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1-15 of 15
- Actor
- Director
Dana Elcar was born on 10 October 1927 in Ferndale, Michigan, USA. He was an actor and director, known for The Sting (1973), MacGyver (1985) and 2010: The Year We Make Contact (1984). He was married to Marianne Torrance, Mary Margaret "Peggy" Romano and Kathryn Frances Mead. He died on 6 June 2005 in Ventura, California, USA.- Actor
- Music Department
- Additional Crew
Daran Norris has been voicing characters in animation, film, tv, radio, and games for over three decades. He is also a busy on-camera actor and has appeared in over 100 television shows and films. He can be currently be seen as news anchor Johnny Frost on "iZombie" for the CW. Other recent appearances include "The Real O'Neals," "Gamer's Guide," "Veronica Mars," "Party Down," and "Big Time Rush."- Actor
- Soundtrack
American character actor Frank Ferguson appeared in scores of films and television shows, often as self-important types. Prior to his film debut, he was a prominent performer and director with the acclaimed Pasadena Community Playhouse, where he coached numerous up-and-coming young actors such as Dana Andrews, George Reeves, Robert Preston and Victor Mature. He broke into films, himself, in the early 1940s, usually playing minor supporting roles, though he was seen to advantage in larger roles, notably in two of the best-known (and oddest) westerns of the '50s, Rancho Notorious (1952) and Johnny Guitar (1954). He played hundreds of ranchers, bankers and police detectives in films and television throughout the '50s and '60s. He became most familiar as "Gus" on the children's program My Friend Flicka (1955) and later as "Eli Carson" on the two TV series based on the novel Peyton Place (1964). He semi-retired in 1972 and died of cancer six years later.- Actor
- Producer
Stanley Baker was unusual star material to emerge during the Fifties - when impossibly handsome and engagingly romantic leading men were almost de rigueur. Baker was forged from a rougher mould. His was good-looking, but his features were angular, taut, austere and unwelcoming. His screen persona was taciturn, even surly, and the young actor displayed a predilection for introspection and blunt speaking, and was almost wilfully unromantic. For the times a potential leading actor cast heavily against the grain. Baker immediately proved a unique screen presence - tough, gritty, combustible - and possessing an aura of dark, even menacing power.
Stanley Baker came from rugged Welsh mining stock - and as a lad was unruly, quick to flare, and first to fight. But like his compatriot and friend Richard Burton, the young Baker was rescued from a gruelling life of coal mining by a local teacher, Glyn Morse, who recognized in the proud and self-willed lad a potent combination of a fine speaking voice, a smouldering intensity, and a strong spirit. And like Burton, Stanley Baker was specially and specifically tutored for theatrical success. In fact, early on, Burton and Baker appeared together on stage as juveniles in The Druid's Rest, in Cardiff, in Wales. But later, by way of Birmingham Repertory Theatre and then the London stage, Stanley Baker charted his inevitable course toward the Cinema.
Film welcomed the adult Baker as the embodiment of evil. Memorable early roles cast the actor in feisty unsympathetic parts - from the testy bosun in Captain Horatio Hornblower (1951) to his modern-day counterpart in The Cruel Sea (1953), to the arch villains in Hell Below Zero (1954) and Campbell's Kingdom (1957) to the dastardly Mordred in Knights of the Round Table (1953) and the wily Achilles in Helen of Troy (1956). For a time there was a distillation of Baker's screen persona in a series of roles as stern and uncompromising policemen - in Violent Playground (1958), Chance Meeting (1959), and Hell Is a City (1960). But despite never having been cast as a romantic leading man, and being almost wholly associated with villainous roles, Stanley Baker nevertheless became a star by dint of his potent personality.
Although now enthroned by enthusiastic audiences Stanley Baker was obviously aware he need not desert unsympathetic parts - and his relish in playing the scheming Astaroth in Sodom and Gomorrah (1962) and the unscrupulous mobster Johnny Bannion in The Concrete Jungle (1960) was readily evident. But soon there were more principled, if still surly characters, in The Guns of Navarone (1961), The Games (1970), Eva (1962), and Accident (1967), the latter two films reuniting Baker with the American expatriot director of The Criminal, Joseph Losey. Stanley Baker also established a fruitful working relationship with the American director Cy Endfield, following their early collaboration on Hell Drivers (1957). When Baker inaugurated his own film production company - it was Endfield he commissioned to write and direct both Zulu (1964) and Sands of the Kalahari (1965), with Baker allotting himself the downbeat roles of the martinet officer John Chard in Zulu and the reluctant hero Mike Bain in The Sands Of The Kalahari.
Baker must have felt more assured in disenchanted roles - as further films from Baker's own stable still promoted the actor in either criminal or villainous mode - as gangster Paul Clifton in Robbery (1967) and the corrupt thief-taker Jonathan Wild in Where's Jack? (1969). The success of Baker's own productions was timely and did much to enhance the prestige of what was then considered an ailing British film industry. Stanley Baker also took the opportunity to move into the realm of television, appearing in, among other productions, the dramas The Changeling (1974) and Robinson Crusoe (1974), and also in the series How Green Was My Valley (1975).
Knighted in 1976 it was evident that Stanley Baker may well have continued to greater heights, both as an actor and a producer, but he succumbed to lung cancer and died at the early age of forty-eight. But his legacy is unquestioned. He was a unique force on screen, championing characterizations that were not clichéd or compromised. He established his own niche as an actor content to be admired for peerlessly portraying the disreputable and the unsympathetic. In that he was a dark mirror, more accurately reflecting human frailty and the vagaries of life than many of his more romantically or heroically inclined contemporaries. There have forever been legions of seemingly interchangeable charming and virile leading men populating the movies - but Stanley Baker stood almost alone in his determination to be characterized and judged by portraying the bleaker aspects of the human condition. Consequently, more than twenty-five years after his death, his sombre, potent personality still illuminates the screen in a way few others have achieved.- Actor
- Writer
- Soundtrack
Scott Christopher won the Irene Ryan National Acting Scholarship while attending Brigham Young University in 1991 and has since appeared in dozens of films and television shows-NCIS, NCIS: Los Angeles, Criminal Minds, Modern Family, Granite Flats, Everwood, Touched By An Angel and dozens of films for big and little screen, including Hallmark, Lifetime, Disney Channel and others. Acclaimed keynote speaker and author of best-selling business books "The Levity Effect" and "People People." www.scottchristopher.net Splits time between Salt Lake City and Los Angeles. Married with five sons. Teleprompter expert. Near-native Spanish speaker.- Herb Rice was born on 23 March 1951 in Ferndale, Michigan, USA. He is an actor, known for Apocalypse Now (1979), Rumble Fish (1983) and Youngblood (1978).
- Producer
- Additional Crew
Freddie Fields was born on 23 July 1923 in Ferndale, New York, USA. He was a producer, known for American Gigolo (1980), Victory (1981) and Glory (1989). He was married to Corinna Tsopei, Cherie Latimer, Polly Bergen and Edith Fellows. He died on 11 December 2007 in Beverly Hills, California, USA.- Music Department
- Actor
- Composer
Ron Carter was born on 4 May 1937 in Ferndale, Michigan, USA. He is an actor and composer, known for House of Gucci (2021), Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me (1992) and What Happens in Vegas (2008). He has been married to Quintell Williams since 2012. He was previously married to Janet Hasbrouch.- Camera and Electrical Department
- Cinematographer
- Producer
Rod Allin was born on 3 December 1929 in Ferndale, Michigan, USA. He was a cinematographer and producer, known for Brother of the Wind (1972), Ski on the Wild Side (1967) and This Is Skiing (1969). He died on 20 August 2002 in Ontario, Canada.- Bill Messner-Loebs was born on 19 February 1949 in Ferndale, Michigan, USA. He is a writer, known for The Maxx (1995), The Chronic Rift (1990) and Two Geeks Talking (2008).
- Additional Crew
Scott R. Murray was born on 2 October 1961 in Ferndale, Michigan, USA. Scott R. is known for The Order: 1886 (2015), Lone Echo (2017) and NFL GameDay (2002). Scott R. was previously married to Mei T Murray and Karen Michelle Taylor.- Malcolm sang as a tenor with the D'Oyly Carte Opera Company between 1973 and 1974. His featured roles were: Box in "Cox and Box" Alexis in "The Sorcerer" Ralph in "HMS Pinafore" Duke in "Patience" Tolloller in "Iolanthe" Dick Dauntless in "Ruddigore" Marco in "The Gondoliers". He recorded the role of Tolloller for Decca recordings in 1973.
- Roderick Jones was born on 2 June 1910 in Ferndale, Rhondda Valley, Wales, UK. He was an actor, known for Festival (1963), A House Called Bell Tower (1960) and Secret Agent (1964). He died on 16 September 1992 in Caerleon, Wales, UK.
- Len Casanova was born on 12 June 1905 in Ferndale, California, USA. He was married to Margaret Pence. He died on 30 September 2002 in Eugene, Oregon, USA.
- Michael Koenen was born on 13 July 1982 in Ferndale, Washington, USA.