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Martha Hyer was born on August 10, 1924 in Fort Worth, Texas. Once she finished her formal schooling, Martha played a bit role in 1946's The Locket (1946). Slowly, Martha began picking up roles with more and more substance. The best years for the beautiful actress began in 1954 when she played in films such as Down Three Dark Streets (1954), Showdown at Abilene (1956) and Battle Hymn (1957). Perhaps the best role of her long career was as "Gwen French" in 1958's Some Came Running (1958) in which she starred opposite Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin and Shirley MacLaine. As a result of her stellar role, Martha received an Academy Award nomination as Best Supporting Actress, but she lost out to Wendy Hiller in Separate Tables (1958). Afterwards, Martha's stint on the US silver screen's trailed off some. She did make a handful of foreign films, returning to appear in the US from time to time, but nothing compared to the pace she had in the fifties. Her last film was in 1973 in the film The Day of the Wolves (1971). In 1966, she married producer Hal B. Wallis and remained with him until his death in 1986.

David Huddleston was born on 17 September 1930 in Vinton, Virginia, USA. He was an actor and producer, known for The Big Lebowski (1998), Blazing Saddles (1974) and The Producers (2005). He was married to Sarah C. Koeppe and Carole Ann Swart. He died on 2 August 2016 in Santa Fe, New Mexico, USA.

Peter Griffith was born on 23 October 1933 in Baltimore, Maryland, USA. He was an actor, known for Halloween (1978), Suspense (1949) and Roads to Romance (1946). He was married to Debra Meyer Boyd, Marianne ?, Daryl ?, Nanita Greene and Tippi Hedren. He died on 14 May 2001 in Santa Fe, New Mexico, USA.

American leading man Victor John Mature was born in Louisville, Kentucky, to Clara P. (Ackley) and Marcellus George Mature, a cutler and knife sharpener. His father, born Marcello Gelindo Maturi in Pinzolo, Trentino, was Italian, and his mother was of Swiss-German and German descent. Mature worked as a teenager with his father as a salesman for butcher supplies. Hoping to become an actor, he studied at the Pasadena Playhouse in California. He auditioned for Gone with the Wind (1939) for the role ultimately played by his fellow Playhouse student, George Reeves. After achieving some acclaim in his first few films, he served in the Coast Guard in World War II. Mature became one of Hollywood's busiest and most popular actors after the war, though rarely was he given the critical respect he often deserved. His roles in John Ford's My Darling Clementine (1946) and in Henry Hathaway's Kiss of Death (1947) were among his finest work, though he moved more and more frequently into more exotic roles in films like Samson and Delilah (1949) and The Egyptian (1954). Never an energetic actor nor one of great artistic pretensions, he nevertheless continued as a Hollywood stalwart both in programme and in more prominent films like The Robe (1953). More interested in golf than acting, his appearances diminished through the 1960s, but he made a stunning comeback of sorts in a hilarious romp as a very Victor Mature-like actor in Neil Simon's After the Fox (1966). Golf eventually took over his activities and, after a cameo as Samson's father in a TV remake of his own "Samson and Delilah" (Samson and Delilah (1984)), he retired for good. Rumors occasionally surfaced of another comeback, most notably in a never-realized remake of Red River (1948) with Sylvester Stallone, but none came to fruition. He died of cancer at his Rancho Santa Fe, California, home in 1999.

Congenial, unassuming and always ingratiating comic actor Bill Daily came to fame as the bumbling, jittery playboy astronaut Roger Healy, best buddy and sidekick to Larry Hagman's accident-prone Tony Nelson in the perennial sitcom favourite I Dream of Jeannie (1965). Though his role had initially been earmarked for Don Dubbins, the show's creator and executive producer Sidney Sheldon (with possible input from Hagman) made the impromptu decision to cast the relatively unknown Iowa native instead.

Daily had started his professional life as a musician playing bass with a local jazz combo called 'Jack and the Beanstalks'. Having completed compulsory military service during the Korean War he took on acting studies at the Goodman Theater College in Chicago. After graduating, he worked briefly as an announcer and staff director for NBC and subsequently developed his own stand-up comedy act which he took to nightclubs across the mid-west. By 1960, Daily contributed material for comedic sketches to Westinghouse Broadcasting for use in popular variety shows hosted by Mike Douglas, Merv Griffin and Steve Allen. Douglas also occasionally featured him in sketches. Daily was well on his way to accumulating the credentials to becoming a top comedy writer when Sheldon noticed him in a small supporting role in Bewitched (1964) (his TV debut). While now happily employed at Columbia/NBC as the affable Major Healy, Daily continued to moonlight as a writer for assorted food commercials. In the wake of 'Jeanie', he enjoyed an even longer run (six seasons) as the star's annoying neighbour and clueless comic foil on The Bob Newhart Show (1972).

During his later career he made numerous guest appearances, frequently as a panellist on TV shows like Match Game (1973) (which inspired the later UK franchise Blankety Blank (1978)). He also tried his hand hosting several youth-oriented specials on magic ('Bill Daily's Hocus-Pocus Gang') and appeared at conventions with his former co-stars for nostalgic reunions.

Tim Donnelly was born on 3 September 1944 in Los Angeles County, California, USA. He was an actor, known for Emergency! (1972), The Clonus Horror (1979) and The Toolbox Murders (1978). He was married to Michele McKay. He died on 17 September 2021 in Santa Fe, New Mexico, USA.

Kevin Brophy was born on 1 November 1953 in Salt Lake City, Utah, USA. He was an actor, known for Hell Night (1981), The Long Riders (1980) and Lucan (1977). He was married to Amy Prettyman . He died on 11 May 2024 in Rancho Santa Fe, California, USA.

Cormac McCarthy was born on 20 July 1933 in Providence, Rhode Island, USA. He was a writer and producer, known for The Road (2009), No Country for Old Men (2007) and The Counselor (2013). He was married to Jennifer Claire Winkley, Anne DeLisle and Lee Holleman. He died on 13 June 2023 in Santa Fe, New Mexico, USA.

Kristin Harmon was born on 25 June 1945 in Burbank, California, USA. She was an actress and producer, known for The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet (1952), Love & Kisses (1965) and Sonic Boom (1975). She was married to Mark Tinker and Ricky Nelson. She died on 27 April 2018 in Santa Fe, New Mexico, USA.

George J. Lewis was born on 10 December 1903 in Guadalajara, Jalisco, Mexico. He was an actor, known for Zorro's Black Whip (1944), Malice in the Palace (1949) and Radar Patrol vs. Spy King (1949). He was married to Mary Louise Lohman. He died on 8 December 1995 in Rancho Santa Fe, California, USA.

Ericson was born in Düsseldorf, the son of a German chemist and a Swedish actress and opera singer. Escaping from the Nazi regime, his family emigrated to the U.S. when he was three. At first living in Detroit, they eventually settled in New York where his dad (according to a 1955 newspaper article) found lucrative employment as president of a food extract company. After graduating from Newton High School, John enrolled at the Academy of Dramatic Arts, financially supporting his studies working at a Walgreen drug store.

Most sources incorrectly cite his acting debut as being Stalag 17 on Broadway, but Ericson himself stated (in a 1989 interview with Skip E. Lowe) that his career kick-started with the romantic wartime drama Teresa (1951), filmed in Italy by Metro Goldwyn Mayer. Afterwards, he made the decision not to sign a studio contract for fear of being typecast as 'boy-next-door' types. On the strength of his performance in Teresa, producer/director José Ferrer offered Ericson not only what amounted to being the nominal lead in Stalag 17, but the opportunity to play an initially unsympathetic part as the slick, cynical gambler J. J. Sefton (the coveted motion picture role was eventually assigned to William Holden and won the star an Academy Award).

Between 1954 and 1955, Ericson was under contract at MGM and made for four films for the studio: Rhapsody (1954) (opposite Elizabeth Taylor), Green Fire (1954) (co-starring Grace Kelly who had been in his class at the Academy) and the seminal Spencer Tracy western Bad Day at Black Rock (1955) (as a nervy hotel clerk). During the next three decades, he worked as a free-lance actor, his wavy-haired good looks and athletic build not lost on the industry. He co-starred with Anne Francis in Honey West (1965), a short-lived series -- apparently modelled on The Avengers (1961) -- which featured a crime-solving, judo savvy lady detective (even wearing Diana Rigg-style jumpsuits) and her right hand man. The show only lasted for 30 episodes but has since gained a minor cult following.

Ericson's frequent TV guest appearances included Rawhide (1959), Burke's Law (1963), Bonanza (1959), The Invaders (1967) and The F.B.I. (1965). For the big screen, he starred in several James Bond pastiches and spaghetti westerns, produced in Italy and Spain. In the U.S., he had leads in thrillers (The Money Jungle (1967) ), westerns (notably, The Return of Jack Slade (1955) and the High Noon (1952)-lookalike Day of the Badman (1958) ) and science fiction B-graders (The Destructors (1968) and Dan Duryea's last film, The Bamboo Saucer (1968)). He also starred as the titular 1930s depression-era gangster in Pretty Boy Floyd (1960). On the stage, he played King Arthur to Kathryn Grayson's Guinevere in a 1967 production of the musical Camelot. A reviewer commented that what Ericson lacked in the vocal department he more than made up for by a 'masterful performance'. His dramatic theatrical credits included Richard III, Mr. Roberts and A Streetcar Named Desire.

In his spare time, John Ericson sidelined as a painter of landscapes and still life, a sculptor and a keen amateur photographer. Until his death on May 3 2020, he resided in New Mexico with his second wife Karen Huston whom he married in 1974. He has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

Bruce Gordon was born on 1 February 1916 in Fitchburg, Massachusetts, USA. He was an actor, known for Piranha (1978), Timerider: The Adventure of Lyle Swann (1982) and Tower of London (1962). He was married to Mary Jane Farrar Falvey and Marla Gordon. He died on 20 January 2011 in Santa Fe, New Mexico, USA.

Severn Darden was born on 9 November 1929 in New Orleans, Louisiana, USA. He was an actor and writer, known for Battle for the Planet of the Apes (1973), Real Genius (1985) and Saturday the 14th (1981). He was married to Heather Ingrid Bleackley, Cynthia Jane Williams and Ann Barodel Grant. He died on 27 May 1995 in Santa Fe, New Mexico, USA.

Rebecca Welles was born on 5 February 1928 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA. She was an actress, known for Wire Service (1956), Juvenile Jungle (1958) and Lights Out (1946). She was married to Don Weis and Barton Lawrence Goldberg. She died on 13 February 2017 in Santa Fe, New Mexico, USA.

Kim Stanley's movie roles were few and far between; she is perhaps best known for her stellar performances on stage, including successes on Broadway. But when she did step in front of the camera, nothing short of memorable resulted. Her repertoire in movies and on stage covered such diversity from the sensitive glamour-girl Rita Shawn character in the 1958 "Goddess" to the crusty, somewhat salty and sunbaked Pancho Barnes in 1983's The Right Stuff (1983). Her abilities to play such diverse roles and play them well garnered her two Academy Award nominations: one for her portrayal of the slightly unhinged medium in the 1964 Seance on a Wet Afternoon (1964) and another for her characterization of the domineering and wrathful mother of Frances Farmer in 1982's Frances (1982). Stanley was born Patricia Reid in Tularosa, New Mexico. When her parents divorced, her mother moved the family, sans father, to Texas where her mother found work as an interior decorator. Drawn to both Texas and New Mexico, Stanley often found herself lonely and unsure of what she wanted. As a child, she wrote poetry and had many a daydream about becoming an artist or, on the other hand, a May Queen. In school, she found she liked acting in plays. At 16, in San Antonio she attended a touring production of "The Philadelphia Story", which starred Katharine Hepburn. recreating her role from the movie. Overwhelmed by the performance to the point of tears (she didn't want the play to end), Stanley aspired to do what she had seen Hepburn do. In college, she received a degree in psychology after attending first the University of New Mexico and subsequently, the University of Texas. But acting was still what she aspired to. So pursuing a career connected neither to her college major nor to the states where she grew up, Stanley eventually landed an acting apprenticeship in California with the Pasadena Playhouse. Her stay there was brief and she soon moved on to a winter stock company in Louisville, Kentucky. From there, with $21 to her name, she traveled to Manhattan. The year was 1947 and her Texas accent was still very much a part of her persona -- so much so that many in the New York theatre scene advised she go home to Texas. Persevering, however, Stanley made ends meet as a dress model and as a cocktail waitress, all the while honing her skills in off-Broadway productions of the Gertrude Stein ilk. It was in Stein's "Yes Is for a Very Young Man," that New York Times theatre critic Books Atkinson singled out Stanley as an actress with promise (incidentally, he did not care much for the play she was in). Stanley was also developing her craft under the tutelage of Elia Kazan and Lee Strasberg at the Actors Studio in New York City, and scored her first Broadway success in 1952 when, at the age of 27, she played the 12-year-old Millie Owens in William Inge's "Picnic". Subsequently, in the 1954 production of Inge's "Bus Stop," as the starry-eyed chanteuse Cherie (a role Marilyn Monroe assumed for the film), Stanley ascended to even greater heights and greater accolades in her acting achievements. Though she preferred stage acting to any other facsimile and often shied away from movies (reportedly, she declined to repeat for the movies roles she mastered on stage), she frequently played roles on television during the 1950s and '60s on such theatrical programs as "Goodyear TV Playhouse" and "Magnavox Theater," garnering two Emmy awards in the process (one in 1963 for her contributions to an episode of Ben Casey (1961); the other for her Big Mama part in the 1984 PBS/American Playhouse production of Tennessee Williams' "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof"). In the latter part of her life, she gravitated toward teaching, conducting acting classes in Los Angeles and, later, returning to her roots, securing a position teaching acting at the College of Santa Fe in New Mexico.

John Paxton was born on 14 July 1920 in Missouri, USA. He was an actor and producer, known for Spider-Man 3 (2007), A Simple Plan (1998) and Spider-Man (2002). He was married to Mary Lou Gray. He died on 17 November 2011 in Rancho Santa Fe, California, USA.

Surrey-born character actor Paul John Geoffrey was raised and educated in England. He began his screen career in 1977 and first appeared on the professional stage the following year at the Haymarket Theatre Royal, London, as John Daly in a revival of N.C. Hunter's play Waters of the Moon. Described as 'a thespian to the core' with a sound appreciation of history, Geoffrey specialized in classical roles early on and became known for his many performances in literary adaptations and period drama, including as Sir Perceval in Excalibur (1981), Tarzan's biological father Lord John 'Jack' Clayton in Greystoke: The Legend of Tarzan, Lord of the Apes (1984), Vronsky's close friend Petritsky in Anna Karenina (1985), Murat in Napoleon and Josephine: A Love Story (1987) and (as Mr. Lockwood) in Wuthering Heights (1992), headlining Juliette Binoche and Ralph Fiennes.

Geoffrey's first wife was London-born actress Belinda Sinclair, a niece of the well-known film director Nicolas Roeg. When this union ended in divorce, he remarried in the U.S. and moved there in 1991, settling in Santa Fe, New Mexico. There, he forged a successful career as a real estate broker and as director of a fashionable contemporary art gallery, while continuing to make occasional guest appearances in TV series like Better Call Saul (2015) and Get Shorty (2017).

With more than two decades of stage experience in France, England and on Broadway behind her, this moon-faced, heavy-set character actress first entered films in 1940. But no matter a film's genre - contemporary drama, historical costumer or shoot 'em up western - her Brooklyn roots always sounded through.

Virginia Brissac was an actress, best known for Rebel Without a Cause (1955), Dark Victory (1939) and The Scarlet Clue (1945). Prior to her work in film and television, she had a thirty-year career as a stage actress on the West Coast stock circuit, including three years in residence with her own company in San Diego, managed by then husband John Griffith Wray. She had one daughter, Ardel Wray, by a previous marriage.

Don Meredith was born on 10 April 1938 in Mount Vernon, Texas, USA. He was an actor, known for NFL Monday Night Football (1970), Supertrain (1979) and McCloud (1970). He was married to Susan Schloss Lessans, Cheryl King and Alma Lynne Shamburger. He died on 5 December 2010 in Santa Fe, New Mexico, USA.

Donald Murphy was born on 29 January 1918 in Chicago, Illinois, USA. He was an actor, known for Frankenstein's Daughter (1958), Lord Love a Duck (1966) and Cavalcade of America (1952). He died on 19 May 2008 in Santa Fe, New Mexico, USA.

Arlene McQuade was born on 29 May 1936 in New York City, New York, USA. She was an actress, known for The Goldbergs (1949), Have Gun - Will Travel (1957) and Alfred Hitchcock Presents (1955). She was married to Valentin de Vargas and Chad. She died on 21 April 2014 in Santa Fe, New Mexico, USA.

During the early 1970s QM Productions through its owner Quinn Martin dominated the action adventure television series genre. At one time QM produced more hours of network television programs per week than any other independent production company. Perhaps one of Martin's most lasting contributions to the genre was developing and perfecting the formula for the one hour television drama-- the number of acts (+ the "epilog"), the number of "beats" of action per act and the ability to end the act on a cliffhanger for the commercial break thereby assuring that the audience would stay tuned through the commercial.

James W. Gavin was born on 13 March 1935 in Denver, Colorado, USA. He was an actor and assistant director, known for Pearl Harbor (2001), The Edge (1997) and Lethal Weapon (1987). He died on 13 August 2005 in Rancho Santa Fe, California, USA.

Milwaukee-born Don Weis began as a director of light-hearted, often youth-oriented entertainment. After graduating in film studies from the University of Southern California in 1942, he got his first job as an errand boy at Warner Brothers. He saw wartime service as a technician with the 1st Motion Picture Unit of the U.S. Army Air Corps, involved in the production of training films at Culver City. After the war he resumed his apprenticeship with Enterprise Productions as a dialogue director and assistant on several pictures produced by Stanley Kramer. In 1951 he was signed by Dore Schary to a two-year contract at MGM, making his directorial feature debut with the newspaper expose Bannerline (1951). This was followed by a string of light comedies and musicals of widely varying quality.

Among the best of the bunch was the cheerful George Wells-scripted and -produced musical I Love Melvin (1953) starring Debbie Reynolds and Donald O'Connor, highlighted by several exuberant dance routines and an engaging dream sequence in which Debbie sings "A Lady Loves". There was also a youthful college comedy, The Affairs of Dobie Gillis (1953), and an enjoyable minor sword-and-sandal outing made for Fox, entitled The Adventures of Hajji Baba (1954). Of considerably less interest were two inane entries in the "beach party" genre aimed specifically at the teen market: the sleep-inducing, apropriately-titled Pajama Party (1964) and the even sillier The Ghost in the Invisible Bikini (1966), which sadly wasted the talents of such excellent screen veterans as Boris Karloff and Basil Rathbone. It didn't get any better with the decidely laborious and unamusing farce Did You Hear the One About the Traveling Saleslady? (1968). Though conceived by two talented writers (James Fritzell and Everett Greenbaum) who later earned a well-deserved reputation for their rather wittier collaborative effort on M*A*S*H (1972), the humour was as obvious as the title might suggest. The venture, predictably, did not make a screen star out of Phyllis Diller.

In 1954 Weis began to direct episodes for television, a medium to which he found himself eminently suited. In the course of the next 30 years he became one of TV's busiest directors and one of the most accomplished, winning six annual awards from the Directors Guild of America. Ranging across every known genre, he was equally at ease helming the iconic Batman (1966) as he was behind the camera of some 58 episodes of crime-busting, wheelchair-bound Ironside (1967), or guiding four of the best installments of the cult series Kolchak: The Night Stalker (1974). Weis achieved his greatest success directing a brace of the most enduring episodes of the long-running and much-loved medical comedy "M*A*S*H*". Following his retirement he presided over the Motion Picture Permanent Charities Committee (PCC) and served on the board of the New Mexico Film Council.