Superman Movies (1978-1987) Actors Who Died

The son of an insurance underwriter who represented Lloyd's of London in Ceylon, Trevor Wallace Howard-Smith was born in Margate, Kent. He spent his early childhood globetrotting with his mother, frequently left in the care of strangers. After attending private school he went on to study drama at RADA (due to his mother's insistence) and was voted best in his class following a performance in "Much Ado About Nothing". Spurning a Hollywood contract with Paramount he acted on the West End stage and with the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre in Stratford-upon-Avon from the mid-1930s, specialising in classical plays ranging from "Hamlet" and "Coriolanus" to "French without Tears", by Terence Rattigan. Howard was initially turned down for military service by both the RAF and the British Army but shortage of manpower led to his being called up in 1940 to serve as a second lieutenant with the Army Signal Corps. However, he neither saw action nor accumulated the illustrious wartime record (including winning the Military Cross) invented for him by his publicists. A 2001 biography by Terence Pettigrew claimed to have unearthed files from his war record which alleged that he was dismissed from service in 1943 due to 'mental instability'. Ironically, on screen, the actor was often cast as solid, unflappable British officers, perhaps reflecting his own personal credo of always feeling best when impersonating someone else.

Howard's career in films began quietly with small roles in The Way Ahead (1944) and Johnny in the Clouds (1945). He unexpectedly leapt to stardom in just his third outing as the stoic, decent Dr. Alec Harvey in David Lean's melancholic story of middle-class wartime romance, Brief Encounter (1945). Howard's mannered performance perfectly suited the required stiff-upper-lip mood of the film, his intensity and projected integrity more than compensating for his average looks. That 'jolly decent chap' persona continued on in another 'woman's picture', The Passionate Friends (1949), but Howard soon found his niche in more determined, worldly roles. He later admitted that "for years I was practically hounded by my first part in Brief Encounter. I loved the film, mind you, but the role wasn't me, at all" (Ottawa Citizen, February 17 1961). As a screen actor, Howard came of age in crime thrillers and war films, delivering his first genuine tour de force performance as a battle-hardened, cynical ex-pilot caught up in the world of post-war black market racketeering in I Became a Criminal (1947). His efficient, by-the-book intelligence officer, Major Calloway, in Carol Reed's The Third Man (1949) put him firmly on the map as a star character player.

Rasping-voiced and becoming increasingly craggy as the years went by, Howard contrasted archetypal authoritarians (seasoned army veteran Captain Thomson of The Cockleshell Heroes (1955), Captain William Bligh in the remake of Mutiny on the Bounty (1962), Lord Cardigan in The Charge of the Light Brigade (1968)) with weaklings (best exemplified by morally corrupt, degenerate expatriate trader Peter Willems in Outcast of the Islands (1951) -- arguably one of Howard's finest performances); sympathetic victims (colonial cop Scobie, tormented by religious guilt in The Heart of the Matter (1953)) and obsessive, driven eccentrics (crusading elephant preservationist Morel in The Roots of Heaven (1958), the alcoholic, haunted Sir Henry at Rawlinson End (1980), and the weird Russian recluse of Light Years Away (1981)). In the midst of angst-ridden heroes, drunken clerics and assorted historical characters, ranging from Napoleon Bonaparte to Sir Isaac Newton, Howard even essayed a Cheyenne warrior returning from the dead to defend his family in Windwalker (1980). Remarkably, though he took on a score of eminently forgettable projects, it is difficult to fault a single one of his performances. Throughout his entire career he was never out of favour with audiences and never out of work.

As becoming one of the most British of actors, Howard was an ardent cricket supporter, member of the prestigious Marylebone Cricket Club. He insisted on having a clause inserted in his contracts which allowed him leave from filming to attend test matches. A rather solitary man, he had few other hobbies (except, perhaps, a fondness for alcohol, which likely contributed to his death at the age of 74) and was reputedly modest about his accomplishments as an actor. He once declared "we don't have the Method School of acting in England. We simply read the script, let it seep in, then go put on whiskers - and do it" (New York Times, January 8 1988).

British character actor Harry Andrews had the sort of massive granite face and square jaw that would stamp that career, but he set himself apart with brilliant stage and screen work. He had graduated from Wrekin College in Shropshire and then moved on to the stage, appearing with Liverpool Repertory in 1933 and focusing on Shakespearean roles. He was befriended by stage star John Gielgud who invited him to New York and Broadway as part of the cast of "Hamlet" in 1935. On the return to London, Andrews did a run of plays in the West End. Then Gielgud invited him into his own stage company. Soon after he was asked into the Old Vic Company by its director Laurence Olivier. His roles were becoming increasingly substantial, authoritative parts to match his sharp and forceful, through-the-teeth delivery of lines. Next he did not pass up the opportunity to join the Stratford Memorial Theatre in Stratford-upon-Avon, where he spent a decade honing himself into an established, fine, versatile actor, described by the controversial London theater critic Kenneth Tynan as "the backbone of British theater."

He came to the small screen before the large, having debuted in British experimental television in 1939, followed over a decade later with his debut on the ever expanding and fecund American playhouse TV in 1952. His big screen debut came the next year in a character part which would accent his career-from ancient to modern-the disciplined military man in Paratrooper (1953). From there the roles came his way - three or four per year - well into 1979, when TV took up most of his time. His movie making was spent either before American or British cameras. And the military roles were always masterly done, whether a roughed out sergeant or a more dignified officer. Though his most famous noncom may be Sergeant Major Tom Pugh alongside John Mills in J. Lee Thompson's classic adventure Ice Cold in Alex (1958), his achievement as Sergeant Major Bert Wilson, the near psychotic martinet, opposite Sean Connery and Ian Bannen, in The Hill (1965) was an over-the-top tour de force. That same year he was back in costume - having played many an ancient and medieval noble role through the 1950s - in something different - playing the great Renaissance architect Donato Bramante against Charlton Heston as rival Michelangelo in The Agony and the Ecstasy (1965). Not a big part, nevertheless Andrews gave the role a subdued and matter-of-fact strength that well fit the ambitious architect of the fiery Pope Julius II (played with great verve by Rex Harrison). While Andrews was also excellent with a tongue-in-cheek style for comedic roles, as in the send up, The Ruling Class (1972), he excelled against type as a flamboyant homosexual in the black comedy Entertaining Mr Sloane (1970). He had said something like: "I don't want to be a star -- I want to be a good actor in good parts" - but his presence always made him standout. It was ironic that he had difficulty in memorizing lines. Sometime later co-star Alan Bates thought him very courageous for his obvious triumph over this impediment. Bates further remarked that Andrews' great sense of humor and no-nonsense personable character made him a favorite with younger actors as a continuous well of encouragement and learning experiences. Though his parts were smaller as he grew older, he filled each of his roles, big or small - over 100 of them - with a giant's footsteps.

Lee Quigley was born on 13 August 1976 in Lambeth, London, England, UK. He was an actor, known for Superman (1978). He died on 10 March 1991 in Eastbourne, England, UK.

Robert Beatty graduated with a B.A. from the University of Toronto and started in amateur dramatics with the Hamilton Player's Guild. For a while, he made a living as a cashier for a gas and fuel company. In order to further hone his acting skills, he made his way to London in 1936 (on the advice of Leslie Howard) to train for acting at RADA. He made his theatrical debut in "Idiot's Delight" at the Apollo, and from there obtained regular work on both stage and screen in bit parts and walk-ons, eventually making his breakthrough on radio as a broadcaster for the BBC. He was famously on hand, reporting eyewitness accounts of the London Blitz for the Overseas News Service during the war years.

On the strength of this, Beatty was promoted to more substantial film roles, beginning with San Demetrio London (1943), in which he played a brash, alcoholic American sailor mellowed by his good-natured British crewmates in the best 'stiff-upper-lip' tradition. This seemed to set the tone for his future screen personae, for he was henceforth typecast as tough, down-to-earth Canadians or Americans, many of them cops or gumshoes in low budget potboilers. That notwithstanding, he had his share of quality assignments as well, notably as loyal friend to IRA fugitive James Mason in Odd Man Out (1947); as a plausible Lord Beaverbrook in The Magic Box (1951); as Lieutenant William Bush, best friend and second-in-command to Gregory Peck's Captain Horatio Hornblower (1951); and as a washed-out heavyweight prizefighter in The Square Ring (1953). Throughout his career, Beatty's stock-in-trade was masculinity, dependability and forthrightness.

Immensely popular on radio, Beatty provided the voice for private eye Philip Odell in a long-running series for the BBC "Light Programme" between 1947 and 1961. From the late 1950's, he also became increasingly prolific on television and as a narrator of documentaries. If his face was not yet recognisable enough, he appeared in commercials for a hair care product. For two years, Beatty starred in his own half-hour series, Dial 999 (1958), as a Canadian mountie seconded to Scotland Yard. On the big screen he was cast as Dr. Ralph Halvorsen in Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968). Towards the end of his lengthy career, he gave one of his finest performances, a thoroughly convincing impersonation of President Ronald Reagan in the documentary-drama Breakthrough at Reykjavik (1987).

Actor and director Sam Wanamaker was born in Chicago, Illinois, to Ukrainian Jewish immigrants, Molly (Babell) and Maurice Wattenmaker, a tailor. He studied at Drake University, IA, then trained at Goodman Theatre, Chicago, worked with summer stock companies in Chicago as an actor and director, and made his London debut in 1952. In 1957, he was appointed director of the New Shakespeare Theatre, Liverpool, and in 1959 joined the Shakespeare Memorial Theatre company at Stratford-upon-Avon. He produced or directed several works at Covent Garden and elsewhere in the 1960s and 1970s, including the Shakespeare Birthday Celebrations in 1974. He worked both as director and actor in films and television, his appearances included The Spiral Staircase (1975), Private Benjamin (1980), Superman IV: The Quest for Peace (1987), and Baby Boom (1987).

Married to Charlotte Holland, his daughter is actress Zoë Wanamaker.

With over 150 Film and TV appearances to his credit, E. G. Marshall was arguably most well known as the imperturbable Juror No. 4 in the Sidney Lumet legal drama 12 Angry Men (1957).

Some of his stand-out performances are in Creepshow (1982), National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation (1989), and Nixon (1995).

Marshall married three times and had seven children.

Marlon Brando is widely considered the greatest movie actor of all time, rivaled only by the more theatrically oriented Laurence Olivier in terms of esteem. Unlike Olivier, who preferred the stage to the screen, Brando concentrated his talents on movies after bidding the Broadway stage adieu in 1949, a decision for which he was severely criticized when his star began to dim in the 1960s and he was excoriated for squandering his talents. No actor ever exerted such a profound influence on succeeding generations of actors as did Brando. More than 50 years after he first scorched the screen as Stanley Kowalski in the movie version of Tennessee Williams' A Streetcar Named Desire (1951) and a quarter-century after his last great performance as Col. Kurtz in Francis Ford Coppola's Apocalypse Now (1979), all American actors are still being measured by the yardstick that was Brando. It was if the shadow of John Barrymore, the great American actor closest to Brando in terms of talent and stardom, dominated the acting field up until the 1970s. He did not, nor did any other actor so dominate the public's consciousness of what WAS an actor before or since Brando's 1951 on-screen portrayal of Stanley made him a cultural icon. Brando eclipsed the reputation of other great actors circa 1950, such as Paul Muni and Fredric March. Only the luster of Spencer Tracy's reputation hasn't dimmed when seen in the starlight thrown off by Brando. However, neither Tracy nor Olivier created an entire school of acting just by the force of his personality. Brando did.

Marlon Brando, Jr. was born on April 3, 1924, in Omaha, Nebraska, to Marlon Brando, Sr., a calcium carbonate salesman, and his artistically inclined wife, the former Dorothy Julia Pennebaker. "Bud" Brando was one of three children. His ancestry included English, Irish, German, Dutch, French Huguenot, Welsh, and Scottish; his surname originated with a distant German immigrant ancestor named "Brandau." His oldest sister Jocelyn Brando was also an actress, taking after their mother, who engaged in amateur theatricals and mentored a then-unknown Henry Fonda, another Nebraska native, in her role as director of the Omaha Community Playhouse. Frannie, Brando's other sibling, was a visual artist. Both Brando sisters contrived to leave the Midwest for New York City, Jocelyn to study acting and Frannie to study art. Marlon managed to escape the vocational doldrums forecast for him by his cold, distant father and his disapproving schoolteachers by striking out for The Big Apple in 1943, following Jocelyn into the acting profession. Acting was the only thing he was good at, for which he received praise, so he was determined to make it his career - a high-school dropout, he had nothing else to fall back on, having been rejected by the military due to a knee injury he incurred playing football at Shattuck Military Academy, Brando Sr.'s alma mater. The school booted Marlon out as incorrigible before graduation.

Acting was a skill he honed as a child, the lonely son of alcoholic parents. With his father away on the road, and his mother frequently intoxicated to the point of stupefaction, the young Bud would play-act for her to draw her out of her stupor and to attract her attention and love. His mother was exceedingly neglectful, but he loved her, particularly for instilling in him a love of nature, a feeling which informed his character Paul in Last Tango in Paris (1972) ("Last Tango in Paris") when he is recalling his childhood for his young lover Jeanne. "I don't have many good memories," Paul confesses, and neither did Brando of his childhood. Sometimes he had to go down to the town jail to pick up his mother after she had spent the night in the drunk tank and bring her home, events that traumatized the young boy but may have been the grain that irritated the oyster of his talent, producing the pearls of his performances. Anthony Quinn, his Oscar-winning co-star in Viva Zapata! (1952) told Brando's first wife Anna Kashfi, "I admire Marlon's talent, but I don't envy the pain that created it."

Brando enrolled in Erwin Piscator's Dramatic Workshop at New York's New School, and was mentored by Stella Adler, a member of a famous Yiddish Theatre acting family. Adler helped introduce to the New York stage the "emotional memory" technique of Russian theatrical actor, director and impresario Konstantin Stanislavski, whose motto was "Think of your own experiences and use them truthfully." The results of this meeting between an actor and the teacher preparing him for a life in the theater would mark a watershed in American acting and culture.

Brando made his debut on the boards of Broadway on October 19, 1944, in "I Remember Mama," a great success. As a young Broadway actor, Brando was invited by talent scouts from several different studios to screen-test for them, but he turned them down because he would not let himself be bound by the then-standard seven-year contract. Brando would make his film debut quite some time later in Fred Zinnemann's The Men (1950) for producer Stanley Kramer. Playing a paraplegic soldier, Brando brought new levels of realism to the screen, expanding on the verisimilitude brought to movies by Group Theatre alumni John Garfield, the predecessor closest to him in the raw power he projected on-screen. Ironically, it was Garfield whom producer Irene Mayer Selznick had chosen to play the lead in a new Tennessee Williams play she was about to produce, but negotiations broke down when Garfield demanded an ownership stake in "A Streetcar Named Desire." Burt Lancaster was next approached, but couldn't get out of a prior film commitment. Then director Elia Kazan suggested Brando, whom he had directed to great effect in Maxwell Anderson's play "Truckline Café," in which Brando co-starred with Karl Malden, who was to remain a close friend for the next 60 years.

During the production of "Truckline Café," Kazan had found that Brando's presence was so magnetic, he had to re-block the play to keep Marlon near other major characters' stage business, as the audience could not take its eyes off of him. For the scene where Brando's character re-enters the stage after killing his wife, Kazan placed him upstage-center, partially obscured by scenery, but where the audience could still see him as Karl Malden and others played out their scene within the café set. When he eventually entered the scene, crying, the effect was electric. A young Pauline Kael, arriving late to the play, had to avert her eyes when Brando made this entrance as she believed the young actor on stage was having a real-life conniption. She did not look back until her escort commented that the young man was a great actor.

The problem with casting Brando as Stanley was that he was much younger than the character as written by Williams. However, after a meeting between Brando and Williams, the playwright eagerly agreed that Brando would make an ideal Stanley. Williams believed that by casting a younger actor, the Neanderthalish Kowalski would evolve from being a vicious older man to someone whose unintentional cruelty can be attributed to his youthful ignorance. Brando ultimately was dissatisfied with his performance, though, saying he never was able to bring out the humor of the character, which was ironic as his characterization often drew laughs from the audience at the expense of Jessica Tandy's Blanche Dubois. During the out-of-town tryouts, Kazan realized that Brando's magnetism was attracting attention and audience sympathy away from Blanche to Stanley, which was not what the playwright intended. The audience's sympathy should be solely with Blanche, but many spectators were identifying with Stanley. Kazan queried Williams on the matter, broaching the idea of a slight rewrite to tip the scales back to more of a balance between Stanley and Blanche, but Williams demurred, smitten as he was by Brando, just like the preview audiences.

For his part, Brando believed that the audience sided with his Stanley because Jessica Tandy was too shrill. He thought Vivien Leigh, who played the part in the movie, was ideal, as she was not only a great beauty but she WAS Blanche Dubois, troubled as she was in her real life by mental illness and nymphomania. Brando's appearance as Stanley on stage and on screen revolutionized American acting by introducing "The Method" into American consciousness and culture. Method acting, rooted in Adler's study at the Moscow Art Theatre of Stanislavsky's theories that she subsequently introduced to the Group Theatre, was a more naturalistic style of performing, as it engendered a close identification of the actor with the character's emotions. Adler took first place among Brando's acting teachers, and socially she helped turn him from an unsophisticated Midwestern farm boy into a knowledgeable and cosmopolitan artist who one day would socialize with presidents.

Brando didn't like the term "The Method," which quickly became the prominent paradigm taught by such acting gurus as Lee Strasberg at the Actors Studio. Brando denounced Strasberg in his autobiography "Songs My Mother Taught Me" (1994), saying that he was a talentless exploiter who claimed he had been Brando's mentor. The Actors Studio had been founded by Strasberg along with Kazan and Stella Adler's husband, Harold Clurman, all Group Theatre alumni, all political progressives deeply committed to the didactic function of the stage. Brando credits his knowledge of the craft to Adler and Kazan, while Kazan in his autobiography "A Life" claimed that Brando's genius thrived due to the thorough training Adler had given him. Adler's method emphasized that authenticity in acting is achieved by drawing on inner reality to expose deep emotional experience

Interestingly, Elia Kazan believed that Brando had ruined two generations of actors, his contemporaries and those who came after him, all wanting to emulate the great Brando by employing The Method. Kazan felt that Brando was never a Method actor, that he had been highly trained by Adler and did not rely on gut instincts for his performances, as was commonly believed. Many a young actor, mistaken about the true roots of Brando's genius, thought that all it took was to find a character's motivation, empathize with the character through sense and memory association, and regurgitate it all on stage to become the character. That's not how the superbly trained Brando did it; he could, for example, play accents, whereas your average American Method actor could not. There was a method to Brando's art, Kazan felt, but it was not The Method.

After A Streetcar Named Desire (1951), for which he received the first of his eight Academy Award nominations, Brando appeared in a string of Academy Award-nominated performances - in Viva Zapata! (1952), Julius Caesar (1953) and the summit of his early career, Kazan's On the Waterfront (1954). For his "Waterfront" portrayal of meat-headed longshoreman Terry Malloy, the washed-up pug who "coulda been a contender," Brando won his first Oscar. Along with his iconic performance as the rebel-without-a-cause Johnny in The Wild One (1953) ("What are you rebelling against?" Johnny is asked. "What have ya got?" is his reply), the first wave of his career was, according to Jon Voight, unprecedented in its audacious presentation of such a wide range of great acting. Director John Huston said his performance of Marc Antony was like seeing the door of a furnace opened in a dark room, and co-star John Gielgud, the premier Shakespearean actor of the 20th century, invited Brando to join his repertory company.

It was this period of 1951-54 that revolutionized American acting, spawning such imitators as James Dean - who modeled his acting and even his lifestyle on his hero Brando - the young Paul Newman and Steve McQueen. After Brando, every up-and-coming star with true acting talent and a brooding, alienated quality would be hailed as the "New Brando," such as Warren Beatty in Kazan's Splendor in the Grass (1961). "We are all Brando's children," Jack Nicholson pointed out in 1972. "He gave us our freedom." He was truly "The Godfather" of American acting - and he was just 30 years old. Though he had a couple of failures, like Désirée (1954) and The Teahouse of the August Moon (1956), he was clearly miscast in them and hadn't sought out the parts so largely escaped blame.

In the second period of his career, 1955-62, Brando managed to uniquely establish himself as a great actor who also was a Top 10 movie star, although that star began to dim after the box-office high point of his early career, Sayonara (1957) (for which he received his fifth Best Actor Oscar nomination). Brando tried his hand at directing a film, the well-reviewed One-Eyed Jacks (1961) that he made for his own production company, Pennebaker Productions (after his mother's maiden name). Stanley Kubrick had been hired to direct the film, but after months of script rewrites in which Brando participated, Kubrick and Brando had a falling out and Kubrick was sacked. According to his widow Christiane Kubrick, Stanley believed that Brando had wanted to direct the film himself all along.

Tales proliferated about the profligacy of Brando the director, burning up a million and a half feet of expensive VistaVision film at 50 cents a foot, fully ten times the normal amount of raw stock expended during production of an equivalent motion picture. Brando took so long editing the film that he was never able to present the studio with a cut. Paramount took it away from him and tacked on a re-shot ending that Brando was dissatisfied with, as it made the Oedipal figure of Dad Longworth into a villain. In any normal film Dad would have been the heavy, but Brando believed that no one was innately evil, that it was a matter of an individual responding to, and being molded by, one's environment. It was not a black-and-white world, Brando felt, but a gray world in which once-decent people could do horrible things. This attitude explains his sympathetic portrayal of Nazi officer Christian Diestl in the film he made before shooting One-Eyed Jacks (1961), Edward Dmytryk's filming of Irwin Shaw's novel The Young Lions (1958). Shaw denounced Brando's performance, but audiences obviously disagreed, as the film was a major hit. It would be the last hit movie Brando would have for more than a decade.

One-Eyed Jacks (1961) generated respectable numbers at the box office, but the production costs were exorbitant - a then-staggering $6 million - which made it run a deficit. A film essentially is "made" in the editing room, and Brando found cutting to be a terribly boring process, which was why the studio eventually took the film away from him. Despite his proved talent in handling actors and a large production, Brando never again directed another film, though he would claim that all actors essentially direct themselves during the shooting of a picture.

Between the production and release of One-Eyed Jacks (1961), Brando appeared in Sidney Lumet's film version of Tennessee Williams' play "Orpheus Descending," The Fugitive Kind (1960) which teamed him with fellow Oscar winners Anna Magnani and Joanne Woodward. Following in Elizabeth Taylor's trailblazing footsteps, Brando became the second performer to receive a $1-million salary for a motion picture, so high were the expectations for this re-teaming of Kowalski and his creator (in 1961 critic Hollis Alpert had published a book "Brando and the Shadow of Stanley Kowalski"). Critics and audiences waiting for another incendiary display from Brando in a Williams work were disappointed when the renamed The Fugitive Kind (1960) finally released. Though Tennessee was hot, with movie versions of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1958) and Suddenly, Last Summer (1959) burning up the box office and receiving kudos from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences, The Fugitive Kind (1960) was a failure. This was followed by the so-so box-office reception of One-Eyed Jacks (1961) in 1961 and then by a failure of a more monumental kind: Mutiny on the Bounty (1962), a remake of the famed 1935 film.

Brando signed on to Mutiny on the Bounty (1962) after turning down the lead in the David Lean classic Lawrence of Arabia (1962) because he didn't want to spend a year in the desert riding around on a camel. He received another $1-million salary, plus $200,000 in overages as the shoot went overtime and over budget. During principal photography, highly respected director Carol Reed (an eventual Academy Award winner) was fired, and his replacement, two-time Oscar winner Lewis Milestone, was shunted aside by Brando as Marlon basically took over the direction of the film himself. The long shoot became so notorious that President John F. Kennedy asked director Billy Wilder at a cocktail party not "when" but "if" the "Bounty" shoot would ever be over. The MGM remake of one of its classic Golden Age films garnered a Best Picture Oscar nomination and was one of the top grossing films of 1962, yet failed to go into the black due to its Brobdingnagian budget estimated at $20 million, which is equivalent to $120 million when adjusted for inflation.

Brando and Taylor, whose Cleopatra (1963) nearly bankrupted 20th Century-Fox due to its huge cost overruns (its final budget was more than twice that of Brando's Mutiny on the Bounty (1962)), were pilloried by the show business press for being the epitome of the pampered, self-indulgent stars who were ruining the industry. Seeking scapegoats, the Hollywood press conveniently ignored the financial pressures on the studios. The studios had been hurt by television and by the antitrust-mandated divestiture of their movie theater chains, causing a large outflow of production to Italy and other countries in the 1950s and 1960s in order to lower costs. The studio bosses, seeking to replicate such blockbuster hits as the remakes of The Ten Commandments (1956) and Ben-Hur (1959), were the real culprits behind the losses generated by large-budgeted films that found it impossible to recoup their costs despite long lines at the box office.

While Elizabeth Taylor, receiving the unwanted gift of reams of publicity from her adulterous romance with Cleopatra (1963) co-star Richard Burton, remained hot until the tanking of her own Tennessee Williams-renamed debacle Boom! (1968), Brando from 1963 until the end of the decade appeared in one box-office failure after another as he worked out a contract he had signed with Universal Pictures. The industry had grown tired of Brando and his idiosyncrasies, though he continued to be offered prestige projects up through 1968.

Some of the films Brando made in the 1960s were noble failures, such as The Ugly American (1963), The Appaloosa (1966) and Reflections in a Golden Eye (1967). For every "Reflections," though, there seemed to be two or three outright debacles, such as Bedtime Story (1964), Morituri (1965), The Chase (1966), A Countess from Hong Kong (1967), Candy (1968), The Night of the Following Day (1969). By the time Brando began making the anti-colonialist picture Burn! (1969) in Colombia with Gillo Pontecorvo in the director's chair, he was box-office poison, despite having worked in the previous five years with such top directors as Arthur Penn, John Huston and the legendary Charles Chaplin, and with such top-drawer co-stars as David Niven, Yul Brynner, Sophia Loren and Taylor.

The rap on Brando in the 1960s was that a great talent had ruined his potential to be America's answer to Laurence Olivier, as his friend William Redfield limned the dilemma in his book "Letters from an Actor" (1967), a memoir about Redfield's appearance in Burton's 1964 theatrical production of "Hamlet." By failing to go back on stage and recharge his artistic batteries, something British actors such as Burton were not afraid to do, Brando had stifled his great talent, by refusing to tackle the classical repertoire and contemporary drama. Actors and critics had yearned for an American response to the high-acting style of the Brits, and while Method actors such as Rod Steiger tried to create an American style, they were hampered in their quest, as their king was lost in a wasteland of Hollywood movies that were beneath his talent. Many of his early supporters now turned on him, claiming he was a crass sellout.

Despite evidence in such films as The Appaloosa (1966) and Reflections in a Golden Eye (1967) that Brando was in fact doing some of the best acting of his life, critics, perhaps with an eye on the box office, slammed him for failing to live up to, and nurture, his great gift. Brando's political activism, starting in the early 1960s with his championing of Native Americans' rights, followed by his participation in the Southern Christian Leadership Conference's March on Washington in 1963, and followed by his appearance at a Black Panther rally in 1968, did not win him many admirers in the establishment. In fact, there was a de facto embargo on Brando films in the recently segregated (officially, at least) southeastern US in the 1960s. Southern exhibitors simply would not book his films, and producers took notice. After 1968, Brando would not work for three years.

Pauline Kael wrote of Brando that he was Fortune's fool. She drew a parallel with the latter career of John Barrymore, a similarly gifted thespian with talents as prodigious, who seemingly threw them away. Brando, like the late-career Barrymore, had become a great ham, evidenced by his turn as the faux Indian guru in the egregious Candy (1968), seemingly because the material was so beneath his talent. Most observers of Brando in the 1960s believed that he needed to be reunited with his old mentor Elia Kazan, a relationship that had soured due to Kazan's friendly testimony naming names before the notorious House un-American Activities Committee. Perhaps Brando believed this, too, as he originally accepted an offer to appear as the star of Kazan's film adaptation of his own novel, The Arrangement (1969). However, after the assassination of Martin Luther King, Brando backed out of the film, telling Kazan that he could not appear in a Hollywood film after this tragedy. Also reportedly turning down a role opposite box-office king Paul Newman in a surefire script, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969), Brando decided to make Burn! (1969) with Pontecorvo. The film, a searing indictment of racism and colonialism, flopped at the box office but won the esteem of progressive critics and cultural arbiters such as Howard Zinn. He subsequently appeared in the British film The Nightcomers (1971), a prequel to "Turn of the Screw" and another critical and box office failure.

Kazan, after a life in film and the theater, said that, aside from Orson Welles, whose greatness lay in film making, he only met one actor who was a genius: Brando. Richard Burton, an intellectual with a keen eye for observation if not for his own film projects, said that he found Brando to be very bright, unlike the public perception of him as a Terry Malloy-type character that he himself inadvertently promoted through his boorish behavior. Brando's problem, Burton felt, was that he was unique, and that he had gotten too much fame too soon at too early an age. Cut off from being nurtured by normal contact with society, fame had distorted Brando's personality and his ability to cope with the world, as he had not had time to grow up outside the limelight.

Truman Capote, who eviscerated Brando in print in the mid-'50s and had as much to do with the public perception of the dyslexic Brando as a dumbbell, always said that the best actors were ignorant, and that an intelligent person could not be a good actor. However, Brando was highly intelligent, and possessed of a rare genius in a then-deprecated art, acting. The problem that an intelligent performer has in movies is that it is the director, and not the actor, who has the power in his chosen field. Greatness in the other arts is defined by how much control the artist is able to exert over his chosen medium, but in movie acting, the medium is controlled by a person outside the individual artist. It is an axiom of the cinema that a performance, as is a film, is "created" in the cutting room, thus further removing the actor from control over his art. Brando had tried his hand at directing, in controlling the whole artistic enterprise, but he could not abide the cutting room, where a film and the film's performances are made. This lack of control over his art was the root of Brando's discontent with acting, with movies, and, eventually, with the whole wide world that invested so much cachet in movie actors, as long as "they" were at the top of the box-office charts. Hollywood was a matter of "they" and not the work, and Brando became disgusted.

Charlton Heston, who participated in Martin Luther King's 1963 March on Washington with Brando, believes that Marlon was the great actor of his generation. However, noting a story that Brando had once refused a role in the early 1960s with the excuse "How can I act when people are starving in India?," Heston believes that it was this attitude, the inability to separate one's idealism from one's work, that prevented Brando from reaching his potential. As Rod Steiger once said, Brando had it all, great stardom and a great talent. He could have taken his audience on a trip to the stars, but he simply would not. Steiger, one of Brando's children even though a contemporary, could not understand it. When James Mason' was asked in 1971 who was the best American actor, he had replied that since Brando had let his career go belly-up, it had to be George C. Scott, by default.

Paramount thought that only Laurence Olivier would suffice, but Lord Olivier was ill. The young director believed there was only one actor who could play godfather to the group of Young Turk actors he had assembled for his film, The Godfather of method acting himself - Marlon Brando. Francis Ford Coppola won the fight for Brando, Brando won - and refused - his second Oscar, and Paramount won a pot of gold by producing the then top-grossing film of all-time, The Godfather (1972), a gangster movie most critics now judge one of the greatest American films of all time. Brando followed his iconic portrayal of Don Corleone with his Oscar-nominated turn in the high-grossing and highly scandalous Last Tango in Paris (1972) ("Last Tango in Paris"), the first film dealing explicitly with sexuality in which an actor of Brando's stature had participated. He was now again a top ten box office star and once again heralded as the greatest actor of his generation, an unprecedented comeback that put him on the cover of "Time" magazine and would make him the highest-paid actor in the history of motion pictures by the end of the decade. Little did the world know that Brando, who had struggled through many projects in good faith during the 1960s, delivering some of his best acting, only to be excoriated and ignored as the films did not do well at the box office, essentially was through with the movies.

After reaching the summit of his career, a rarefied atmosphere never reached before or since by any actor, Brando essentially walked away. He would give no more of himself after giving everything as he had done in Last Tango in Paris (1972)," a performance that embarrassed him, according to his autobiography. Brando had come as close to any actor to being the "auteur," or author, of a film, as the English-language scenes of "Tango" were created by encouraging Brando to improvise. The improvisations were written down and turned into a shooting script, and the scripted improvisations were shot the next day. Pauline Kael, the Brando of movie critics in that she was the most influential arbiter of cinematic quality of her generation and spawned a whole legion of Kael wannabes, said Brando's performance in Last Tango in Paris (1972) had revolutionized the art of film. Brando, who had to act to gain his mother's attention; Brando, who believed acting at best was nothing special as everyone in the world engaged in it every day of their lives to get what they wanted from other people; Brando, who believed acting at its worst was a childish charade and that movie stardom was a whorish fraud, would have agreed with Sam Peckinpah's summation of Pauline Kael: "Pauline's a brilliant critic but sometimes she's just cracking walnuts with her ass." He probably would have done so in a simulacrum of those words, too.

After another three-year hiatus, Brando took on just one more major role for the next 20 years, as the bounty hunter after Jack Nicholson in Arthur Penn's The Missouri Breaks (1976), a western that succeeded neither with the critics or at the box office. Following The Godfather and Tango, Brando's performance was disappointing for some reviewers, who accused him of giving an erratic and inconsistent performance. In 1977, Brando made a rare appearance on television in the miniseries Roots: The Next Generations (1979), portraying George Lincoln Rockwell; he won a Primetime Emmy Award for Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Miniseries or a Movie for his performance. In 1978, he narrated the English version of Raoni (1978), a French-Belgian documentary film directed by Jean-Pierre Dutilleux and Luiz Carlos Saldanha that focused on the life of Raoni Metuktire and issues surrounding the survival of the indigenous Indian tribes of north central Brazil.

Later in his career, Brando concentrated on extracting the maximum amount of capital for the least amount of work from producers, as when he got the Salkind brothers to pony up a then-record $3.7 million against 10% of the gross for 13 days work on Superman (1978). Factoring in inflation, the straight salary for "Superman" equals or exceeds the new record of $1 million a day Harrison Ford set with K-19: The Widowmaker (2002). He agreed to the role only on assurance that he would be paid a large sum for what amounted to a small part, that he would not have to read the script beforehand, and his lines would be displayed somewhere off-camera. Brando also filmed scenes for the movie's sequel, Superman II, but after producers refused to pay him the same percentage he received for the first movie, he denied them permission to use the footage.

Before cashing his first paycheck for Superman (1978), Brando had picked up $2 million for his extended cameo in Francis Ford Coppola's Apocalypse Now (1979) in a role, that of Col. Kurtz, that he authored on-camera through improvisation while Coppola shot take after take. It was Brando's last bravura star performance. He co-starred with George C. Scott and John Gielgud in The Formula (1980), but the film was another critical and financial failure. Years later though, he did receive an eighth and final Oscar nomination for his supporting role in A Dry White Season (1989) after coming out of a near-decade-long retirement. Contrary to those who claimed he now only was in it for the money, Brando donated his entire seven-figure salary to an anti-apartheid charity. He then did an amusing performance in the comedy The Freshman (1990), winning rave reviews. He portrayed Tomas de Torquemada in the historical drama 1492: Conquest of Paradise (1992), but his performance was denounced and the film was another box office failure. He made another comeback in the Johnny Depp romantic drama Don Juan DeMarco (1994), which co-starred Faye Dunaway as his wife. He then appeared in The Island of Dr. Moreau (1996), co-starring Val Kilmer, who he didn't get along with. The filming was an unpleasant experience for Brando, as well as another critical and box office failure.

Brando had first attracted media attention at the age of 24, when "Life" magazine ran a photo of himself and his sister Jocelyn, who were both then appearing on Broadway. The curiosity continued, and snowballed. Playing the paraplegic soldier of The Men (1950), Brando had gone to live at a Veterans Administration hospital with actual disabled veterans, and confined himself to a wheelchair for weeks. It was an acting method, research, that no one in Hollywood had ever heard of before, and that willingness to experience life.

Christopher D'Olier Reeve was born September 25, 1952, in New York City, to journalist Barbara Johnson (née Barbara Pitney Lamb) and writer/professor F.D. Reeve (Franklin D'Olier Reeve). He came from an upper-class family; his paternal grandfather was CEO of Prudential Financial, and one of his maternal great-grandfathers was Supreme Court Associate Justice Mahlon Pitney.

When Reeve was four, his parents divorced. His mother moved him and his brother Benjamin to Princeton, New Jersey, and married an investment banker a few years later. After graduating from high school, Reeve studied at Cornell University while at the same time working as a professional actor. In his final year at Cornell, he was one of two students selected (Robin Williams was the other) to study at New York's famous Juilliard School, under the renowned John Houseman. Although Christopher is best known for his role as Superman (1978), a role which he played with both charisma and grace, his acting career spans a much larger ground. Paralyzed after a horse riding accident, he died suddenly at age 52 after several years of living and working with his severe disability.

Maria Schell studied in a religious institution in Colmar (Haut-Rhin, France). She received a dramatic training in Zurich, Switzerland. To pay her studies, she was a secretary there. Besides being a film star; Maria appeared in plays in Zurich, Basel, in Vienna (Josefstad Theater), Berlin, Munich (Kammerspiel Theater), at the Salzburg Festival and went on provincial tours from 1963. Among the plays she performed there were such classics as William Shakespeare's "Hamlet", Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's "Faust" and such modern classics as "Pygmalion" by George Bernard Shaw.

William Michael Hootkins was born on July 5, 1948, in Dallas, Texas. He moved to London, England in the early '70s and lived there up until 2002. Hootkins was an actor at Theatre Intime while attending Princeton University where he learned how to speak fluent Mandarin Chinese. He also trained as an actor at the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Arts, and attended St. Marks, where he was in the same theater group as Tommy Lee Jones. The imposingly bulky and heavyset Hootkins first began acting in films and TV shows alike in the mid '70s. His more noteworthy parts include the first of the Rebel fighter pilots to get killed while attacking the Death Star in "Star Wars", scientist Topol's bumbling oaf assistant in "Flash Gordon", Major Eaton, sent by the US government in "Raiders of the Lost Ark", one of Rod Steiger's demented sons in "American Gothic", a corrupt police lieutenant in "Batman", a disgusting sleazy voyeur in "Hardware", a coarse South African police chief in "Dust Devil", the mysterious and duplicitous Mr. X in "Hear My Song", a haughty corporate executive in "Death Machine", Santa Claus in "Like Father, Like Santa", and an opera-singing vampire in "The Breed". Moreover, Hootkins had small parts in two "Pink Panther" pictures: he's a taxi driver in both "The Trail of the Pink Panther" and "Curse of the Pink Panther".

Among the TV shows he did guest spots on are "Yanks Go Home", "Agony", "Play for Today", "Tales of the Unexpected", "The Life and Times of David Lloyd George", "Brett Maverick", "Cagney and Lacey", "Taxi", "Hammer House of Mystery and Suspense", "Poirot", "Chancer", "The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles", "The Tomorrow People", "The West Wing", and "Absolute Power". Hootkins received many accolades for his outstanding performance as Sir Alfred Hitchcock in Terry Johnson's hit play "Hitchcock Blonde". In addition to his substantial film and TV credits, Hootkins was also a popular and prolific voice artist who recorded dozens of plays for BBC Radio Drama; he supplied the voices for such iconic individuals as Orson Welles, J. Edgar Hoover, and Winston Churchill. William Hootkins died of pancreatic cancer on October 23, 2005.

Highly influential, and always controversial, African-American actor/comedian who was equally well known for his colorful language during his live comedy shows, as for his fast paced life, multiple marriages and battles with drug addiction. He has been acknowledged by many modern comic artist's as a key influence on their careers, and Pryor's observational humor on African-American life in the USA during the 1970s was razor sharp brilliance.

He was born Richard Franklin Lennox Pryor III on December 1, 1940, in Peoria, Illinois, the son of Gertrude L. (Thomas) and LeRoy "Buck Carter" Pryor. His mother, a prostitute, abandoned him when he was ten years of age, after which he was raised in his grandmother's brothel. Unfortunately, Pryor was molested at the age of six by a teenage neighbor, and later by a neighborhood preacher. To escape this troubled life, the young Pryor was an avid movie fan and a regular visitor to local movie theaters in Peoria. After numerous jobs, including truck driver and meat packer, the young Pryor did a stint in the US Army between 1958 & 1960 in which he performed in amateur theater shows. After he left the services in 1960, Pryor started singing in small clubs, but inadvertently found that humor was his real forte.

Pryor spent time in both New York & Las Vegas, honing his comic craft. However, his unconventional approach to humor sometimes made bookings difficult to come by and this eventually saw Pryor heading to Los Angeles. He first broke into films with minor roles in The Busy Body (1967) and Wild in the Streets (1968). However, his performance as a drug addicted piano player in Lady Sings the Blues (1972), really got the attention of fans and film critics alike.

He made his first appearance with Gene Wilder in the very popular action/comedy Silver Streak (1976), played three different characters in Which Way Is Up? (1977) and portrayed real-life stock-car driver "Wendell Scott" in Greased Lightning (1977). Proving he was more than just a comedian, Pryor wowed audiences as a disenchanted auto worker who is seduced into betraying his friends and easy money in the Paul Schrader working class drama Blue Collar (1978), also starring Yaphet Kotto and Harvey Keitel. Always a strong advocate of African-American talent, Pryor next took a key role in The Wiz (1978), starring an all African-American cast, including Diana Ross and Michael Jackson, retelling the story of The Wizard of Oz (1939). His next four screen roles were primarily cameos in California Suite (1978); The Muppet Movie (1979); Wholly Moses! (1980) and In God We Trust (or Gimme That Prime Time Religion) (1980). However, Pryor teamed up with Gene Wilder once more for the prison comedy Stir Crazy (1980), which did strong box office business.

His next few films were a mixed bag of material, often inhibiting Pryor's talent, with equally mixed returns at the box office. Pryor then scored second billing to Christopher Reeve in the big budget Superman III (1983), and starred alongside fellow funny man John Candy in Brewster's Millions (1985) before revealing his inner self in the autobiographical Jo Jo Dancer, Your Life Is Calling (1986). Again, Pryor was somewhat hampered by poor material in his following film ventures. However, he did turn up again in See No Evil, Hear No Evil (1989) with Gene Wilder, but the final product was not as sharp as their previous pairings. Pryor then partnered on-screen with two other very popular African-American comic's. The legendary Redd Foxx and 1980s comic newcomer Eddie Murphy starred with Pryor in the gangster film Harlem Nights (1989) which was also directed by Eddie Murphy. Having contracted multiple sclerosis in 1986, Pryor's remaining film appearances were primarily cameos apart from his fourth and final outing with Gene Wilder in the lukewarm Another You (1991), and his final appearance in a film production was a small role in the David Lynch road flick Lost Highway (1997).

Fans of this outrageous comic genius are encouraged to see his live specials Richard Pryor: Live and Smokin' (1971); the dynamic Richard Pryor: Live in Concert (1979); Richard Pryor: Live on the Sunset Strip (1982) and Richard Pryor... Here and Now (1983). In addition, The Richard Pryor Show (1977) is a must-have for any Richard Pryor fans' DVD collection.

Unknown to many, Pryor was a long time advocate against animal cruelty, and he campaigned against fast food chains and circus shows to address issues of animal welfare. He was married a total of seven times, and fathered eight children.

After long battles with ill health, Richard Pryor passed away on December 10th, 2005.

Legendary actor Glenn Ford was born Gwyllyn Samuel Newton Ford in Sainte-Christine-d'Auvergne, Quebec, Canada, to Hannah Wood (Mitchell) and Newton Ford, a railroad executive. His family moved to Santa Monica, California when he was eight years old. His acting career began with plays at high school, followed by acting in West Coast, a traveling theater company.

Ford was discovered in 1939 by Tom Moore, a talent scout for 20th Century Fox. He subsequently signed a contract with Columbia Pictures the same year. Ford's contract with Columbia marked a significant departure in that studio's successful business model. Columbia's boss, Harry Cohn, had spent decades observing other studios'-most notably Warner Brothers-troubles with their contract stars and had built his poverty-row studio around their loan-outs. Basically, major studios would use Columbia as a penalty box for unruly behavior-usually salary demands or work refusals. The cunning Cohn usually assigned these stars (his little studio could not normally afford then) into pictures, and the studio's status rose immensely as the 1930s progressed. Understandably, Cohn had long resisted developing his own stable of contract stars (he'd first hired Peter Lorre in 1934 but didn't know what to do with him) but had relented in the late 1930s, first adding Rosalind Russell, then signing Ford and fellow newcomer William Holden. Cohn reasoned that the two prospects could be used interchangeably, should one become troublesome. Although often competing for the same parts, Ford and Holden became good friends. Their careers would roughly parallel each other through the 1940s, until Holden became a superstar through his remarkable association with director Billy Wilder in the 1950s.

Ford made his official debut in Fox's Heaven with a Barbed Wire Fence (1939), and continued working in various small roles throughout the 1940s until his movie career was interrupted to join the Marines in World War II. Ford continued his military career in the Naval Reserve well into the Vietnam War, achieving the rank of captain. In 1943 Ford married legendary tap dancer Eleanor Powell, and had one son, Peter Ford. Like many actors returning to Hollywood after the war (including James Stewart and Holden (who had already acquired a serious alcohol problem), he found it initially difficult to regain his career momentum. He was able to resume his movie career with the help of Bette Davis, who gave him his first postwar break in the 1946 movie A Stolen Life (1946). However, it was not until his acclaimed performance in a 1946 classic film noir, Gilda (1946), with Rita Hayworth, that he became a major star and one of the the most popular actors of his time. He scored big with the film noir classics The Big Heat (1953) and Blackboard Jungle (1955), and was usually been cast as a calm and collected everyday-hero, showing courage under pressure. Ford continued to make many notable films during his prestigious 50-year movie career, but he is best known for his fine westerns such as 3:10 to Yuma (1957) and The Rounders (1965). Ford pulled a hugely entertaining turn in The Sheepman (1958) and many more fine films. In the 1970s, Ford made his television debut in the controversial The Brotherhood of the Bell (1970) and appeared in two fondly remembered television series: Cade's County (1971) and The Family Holvak (1975). During the 1980s and 1990s, Ford limited his appearance to documentaries and occasional films, including a nice cameo in Superman (1978).

Glenn Ford is remembered fondly by his fans for his more than 100 excellent films and his charismatic silver screen presence.

Don Fellows was born on 2 December 1922 in Salt Lake City, Utah, USA. He was an actor, known for Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981), Superman II (1980) and Superman IV: The Quest for Peace (1987). He was married to Miranda Fellows. He died on 21 October 2007 in London, England, UK.

The lovely Susannah York, a gamine, blue-eyed, cropped-blond British actress, displayed a certain crossover star quality when she dared upon the Hollywood scene in the early 1960s. A purposefully intriguing, enigmatic and noticeably uninhibited talent, she was born Susannah Yolande Fletcher on January 9, 1939 in Chelsea, London, but raised in a remote village in Scotland. Her parents divorced when she was around 6. Attending Marr College, she trained for acting at London's Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, winning the Ronson Award for most promising student. She then performed classical repertory and pantomime in her early professional career.

Making an impression on television in 1959 opposite Sean Connery in a production of "The Crucible" as Abigail Williams to his John Proctor, the moon-faced beauty progressed immediately to ingénue film roles, making her debut as the daughter of Alec Guinness in the classic war drama Tunes of Glory (1960). She emerged quickly as a worthy co-star with the sensitively handled coming-of age drama Loss of Innocence (1961), the more complex psychodrama Freud (1962), as a patient to Montgomery Clift's famed psychoanalyst, and the bawdy and robust 18th century tale Tom Jones (1963), with Susannah portraying the brazenly seductive Sophie, one of many damsels lusting after the bed-hopping title rogue Albert Finney.

Susannah continued famously both here and in England in both contemporary and period drama opposite the likes of Warren Beatty, William Holden, Paul Scofield and Dirk Bogarde. Susannah was a new breed. Free-spirited and unreserved, she had no trouble at all courting controversy in some of the film roles she went on to play. She gained special notoriety as the child-like Alice in her stark, nude clinches with severe-looking executive Coral Browne in the lesbian drama The Killing of Sister George (1968). A few years later, she and Elizabeth Taylor traveled similar territory with X, Y & Zee (1972).

Award committees also began favoring her; she won the BAFTA film award as well as Oscar and Golden Globe nominations for her delusional Jean Harlow-like dance marathon participant in the grueling Depression-era film They Shoot Horses, Don't They? (1969). Her crazy scene in the shower with Oscar-winner Gig Young was particularly gripping and just one of many highlights in the acclaimed film. She also copped a Cannes Film Festival award for her performance in Images (1972) playing another troubled character barely coping with reality. On television, she was Emmy-nominated for her beautifully nuanced Jane Eyre (1970) opposite George C. Scott's Rochester.

Susannah's film career started to lose ground into the 1970s as she continued her pursuit of challengingly offbeat roles as opposed to popular mainstream work. The film adaptations of Kurt Vonnegut Jr.'s Happy Birthday, Wanda June (1971) opposite Rod Steiger and Jean Genet's The Maids (1975) with Glenda Jackson were not well-received. Her performances in such films as Gold (1974), Conduct Unbecoming (1975) which starred another famous York (Michael York), That Lucky Touch (1975), Sky Riders (1976) and The Shout (1978) were overlooked, as were the films themselves. In the one highly popular movie series she appeared in, the box-office smashes Superman (1978) and its sequel Superman II (1980), she had literally nothing to do as Lara, the wife of Marlon Brando's Jor-El and birth mother of the superhero. While the actress continued to pour out a number of quality work assignments in films and television, she failed to recapture her earlier star glow.

Wisely, Susannah began extending her talents outside the realm of film acting. Marrying writer Michael Wells in 1960, she focused on her personal life, raising their two children for a time. The couple divorced in 1980. In the 1970s, she wrote the children's books "In Search of Unicorns" and "Lark's Castle". She also found time to direct on stage and wrote the screenplay to one of her film vehicles Falling in Love Again (1980). On stage Susannah performed in such one-woman shows as "Independent State", 'Picasso's Women", "The Human Voice" and "The Loves of Shakespeare's Women", while entertaining such wide and varied theatre challenges as "Peter Pan" (title role), "Hamlet" (as Gertrude), "Camino Real", "The Merry Wives of Windsor", "A Streetcar Named Desire", "Private Lives", "Agnes of God" and the title role in "Amy's View".

At the age of 67, Susannah showed up once again on film with a delightful cameo role in The Gigolos (2006), and seemed ripe for a major comeback, perhaps in a similar vein to the legendary Judi Dench, Maggie Smith and Helen Mirren. Sadly, it was not to be. Diagnosed with bone marrow cancer, the actress died on January 15, 2011, six days after her 72nd birthday. Her final films, Franklyn (2008) and The Calling (2009), proved that she still possessed the magnetism of her earlier years.

Jackie Cooper was born John Cooper in Los Angeles, California, to Mabel Leonard, an Italian-American stage pianist, and John Cooper. Through his mother, he was the nephew of actress Julie Leonard, screenwriter Jack Leonard, and (by marriage) director Norman Taurog. Jackie served with the Navy in the South Pacific toward the end of World War II. Then, quietly and without publicity or fanfare, compiled one of the most distinguished peacetime military careers of anyone in his profession. In 1961, as his weekly TV series Hennesey (1959) was enhancing naval recruiting efforts, accepted a commission as a line officer in the Naval Reserve with duties in recruitment, training films, and public relations. Holder of a multi-engine pilot license, he later co-piloted jet planes for the Navy, which made him an Honorary Aviator authorized to wear wings of gold-at the time only the third so honored in naval aviation history. By 1976 he had attained the rank of captain, and was in uniform aboard the carrier USS Constellation for the Bicentennial celebration on July 4. In 1980 the Navy proposed a period of active duty at the Pentagon that would have resulted in a promotion to rear admiral, bringing him even with Air Force Reserve Brigadier General James Stewart. Fresh on the heels of a second directing Emmy, he felt his absence would impact achieving a long-held goal of directing motion pictures, and reluctantly declined. (The opportunity in films never materialized.) Holds Letters of Commendation from six secretaries of the Navy. Was honorary chairman of the U.S. Navy Memorial Foundation and a charter member of VIVA, the effort to return POW-MIAs from Vietnam. Upon retirement in 1982, he was decorated with the Legion of Merit by Navy Secretary John F. Lehman Jr.. Other than Stewart, no performer in his industry has achieved a higher uniformed rank in the U.S. military. (Glenn Ford was also a Naval Reserve captain, and director and Captain John Ford was awarded honorary flag rank upon his 1951 retirement from the Naval Reserve).

This warm and winning, very non-theatrical brunette was born Phyllis St. Felix Thaxter in Portland, Maine, on November 20, 1919. The daughter of Maine Supreme Court Justice Sidney Thaxter, her acting talent came from her mother's side, who was a one-time Shakespearean actress. Phyllis was educated for a time at St. Genevieve School in Montreal and back at Portland's Deering High School.

She apprenticed in summer stock and had joined the Montreal Reperatory Theatre company by the time she made her Broadway debut at age 17 in "What a Life!" in 1939, the "Henry Aldrich" play. She went on to play a maid and to understudy the leading ingénue in "There Shall Be No Night" (1940), which starred America's premiere theatrical couple, Alfred Lunt and Lynn Fontanne, then understudied Dorothy McGuire in the hit dramatic play, "Claudia", later that year. She eventually played the title role both on Broadway and on the road, but lost out on the film role to McGuire.

Hollywood films reached her sights a few years later with the MGM war film, Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo (1944), proving quite convincing as Van Johnson's noble wife. Similar to Margaret Sullavan, June Allyson, Dorothy McGuire and Teresa Wright, Phyllis was depended on as a stabilizing factor in melodramas and war pictures, often the dewy-eyed, altruistic wife, girlfriend or daughter waiting on the home-front.

Other important films included the girl with a split personality in Bewitched (1945), and as a angst-ridden, teary-eyed bride-to-be in Week-End at the Waldorf (1945). She was dutifully wholesome as the daughter who reunites Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn in the movie The Sea of Grass (1947) and evoked tears, yet again, as little Margaret O'Brien's mother in Tenth Avenue Angel (1948). So natural and non-glamorous was she that she tended to blend into the woodwork while the flashier actresses often stole the thunder and the notices.

Audiences did not always fully appreciate Phyllis's understated work. She finished out her MGM contract with Act of Violence (1948), ever-faithful to even the bad guy, this time psychotic gangster Robert Ryan. Phyllis moved to Warner Brothers in the 1950s and played more of the same. The ever-patient wife to a slew of top actors including shady boat skipper John Garfield in The Breaking Point (1950), an alcoholic Gig Young in Come Fill the Cup (1951) and law-abiding Gary Cooper in Springfield Rifle (1952), her nascent career at Warners was suddenly curtailed by illness.

While visiting her family in Portland, she contracted a form of infantile paralysis. Fortunately, she recovered quickly but the ailment triggered the termination of her contract. Film roles were few and far between after this. Still displaying her built-in compassion and concern, her best-known part came with the touching but relatively minor role of farm wife "Martha Kent" in the highly popular Superman (1978) film series with the late Christopher Reeve as her adopted superhero son and Glenn Ford as her husband. She was also a steady guest star on TV with numerous dramatic appearances including The Twilight Zone (1959), The F.B.I. (1965), Cannon (1971), Medical Center (1969), Barnaby Jones (1973) and several TV movies.

Married for nearly two decades to James T. Aubrey (1918-1994), who became president of CBS-TV before taking over MGM, they had three children--including Schuyler, who would become the actress Skye Aubrey. Following the couple's divorce in 1962, Phyllis married Gilbert Lea, who owned Tower Publishing Company in Portland. They eventually retired to Cumberland, Maine, where she involved herself in civic/community activities and dedicated herself to hospital volunteer work.

Phyllis died in Florida on August 14, 2012, at age 92.

Stanley Lebor was born on 24 September 1934 in East Ham, London, England, UK. He was an actor, known for Superman IV: The Quest for Peace (1987), Holocaust (1978) and Flash Gordon (1980). He died on 23 November 2014 in Faversham, Kent, England, UK.

Robert Francis Vaughn was born on November 22, 1932 at Charity Hospital in New York City, the son of show business parents, Marcella Frances (Gaudel) and Gerald Walter Vaughn. His father was a radio actor and his mother starred on stage. Robert came to the public's attention first with his Oscar-nominated role, in The Young Philadelphians (1959). The next year, he was one of the seven in the western classic The Magnificent Seven (1960). Despite being in such popular films, he generally found work on television. He appeared over 200 times in guest roles in the late 1950s to early 1960s. It was in 1963 that he received his first major role in The Lieutenant (1963). Robert took the role with the intention of making the transition from being a guest-star actor to being a co-star on television. It was due to his work in this series that producer Norman Felton offered him the role of Napoleon Solo in The Man from U.N.C.L.E. (1964).

Four extremely successful years (1964-68) followed as the series became one of the most popular television series of the 1960s. It made Vaughn an international television star, but he wanted to embark on a career in film, and did so soon after the series ended in 1968 by co-starring in Bullitt (1968) with Steve McQueen. Now working in film full-time, he starred in The Bridge at Remagen (1969) and The Mind of Mr. Soames (1970), before making a change by going back to television, this time in England. He took a lead role in the series The Protectors (1972) and stayed in England for the first half of the 1970s. He returned to the United States in the mid-1970s and embarked on a very successful run of television miniseries roles that resulted in his receiving an Emmy Award in 1978 for Washington: Behind Closed Doors (1977) and a nomination the following year for Backstairs at the White House (1979).

The 1970s proved a important time in Robert's life, as in 1974, he married actress Linda Staab, and completed his thesis on Hollywood blacklisting during the McCarthy "Red Scare" era, published in 1972 as "Only Victims: A Study of Show Business Blacklisting". During the 1980s, he mixed television with film. Roles in such films as S.O.B. (1981), Superman III (1983), The Delta Force (1986) and Black Moon Rising (1986) were highlights. In television, he appeared in many successful series, most notably in The A-Team (1983) and Emerald Point N.A.S. (1983).

He continued with a diverse range of projects, appearing on stage on numerous occasions. The 1990s saw the same variety of roles. Made-for-TV movies were a popular choice for him, as well as such series as As the World Turns (1956), The Nanny (1993) and Law & Order (1990). He had a role in the 1998 series remake of the classic film in which he appeared, The Magnificent Seven (1998). He also appeared in major features such as Joe's Apartment (1996) and BASEketball (1998), and in smaller roles in subsequent years.

Robert died of acute leukemia on November 11, 2016 in Ridgefield, Connecticut. His last acting credit, Gold Star (2017), was released the year of his death.

Blustery, stocky, loud although often genial character actor who has created a niche for himself playing often frustrated and fast talking Southern characters... most noticeably as Sheriff J.W. Pepper alongside Roger Moore in the James Bond adventures Live and Let Die (1973) and The Man with the Golden Gun (1974).

He may have perfected a Southern drawl, however Clifton James was actually born on May 29, 1921 in Spokane, Washington. A graduate of the Actors Studio, he regularly appeared in guest roles on television series, including Gunsmoke (1955), Bonanza (1959) and The Virginian (1962). He was also busy in the cinema with minor roles in classy productions, such as Cool Hand Luke (1967), Will Penny (1967) and The New Centurions (1972). After his 007 escapades, James remained busy putting in a great dramatic performance in The Deadly Tower (1975), played another loud-mouthed Sheriff in the action comedy Silver Streak (1976) and was superb as team owner Charles Comiskey in the dramatization of the 1919 Chicago White Sox scandal, Eight Men Out (1988).

His other roles include that of a wealthy Montana baron whose cattle are being rustled in Rancho Deluxe (1975), and as the source who tips off a newspaper reporter (Bruce Willis) to a potentially explosive story in The Bonfire of the Vanities (1990). He had been quieter in his later years, but showed he could still contribute an enjoyable performance in the wonderful John Sayles movie Sunshine State (2002). James died at age 96 from complications of diabetes at his home in Gladstone, Oregon on April 15, 2017.

Margot Kidder was born Margaret Ruth Kidder in Yellowknife, Northwest Territories, Canada, to Jocelyn Mary "Jill" (Wilson), a history teacher from British Columbia, and Kendall Kidder, a New Mexico-born mining engineer and explosives expert. Margot was a delightful child who took pride in everything she did. At an early age, she became aware of the great emotions she felt towards expressing herself, and caught the acting bug. As a child, she wrote in a diary that she wanted to become a movie star, and that one day it would happen, but she had to overcome something else first. She was aware that she was constantly facing mood swings, but didn't know why. At odd times, she would try to kill herself - the first time was at age 14 - but the next day she would be just fine. Her father's hectic schedule and moving around so much didn't help matters, either, causing her to attend 11 schools in 12 years. Finally, in an attempt to help Margot with her troubles, her parents sent" her to a boarding school, where she took part in school plays, such as Romeo and Juliet", in which she played the lead.

After graduation, Margot moved to Los Angeles to start a film career. She found herself dealing with a lot of prejudice, and hotheads, but later found solace with a Canadian agent. This was when she got her first acting job, in the Norman Jewison film Gaily, Gaily (1969). This led to another starring role in Quackser Fortune Has a Cousin in the Bronx (1970), in which she co-starred with Gene Wilder. After some harsh words from the film's director, Margot temporarily left films to study acting in New York, doing television work to pay her bills, but when the money ran out, she decided it was time to make a second try at acting. When she arrived in Hollywood she met up at a screen test with actress Jennifer Salt, resulting in a friendship that still stands strong today. Margot and Jennifer moved into a lofty beach house and befriended other, then unknown, struggling filmmakers such as Martin Scorsese, Brian De Palma, Steven Spielberg and Susan Sarandon, among others. Late nights would see the hot, happening youngsters up until all hours talking around a fire about how they were all going to change the film industry. It was crazy living and within the Christmas season, Margot had become involved with De Palma, and as a Christmas present he gave her the script to his upcoming film Sisters (1972). Margot and Salt both had the leads in the film, and it was a huge critical success.

The film made branded Margot as a major talent, and in the following years she starred in a string of critically acclaimed pictures, such as Black Christmas (1974), The Great Waldo Pepper (1975), 92 in the Shade (1975) - directed by Thomas McGuane, who was also her husband for a brief period - and a somewhat prophetic tale of self-resurrection, The Reincarnation of Peter Proud (1975).

After three years of being a housewife, looking after her daughter Maggie and not working, Margot decided it was time to let her emotions take control and get back into acting. Once her marriage to McGuane was over, she eyed a script that would change her life forever. Her new agent referred her to a little-known director named Richard Donner. He was going to be directing a film called Superman (1978), and she auditioned for and secured the leading female role of Lois Lane. That film and Superman II (1980) filmed simultaneously. After the success of "Superman" she took on more intense roles, such as The Amityville Horror (1979) and Willie & Phil (1980). After that, Margot starred in numerous films, television and theater work throughout the 1980s, including Superman IV: The Quest for Peace (1987). When the 1990s erupted with the Gulf War, Margot found herself becoming involved in politics. She made a stir in the biz when she spoke out against the military for their actions in Kuwait. She also appeared in a cameo in Donner's Maverick (1994).

In 1996, as she was preparing to write her autobiography, she began to become more and more paranoid. When her computer became infected with a virus, this gave her paranoia full rein, and she sank into bipolar disorder. She panicked, and the resulting psychological problems she created for herself resulted in her fantasizing that her first husband was going to kill her, so she left her home and faked her death, physically altering her appearance in the process. After an intervention took place, she got back on her feet and started the mental wellness campaign. Since then, she resumed her career in film, television, and theatre, including appearing in a Canadian stage production of "The Vagina Monologues", and in films like The Clown at Midnight (1998).

Margot died on May 13, 2018, in Livingston, Montana.

Annie Ross was born on 25 July 1930 in Mitcham, Surrey, England, UK. She was an actress, known for Short Cuts (1993), Superman III (1983) and Throw Momma from the Train (1987). She was married to Sean Lynch. She died on 21 July 2020 in Manhattan, New York City, New York, USA.

Stocky, genial-looking supporting actor Ned Beatty was once hailed by Daily Variety as the "busiest actor in Hollywood."

Ned Thomas Beatty was born in Louisville, Kentucky, to Margaret (Fortney) and Charles William Beatty. He grew up fishing and working on farms. His hometown of St. Matthews, Kentucky, is hardly the environment to encourage a career in the entertainment industry, though, so when asked, "How did you get into show business?" Beatty responded, "By hanging out with the wrong crowd." That "crowd" includes some of the industry's most prominent names, such as John Huston, Steven Spielberg, Robert Altman, Paul Newman, Richard Burton, Charlton Heston, Marlon Brando and Robert Redford.

Beatty garnered praise from both critics and peers as a dedicated actor's actor. He started as a professional performer at age ten, when he earned pocket money singing in gospel quartets and a barber shop. The big city and bright lights did not come easy, though. The first ten years of Beatty's career were spent at the Barter Theater in Abingdon, Virginia. He then moved on to the Erie Playhouse in Pennsylvania, the Playhouse Theater in Houston, Texas, and the prestigious Arena Stage Company in Washington, D.C. He was also a member of Shakespeare in Central Park, Louisville, Kentucky. Later, he appeared in the Broadway production of "The Great White Hope". At the Mark Taper Forum in Los Angeles, he won rave reviews when he starred in "The Accidental Death of an Anarchist."

In 1971, Beatty was chosen by director John Boorman for the role of Bobby Trippe in the hit film/backwoods nightmare Deliverance (1972). Co-star Burt Reynolds and Beatty struck up a friendship, and Ned was then cast by Burt in several other films together, including White Lightning (1973), W.W. and the Dixie Dancekings (1975), and the abysmal Stroker Ace (1983). Ned's talents were also noticed by others in Hollywood and he was cast in many key productions of the 1970s turning in stellar performance, including an Academy Award nomination of Best Supporting Actor for his role in Network (1976). Beatty was also marvelous in Nashville (1975), under fire from a crazed sniper in The Deadly Tower (1975), an undercover FBI man in the action comedy Silver Streak (1976), as Lex Luthor's bumbling assistant, Otis, in the blockbuster Superman (1978) ... and he returned again with Gene Hackman to play Otis and Lex Luthor again in Superman II (1980).

Beatty continued to remain busy throughout the 1980s with appearances in several big budget television productions including The Last Days of Pompeii (1984). However, the overall caliber of the productions in general did not match up to those he had appeared in during the 1970s. Nonetheless, Beatty still shone in films including The Big Easy (1986) and The Fourth Protocol (1987). Into the 1990s, Beatty's work output swung between a mixture of roles in family orientated productions (Gulliver's Travels (1996), Back to Hannibal: The Return of Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn (1990), etc.) taking advantage of his "fatherly" type looks, but he could still accentuate a hard edge, and additionally was cast in Radioland Murders (1994) and Just Cause (1995). His many other films include The Toy (1982), All the President's Men (1976), Wise Blood (1979), Rudy (1993), Spring Forward (1999), Hear My Song (1991) -- for which he earned a Golden Globe nomination for Best Supporting Actor -- Prelude to a Kiss (1992), He Got Game (1998) and Cookie's Fortune (1999). Beatty's numerous television credits include three years on the NBC series Homicide: Life on the Street (1993), Streets of Laredo (1995) and The Boys (1993).

Beatty received an Emmy Award nomination for Best Actor for his performance in Friendly Fire (1979) opposite Carol Burnett, and a Best Supporting Actor nomination for Family Channel's Magic Hour: Tom Alone (1989). Other notable credits include The Wool Cap (2004), The Execution of Private Slovik (1974), A Woman Called Golda (1982), Pray TV (1982), the miniseries Robert Kennedy and His Times (1985), Lockerbie: A Night Remembered (1998) and T Bone N Weasel (1992). He also had a recurring role on Roseanne (1988) and performed musically on television specials for Dolly Parton and The Smothers Brothers.

In 2001, Beatty returned to his theatrical roots starring in London's West End revival production of Tennessee Williams' "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof" with Brendan Fraser. He also appeared in the production on Broadway in 2003/2004 with Jason Patric and Ashley Judd. In 2006, Beatty completed three features to be released next year: The Walker (2007); Paul Schrader's film also starring Woody Harrelson, Kristin Scott Thomas and Lily Tomlin; Paramount Pictures' Shooter (2007) starring Mark Wahlberg; and Charlie Wilson's War (2007), Mike Nichols's film with Tom Hanks, Philip Seymour Hoffman and Julia Roberts. Also in the 21st century, Beatty turned out a terrific performance in the popular Where the Red Fern Grows (2003). Blessed with eight children, Ned Beatty enjoyed golf and playing the bass guitar. He gave himself until the age of 70 to become proficient at both. He died at age 83 of natural causes on June 13, 2021 in Los Angeles, California.

Gavan O'Herlihy was born on 29 July 1951 in Dublin, County Dublin, Ireland. He was an actor, known for The Descent: Part 2 (2009), Willow (1988) and Never Say Never Again (1983). He was married to Juliette. He died on 15 September 2021 in Bath, England, UK.

Eugene Allen Hackman was born in San Bernardino, California, the son of Ann Lydia Elizabeth (Gray) and Eugene Ezra Hackman, who operated a newspaper printing press. He is of Pennsylvania Dutch (German), English, and Scottish ancestry, partly by way of Canada, where his mother was born. After several moves, his family settled in Danville, Illinois. Gene grew up in a broken home, which he left at the age of sixteen for a hitch with the US Marines.

Moving to New York after being discharged, he worked in a number of menial jobs before studying journalism and television production on the G.I. Bill at the University of Illinois. Hackman would be over 30 years old when he finally decided to take his chance at acting by enrolling at the Pasadena Playhouse. Legend says that Hackman and friend Dustin Hoffman were voted "least likely to succeed."

Hackman next moved back to New York, where he worked in summer stock and off-Broadway. In 1964 he was cast as the young suitor in the Broadway play "Any Wednesday." This role would lead to him being cast in the small role of Norman in Lilith (1964), starring Warren Beatty. When Beatty was casting for Bonnie and Clyde (1967), he cast Hackman as Buck Barrow, Clyde Barrow's brother. That role earned Hackman a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor, an award for which he would again be nominated in I Never Sang for My Father (1970). In 1972 he won the Oscar for his role as Detective Jimmy "Popeye" Doyle in The French Connection (1971). At 40 years old Hackman was a Hollywood star whose work would rise to new heights with Night Moves (1975) and Bite the Bullet (1975), or fall to new depths with The Poseidon Adventure (1972) and Eureka (1983). Hackman is a versatile actor who can play comedy (the blind man in Young Frankenstein (1974)) or villainy (the evil Lex Luthor in Superman (1978)). He is the doctor who puts his work above people in Extreme Measures (1996) and the captain on the edge of nuclear destruction in Crimson Tide (1995). After initially turning down the role of Little Bill Daggett in Clint Eastwood's Unforgiven (1992), Hackman finally accepted it, as its different slant on the western interested him. For his performance he won the Oscar and Golden Globe and decided that he wasn't tired of westerns after all. He has since appeared in Geronimo: An American Legend (1993), Wyatt Earp (1994), and The Quick and the Dead (1995).