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1-14 of 14
- Writer
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Erle Stanley Gardner, the prolific pulp fiction writer best known for creating the fictional lawyer Perry Mason; Della Street, Mason's secretary; private detective Paul Drake, Mason's favorite investigator; and Hamilton Burger, the district attorney with the worst won-lost record in the history of fictional jurisprudence, was born in in Malden, Massachusetts, in 1889, the son of a mining engineer. The family soon moved to Portland, Oregon, and later to the Klondike during the Gold Rush. Eventually, the Gardners settled in Oroville, California, a small mining town.
Young Erle graduated from Palo Alto High School in 1909, but his college education was cut short when he was expelled from Valparaiso University in Indiana early in his freshman year for fighting. The young Erle led a wild life, as befits a child of the Klondike and mining towns. He was to remain an ardent sportsman and traveler throughout his life. He also spoke fluent Chinese.
The wild young Mr. Gardner supported himself as a boxer and as a promoter of illegal wrestling matches. Eventually, fate was to intervene. While working as a typist in a California law office, he became intrigued by the subject and decided to make it his profession. In the first half of the 20th century, lawyers did not attend law school but gained their education via practical experience, i.e., working in a law office. Law school was for those who intended to teach the law or become judges. Without formal instruction, Garnder passed the bar examination and was admitted to the California Bar in 1911, opening his first law office in Merced, California, when he was 21 years old.
Initially, business was bad, but his Chinese fluency enabled him to make a living defending Chinese clients, who dubbed him "T'ai chong tze" ("The Big Lawyer"). Gardner moved south to Ventura, where he went into practice with another attorney in 1918. Gardner soon quit practicing law for three years, instead working as a salesman for the Consolidated Sales Co. He married Natalie Frances Talbert in 1921, the year he returned to Ventura and the practice of the law. He was a practicing attorney for the next 12 years.
In the early 1920s, Gardner began writing for the pulp fiction magazines under the pseudonym Charles M. Green, the first of many pen names he would use during his career. Gardner wrote strictly for the money, but he had a flair for it, and his mystery short stories were popular and proved highly salable. He soon became a quite successful writer. According to the Encyclopedia Britannica, Gardner "wrote nearly 100 detective and mystery novels that sold more than 1,000,000 copies each, making him easily the best-selling American writer of his time."
Gardner established himself as a major contributor to the Black Mask, the most famous of all the pulp magazines. He wrote stories about Gentleman Rogue Lester Leith, Sidney Zoom (The Master of Disguise and the King of Chinatown). After the Great Depression set in, Gardner began writing western stories for a penny a word. A 1931 trip to China gave birth to Major Copely Brane, International Adventurer. That same year, he began using a Dictaphone to dictate his stories. Gardner had averaged 66,000 typed words a week (10% longer than F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby (1949)). After dictating a story, Gardener's secretary would transcribe the recordings.
Perry Mason debuted in 1933 with two stories, The Case of the Velvet Claws and The Case of the Sulky Girl, and proved instantly popular. The first Perry Mason film, The Case of the Howling Dog (1934) was made the next year by Warner Bros.-First National, with Warren William as Perry Mason, ably supported by future Oscar-winner Mary Astor and character actor Allen Jenkins. Williams returned the following year in The Case of the Curious Bride (1935) and The Case of the Lucky Legs (1935), the former helmed by Michael Curtiz, one of Warner's top directors who won his first Oscar nomination for directing Alex Hakobian that same year. Curtiz eventually won his Oscar for directing Casablanca (1942).
The following year, at RKO, granite-chinned heart-throb Richard Dix played Gardner's detective Bill Fenwick in the B-movie Special Investigator (1936). Meanwhile, back at Warner Bros., William Warren reprised the role of Perry Mason in The Case of the Velvet Claws (1936) before handing the role over to former silent-film superstar Ricardo Cortez. Cortez had played Sam Spade in the original The Maltese Falcon (1931), and at whom the immortal line, "Who's the dame in my kimono?" was directed. In The Case of the Black Cat (1936), the series was foisted off on the B-unit. Donald Woods, who had made his film debut eight years earlier in the silent picture Motorboat Mamas (1928), took over the role for the final entry in the Warner Bros. series, The Case of the Stuttering Bishop (1937). Despite Ann Dvorak being cast as Della Street, it proved the last appearance of Perry Mason on-screen for 20 years, with the exception of his veiled appearance under another name in Granny Get Your Gun (1940), which was based on the Perry Mason novel "The Case of the Dangerous Dowager."
After 1940, a Gardner work would never again appear on the big screen, though Perry Mason was to achieve immortality on TVs as they became ubiquitous in American homes. Perry Mason, which had some success as a radio show on CBS, moved to television in a one-hour format on 1957 and was a smash hit. The series ran until actor Raymond Burr, the definitive small-screen attorney, tired of the role in 1966. The TV series was revived in 1989 as made-for-TV movies, starting with "The Case of Too Many Murders" (1989), written by Thomas Chastain.
Due to his prodigious output, Garnder had to resort to pseudonyms so that his works wouldn't flood the market and depress their value. His most famous pen name was that of A.A. Fair. Gardner had a staff of secretaries to transcribe his dictation. He married one of his long-serving secretaries in 1968, after the death of his wife Natalie, from whom he had been estranged from since 1935.
Out of necessity, Gardner developed formulaic characters and plots, though each book was worked out extensively in his own longhand, including the final courtroom confrontation, before he sat down to dictate it. Graduating from Black Mask in the late 1930s, most of the Perry Mason novels were serialized by the Saturday Evening Post before they were published in book form. Gardner's connection with that magazine lasted 20 years.
As a lawyer, Gardner became the bane of the legal establishment when he helped co-founding The Case Review Committee (colloquially known as the Court of Last Resort), a professional association of concerned lawyers who sought to investigate and reopen cases wherein a person might have been wrongly convicted serious crime. Beside Gardner, other founders included LeMoyne Snyder, a physician and lawyer who wrote well-regarded text books concerning homicide investigations; Dr. Leonorde Keeler, a pioneer and authority in the use of the polygraph in criminal proceedings; former American Academy of Scientific Investigators President Alex Gregory (another polygraph expert who replaced Dr. Keeler after his death), renowned handwriting expert Clark Sellers, and former Walla Walla Penitentiary warden Tom Smith. The Mystery Writers of America bestowed its prestigious Fact Crime Edgar Award on Gardner in 1952, for his non-fiction book The Court of Last Resort (1957), which detailed one of the Court's first investigations.
The most prominent case the Court was involved with was the murder conviction of Dr. Samuel Sheppard, who staunchly proclaimed his innocence of the murder of his wife. (The Sheppard case provided the basis for the fictional The Fugitive (1963) TV show.) During the initial phases of the Sheppard appeal, Gardner polygraphed members of the Sheppard family. He had hoped if the results were favorable, he would then administer the lie detector test to Sam Sheppard himself. However, when Sheppard family members were tested, the polygraph results indicated guilty knowledge. Consequently Gardner declined to test Sam Sheppard, and the Court of Last Resort withdrew from the case, even though Gardner believed in Sheppard's innocence. Sheppard was later freed by a Supreme Court decision that held that Sheppard had not gotten a fair trial due to pre-trial publicity that tainted the juror pool. The Supreme Court case was won by F. Lee Bailey, who also won acquittal for Sheppard during the subsequent retrial. Polygraph tests have never been allowed into evidence in a U.S. court due to their unreliability. Gardner ended his active membership in the Court of Last Resort in 1960. The Court - which conducted preliminary investigations of at least 8,000 cases -- eventually disbanded.
Gardner died on March 11, 1970, at his home, Rancho del Paisano, in Temecula, California. His last Perry Mason mystery, "The Case of the Postponed Murder" was published in 1973.- Director
- Editor
- Producer
Christian Nyby, the television and movie director who achieved acclaim as a film editor before moving into the director's chair, was born on September 1, 1913, in Los Angeles, California. He made his reputation as a cutter during the 1940s, when he worked with the great helmer Howard Hawks, winning his sole Academy Award nomination for the editing of Hawks' classic Western Red River (1948) (1948). Nyby first collaborated with Hawks as an editor at Warner Bros., on the director's adaptation of his friend Ernest Hemingway's novel To Have and Have Not (1944) (1944). He edited The Big Sleep (1946), both the original 1944 version and the recut version that put more emphasis on stars Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall that was released in 1946.
In a real-life scenario similar to Robert Wise's cutting of Orson Welles's second masterpiece, The Magnificent Ambersons (1942), Nyby had to cut Red River (1948) on his own when director/producer Hawks had to go to Europe to complete another assignment. Nyby had to shorten Hawks' original cut, and also eliminate scenes that producer Howard Hughes thought plagiarized his own Western The Outlaw (1943), which Hawks had worked on. Though the film became regarded as a genre classic in the original Nyby cut, the original cut that Nyby had made under Hawks' supervision survived and was released during the 1960s, further burnishing the reputation of the film.
Nyby moved to the directors' chair for producer Hawks for the sci-fi movie The Thing from Another World (1951). Although The Thing is rightly regarded as a classic, credit for the direction of the film generally is attributed to Hawks as he reportedly was on the set everyday as the producer, and the film bears his "auteurist" stamp. Furthermore, Nyby's subsequent directorial output in film and on TV was mediocre, unlike this, his debut. Some believe the Hawks was ashamed to put his name on such a lowly genre piece (sci-fi was despised, critically, until Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) a generation later, and that film, one of the great classics of cinema, initially engendered hostile reviews from critics). Another theory is that Hawks helmed the film himself but let Nyby, who was on the set learning the ropes of direction, take the director's credit on the picture to receive membership in the Directors Guild. Whatever the truth, "The Thing" -- Nyby's greatest accomplishment as a director -- generally is credited to Hawks in fact or in spirit, so much is his style evident in the picture.
Nyby went on to direct B-movies such as the uninspired ode to the Marine Corps and battlefield sacrifice First to Fight (1967) (1967) and episodic television, never again showing the promise he had as director of "The Thing." He died on September 17, 1993, two weeks after turning 80 years old.- Actor
- Stunts
- Additional Crew
A somewhat chubby but menacing Guy Way played a frequent heavy in movies and television. During the 1960s you could catch him on numerous shows from Mission Impossible to The Man from U.N.C.L.E. (1964). Once in a while he did get a few lines as with The Sting (1973), where he takes Robert Redford at the roulette table. In 1967, as a prison guard he addresses Robert Blake as he is about to be hung in the classic In Cold Blood (1967). And he was a cop that helps chase Kevin McCarthy back in the 50s with Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956).- Bob Chaney was born on 2 February 1943. He was an actor, known for The Instructor (1981). He died on 27 March 2016 in Temecula, California, USA.
- John Mauldin was born on 14 October 1936. He was an actor, known for The Magic Sword (1962), The Dick Powell Theatre (1961) and General Electric Theater (1953). He died on 5 March 2007 in Temecula, California, USA.
- Writer
- Additional Crew
- Producer
Myles Wilder was born on 28 January 1933 in New York City, New York, USA. He was a writer and producer, known for The Dukes of Hazzard (1979), Get Smart (1965) and Karen (1964). He was married to Kim Wilder-Lee. He died on 20 April 2010 in Temecula, California, USA.- Sound Department
- Second Unit Director or Assistant Director
- Writer
Art Names was an assistant director and writer, known for The Hitcher (1986), Fangs (1974) and Alligator (1980). He died on 9 August 2015 in Temecula, California, USA.- Composer
- Writer
- Soundtrack
Andy Fraser was born on 3 July 1952 in Paddington, London, England, UK. He was a composer and writer, known for Wild (2014), American Beauty (1999) and The Diary of a Teenage Girl (2015). He was married to Henrietta (Ri). He died on 16 March 2015 in Temecula, California, USA.- Music Department
- Composer
Donald York was born on 19 June 1947 in Watertown, New York, USA. He was a composer, known for ABC Afterschool Specials (1972), Great Performances: Dance in America (1976) and CBS Children's Film Festival (1967). He was married to Anne York and Lila . He died on 3 June 2021 in Temecula, California, USA.- Music Department
- Composer
- Soundtrack
Songwriter, composer ("The Mole"), arranger, conductor and arranger, educated at LACC, Juilliard, and the Northwestern College of Music. He was also a music student of Joseph Schillinger, Ivan Boutnikoff, and Ernst Toch. During World War II, he served in the US Navy as a Lieuenant jg. in the Pacific Theatre. Later, he arranged for the orchestras of Vincent Lopez, Gordon Jenkins, Benny Goodman and Harry James, and also for NBC in Hollywood. Later still he was appointed music director for United Artists Records. Joining ASCAP in 1953, his other popular-song and instrumental compositions include "Prince Charming", "Sahara", "One Stop Boogie", "Pennsylvania Turnpike", "B-19", and "The New Dixieland Parade".- Dale Armstrong was born in 1941 in Holden, Alberta, Canada. He died on 28 November 2014 in Temecula, California, USA.
- James Phelan was born on 31 July 1912 in Alton, Illinois, USA. He was married to Amalie Deren. He died on 8 September 1997 in Temecula, California, USA.
- Writer
- Producer
Kisa Puckett was a writer and producer, known for Modern Day Jesus. Kisa died on 10 August 2023 in Temecula, California, USA.- Dave Meyers was born on 21 April 1953 in San Diego, California, USA. He was married to Linda. He died on 9 October 2015 in Temecula, California, USA.