The Magnificent Ambersons

Joseph Cotten (Actor) .. Eugene Morgan

Born: May 15, 1905
Died: February 06, 1994
Birthplace: Petersburg, Virginia, United States

Trivia: Born to a well-to-do Southern family, Joseph Cotten studied at the Hickman School of Expression in Washington D.C., and later sought out theater jobs in New York. He made his Broadway debut in 1930, and seven years later joined Orson Welles' progressive Mercury Theatre company, playing leads in such productions as Julius Caesar and Shoemaker's Holiday. He briefly left Welles in 1939 to co-star in Katharine Hepburn's Broadway comeback vehicle The Philadelphia Story. Cotten rejoinedWelles in Hollywood in 1940, making his feature-film debut as Jed Leland in Welles' Citizen Kane (1941). As a sort of private joke, Jed Leland was a dramatic critic, a profession which Cotten himself had briefly pursued on the Miami Herald in the late '20s. Cotten went on to play the kindly auto mogul Eugene Morgan in Welles' The Magnificent Ambersons in 1942, and both acted in and co-wrote Journey Into Fear, the film that Welles was working on when he was summarily fired by RKO. Cotten remained a close friend of Welles until the director's death in 1985; he co-starred with Welles in Carol Reed's The Third Man (1949) and played an unbilled cameo for old times' sake in the Welles-directed Touch of Evil (1958). A firmly established romantic lead by the early '40s, Cotten occasionally stepped outside his established screen image to play murderers (Alfred Hitchcock's Shadow of a Doubt [1943]) and surly drunkards (Under Capricorn [1949]). A longtime contractee of David O. Selznick, Cotten won a Venice Film Festival award for his performance in Selznick's Portrait of Jennie (1948). Cotten's screen career flagged during the 1950s and '60s, though he flourished on television as a guest performer on such anthologies as Alfred Hitchcock Presents, Fireside Theatre, The Great Adventure, and as host of The 20th Century-Fox Hour (1955), The Joseph Cotten Show (1956), On Trial (1959), and Hollywood and the Stars (1963). He also appeared in several stage productions, often in the company of his second wife, actress Patricia Medina. In 1987, Cotten published his engagingly candid autobiography, Vanity Will Get You Somewhere. He died of pneumonia in 1994 at the age of 88.

Dolores Costello (Actor) .. Isabel Amberson Minafer

Born: September 17, 1905
Died: March 01, 1979

Trivia: Dolores Costello was a delicate blonde beauty who projected patrician poise as a lead actress. The daughter of stage-screen matinee idol Maurice Costello, she and her sister (actress Helene Costello) began appearing as children in Vitagraph films that starred their father. As a teenager, Costello became a model for top New York illustrators, then began playing bit roles at age 17 in East Coast productions. She and her sister formed a successful dance duet on the New York stage in the George White Scandals of 1924, leading to the two of them being signed to film contracts by Warner Bros. Her career moved slowly at first, but took off as a sudden star after her appearance opposite John Barrymore in The Sea Beast (1926), a romanticized adaptation of Moby Dick; she and Barrymore were married in 1928. She went on to be one of the leading stars of the late '20s and early '30s, making the transition into the talkies but retiring from films in 1932 to have two children (one of whom was future actor John Barrymore, Jr.). After she and Barrymore Sr. split up, she returned to the screen in mature roles, notably as Freddie Bartholomew's mother in Little Lord Fauntelroy (1936) and as Isabel Amberson, Tim Holt's mother and Joseph Cotten's love, in Orson Welles' The Magnificent Ambersons (1942). She retired from the screen permanently in 1943.

Anne Baxter (Actor) .. Lucy Morgan

Born: May 07, 1923
Died: December 12, 1985
Birthplace: Michigan City, Indiana, United States

Trivia: Raised in Bronxville, N.Y., the granddaughter of renowned architect Frank Lloyd Wright, Anne Baxter took up acting at the age of 11 with Maria Ouspenskaya, debuting on Broadway two years later (in Seen but Not Heard); she continued working on Broadway until her screen debut at age 17 in Twenty-Mule Team (1940), a minor Western featuring Wallace Beery and Marjorie Rambeau. Charming if not beautiful, she tended to play shy and innocent types and gave a few outstanding performances, such as that with Bette Davis in All About Eve (1950); she and Davis were both nominated for the Best Actress Oscar, but it went to Judy Holliday. Her "breakthrough" film was Orson Welles's The Magnificent Ambersons (1942), leading to many more roles in the next few years. At home in a variety of parts, she won the Best Supporting Actress Oscar in 1946 for her work in The Razor's Edge. Although she has worked with many of Hollywood's most celebrated and accomplished directors (Welles, Hitchcock, Lang, Mankiewicz, Wilder Wellman), after the mid-'50s she tended to get poor roles in mediocre movies. Baxter left Hollywood in 1961 for an isolated cattle station in Australia, an experience she described in her critically-acclaimed book Intermission: A True Story. She made a few more films, but her major work was as Lauren Bacall's replacement as Margo Channing in Applause, the musical version of All About Eve; having played Eve in the film, she now assumed the role earlier held by Davis. Baxter also did some TV work, including a part in the early '80s series Hotel. She was married from 1946-53 to actor John Hodiak, whom she met while filming Sunday Dinner for a Soldier (1944).

Agnes Moorehead (Actor) .. Fanny Amberson

Born: December 06, 1900
Died: April 30, 1974
Birthplace: Clinton, Massachusetts, United States

Trivia: At age three Agnes Moorehead first appeared onstage, and at 11 she made her professional debut in the ballet and chorus of the St. Louis Opera. As a teenager she regularly sang on local radio. She earned a Ph.D. in literature and studied theater at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts. She began playing small roles on Broadway in 1928; shortly thereafter she shifted her focus to radio acting, becoming a regular on the radio shows March of Time, Cavalcade of America, and a soap opera series. She toured in vaudeville from 1933-36 with Phil Baker. In 1940 she joined Orson Welles's Mercury Theater Company, giving a great boost to her career. Moorehead debuted onscreen as Kane's mother in Welles' film Citizen Kane (1941). Her second film was Welles' The Magnificent Ambersons (1942), for which she received a Best Supporting Actress Oscar nomination; ultimately she was nominated for an Oscars five times, never winning. In films, she tended to play authoritarian, neurotic, puritanical, or soured women, but also played a wide range of other roles, and was last onscreen in 1972. In the '50s she toured the U.S. with a stellar cast giving dramatic readings of Shaw's Don Juan in Hell. In 1954 she began touring in The Fabulous Redhead, a one-woman show she eventually took to over 200 cities across the world. She was also active on TV; later audiences remember her best as the witch Endora, Elizabeth Montgomery's mother, in the '60s TV sitcom Bewitched. Moorehead's last professional engagement was in the Broadway musical Gigi. She died of lung cancer in 1974. She was married to actors John Griffith Lee (1930-52) and Robert Gist (1953-58).

Ray Collins (Actor) .. Jack Amberson

Born: December 10, 1889
Died: July 11, 1965

Trivia: A descendant of one of California's pioneer families, American actor Ray Collins' interest in the theatre came naturally. His father was drama critic of the Sacramento Bee. Taking to the stage at age 14, Collins moved to British Columbia, where he briefly headed his own stock company, then went on to Broadway. An established theatre and radio performer by the mid-1930s, Collins began a rewarding association with Orson Welles' Mercury Theatre. He played the "world's last living radio announcer" in Welles' legendary War of the Worlds broadcast of 1938, then moved to Hollywood with the Mercury troupe in 1939. Collins made his film debut as Boss Jim Gettys in Welles' film classic Citizen Kane (1940). After the Mercury disbanded in the early 1940s, Collins kept busy as a film and stage character actor, usually playing gruff business executives. Collins is most fondly remembered by TV fans of the mid-1950s for his continuing role as the intrepid Lt. Tragg on the weekly series Perry Mason.

Richard Bennett (Actor) .. Maj. Amberson

Born: May 21, 1873
Died: October 22, 1944

Trivia: Broadway luminary Richard Bennett made his first acting appearance in an 1891 Chicago production of The Limited Mail. Later that year, he made his New York bow appearing in the same play. With his classically chiseled features and athletic build, Bennett rapidly achieved "matinee idol" status, continuing to portray virile leading men into his fifties. He had a flair for foreign dialects, which he demonstrated to maximum effects in such plays as They Knew What They Wanted (1924) and such films as Arrowsmith (1931). While he regarded Hollywood as a "madhouse," Bennett occasionally functioned as technical advisor in silent-film adaptations of his stage plays, and was sporadically lured before the cameras in the talkie era, most memorably as the dying millionaire in If I Had a Million (1932) and the crusty Amberson paterfamilias in Orson Welles' The Magnificent Ambersons (1942). Richard Bennett was the father of actresses Constance, Joan and Barbara Bennett, and the grandfather of talk show host Morton Downey Jr.

Erskine Sanford (Actor) .. Benson

Born: November 19, 1880
Died: January 01, 1969

Trivia: Legend has it that Orson Welles saw his first theatrical production at age seven, when a touring company of Mr. Pim Passes By played in Welles' hometown of Kenosha, WI. Invited backstage, young Welles was effusively greeted by the play's leading man, Erskine Sanford, whose kind and encouraging words inspired Welles to pursue an acting career himself. Whether this story is true or not, the fact remains that, in 1936, Erskine Sanford left the Theatre Guild after a 15-year association to join Orson Welles' experimental Mercury Theatre. When Welles took the Mercury Players to Hollywood in 1940 to film Citizen Kane, Sanford was assigned the small but plum role of Herbert Carter, the sputtering, apoplectic former editor of the New York Inquirer. The actor went on to appear prominently in such Welles-directed films as The Magnificent Ambersons (1942, as Mr. Bronson), Lady From Shanghai (1947, as the judge), and MacBeth (1948, as King Duncan). Outside of his Mercury Theatre activities, Erskine Sanford played featured roles in such mainstream Hollywood productions as Ministry of Fear (1943) and Angel on My Shoulder (1946) before his retirement in 1950.

Tim Holt (Actor) .. George Amberson Minafer

Born: February 05, 1919
Died: February 15, 1973

Trivia: The son of actor Jack Holt and brother of actors David and Jennifer Holt, Tim Holt, born Charles John Holt III, debuted onscreen at age ten (playing his father's character as a child) in The Vanishing Pioneer (1928). He went on to play earnest teenagers in the mid-to-late '30s, moving into roles as boyish Western heroes in many B-movies; from 1941-43 and 1948-52 he was a top ten box office star, and at one point was very popular among teenage girls. He occasionally got higher quality roles, and will probably be best remembered as the arrogant aristocrat George Amberson in Orson Welles' The Magnificent Ambersons (1942) and as Curtin, Humphrey Bogart's conscientious partner, in John Huston's The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948). During World War II, he was an oft-decorated B-29 bomber in the Pacific arena. He was rarely onscreen after 1952, and he retired from acting in the mid-50s to go into business; later he did occasional radio and TV work. He died of cancer in 1973.

J. Louis Johnson (Actor) .. Sam the Butler

Born: January 01, 1877
Died: January 01, 1954

Donald Dillaway (Actor) .. Wilbur Minafer

Born: January 01, 1903
Died: January 01, 1982

Charles Phipps (Actor) .. Uncle John

Born: January 01, 1877
Died: January 01, 1950

Dorothy Vaughan (Actor) .. Woman at Funeral

Born: November 05, 1889
Died: March 15, 1955

Trivia: In films from 1936, Dorothy Vaughan spent the next 14 years playing scores of bits and featured roles. Vaughan was at one time or another practically everyone's "mom" or "grandma," devoting the rest of the time to playing nurses, maids, governesses, and charwomen. In Westerns, she could be seen playing such no-nonsense matriarchs as the Commodore in Trail to San Antone (1947). From 1939 to 1942, Dorothy Vaughan was a regular in The Glove Slingers, a two-reel comedy series produced at Columbia.

Elmer Jerome (Actor) .. Man at Funeral

Born: January 01, 1871
Died: January 01, 1947

John Elliott (Actor) .. Guest

Born: July 05, 1876
Died: December 12, 1956

Trivia: A distinguished gray-haired stage actor, John Elliott appeared sporadically in films from around 1920. But Elliott became truly visible after the advent of sound, when he found his niche in B-Westerns. As versatile as they come, he could play the heroine's harassed father with as much conviction as he would "boss heavies." Doctors, lawyers, assayers, prospectors, clergymen -- John Elliott played them all in a screen career that lasted until 1956, the year of his death. His final screen appearance was in Perils of the Wilderness (1956) which, coincidentally, was the second-to-last action serial produced in the United States.

Nina Guilbert (Actor) .. Guest

Sam Rice (Actor) .. Man at Funeral

Olive Ball (Actor) .. Mary

Kathryn Sheldon (Actor) .. Matron

Born: January 01, 1878
Died: January 01, 1975

Anne O'Neal (Actor) .. Mrs. Foster

Born: December 23, 1893
Died: November 24, 1971

Trivia: Stage actress Anne O'Neal first showed up onscreen as a street singer in John Ford's The Informer. Well suited for such roles as spinsterish gossips and baleful landladies, O'Neal kept busy in the mid-'30s with the Columbia Pictures short-subject unit, serving as the foil for such comics as Andy Clyde and the Three Stooges. During the 1940s, she was a semi-regular in the one- and two-reel productions of MGM, showing up in the Passing Parade, Our Gang, and Crime Does Not Pay series. Her feature-film credits include such small but memorable roles as psychiatrist Porter Hall's neurotic secretary in Miracle on 34th Street (1947) and Miss Sifert in the cult classic Gun Crazy (1949). Anne O'Neal spent her last active years in television, most poignantly as one of the "rejuvenated" senior citizens in the 1962 Twilight Zone episode "Kick the Can."

Henry Roquemore (Actor) .. Hardware Man

Born: March 13, 1886
Died: June 30, 1943

Trivia: In films from 1928, heavy-set character actor Henry Roquemore essayed small-to-medium roles as politicians, storekeepers, judges, and "sugar daddies." A typical Roquemore characterization was "the Match King," one of Mae West's many over-the-hill suitors in Goin' to Town (1935). His more memorable roles include the Justice of the Peace who marries Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn in Woman of the Year (1941). Henry Roquemore was the husband of actress Fern Emmett.

Mel Ford (Actor) .. Fred Kinney

Lillian Nicholson (Actor) .. Landlady

Bobby Cooper (Actor) .. George as a Boy

Born: July 16, 1954

Drew Roddy (Actor) .. Elijah

Jack Baxley (Actor) .. Rev. Smith

Born: January 01, 1883
Died: January 01, 1950

Trivia: Burly Jack Baxley had been a side show barker and played that in most of his early films, including Anna Christie (1930), Dancing Lady (1933) and O'Shaughnessey's Boy (1935). Long at MGM, Baxley also portrayed salesmen, bartenders, process servers, and reporters -- in other words men not necessarily all that trustworthy. He was a member of Screen Extras Guild until his death in 1950.

Nancy Gates (Actor) .. Girl

Born: February 01, 1926

Trivia: Teenaged actress Nancy Gates had already accrued a respectable string of stage and radio credits when she was signed by RKO Radio studios in 1942. She served a short apprenticeship in 2-reelers and "B"-pictures (and also showed up very briefly in Orson Welles' The Magnificent Ambersons) before being promoted to such RKO "A"s as This Land is Mine (1943) and The Spanish Main (1945). Though a pleasant and attractive screen personality, Gates never exuded true star quality, and by the 1950s she was free-lancing in low-budget films like The Atomic City and in television. Retiring from films in 1960 to spend more time with her family, Nancy Gates began making occasional TV appearances again in such series as The Twilight Zone and Mod Squad.

James Westerfield (Actor) .. Cop at Accident

Born: March 22, 1913
Died: September 20, 1971

Trivia: Character actor James Westerfield made comparatively few films, as his first love was the stage; he produced, directed and acted in a number of Broadway productions, and was the recipient of two New York Drama Critics awards. In films from 1941 (he's easily recognizable as a traffic cop in Orson Welles' The Magnificent Ambersons), he was generally cast as villains, notably as a recurring rapscallion on the 1963 TV series The Travels of Jamie McPheeters. Disney fans will remember Westerfield as the flustered small-town police officer (variously named Hanson and Morrison) in such fanciful farces as The Shaggy Dog (1959), The Absent Minded Professor (1960) and Son of Flubber (1963). James Westerfield was married to actress Fay Tracy.

Edwin August (Actor) .. Man

Born: November 10, 1883
Died: March 04, 1964

Trivia: A major presence in early American films, Edwin August (born Edwin August Philip von der Butz) was one of the first stage stars to embrace motion pictures. Having appeared opposite nearly all the leading Broadway stars of his era -- including Mrs. Leslie Carter, Otis Skinner, and Digby Bell -- August entered the film industry as an actor/writer/director with the pioneering Edison company around 1908. Directing or starring in literally hundreds of early films for nearly every company operating at the time -- including a lengthy stay at the famed Biograph-- August at one point even operated his own producing entity, Edwin August Feature Films. Playing leading roles as late as 1918, the veteran star turned to supporting roles in the 1920s, then spent the next couple of decades as a Hollywood extra. Besides his screen work, August also penned quite a few novels under the pseudonym of Montague Lawrence.

Jack Santoro (Actor) .. Barber

Born: April 18, 1898
Died: October 23, 1980

Trivia: A veteran vaudeville performer, Jack Santoro was reportedly discovered by Warner Bros. writer Darryl F. Zanuck because of his resemblance to debonair comedy stars Raymond Griffith and Adolphe Menjou. In 1927, he played a crusading newspaperman in George Jessel's Ginsburg the Great and was apparently so convincing that he would spend the next three decades playing reporters. Santoro's screen and television career lasted well into the 1960s although he rarely received billing.

Gus Schilling (Actor) .. Drugstore Clerk

Born: June 20, 1908
Died: June 16, 1957

Trivia: A product of vaudeville and burlesque, gerbil-faced comic actor Gus Schilling hit the big time when he joined the Earl Carroll Vanities in the 1930s. He moved on to Orson Welles' Mercury Theatre troupe, appearing in several Mercury radio shows and in the Welles-directed films Citizen Kane (1940), Magnificent Ambersons (1942), The Lady From Shanghai (1947), and MacBeth (1948). He also showed up in such comedy characterizations as the harried orchestra leader in Hellzapoppin' (1941) and the nervous TV repairman in Our Very Own (1950). From 1945 through 1950, Schilling teamed with Dick Lane in a lively series of 11 Columbia Pictures two-reelers; appearing in nearly all of these shorts was Schilling's burlesque partner, Judy Malcolm, who'd invariably pop up out of nowhere, slap Schilling's face, and shout, "How dare you look like someone I hate?" A heavy smoker, Schilling looked terribly drawn and haggard in his last film appearances. Gus Schilling died at the age of 49 of a reported heart attack, though many of those close to him were of the opinion that he killed himself.

Georgia Backus (Actor) .. Matron

Born: January 01, 1900
Died: January 01, 1983

Hilda Plowright (Actor) .. Nurse

Born: January 01, 1890
Died: January 01, 1973

Bob Pittard (Actor) .. Charlie Johnson

Billy Elmer (Actor) .. House Servant

Born: January 01, 1870
Died: January 01, 1945

Maynard Holmes (Actor) .. Citizen

Lew Kelly (Actor) .. Citizen

Born: January 01, 1879
Died: June 10, 1944

Trivia: A seasoned vaudeville and burlesque comedian, Lew Kelly came to films in 1929. The wizened, pop-eyed Kelly quickly became a comedy "regular," appearing in support of such star comics as Laurel & Hardy, W.C. Fields, and Wheeler and Woolsey. In dramatic films, Kelly could be found in bit parts as night watchmen, bartenders and doctors; one of his best roles of the 1940s was the derelict drunken doc in Bela Lugosi's Bowery at Midnight. Throughout the 1930s and 1940s, Lew Kelly worked steadily in two-reelers, appearing with the likes of Charley Chase, Andy Clyde, Harry Langdon and the Three Stooges.

John McGuire (Actor) .. Young Man

Born: January 01, 1911
Died: January 01, 1980

Edward Howard (Actor) .. Chauffeur/Citizen

Born: September 12, 1909
Died: May 23, 1963

Trivia: A dark-haired actor from Illinois who mostly portrayed "dog heavies," Edward Howard enjoyed a more substantial role in the 1945 Texas Ranger oater Three in the Saddle, attempting to steal Lorraine Miller's ranch. Long in retirement, Howard died of a cerebral hemorrhage.

William Blees (Actor) .. Youth at Accident

Philip Morris (Actor) .. Cop

Born: January 20, 1893
Died: December 18, 1949

Trivia: It is perhaps superfluous to note that actor Philip Morris was no relation to the cigarette-manufacturing family of the same name. In films from 1935 to 1948, Morris was generally cast as a cop, doorman, cabbie, or truck driver. He can be glimpsed near the end of The Magnificent Ambersons (1942) as the traffic cop investigating George Minafer's auto accident, and in High, Wide and Handsome (1937) as one of the sweating teamsters. One of Philip Morris' few screen characters to be given a name was Howard Ross in the 1948 Western Whirlwind Raiders.

Louis Hayward (Actor) .. Ballroom Extra

Born: March 19, 1909
Died: February 21, 1985

Trivia: Born in South Africa, roguishly handsome leading man Louis Hayward was educated in England and the Continent. Hayward briefly managed a London nightclub before he went on stage as a protégé of playwright Noel Coward. He co-starred in the London stage productions of several Broadway plays, among them Dracula and Another Language, and in 1933 made his screen bow in the British Self Made Lady. Hayward came to Broadway in 1935 to star in Point Verlaine (1935), which won him a Hollywood contract. His first American film role of note was as the hero's father in the prologue of Warner Bros.' Anthony Adverse (1936). Hayward went on to play both heroes and heels, and sometimes a charming combination thereof. He starred as Leslie Charteris' soldier-of-fortune Simon Templar in the first and the last entries in the "Saint" "B"-picture series. He also thrived in costume swashbucklers, appearing twice as the Count of Monte Cristo and once each as D'Artagnan, Captain Blood and Dick Turpin. In 1941, he was cast in a pivotal role in Orson Welles' The Magnificent Ambersons, but his part ended up on the cutting room floor. Serving as a Marine during World War II, Hayward supervised the filming of the battle of Tarawa, winning a Bronze Star for his courage under fire. After the war, he developed one of first percentage-of-profits deals, ensuring him a steady income in perpetuity for both the theatrical and TV releases of his post-1949 films. In 1954, Hayward produced and starred in the 39-week TV series The Lone Wolf (aka Streets of Danger), after buying exclusive rights to several of Louis Joseph Vance's original "Lone Wolf" stories. His later TV projects included the British series The Pursuers (1966) and the American The Survivors (1970). The first of Louis Hayward's three wives was actress Ida Lupino; the others were Peggy Morrow and June Blanchard.

Nina Guilberg (Actor) .. Guest

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