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- Marlowe was born Hugh Hipple in Philadelphia, and began his stage career in the 1930s at the Pasadena Playhouse in California. He performed extensively on radio, stage, television and film with credits including off-Broadway productions of "The Deer Park" in 1967 and "All My Sons" in 1974.
- Actor
- Producer
- Director
Actor/director/producer Helmut Dantine was born in Vienna, Austria on October 7, 1917. He made a name for himself as an actor during World War Two playing German soldiers and Nazi villains in Hollywood films, most notably in Mrs. Miniver (1942). The young Dantine was a fervent anti-fascist/anti-Nazi activist in Vienna. As a leader in the anti-Nazi youth movement the 19-year old was summarily rounded up and imprisoned at the Rosserlaende concentration camp. Family influence persuaded a physician to grant him a medical release that June and he was immediately sent to Los Angeles to stay with the only friend they had in America. Dantine joined the Pasadena Playhouse, where he was spotted by a Warner Bros. talent scout who was struck by Dantine's dark good looks. Signed to a Warner's contract, he appeared in a variety of films after making his debut as a Nazi in International Squadron (1941) starring Ronald Reagan. He played supporting, second lead and eventually, lead roles in such films as Casablanca (1942) (where he was the newlywed who gambles away his visa money), Edge of Darkness (1943) (his first lead), the infamous Mission to Moscow (1943) and Passage to Marseille (1944). Two of his best films came on loan-out from Warners in 1942: Ernst Lubitsch's comic masterpiece To Be or Not to Be (1942) and William Wyler's Oscar-winning Mrs. Miniver (1942). Dantine directed the the unsuccessful Thundering Jets (1958). His wife, Niki Dantine, was the daughter of Loew's president Nicholas Schenck, the overall boss of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer -- ostensibly the most powerful man in Hollywood since 1927. After Schenck was forced out of Loew's, the wily old movie veteran formed his own production and distribution company. In 1959, Dantine's acting career was on the wane and his attempt to become a director a relative failure, he became a producer. He was appointed vice-president of his father-in-law's Schenck Enterprises, eventually becoming president of the company in 1970. Dantine produced three minor Sam Peckinpah films in the mid-1970s, including Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia (1974) and The Killer Elite (1975) in both of which,he had small supporting roles. Helmut Dantine died on May 2, 1982, at age 63, in Beverly Hills after suffering a massive heart attack. His body was interred at Westwood Memorial Park in Los Angeles, California.- Actress
- Soundtrack
Wini Shaw started her show biz career as child in her parents' vaudeville act. In 1934 she made her first screen appearance in a Hollywood movie and got a Warner contract. Her starring roles were mostly in minor movies, but as a specialty singer she appeared in some of the studio's big productions. She is best remembered as the girl who introduced the Harry Warren-Al Dubin song "Lullaby of Broadway" in Busby Berkeley's movie Gold Diggers of 1935 (1935). Surprisingly, she made only one record, for Decca in 1935 (Decca 408, recorded February 28, 1935). At the end of the '30s her screen career faded away.- Actress
- Soundtrack
Well-known Broadway actress Virginia Vestoff was born on December 9, 1939, in New York City, the daughter of vaudevillians. Her father was a Russian immigrant and mother a direct descent of composer/songwriter Stephen Foster (1826-1864). Both parents died young, leaving Virginia an orphan by age 9 and living with relatives. Her lonely, unhappy childhood led to an overactive imagination and a propensity toward the performing arts. At age 12 she won third prize on Ted Mack & the Original Amateur Hour (1948) and made her professional debut in the Children's Chorus of the New York City Opera Company. She later became a student at New York's High School of the Performing Arts.
She dropped out of school at age 15 to pursue her acting dream and eventually found herself touring with a dance company. This led to her professional stage debut in "The Boyfriend" in 1957. Virginia's versatility would shine in both legit classical plays and musicals, keeping her constantly employed throughout the 1960s and 1970s in such shows as "I'm Getting My Act Together and Taking It On the Road," "The Threepenny Opera," "Camelot," "My Fair Lady," "The King and I," "The Misanthrope," "Love and Let Love," "Man With a Load of Mischief," and "A Doll's House" (understudying Liv Ullmann as Nora).
She took her first Broadway bow in the musical revue "From A to Z" in 1960. While performing in New York the role of Daisy in the Sherlock Holmes musical "Baker Street" in 1965, she met and subsequently married psychologist/writer Morty Lefkoe, president and founder of the Lefkoe Institute and creator of the Lefkoe Method, a psychological process. Her other Broadway performances include "Irma La Douce" (understudying the title role before taking it over), "Boccaccio," the rock musical "Via Galactica," and, most notably, her portrayal of Abigail Adams in the hit revolutionary-period musical "1776," for which she received a 1969 Tony Award nomination. She lost that year to Marian Mercer for "Promises, Promises."
In the late '60s, the lovely red-headed actress started to find replacement work on daytime soaps. From 1969 to 1970, she replaced a vacationing Elizabeth Hubbard as Dr. Althea Davis on The Doctors (1963). She then assumed the role of Samantha in the cult vampire soap Dark Shadows (1966) for four months, superseding a departing Kathryn Leigh Scott. She also wound up pitching household items on commercial TV on a fairly regular basis.
Virginia had little chance to make a strong showing in films, appearing in only three supporting roles during her lifetime. She played minor ladylike parts in Such Good Friends (1971) and Robert Altman's A Wedding (1978), but, in between, was fortunate enough to preserve her award-worthy role of Abigail Adams in the celluloid version of 1776 (1972), again opposite William Daniels as her husband, Continental Congress delegate John Adams. Virginia's scant prime-time TV appearances include episodes of The Quinns (1977) and Kojak (1973). Sadly, she died of cancer at the age of 42 on May 2, 1982, in her native New York City.- Actor
- Director
Pjetër Gjoka was born on 2 August 1912 in Ulcinj, Montenegro. He was an actor and director, known for E Vërteta e Spanjës (1961), Skanderbeg (1953) and Furtuna (1959). He died on 2 May 1982 in Tirana, Albania.