Mervyn LeRoy

Ronald Colman Born Ronald Charles Colman 9 February 1891 Richmond, Surrey, England, UK Died 19 May 1958 (aged 67) Santa Barbara, California, US Cause of death Emphysema Occupation Actor Years active 1914–57 Spouse(s) Thelma Raye (m. 1920; div. 1934) Benita Hume (m. 1938; his death 1958) Colman was an English-born actor, starting his career in theater and silent film in his native country, before emigrating to the USA, and having a successful Hollywood film career, he was most popular during the 1920s, 1930s, and 1940s. He received Oscar nominations for Bulldog Drummond (1929), Condemned (1929) and Random Harvest (1942). Colman starred in several classic films, including A Tale of Two Cities (1935), Lost Horizon (1937) and The Prisoner of Zenda (1937). He also played the starring role in the Technicolor classic Kismet (1944), with Marlene Dietrich, which was nominated for four Academy Awards. In 1947, he won Academy Award for Best Actor and Golden Globe Award for Best Actor for the film A Double Life. Colman was given a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, for his work in motion pictures. He was awarded a second star for his television work. Ronald Charles Colman was born in Richmond, Surrey, England, the second son and fourth child of Charles Colman, a silk merchant, and his wife Marjory Read Fraser. His siblings comprised Eric, Edith and Marjorie. He was educated at boarding school in Littlehampton, where he discovered that he enjoyed acting, despite his shyness. He intended to study engineering at Cambridge, but his father's sudden death from pneumonia in 1907 made it financially impossible. First World War While working as a clerk at the British Steamship Company in the City of London, he joined the London Scottish Regiment in 1909 as a Territorial Army soldier, and on being mobilized at the outbreak of the First World War, crossed the English Channel to France in September 1914 to take part in the fighting on the Western Front. On 31 October 1914, at the Battle of Messines, Colman was seriously wounded by shrapnel in his ankle, which gave him a limp that he would attempt to hide throughout the rest of his acting career. As a consequence, he was invalided out of the British Army in 1915. Colman had sufficiently recovered from wartime injuries to appear at the London Coliseum on 19 June 1916, as Rahmat Sheikh in The Maharani of Arakan, with Lena Ashwell; at the Playhouse in December that year as Stephen Weatherbee in the Charles Goddard/Paul Dickey play The Misleading Lady; at the Court Theatre in March 1917 as Webber in Partnership. At the same theatre the following year he appeared in Eugène Brieux's Damaged Goods. At the Ambassadors Theatre in February 1918 he played George Lubin in The Little Brother. During 1918, he toured as David Goldsmith in The Bubble.[citation needed] In 1920, Colman went to America and toured with Robert Warwick in The Dauntless Three, and subsequently toured with Fay Bainter in East is West. He married his first wife, Thelma Raye, in 1920; they divorced in 1934. At the Booth Theatre in New York in January 1921 he played the Temple Priest in William Archer's play The Green Goddess. With George Arliss at the 39th Street Theatre in August 1921 he appeared as Charles in The Nightcap. Director Henry King engaged him as the leading man in the 1923 film The White Sister, opposite Lillian Gish. He was an immediate success. Thereafter Colman virtually abandoned the stage for film. He became a very popular silent film star in both romantic and adventure films, among them The Dark Angel (1925), Stella Dallas (1926), Beau Geste (1926) and The Winning of Barbara Worth (1926). His dark hair and eyes and his athletic and riding ability (he did most of his own stunts until late in his career) led reviewers to describe him as a "Valentino type". He was often cast in similar, exotic roles.[7] Towards the end of the silent era, Colman was teamed with Hungarian actress Vilma Bánky under Samuel Goldwyn; the two were a popular film team rivalling Greta Garbo and John Gilbert. Although he was a huge success in silent films, he was unable to capitalize on one of his chief assets until the advent of the talking picture, "his beautifully modulated and cultured voice." also described as "a bewitching, finely-modulated, resonant voice." Colman was often viewed as a suave English gentleman, whose voice embodied chivalry and mirrored the image of a "Stereotypical English gentleman." Commenting on Colman's appeal, English film critic David Shipman stated that Colman was "'the dream lover - calm, dignified, trustworthy. Although he was a lithe figure in adventure stories, his glamour - which was genuine - came from his respectability; he was an aristocratic figure without being aloof.'" His first major talkie success was in 1930, when he was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actor for two roles – Condemned and Bulldog Drummond. He thereafter appeared in a number of notable films: Raffles in 1930, The Masquerader in 1933, Clive of India and A Tale of Two Cities in 1935, Under Two Flags, The Prisoner of Zenda and Lost Horizon in 1937, If I Were King in 1938 and Random Harvest and The Talk of the Town in 1942. He won the Best Actor Oscar in 1948 for A Double Life. He next starred in a screwball comedy, 1950's Champagne for Caesar. However, Colman died and the film became a British production starring George Sanders, who married Colman's widow, Benita Hume. Fame Colman has been mentioned in many novels, but he is specifically mentioned in Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man because of his charming, well-known voice. The main character of this novel says that he wishes he could have a voice like Colman's because it is charming, and relates the voice to that of a gentleman or a man from Esquire magazine. Colman was indeed very well known for his voice. Encyclopædia Britannica says that Colman had a "resonant, mellifluous speaking voice with a unique, pleasing timbre". Along with his charming voice, Colman had a very confident performing manner that helped make him a major star of sound films. Radio and television Beginning in 1945, Colman made many guest appearances on The Jack Benny Program on radio, alongside his second wife, stage and screen actress Benita Hume, who he married in 1938. Their comedy work as Benny's perpetually exasperated next-door neighbors led to their own radio comedy The Halls of Ivy from 1950 to 1952, created by Fibber McGee & Molly mastermind Don Quinn, on which the Colmans played the literate, charming president of a middle American college and his former-actress wife. Colman was also the host and occasional star of the syndicated anthology Favorite Story, (1946-1949). Of note was his narration and portrayal of Scrooge in a 1948 production of "A Christmas Carol". Colman died on 19 May 1958, aged 67, from acute emphysema in Santa Barbara, California, and was interred in the Santa Barbara Cemetery. He had a daughter, Juliet Benita Colman (born 1944), by his second wife Benita Hume.[17] Awards and honours Colman was nominated three times for the Academy Award for Best Actor. At the 3rd Academy Awards ceremony he received a single nomination for his work in two films; Bulldog Drummond (1929) and Condemned (1929). He was nominated again for Random Harvest (1942), before winning for A Double Life (1947), where he played the role of Anthony John, an actor playing Othello who comes to identify with the character. He also won the Golden Globe award for Best Actor in 1947 for his role in A Double Life. In 2002, Colman's Oscar statuette was sold at auction by Christie's for US$174,500.[18] Colman is a recipient of the George Eastman Award, given by George Eastman House for distinguished contribution to the art of film. Colman has two stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in Los Angeles, one for motion pictures at 6801 Hollywood Blvd. and one for television at 1623 Vine Street. He is the subject of a biography written by his daughter Juliet Benita Colman in 1975, "Ronald Colman: A Very Private Person".

Biography Picture Titian haired Greer Garson was one of the most popular actress during the 1940s. Unlike most young actresses beginning their careers in Hollywood, Garson was already in her mid-thirties when she made her first film. Her elegant and intelligent demeanor struck a cord with the movie going public and her popularity soared at MGM. She possessed a beautiful speaking voice and her refined acting style earned her six Academy Award nominations. She also appeared in five films that earned Best Picture nominations. She was born Eileen Evelyn Greer Garson on September 29, 1904 in London although she always claimed that she was born in Ireland in 1908. Her father died during an appendectomy when Greer was only two. Greer's mother, Nina (who was from Scotland) provided a living for them by managing townhouses that her husband had owned. Greer was a sickly child, suffering from bronchitis, and spent most of her winters in bed. She was not one to be idle with discouragement, however, and she passed the time by reading and studying. Summers were spent at her grandparent's home in Ireland and it was there in the green countryside that her imagination flourished. She did not have any clear-cut career goals but her mother felt that her future lay in academia due to Greer's intelligence and book sense. She entered the University of London in 1921 and spent five years there, earning a Bachelor's degree in 1926. It was at the university that she discovered the theater and a passion for acting. Following graduation, she worked in a research library for an advertising agency and participated in local theater productions whenever she could. In 1931, Greer was accepted at the Birmingham Repertory Company and she quit her job at the ad agency. She performed in small roles in a variety of productions for two years before a long bout with pneumonia forced the company to terminate her contract. While recuperating, Greer was courted by a childhood friend, Alec Snelson, who eventually proposed to her. She accepted due to the advice from family and friends although deep down inside she knew that she did not love him. The marriage proved to be disastrous. Snelson took Greer on a honeymoon trip to Germany where she learned that he was a jealous and extremely possessive man. Snelson traveled on to India where he would work, but Greer, who was ill again, stayed with her mother in London. It would be a year before she saw Snelson again and they would never spend any more time together. He refused a divorce and it would be years later, when Greer was pursuing a successful career in Hollywood, before the divorce would be final. Greer returned to acting when her health improved. She eventually landed a role in a play with Laurence Olivier called "The Golden Arrow" and it proved to be her breakthrough. She was suddenly very popular throughout London and play offers poured in. She acted in a variety of plays, ranging from Shakespeare to costume dramas, but none of them were huge hits. In 1937, while performing in a play called Old Music, she was noticed by MGM mogul Louis B. Mayer, would was in London seeking new talent. Greer was actually not that interested in a film career because she felt that she did not photograph well. However, the lure of money and a nice climate for her mother, convinced her to change her mind. In September of 1937, she signed a seven year contract with MGM. See Greer Garson: Obituary.

Film Director Mervyn LeRoy Dead at 86 SEP. 14, 1987 1 TIMES STAFF WRITER Oscar-winning producer-director Mervyn LeRoy, the one-time San Francisco newsboy who set the tone of Hollywood movie making for 40 years with such films as “Little Caesar,” “The Wizard of Oz,” “Quo Vadis” and “Gypsy"--and co-founded Hollywood Park race track--died Sunday at his home in Beverly Hills. He was 86, and members of the family said heart ailments had kept him bedridden for the last six months. “Mervyn went peacefully, in his sleep,” said Kitty LeRoy, his wife of 41 years. “His heart just gave way. He was dead when I came to wake him at 8 a.m. It was a good kind of death after a good kind of life. ‘Good and Sweet Man’ “None of us could have wanted anything better for a good and sweet man. . . .” In addition to his wife, he leaves a daughter, Linda Jacklow, a son, Warner LeRoy, and five grandchildren. Funeral services are pending. One of the most successful products of the pre-World War II studio system, LeRoy’s career was a reflection of the strengths of that system--while betraying almost none of its weaknesses. He had been a full-fledged director at First National (later Warner Bros.) for only three years when his handling of “Little Caesar” and “I Am a Fugitive From a Chain Gang” boosted Edward G. Robinson and Paul Muni to stardom--and set the tone of fast-paced toughness that dominated Warners’ products for a decade. Later, at MGM, he presided over a series of lush, romantic vehicles that enhanced the careers of such stars as Vivien Leigh and Greer Garson, while displaying a total mastery of such diverse forms as musicals, historical spectaculars, action films and even children’s fantasy. He won an Oscar in 1942 for directing “Random Harvest,” received an honorary Oscar three years later for producing a short subject, “The House I Live In,” and was selected for the Irving Thalberg Memorial career achievement award in 1975. “And through it all,” studio mogul Jack Warner told a magazine interviewer in the 1960s, “he never seemed to have a box-office disaster. Maybe one or two that didn’t do as well as they might--but no disasters. And mixed in there, several of the biggest winners of all time. “Add the fact that you can’t find anyone in town to call him a son of a b****--and you’ve got a real giant. “There’s nobody like him and never will be. . . .” In addition, LeRoy helped found the Hollywood Turf Club--which built Hollywood Park--five decades ago and served for three decades as president of the corporation that controlled the race track. It was LeRoy who introduced Ronald Reagan to then-actress Nancy Davis. In a statement issued Sunday by the White House, the President and Mrs. Reagan called him “a special part of our lives. “It was he who introduced us. And he was always a precious friend,” the statement said. “Mervyn LeRoy was one of the pillars of the entertainment industry, responsible for some of the finest motion pictures ever. He was one of the greatest directors and producers of all time, knowing exactly how a scene should be and knowing just what to say to get his actors to make it right.” “He had a touch that was like no other,” Lane Curtiz said in a 1981 appreciation. “The name ‘Mervyn LeRoy’ on the film meant that your intellect was not likely to be assaulted and your sense of fitness would emerge intact. There was an essential rightness about all that he did. “You knew the film he made would be as decent and elegant as the man himself.”