(JOHN LENNOX ARTHUR WILLIAMS)
Born May 20, 1883
Died New Year’s Eve, 1951
Whiny comic. Born in Scottsdale, Philadelphia, 5́ 8˝ Johnny Arthur began his career in the theatre playing opposite Lou Tellegen before he moved to the silver screen where he was best known for his appearances in the ‘Tuxedo’ comedies made by Educational in the Twenties. He later appeared as a harassed father in Hal Roach’s Our Gang series. He also had a role in the first of the Crosby-Hope Road To… films.
CAUSE: Arthur died of heart disease in Woodland Hills, California. He was 68.
Dorothy Arzner
Born January 3, 1897
Died October 1, 1979
The premier female director. Born, appropriately enough, in San Francisco the daughter of the owner of the Hoffman Café in Hollywood. It was patronised by Charlie Chaplin, D.W. Griffith, Hal Roach, Mack Sennett and Erich Von Stroheim. Arzner was educated at Westlake School for Girls and then attended, but never graduated from, the University of Southern California, where she studied medicine. During World War I she drove ambulances and then worked in newspapers. She landed a job as a typist at Paramount in 1919 and worked her way up to cutter, editor (in one year she edited 32 films, including Blood And Sand [1922] starring Rudolph Valentino) and assistant director before becoming a director. She was only allowed to direct after continually threatening to resign. Her films included Get Your Man (1927) starring Clara Bow, Cocktail (1928) the first talkie directed by a woman, The Wild Party (1929) also starring Clara Bow, Sarah And Son (1930) with Ruth Chatterton and Merrily We Go To Hell (1932) starring Frederic March and Sylvia Sidney. She had a clause in her contract stating that she would not have to attend meetings on arch philanderer Harry Cohn’s yacht. Arzner left Paramount to work in the freelance sector, directing Katharine Hepburn in Christopher Strong (1933) and Joan Crawford in The Bride Wore Red (1937). The first woman elected to the Directors’ Guild of America (an organisation she helped to found in 1936), Arzner retired early (1943) of her own volition (“The true reason I retired from Hollywood may forever remain a secret, and I’d rather it does,” she said in a 1978 interview) and taught at the University of California at Los Angeles. One of her students was Francis Ford Coppola. “When you direct, you’re learning. When you’re a teacher, you impart learning. This helps me feel more serene,” she once said. “Directing, I always had people at my back. In the classroom, I have people in front of me, bright, eager pupils … The press can’t trivialise teaching. With motion pictures, they tried to reduce your accomplishments to what star you worked with … I didn’t want to be known just for making Clara Bow a star.” She also directed over 50 Pepsi Cola advertisements for her friend Joan Crawford. Arzner, who stood 5́ 4˝, was a lesbian. Gay director George Cukor commented: “She was too tough for Hollywood. Most of her movies were hits, which is a track record Hollywood loves. But she didn’t modify her ways or looks or manner. As a woman directing movies, she was looked on by most as a freak. And as that kind of woman, they found her less and less acceptable. They didn’t want her inside their golden boys’ club.” Arzner moved in an almost exclusively sapphic circle that included her lover Alla Nazimova and Dolly Wilde (niece of Oscar, the only member of the family to sleep with women, it was jested).
CAUSE: She died of natural causes aged 82 in La Quinta, California.
Dame Peggy Ashcroft
Born December 22, 1907
Died June 14, 1991
Theatrical grande dame. Born in Croydon as Edith Margaret Emily Ashcroft, the second child of land agent William Worsley Ashcroft, she was educated at Woodford School, Croydon (the town’s Ashcroft Theatre was named after her in 1962) and the Central School of Dramatic Arts. There she studied under Elsie Fogerty and earned a Diploma in Dramatic Art from the University of London. On May 22, 1926, she made her stage début playing Margaret in J. M. Barrie’s Dear Brutus and a year later made her first appearance in London as Bessie in Joseph Conrad’s One Day More at the Playroom Six. She rarely stopped working (except through choice or ill-health) until her death, on stage, in films and on television. Sir John Gielgud admiringly said of her: “She can be enchantingly feminine yet turn and play monstrous, villainous people, parts you wouldn’t think her right for.” In May 1930 she caused a sensation playing Desdemona opposite Paul Robeson in Othello at the Savoy Theatre. She was asked by one journalist if she minded kissing a ‘coloured’ man. She told the hack it was a ‘privilege’ to work with a ‘great artist’ like Robeson; the journalist can have little suspected that the leading man and lady were in the throes of a passionate affair that resulted in the beginning of the end of Ashcroft’s first marriage. She made her first foray into films in 1933 playing Olalla Quintana in The Wandering Jew and followed that up with just 15 movies including The 39 Steps (1935) as Mrs Crofter, Rhodes Of Africa (1936) as Anna Carpenter, The Nun’s Story (1958) as Mother Mathilde, Three Into Two Won’t Go (1969) as Belle, Sunday, Bloody Sunday (1971) as Mrs Greville, A Passage To India (1985) as Mrs Moore, a role that won her a Best Supporting Actress Oscar (although she was in bed with the flu at the time and didn’t attend the ceremony), Madame Soulatzka (1989) and She’s Been Away (1989) as Lillian Huckle. She also shone on television in 1984 as Barbie Batchelor in Granada TV’s The Jewel In The Crown. In 1956 Ashcroft became a Dame Commander of the British Empire. She recalled: “When they asked Judith Anderson how becoming a dame had changed her life, she said she found she wore gloves more often … I’m surprised she takes it so lightly – it’s a great honour, though I still don’t like the word ‘dame’ when it’s pronounced by an American.” Ashcroft, a Labour party and CND supporter (Binkie Beaumont nicknamed her ‘The Red Dame’), was a private individual who much preferred to let her work speak for itself. A journalist once asked her to imagine speaking to the public at a tea table. “But I wouldn’t have the public to tea,” was her response. Ashcroft married three times. Her first husband was publisher (Sir) Rupert Hart-Davis, whom she married on December 23, 1929, at Saviour’s Church, Chelsea. They divorced in the summer of 1933. Five months later, she married theatre producer Theodore Komisarjevsky (b. Venice, May 23, 1882, d. Darien, Connecticut, April 17, 1954). He left her for a young American dancer and the couple was divorced in London on June 15, 1937. Her third and final husband was barrister Jeremy Hutchinson (now Baron Hutchinson of Lullington, QC), whom she married on September 14, 1940, at Marylebone Registry Office. On June 14, 1941, she gave birth to daughter Eliza and at Welbeck Street, London, on May 3, 1946, to son Nicholas, now a stage director. In December 1965 they were divorced on the grounds of adultery.
CAUSE: Towards the end of her life Peggy Ashcroft suffered from depression, perhaps exacerbated by a rift with her daughter. On May 23, 1991, she suffered a severe stroke and was admitted to the Royal Free Hospital, north London, in a coma. She never regained consciousness and died there, aged 83. Shortly before her death she had sold (for £1.1 million to publisher Tom Maschler) the house (Manor Lodge, 40 Frognall Lane, Hampstead, London NW 3) she lived in for 40 years and moved to a small flat in Belsize Park (Flat 14, 9–11 Belsize Grove, London NW 3). Her funeral was a private affair. Bizarrely, no record exists of her will. It was thought she left £900,000 although to whom is an enduring mystery. FURTHER READING: Peggy Ashcroft – Michael Billington (London: John Murray, 1988); The Secret Woman: A Life Of Peggy Ashcroft – Garry O’Connor (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1997).
Ted Ashley
(THEODORE ASSOFSKY)
Born August 3, 1922
Died August 24, 2002
The new Warner brother. It was the business and cultural acumen of Ted Ashley that made Warner Bros the place to work during the Seventies. Born in Brooklyn, Ashley left school at 15 and joined the William Morris Agency. By night he studied business administration and later started his own agency, the Ashley Famous Agency, with clients such as Perry Como, Arthur Miller and Tennessee Williams. The agency was also responsible for television series such as Missio
n: Impossible, Tarzan and Get Smart. In 1969 Ashley became chief executive of Warner Bros and within weeks had sacked 17 of the 21 executives. It was due to Ashley that Roots, Alex Haley’s fictionalised version of his family’s struggle to escape slavery, was made. His successes on the big screen included A Clockwork Orange (1971), The Exorcist (1973), Blazing Saddles (1974) and Superman (1978). Ashley avoided giving interviews, didn’t mix with the people he made stars and spent his time reading material that he thought would make good films. He was married with four daughters.
CAUSE: He died aged 80 of acute leukaemia.
Arthur Askey, CBE
Born June 6, 1900
Died November 16, 1982
Big-hearted Arthur. Born at 29 Moses Street, Liverpool, Arthur Bowden Askey was a diminutive (5˝3˝) Scouser who could do it all – sing, dance, and tell jokes. As a boy, he sang in the church choir and was chosen to perform a solo when the Archbishops of Canterbury and York visited Liverpool Cathedral. One year the family holidayed in Rhyl, North Wales, where a pierrot troupe, The Jovial Sisters, performed daily on the sands. Young Arthur went along to the performances religiously and by the end of the vacation knew the act verbatim. At 16 he began his working life as a clerk at Liverpool education offices, earning £10 per month. With the outbreak of war he sang to entertain the troops, most often solo although occasionally he duetted with Tommy Handley. In June 1918 he became a private in the Welch Regiment but was demobilised almost immediately at the end of hostilities in November. He returned to his desk at the education office until 1924 when he made his professional début in the Song Salad touring concert party from the Electric Theatre, Colchester. He was paid £6 10s. a week for the 30-week engagement. He moved into radio in 1932, though it wasn’t until Band Waggon six years later that he became a massive star. First broadcast on January 5, 1938, the show was not an immediate success and the original commission of 12 shows was cut to six. After show four Askey said that if he was the ‘resident comedian’ he should live on the premises and so he and sidekick Richard Murdoch were installed in an imaginary flat at the top of Broadcasting House with a goat called Lewis and Lucy and Basil, two pigeons. For a period, a camel called Hector even lived with the motley crew. The goat was introduced because it was thought too far to go down seven floors just to collect the milk. This led to the joke: “A goat in the flat? What about the smell?” “Oh, he’ll get used to it.” By show six, Band Waggon was so successful that the run was extended to 18 weeks. It spawned a number of catch-phrases, including Askey’s “I thank you,” pronounced “Aye-thang-yu,” which he picked up from a London bus conductor; “Doesn’t it make you want to spit” (BBC Director-General Sir John [later Lord] Reith hated this ‘vulgar’ expression and told Askey not to include it but he [Askey] was so popular he ignored the directive and used the phrase all the more frequently); “Here and now, before your very eyes” and “Oh, don’t be filthy”. It was BBC policy to refuse to credit the writers because they wanted listeners to believe Askey and Murdoch made it all up. The show finished when Murdoch was drafted into the Air Force. Askey made his film début two years before the outbreak of hostilities in Calling All Stars (1937) and followed that up with Band Waggon (1939), Charley’s Big-Hearted Aunt (1940), The Ghost Train (1941), I Thank You (1941), Back Room Boy (1942), King Arthur Was A Gentleman (1942), The Nose Has It (1942), Miss London Limited (1943), Bees In Paradise (1944), The Love Match (1954), Ramsbottom Rides Again (1956), Make Mine A Million (1958), Friends And Neighbours (1959), The Alf Garnett Saga (1972) and End Of Term (1977). Askey had moved into television following WWII and had a new series every year from 1953. In 1954 he co-starred with David Nixon in Hello Playmates, written by Bob Monkhouse and Denis Goodwin. Askey was equally famous for his silly songs ‘The Seagull’, ‘The Worm’ and, the best known, ‘The Bee’. He featured in a remarkable ten Royal Variety Performances – 1946, 1948, 1952, 1954, 1955, 1957, 1968, 1972, 1978 and 1980 – and remains one of the few people to have been featured twice on This Is Your Life.
CAUSE: His health began to fail rapidly after his 80th birthday. He suffered muscular difficulties in his legs which eventually resulted in double amputation. He died at St Thomas’ Hospital, London, aged 82. He left £283,867 in his will.
FURTHER READING: Before Your Very Eyes – Arthur Askey (London: The Woburn Press, 1975).
Hon. Anthony Asquith
Born November 9, 1902
Died February 20, 1968
‘Puffin’. The youngest child of British Prime Minister Herbert Henry Asquith, he was born in London and educated at Summer Fields, Oxford, Winchester and Balliol College, Oxford. Despite an early love of music he decided his ambitions lay in the cinema and founded the Film Society in London in 1925. He studied film under Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks and, returning to London, began to direct. Unlike his contemporaries, Asquith’s career was spent in England. His forte was producing cinematic versions of West End plays, including The Way To The Stars (1945), The Winslow Boy (1948) and The Browning Version (1951), all based on Terence Rattigan’s works. In 1937 he was invited to become president of the Association of Cinematographic Technicians, a position he held until his death. Dominated by his mother, he was unmarried and, some believe, homosexual. He spent his weekends serving burly lorry drivers in a greasy spoon café in Catterick, North Yorkshire. One of the most bizarre rumours about Asquith is that he was the infamous ‘Man In The Mask’ at an orgy known as the ‘Feast of the Peacocks’ held in December 1961 at Hyde Park Square in London by notorious prostitute Mariella Novotny. The mystery man was whipped by the guests as they entered and then ordered to hide under a table out of sight. In her unpublished memoirs, The Government Chief Whip (Retired), Novotny identifies the masochist as “Lord Asquith”. ‘Lord’ was a nickname given to Asquith by crews on his films. Novotny’s husband, Hod Dibben, refused to deny that Asquith was the man as he had done when other candidates were suggested. It seems likely that Asquith was, indeed, the mysterious ‘Man In The Mask’.
CAUSE: He was involved in a car crash in December 1963 and was never fully well again. He died in London of cancer aged 65 and was buried in All Saints’ churchyard in Sutton Courtenay, Berkshire. He left £64,231.
Fred Astaire
(FREDERIC AUSTERLITZ, JR)
Born May 10, 1899
Died June 22, 1987
Mr Twinkletoes. Born on South 10th Street in Omaha, Nebraska, Astaire and his sister, Adèle, worked in vaudeville (and were once replaced by a dog act) before making their Broadway début on November 28, 1917, at the 44th Street Roof Theater in Over The Top. They became the toast of London society in the Twenties. The show, Stop Flirting, ran for 418 performances at the Shaftesbury Theatre from May 30, 1923. On March 5, 1932, Adèle retired and two months later, on May 9, she married Lord Frederick Cavendish. Fred and Adèle had made their movie débuts as uncredited extras in a 1915 short, Fanchon The Cricket, starring Mary Pickford. In January 1933, 5́ 9˝ Astaire was given a proper screen test by RKO. It wasn’t good: “Can’t act. Slightly bald. Also dances.” Studio boss David O. Selznick reported, “I am a little uncertain about the man, but I feel, in spite of his enormous ears and bad chin line, that his charm is so tremendous that it comes through even in this wretched test.” His first major role was playing himself in MGM’s Dancing Lady (1933) starring Joan Crawford, Clark Gable and Franchot Tone. However, it was the next film, Thornton Freeland’s Flying Down To Rio (1933) for RKO, co-starring Dolores Del Rio, Gene Raymond and Ginger Rogers, that established Astaire as a star. He spent hours on set practising his steps. “Choreography for the camera requires 80% brain work and 20% footwork,” he once remarked. Novelist Graham Greene commented: “He is the nearest thing we are ever likely to get to a human Mickey Mouse.” However, choreographer Hermes Pan, who worked out many of Astaire’s routines, observed, somewhat disparagingly: “Fred Astaire was almost as concerned with his toupee looking right as he was with perfecting each dance number.” The Gay Divorcée (1934), Roberta
(1935) and Top Hat (1935) (during which he broke a dozen canes) began the teaming with Ginger Rogers, a coupling that was so successful RKO insured his legs for $1 million and paid him a percentage of the profits. However, Astaire was not certain about the partnership. “I did not go into pictures with the thought of becoming a team,” he said on the suggestion he should work with Ginger Rogers. Altogether, they appeared together in ten films. Look out for one of those films – Swing Time (1936). In it, Astaire puts a lighted pipe in his pocket. On July 12, 1933, he married divorced mother-of-one Phyllis Potter in Brooklyn. She had a speech impediment and called him ‘Fwed’. They were happily married for 21 years and had two children: Fred Jr (b. Good Samaritan Hospital, Los Angeles, January 21, 1936) and Phyllis Ava (b. Los Angeles, March 28, 1942). Astaire danced so energetically during the making of Holiday Inn (1942) that he lost a stone in weight. In 1949 he was awarded a special Oscar in recognition of his contribution to film. Following Phyllis’ death from lung cancer, aged 46, at 10am on September 13, 1954, Astaire lived with his mother, Ann, until she too died, aged 97, on July 26, 1975. Five years later, on June 24, 1980, Astaire married jockey Robyn Caroline Smith (b. San Francisco, August 14, 1942, as Melody Dawn Constance Palm), five months younger than his daughter. In 1959 Astaire, who watched what he ate and rarely touched alcohol, had begun appearing in dramatic films, beginning with the part of Julian Osborne in On The Beach, co-starring Gregory Peck, Ava Gardner and Anthony Perkins. Astaire was nominated for a Best Supporting Actor Oscar for his performance as Harlee Claiborn in The Towering Inferno (1974). Away from the screen he was fascinated by crime, so much so that he often toured with police patrols. In 1981 the American Film Institute bestowed its lifetime achievement award on him. It is for his dancing that Fred Astaire will always be known. As Russian ballet dancer Mikhail Baryshnikov said: “No dancer can watch Fred Astaire and not know we should all have been in a different business.”
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