had his own orchestra, he until 1940, conducted orchestras for the Jack Benny and Philip Morris records and radio shows. Nathaniel Shilkret and Paul Whiteman commissioned Green to write larger works for orchestra, such as "Night Club", introduced by Whiteman on January 25, 1933 at Carnegie Hall. Green was at piano "one," and Roy Bargy and Ramona played the other two pianos. During the early 1930s, Green wrote music for numerous films at Paramount's Astoria Studios, conducted in East Coast theatres, toured vaudeville as musical director for Buddy Rogers. During his two and a half years at Paramount Astoria, he was able to learn more about film scoring from veterans Adolph Deutsch and Frank Tours.
Green spent much of 1933 in London, where he contributed songs to both Mr. Whittington, a musical comedy for Jack Buchanan at the London Hippodrome, Big Business, the first musical comedy written for BBC Radio. On Green's return to the U. S. A. early in 1934, William S. Paley, president of the Columbia Broadcasting System and an investor in New York's St. Regis Hotel, encouraged him to form what became known as Johnny Green, His Piano and Orchestra; the orchestra, based for a time at the St. Regis, featured Green's piano and arrangements, whose harmony and mood were among the most sophisticated of the day, it made dance records for the Columbia and Brunswick companies, although in the Depression the most popular records sold only in small numbers. In 1935, Green starred on CBS's Socony Sketchbook, sponsored by Socony-Vacuum Oil Co, he lured the young California singer Virginia Verrill to headline with him on the Friday evening broadcasts. His regular cast included his band singers Marjory Logan and Jimmy Farrell, essayist Christopher Morley, stage/screen favorites the Four Eton Boys.
A bigger venture yet in commercial radio was The Fred Astaire Hour, sponsored by Packard Motors over NBC in 1936 and co-featuring tenor Allan Jones and the comedy of Charles Butterworth. Green's band backed Astaire on a series of classic recording dates, in both New York and Hollywood, in 1935–1937, he served as musical director for The Jell-O Program Starring Jack Benny during its 1935–1936 season on NBC. He continued conducting on radio and in theatres into the 1940s leading a dance band for the short-lived Royale Records label in 1939–1940, until he decided to move permanently to Hollywood and work in the film business. Green made an impression at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, where in the 1940s, along with orchestrator Conrad Salinger, he was one of the musicians most responsible for changing the overall sound of the MGM Symphony Orchestra through the re-seating of some of the players; this is why the overall orchestral sound of MGM's musicals from the mid-1940s onward is different from the orchestral sound of those made from 1929 until about 1944.
Green was
Westinghouse Electric Corporation
The Westinghouse Electric Corporation was an American manufacturing company. It was founded on January 8, 1886, as Westinghouse Electric Company and renamed Westinghouse Electric Corporation by its founder George Westinghouse. George Westinghouse had founded the Westinghouse Air Brake Company; the corporation purchased the CBS broadcasting company in 1995 and became the original CBS Corporation in 1997. Westinghouse Electric was founded by George Westinghouse in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania in 1886; the firm became active in developing electric infrastructure throughout the United States. The company's largest factories were located in East Pittsburgh Pennsylvania, Lester, Pennsylvania and in Hamilton, where they made turbines, generators and switch gear for generation and use of electricity. In addition to George Westinghouse, early engineers working for the company included Frank Conrad, Benjamin Garver Lamme, Oliver B. Shallenberger, William Stanley, Nikola Tesla, Stephen Timoshenko and Vladimir Zworykin.
Early on, Westinghouse was a rival to Thomas Edison's electric company. In 1892, Edison was merged with Westinghouse's chief AC rival, the Thomson-Houston Electric Company, making an bigger competitor, General Electric. Westinghouse Electric & Manufacturing Company changed its name to Westinghouse Electric Corporation in 1945. Westinghouse purchased CBS Inc. in 1995. Westinghouse Electric Corporation changed its name to and became CBS Corporation in 1997. In 1998, the Power Generation Business Unit, headquartered in Orlando, was sold to Siemens AG, of Germany. A year CBS sold all of its commercial nuclear power businesses to British Nuclear Fuels Limited. In connection with that sale, certain rights to use the Westinghouse trademarks were granted to the newly formed BNFL subsidiary, Westinghouse Electric Company; that company was sold to Toshiba in 2006. In 1990, Westinghouse experienced a financial catastrophe when the Corporation lost over one billion dollars due to bad high-risk, high-fee, high-interest loans made by its Westinghouse Credit Corporation lending arm.
In an attempt to revitalize the corporation, the Board of Directors appointed outside management in the form of CEO Michael Jordan, who brought in numerous consultants to help re-engineer the company in order to realize the potential that they saw in the broadcasting industry. Westinghouse reduced the work force in many of its traditional industrial operations and made further acquisitions in broadcasting to add to its substantial Group W network, purchasing CBS in 1995. Shortly after, Westinghouse purchased Infinity Broadcasting, TNN, CMT, American Radio Systems, rights to NFL broadcasting; these investments cost the company over fifteen billion dollars. To recoup its costs, Westinghouse sold many other operations. Siemens purchased non-nuclear power generation, while other firms bought the defense electronics, office furniture company Knoll, Thermo King, residential security. With little remaining of the company aside from its broadcasting, Westinghouse renamed itself CBS Corporation in 1997.
During the 20th century, Westinghouse engineers and scientists were granted more than 28,000 US government patents, the third most of any company. The company pioneered the power generation industry and in the fields of long-distance power transmission and high-voltage alternating-current transmission, unveiling the technology for lighting in Great Barrington, Massachusetts; the first commercial Westinghouse steam turbine driven generator, a 1,500 kW unit, began operation at Hartford Electric Light Co. in 1901. The machine, nicknamed Mary-Ann, was the first steam turbine generator to be installed by an electric utility to generate electricity in the US. George Westinghouse had based his original steam turbine design on designs licensed from the English inventor Charles Parsons. Today a large proportion of steam turbine generators operating around the world, ranging to units as large as 1,500 MW were supplied by Westinghouse from its factories in Lester, Pennsylvania. Major Westinghouse licensees or joint venture partners included Mitsubishi Heavy Industries of Japan and Harbin Turbine Co. and Shanghai Electric Co. of China.
Westinghouse boasted 50,000 employees by 1900, established a formal research and development department in 1906. While the company was expanding, it would experience internal financial difficulties. During the Panic of 1907, the Board of Directors forced George Westinghouse to take a six-month leave of absence. Westinghouse retired in 1909 and died several years in 1914. Under new leadership, Westinghouse Electric diversified its business activities in electrical technology, it acquired the Copeman Electric Stove Company in 1914 and Pittsburgh High Voltage Insulator Company in 1921. Westinghouse moved into radio broadcasting by establishing Pittsburgh's KDKA, the first commercial radio station, WBZ in Springfield, Massachusetts in 1921. Westinghouse expanded into the elevator business, establishing the Westinghouse Elevator Company in 1928. Throughout the decade, diversification engendered considerable growth. Westinghouse produced the first operational American turbojet for the US Navy program in 1943.
After many successes, the ill-fated J40 project, started soon after WWII, was abandoned in 1955 and led to Westinghouse exiting the aircraft engine business with closure of the Westinghouse Aviation Gas Turbine Division in 1960. During the late 1940s Westinghouse applied its aviation gas turbine technology and experience to develop its first industrial gas turbine. A 2,0
William Lundigan
William Lundigan was an American film actor. His more than 125 films include Dodge City, The Fighting 69th, The Sea Hawk, Santa Fe Trail, Dishonored Lady, Love Nest with Marilyn Monroe, The House on Telegraph Hill, I'd Climb the Highest Mountain and Inferno. Growing up in Syracuse, New York, Lundigan was the oldest of four sons, his father, Michael F. Lundigan, owned a shoe store in the same building as a local radio station, WFBL. Becoming fascinated by radio, he was playing child roles on radio and producing radio plays at 16. A graduate of Nottingham High School, Lundigan studied law at Syracuse University, earning money as a radio announcer at WFBL, he passed the bar examination before events changed his career path. A Universal Pictures production chief heard Lundigan's voice, met him, arranged a screen test and signed him to a motion picture contract in 1937. Moving over to MGM, Lundigan's last film before enlisting in the U. S. Marine Corps in World War II was Salute to the Marines, he served as a combat cameraman in the Battle of Peleliu and the Battle of Okinawa, returning at war's end as a Corporal.
Lundigan was host for Climax! and Shower of Stars. From September 30, 1959, to September 7, 1960, Lundigan portrayed Col. Edward McCauley in the CBS television series, Men into Space. In 1961, Lundigan was cast as Nathaniel Norgate in the episode, "Dangerous Crossing", on the syndicated anthology series, Death Valley Days, hosted by Stanley Andrews; the story focuses on religious settlers. In 1963 and 1964, Lundigan joined fellow actors Walter Brennan, Chill Wills, Efrem Zimbalist, Jr. in making appearances on behalf of U. S. Senator Barry M. Goldwater, the Republican nominee in the campaign against U. S. President Lyndon B. Johnson. Lundigan himself waged an unsuccessful campaign for a nominally non-partisan seat on the Los Angeles City Council. Lundigan married Rena Morgan, they had a daughter, Anastasia. Lundigan died at the age of sixty-one of apparent heart failure at Hope Medical Center in Duarte, California. 1951 Screen Guild Players 1952 Stars in the Air William Lundigan on IMDb William Lundigan at the TCM Movie Database William Lundigan at Find a Grave
Anthology series
An anthology series is a radio, television or book series that presents a different story and a different set of characters in each episode or season. These have a different cast each week, but several series in the past, such as Four Star Playhouse, employed a permanent troupe of character actors who would appear in a different drama each week; some anthology series, such as Studio One, began on radio and expanded to television. Medieval Greek anthologiā, collection of epigrams, from Greek, flower gathering, from anthologein, to gather flowers: antho-, antho- + logos, a gathering. Many popular old-time radio programs were anthology series. On some series, such as Inner Sanctum Mysteries, the only constant was the host, who introduced and concluded each dramatic presentation. One of the earliest such programs was The Collier Hour, broadcast on the NBC Blue Network from 1927 to 1932; as radio's first major dramatic anthology, it adapted stories and serials from Collier's Weekly in a calculated move to increase subscriptions and compete with The Saturday Evening Post.
Airing on the Wednesday prior to each week's distribution of the magazine, the program soon moved to Sundays in order to avoid spoilers with dramatizations of stories appearing in the magazine. Radio drama anthology series include: Academy Award Theater Arch Oboler's Plays The Campbell Playhouse Cavalcade of America CBS Radio Workshop Earplay Four Star Playhouse Lux Radio Theater The Mercury Theatre on the Air The Screen Guild Theater Stars over Hollywood Radio anthology series provided a format for science fiction, horror and mystery genres: Mystery House The Witch's Tale Lights Out The Hermit's Cave Famous Jury Trials Dark Fantasy Inner Sanctum Mysteries The Whistler Suspense The Mysterious Traveler Creeps by Night Mystery Playhouse The Strange Dr. Weird The Haunting Hour The Sealed Book Mystery in the Air The Weird Circle Quiet, Please! Escape The Unexpected The Hall of Fantasy 2000 Plus Dimension X ABC Mystery Theater, anthology and mystery series Sleep No More Theater 10:30 X Minus One The final episode of Suspense was broadcast on September 30, 1962, a date that has traditionally been seen as marking the end of the old-time radio era.
However, genre series produced since 1962 include: The Black Mass The Creaking Door Beyond Midnight The Zero Hour Mystery Theater Nightfall The Cabinet of Dr. Fritz 2000X The Twilight Zone In the history of television, live anthology dramas were popular during the Golden Age of Television of the 1950s with series such as The United States Steel Hour and The Philco Television Playhouse. Dick Powell came up with an idea for an anthology series, Four Star Playhouse, with a rotation of established stars every week, four stars in all; the stars would own the studio and the program, as Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz had done with Desilu studio. Powell had intended for the program to feature himself, Charles Boyer, Joel McCrea, Rosalind Russell; when Russell and McCrea backed out, David Niven came on board as the third star. The fourth star was a guest star. CBS liked the idea, Four Star Playhouse made its debut in fall of 1952, it ran on alternate weeks only during the first season, alternating with Andy.
It was successful enough to be renewed and became a weekly program from the second season until the end of its run in 1956. Ida Lupino was brought on board as the de facto fourth star, though unlike Powell and Niven, she owned no stock in the company. American television networks would sometimes run summer anthology series which consisted of unsold television pilots. Beginning in 1971, the long-run Masterpiece Theatre drama anthology series brought British productions to American television. In 2011, American Horror Story debuted a new type of anthology format in the U. S; each season, rather than each episode, is a standalone story. Several actors have appeared in the various seasons, but playing different roles—in an echo of the Four Star Playhouse format; the success of American Horror Story has spawned other season-long anthologies such as American Crime Story and Feud. The 20th Century Fox Hour ABC Movie of the Week ABC Stage 67 Academy Theatre Actors Studio Alcoa-Goodyear Theatre The Alcoa Hour Alcoa Premiere American Crime American Crime Story American Horror Story American Film Theatre American Playhouse The American Playwrights Theater: The One Acts Th
Bernadette Soubirous
Saint Bernadette Soubirous known as Saint Bernadette of Lourdes, was the firstborn daughter of a miller from Lourdes, in the department of Hautes-Pyrénées in France, came to be venerated as a saint in the Catholic Church. Soubirous has become best known for the Marian apparitions of a "young lady" who asked for a chapel to be built at the nearby cave-grotto at Massabielle where apparitions are said to have occurred between 11 February and 16 July 1858, she would receive recognition when the lady who appeared to her identified herself as the Immaculate Conception. Despite initial skepticism from some Church authorities, Soubirous's claims were declared "worthy of belief" after a canonical investigation, the Marian apparition became known as Our Lady of Lourdes. Since her death, Soubirous's body has remained internally incorrupt, but it is not without blemish; these masks were placed on her face and hands before she was moved to her crystal reliquary in June 1925. The Marian shrine at Lourdes went on to become a major pilgrimage site, attracting over five million pilgrims of all denominations each year.
On 8 December 1933 Pope Pius XI declared Soubirous a saint of the Catholic Church. Her feast-day specified as 18 February—the day her Lady promised to make her happy, not in this life, but in the next— is now observed in most places on the date of her death, 16 April. Marie Bernarde Soubirous was the daughter of François Soubirous, a miller, Louise, a laundress, she was the eldest of nine children—Bernadette, Toinette, Jean-Marie, Jean-Marie, Pierre, a baby named Louise who died soon after her birth. Soubirous was born on 7 January 1844 and baptized at the local parish church, St. Pierre's, on 9 January, her parents' wedding anniversary, her godmother was Bernarde Casterot, her mother's sister, a moderately wealthy widow who owned a tavern. Hard times had fallen on France and the family lived in extreme poverty. Soubirous was a sickly child and due to this only measured 4 ft.7in. Tall, she suffered severe asthma for the rest of her life. Soubirous attended the day school conducted by the Sisters of Charity and Christian Instruction from Nevers.
Contrary to a belief popularized by Hollywood movies, Soubirous learned little French, only studying French in school after age 13 due to being ill and a poor learner. She could read and write little due to her frequent illness, she spoke the language of Occitan, spoken by the local population of the Pyrenees region at that time and to a lesser degree today. By the time of the events at the grotto, the Soubirous family's financial and social status had declined to the point where they lived in a one-room basement used as a jail, called le cachot, "the dungeon", where they were housed for free by her mother's cousin, André Sajoux. On 11 February 1858, Soubirous aged 14, was out gathering firewood with her sister Toinette and a friend near the grotto of Massabielle when she experienced her first vision. While the other girls crossed the little stream in front of the grotto and walked on, Soubirous stayed behind, looking for a place to cross where she wouldn't get her stockings wet, she sat down to take her shoes off in order to cross the water and was lowering her stocking when she heard the sound of rushing wind, but nothing moved.
A wild rose in a natural niche in the grotto, did move. From the niche, or rather the dark alcove behind it, "came a dazzling light, a white figure"; this was the first of 18 visions of what she referred to as aquero, Gascon Occitan for "that". In testimony, she called it "a small young lady", her sister and her friend stated. On 14 February, after Sunday Mass, with her sister Marie and some other girls, returned to the grotto. Soubirous knelt down saying she saw the apparition again and falling into a trance; when one of the girls threw holy water at the niche and another threw a rock from above that shattered on the ground, the apparition disappeared. On her next visit, 18 February, Soubirous said that "the vision" asked her to return to the grotto every day for a fortnight; this period of daily visions came to be known as la Quinzaine sacrée, "holy fortnight." Soubirous' parents her mother, were embarrassed and tried to forbid her to go. The supposed apparition did not identify herself until the seventeenth vision.
Although the townspeople who believed she was telling the truth assumed she saw the Virgin Mary, Soubirous never claimed it to be Mary using the word aquero. She described the lady as wearing a white veil, a blue girdle and with a yellow rose on each foot – compatible with "a description of any statue of the Virgin in a village church". Soubirous' story caused a sensation with the townspeople, who were divided in their opinions on whether or not she was telling the truth; some demanded she be put in an asylum. The other contents of Soubirous' reported visions were simple and focused on the need for prayer and penance. On 25 February she explained that the vision had told her "to drink of the water of the
