Come to the Stable

Loretta Young (Actor) .. Sister Margaret

Born: January 16, 1913
Died: August 12, 2000
Birthplace: Salt Lake City, Utah, United States

Trivia: Born Gretchen Young, her family moved to Hollywood and she began appearing (at age four) as a child extra in movies, as did her sisters (one of whom later became known as actress Sally Blane). At 14, she got a small supporting role in Naughty but Nice (1927), which led to a screen contract. She moved quickly from teenager to ingénue to leading lady roles, appearing in many films and successfully making the transition to the sound era. By the mid-'30s, she was an established star, usually cast in decorative roles in routine programmers. For her work in The Farmer's Daughter (1947) she won the Best Actress Oscar, and was nominated again for Come to the Stable (1949). After a consistently busy screen career of 25 years, she retired from films in 1953 to host the TV series The Loretta Young Show, a weekly half-hour teleplay; she appeared in about half of the show's episodes, winning three Emmy Awards. Since the early '60s, she has devoted most of her energies to Catholic charities. She has been married twice. In 1930, she made headlines when, at age 17, she eloped with actor Grant Withers. However, the marriage was annulled after a year. She later married producer and writer Thomas Lewis, from whom she eventually separated. She authored the memoir The Things I Had to Learn (1961). After NBC unlawfully broadcast her TV shows abroad, she sued the network in 1972 and won 600,000 dollars.

Celeste Holm (Actor) .. Sister Scholastica

Born: April 29, 1917
Died: July 15, 2012
Birthplace: New York, New York, United States

Trivia: American actress Celeste Holm made her first stage appearance in 1936 with a Pennsylvania stock company. Sophisticated and poised beyond her years, Holm was cast shortly afterward in a touring company of the ultra-chic Clare Boothe Luce comedy The Women, then played New York in such high-profile productions as The Time of Your Life. Rodgers and Hammerstein cast her as soubrette Ado Annie in Oklahoma! in 1943; both the production itself and Annie's show-stopping song "I Cain't Say No" affirmed Holm's future stardom. Following her film debut in Three Little Girls in Blue (1946), she was cast by her studio, 20th Century-Fox, in the role of the love-starved fashion editor in the prestige feature Gentlemen's Agreement (1947), for which she won an Academy Award. The important role of Bette Davis' understanding friend in another Oscar-winner, All About Eve (1950), has immortalized Holm amongst the film cultists. Stage, nightclub and television assignments followed (she starred in the short-lived 1950s sitcom Honestly, Celeste), and from the late 1950s onward, Holm was more at home on stage than in films. Her performance in the touring company of Mame won Holm the Sara Siddons Award -- coincidentally the same award presented to the title character at the beginning of All About Eve. Always choosy about her roles, Holm remained active through the early 2000s whenever a good part struck her fancy; one of her most frequently rebroadcast assignments was as a custody court judge in an early-1980s episode of Archie Bunker's Place and she appeared in several episodes of Touched By an Angel. She died in 2012 at the age of 95.

Elsa Lanchester (Actor) .. Amelia Potts

Born: October 28, 1902
Died: December 26, 1986

Trivia: Eccentric, high-voiced British comedienne/actress Elsa Lanchester started her career as a modern dancer, appearing with Isadora Duncan. Lanchester can be seen bringing unique and usually humorous interpretations to roles in The Private Life of Henry VIII (1933), opposite husband Charles Laughton; The Bride of Frankenstein (1934), where she appears both as a subdued Mary Shelley and a hissing bride; David Copperfield and Naughty Marietta (both 1935); Tales of Manhattan (1942) and Forever and a Day (1943), both with Laughton; Lassie Come Home (1943), in which she is unusually subdued as the mother; The Bishop's Wife (1947); The Inspector General and The Secret Garden (1949); and Come to the Stable (1949), for which she was nominated for an Oscar. She and Laughton are riotous together in Witness for the Prosecution (1957), for which she was also Oscar-nominated, and she also appeared in Bell, Book and Candle (1958) and the Disney films Mary Poppins (1964), as the departing nanny Katie Nanna, and in That Darn Cat (1965). One of her best late performances was in Murder by Death (1976). Lanchester was also an actress at London's Old Vic, an outlandish singer, and a nightclub performer; she co-starred on The John Forsythe Show (1965-66), and was a regular on Nanny and the Professor in 1971.

Hugh Marlowe (Actor) .. Robert Masen

Born: January 30, 1911
Died: May 02, 1982

Trivia: It's quite possible that Hugh Marlowe might have been limited to film comedy roles had he retained his given name of Hugh Herbert Hipple, but it's not likely that he would have garnered many laughs. A radio announcer and stage performer, Marlowe had a brief leading-man filing in the late 1930s, but was more effective from the mid-1940s onward as a second lead and character actor. His stiff, humorless demeanor served him well in many second parts at 20th Century-Fox in the 1950s. Director Howard Hawks cleverly exploited Marlowe's solemnity by casting the actor as foil to the childish antics of "fountain of youth" partaker Cary Grant in Monkey Business (1952). Marlowe also showed up in several science fiction films, notably The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951), Earth vs. the Flying Saucers (1956) and World Without End (1956), wherein his somber approach lent a measure of credence to the proceedings. On television, Hugh Marlowe played Ellery Queen (a role he'd previously essayed on radio) in a 1954 syndicated series, and was the last of four actors to portray Jim Matthews on the NBC daytime drama Another World.

Thomas Gomez (Actor) .. Luigi Rossi

Born: July 10, 1905
Died: June 18, 1971

Trivia: Awarded a scholarship to a prestigious New York drama school at 17, Thomas Gomez first stepped on the Broadway stage as a cadet in Walter Hampden's Cyrano de Bergerac. He joined Alfred Lunt's company in the 1930s, playing character parts of varying sizes. He also made a pioneering television appearance in a 1940 broadcast of a long-forgotten playlet called "A Game of Chess". After garnering good reviews for his performance in the 1942 play Flowers of Virtue, Gomez was signed to play a megalomanic Nazi spy in his first film, Sherlock Holmes and the Secret Weapon (1942). By virtue of his weight, his raspy voice and his baleful appearance, Gomez was often cast as heavies, though he evinced a preference for characters with "some rascality, warmth and dimension." Of Spanish heritage, Gomez refused to play Latin characters unless they could be presented "with sympathy, or at least with humanity." In 1947, Gomez was Oscar-nominated for just such a role in Ride the Pink Horse. Amidst his dramatic roles, Gomez proved a worthy foil to such comedians as Bob Hope and Abbott and Costello. Thomas Gomez' extensive television work included the part of a most courtly devil in the 1959 Twilight Zone episode "Escape Clause," Soviet functionary Malenkov in the like-vintage Playhouse 90 drama "The Plot to Kill Stalin," and a Minnesota Fats-type pool player in a well-circulated 1965 Mister Ed installment; he also played Pasquale in the 1953 TV revival of radio's Life With Luigi.

Dorothy Patrick (Actor) .. Kitty

Born: January 01, 1921
Died: May 31, 1987

Trivia: She was billing herself under her given name of Dorothy Davis when she made a name for herself as the "Chesterfield Girl." The well-proportioned young photographer's model won a Gateway to Hollywood contest in 1939, but opted instead for a marriage to star hockey player Lynn Patrick. When she finally did begin making films in 1946, the blonde beauty had changed her professional and personal name to Dorothy Patrick. After a brief flurry of stardom in such Republic programmers as Blonde Bandit (1949) and Destination Big House (1950), Dorothy Patrick settled into decorative walk-on roles in major releases like The Bad and the Beautiful (1952) and Singin' in the Rain (1952), before retiring in the late '50s.

Basil Ruysdael (Actor) .. Bishop

Born: January 01, 1888
Died: October 10, 1960

Trivia: Of Russian descent, American actor Basil Ruysdael was a successful opera singer in the 'teens and twenties. Firmly based in New York, Ruysdael made his first screen appearance in the Marx Brothers Astoria-filmed The Cocoanuts (1929). His portrayal of Detective Hennessy in this film was ordinary enough, save for his hilarious vocal rendition of "Tale of a Shirt," an elaborate parody of "The Toreador Song" from Bizet's Carmen. Ruysdael remained in Manhattan for nearly two decades after Cocoanuts, working on the stage, in radio, and in the occasional film short. He moved to California in 1949, showing up in no fewer than six films during his first year in Hollywood. Active until his death in 1960, Ruysdael was invariably cast as orotund authority figures: military officers, judges, governors, college deans. During the early 1950s, Basil Ruysdael was the radio and TV spokesperson for Lucky Strike cigarettes, imparting in pear-shaped tones the vital message "L.S.M.F.T....Lucky Strikes Means Fine Tobacco."

Dooley Wilson (Actor) .. Anthony James

Born: April 03, 1886
Died: May 30, 1953

Trivia: African-American actor/musician Dooley Wilson led a very popular band from 1919 through 1930, in which he soloed on the drums. He shied away from film work until 1942, when he was signed for a contract at Paramount Pictures. At the same time, Warner Bros. was looking for a black actor to play Sam, the philosophical pianist at Rick's Cafe Americain in their upcoming production Casablanca. Wilson won out over top contender Clarence Muse (who'd later play Sam on a '50s TV adaptation of Casablanca), but his services cost Warners dearly. Though Wilson received only $500 per week, the cost Paramount imposed on Warners' for the loanout resulted in Wilson being the most expensive of Casablanca's supporting cast. The film represented perhaps Wilson's best movie work, a role that immortalized him to filmgoers of future years--even though he was never really able to play "As Time Goes By," and had to have his keyboard worked dubbed in by Warners' staffer Elliot Carpenter. Few of Wilson's subsequent film appearances even approached the caliber of Casablanca, even though he enjoyed himself as part of a screen romantic triangle with Lena Horne and Bill "Bojangles" Robinson in the all-black film musical Stormy Weather. Dooley Wilson's last major acting stint was as Bill Jackson, the erstwhile boyfriend of maid Ethel Waters (and later Louise Beavers) on the early-TV sitcom Beulah.

Regis Toomey (Actor) .. Monsignor Talbot

Born: August 13, 1898
Died: October 12, 1991

Trivia: Taking up dramatics while attending the University of Pittsburgh, Regis Toomey extended this interest into a profitable career as a stock and Broadway actor. He specialized in singing roles until falling victim to acute laryngitis while touring England in George M. Cohan's Little Nellie Kelly. In 1929, Toomey made his talking-picture bow in Alibi, where his long, drawn-out climactic death scene attracted both praise and damnation; he'd later claim that, thanks to the maudlin nature of this scene, producers were careful to kill him off in the first or second reel in his subsequent films. Only moderately successful as a leading man, Toomey was far busier once he removed his toupee and became a character actor. A lifelong pal of actor Dick Powell, Regis Toomey was cast in prominent recurring roles in such Powell-created TV series of the 1950s and 1960s as Richard Diamond, Dante's Inferno, and Burke's Law.

Mike Mazurki (Actor) .. Heavy Man

Born: December 25, 1907
Died: December 09, 1990

Trivia: Though typecast as a dull-witted brute, Austrian-born Mike Mazurki was the holder of a Bachelor of Arts degree from Manhattan College. During the 1930s, he was a professional football and basketball player, as well as a heavyweight wrestler. His clock-stopping facial features enabled Mazurki to pick up bit and supporting roles in such films as The Shanghai Gesture (1941) and Dr.Renault's Secret (1943). Larger parts came his way after his indelible portrayal of psychotic brute Moose Malloy in 1944's Murder My Sweet. His trademarked slurred speech was reportedly the result of an injury to his Adam's apple, incurred during his wrestling days. While villainy was his bread and butter, Mazurki enjoyed working with comedians like Jerry Lewis and Lou Costello; he was particularly fond of the latter because the diminutive Costello treated him with dignity and respect, defending big Mike against people who treated the hulking actor like a big dumb lug. Mazurki's many TV appearances included a regular role on the short-lived 1971 sitcom The Chicago Teddy Bears. In 1976, Mike Mazurki was effectively cast as a kindly trapper in the family-oriented "four-waller" Challenge to Be Free, which ended up a cash cow for the veteran actor.

Henri Letondal (Actor) .. Father Barraud

Born: January 01, 1902
Died: January 01, 1955

Walter S. Baldwin (Actor) .. Jarman

Born: January 01, 1887
Died: January 27, 1972

Trivia: Bespectacled American actor Walter Baldwin was already a venerable stage performer at the time he appeared in his first picture, 1940's Angels over Broadway. With a pinched Midwestern countenance that enabled him to portray taciturn farmers, obsequious grocery store clerks and the occasional sniveling coward, Baldwin was a familiar (if often unbilled) presence in Hollywood films for three decades. Possibly Baldwin's most recognizable role was as Mr. Parrish in Sam Goldwyn's multi-Oscar winning The Best Years of Our Lives (1946), for which the actor received thirteenth billing. He also had a prime opportunity to quiver and sweat as a delivery man whose truck is commandeered by homicidal prison escapee Robert Middleton in The Desperate Hours (1955). Seemingly ageless, Walter Baldwin made his last film appearance three years before his death in 1969's Hail Hero.

Walter Baldwin (Actor) .. Jarman

Born: January 02, 1889

Tim Huntley (Actor) .. Mr. Thompson

Virginia Kelly (Actor) .. Mrs. Thompson

Louis Jean Heydt (Actor) .. Mr. Newman

Born: April 17, 1905
Died: January 29, 1960

Trivia: It was once said of the versatile Louis Jean Heydt that he played everything except a woman. Born in New Jersey, the blonde, chiseled-featured Heydt attended Worcester Academy and Dartmouth College. He briefly served as a reporter on the New YorkWorld before opting for a stage career. Among his Broadway appearances was the lead in Preston Sturges' Strictly Dishonorable, establishing a long working relationship with Sturges that would extend to the latter's film productions The Great McGinty (1940) and The Great Moment (1942). Heydt's film characters often seemed destined to be killed off before the fourth reel, either because they were hiding something or because they'd just stumbled upon important information that could prove damaging to the villains. He was knocked off in the first three minutes of Charlie Chan at Treasure Island (1939) and was shot full of holes just before revealing an important plot point to Humphrey Bogart in The Big Sleep (1946) (this after an unforgettable interrogation scene in which Heydt is unable to look Bogart straight in the eye). Heydt's many other assignments include the hungry soldier in Gone with the Wind (1939), Mentor Graham in Abe Lincoln in Illinois (1940), a frustrated general practitioner in Tortilla Flat (1941), a squadron leader in Gung Ho (1943) and a loquacious rural family man in Come to the Stable (1949). Our Gang fans will recall Heydt as Bobby Blake's stepfather in the MGM "Gang" shorts Dad For a Day (1939) and All About Hash (1940). A ubiquitous TV actor, Louis Jean Heydt was seen on many anthology series, and as a semi-regular on the 1958 syndicated adventure weekly MacKenzie's Raiders.

Pati Behrs (Actor) .. Nun

Nan Boardman (Actor) .. Nun

Louise Colembet (Actor) .. Nun

Georgette Duane (Actor) .. Nun

Yvette Reynard (Actor) .. Nun

Loulette Sablon (Actor) .. Nun

Ian Macdonald (Actor) .. Mr. Matthews

Born: June 28, 1914

Trivia: Flint-eyed American character actor Ian MacDonald began appearing in films in 1941. The war interrupted MacDonald's screen career, but he was back at his post in 1947. Nearly always a villain on-screen, his most celebrated role was Frank Miller, the vindictive gunman who motivates the plot of High Noon (1952). Likewise memorable were his portrayals of Bo Creel in White Heat (1949) and Geronimo in Taza, Son of Cochise (1954). In films until 1959, Ian MacDonald also occasionally dabbled in screenwriting.

Jean Prescott (Actor) .. Mrs. Matthews

Gordon Gebert (Actor) .. Willie

Gary Pagett (Actor) .. Johnnie

Born: February 26, 1941

Nolan Leary (Actor) .. Station Master

Born: January 01, 1888
Died: January 01, 1987

Trivia: American actor/playwright Nolan Leary made his stage debut in 1911; 60 years later, he was still appearing in small film and TV roles. From 1943 onward, Leary showed up in some 150 movies, mostly in bit roles. One of his juicier screen assignments was as the deaf-mute father of Lon Chaney James Cagney in Man of 1000 Faces (1958). In 1974, Nolan Leary showed up briefly as Ted Baxter's prodigal father on The Mary Tyler Moore Show.

Wallace Brown (Actor) .. Sheldon

Wally Brown (Actor) .. Sheldon

Born: October 09, 1904
Died: November 13, 1961

Trivia: Wally Brown built up his reputation in vaudeville as a fast-talking (albeit low-pressure) monologist. In 1942, Brown decided to settle down in Hollywood with a contract at RKO Radio Pictures, making his movie-debut in Petticoat Larceny (1943). When RKO decided to emulate the success of Universal's Abbott and Costello, the studio teamed Brown with short, stocky Alan Carney for a series of energetic but undistinguished "B" pictures, the first of which was the Buck Privates wannabe Adventures of a Rookie (1943). Brown and Carney used the same character names (Brown played Jerry Miles, while Carney played Mike Strager) in each of their starring films--which is just as well, since the movies are virtually impossible to tell apart. Arguably the team's best film was 1945's Zombies on Broadway. RKO folded Brown and Carney in 1946, after which both actors continued working in films as solo character performers; they would be reunited, after a fashion, in the 1961 Disney film The Absent Minded Professor. Wally Brown spent most of his last decade as a prolific TV guest star; his last performance, telecast posthumously, was an appearance on My Three Sons.

Danny Jackson (Actor) .. George

Dan Jackson (Actor) .. George

Edwin Max (Actor) .. Whitey

Born: January 01, 1908
Died: January 01, 1980

Trivia: Character actor, onscreen from the '40s; aka Edwin Miller.

Russ Clark (Actor) .. Policeman

Robert Foulk (Actor) .. Policeman

Born: January 01, 1908
Died: January 01, 1989

Trivia: Starting his Hollywood career in or around 1951, American actor Robert Foulk was alternately passive and authoritative in such westerns as Last of the Badmen (1957), The Tall Stranger (1957), The Left-Handed Gun (1958) and Cast a Long Shadow (1958). He remained a frontiersmen for his year-long stint as bartender Joe Kingston on the Joel McCrea TV shoot-em-up Wichita Town (1959) (though he reverted to modern garb as the Anderson family's next-door neighbor in the '50s sitcom Father Knows Best). In non-westerns, Foulk usually played professional men, often uniformed. Some of his parts were fleeting enough not to have any designation but "character bit" (vide The Love Bug [1968]), but otherwise there was no question Foulk was in charge: as a doctor in Tammy and the Doctor (1963), a police official in Bunny O'Hare (1971) or a railroad conductor in Emperor of the North (1973). Robert Foulk was given extensive screen time in the Bowery Boys' Hold That Hypnotist (1957), as the title character; and in Robin and the Seven Hoods (1964), playing straight as Sheriff Glick opposite such "Merrie Men" as Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin Sammy Davis Jr. and Bing Crosby.

Marion Martin (Actor) .. Manicurist

Born: June 07, 1909
Died: August 13, 1985

Trivia: The brassiest platinum blonde of them all, Marion Martin turned up in numerous films of the 1930s and 1940s, usually only for a moment or two but long enough to make an impression. Reportedly hailing from Philadelphia's Main Line, Martin had made her Broadway bow in a 1927 revival of Lombardi Ltd. but was rather more noticeable in burlesque where she vowed 'em with a voluptuous body and with a throaty singing voice to match. She began popping up in films around 1935 and went on to play a host of characters named Blondie, Fifi, Lola, and Dixie, rarely awarded a last name and usually only a line or two. But she almost always made the line count, as in Sinner in Paradise (1938), when he-man Bruce Cabot introduces himself with a terse "the name is Malone." "Does it make you happy," she quips, with that bored look she had come to favor. Martin's screen career lasted well into the 1950s but by then her once-statuesque build had turned quite blowsy. In her later years as the wife of a Southern California physician, she occasionally expressed a desire to return to show business but no projects materialized.

06:00 am - 08:00 am, Wednesday, December 3 on WBXI Movies (47.4)