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- Actor
- Writer
- Director
His father, Richard Head Welles, was a well-to-do inventor, his mother, Beatrice (Ives) Welles, a beautiful concert pianist; Orson Welles was gifted in many arts (magic, piano, painting) as a child. When his mother died in 1924 (when he was nine) he traveled the world with his father. He was orphaned at 15 after his father's death in 1930 and became the ward of Dr. Maurice Bernstein of Chicago. In 1931, he graduated from the Todd School in Woodstock, Illinois. He turned down college offers for a sketching tour of Ireland. He tried unsuccessfully to enter the London and Broadway stages, traveling some more in Morocco and Spain, where he fought in the bullring.
Recommendations by Thornton Wilder and Alexander Woollcott got him into Katharine Cornell's road company, with which he made his New York debut as Tybalt in 1934. The same year, he married, directed his first short, and appeared on radio for the first time. He began working with John Houseman and formed the Mercury Theatre with him in 1937. In 1938, they produced "The Mercury Theatre on the Air", famous for its broadcast version of "The War of the Worlds" (intended as a Halloween prank). His first film to be seen by the public was Citizen Kane (1941), a commercial failure losing RKO $150,000, but regarded by many as the best film ever made. Many of his subsequent films were commercial failures and he exiled himself to Europe in 1948.
In 1956, he directed Touch of Evil (1958); it failed in the United States but won a prize at the 1958 Brussels World's Fair. In 1975, in spite of all his box-office failures, he received the American Film Institute's Lifetime Achievement Award, and in 1984, the Directors Guild of America awarded him its highest honor, the D.W. Griffith Award. His reputation as a filmmaker steadily climbed thereafter.- Actor
- Director
- Producer
Exotic leading man of American films, famed as much for his completely bald head as for his performances, Yul Brynner masked much of his life in mystery and outright lies designed to tease people he considered gullible. It was not until the publication of the books "Yul: The Man Who Would Be King" and "Empire and Odyssey" by his son, Yul "Rock" Brynner, that many of the details of Brynner's early life became clear.
Yul sometimes claimed to be a half-Swiss, half-Japanese named Taidje Khan, born on the island of Sakhalin; in reality, he was the son of Marousia Dimitrievna (Blagovidova), the Russian daughter of a doctor, and Boris Yuliyevich Bryner, an engineer and inventor of Swiss-German and Russian descent. He was born in their home town of Vladivostok on 11 July 1920 and named Yuli after his grandfather, Jules Bryner. When Yuli's father abandoned the family, his mother took him and his sister Vera to Harbin, Manchuria, where they attended a YMCA school. In 1934 Yuli's mother took her children to Paris. Her son was sent to the exclusive Lycée Moncelle, but his attendance was spotty. He dropped out and became a musician, playing guitar in the nightclubs among the Russian gypsies who gave him his first real sense of family. He met luminaries such as Jean Cocteau and became an apprentice at the Theatre des Mathurins. He worked as a trapeze artist with the famed Cirque d'Hiver company.
He traveled to the U.S. in 1941 to study with acting teacher Michael Chekhov and toured the country with Chekhov's theatrical troupe. That same year, he debuted in New York as Fabian in "Twelfth Night" (billed as Youl Bryner). After working in a very early TV series, Mr. Jones and His Neighbors (1944), he played on Broadway in "Lute Song" with Mary Martin, winning awards and mild acclaim. He and his wife, actress Virginia Gilmore, starred in the first TV talk show, Mr. and Mrs. (1948). Brynner then joined CBS as a television director. He made his film debut in Port of New York (1949). Two years later Mary Martin recommended him for the part he would forever be known for: the King in Richard Rodgers' and Oscar Hammerstein II's musical "The King and I". Brynner became an immediate sensation in the role, repeating it for film (The King and I (1956)) and winning the Oscar for Best Actor.
For the next two decades, he maintained a starring film career despite the exotic nature of his persona, performing in a wide range of roles from Egyptian pharaohs to Western gunfighters, almost all with the same shaved head and indefinable accent. In the 1970s he returned to the role that had made him a star, and spent most of the rest of his life touring the world in "The King and I". When he developed lung cancer in the mid 1980s, he left a powerful public service announcement denouncing smoking as the cause, for broadcast after his death. The cancer and its complications, after a long illness, ended his life. Brynner was cremated and his ashes buried in a remote part of France, on the grounds of the Abbey of Saint-Michel de Bois Aubry, a short distance outside the village of Luzé. He remains one of the most fascinating, unusual and beloved stars of his time.- Edith Van Cleve was born on 11 October 1894 in Cleveland, Ohio, USA. She was an actress, known for The Age of Innocence (1934). She died on 10 October 1985 in Boston, Massachusetts, USA.
- Vera Bogetti was born on 5 October 1902 in Wandsworth, London, England, UK. She was an actress, known for Thistledown (1938), Because of Love (1936) and Confidential Lady (1940). She died on 10 October 1985 in Godstone, Surrey, England, UK.
- Producer
- Writer
Maurice Revnes was born on 28 September 1890 in New York City, New York, USA. He was a producer and writer, known for Paris Bound (1929), Suzy (1936) and The Awful Truth (1929). He was married to Sybil Carmen and Sibyl Carmen. He died on 10 October 1985 in Florida, USA.- Ghigo Masino was born on 2 March 1921 in Florence, Tuscany, Italy. He was an actor and writer, known for Anche i ladri hanno un santo (1981), Il vangelo secondo San Frediano (1978) and Racconti proibiti... di niente vestiti (1972). He died on 10 October 1985 in Florence, Tuscany, Italy.
- The daughter of an American living abroad, Aedita Stuart grew up in France and was known as a great beauty. First married to a French nobleman who died in World War I, the widowed Countess de Beaumont went on the stage as a dancer and actress, using the name "Gypsy Norman", performing both on Broadway and in vaudeville from 1921. She was married to her second husband, cartoonist Bud Fisher, by the captain of the ocean liner "Leviathan"; although the marriage lasted only a few months, she was Fisher's sole heir and after his death, owned the copyright to his comic strip "Mutt and Jeff", which afforded her a comfortable retirement.
- László Baksa Soós was born on 28 April 1910 in Budapest, Austria-Hungary [now Hungary]. He was an actor, known for Valamit visz a víz (1944), Ne kérdezd ki voltam (1941) and Futóhomok (1943). He died on 10 October 1985 in Budapest, Hungary.
- Karl Heinz Wocker was born on 1 May 1928 in Düsseldorf, North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany. He died on 10 October 1985 in London, England, UK.
- Sven-Ivar Pettersson was born on 25 November 1931 in Vedby, Skåne län, Sweden. He was an actor. He died on 10 October 1985 in Sollentuna, Stockholms län, Sweden.