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1-22 of 22
- 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.- Director
- Writer
- Second Unit Director or Assistant Director
Jean Negulesco made his reputation as a director of both polished, popular entertainments as well as critically acclaimed dramatic pictures in the 1940s and 1950s. Born in Craiova, Romania, he left home at age 12, ending up in Paris. He earned some money washing dishes, which paid for his art tuition, on the way to fulfilling his dream of becoming a painter. World War I intervened, and he found himself in the French army working in a field hospital on the Western Front. Returning to Paris unscathed, he embarked on a more serious study of the arts, learning to paint under the guidance of his émigré compatriot Constantin Brâncusi (1876-1957), and subsequently returned home to Romania. Proving himself an adept pupil, Negulesco sold 150 of his paintings at his very first exhibition. Back in Paris by the early 1920s, he discovered another outlet for his creativity by working as a stage decorator.
In 1927, Negulesco took some of his paintings to New York in the hope of finding a wider audience. He liked it and decided to stay. Travelling across the US to California--all the while making money by painting portraits--Negulesco took years to arrive at his destination. In 1932, he was hired by Paramount Pictures (working for producer Benjamin Glazer) for his first job in the movie industry, as a sketch artist and technical advisor, notably designing the rape scene in The Story of Temple Drake (1933) without violating the Hays Code. Persuaded by an art critic, Elie Faure, to throw himself whole-heartedly into film work, Negulesco then financed and directed his own experimental project, "Three and a Day", starring Mischa Auer. Studio executives liked the picture and Negulesco advanced up the ladder to second-unit director, working on A Farewell to Arms (1932) and (on loan to Warner Brothers) The Sea Hawk. He served in diverse capacities during the remainder of the decade, including associate director, scenarist and original story writer. In 1940, he was approached by Warner Brothers and signed to a contract (until 1948) to direct shorts. Between 1941 and 1944, Negulesco turned out a string of shorts, generally of a musical nature and often featuring popular big bands, including those of Joe Reichman, Freddy Martin and Jan Garber.
Negulesco's road to directing feature films was a tortured one. He was replaced by John Huston two months into shooting The Maltese Falcon (1941) and suffered a similar fate with Singapore Woman (1941). His big break came when he landed the directing job for The Mask of Dimitrios (1944), a tale of international intrigue, based on the novel "A Coffin for Dimitrios" by Eric Ambler. The film was unusual in that it starred two character actors instead of romantic leads. The story, already convoluted by many flashbacks, was therefore not muddied further by built-in romantic angles not integral to the plot. The two films noir experts at the center of the action, Sydney Greenstreet and Peter Lorre, contributed greatly to the success of the venture. Likewise did Negulesco's experience as an artist, which had provided him with a keen eye for effective shots and the ability to set a scene to create atmosphere. Critic Pauline Kael aptly commented that the picture "had more mood than excitement". "The Mask of Dimitrios" was a financial boon for Warner Brothers and led to further assignments for its director.
Continuing in the same genre, Negulesco was tasked with two more films starring Greenstreet and Lorre, The Conspirators (1944) and Three Strangers (1946). He also directed John Garfield and Joan Crawford in the brilliantly moody melodrama Humoresque (1946). This picture was in many ways a victory of style over content. The maudlin tale of an up-and-coming young violinist and his stormy, ultimately, ill-fated relationship with an unhappily married alcoholic socialite, could have been hackneyed soap opera under a lesser talent. However, Negulesco not only elicited electrifying performances from his stars, but also gave the film an edgy look, as well as effectively juxtaposing the ghetto background of the Garfield character with the lush, high-society settings of Crawford's. Aided by Ernest Haller's photography, a bitingly clever screenplay conceived by Clifford Odets and Zachary Gold, and with Franz Waxman's lavish orchestration of music by Antonín Dvorák and Richard Wagner, "Humoresque" was another major hit with critics and public alike.
'Mood" was again at the center of the success pf Johnny Belinda (1948), the story of a deaf-mute who is raped, has a child and later kills her assailant. Negulesco tackled what was at the time a taboo subject in films (considered box-office poison) with restrained sentimentality. Bosley Crowther pondered in his review why Warners had undertaken the project in the first place, but gave both it and its director an excellent appraisal (October 2, 1948). Unfortunately, Warners did not concur and, though "Johnny Belinda" made the studio $4 million, Negulesco was unceremoniously fired. He did have the last laugh, however, being nominated for an Academy Award for Best Director and seeing his star, Jane Wyman, walking away with a Best Actress Oscar.
Between 1948 and 1958, Jean Negulesco became a contract director for 20th Century-Fox, a studio where he found the pace more to his liking. His first assignment was Road House (1948), another robust film noir with a good cast, headed by Ida Lupino and Richard Widmark. He then helmed the realistic war drama Three Came Home (1950), which enjoyed good reviews by both "Variety" and the "New York Times". After a brief interlude in England, directing the idiosyncratic comedy The Mudlark (1950) with Alec Guinness, Negulesco had a less successful outing with his version of the sinking of the Titanic (1953).
From 1953, Negulesco effectively reinvented himself as a director of more commercial, glossy entertainments, beginning with the expensively made and deliriously enjoyable comedy How to Marry a Millionaire (1953). With Marilyn Monroe at the peak of her career, this was also one of the first pictures to be shot in CinemaScope. Not necessarily a critical hit but a hugely popular success was the Oscar-nominated Three Coins in the Fountain (1954), which was filmed on location in Rome and became another major hit for its director. This was followed, in a similar vein, by the excellent all-star Woman's World (1954). Negulesco's variable output during the remainder of the decade ranged from the CinemaScope musical Daddy Long Legs (1955) to the colorful Boy on a Dolphin (1957), which introduced Sophia Loren to American audiences. Among Negulesco's notable failures during this period were The Rains of Ranchipur (1955) and The Gift of Love (1958).
In the late 1960s he moved to Marbella, Spain, to paint and to collect art. He made three more films after 1963, The Pleasure Seekers (1964), The Invincible Six (1970) and Hello-Goodbye (1970), which are best forgotten.
Jean Negulesco reminisced about his Hollywood experiences in an autobiography in 1984, "Things I Did...and Things I Think I Did". He died in Marbella of a heart attack at the respectable age of 93.- Actress
- Soundtrack
Ann Smyrner was born on 3 November 1934 in Frederiksberg, Denmark. She was an actress, known for Reptilicus (1961), Kommissar X - Drei gelbe Katzen (1966) and Holiday in St. Tropez (1964). She died on 29 August 2016 in Benalmadena, Andalusia, Spain.- Actor
- Producer
Gérard Barray was the leading hero in Adventure-Movies made in France - following Jean Marais and on his side in his starting-out-Movies. He became famous as D'Artagnan in "Les trois mousquetaires", as Hardi Pardaillan and "Commissaire San Antonio". In 1969 he changed his profile to the dark side as Van Britten, partner of young Claude Jade in The Witness (1969) - his most interesting part, but whithout great success. His come-back to popularity was the TV-Man Duvernois in Open Your Eyes (1997) by Alejandro Amenábar, the original version of Vanilla Sky (2001) with Tom Cruise.- According to his obituary, Dick Stark had been a child actor and appeared in films such as ''Hearts of Humanity,'' and ''Out of the Wreck," and ''The Wedding March.'' He was a Colonel in the Marine Corps Reserve for 30 years serving in the Pacific during World War II returning to active duty in 1966 to serve in Vietnam. He was a graduate of Cornell University and Pratt Institute.
- Actor
- Additional Crew
Rafael Durán Espayaldo was born in Madrid on 15 December, 1911.
He tried to pursue a military career, wanting to join the Navy, but was unsuccessful. Then he started Engineering studies, but left them for show business. He worked first as dancer then meritorio (extra) in theatre plays (1932), going from modest companies to those of Irene López Heredia and Gonzalo Delgrás-Margarita Robles. There he met Estrellita Castro, his future costar in the picture that was to be the first for both, Rosario la cortijera (1935), a drama set in a bull-breeding background.
During the Spanish Civil War he fought with the National (Franco's) side, joining the Falange and thus being in an advantaged political position in post-war industry. His distinctive voice, with a strong clear diction, also brought him to dubbing pictures for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Acústica studio, managed by Delgrás. There he was the Spanish voice for Cary Grant. As he also had good looks and a martial air, Delgrás offered him a role in his picture La tonta del bote (1939), where he was paired with Josita Hernán. From his first picture he had significant roles, soon becoming one of the main leading men of Spanish postwar cinema. "La tonta del bote" became so successful that he and Josita would team together in several pictures afterwards, also partnering in a theatrical company.
During the 40s he acted in comedies and dramas with equal success, co-starring with the main actresses of the time : Lina Yegros (Un marido a precio fijo (1942), Luchy Soto (Tuvo la culpa Adán (1944), Marta Santaolalla (Mosquita en palacio (1943) and Amparo Rivelles among them. With Amparo Rivelles he made two of the most popular pictures of the decade, the comedy Eloísa está debajo de un almendro (1943) and Pedro Antonio de Alarcón's heavy costume drama The Nail (1944). They would repeat a similar style in La fe (1947), pertaining to the religious genre. Another of his leading ladies was Conchita Montes in another successful comedy, La vida en un hilo (1945). In fact he was teamed with practically every main actress of the period, like Paola Barbara in one more Alarcón's story, The Prodigal Woman (1946). For this performance he was given the Motion Picture Writer's (Círculo de Escritores Cinematográficos) award. He got married and had a daughter. In 1949 he and Joaquín Luis Romero Marchent founded Intercontinental Films Productions. In the 50s he slowly backed to supporting roles, but worked regularly and remained popular with audiences.
His roles were usually commanding and energetic, and his serious air made him equally good in comedy and drama. Not to forget the typical Spanish genre of those times, historical pictures like Jeromín (1953) (where he starred with dramatic actress Ana Mariscal). In the 50s another genre was gaining prominence, crime pictures, known as cine policíaco (detective stories, Spanish noir). Durán would add them to his already wide repertory, and would make several good ones. Like the Portuguese coproduction Três Espelhos (1947), or the interesting newspaper multi-story Séptima página (1951) where he had the connecting role.
In 1965 he retired from acting. He died peacefully in Seville on 12 February 1994 of cancer.
He had a good timing for comedy, a polished looks and firm voice, and a characteristic gesture of raising one brow which, along with his style of acting and dubbing precedent, won him the familiar name of "The Spanish Cary Grant".- Joan Dalmau was born on 19 February 1927 in Montcada i Reixac, Barcelona, Catalonia, Spain. He was an actor, known for The Sea Inside (2004), Julia's Eyes (2010) and Soldiers of Salamina (2003). He died on 6 February 2013 in Coria del Río, Seville, Andalusia, Spain.
- Director
- Writer
- Second Unit Director or Assistant Director
Luis Calvo Teixeira was born in 1936 in Ceuta, Spain. He was a director and writer, known for Horas doradas (1980), Fulgor y muerte de Joaquín Murrieta (1975) and Teatro de siempre (1966). He died on 7 May 2015 in Marbella, Andalusia, Spain.- Tibu Lubart was born in 1947 in New York, USA. She was an actress, known for Bear's Kiss (2002). She died in 2003 in Andalusia, Spain.
- Paco De Osca was born in 1925 in Reus, Barcelona, Spain. He was an actor, known for Fugitivas (2000), La hoz y el Martínez (1985) and La Lola se va a los puertos (1993). He died on 22 November 2002 in Gines, Sevilla, Andalusia, Spain.
- Toni Dalli was born on 28 November 1933 in Pescara, Abruzzo, Italy. He died on 29 April 2021 in Marbella, Andalusia, Spain.
- Brian Naylor was born on 24 March 1923 in Salford, England, UK. He died on 8 August 1989 in Marbella, Andalusia, Spain.
- Junio Valerio Borghese was born on 6 June 1906 in Artena, Lazio, Italy. He died on 26 August 1974 in Cadiz, Andalusia, Spain.
- Martin Revuelo was born in 1945 in Madrid, Spain. He was married to Juana La Del Revuelo. He died on 22 January 2012 in Sevilla, Andalusia, Spain.
- Nelson Shanks was born on 23 December 1937 in Rochester, New York, USA. He was married to Leona. He died on 28 August 2015 in Andalusia, Pennsylvania, USA.
- Producer
- Director
Philip Brooks was born on 2 July 1953 in Hobart, Tasmania, Australia. He was a producer and director, known for Madame Satã (2002), Woubi Cheri (1998) and 6000 a Day: An Account of a Catastrophe Foretold (2002). He died on 6 January 2003 in Cadiz, Andalusia, Spain.- Louis Darquier de Pellepoix was born on 19 December 1897 in Cahors, Lot, France. He was married to Myrtle Jones. He died on 29 July 1980 in Carratraca, Málaga, Andalusia, Spain.
- Actor
- Writer
Pablo Aranda was an actor and writer, known for Otra ciudad (2009), Arena en los bolsillos (2006) and El mismo mar (2006). He died on 1 August 2020 in Malaga, Andalusia, Spain.- Actor
- Soundtrack
Pepe Jaramillo was born on 27 October 1921 in Lerdo, Durango, Mexico. He was an actor, known for What We Do in the Shadows (2014), Cooperama (1966) and The Dick Emery Show (1963). He died on 30 April 2001 in Mijas, Malaga province, Andalusia, Spain.- Composer
- Actor
- Writer
Salvador Távora was born on 3 April 1930 in Sevilla, Andalusia, Spain. He was a composer and actor, known for Rocío (1980), Nanas de espinas (1984) and El barranco de Viznar (1976). He died on 8 February 2019 in Sevilla, Andalusia, Spain.- Luis Del Sol was born on 6 April 1935 in Arcos de Jalón, Spain. He died on 20 June 2021 in Sevilla, Andalusia, Spain.
- Soundtrack
Juana La Del Revuelo was born in 1952 in Sevilla, Spain. She was married to Martin Revuelo. She died on 7 June 2016 in Sevilla, Andalusia, Spain.