CAUSE: In 1974 she underwent an operation for cancer of the tongue, having smoked 40 a day for as long as she could remember. Amanda Blake died aged 62 from AIDS at 7.15pm at Mercy General Hospital, Sacramento.
Mel Blanc
Born May 30, 1908
Died July 10, 1989
The Voice. In the course of his career, San Francisco-born Melvin Jerome Blanc’s voice appeared in over 3,000 films. He provided the cartoon voices for, amongst others, Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, Porky Pig, Barney Rubble, the Road Runner, Sylvester and Tweety Pie. His birthdate in Katz appears as June 30, 1892.
CAUSE: He died of natural causes aged 81, or possibly 97, in Los Angeles.
Sally Blane
(ELIZABETH JANE YOUNG)
Born July 11, 1910
Died August 27, 1997
Loretta Young’s big sister. Sally Blane was born Elizabeth Jane Young in Salida, Colorado, almost on a train. One of five children, the family split in 1915 and Sally and her siblings moved to Hollywood. All the Young children landed work as extras – Blane was the first to be cast in featured roles. In the first of her 70-plus films she portrayed a nymph in Sirens Of The Sea (1917) and was also in The Sheik (1921), playing an Arab child. Aged 14, she was spotted dancing by director Wesley Ruggles and cast in the Collegian series. Soon afterwards, she signed a contract with Paramount and was placed in Rolled Stockings (1927). Even though she was a well-paid starlet, she still cadged lifts off her male co-stars because her stage mother wouldn’t allow any of her children to buy a car. In the Twenties and early Thirties she appeared in Dead Man’s Curve (1928) as Ethel Hume, Horseman Of The Plains (1928) as Dawn O’Day, Fools For Luck as Louise Hunter, The Vanishing Pioneer (1928) as June Shelby, Tanned Legs (1929) as Janet Reynolds, Eyes Of The Underworld as Florence Hueston, Vagabond Lover (1929) as Jean, Once A Sinner (1930) as Hope Patterson, Little Accident (1930) as Isabel, X Marks The Spot (1931) as Sue, Probation (1932) as Janet Holman, Forbidden Company (1932) as Janet Blake, Local Bad Man (1932) as Marian Meade, Pride Of The Legion (1932) as Peggy, and Alice in I Am A Fugitive From A Chain Gang (1932) (she was due to play Helen Vinson until she was nixed by Mrs Paul Muni) before moving to low-budget studios Chesterfield and Artclass where she starred in B pictures such as Trick For Trick (1933) as Constance Russell, Half A Sinner (1934) as Phyllis, City Limits (1934) as Helen Matthews, No More Women (1934) as Helen Young, The Great Hospital Mystery (1937) as Ann Smith and Charlie Chan At Treasure Island (1939) as Stella Essex. As her sister’s star soared, Blane’s waned. “She had more drive than the rest of us,” she said of her sister. “Loretta was always really ambitious. She would turn down parts that I would have given anything to have played, but she never realised how much I wanted them. But while Loretta was concentrating on her career, I had all the beaux.” In 1937 she married director Norman Foster (who had gone out with sister Loretta) and spent time raising their son and daughter. She was widowed in 1976. Her youngest sister, Georgianne, married actor Ricardo Montalban. Of her career, 5́ 4½˝ Blane said, “I never felt I was photogenic. People ask if I watch my old movies on television. I don’t. I never liked a single thing I did.”
CAUSE She died of natural causes in Los Angeles, California aged 87.
Billy Bletcher
Born September 24, 1894
Died January 5, 1979
Busy comedian. Born in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, Billy Bletcher was a much in-demand comedian. He entered films in 1913 with Vitagraph and was still working 53 years later. At the company’s New York studio he also trained to be an assistant director. After a brief flirtation with another company (Vim) Bletcher returned to Vitagraph and when the organisation announced it was opening a second office on the West Coast he was one of the first to volunteer. Bletcher spent a couple of years working with Mack Sennett. He appeared in A Roman Scandal (1919) which starred Colleen Moore. That same year he made his first feature film The Love Hunger. From 1920 he appeared in two comedic series – Gayety Comedies and Spotlight Comedies. In the Twenties Bletcher worked for Fox, Christie and Educational. As well as comedies he also featured in Westerns. He worked for Hal Roach and appeared with Laurel & Hardy in Babes In Toyland (1934) and The Big Noise (1944). He also provided the voice of the Big Bad Wolf in Disney’s The Three Little Pigs (1933). He was married to the actress Arlyn Roberts (b. New York, March 20, 1893 as Arline Harriet Roberts, d. Los Angeles, California, July 3, 1992, aged 99, of cardiac arrest).
CAUSE: He died in Los Angeles, California, aged 84.
Joan Blondell
Born August 30, 1909
Died December 25, 1979
Wisecracker. New York-born 5́ 4˝ Rose Joan Blondell was an actress and one-time wife of actor Dick Powell (September 19, 1936–July 14, 1944) and flamboyant impresario Michael (Around The World In 80 Days) Todd (July 4, 1947–June 8, 1950). As a teenager Blondell won a beauty contest and used the title to get to New York where she appeared on Broadway with James Cagney in Penny Arcade. That won them both contracts in Hollywood, where she made a name for herself as a wisecracking, loose woman – on screen that is – in the Thirties. She received an Oscar nomination for The Blue Veil (1951) and matured into a woman of certain standing – on screen that is. Among her last films was Grease (1978).
CAUSE: She died in Santa Monica, California, aged 70, from leukaemia.
Sergei Bodrov, Jr
Born December 27, 1971
Died September 20, 2002
Rising Russian star. Born in Moscow, Bodrov’s father, Sergei Sr, was also a film-maker. The younger Bodrov graduated from Moscow State University in 1993 with a degree in history and combined work and study to achieve an MA in 1998. In 1996 he made his acting début in his father’s film The Prisoner Of The Mountains playing Vania Zhilin alongside Oleg Menshikov, the country’s leading film star. The professional and the amateur worked well together and won awards for their work on the film. Bodrov landed the presenting role on Vzgliad (View), a chat show on ORT, Russia’s first television channel. It was a job he held for three years until 1999. In Brother (1997) and Brother 2 (2000) Bodrov played Danila Bagrov, a soldier in the Chechen war who returns home to St Petersburg and rescues his brother from the Chechen Mafia by killing large numbers of them. When he gave up his television career Bodrov moved behind the cameras to become a film director. His first film Sisters (2001) won awards for the best début film in Russia. He also appeared, again playing a soldier, in War (2002). He was married with two children.
CAUSE: Bodrov and his film crew had travelled to Karmadon Gorge in the north Caucasus to make his second film The Messenger. Waiting for their transport to take them away, Bodrov and the entire crew, young actors from Moscow and Vladikavkas, were killed when a glacier slid down the gorge and buried them all alive under a mass of ice and mud. Bodrov was 30.
Sir Dirk Bogarde
(DEREK NIVEN VAN DEN BOGAERDE)
Born Easter Monday (March 28), 1921
Died May 8, 1999
Suave Englishman. Born in West Hampstead, London, the Catholic eldest son of three children of Ulric Gontron Jules Van Den Bogaerde (b. Walsall Road, Perry Bar, Birmingham, June 14, 1892, d. Cherry Tree Cottage, Sussex, 1972), the first art editor of The Times, and Margaret Niven (b. 1898, d. Sussex, March 29, 1980 of heart failure), a former actress. Young Derek worked as a commercial artist to fund his acting lessons. He made his stage début on January 15, 1940 in a play ironically entitled When We Are Married and written by J.B. Priestley. His career was interrupted by the war and he served in the Army (Queen’s Royal Regiment) from May 8, 1941. He served in Europe and the Far East until September 5, 1946. He reappeared on stage in February 1947 and entered films properly the following year. He was signed to a contract by Rank on June 7, 1947 and played heavy dramas, light comedies and everything in between. However, when he started at Rank he was told his head was too small, he was too thin and his neck “wasn’t right”. Little wonder he lacked confidence and covered this by being arrogant, rude and often drunk. In hi
s first film he was credited as ‘Birk Gocart’ in Esther Walters (1948) in which he played William Latch and which began shooting on September 6, 1947. Bogarde had appeared in two bit parts earlier including one as an extra in the George Formby comedy Come On George (1939) and the other as a radio operator in Dancing With Crime (1947). He was acclaimed for his performance as Melville Farr, a gay lawyer, in Basil Dearden’s Victim (1961) and won large audiences for his Doctor… films including Doctor In The House (1954), Doctor At Sea (1955), Doctor At Large (1956) and Doctor In Distress (1963) all as Simon Sparrow. His other films included The Blue Lamp (1950) as Tom Riley in which he shot and killed PC George Dixon, Cast A Dark Shadow (1955) as Edward Bare, A Tale Of Two Cities (1958) as Sydney Carton, Darling (1965) as Robert Gold, a part that won him a BAFTA, Modesty Blaise (1966) as Gabriel, Oh! What A Lovely War (1969) as Stephen, Death In Venice (1971) as Gustav Von Aschenbach, The Night Porter (1974) playing a former Nazi concentration camp guard, A Bridge Too Far (1977) as Lieutenant-General Frederick ‘Boy’ Browning and Despair (1978) as Hermann Hermann after which he seemed to retire from the screen. He returned in 1990 with Daddy Nostalgie playing Daddy. He attracted a huge female following and had to have his flies sewn up when he ventured out on publicity junkets. He left England in 1968 for a rambling farmhouse in the South of France, returning twenty years later to live in a Spartan flat near Sloane Square. One of the biggest puzzles concerning Bogarde was his sex life. Was he gay? Bisexual? Asexual? In his memoirs he tells of being seduced as a boy by a Mr Dodd, losing his virginity to a female rapist and his affairs with Kay Kendall and Judy Garland who once stabbed him because he wouldn’t kiss her. Although Bogarde never married, he claimed he wasn’t homosexual although few people believed him. Bogarde grew up at a time when homosexuality was illegal. The actor Helena Bonham Carter, who worked with Bogarde on one of his last TV films, believed that he could not come out because, if he did, he would have found it impossible to cope with the sorrow at not having done so sooner. Bogarde would even tell people that his live-in companion, Tony Forwood (b. Melcombe Regis, Dorset, October 3, 1915 as Ernest Lytton Langton Forwood), the ex-husband of Glynis Johns, was actively anti-homosexual. The two men met in 1940 in Amersham. Their affaire propre began in late 1946 and on May 26, 1948, a month before his divorce became final, Forwood moved into Bogarde’s home at 44 Chester Row, Belgravia, London SW1. The two men would live together for forty years. In 1986 the gay chat show host Russell Harty interviewed Bogarde for a Yorkshire Television programme. During the course of the show Bogarde asked Forwood how it was going, to be told that he was going over the same material. Bogarde told Harty to “Throw me some interesting questions. Be provocative, and I’ll answer.” Harty tried to get Bogarde to open up fully about Forwood but without success – “I’m still in the shell and you haven’t cracked it yet, honey.” His move back to England that same year and the selling of their home Le Haut Clermont, Châteauneuf de Grasse for £275,000 was necessitated by Forwood being diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease. With Bogarde holding his hand, he died aged 72 in St Stephen’s Hospital, London, at 2.15am on May 18, 1988, after almost fifty years together. The cause of death was cancer of the liver. Bogarde was knighted in the 1992 New Year’s Honours List, the year in which he received a lifetime achievement award from the British Academy. Director Joseph Losey recalled the actor he knew: “Dirk Bogarde is a fine actor. His problem is breaking through his own coldness and emotional hostility to his softer, guarded emotions. I may reasonably say that he is the least friendly or outgoing actor I’ve ever worked with.” For himself, 5́ 8˝ Bogarde was as determined to protect his privacy in death as well as in life. As he completed each volume of his autobiography, he destroyed the original material on which it was based. Interviewed by Lynn Barber, he told her, “I don’t care if I’m remembered or not. It doesn’t matter on your gravestone, does it? It doesn’t matter a bugger … I have said that in my will: no funeral, no memorial, just forget me.”
CAUSE: Bogarde suffered a minor stroke on November 16, 1987 which left him partially paralysed. He recovered, although it left him with a slight limp. He dyed his hair towards the end of his life. Bogarde became vice-president of the Voluntary Euthanasia Society in 1991. In 1994 he suffered from shingles. On September 18, 1996, he was admitted to King Edward VII Hospital for an angioplasty. He was recovering from the surgery when he suffered another stroke which left him confined to a wheelchair. He was discharged on December 19. Sir Dirk Bogarde died at midday of a heart attack in his flat at 2 Cadogan Gardens, Chelsea, London, aged 78. On May 13, 1999, he was cremated at St Marylebone Crematorium. The only attendees were Bogarde’s nephew, Brock, and chauffeur, Bob Pearson. His ashes were scattered at his former home, Le Haut Clermont, Châteauneuf de Grasse. In his will he left £859,000 and two Picassos.
FURTHER READING: A Postillion Struck By Lightning– Dirk Bogarde (London: Chatto & Windus, 1977); Snakes And Ladders– Dirk Bogarde (London: Chatto & Windus, 1978); An Orderly Man – Dirk Bogarde (London: Chatto & Windus, 1983); Backcloth – Dirk Bogarde (London: Viking, 1986); Dirk Bogarde The Authorised Biography – John Coldstream (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2004).
Humphrey Bogart
Born December 25, 1899
Died January 14, 1957
Little tough guy. Humphrey DeForest Bogart was born at 245 West 103rd Street in New York City weighing 8lb 7oz. His true birthday is one of the most contentious of all film stars, even in a profession where the truth is rarely admitted. No birth certificate exists to confirm the date. His widow, Lauren Bacall, stated emphatically on her 1988 TV show Bacall On Bogart: “Despite what you may have heard or read, Bogie was born on Christmas Day.” His authorised biographer concurs, but then the introduction to that book was written by Lauren Bacall. His death certificate also states December 25, 1899, as his birthday. Before he became a star Bogart’s birthday was given as January 23, 1899, and this date appears in several editions of the Motion Picture Almanac. Following the success of The Petrified Forest (1936), Warner Bros changed his birthday to December 25, 1900. This date appears in the Motion Picture Almanac from its 1937/8 edition. Bogie later modified the year to 1899. There was no reason for the pre-1937 date to be disputed. Why would Bogart lie about his birthday before he was famous? There the matter seemed to rest until his most recent biographer discovered a cutting from The Ontario County Times from January 10, 1900. It reads: “Born: at New York, Dec 25, 1899, to Mr and Mrs. Belmont DeForest Bogart, a son.” Bogart was raised in a large brownstone in Manhattan. His father was a morphine-addicted GP and his mother an artist under her maiden name Maud Humphrey. He had two sisters: Frances, known as Pat (b. 1901), and Catherine Elizabeth, known as Kay (b. 1903, d. New York City, 1937, of peritonitis caused by a ruptured appendix). A sketch of the young Humphrey by his mother was used as an image of the ideal baby to promote Mellin’s baby food. In 1909 he went to Trinity School on New York’s 91st Street and eight years later, in September 1917, he enrolled in Phillips Academy in Andover, Massachusetts, where his father had been educated. Eight months later he was expelled because he didn’t apply himself to studying – not, as his studio would have it, because he was an inveterate practical joker. On May 28, 1918, he joined the navy and spent two years in the North Atlantic. He claimed that the scar on his lip was as the result of enemy action but the war was over before Bogart had finished basic training. One explanation is that it occurred when he was escorting a prisoner who tried to escape by smacking him in the mouth with the handcuffs he was wearing. Another story has it caused by a bar room brawl. On leaving the navy on June 20, 1919, he drifted through various jobs before landing a position with a touring company. It was there that he met his first wife. Bogie married actress Helen Menken (b. New York, 1900, d. New York, March 27, 1966, from a heart attack) on May 20, 1926, at her home in the Gramercy Park Hotel, by which time he was established as an actor. (They were to divorce in Chicago, Illinois, on November 18, 1927.) Two years earlier he had met Louise Brooks. Sh
e recalled: “My first impression was of a slim boy with charming manners, who was unusually quiet for an actor. His handsome face was made extraordinary by a most beautiful mouth. It was very full, rosy, and perfectly modelled – perfectly, that is, except that, to make it completely fascinating, at one corner of his upper lip a scarred, quilted piece hung down in a tiny scallop. It was taken for granted that he got punched in the mouth at some speakeasy. When Humphrey went into films, a surgeon sewed up the scallop, and only a small scar remained. Photographically, it was an improvement, but I missed this endearing disfigurement.” In 1924 he had a screen test for Fox and was promised a part in The Man Who Came Back (1924) but the role went to the established Charles Farrell instead. In Hartford, Connecticut, on April 3, 1928, he married for the second time. The new Mrs Bogart was actress Mary Philips (b. New London, Connecticut, January 23, 1901, d. Santa Monica, California, April 22, 1975, from cancer). They divorced in 1938. Bogie finally entered films in the Twenties, appearing in The Dancing Town (1928), Broadway’s Like That (1930), Up The River (1930) as ex-con Steve, A Devil With Women (1930) as wealthy Tom Standish, Love Affair (1932) as aviator Jim Leonard and others before The Petrified Forest made his name. The latter saw Bogart in the role of Duke Mantee, a killer based not too loosely on John Dillinger; it was a part he had played on Broadway. Bogart had been signed to a seven-year contract by Warner Bros in November 1935 and he made two dozen films during the mid-to-late Thirties, including China Clipper (1936) as pilot Hap Stuart, Black Legion (1936) as killer Frank Taylor, Marked Woman (1937) as District Attorney David Graham, Kid Galahad (1937) as boxing manager Turkey Morgan, Swing Your Lady (1938) as Ed Hatch (Bogart regarded this as his worst film), Men Are Such Fools (1938) as advertising executive Harry Galleon, The Amazing Dr Clitterhouse (1938) as hoodlum ‘Rocks’ Valentine, Angels With Dirty Faces (1938) as hoodlum James Frazier and The Roaring Twenties (1939) as George Hally, before two of his most famous roles established his stardom. He was suspended 12 times by Warner Bros for refusing to appear in certain films. However, he was second choice for both The Maltese Falcon (1941) in which he played Dashiell Hammett’s hero Sam Spade, and High Sierra (1941) in which he was gangster Roy ‘Mad Dog’ Earle. George Raft turned down both roles. Casablanca (1942) consolidated his position in the pantheon of film gods and he was nominated for a Best Actor Oscar, losing out to Paul Lukas for Watch On The Rhine (1942). Bogie was a keen chess player. He played on set, by phone and even had it written into the opening scene of Casablanca. He never said “Play it again Sam” in the film. The line “Play it, Sam. Play ‘As Time Goes By’” was actually spoken by Ingrid Bergman. In Beverly Hills on August 20, 1938, Bogart had married for the third time to busty blonde Broadway actress Mayo June Methot Morgan (b. Portland, Oregon, April 3, 1904, d. Holladay Park Hospital, Portland, Oregon, June 9, 1951, of acute alcoholism), a highly strung woman who had been married twice before herself and was convinced he would have an affair with Ingrid Bergman. (He didn’t.) Bogie appeared in To Have And Have Not (1944) as Harry Morgan during which (in March 1944) he met the future fourth Mrs Bogart, Lauren Bacall (b. New York September 16, 1924) known to her friends as Betty. It was in this film, a re-run of the Casablanca story, that Bacall utters the immortal words to Bogart: “You know you don’t have to act with me, Steve. You don’t have to say anything and you don’t have to do anything. Not a thing. Oh, maybe just whistle. You know how to whistle don’t you, Steve? Just put your lips together and blow.” When he married her on Malabar Farm in Ohio on May 21, 1945, eleven days after his third divorce, he cried throughout the whole ceremony. They had one son: Stephen Humphrey (b. Cedars Of Lebanon Hospital, Los Angeles, January 6, 1949, at 11.22pm, weighing 6lb 6oz) and one daughter, Leslie Howard (b. Cedars Of Lebanon Hospital, Los Angeles, August 23, 1952, weighing 6lb 5oz). Bogie and Bacall also appeared in The Big Sleep (1946). He was Raymond Chandler’s ace private eye Philip Marlowe; she played Vivian Rutledge. The film was actually made between October 10, 1944, and January 13, 1945. It ran 34 days over its 42-day schedule, due in no small part to Bogie’s domestic troubles with Mayo Methot and director Howard Hawks’ insistence on rewriting the script as they went along. Bogart appeared in two major John Huston pictures, The Treasure Of The Sierra Madre (1948) as Fred C. Dobbs and Key Largo (1948) as ex-soldier Frank McCloud. In Tokyo Joe (1949) Bogart played Joe Barrett, a bar owner in the Japanese capital who becomes a fighter pilot at the outbreak of war. Another Bogie blockbuster was The African Queen (1951) based on C.S. Forester’s 1935 novel. John Huston tried to make the film in the Forties with Bogart and Bette Davis but her acrimonious row with the studio kiboshed that plan. Finally, Huston and Sam Spiegel got the project off the ground and the company flew to the Belgian Congo in May 1951 for two months’ filming followed by a further six weeks in London. Bogie plays Charlie Allnut, a rough, hard-drinking riverboat captain in 1914 German East Africa. It was a portrayal that won him his only Oscar (on March 20, 1952). His co-star was Katharine Hepburn who, unlike Bogart, enjoyed her time in the jungles. (By the way, the leeches on Bogart’s body were not real. They were made of rubber.) Beat The Devil (1954) again teamed Bogie with John Huston. He played fortune hunter Billy Dannreuther, but the film flopped at the box office. On February 7, 1953, while filming in Italy, Bogart and Huston were involved in a car crash that injured Bogart’s mouth, necessitating a week off work. In The Caine Mutiny (1954) Bogie plays Lieutenant Commander Philip Francis Queeg, a naval officer who believes that everything should be done by the book; it won him another Oscar nomination. Not everyone liked him. The film’s producer Stanley Kramer said to him: “I have to be up early to make sure the set is ready for prematurely balding and ageing actors like you.” His remaining films included The Barefoot Contessa (1954) as Hollywood director Harry Dawes, We’re No Angels (1955) as escaped convict Joseph and his 75th and last film, The Harder They Fall (1956), in which he played Eddie Willis, an unemployed sportswriter. In 1947 Bogie had become increasingly political, leading a march on October 26 to protest about the communist witch hunts. He had been a Republican until Bacall persuaded him to see the error of his ways. He was also short. He stood just 5́ 4˝ and wore special devices on his shoes to make himself look taller as well as a wig to hide his receding hairline. Bogart was also supposed to have popularised the line “Tennis, anyone?” He denied ever saying it, either on film or in real life, but he did coin the phrase “Louis, I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship.”
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