CAUSE: He died of chronic hepatitis in Beverly Hills, California. He was 73 years old.
Melina Mercouri
Born October 31, 1920
Died March 6, 1994
‘The Last Greek Goddess’. Born in Athens, Greece, Maria Amalia Mercouri became better known for her ardent patriotism rather than for acting at the end of her life. The daughter of a politician who became Mayor of Athens, she followed in her father’s footsteps by becoming a Greek MP in 1977 and Minister for Culture in 1981, demanding the return of the Elgin Marbles. The high point of her acting career was being nominated for a Best Actress Oscar for playing the prostitute Ilya in Pote Tin Kyriaki (1960). In the late Sixties and Seventies she was a thorn in the side of the military junta that ruled Greece and was stripped of her citizenship. She made less than 20 films. She was defeated in her bid to become Mayor of Athens.
CAUSE: She died of lung cancer aged 73 in New York.
Burgess Meredith
Born November 16, 1907
Died September 9, 1997
Raspy-voiced environmentalist. Oliver Burgess Meredith was born in Cleveland, Ohio, and was educated in Amherst College, Massachusetts, and worked as a journalist before travelling to New York in 1933 to join Eva Le Gallienne’s company. Two years later, he was a sensation as Mio in Maxwell Anderson’s Winterset on stage and was equally splendid in the film version in 1936, his movie début. Meredith appeared in dozens of films and TV movies but was probably best known for his portrayal of Mickey in Rocky (1976), which saw him nominated for a Best Supporting Actor Oscar. He reprised the role in Rocky II (1979), Rocky III (1982) and Rocky V (1990). He also received an Oscar nod for Harry Greener in The Day Of The Locust (1975). On television he played Batman’s nemesis The Penguin in several episodes of the camp Sixties TV classic. Blacklisted for a while during the McCarthy era because of his left-wing views, Meredith’s other films included: There Goes The Groom (1937) as Dick Matthews, Spring Madness (1938) as Lippencott, Tom, Dick And Harry (1941) as Harry, San Francisco Docks (1941) as Johnny Barnes, The Rear Gunner (1943) as Private Pee Wee Williams, The Story Of G.I. Joe (1945) as Ernie Pyle, Mine Own Executioner (1947) as Felix Milne, The Man On The Eiffel Tower (1949) as Huertin, Golden Arrow (1949) as Dick, Advise And Consent (1962) as Herbert Gelman, A Big Hand For The Little Lady (1966) as Doc Scully, Stay Away, Joe (1968) as Charlie Lightcloud, Clay Pigeon (1971) as Freedom Lovelace, Beware! The Blob (1972) as Hobo, The Hindenburg (1975) as Emilio Pajetta, The Sentinel (1977) as Charles Chazen, The Manitou (1978) as Doctor Ernest Snow, Foul Play (1978) as Mr Hennessey, The Amazing Captain Nemo (1978) as Professor Waldo Cunningham, Clash Of The Titans (1981) as Ammo, Santa Claus (1985) as Ancient Elf, King Lear (1987) as Don Learo, State Of Grace (1990) as Finn and Grumpy Old Men (1993) as Grandpa Gustafson. He married four times. The first Mrs Meredith was Helen Berrian Derby (1932–1935), followed by Margaret Perry (January 10, 1936–July 19, 1938) (who was the daughter of Antoinette Perry after whom the Tonys are named), Paulette Goddard (May 21, 1944–June 6, 1949) and Kaja Sundsten (1950–1979).
CAUSE: He died of Alzheimer’s disease in Malibu, California, aged 89.
Ethel Merman
(ETHEL AGNES ZIMMERMAN)
Born January 16, 1909
Died February 15, 1984
‘The First Lady Of American Musical Comedy’. A former typist and secretary, she moonlighted in a show at the Brooklyn Paramount in 1928. With her raucous voice, Ethel Merman (born in Astoria, Long Island) often set the Broadway stage alight. It was there she did her best work but, thankfully, there are records of Merman for posterity in the films she made, often playing herself. She made her film début in Follow The Leader (1930) as Helen King and followed that up with, among others, Old Man Blues (1932) as Helen, Let Me Call You Sweetheart (1932), You Try Somebody Else (1932), Time On My Hands (1932), Song Shopping (1933) and The Big Broadcast Of 1936 (1936) all as herself, Anything Goes (1936) as Reno Sweeney, Alexander’s Ragtime Band (1938) as Jerry Allen, Stage Door Canteen (1943) as herself, Call Me Madam (1953) as Sally Adams, There’s No Business Like Show Business (1954) as Molly Donahue, Won Ton Ton, the Dog Who Saved Hollywood (1976) as Hedda Parsons and Airplane! (1980) as Lieutenant Hurwitz, a hospital patient who thought he was Ethel Merman! Away from the stage Merman was vulgar, bigoted (calling black people “niggers” and referring to “commie Jews”) and even demanded a percentage of tickets for every show she was in so she could sell them to touts. Novelist Jacqueline Susann based the character of Helen Lawson in Valley Of The Dolls on Merman. She drank too much, was usually an abusive drunk and married four times. On November 15, 1940, she married agent William R. Smith in Elkington, Maryland. A year later he obtained a divorce on the grounds of desertion. In 1941 she married newspaper executive Robert Daniels Levitt and had two children: Robert Daniels, Jr (b. New York City, August 11, 1945) and Ethel (b. New York City, July 20, 1942, d. 1967, of a drug and drink overdose). They divorced on June 10, 1952. On March 9, 1953, she wed airline boss Robert F. Six and divorced him in December 1960. On June 27, 1964, she married Ernest Borgnine and left him 38 days later. They divorced on November 18, 1964. When she came to write her autobiography one chapter was entitled “Marriage To Ernest Borgnine” followed by a blank page. When asked why, she said: “I only write about things that are important to me.”
CAUSE: In April 1983 she underwent brain surgery. She died in her sleep ten months later in New York. She was 75.
Russ Meyer
Born March 21, 1922
Died September 18, 2004
The breast man. Russell Albion Meyer was born in Oakland, California, the son of a policeman and a nurse. An autodidact, Meyer began making films in his teens. His first film was The Immortal Mr Teas (1959), the first nudie flick to make a profit – $1 million on $24,000 cost. He was off and running and he began to make often bizarre and violent films usually featuring women with huge breasts. His movies included: Erotica (made in 1961 on a budget of $4,000), Heavenly Bodies (made in 1963 on a budget of $5,000), Kiss Me Quick! (1964), Mudhoney (made in 1965 on a budget of $60,000), Motor Psycho (made in 1965 on a budget of $38,000), Faster, Pussycat! Kill! Kill! (made in 1965 on a budget of $45,000), Mondo Topless (made in 1966 on a budget of $12,000), Finders Keepers Lovers Weepers (made in 1968 on a budget of $82,000) and Vixen! (made in 1968, it grossed more than $6 million profit on an initial outlay of $76,000). Following the success of this last film, Meyer was hired by 20th Century Fox to make proper films. The first of these was Beyond The Valley Of The Dolls (1970). It starred Dolly Read (as Kelly MacNamara), Cynthia Myers (Casey Anderson) and Marcia McBroom (Petronella Danforth) as the members of an all-girl rock group who evolve into The Carrie Nations (the name of a nineteenth century temperance campaigner) and it was an enormous hit. Costing $900,000 it grossed $9 million at the American box office. Originally, the film was supposed to be a sequel to the cinematic version of Jacqueline Susann’s best-selling novel Valley Of The Dolls (1967) but that idea was quickly abandoned. It did not stop Susann from suing for breach of copyright and winning, albeit posthumously, a $2 million settlement. Next Meyer directed a frankly awful version of Irving Wallace’s superb novel The Seven Minutes (1971), about the world’s rudest book. Meyer returned to the sex and schlock formula that had served him so well in films such as Supervixens (made in 1975 on a budget of $250,000) and Beyond The Valley Of The Ultra Vixens (made in 1979 on a budget of $239,000). He was married three times. His wives were Betty Valvodinos; the 5˝ 7˝ 38-24-35 Playboy Playmate of the Month for June 1955, Evelyn Eugene ‘Eve’ Turner (b. Griffin, Georgia, December 13, 1928, k. in a plane crash in the Canary Islands, March 27, 1977) from April 2, 1952 until their divorce in 1969; and 37-23-37 Edwina Beth ‘Edy’ Williams (b. Salt Lake City, Utah, July 9, 1942), a 5́ 7˝ actor who made a career of turning up annually to the Academy Awards in the skimpiest outfits she could find, pre-empting the wannabes of today, from June 27, 1970 until November 7, 1975.
CAUSE: Russ Meyer died aged 82 of com
plications from pneumonia at his home in the Hollywood Hills.
Lewis Milestone
(LEVIS MILSTEIN)
Born September 30, 1895
Died September 25, 1980
The forgotten man. When asked to name a Hollywood director of the past, the name of Lewis Milestone is one that rarely features in anyone but the most keen film student’s list. And he died less than 30 years ago. He won a Best Film Oscar for All Quiet On The Western Front (1930). Incidentally, it is Milestone’s hand that reaches for the butterfly at the end of the picture. Milestone showed the horror of wars – the First, Second and Korean conflicts – from the point of view of the ordinary soldier. It was a decision that earned him approbation from many producers. He was born near Odessa in the Ukraine and came to America in 1913, becoming a citizen when he was 18. He worked in various menial jobs such as floor sweeping before he joined the US Signal Corps in 1917 where he worked as an assistant director on army training films. Demobbed in 1919, he headed for Hollywood. He directed his first film, Seven Sinners, in 1925, having spent time as a cutter, editor and writer to hone his trade. His fourth film, Two Arabian Knights (1927) starring William Boyd and Mary Astor, won a Best Comedy Direction Oscar, the only occasion this award was ever given. After All Quiet On The Western Front for which he was paid $135,000 and which won him his second Academy Award, Milestone worked on films with a non-military theme such as the newspaper story by Charles MacArthur and Ben Hecht The Front Page (1931) starring Pat O’Brien and Adolph Menjou, drama such as Rain (1932) with Joan Crawford and musicals including Hallelujah, I’m A Bum (1933) starring Al Jolson. He also made Of Mice And Men (1939) starring Lon Chaney, Jr as Lennie and Burgess Meredith as George, a production that the author John Steinbeck liked. He returned to the military genre with The Purple Heart (1944) starring Dana Andrews and Richard Conte, A Walk In The Sun (1945) with Dana Andrews and John Ireland, Halls Of Montezuma (1951) with Richard Widmark and Pork Chop Hill (1959), a film that was beset by arguments with star Gregory Peck. His last two films were Ocean’s 11 (1960) starring the Rat Pack and as a late replacement for Carol Reed on Mutiny On The Bounty (1962) with Marlon Brando and Trevor Howard. Mutiny was not the walk in the park that 5́ 7˝ Milestone was expecting. He said, “I thought this was one way of getting rich quick – I get the salary and, at most, it couldn’t take two or three months. After I’d signed the contract, I found out that in the previous year all they had on screen was about seven minutes of film. I spent a year on it.” In 1936 he married the actor Kendall Lee (b. Washington, DC, September 18, 1903, d. Beverly Hills, California, July 30, 1978).
CAUSE: Lewis Milestone died in Los Angeles, California, five days before his 85th birthday, following abdominal surgery.
Ray Milland
(REGINALD ALFRED JOHN TRUSCOTT-JONES)
Born January 3, 1905
Died March 10, 1986
Heterosexual Cary Grant. Born in Neath, Wales, 6́ 1˝ Milland was educated at a military school before opting for acting. His stage name came from the mill lands, a flat area on the banks of the river that Neath stands upon. He appeared in over 100 films and mostly played in comedies until his portrayal of an alcoholic writer in The Lost Weekend (1945), which won him a Best Actor Oscar. He had his own show on American television for two years from 1953 and in 1976 was nominated for an Emmy for his role as Duncan Calderwood in Rich Man, Poor Man Book I. His character in Reap The Wild Wind (1942), Stephen Tolliver, had a curly head of hair while Milland’s own locks were straight. To achieve the desired effect the make-up department used hot curling irons on his hair. Milland was convinced this was what caused him to lose his hair (he often wore a wig on screen) and his status as a leading man. His films included: The Flying Scotsman (1929) as Jim Edwards, Just A Gigolo (1931) as Freddie, Blonde Crazy (1931) as Joe Reynolds, Menace (1934) as Freddie Bastion, Charlie Chan In London (1934) as Neil Howard, We’re Not Dressing (1934) as Prince Michael Stofani, Bolero (1934) as Lord Robert Coray, Four Hours To Kill! (1935) as Carl, Alias Mary Dow (1935) as Peter Marshall, Return Of Sophie Lang (1936) as James Dawson, Next Time We Love as Tommy Abbott, The Big Broadcast Of 1937 (1936) as Bob Miller, The Jungle Princess (1936) as Christopher Powell, Wings Over Honolulu (1937) as Lieutenant Samuel Gilchrist, Ebb Tide (1937) as Robert Herrick, Bulldog Drummond Escapes as Captain Hugh ‘Bulldog’ Drummond, Her Jungle Love (1938) as Bob Mitchell, French Without Tears (1939) as Alan Howard, Beau Geste (1939) as John Geste, Arise, My Love (1940) as Tom Martin, Untamed (1940) as Dr William Crawford, Are Husbands Necessary? (1942) as George Cugat, Forever And A Day (1943) as Lieutenant William Trimble, California (1946) as Jonathan Trumbo, Kitty (1946) as Sir Hugh Marcy, Golden Earrings (1947) as Colonel Ralph Denistoun, Sealed Verdict (1948) as Major Robert Lawson, Alias Nick Beal (1949) as Nick Beal, Rhubarb (1951) as Eric Yeager, The Thief (1952) as Allan Fields, Something To Live For (1952) as Alan Miller, Dial M For Murder (1954) as Tony Wendice, The Girl In The Red Velvet Swing (1955) as Stanford White, Three Brave Men (1957) as Joe DiMarco, X: The Man With The X-Ray Eyes (1963) as Dr James Xavier, Love Story (1970) as Oliver Barrett III, Terror In The Wax Museum (1973) as Harry Flexner, Escape To Witch Mountain (1975) as Aristotle Bolt and Oliver’s Story (1978) as Oliver Barrett III. From September 30, 1932, until his death Milland was married to Muriel ‘Mal’ Webber. They had one son, Daniel David (b. March 6, 1940), and an adopted daughter, Victoria Francesca. Milland was a keen parachutist and during the filming of I Wanted Wings (1941), in which he played Jeff Young, he took off with a pilot to test a plane for filming. In the air he had the urge to jump but the pilot said the plane was low on fuel and that he had to land. Later, retelling the tale, Milland was horrified to learn the ‘parachute’ that he had intended to use was, in fact, only a prop.
CAUSE: Suffering from lung cancer, he died in Torrance, California, aged 81.
Marjie Millar
Born August 10, 1931
Died April 1966
Blonde ingénue. Born in Tacoma, Washington, attractive Marjie Millar was the protégée of producer Hal Wallis. He took a very deep and personal interest in her career, putting her in Money From Home (1953) as Phyllis Leigh and About Mrs Leslie (1954) as Nadine Roland. However, in 1958, she was involved in a car crash that left her partially disabled. Giving up all thoughts of acting, she returned to Tacoma where she opened a dance school. She was married to the television producer John Florea (b. Alliance, Ohio, May 28, 1916, d. Las Vegas, Nevada, August 25, 2000).
CAUSE: She died in Tacoma, from the after-effects of the car crash, following 16 operations on her legs. She was only 34.
Ann Miller
(JOHNNIE LUCILLE ANN COLLIER)
Born April 12, 1923
Died January 22, 2004
‘Star lady’. Born in Cherino, Texas, the daughter of John Collier, a prominent criminal lawyer, Miller who was of Irish, French and Cherokee descent (on her grandmother’s side) was raised in Houston, where she attended the Albert Sidney Johnson High School. A childhood bout of rickets led to her having dancing lessons and she reportedly had her first tap lesson from Bill ‘Bojangles’ Robinson. Her parents divorced when she was 10 and she moved to California. Her mother was deaf and received no maintenance from her ex-husband so, to support the family, Miller had to dance at sleazy establishments such as the Black Cat Club. While working at the Bal Tabarin in San Francisco, she was spotted by the RKO talent scout Benny Rubin and at the age of 14 she claimed to be 18 to sign a contract with RKO (hence many reference books list her natal year as 1919). She made her screen début in New Faces Of 1937. Her early films included Stage Door (1937) as Annie, Room Service (1938) as Hilda with the Marx Brothers, and Radio City Revels (1938) as Billie Shaw. An early beefier part as Essie Carmichael came in Frank Capra’s Oscar-winning comedy You Can’t Take It With You (1938). Owing to a conflict of interest with her agent Miller asked RKO to be released from her contract. At that time, the dancer Eleanor Powell, who was a big star at MGM, had the same representation. The studio was u
nhappy to see Ann Miller developing as a rival and Miller believed that if pressure was brought to bear to ensure Powell’s continued supremacy her career would suffer. Miller left Hollywood and headed for Broadway. She appeared in the last (1939) edition of The George White Scandals, and, although the show was not successful, everybody admired her big number, ‘The Mexiconga’. Her return to Tinseltown came with a series of mostly unsatisfactory short-term contracts. In Melody Ranch (1940), she starred as Julie Shelton opposite the singing cowboy Gene Autry (“I was the first girl he ever kissed, apart from his horse”) and became known as “the Queen of the Bs” in a run of second features such as True To The Army (1942) as Vicki Marlow, Priorities On Parade (1942) as Donna D’Arcy and Reveille With Beverly (1943) as Beverly Ross, all aimed at encouraging the war effort. In 1948 she was hired by MGM to replace an injured Cyd Charisse in Easter Parade playing Nadine Hale. It was not a great part but it placed her opposite Fred Astaire, and Miller made a big enough impression to secure a standard seven-year contract. It led to On The Town and steady employment in some of MGM’s best-known musicals. Among them were Lovely To Look At (1952) as Bubbles Cassidy, a remake of the Fred Astaire/Ginger Rogers film Roberta, Kiss Me Kate in which as Lois ‘Bianca’ Lane she sang ‘Too Darn Hot’ and ‘Always True To You’, Small Town Girl (1953) as Lisa Bellmount in which she danced a scorching version of ‘I’ve Got To Hear That Beat’, Deep In My Heart and Hit The Deck (1955) as Ginger. Her last musical was The Opposite Sex (1956) as Gloria Dell, an ill-advised remake of The Women. In the same year, she played her last film role for two decades – as Doris Patterson, the mother of Dean Jones, in The Great American Pastime, a non-musical film about baseball. Realising that the time of the big musical was over, she concentrated on theatre and TV. 5́ 7˝ Miller also featured in a spectacular television advertisement for Heinz Great American Soups, dancing on top of an eight-foot soup tin, surrounded by 20-foot fountains, a 24-piece orchestra and a long line of high-kicking chorus girls. It ended with her tapping her way into the kitchen, where her husband moaned, “Why must you make such a big production out of everything?” The song she sang was written by comedian Stan Freberg and choreographed by Danny Daniels. Miller had a reputed speed of 500 taps a minute. Her tap shoes were called Moe and Joe and were exhibited in the Smithsonian Institute in Washington. In the theatre she appeared in touring productions of Can Can, Hello, Dolly!, Panama Hattie and Blithe Spirit, and made her Broadway comeback (after a 30-year gap) in Mame, taking the role originally played by Angela Lansbury. Her most successful stage appearance was in 1979 in Sugar Babies, a $1.3 million extravaganza based on the rise of burlesque. Her co-star was her former acting school classmate Mickey Rooney. The show was brought to London in 1988, where she received some of the most favourable notices of her career. In 1998 she appeared in a successful revival of Stephen Sondheim’s Follies at the Paper Mill Playhouse in New Jersey. She disliked nudity and sex on screen but when she returned to films it was in 2001 when she played Catherine ‘Coco’ Lenoix, an ageing Hollywood matron, in David Lynch’s Mulholland Drive, which contained nudity and explicit sex. She was married three times: to Reese Milner on February 16, 1946; to William Moss on August 22, 1958 (they divorced on May 11, 1961) and to Arthur Cameron in 1961. The marriage was annulled the following year. All three were oil millionaires. There were no surviving children. Her daughter died on November 12, 1946, three hours after her birth. Miller had fallen downstairs while nine months pregnant. Miller, who believed in reincarnation, claimed that her difficulty in maintaining relationships with men was due to her being an Egyptian queen in a past life and executing any men who displeased her. Unlike many of her contemporaries at Culver City, she never had a bad word to say about MGM or its studio boss, Louis B. Mayer. “Why, Mr Mayer treated us better than his own horses,” she claimed. For his part Mayer was captivated by her and, despite being almost 40 years her senior, regularly took her wining, dining and dancing – always with her mother as chaperone. Not that he misbehaved. “Mr Mayer was the Kissinger of his day,” she reported, “very much the gentleman, and he liked me because I was a nice girl.” Unfortunately, he was also jealous and possessive. One of the more bizarre stories from that era concerned her nose. After breaking it, she disliked the contour after it mended, so she had an artificial extension made. When she and Mayer argued, he would steal the nose and lock it away in his safe so that she could not go out without him. Then when she fell for an oil millionaire and told Mayer, he cried, he groaned, he hung up the telephone and, within minutes, sent his chauffeur to summon her to his deathbed, where he was dying having swallowed a bottle of sleeping tablets. The ambulance, however, got there first and Mayer recovered. Their relationship was never as cordial thereafter. On her passport, in the space reserved for “occupation,” she wrote simply “star lady”. She was under no illusions about her talent. “As an actress, I’m terrible,” she admitted, “but if Ava Gardner and Lana Turner can act under a good director, I think I still have a chance.” Ann Millerisms became almost as legendary as Goldwynisms. Attending a memorial tribute to Oscar Hammerstein, she asked her date, “Why isn’t Oscar here tonight?” When she was informed that this was what the concert was about, the lyricist having been dead for 10 years, she replied, “Well, how should I know? I’ve been touring in Mame.” “I do a lot of nutty things, and people think I’m for real,” the 35-22-34 star acknowledged. “But all my life I’ve tried to be an eight-by-10 glossy. I try to give the impression that everything’s perfect and that star ladies don’t go to the bathroom. It was worse than doing 24 shows a day for those smarty-pants husbands of mine because I was never off stage. I tried to make them believe I was always gorgeous.”
Fade to Black: A Book of Movie Obituaries Page 123