FURTHER READING: The Amazing Mary Millington – Mary Millington and David Weldon (London: Futura, 1979).
Sir John Mills, CBE
(LEWIS ERNEST WATTS MILLS)
Born February 22, 1908
Died April 23, 2005
Consummate pro. John Mills was born at Watts Naval Training College, North Eltham, Suffolk and spent his early years at Belton, near Great Yarmouth, where his father was headmaster (and maths teacher) of the village school. He was educated at Norwich High School For Boys. His sister was the television presenter Annette Mills (b. Chelsea, London, 1890 as Mabel Mills, d. January 10, 1955 of a brain tumour) who created Muffin the Mule. John Mills worked briefly as a clerk before making his theatre début in 1929 in the chorus of a revue. Three years later he made his first film, The Midshipmaid, and for a time specialised in juvenile leads. He had a small part in Goodbye Mr Chips (1939), in which he played Colley, the old boy who comes back from the First World War to visit the old master. He joined the 346 Company of the Royal Engineers, a searchlight battery based at Royston, Hertfordshire. Commissioned in the autumn of 1940, he was posted to the headquarters of 1st Rifle Battalion, Monmouthshire Regiment, at Trowbridge, Wiltshire. At the end of 1940 he was invalided out with a duodenal ulcer and returned to acting. He appeared in a number of war films to bolster morale including In Which We Serve (1942) as Shorty Blake – the film, scripted and produced by Noël Coward, who took the starring role, was based on Lord Mountbatten’s destroyer HMS Kelly. At one stage during shooting, Mountbatten arranged for 100 sailors to be brought in to replace extras made “seasick” by the hydraulic pumps used to simulate the pitch and roll of the ocean. “There’s dysentery in every ripple,” observed Coward. Mills claimed to have given Coward the nickname ‘The Master’. We Dive At Dawn (1943) about a British submarine disabled in the Baltic and The Way To The Stars (1945), Anthony Asquith’s film about the RAF in the war, followed this. Mills often played clean-cut officer types but showed his versatility in Cottage To Let (1941) in which he played a Nazi fifth columnist and Waterloo Road (1944) in which he was a cuckolded husband. Stardom came with his portrayal of Pip in David Lean’s film Great Expectations (1946). He followed this by acting as well as going behind the cameras with The History Of Mr Polly (1949) and The Rocking Horse Winner (1950), both of which he produced. 5́ 8˝ Mills said, “I wasn’t a very good producer because I was always dying to get on the floor and didn’t really like the office work.” He suggested that Mr Polly did not succeed popularly at the time because, “I was a blue-eyed hero up to then and audiences hated seeing me as a little wizened chap with smarmed hair, being a henpecked husband. But I wanted to make those two movies and now I’m rather proud of them.” He played the tragic hero Robert Falcon Scott in Scott Of The Antarctic (1947) and his subsequent films included: Morning Departure (1950) in which he played a submarine skipper resigned to staying down with his ship after it has been hit by a mine, the thriller The Long Memory (1952), the guileless Lancashire cobbler Willy Mossop in David Lean’s Hobson’s Choice (1954), The End Of The Affair (1955), The Colditz Story (1955) as Pat Reid, War And Peace (1956) as the cheerful Russian peasant Platon, Town On Trial (1957), I Was Monty’s Double (1958) and Ice Cold In Alex (1958) as the alcoholic Captain Anson, in which he was required to drink a pint of cold lager but the director required several takes and by the end of the morning’s filming Mills had to be put to bed, completely drunk. He was also upset that his love scenes were excised, “I was so disappointed in my love scene with Sylvia Syms. Up to then I had made love on the screen to virtually nothing but submarines and tanks, and this was my big chance – and then most of it was cut out.” He stayed in the army for Tunes Of Glory (1960), in which he played Colonel Barrow opposite his friend of many years, Alec Guinness. “I’ve been asked a hundred times how I did the quivering eye bit,” he said, “but I’m not telling.” The performance won him the Best Actor prize at the Venice Film Festival. However, Mills’ later claim that he and Guinness had tossed a coin as to which role each should play was one that the director, Ronald Neame, later denied. In 1961 he appeared on Broadway in Terence Rattigan’s play about Lawrence of Arabia, Ross (a role that coincidentally Guinness had played in the West End). In the Sixties Mills began appearing in international films including Lady Hamilton (1967) – he played the cuckolded Sir William Hamilton – and Lady Caroline Lamb (1972), with Mills as prime minister George Canning. On occasion he worked with his family. Daughter Juliet first appeared on screen as a three-month-old baby in In Which We Serve and sister Hayley made her screen début at age 13 with her father in Tiger Bay (1959). They also appeared together in The Parent Trap (1961), The Chalk Garden (1964) and The Family Way (1967). In 1965 he directed the melodrama Sky West And Crooked, as a vehicle for Hayley and written by his wife Mary Hayley Bell. The film was a box office flop. “You could have fired a shotgun in any Odeon where it was showing and not hit a soul,” he remarked. His other films included Bryan Forbes’ King Rat (1965) and playing Field Marshal Haig in Richard Attenborough’s Oh! What A Lovely War (1969). On April 15, 1971, he won a Best Supporting Actor Oscar for his portrayal of the village idiot in Lean’s Ryan’s Daughter (1970). His later films included The 39 Steps (1978), The Big Sleep (1978), Gandhi (1982), Who’s That Girl? (1987), Kenneth Branagh’s Hamlet (1996), Bean (1997), and Bright Young Things (2003). He was married twice. His first wife was Aileen Raymond, who he married in March 1932 at Marylebone Register Office. After their divorce he married Mary Hayley Bell on January 16, 1941 and by her had a son, Jonathan (b. London Clinic, December 3, 1949), a screenwriter, and two daughters 5́ 2˝ Juliet Maryon (b. Royal Northern Hospital, Holloway Road, north London, November 21, 1941) and Hayley Catherine Rose Vivien (b. London, April 18, 1946 at 11.40pm). In May 1976, Mills, who had been appointed CBE in 1960, was knighted in prime minister Harold Wilson’s resignation list. The investiture took place at Buckingham Palace on July 28, 1976.
CAUSE: Mills had been in poor health during his last few years, becoming virtually blind in 1992. In August 2002 he was hospitalised with a severe chest infection. It was an affliction that was never to leave him and he died aged 97 at his Denham, Buckinghamshire home. He had nursed his wife through Alzheimer’s disease.
FURTHER READING: Up In The Clouds Gentlemen Please – John Mills (London: Penguin Books, 1981).
Sal Mineo
Born January 10, 1939
Died February 12, 1976
‘The Switchblade Kid’. Born in The Bronx, Salvatore Mineo, Jr was a teen star who progressed to adult success. He was lauded for his Broadway performances in The Rose Tattoo in 1951 co-starring Maureen Stapleton and Eli Wallach and The King & I a year later with Yul Brynner. After being expelled from school for bad behaviour he was given two choices: borstal or enrol in an acting school. Acting won but Mineo still took pleasure in beating up anyone who called him a sissy. In 1955 he began making movies. His first filmic forays confirmed his talent and he was Oscar nominated for his portrayal of John, nicknamed Plato, in Rebel Without A Cause (1955). His subsequent film career seemed to consist of playing variations of Plato or roles that didn’t stretch his acting ability. He appeared in Somebody Up There Likes Me (1956) as Romolo, Rock Pretty Baby (1956) as Angelo Barrato, Giant (1956) as Angel Obregon II and Dino (1957) as juvenile delinquent Dino Minetta. Then came Exodus (1960), in which he played the part of Holocaust survivor Dov Landau, and another Academy Award nomination. The film caused Mineo problems, however. He was wanted to play the part of an Arab boy in Lawrence Of Arabia (1962) but because he had played an Arab-killing Jew in Exodus he was banned from entering Jordan, where the movie was filmed. He was absent from the screen for 1961 and was a face in the crowd in The Longest Day (1962) as Private Martini and The Greatest Story Ever Told (1965) as Uriah. John Ford cast him as Red Shirt in the western Cheyenne Autumn (1964) which, apart from playing Milo in Escape From The Planet Of The Apes (1971), was his last major film. He was proud of his Italian ancestry: “I’m … a
wop … I was unique. They made all the guys change names, and half of them had to have nosejobs, like Dean Martin, alias Dino Crocetti. And the girls: Anne Bancroft’s real name was Italiano – and Paula Prentiss’ was Ragusa … We ain’t all olive-skinned. Look at Connie Stevens or Bernadette Peters.” A diminutive bisexual, he was the mentor and gay lover of a very successful Eighties actor who attempts to keep the association quiet today.
CAUSE: With his film career seemingly at an end, Mineo returned to the theatre and began rehearsals at the Westwood Theater for the play P.S. Your Cat Is Dead. The show had played well in San Francisco, prompting wags to comment it should really be called ‘P.S. Sal Mineo Is Alive’. At approximately 10pm on February 12, 1976, with opening a week away, Mineo returned to his rented home in West Hollywood just below Sunset Strip, 8563 Holloway Drive, and parked his blue Chevelle in the garage. As he walked to his apartment he was attacked by a man with a knife who stabbed Mineo through the heart. Despite the best efforts of his neighbours Mineo died, aged 37, five minutes later. Witnesses spoke of “ A white male with long hair, dressed in dark clothes running away from the scene.” It was assumed to be a robbery that went fatally wrong but then police discovered Mineo still was in possession of his wallet. A link to drugs also failed to be substantiated leaving police to believe that Mineo had been murdered during a lovers’ tiff. Sal was interred, next to his father, at the Cemetery of the Gate of Heaven, Stevens Avenue, Hawthorne, New York 10532. For two years police hunted Mineo’s killer but drew a blank until one day a man in jail confessed to the killing, was charged and, on February 13, 1979, convicted. Lionel Ray Williams, 21, revealed that he had stabbed Mineo just for the hell of it. Police had failed to find a motive for the slaying because there wasn’t one. Bizarrely, several leading cast members of Rebel Without A Cause all died violent deaths: Nick Adams, James Dean, Mineo and Natalie Wood.
Vincente Minnelli
(LESTER ANTHONY MINNELLI)
Born February 28, 1903
Died July 25, 1986
Creator of Magic. Born in Chicago, Illinois, the grandson of an Italian revolutionary. Shy, unattractive, effeminate, cosmetic-wearing, inarticulate, beset by a tic and homosexual, Minnelli began his career as a window dresser and then became a photographer’s assistant and a costume designer. He had directed a number of stage shows and three films when he was flung into the big time and given the chance to direct Judy Garland in Meet Me In St Louis (1944). Production began on November 10, 1943, although filming didn’t start until December 7. Garland was often late or didn’t bother to show up at all. She was reliant on drugs and had just finished an affair with Joseph L. Mankiewicz and on the rebound took up with her leading man, Tom Drake. Unfortunately, Drake was gay but Garland took his inability to get an erection as a personal insult. The last day of filming – April 7, 1944 – could not come too soon for her. With all these distractions the film could have been a disaster. It was thanks to Minnelli’s skill that it wasn’t. The Los Angeles Times lauded it as “one of the Great American Family sketches” and the movie became a box-office smash. It was against this background that Garland fell in love with Vincente Minnelli. He had, after all, made her look stunning on film. She and Minnelli began to have dinner together, first with another man present and then alone, and romance blossomed. Not long after the film wrapped they began living together, Judy studiously ignoring the clues to Minnelli’s true sexuality. Minnelli worked on Yolanda And The Thief (1945) which flopped, The Clock (1945) and Ziegfeld Follies (1946) the last two which teamed him once again, professionally, with Garland. On January 9, 1945, Minnelli and Garland announced their engagement. Minnelli liked to mould women to his style and tastes and Judy was no exception. Some women may have been horrified by this flagrant interference. Judy loved it. They married on June 15, 1945, in Judy’s mother’s house and MGM chief Louis B. Mayer gave the bride away. By the end of August, Judy was pregnant and baby Liza arrived in Cedars of Lebanon Hospital, Los Angeles, at 7.58am on March 12, 1946, weighing 6lb 10½oz. He next directed Judy in The Pirate (1948), a film about mistaken identities. Judy was out of her head on pills during most of the filming, missing 99 days out of the 135-day schedule. The drugs caused paranoia, the paranoia was addressed to her husband and the film was a financial flop. As they approached their second wedding anniversary, the strains were beginning to tell. Judy had an affair with Yul Brynner and then caught Minnelli in bed with the handyman, the sight of which caused her to attempt suicide. She had him replaced on Easter Parade (1948), much to his disappointment and embarrassment. He directed Madame Bovary (1949) and Father Of The Bride (1950). Then, on December 21, 1950, the couple announced their marriage was at an end. Without the heartache of Judy Garland, Minnelli seemed to thrive and directed highly successful musicals for MGM. His films garnered 20 Oscars and included: Father’s Little Dividend (1951), An American In Paris (1951), which picked up six Academy Awards, The Band Wagon (1953), Brigadoon (1954), Kismet (1955), Lust For Life (1956), which won a solitary Oscar, Designing Woman (1957) which also won a solitary Oscar, The Reluctant Debutante (1958), Gigi (1958), which won a staggering nine Oscars including Best Direction for Minnelli, Four Horsemen Of The Apocalypse (1961), The Courtship Of Eddie’s Father (1963), The Sandpiper (1965) and On A Clear Day You Can See Forever (1970). Following his divorce Minnelli married Georgette Magnani (b. 1931) on February 16, 1954, and fathered a daughter, Tina Nina, in April 1955. On December 31, 1960, he married Denise Gigante. They divorced in August 1971. His final wife was Lee Anderson with whom he began living in 1969.
CAUSE: He died of Alzheimer’s disease aged 83 at his home, North Crescent Drive, in Beverly Hills, California. Minnelli was buried in a Catholic funeral at the Wee Kirk O’ The Heather, Forest Lawn Memorial-Parks, 1712 Glendale Avenue, Glendale, California 91209.
Carmen Miranda
(MARIA DO CARMO MIRANDA DA CUNHA)
Born February 9, 1904
Died August 5, 1955
‘The Brazilian Bombshell’. The enduring image of Carmen Miranda is one of an enthusiastic dancer with the contents of a fruit bowl on her head. She was not born in Brazil but in Marco de Canavezes, near Lisbon, Portugal moving to Rio de Janeiro at an early age. She worked on Brazilian radio and in films such as A Voz Do Carnaval (1933) and Estudantes (1935) as Mimi, before making her Broadway début in 1939. One critic wrote of that performance: “Her face is too heavy to be beautiful, her figure is nothing to write home about, and she sings in a foreign language. Yet she is the biggest theatrical sensation of the season.” Her star shone brightly in Hollywood for a brief period from 1940’s Down Argentine Way onwards. However, by the end of the decade her welcome had been outstayed. Her films included: That Night In Rio (1941) as Carmen, Weekend In Havana (1941) as Rosita Rivas, Springtime In The Rockies (1942) as Rosita Murphy, Something For The Boys (1944) as Chiquita Hart, Greenwich Village (1944) as Princess Querida, Four Jills In A Jeep (1944) as Carmen Miranda, If I’m Lucky (1946) as Michelle O’Toole, Copacabana (1947) as Carmen Novarro and A Date With Judy (1948) as Rosita Cochellas. It was said she kept her supply of cocaine in a special compartment of her platform shoes. She married producer David Sebastian at the Church of the Good Shepherd, Beverly Hills, on March 17, 1947. He survived her.
CAUSE: She died aged 51 in Beverly Hills, California, of a heart attack, following an appearance on a Jimmy Durante television show. There is a Carmen Miranda Museum in Rio de Janeiro.
Carolyn Mitchell
(BARBARA ANN THOMASON)
Born January 25, 1937
Died January 31, 1966
Fit beauty. The blonde 1954 Miss Muscle Beach of Santa Monica, Mitchell appeared in Dragstrip Riot (1958) as Betty and Roger Corman’s The Cry Baby Killer (1958) as Carole opposite Jack Nicholson before giving up her career to become the fifth Mrs Mickey Rooney in Mexico in December 1958. They had four children: Kelly Ann (b. Santa Monica, California, September 13, 1959); Kerry (b. December 30, 1960); Kyle (b. Santa Monica, California, April 2, 1962) an
d Kimmy Sue (b. Santa Monica, California, September 13, 1963). However, she began an affair with Yugoslavian wannabe actor Milos Milocevic and on January 21, 1966, she split from Rooney. On January 24, Rooney began divorce proceedings. Six days later, they were reconciled.
CAUSE: Milocevic, who was working as a chauffeur for Alain Delon, refused to accept the affair was over and one day after the reconciliation he murdered Mitchell in her Brentwood home before turning the gun on himself.
Robert Mitchum
Born August 6, 1917
Died July 1, 1997
Nonchalant tough guy. An air of menace seemed to hang over the slow-talking (but not slow-thinking) Robert Charles Durman Mitchum, yet he also could come across as a pussycat, albeit one with claws. Born in Bridgeport, Connecticut, his father was killed in February 1919 and he wandered through a variety of jobs, including working with Marilyn Monroe’s husband in a factory. His long career in movies (130+ films) supposedly began when Mitchum wandered by mistake onto the set of Hopalong Cassidy, where he was spotted by a producer. Another story is that he was originally a screenwriter but realised there was more money to be made on the other side of the camera. He played Rigney in Hoppy Serves A Writ (1943) and that year also appeared in 18 other films. “I played everything from Chinese laundrymen to midgets, to Irish washer women to faggots.” He featured in eight Hopalong Cassidy films at $100 a week, “plus all the horse shit I could take home.” Seven films followed in 1944, before Mitchum made his name with The Story Of G.I. Joe (1945) as Lieutenant Bill Walker, for which he was nominated for an Oscar. Almost as soon as that filmed wrapped he was called up into the army and spent eight months in the military. He was the first male star to refuse to shave his chest. He almost wrecked his career on September 1, 1948, when he was arrested at 8334 Ridpath Drive, Los Angeles, for possession of marijuana and was sentenced to 60 days in Los Angeles County Jail (prisoner #91234) on February 9, 1949. On his release he worked hard to rebuild his reputation in films such as The Big Steal (1949) as Lieutenant Duke Halliday, The Red Pony (1949) as Billy Buck, The Racket as Captain Thomas McQuigg, My Forbidden Past (1951) as Dr Mark Lucas, One Minute To Zero (1952) as Colonel Steve Janowski, Macao (1952) as Nick Cochran, The Lusty Men as Jeff McCloud, Angel Face (1952) as Frank Jessup, River Of No Return (1954) as Matt Calder in which he co-starred with Marilyn Monroe, The Night Of The Hunter (1955) as the mad Reverend Harry Powell, Foreign Intrigue (1956) as Dave Bishop, The Enemy Below (1957) as Captain Murrell, Heaven Knows, Mr Allison (1957) as Marine Corporal Allison, which was his favourite of his own films, Thunder Road (1958) as Lucas Doolin, The Hunters (1958) as Major Cleve Saville, The Sundowners (1960) as Paddy Carmody, The Grass Is Greener (1960) as Charles Delacro, The Last Time I Saw Archie (1961) as Archie Hall, The Longest Day (1962) as Brigadier General Norman Cota, Cape Fear (1962), in which he gave a terrifyingly convincing portrayal of psychopathic rapist Max Cady, The List Of Adrian Messenger (1963) as Jim Slattery, Mister Moses (1965) as Joe Moses, El Dorado (1967) as Sheriff J.B. Harrah, Villa Rides (1968) as Lee Arnold, Ryan’s Daughter (1970) as Charles Shaughnessy, The Friends Of Eddie Coyle (1973) as ex-villain Eddie Coyle, Farewell, My Lovely (1975) as private eye Philip Marlowe, Midway (1976) as Admiral William F. ‘Bull’ Halsey, Jr, The Last Tycoon (1976) as Pat Brady, The Big Sleep (1978) reprising his role as Philip Marlowe, Cape Fear (1991) as Lieutenant Elgart, Woman Of Desire (1993) as lawyer Walter J. Hill starring opposite Bo Derek and James Dean: Race With Destiny (1997) as George Stevens. He married Dorothy Clement Spence (b. 1919) in Dover, Delaware, on March 16, 1940, proposing with the words: “Marry me and you’ll be farting through silk.” They had two sons: James Robin Spence ‘Josh’ (b. May 8, 1941) and Christopher (b. October 16, 1943) and one daughter: Petrine Day (b. Good Samaritan Hospital, Los Angeles, California, March 3, 1952, weighing 7lb 10oz). He loved to test the gullibility of the press, often making up stories about himself because he was bored. He told a hack in 1991 that he would like to spend the rest of his life setting up a rehabilitation home for celibate ex-jailbirds. He also told one female reporter who unctuously asked how he maintained his good looks at 60: “It’s down to a life of abstention and celibacy.” In fact, celibacy was one thing Mitchum didn’t practise. In 1962 he had an affair with Shirley MacLaine that almost wrecked his marriage. He also romanced Sarah Miles. In the summer of 1977 while filming The Big Sleep he had a fling with blonde 34B-22-33 nude model Lindy Benson (b. Muswell Hill, north London, November 28, 1952). “He was the best lover I’ve ever had,” she later enthused. “He liked to lie with his head on my behind. He said it was the softest pillow ever.” Mitchum was also an insomniac. He never took acting seriously: “I got three expressions: looking left, looking right and looking straight ahead,” he once commented, adding, “Movies bore me, especially my own.” He apparently developed a pot belly so that he wouldn’t have to pose with his shirt off. “People think I have an interesting walk. I’m just trying to hold my stomach in.” Or was that all a front? Howard Hawks said to him: “You’re the biggest fraud I ever met. You pretend you don’t care a damn about a scene and you’re the hardest working so-and-so I’ve ever known.”
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