Loving You

Elvis Presley (Actor) .. Deke Rivers

Born: January 08, 1935
Died: August 16, 1977
Birthplace: Tupelo, Mississippi, United States

Trivia: One of the all-time great rock & rollers and an unprecedented, phenomenal show-business success, Elvis Presley also starred in 31 consecutive big-screen hits. He was among the Top Ten box-office attractions in 1957 and from 1961-1966. When he was 13, he moved to Memphis with his family, going on to work as an usher in a movie theater and a truck driver. Presley toured locally as a singer (billed as "The Hillbilly Cat") and recorded several singles for a local label; he was signed by RCA in 1955 and became an instant star, racking up one hit single after another. On-stage, he gyrated his midsection seductively, leading him to acquire the nickname "Elvis the Pelvis." His concert appearances inspired hysteria among his young female fans, and he was considered by many to be a negative moral influence. However, Presley maintained his clean-cut, "mama's boy" image and soon had fans from every generation. He began appearing in films in 1956, debuting in Love Me Tender. Never successful among critics, his films were designed around his casual, good-ol'-boy characters, successful flirtations with his pretty female co-stars, and numerous songs. And each film made money, altogether grossing more than 150 million dollars. After Presley served a tour in the army, his singing career declined in the early '60s, when the Beatles and other new groups dominated the airwaves; he continued making successful films until 1969 (his last was Change of Habit with Mary Tyler Moore, who played a nun). He also appeared in two concert documentaries, That's the Way It Is (1970) and Elvis on Tour (1972). In the early '70s, after a decade of few personal appearances, Presley began doing live entertainment again, and his drawing power was as strong as ever. However, he began neglecting his health and gained large amounts of weight. He died of a prescription-drug-induced heart attack in 1977, after which his cult of personality grew to enormous proportions. Presley is perhaps more popular in death than he was during his life.

Lizabeth Scott (Actor) .. Glenda

Born: September 29, 1922
Died: January 31, 2015

Trivia: Born into the Czech ghetto in Scranton, Pennsylvania, Lizabeth Scott attended the Alvienne School of Drama in New York and began her career in stock. Scott's first break came when she was cast as Tallulah Bankhead's understudy in Broadway's The Skin of Our Teeth (1942); meanwhile, she also worked as a fashion model. Starmaker Hal Wallis spotted her, and she did well in a screen test, leading to her film debut in 1945. She went on to play alluring leads in a number of films throughout the next decade, hyped by her studio as another Lauren Bacall or Veronica Lake. There was speculation that Scott would marry Wallis, but this never occurred, and he dropped her option in 1957, effectively ending her movie career. In 1955 she sued Confidential magazine over its allegations concerning her sexual preferences. She appeared in her last film, Pulp (1972), with Michael Caine. Scott died in 2015, at age 92.

Wendell Corey (Actor) .. Walker `Tex' Warner

Born: March 20, 1914
Died: November 09, 1968

Trivia: The son of Congregationalist minister, Wendell Corey was pursuing a brief career as a washing machine salesman when he showed up at the rehearsals for a community play to pick up a friend. Invited by the director to read for a part, Corey found he liked performing, and eventually turned pro in summer stock. After a string of Broadway flops, Corey finally scored a success in the original 1945 production of Elmer Rice's Dream Girl. Entering films with a Paramount contract in 1946, the incisive, sharp-eyed Corey spent the next fifteen years alternating between leads (File on Thelma Jordon), "best friend" supporting characters (Rear Window), and, most effectively, villains (The Big Knife). On TV Corey starred in the weekly series Harbor Command (1957) and The Eleventh Hour (1961-63). Intensely interested in politics, Corey was once the president of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences and the director of the Screen Actors, and served on the Santa Monica City Council; he ran for but did not win California's Republican congressional seat.

Dolores Hart (Actor) .. Susan

Born: January 01, 1938

Trivia: Dolores Hart was raised by her grandparents in Chicago. Not yet out of her teens, Hart was discovered by producer Hal Wallis, who cast her as Elvis' new leading lady in both Loving You (1957) and King Creole (1959). She appeared on Broadway in 1959's The Pleasure of His Company, then returned to Hollywood for her best remembered film, Where the Boys Are (1960). Her pious, reverent comments to interviewers while filming 1961's Francis of Assisi may have seemed like so much hype to Tinseltown cynics; but as it turned out, Hart's religiosity was very real. In 1963, Dolores Hart gave up her $50,000-per-picture career to enter a Benedictine order of nuns in Connecticut; after several years' probation as sister Judith, she matriculated to "Mother Dolores," which she remains to this day.

James Gleason (Actor) .. Carl

Born: May 23, 1886
Died: April 12, 1959

Trivia: Character actor James Gleason usually played tough-talking, world-weary guys with a secret heart-of-gold. He is easily recognized for his tendency to talk out of the side of his mouth. Gleason's parents were actors, and after serving in the Spanish-American War, Gleason joined their stock company in Oakland, California. His career was interrupted by service in World War I, following which he began to appear on Broadway. He debuted onscreen in 1922, but didn't begin to appear regularly in films until 1928. Meanwhile, during the '20s he also wrote a number of plays and musicals, several of which were later made into films. In the early sound era, Gleason collaborated on numerous scripts as a screenwriter or dialogue specialist; he also directed one film, Hot Tip (1935). As an actor, he appeared in character roles in over 150 films, playing a wide range of hard-boiled (and often semi-comic) urban characters, including detectives, reporters, marine sergeants, gamblers, fight managers, and heroes' pals. In a series of films in the '30s, he had a recurring lead role as slow-witted police inspector Oscar Piper. James Gleason was married to actress Lucille Webster Gleason; their son was actor Russell Gleason.

Paul Smith (Actor) .. Skeeter

Ralph Dumke (Actor) .. Tallman

Born: January 01, 1899
Died: January 01, 1964

Ken Becker (Actor) .. Wayne

Born: December 23, 1931

Trivia: American actor Ken Becker played supporting roles in a number of Hal Wallis-Elvis Presley features. He then went on to work as a technician on network television.

Jana Lund (Actor) .. Daisy

Born: August 28, 1933

The Jordanaires (Actor) .. Themselves

Yvonne Lime (Actor) .. Sally

Born: April 07, 1938

Skip Young (Actor) .. Teddy

Born: March 14, 1930

Vernon Rich (Actor) .. Harry Taylor

Born: January 01, 1905
Died: January 01, 1978

Grace Hayle (Actor) .. Mrs. Gunderson

Born: January 01, 1888
Died: March 20, 1963

Trivia: American actress Grace Hayle spent most of her screen time playing bejeweled dowagers, huffy department store customers and aggressive lady journalists. Hayle proved a worthy Margaret Dumont type in Wheeler and Woolsey's Diplomaniacs (1933), supplied laughs as a ruddy-faced cyclist in The Women (1939) and played a most unlikely rhumba dancer in Two-Faced Woman (1940). One of her few credited roles was the long-suffering Madame Napaloni in Chaplin's The Great Dictator (1940). Grace Hayle remained in Hollywood long enough to appear in an early Elvis Presley film.

Dick Ryan (Actor) .. Mack

Born: August 25, 1896
Died: August 12, 1969

Trivia: Actor Dick Ryan made his first movie appearance in Monogram's Smark Alecks (1942), and his last in Paramount's Summer and Smoke (1961), an artistic stretch if ever there was one. Ryan usually plays doctors, judges, and prison wardens, with a few beat cops and bartenders thrown in. Accordingly, most of his screen characters were identified by their professions rather than by proper names. One of Dick Ryan's larger assignments was in the 1957 Rowan and Martin vehicle Once Upon a Horse, which nostalgically featured several Hollywood old-timers in choice roles.

Gaylord "Steve" Pendleton (Actor) .. O'Shea

Born: September 16, 1908

Trivia: The younger brother of comic actor Nat Pendleton, Gaylord "Steve" Pendleton entered films in 1923. He was usually cast as collegiate types (undergrads, military school cadets), with a few weaklings and villains thrown in. Fans of Bob Hope and Bing Crosby will remember Pendleton as tuxedoed "other man" Gordon Wycott in Road to Singapore (1940). Active in films until 1960, Gaylord Pendleton was generally confined to minor roles, with a handful of leads and second leads in serials and comedy two-reelers.

Sydney Chatton (Actor) .. Grew

Born: May 06, 1918

Jack Latham (Actor) .. TV Announcer

William Forrest (Actor) .. Mr. Jessup

Born: January 01, 1904
Died: January 01, 1989

Trivia: Baby boomers will recall silver-maned actor William Forrest as Major Swanson, the brusque but fair-minded commander of Fort Apache in the 1950s TV series The Adventures of Rin Tin Tin. This character was but one of many military officers portrayed by the prolific Forrest since the late 1930s. Most of his film appearances were fleeting, and few were billed, but Forrest managed to pack more authority into 30 seconds' film time than many bigger stars were able to manage in an hour and a half. Outside of Rin Tin Tin, William Forrest is probably most familiar as the sinister fifth-columnist Martin Crane in the 1943 Republic serial The Masked Marvel.

Irene Tedrow (Actor) .. Mrs. Jessup

Born: August 03, 1907
Died: March 10, 1995

Trivia: Supporting actress Irene Tedrow spent most of her 60-year career on stage, but she also had considerable experience in feature films and on television. Slender and possessing an austere beauty, Tedrow was well suited for the rather prim and moral characters she most often played. After establishing herself on stage in the early '30s, she made her film debut in 1937. She gained fame during the 1940s playing Mrs. Janet Archer in the Meet Corliss Archer film series. She kept the role in the subsequent television series. She played Mrs. Elkins on Dennis the Menace between 1959 and 1963. In 1976, Tedrow earned an Emmy for her performance in Eleanor and Franklin.

Hal K. Dawson (Actor) .. Lieutenant

Born: January 01, 1896
Died: February 17, 1987

Trivia: Sad-eyed, mustachioed actor Hal K. Dawson appeared in several Broadway productions of the 1920s. During the run of Machinal, Dawson was the roommate of fellow actor Clark Gable; throughout his later Hollywood career, Gable saw to it that Dawson was given parts in such films as Libeled Lady (1936) and To Please a Lady (1951). Even without Gable's help, Dawson enjoyed a long and productive movie and TV career, usually playing long-suffering personal secretaries and officious desk clerks. Hal K. Dawson was a lifelong member of the Masquers Club, and, in the twilight of his life, was made an honorary member of the Pioneers of Radio Club.

Joe Forte (Actor) .. Editor

Born: June 14, 1893

Almira Sessions (Actor) .. Woman

Born: September 16, 1888
Died: August 03, 1974

Trivia: With her scrawny body and puckered-persimmon face, Almira Sessions successfully pursued a six-decade acting career. Born into a socially prominent Washington family, Sessions almost immediately followed her "coming out" as a debutante with her first stage appearance, playing a sultan's wizened, ugly wife in The Sultan of Sulu. She briefly sang comic songs in cabarets before pursuing a New York stage career. In 1940, she traveled to Hollywood to play Cobina of Brenda and Cobina, an uproariously if cruelly caricatured brace of man-hungry spinsters who appeared regularly on Bob Hope's radio show (Elvia Allman was Brenda). Sessions' first film was the 1940 Judy Garland vehicle Little Nellie Kelly. Until her retirement in 1971, she played dozens of housekeepers, gossips, landladies, schoolmarms, maiden aunts, and retirement-home residents. Usually appearing in bits and minor roles, Almira Sessions was always given a few moments to shine onscreen, notably as an outraged in-law in Chaplin's Monsieur Verdoux (1947), the flustered high school teacher in the observatory scene in Rebel Without a Cause (1955), and the hero's inquisitive neighbor in Willard (1971).

Madge Blake (Actor) .. Woman

Born: May 31, 1899
Died: February 19, 1969

Beach Dickerson (Actor) .. Glenn

Born: February 03, 1924

Gail Lund (Actor) .. Candy

Harry Cheshire (Actor) .. Mayor

Born: August 16, 1891

Gladys Presley (Actor) .. Extra in Audience

David Cameron (Actor) .. Mr. Castle

Donna Jo Gribble (Actor) .. Teenager

Helen Hatch (Actor) .. Bit woman

Karen Scott (Actor) .. Waitress

Harry V. Cheshire (Actor) .. Mayor

Born: January 01, 1892
Died: June 16, 1968

Trivia: American character actor Harry Cheshire was usually billed as "Pappy," and, like S. Z. "Cuddles" Sakall, he certainly lived up to his nickname, both visually and temperamentally. After a long career on stage and in radio, Cheshire came to films in 1940, appearing in many of Republic's "hillbilly" musicals and westerns. In larger-budgeted films, he was usually seen in minor roles as businessmen, ministers, justice of the peaces and the like. He played Dr. Campbell in the Yuletide classic It's a Wonderful Life (1946), the stage manager of the ill-fated Iroquois theater in The Seven Little Foys (1955) and the Elvis-hating mayor in Loving You (1957). He also showed up in a few of the Ma and Pa Kettle entries, and was afforded a rare opportunity at all-out villainy in Dangerous Mission (1954). TV western fans will remember Harry Cheshire as Judge Ben Wiley on the Gene Autry-produced weekly Buffalo Bill Jr. (1954).

Charles Beach Dickerson (Actor) .. Glenn

Born: January 01, 1935

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