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- Jonathan Frid's career in drama began when he first "offered his soul" to the theater as a young boy at a preparatory school in Ontario, Canada. Following his graduation from McMaster University, he attended the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts (RADA) in the UK and later earned a Master's Degree in Directing from the Yale School of Drama.
He was a leading actor in English and Canadian repertory and went on to work in many of the most celebrated regional theaters in the United States, including the Williamstown Theatre Festival, the Old Globe Theatre in San Diego, and the American Shakespeare Festival under the direction of John Houseman, performing with Katharine Hepburn in "Much Ado About Nothing".
Frid appeared in major roles on-and-off Broadway, in such productions as "Roar Like A Dove", "Murder in the Cathedral" and "Wait Until Dark". However, it was his portrayal of a complex, conflicted vampire on ABC-TV's daytime drama series Dark Shadows (1966) (he also had a cameo role in the motion picture House of Dark Shadows (1970)) which garnered him his greatest fame in the United States. Other film credits included co-starring roles in The Devil's Daughter (1973) (with Shelley Winters) and Seizure (1974) (Oliver Stone's directorial debut).
In 1986, Frid joined the Broadway production of "Arsenic and Old Lace" (co-starring with Jean Stapleton). He won critical acclaim for his villainous turn as the homicidal nephew and spent ten months with the play's national tour. That same year, Frid founded his own production company, "Clunes Associates", to create and tour a series of one-man readers' theater shows across North America. Frid continued to perform his one-man shows, now under the banner of "Charity Associates", to raise money for a variety of charities. Combining the arts of his voice and his zest for entertaining", as one critic put it. In June 2000, he returned to the traditional professional stage in the play "Mass Appeal" at the Stirling Festival Theatre in Stirling, Ontario. - Actor
- Soundtrack
Russell Arms played Chester Finley opposite Doris Day in "By the Light of the Silvery Moon" (Warner Bros. 1953). Chester, a nerd in love with Marjorie Winfield, Day's character, was Marjorie's piano teacher, a rival to Bill Sherman, played by Gordon MacRae. Arms, in 1953, was not yet a featured player on NBC-TV's "Your Hit Parade." He became one of the program's four regular singers in 1954.- Michael Ebbin was born on 5 June 1945 in Pembroke, Bermuda. He was an actor, known for Live and Let Die (1973). He died on 27 April 1996 in Hamilton, Bermuda.
- Actor
- Producer
Born in Hamilton, Ontario, George Frederick Cooper attended Prince of Wales School and Central Collegiate. He became a police cadet but eventually headed to Toronto for acting jobs on the CBC. He went to Hollywood and landed contracts with Warner Bros and Universal Studios in the early 1960s. Warner initially gave him the stage name of Kyle Thomson in 1961, but he soon changed it to Jeff Cooper in order to use his own last name at least, there already being an actor named George Cooper. He played a cavalry soldier in 1966's "Duel at Diablo" with Garner and Poitier and a hippy in 1968's "The Impossible Years" with Niven, and was a biker in the first Billy Jack film, 1967's "The Born Losers." His biggest role was in 1972 when he starred as Kaliman the Incredible, one of South America's most popular comic book heroes. The film was made by a Mexican film studio and was an enormous hit in Mexico. Cooper also made films in Europe and Egypt, and in 1978, he starred in a martial arts feature called "Circle of Iron" with David Carradine and Christopher Lee. It was originally written by Bruce Lee, who had intended to star in it but abandoned the project shortly before his untimely death. To hedge his bets, Cooper got a real estate license but that same day, he landed the role of Dr. Simon Ellby on the TV show "Dallas." He never did sell a home. In 1995, he returned to Hamilton to care for his ailing mother. Wife Colette said he had become "a private person" since he returned to Hamilton and had mostly spent his final years in Hamilton learning how to play guitar, taking nature walks, working out at the downtown YMCA, and reading profusely. He was 82 at the time of his death.- Actor
- Stunts
- Soundtrack
Neil Hope was born on 24 September 1972 in Toronto, Ontario, Canada. He was an actor, known for Degrassi High (1987), Degrassi: The Next Generation (2001) and The Kids of Degrassi Street (1979). He died on 25 November 2007 in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada.- Writer
- Actor
Terence Mervyn Rattigan was born in London on June 10, 1911, the son of a career diplomat and serial philanderer whose indiscretions resulted in his being cashiered by the Foreign Office. As a member of the lower upper-middle class in the inter-war period, the young Rattigan received a first-rate education at Harrow and Trinity College, Oxford. His was a privileged, intellectual background that is reflected in his plays. For a decade after the Second World War, he was one of England's leading playwrights, but the eruption of the "kitchen-sink" school of English drama in the mid-1950s scuttled his critical reputation.
Rattigan achieved his first success as a playwright at age 25 with the light comedy "French Without Tears" (1936), which was a smash in the West End. Determined to do more serious work, he wrote the satirical social drama "After the Dance" in 1939, which skewered the failure of the class of "Bright Young Things" to prevent another war. The advent of World War II truncated the play's run, but Rattigan would continue to taste sweet success for a full generation, alternating between comedies and dramas.
In the post-war period, he established himself as a major English dramatist with "The Winslow Boy", "The Browning Version", "The Deep Blue Sea", and "Separate Tables", all of which were made into successful motion pictures. A Rattigan play displayed keen craftsmanship and finely-structured plots; emotion was hidden in the best English middle-class tradition, but was lurking in the depths. The typical Rattigan play was a sympathetic, witty study of middle-class people in emotional distress. There was often a love triangle or a general conflict in which decent people found themselves embroiled. These characters sublimated their emotions and passions; the psychic cost of repression was a focus and theme of Rattigan's work.
Rattigan's themes were personal: the illogicality of love; the conflict between idealized love and love as realized in the here and now; the pain of lost promise; and the defeat of potential greatness by human weakness. The themes and leitmotifs in Rattigan's plays were found beneath the surface; nothing was worn on the sleeve. They were elucidated by the playwright's craft, through a well-constructed story and skillfully-observed characters.
According to Rattigan's biographer Geoffrey Wansell, he had learned how to mask his feelings from his father, whose multiple love affairs, carried on in secret behind his wife's back, appalled his son. Also, Terence was a homosexual in an era rife with anti-gay sentiment; the persecution of those suffering from what was once termed "inversion" was all too real.
Rattigan lived behind a mask (he was very discreet about his own same-sex affairs), as did the characters in his plays. Emotions were buried lest their display cause even more pain, or scandal. Wansell believes that his reticence stemmed from a deeply-rooted aversion to emotional engagement. "Behind the apparently carefree mask lived a man crying out to be loved and appreciated," Wansell wrote, "but a man who was also incapable of demonstrating that need."
For a run of almost five straight years in the 1940s, Rattigan had plays appearing simultaneously on the boards of three adjacent West End theaters. In 1956 the English stage was revolutionized by John Osborne's "Look Back in Anger," in which emotions were (in the parlance of a later generation) allowed to "all hang out." Overnight, Rattigan's dreams of emotional repression were deemed old-fashioned. Dramatists, directors, and actors who stuck with the old "well-crafted", more subtle paradigm of drama were also deemed "old-fashioned" and suffered a professional eclipse. (Laurence Olivier, who had starred in Rattigan plays and movies made from his work, kept himself relevant by offering himself to Osborne, who crafted "The Entertainer" for him. It would be many years before his contemporaries John Gielgud and Ralph Richardson would make it out of the woods, outside of Shakespeare, in terms of contemporary drama. They appeared together in Harold Pinter's "No Man's Land" 20 years after the changing of the guard).
"Look Back in Anger" was a cultural broadside against everything the Establishment represented, and Rattigan was very much part of that Establishment. In the introduction to his collected plays, published in 1959, Rattigan wrote of an archetypal playgoer, "Aunt Edna," whom he characterized as a "nice, respectable, middle-class, middle-aged maiden lady" to whom playwrights had to be responsive as she was the person who spent her money to go to the theater. What Rattigan was trying to say is that the theater must be responsive to its audience; to the new Turks, many of whom would later thrive in non-commercial, state-subsidized theater. Rattigan was a shameless old fart, pandering to the very class of people, the Aunt Ednas and the Miss Grundys, whom they despised and whose tastes, and the drama and comedies written to suit those tastes, debased the theater as an art form.
Rattigan's reputation declined and, overnight, his plays were derided by the critics. A very sensitive man who had a terrible fear of failure, Rattigan's confidence declined along with his critical reputation. He retaliated the new kitchen-sink school in interviews and via dialogue in his new plays, with the result that he underscored the new generation's contempt of him. Rattigan transformed himself into a caricature of the kind of playwright the new English theater was rebelling against: conservative, staid, old-fashioned, valuing craft above feeling, with no empathy for the modern world or for the majority of Britons. To them, he represented the complacency of a moribund Tory- and toff-dominated Britain that was no longer relevant after the Suez debacle of 1956.
Truthfully, among the post-1956 Rattigan plays are some of his finest work, including "Ross," "Man and Boy," and "Cause Celebre," but it didn't matter to the critics: he was considered hopelessly passé. Like the post- "The Night of the Iguana" Tennessee Williams, he was cruelly discarded as a contemporary artist of any relevance. He was a phantom of a past that vanished with Britain's world-power status after Suez.
Rattigan was first diagnosed with leukemia in 1962; it went into remission in 1964, but he suffered a relapse in 1968. Despising the "Mod" Britain of the 1960s, he moved to Bermuda. In that decade he supported himself by writing screenplays, and for a while he enjoyed the status as the world's highest-paid screenwriter. He was knighted in 1972 and moved back to England. His critical reputation saw a minor revival shortly before his death from cancer in 1977, and a major revival in the early 21st century after Karel Reisz staged a revival of "The Deep Blue Sea." Although he was never as successful in the United States as he was in Britain, Rattigan is increasingly being viewed in his homeland as one of the 20th century's finest playwrights.- Actor
- Additional Crew
Fishka Rais was born in 1919 in South Africa. He was an actor, known for The Hilarious House of Frightenstein (1971), Moord in Kompartement 1001E (1961) and Cannibal Girls (1973). He was married to Olga Rais. He died on 17 February 1974 in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada.- John Dee was born on 12 April 1913 in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, New York City, New York, USA. He was an actor, known for Adventures in Babysitting (1987), The Ray Bradbury Theater (1985) and Read All About It! (1979). He died on 29 March 1994 in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada.
- Aloysius Pang was born on 24 August 1990 in Singapore. He was an actor, known for C.L.I.F. (2011), Beijing to Moscow (2019) and C.L.I.F. 2 (2013). He died on 23 January 2019 in Hamilton, New Zealand.
- Bob Shreve was born on 16 July 1912 in Plymouth, Indiana, USA. He was an actor, known for The General Store (1952), 3 Stooges (1959) and A Million Laughs (1959). He was married to Mary Jane Keller. He died on 20 February 1990 in Hamilton County, Ohio, USA.
- Hyman Ullman was born in Cincinnati, Hamilton County, Ohio, USA. He was the founder of Rink's Bargain City, a local discount department store, and acted as host as well as sponsor for several local TV shows in the early 1960's. As co-host of Shock Theatre on Channel 9 on Fridays at 11:30pm.
He passed away on 3 January 2007 in Cincinnati, Hamilton County, Ohio, USA.
Ullner was the beloved husband of the late Geraldine Ullner, devoted father of Donna Ullner and Richard Ullner, dear brother of Sarah Schwartz, Barbara Baral, Ruth Sacolick and the late Dorothy Moss, Meyer Ullner and Coleman Ullner, loving grandfather of David and Karen Swolsky, Jason and Danielle Ullner, Jamie Ullner, Amy Lewis and Juli and Adam Swolsky, great grandfather of Jessica, Ryan, Morgan, Ben, Jacob, Caroline, Elizabeth and Katherine Swolsky and Walker Lewis, also survived by many loving nieces and nephews. - George S. Patton IV was born on 24 December 1923 in Boston, Massachusetts, USA. He was married to Joanne Holbrook. He died on 27 June 2004 in Hamilton, Massachusetts, USA.
- Andy Stocks was born on 5 February 1942 in Edinburgh, Scotland, UK. He was an actor, known for The Kids of Degrassi Street (1979) and Degrassi High (1987). He died on 19 March 2023 in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada.
- Madeline Kronby was an actress, known for A Cool Sound from Hell (1959), The Unforeseen (1958) and Seaway (1965). She died on 14 February 2004 in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada.
- Actor
- Soundtrack
Johnny S. Black was born on 30 September, 1891, in St. Louis, Missouri, the only child of John L and Jeanie V. Black. In the 1900 US Census, Johnny's father gave his occupation as "inventor". Later he marketed a mail order product that was guaranteed to kill bed bugs. After ordering, the customer received in the mail two blocks of wood with detailed instruction on how to swash the little pests between them. His father, who friends say Johnny adored, had also at one time operated a music store and performed on the vaudeville circuit as a one-man band. Johnny grew up mostly in Fairfield and Hamilton, both suburbs of Cincinnati, Ohio. Before he set out on his own at the age seventeen, Johnny performed with his father on the vaudeville stage usually playing a number of different types of musical instruments.
Johnny Black was a Broadway/vaudeville dance-hall violinist, singer master of ceremonies and songwriter, who is remembered for two songs he wrote that were huge hits.
The song "Dardanella" was a fox trot that became a big hit in 1919. It was composed by Johnny and Felix Bernard and songwriter Fred Fisher, who later added the lyrics. Johnny was said to have early on sold his interest in "Dardanella" for twenty-five dollars. The song went on to earn over twelve million dollars, of which Johnny only received, after litigation, somewhere between twelve and twenty thousand. Many years later Bing Crosby and Louis Armstrong included "Dardanella" in their album "Bing and Louis".
Johnny's other big song, "Paper Doll", was written in 1915, but did not become a hit until some six years following his death, when it was recorded by The Mills Brothers. The song's success sparked a royalties battle among his two ex-wives, his widow and the teenage daughter of his late father's housekeeper. After a lengthy court battle, his first wife convinced the court that her song "My Doll" was the genesis of "Paper Doll".
After the success of "Dardanella", Johnny toured the United States and abroad as a band leader and a master of ceremonies. For a time he performed with a musical comedy group called The Three Chums. While on tour in London, an unpaid hotel bill led to the confiscation of everything he owned excluding the clothes on his back. Johnny was forced to earn his return steamship passage home by shoveling coal. In 1924, Johnny and comedian Joe E. Lewis began performing together as the Dardanella Boys. The two went their separate ways not long after Johnny began showing up on stage drunk. By then Johnny's career was in a downward spiral that was fueled by his lavish life style and alcohol. Once after being convicted of public intoxication, the presiding judge, who was aware of Johnny's talent, ordered him to pay a one-hundred dollar fine or compose three songs to his satisfaction that were to be completed within the week. Johnny was able to write the songs in the time allotted and in a manner that pleased the judge.
In 1925 Johnny was hired as a studio director at WHT, a radio station in Chicago. Within a year or so he was back on the road performing. In the late 1920s he briefly resurrected the Dardanella Boys, this time with organist Harold Hovel (1906-1959).
By the early 1930s, Johnny was performing primarily in and around Hamilton as an entertainer and master of ceremonies at local restaurants, bars and clubs. In 1935 he became the proprietor of the Club Dardanella, a former speakeasy on Dixie Highway, not far from the Great Miami River and the campus of the University of Miami in Hamilton.
In the early morning hours of 6 June, 1936, Johnny got into an argument with a customer over the cost of a 25¢ drink. The patron asked to Johnny to step outside so they could settle the matter in the club's parking lot. During the pursuing fight, Johnny was knocked out when his head hit the concrete pavement hard after a vicious blow to the side of his face.
Johnny eventually recovered that night to the point where he was able to resume his normal duties at the Dardanella. A few hours later though, he lapsed into a coma, from which, he never awoke. He died Tuesday morning, 9 June, 1936 at Mercy Hospital in Hamilton. Even though an eye-witness testified that Johnny was sucker punched as he left the club and stepped into the parking lot; a grand jury later dropped the manslaughter charges against his attacker.
The Dardanella was eventually purchased by Walter Eaton who changed its name to Eaton Manor. Sometime later he placed a plaque commemorating Johnny's death in the restaurant's parking lot.
Within a few months after an article by Jim Newton about Johnny Black's life appeared in the 10 December, 1972 issue of the Journal News (Hamilton, Ohio), enough money was raised to erect a headstone for Johnny's unmarked grave at the Spring Grove Cemetery in Cincinnati. The headstone inscription reads in part "The Happiness His Music Brought Will Live Forever".- Frankie Venom was born on 2 June 1956 in Glasgow, Scotland, UK. He died on 15 October 2008 in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada.
- Mike Sharpe was born on 28 October 1951 in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada. He was an actor, known for WWF Championship Wrestling (1972), Spectrum Wrestling (1977) and WWF Prime Time Wrestling (1985). He died on 17 January 2016 in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada.
- Byron Robertson was born on 28 February 1939 in Kitchener, Ontario, Canada. He was an actor, known for The Wrestlers: Land of a Thousand Dances (1985), WWF Prime Time Wrestling (1985) and Mister Universe (1951). He died on 16 August 2007 in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada.
- Music Department
Brian Griffith was born in 1954 in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada. He is known for Willie Nelson at the Teatro (1998). He was married to Eudene Luther. He died on 14 November 2014 in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada.- Music Department
- Producer
- Sound Department
Nick Blagona was born in Bavaria, Germany. He was a producer, known for Zero Patience (1993), Dead Reckoning - Don't Bring Me Down (2013) and The Tea Party: Angels (2001). He was married to Mary-Jane Russell. He died on 4 January 2020 in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada.- From Find A Grave website: "Dick Von Hoene graduated from the University of Cincinnati, where he earned a bachelor's degree in history and a master's degree in theater; and while attending the University of Cincinnati, he acted in college productions, as well as summer stock and community theater productions; and Dick Von Hoene's professional career began as a copywriter for WCPO radio; he was employed by WXIX-TV, and he was most widely acclaimed as the creator of the very popular "Cool Ghoul" character that became a regular weekend feature hosting horror movies from the fall of 1969 until the spring of 1972; he became a reporter for WUBE 105 in 1973, and in 1979, he became a disc jockey; and in 1983, he became a news announcer for WFKB in Florence. In 1987, Dick Von Hoene was hired by Insight Communications, first as a News Director, and for the last 12 years as host of Northern Kentucky Magazine, a daily talk-variety program, where he promoted the community by welcoming representatives of counties, cities, schools, and charitable organizations to discuss their missions and activities; and he also welcomed authors and celebrities to Northern Kentucky Magazine, such as singers Chubby Checker and Judy Collins, Olympic gymnast Mary Lou Retton, and stage stars Cloris Leachman and Dean Jones were among those guests visiting Northern Kentucky to appear on his program; and he and Northern Kentucky Magazine received numerous awards from tri-state organizations recognizing service in enhancing coverage of the region; and In 1999, Dick Von Hoene was inducted into the Greater Cincinnati Legends of Rock 'N Roll Hall of Fame, along with other former standout deejays Steve Palmer, Shad O'Shea, and Steve Kirk.
- Make-Up Department
- Actress
- Costume Designer
Leighann Brokaw was born on 1 October 1985 in Hopewell, New Jersey, USA. She was an actress and costume designer, known for Gut (2012), The Bucks County Massacre (2010) and Nar-co-lap-sy (2009). She was married to David Ottaunick. She died on 6 January 2017 in Hamilton, New Jersey, USA.- Actor
- Make-Up Department
Paul Vasilak was born on 29 December 1980 in Ancaster, Ontario, Canada. He was an actor, known for Left for Dead (2007), The Artists (2006) and Dead Flowers (2010). He died on 14 July 2023 in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada.- Dave Battah is a Canadian-born performer with a phenomenal Rod Stewart impersonation.
He has wowed audiences including troops in Bosnia, Egypt, Afghanistan and Israel, as well as crowds in Las Vegas, London, Australia, and even the North Pole.
Dave Battah was also part of the 'Legends in Concert' show where he shared the stage with Elvis, Tom Jones, Neil Diamond and Cher impersonators.
Today Dave continues to take his show 'Forever Rod' around the world and has been doing so for over 15 years. - Mbula Enobong was born on 19 January 1990 in Canada. She was an actress, known for Civilized (2019). She died on 15 November 2020 in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada.