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The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis is an American sitcom that aired on CBS from 1959 to 1963. The series and some episode scripts were adapted from a 1951 collection of short stories of the same name, written by Max Shulman, that also inspired the 1953 film The Affairs of Dobie Gillis with Debbie Reynolds, Bob Fosse, and Bobby Van as Dobie Gillis. A follow-up novel, I Was a Teen-Age Dwarf, appeared in 1959.

The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis was produced by Martin Manulis Productions in association with 20th Century Fox Television; creator Shulman also wrote the theme song in collaboration with Lionel Newman.

Overview[link]

Dobie (Dwayne Hickman), Maynard (Bob Denver) and one of Dobie's "many loves" (Danielle De Metz as Yvette LeBlanc).

The series revolved around teenager Dobie Gillis (Dwayne Hickman), who aspired to have popularity, money, and the attention of beautiful and unattainable girls. He didn't have any of these qualities in abundance, and the tiny crises surrounding Dobie's lack of success made the story in each weekly episode. His partner-in-crime was American television's first beatnik, Maynard G. Krebs (Bob Denver).

Krebs had a deep aversion to work and was convinced life was for enjoying. Dobie's father, Herbert T. Gillis (Frank Faylen), who owned a grocery store, was only happy when Dobie was behind a broom. Dobie's father was often caught up in various elaborate get-rich-quick schemes, or situational bail-outs à la Ralph Kramden, with Dobie getting ensnared along with him; by the end both came around grudgingly to Maynard's point of view.

As a high school student, Dobie lived at home with his parents in the show's early years, and his interaction with his parents was a source of much of the humor. His mother Winnie (Florida Friebus) was very caring and perhaps tended to baby her son a little too much; his father Herbert was a very proud, hard-working child of the Great Depression and veteran of World War II, who was often heard to declare "I've gotta kill that boy, I've just gotta!" but deep down a good and decent man.

Dobie's two main antagonists were rich kids, Milton Armitage (Warren Beatty) and, after his departure, Milton's cousin, Chatsworth Osborne, Jr. (Steven Franken), both representing the wealth and popularity to which Dobie aspired. They both shared the same actress, Doris Packer, as their mother.

Dobie was hopelessly attracted to the money-hungry blonde Thalia Menninger (Tuesday Weld), who frequently entangled Dobie in her money-making schemes. Weld soon left the series but was replaced by a seemingly endless stream of young women equally hard for Dobie to obtain. Most, however, were not as money-obsessed as Thalia. Thalia's catchphrase was that the money was not for her but for her family; she would talk about ailments her family had that only money could cure. Thalia claimed her looks were all her family had to lift them out of their bad situation in life.

Zelda Gilroy (Sheila James Kuehl) was a brilliant and eager young girl who was hopelessly in love with Dobie, much to his annoyance. Despite his protests, Dobie was clearly fond of Zelda and would be married to her in the proposed 1977 series pilot, Whatever Happened to Dobie Gillis? Zelda claimed Dobie loved her too but just hadn't realized it yet. To prove this she'd wiggle her nose (like a rabbit) at Dobie who would do the same back to Zelda, though Dobie said it was only a reflex and not love that made him do that.

During the second season, Dobie and Maynard (along with Chatsworth) did a brief stint in the U.S. Army. The peacetime draft was in effect at the time, and the Vietnam War was as yet only a minor concern to most Americans when the series ended.

Beginning with the third season, Dobie moved from high school to S. Peter Pryor Junior College, surrounded by many of the same people. William Schallert played Leander Pomfritt, the English teacher at both the high school and the junior college; and Jean Byron (with whom Schallert would later co-star on The Patty Duke Show) played mathematics teachers Ruth Adams and Professor Imogene Burkhart (which was actually Jean Byron's real name).

Cast[link]

• Dwayne Hickman as Dobie Gillis
• Frank Faylen as Herbert T. Gillis
• Florida Friebus as Winnifred "Winnie" Gillis
• Bob Denver as Maynard G. Krebs
• Tuesday Weld as Thalia Menninger
• Warren Beatty as Milton Armitage
• Sheila James Kuehl as Zelda Gilroy
• Steven Franken as Chatsworth Osborne, Jr.
• Doris Packer as Mrs. Armitage and Mrs. Chatsworth Osborne, Sr.
• William Schallert as Professor Leander Pomfritt
• Joyce Van Patten as Mrs. Pomfritt
• Jean Byron as Dr. Imogene Burkhart and Mrs. Ruth Adams
• Bobby Diamond as cousin Duncan "Dunky" Gillis
• Darryl Hickman as brother Davey Gillis
• Michael J. Pollard as cousin Jerome Krebs
• Marjorie Bennett as Mrs. Kenny
• Raymond Bailey as Dean Magruder
• Clinton Sundberg as Trembley, the Armitage butler
• Dabbs Greer as Zelda's father
• Willis Bouchey as Maynard's father
• Herbert Anderson as Maynard's and Dobie's High School Teacher

Episodes[link]

Broadcasting history[link]

• September 29, 1959 – June 26, 1962: Tuesday at 8:30 pm on CBS
• September 26, 1962 – June 5, 1963: Wednesday at 8:30 pm on CBS

Nielsen ratings[link]

• October 1959 – April 1960: Not in the Top 30
• October 1960 – April 1961: #23/23.0
• October 1961 – April 1962: #21 (tie)/22.9
• October 1962 – April 1963: Not in the Top 30

Production[link]

Dobie Gillis was filmed with two cameras, a method that producer and director Rod Amateau had learned while working with George Burns. The show was not filmed before a live studio audience, but a live audience viewed each episode and provided its laugh track.^[1]

Because Hickman had appeared for several years on the comedy Love That Bob as Bob Cumming's nephew, Chuck, he was asked to dye his hair blond for the role of Dobie in order to distance himself from that character in the public's mind.^[2] By the following year, however, Hickman was permitted to return to his natural brunette hair color.

Auguste Rodin's Statue of "The Thinker."

During the first season, many of the episodes would begin and end with Dobie sitting on a Central City park bench posed à la Auguste Rodin's statue, "The Thinker", a reproduction of which stood behind him. Speaking directly to the audience, he would explain to the viewing audience his problem of the week (usually girls or money). The use of the statue was phased out in later episodes.

After filming the third episode, Bob Denver announced that he had received his draft notice and the character of Maynard was given an elaborate sendoff (he enlisted in the Army) in the show's next episode, Maynard's Farewell to the Troops. Stage actor Michael J. Pollard was brought out from New York to play Maynard's cousin, Jerome Krebs. Before Pollard had completed his first episode, however, Denver returned and announced that he had been designated 4F (unfit for service) because of a neck injury he had sustained some years earlier. Pollard appeared in only one more episode before being bought out of his contract.^[3] Pollard later appeared with his fellow Dobie Gillis co-star Warren Beatty in Bonnie and Clyde, and also appeared in other films, such as The Russians Are Coming, The Russians Are Coming.

The actresses that played Dobie's love interests include Cheryl Holdridge, Michele Lee, Susan Watson, Marlo Thomas, Sally Kellerman, Ellen Burstyn (billed as Ellen McRae), Barbara Babcock, Sherry Jackson, Diana Millay and Barbara Bain. Yvonne Craig appeared in the opening credits and the closing sequence of the pilot film used to sell the series to CBS, but did not appear in the actual episode, "Caper at The Bijou", when it was broadcast. She would eventually play five different girl friends on the show, more than any other actress.

Theme song[link]

The theme song "Dobie" was written by 20th Century-Fox Musical Director Lionel Newman, with lyrics by Max Shulman. The theme was sung by Judd Conlon's Rhythmaires, with music conducted by Lionel Newman.

Other media[link]

After the first season of The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis had aired, Capitol Records attempted to make a recording star out of Dwayne Hickman, ignoring the fact that he couldn't sing. According to Hickman's autobiography, Forever Dobie: The Many Lives of Dwayne Hickman, the recording engineers had to piece together numerous takes to get a usable track of each song. Hickman introduced several of the songs from the Dobie! album on the show, including "I'm a Lover, Not a Fighter" and "Don't Send a Rabbit."
Earlier, while Hickman was appearing on Love That Bob, he had recorded a single, "School Dance," for ABC-Paramount Records, but both the single and the later Capitol album sold very few copies.^[4]

DC Comics published a Many Loves of Dobie Gillis comic that ran for twenty-six issues in the early 1960s, featuring work by Bob Oksner. Stories from this comic would later be revamped as Windy and Willy.

Sequel films[link]

The program spawned two sequels, the pilot Whatever Happened to Dobie Gillis (1978) and TV movie Bring Me the Head of Dobie Gillis (1988). In these, Dobie had married Zelda and had a son named Georgie, who was like Dobie had been at his age. The latter of these took its title from the Sam Peckinpah film, Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia, and its plot from the play The Visit, by Friedrich Dürrenmatt.

Pop culture influences[link]

The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis was a major influence on the characters for another successful CBS program, the Saturday morning cartoon Scooby-Doo, Where Are You! Scooby writer Mark Evanier noted that "Fred was based on Dobie, Shaggy on Maynard, Velma on Zelda and Daphne on Thalia." [1] Dobie would always say something outrageous, about a sloppy, unkempt mess. Up would pop beatnik Maynard with the line "You rang." It would be copied on "The Addams Family," and even parroted on "Mad Men."

Footnotes[link]

References[link]

• Brooks, Tim and Marsh, Earle, The Complete Directory to Prime Time Network and Cable TV Shows
• Twentieth Century-Fox episode information on The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis
• Hickman, Dwayne, Forever Dobie: The Many Lives of Dwayne Hickman, Carol Publishing Corporation, Secaucus, New Jersey, 1994

External links[link]

• The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis at TV.com
• The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis at the Internet Movie Database
• The Affairs of Dobie Gillis (1953 film) at the Internet Movie Database
• Whatever Happened to Dobie Gillis? (1977 TV movie) at the Internet Movie Database
• Bring Me the Head of Dobie Gillis (1988 TV movie) at the Internet Movie Database

Barbara Bain
Barbara Bain (2006)
Born	Millicent Fogel (1931-09-13) September 13, 1931 (age 80) Chicago, Illinois, U.S.
Occupation	Actor
Years active	1958–present
Spouse	Martin Landau (m. 1957–1993) «start: (1957)–end+1: (1994)»"Marriage: Martin Landau to Barbara Bain" Location: (linkback:http://en-wiki.pop.wn.com/index.php/Barbara_Bain)

Barbara Bain (born September 13, 1931) is an American actress.

Early life[link]

Bain was born in Chicago as Millicent Fogel, the daughter of immigrants from Russia.^[1] She graduated from the University of Illinois with a bachelor's degree in sociology. She moved to New York City, where she was a dancer and high fashion model. Bain studied with Martha Graham, thus cementing her interest in dancing. After attending Lee Strasberg's Actors' Studio, she became an actress.

In 1958, Bain and Larry Hagman guest-starred in the last episode of Harbourmaster. She guest-starred as Nen Slausen in the 1959 episode "Fiddle Dee Dead" of Rod Cameron's syndicated series State Trooper.

February 20, 1960 featured in Perry Mason: Episode 85 (Season 3,Ep 16) "The Case of the Wary Wildcatter". Played "Madelyn Terry" the girlfriend of "Lucky Sterling"....

On December 23, 1960, she guest-starred in a Christmas episode of James Whitmore's legal drama The Law and Mr. Jones on ABC.

On December 30, 1963, Bain appeared with Jack Kelly, long after Maverick in "The Fenton Canaby Story" on ABC's Wagon Train, Season 7. Canaby is a former trailmaster with a dark secret he refuses to discuss. Bain plays Lucy Garrison, a young woman with her own questionable past, long before Mission: Impossible!, who is attracted to Canaby. Virginia Gregg plays Grace Lowe, who blames Canaby for her husband's death.^[2]

Career[link]

Barbara Bain as Cinnamon Carter, 1969.

On CBS's Mission: Impossible, Bain played Cinnamon Carter from 1966 until 1969 and again in one 1997 episode of Dick Van Dyke's Diagnosis: Murder. She was nominated for a Golden Globe Award for Actress in a Television Series for her performance in Mission: Impossible in 1968. She won three consecutive Emmys for Best Dramatic Actress for that series in 1967, 1968, and 1969.^[3]

Her then husband, Martin Landau, also starred in Mission: Impossible. The two both left the series in 1969. She starred opposite Landau again in the science fiction television series Space: 1999 (1975–1977), as Dr. Helena Russell. Bain and Landau also performed together on screen in the 1981 made-for-TV film The Harlem Globetrotters on Gilligan's Island. Bain also appeared in Season 2 of the television series The Dick Van Dyke Show in the episode "Will You Two Be My Wife?". Bain appeared on an episode of My So-Called Life, playing main character Angela Chase's grandmother. She appeared in the episode "Matroyoshka" of Millennium, a late-'90s sci-fi series. In 1998, Bain was a special guest star in the Walker, Texas Ranger episode ("Saving Grace") as Mother Superior. In 2006, Bain had a minor role in an episode of CSI: Crime Scene Investigation ("Living Legends"), which featured a suspect, played by Roger Daltrey, who used stretch rubber face masks, similar to those used in the old Mission: Impossible series, to kill his enemies. In 2008, Bain appeared in the episode "What Are Little Girls Made Of?" of the TV show Ben 10: Alien Force, voicing Verdona Tennyson, the grandmother of Ben Tennyson and Gwen Tennyson, alongside her daughter, Juliet Landau.

Personal life[link]

In 1957, she married actor Martin Landau, with whom she later starred on television. Landau and Bain divorced in 1993. The couple had two daughters, actress Juliet Landau and film producer Susan Bain Landau Finch^[4] (née Susan Meredith Landau). Bain is of the Jewish faith.^[5]

Barbara Bain has worked to further the cause of many charities, including literacy. When asked about watching daughter Juliet's career evolve, Bain told Attention Deficit Delirium: "I think it's wonderful. She wants it, she's very good at it, so she should do it. She's very gifted. I've seen her in the theater, and we've been on stage together. We did a play in Los Angeles together. It was gorgeous because I was in the wings and could watch her, and she could be in the wings and watch me. I handed her a handkerchief at the end of her big crying scene. I've never been nervous about her because she knows what she's doing, so I'm very calm when I watch her and very excited to see what she's doing. I don’t take pride because it doesn’t seem like anything that I did. It seems more exquisite pleasure, but not pride. I didn't do anything, she did it. In kindergarten she said she wanted to be a singer/dancer/actress. She does sing and did dance. She didn't mess around. She went right after what she was going to do."^[6]

References[link]

External links[link]

• Barbara Bain at the Internet Movie Database

Rose Marie
Rose Marie on May 6, 2010
Born	Rose Marie Mazetta (1923-08-15) August 15, 1923 (age 88) New York City, New York, U.S.
Occupation	Actress, singer
Years active	1926–present

Rose Marie (born August 15, 1923) is an American actress. As a child performer she had a successful singing career as Baby Rose Marie.

A veteran of vaudeville, Rose Marie's career includes film, records, theater, night clubs, and television. Her most famous role was television comedy writer Sally Rogers on the CBS situation comedy The Dick Van Dyke Show. She later portrayed Myrna Gibbons on CBS's The Doris Day Show and was also a frequent panelist on the game show Hollywood Squares.

Early years[link]

Rose Marie Mazetta was born in New York City, New York, to Italian-American Frank Mazzetta and Polish-American Stella Gluszcak. At the age of three, she started performing under the name "Baby Rose Marie." At five, Rose Marie became a radio star on NBC and made a series of films.

Rose Marie was a nightclub performer in her teenage years before becoming a radio comedian. She was billed then as "The Darling of the Airwaves." According to her autobiography, Hold the Roses,^[1] she was assisted in her career by many members of organized crime, including Al Capone and Bugsy Siegel. She performed at the opening night of the Flamingo Hotel which was built by Siegel.^[2]

At her height of fame as a child singer (late 1929–1934), she had her own radio show, made numerous records, and was featured in a number of Paramount films and shorts. In 1929, the five- or six-year-old singer made a Vitaphone sound short titled "Baby Rose Marie the Child Wonder," (now restored and available in the Warner Brothers DVD set of The Jazz Singer). For her first recording session, in 1932, she was accompanied by Fletcher Henderson's Orchestra. She continued to appear in films through the mid-1930s, making shorts and a feature, International House with W. C. Fields, for Paramount.

Television[link]

In the 1960–1961 season, Rose Marie co-starred with Shirley Bonne, Elaine Stritch, Jack Weston, Raymond Bailey, and Stubby Kaye in the CBS sitcom My Sister Eileen. She played Bertha, a friend of the Sherwood sisters, Ruth, a magazine writer, played by Stritch, and Eileen, an aspiring actress, Bonne's role.

After starring for all five seasons of The Dick Van Dyke Show (in the role originally played by Sylvia Miles in the pilot episode), Rose Marie co-starred on CBS's The Doris Day Show as Doris Martin's friend and co-worker, Myrna Gibbons. She later had a semi-regular seat in the upper center square on the original version of Peter Marshall's Hollywood Squares, alongside her friend and longtime Van Dyke co-star, Morey Amsterdam. She also appeared on both 1986 and 1998 syndicated revival.

In the early 1990s, she had a recurring role as Frank Fontana's mother on the CBS sitcom Murphy Brown. She also played Roy Biggins's domineering mother, Eleanor "Bluto" Biggins in the TV series Wings.

Rose Marie and Morey Amsterdam guest-starred together in a February 1996 episode of the NBC sitcom Caroline in the City, shortly before Amsterdam's death in October of that same year. She appeared with the surviving Dick Van Dyke Show cast members in a 2004 reunion special. Rose Marie was especially close to actor Richard Deacon from that show, and offered him the suits left behind when her husband died in 1964, as the two men were of similar height and build. She was married to trumpeter Bobby Guy from 1946 until his death in 1964.^[3]

She also appeared in two episodes of the NBC series The Monkees in the mid 1960s.

Theater[link]

From 1977–81, she co-starred with Rosemary Clooney, Helen O'Connell and Margaret Whiting in the musical revue 4 Girls 4, which toured the U.S. and appeared on television several times. As of 2011, she continues to occasionally perform.

Filmography[link]

Features[link]

• International House (1933)
• Top Banana (1954)
• The Big Beat (1958)
• Don't Worry, We'll Think of a Title (1966)
• Dead Heat on a Merry-Go-Round (1966)
• Memory of Us (1974)
• The Man from Clover Grove (1975)
• Bruce's Deadly Fingers (1976)
• Cheaper to Keep Her (1980)
• Lunch Wagon (1981)
• Witchboard (1986)
• Sandman (1993)
• Psycho (1998)
• Lost & Found (1999)
• Shriek If You Know What I Did Last Friday the Thirteenth (2000)
• Surge of Power: The Stuff of Heroes (2004)

Short subjects[link]

• Baby Rose Marie the Child Wonder (1929)
• Rambling 'Round Radio Row #4 (1932)
• Back in '23 (1933)
• Sing, Babies, Sing (1933)
• Rambling 'Round Radio Row (1934)
• At the Mike (1934)
• Surprising Suzie (1953)

Television work[link]

• The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis (1960)
• The Dick Van Dyke Show (1961–1966)
• The Hollywood Squares (1966–1981) (regular panelist)
• Walter of the Jungle (1967) (unsold pilot)
• The Virginian (1967)
• The Doris Day Show (cast member from 1969–1971)
• S.W.A.T. (1975) (multiple cameos as Hilda, the sandwich delivery lady)
• Bridge Across Time (1985)
• Remington Steele (1986) (Series 4 Episode 17 - Steele in the Spotlight)
• The Jackie Bison Show (1990) (unsold pilot) (voice)
• Scorch (1992) (canceled after 3 episodes)
• Hardball (1994) (canceled after 7 episodes)
• Cagney & Lacey: Together Again (1995)
• Wings (1997)
• Suddenly Susan (1997)
• The Hughleys (2001)
• Tracey Ullman in the Trailer Tales (2003)
• The Alan Brady Show (2003) (voice)
• The Dick Van Dyke Show Revisited (2004)
• The Monkees (TV series) Monkee Mother (1967) … Milly

References[link]

Rose Marie appeared on "Caroline In The City" with Morey Amsterdam. The episode was about an old desk Caroline had picked up.

External links[link]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Rose Marie

• An interview with Rose Marie, March 2011
• Rose Marie at the Internet Movie Database
• Rose Marie Interview with Archive of American Television

Robert Louis “Bob” Fosse (June 23, 1927 – September 23, 1987) was an American actor, dancer, musical theater choreographer, director, screenwriter, film editor and film director. He won an unprecedented eight Tony Awards for choreography, as well as one for direction. He was nominated for an Academy Award four times, winning for his direction of Cabaret (beating Francis Ford Coppola for The Godfather). He was closely identified with his third wife, Broadway dancing star Gwen Verdon. She was the dancer/collaborator/muse upon whom he choreographed much of his work and, together with dancer/choreographer Ann Reinking, a significant guardian of the Fosse legacy after his death.

Early life and career[link]

Fosse was born in Chicago, Illinois, to a Norwegian American father, Cyril K. Fosse, and Irish-born mother, Sara Alice (Stanton), the second youngest of six children.^[2][3] He teamed up with Charles Grass, another young dancer, and began a collaboration under the name The Riff Brothers. They toured theatres throughout the Chicago area. Eventually Fosse was hired for Tough Situation, which toured military and naval bases in the Pacific.

Fosse moved to New York with the ambition of being the new Fred Astaire. His appearance with his first wife and dance partner Mary Ann Niles (1923–1987) in Call Me Mister brought him to the attention of Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis. Fosse and Niles were regular performers on Your Hit Parade during its 1950-51 season, and during this season Martin and Lewis caught their act in New York's Pierre Hotel and scheduled them to appear on the Colgate Comedy Hour. His early screen appearances included Give A Girl A Break, The Affairs of Dobie Gillis and Kiss Me Kate, all released in 1953. A short sequence that he choreographed in the latter (and danced with Carol Haney) brought him to the attention of Broadway producers.^[4]

Although Fosse's acting career in film was cut short by premature balding, which limited the roles he could take, he was reluctant to move from Hollywood to theatre. Nevertheless, he made the move, and in 1954, he choreographed his first musical, The Pajama Game, followed by George Abbott's Damn Yankees in 1955. It was while working on the latter show that he first met the red-headed rising star whom he was to marry in 1960, Gwen Verdon.

Verdon won her first Tony Award for Best Actress for Damn Yankees (she had won previously for best supporting actress in Can-Can). (Fosse appears in the film version of Damn Yankees, which he also choreographed, in which Verdon reprises her stage triumph as "Lola"; they partner each other in the mambo number, "Who's Got the Pain".) In 1957 Fosse choreographed New Girl in Town, again directed by George Abbott, and Verdon won her second Leading Actress Tony. In 1960, Fosse was, for the first time, both director and choreographer of a musical called simply Redhead.^[5] With Redhead, Verdon won her third Tony Award for Best Actress in a Musical; the show won the Tony for best musical and Fosse carried off the award for best choreography. Fosse was to partner star Verdon as her director/choreographer again with Sweet Charity and again with Chicago. (Fosse was to win the Tony for Best Direction of a Musical in 1973 with Pippin.) Fosse performed a memorable song and dance number in Stanley Donen's 1974 film version of The Little Prince, and in 1977, Fosse had a small role in the romantic comedy Thieves.

Fosse developed a jazz dance style that was immediately recognizable, exuding a stylized, cynical sexuality. Other notable distinctions of his style included the use of turned-in knees, sideways shuffling, rolled shoulders, and jazz hands.^[6] With Astaire as an influence, he used props such as bowler hats, canes and chairs. His trademark use of hats was influenced by his own self-consciousness. According to Martin Gottfried in his biography of Fosse, "His baldness was the reason that he wore hats, and was doubtless why he put hats on his dancers."^[7] He used gloves in his performances because he did not like his hands. Some of his most popular numbers include "Steam Heat" (The Pajama Game) and "Big Spender" (Sweet Charity). The "Rich Man's Frug" scene in Sweet Charity is another example of his signature style. Although he was replaced as the director/choreographer for the short-lived 1961 musical The Conquering Hero, he quickly took on the job of choreographer of the 1961 musical hit How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying, which starred Robert Morse.^[7][8]

Later career[link]

Fosse directed five feature films. His first, Sweet Charity in 1969, starring Shirley MacLaine, is an adaptation of the Broadway musical he had directed and choreographed. Fosse shot the film largely on location in Manhattan. His second film, Cabaret, won eight Academy Awards, including Best Director, for which he won over Francis Ford Coppola for The Godfather starring Marlon Brando. The film was shot on location in Berlin; Liza Minnelli and Joel Grey both won Oscars for their roles.

Fosse went on to direct Lenny in 1974, a biopic of comic Lenny Bruce starring Dustin Hoffman. The film was nominated for Best Picture and Best Director Oscars, among other awards. But just as Fosse picked up his Oscar for Cabaret, his Tony for Pippin, and an Emmy for directing Liza Minnelli's television concert, Liza with a Z, his health suffered and he underwent open-heart surgery.

In 1979, Fosse co-wrote and directed a semi-autobiographical film All That Jazz, which portrayed the life of a womanizing, drug-addicted choreographer-director in the midst of triumph and failure. All That Jazz won four Academy Awards and earned Fosse his third Oscar nomination for Best Director. It also won the Palme d'Or at the 1980 Cannes Film Festival. In the summer and fall of 1980, working with All That Jazz executive producer Daniel Melnick, Fosse commissioned documentary research for a follow-up feature having to do with the motivations that compel people to become performers, but he found the results uninspiring and abandoned the project.^{[citation needed]}

In All That Jazz, Fosse not only toyed with the notion of his own death, but immortalized the two people who would perpetuate the Fosse legacy, Gwen Verdon and Ann Reinking. Reinking appears in the film as the protagonist's lover/protege/domestic-partner. She, like Verdon, would be responsible for keeping Fosse's trademark choreography alive after Fosse's death. Reinking played the role of Roxie Hart in the highly successful New York revival of Chicago, which opened in 1996. She choreographed the dances "in the style of Bob Fosse" for that revival, which is still running on Broadway as of November 2011. In 1999, Verdon served as artistic consultant on a plotless Broadway musical designed to showcase examples of classic Fosse choreography. Called simply Fosse, the three-act musical revue was conceived and directed by Richard Maltby, Jr. and Ann Reinking and choreographed by Reinking and Chet Walker. Verdon and Fosse's daughter, Nicole, received a "special thanks" credit. The show won a Tony for best musical.^[9] Many credit him to be the sole engineer toward Michael Jackson's career for his work on The Little Prince (1974). Many say Michael Jackson may have copied Bob Fosse's choreography and the wardrobe Bob's character had on The Little Prince. In many ways Fosse is credited as the back hand innovators to the careers of many dancers around the world.

His final film, 1983's Star 80, was a controversial biopic about slain Playboy Playmate Dorothy Stratten. The film is based on the Pulitzer Prize-winning article on the same topic. The film was nominated for several awards, and was screened out of competition at the 34th Berlin International Film Festival.^[10] In 1986 he directed and choreographed the unsuccessful Broadway production of Big Deal, which he also wrote.

Innovations[link]

Fosse was an innovative choreographer and had multiple achievements in his life. For Damn Yankees, he took a great deal of inspiration from the "father of theatrical jazz dance", Jack Cole.^[7] He also took influence from Jerome Robbins. New Girl in Town gave Fosse the inspiration to direct and choreograph his next piece because of the conflict of interest within the collaborators. During that piece, the first he'd directed as well as choreographed, Redhead, Fosse utilized one of the first ballet sequences in a show that contained five different styles of dance; Fosse's jazz, a cancan, a gypsy dance, a march, and an old-fashioned English music hall number. Fosse utilized the idea of subtext and gave his dancers something to think about during their numbers. He also began the trend of allowing lighting to influence his work and direct the audience's attention to certain things. During Pippin, Fosse made the first ever television commercial for a Broadway show.^[4]

In 1957, both Verdon and Fosse were studying with Sanford Meisner to develop a better acting technique for themselves. According to Michael Joosten, Fosse once said: "The time to sing is when your emotional level is too high to just speak anymore, and the time to dance is when your emotions are just too strong to only sing about how you feel."^[11]

Personal life and death[link]

Fosse was first married in 1949 to dance partner Mary Ann Niles. The marriage lasted until 1951. Fosse's second marriage was to dancer Joan McCracken (December 1952-59).^[12] His third wife was dancer/actress Gwen Verdon in 1960; they had one daughter, Nicole Providence Fosse, who is also a dancer. He separated from Verdon in the 1970s, but they remained legally married until his death. Verdon never remarried.^[7][13][14] During rehearsals for The Conquering Hero in 1961, it became known that Fosse had epilepsy, when he suffered a seizure on the stage.^[7]

On September 23, 1987, it was reported that Bob Fosse had collapsed in his room at the Willard Hotel in Washington, DC, and later died.^{[citation needed]} It was subsequently learned that he actually died from a heart attack at George Washington University Hospital. He died as the revival of Sweet Charity was opening at the nearby National Theatre.^[15] Fosse was cremated. In late September, his wife and daughter took his ashes to Quogue, New York, where Fosse had been openly living with his girlfriend of four years, and scattered his ashes in the Atlantic Ocean.^[1]

His first wife, and former dance partner, Mary Ann Niles, died one month later from lung cancer, aged 64.^[16]

Honors and awards[link]

Fosse earned many awards, including the Tony Award for Pippin and Sweet Charity, the Academy Award for Cabaret and the Emmy Award for Liza with a "Z". He was the first person to win all three awards in the same year (1973). He is also the only person to have won all three awards in the category of "Best Director".^{[citation needed]}

His semi-autobiographical film, All That Jazz (1979), won the Palme d'Or at Cannes. It portrays a chain-smoking choreographer driven by his Type A personality. In 1999, the revue Fosse won a Tony Award for best musical, and in 2001 the show earned Fosse (together with Ann Reinking) a Laurence Olivier Award for Best Theatre Choreographer.

Bill Henry's 1990 documentary of Fosse's work (Dance In America: Bob Fosse Steam Heat), was produced for an episode of the PBS program Dance in America: Great Performances. The production won an Emmy Award that year. There was a resurgence of interest in Fosse's work following revivals of his stage shows, the Broadway show Fosse, and the film release of Chicago (2002). Rob Marshall's choreography for the film emulates the Fosse style but avoids using specific moves from the original. In 2007, Bob Fosse was inducted, posthumously, into the National Museum of Dance and Hall of Fame.^[17]

Legacy[link]

Fosse was inducted into the National Museum of Dance in Saratoga Springs, New York on 27 April 2007. The Los Angeles Dance Awards, founded in 1994, were called the "Fosse Awards", and are now called the American Choreography Awards. A length of Paulina Street in Chicago at roughly 4400 North received the honorary designation of "Bob Fosse Way".

Influence on Beyonce's 'Single Ladies' video[link]

Fosse's influence extended into the Noughties when, in 2008, the Beyonce Knowles video for Single Ladies (Put a Ring on it) used many of the dance moves that were originally choreographed by Fosse nearly forty years earlier in 1969 for a music video of 'Mexican Breakfast' by Fosse's wife, the actress and dancer, Gwen Verdon.^[18]

In an interview with The Sunday Times, Knowles said:

'I saw a video [Mexican Breakfast] on YouTube. [The dancers] had a plain background and it was shot on the crane; it was 360 degrees, they could move around. And I said, 'This is genius.' We kept a lot of the Fosse choreography and added the down-south thing — it's called J-Setting, where one person does something and the next person follows. So it was a strange mixture ... It's like the most urban choreography, mixed with Fosse — very modern and very vintage.'.^[19][20]

Work[link]

References[link]

Further reading[link]

• Beddow, Margery (1996). Bob Fosse's Broadway. Portsmouth, NH: Heinemann. ISBN 0-435-07002-9. 
• Grubb, Kevin Boyd (1989). Razzle Dazzle: The Life and Work of Bob Fosse. St. Martin's Press. ISBN 0-312-03414-8. 

External links[link]

Dance portal

• Bob Fosse at the Internet Broadway Database
• Bob Fosse at the Internet Movie Database

This biographical article needs additional citations for verification. Please help by adding reliable sources. Contentious material about living persons that is unsourced or poorly sourced must be removed immediately, especially if potentially libelous or harmful. (August 2011)

Debbie Reynolds
Reynolds in 1986
Born	Mary Frances Reynolds (1932-04-01) April 1, 1932 (age 80) El Paso, Texas
Occupation	Actress, dancer, singer
Years active	1948–present
Spouse	Eddie Fisher (m.1955–1959; divorced) Harry Karl (m.1960–1973; divorced) Richard Hamlett (m.1984–1996; divorced)
Children	Todd Fisher Carrie Fisher
Parents	Raymond Francis Reynolds Maxine N. Harmon
Website
debbiereynolds.com

Debbie Reynolds (born April 1, 1932) is an American actress, singer, and dancer.

Initially signed at age sixteen by Warner Bros., Reynolds' career got off to a slow start. When her contract was not renewed, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM) gave her a small but significant part in the film Three Little Words (1950), then signed her to a seven-year contract. In her next film, Two Weeks with Love (1950), she had a hit with the song "Aba Daba Honeymoon". However, it was her first leading role, in Singin' in the Rain (1952), that set her on the path to fame. By the mid 1950s, she was a major star.

Other notable successes include Tammy and the Bachelor (1957), in which her rendering of the song "Tammy" reached number one on the music charts; and The Unsinkable Molly Brown (1964), for which she received a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Actress. She continues to perform successfully on stage, television and film to the present day.

Reynolds' first marriage, to popular singer Eddie Fisher, produced a son and a daughter, actress/author Carrie Fisher, but ended in divorce in 1959 when Fisher and her former (and later) friend Elizabeth Taylor fell in love. Her second and third marriages also ended in divorce, each time ruining her financially.

She is a noted collector of film memorabilia, beginning with the landmark 1972 MGM auction. In June 2011, unable to find a suitable home for her large collection, she began auctioning it off.

Early life[link]

Reynolds was born Mary Frances Reynolds in El Paso, Texas, the second child of Maxine N. (née Harmon; 1913–1999) and Raymond Francis Reynolds (1903–1986), who was a carpenter for the Southern Pacific Railroad.^[1][2] She has Scotch-Irish and English ancestry.^[3] Reynolds was a Girl Scout and a troop leader (a scholarship in her name is offered to high-school age Girl Scouts). Her family moved to Burbank, California, in 1939, and she was raised in a strict Nazarene faith. At age 16, while a student at Burbank's John Burroughs High School, Reynolds won the Miss Burbank Beauty Contest, a contract with Warner Bros., and acquired a new first name.

Career[link]

Reynolds regularly appeared in movie musicals during the 1950s and had several hit records during the period. Her song "Aba Daba Honeymoon" (featured in the film Two Weeks with Love [1950] as a duet with Carleton Carpenter) was a top-three hit in 1951. Her most high-profile film role was in Singin' in the Rain (1952) as Kathy Selden. In Bundle of Joy (1956) she appeared with her then-husband, Eddie Fisher.

Her recording of the song "Tammy" (from her film Tammy and the Bachelor (1957)) earned her a gold record,^[4] and was the best-selling single by a female vocalist in 1957. It was number one for five weeks on the Billboard pop charts. In the movie (the first of the Tammy film series), she co-starred with Leslie Nielsen.

In 1959, Reynolds recorded her first album for Dot Records, simply called Debbie, which included her own selection of twelve standards including "S'posin'", "Moonglow", "Mean To Me", and "Time After Time". Bing Crosby paid tribute to Reynolds in the sleeve notes accompanying the album thus:

Someone recently said, and with reasonable accuracy I would think, that good singers make good actors. Evidence in support of this belief is available in the recent performances of Sinatra and Martin, for instance, but I would like to put forth also the proposition that the reverse is quite true: good actors make good singers. Assuming they can carry a tune. We all know that Debbie is better than a good actress—she's VERY good, and we all know she can sing with a lilt and a listenable quality that's genuinely pleasant and agreeable. Witness "Tammy". It was small surprise to me then that when I listened to this beautiful album she has etched for Dot, I found myself captivated and enchanted. Quite obviously Debbie had spent a great deal of time selecting the songs to be included, because she's made them her own, and invested them with a sincerity that's inescapable—of contrasting moods to be sure, but the moods are there, and to me, mighty effective. And that, mes amis, is artistry.

Reynolds also scored two other top-25 Billboard hits with "A Very Special Love" (1958) and "Am I That Easy to Forget" (1960) — a pop-music version of a country-music hit made famous by both songwriters Carl Belew (in 1959), Skeeter Davis (in 1960), and several years later by singer Engelbert Humperdinck. She has released several albums of both her vintage performances and her later recordings.

During these years, she also headlined in major Las Vegas showrooms.

Her starring role in The Unsinkable Molly Brown (1964) led to a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Actress. She then portrayed Jeanine Deckers in The Singing Nun (1966).

In what Reynolds has called the "stupidest mistake of my entire career",^[5] she made headlines in 1970 after instigating a fight with the NBC television network over cigarette advertising on her eponymous television series; NBC cancelled the show.^[5]

Reynolds made her Broadway debut in 1973 in a revival of Irene, a musical first produced 60 years before. For that production, she received a Tony nomination. She toured with Harve Presnell in Annie Get Your Gun, then wrapped up the Broadway run of Woman of the Year in 1983. In the late 1980s, Reynolds repeated her role as Molly Brown in the stage version of The Unsinkable Molly Brown, first opposite Presnell (repeating his original Broadway and movie role) and later with Ron Raines.

Reynolds continues to make appearances in film and television. She played Helen Chappel Hackett's mother, Deedee Chappel, on an episode of Wings titled, "If It's Not One Thing, It's Your Mother", which originally aired on November 22, 1994.^[6] From 1999 to its 2006 series finale, she played Grace Adler's ditzy mother, Bobbi Adler, on the NBC sitcom Will & Grace (1998–2006), which earned her an Emmy Award^[7] nomination for Outstanding Guest Actress in a Comedy Series in 2000. She also plays a recurring role in the Disney Channel Original Movie Halloweentown film series as Aggie Cromwell. Reynolds made a guest appearance as a presenter at the 69th Academy Awards in 1997.

Reynolds appeared in her West End show Debbie Reynolds: Alive and Fabulous. In June 2010 she replaced Ivana Trump answering reader queries for the weekly paper Globe.^[8]

Awards and nominations[link]

Reynolds won the National Board of Review Award for Best Supporting Actress for her role in The Catered Affair (1956).

She has received various nominations for awards including: an Academy Award nomination for Best Actress for The Unsinkable Molly Brown (1964), a Golden Globe Award nomination for Best Actress – Television Series Musical or Comedy for The Debbie Reynolds Show (1970), a Golden Globe nomination for Best Actress – Motion Picture Musical or Comedy for Mother (1996) and an Emmy Award for Outstanding Guest Actress in a Comedy Series, for her role of Bobbi Adler in the sitcom Will & Grace (2000). In 1996 and 1997, she received the Lifetime Achievement Award in Comedy, in the American Comedy Awards.

Her foot and hand prints are preserved at the Grauman's Chinese Theatre in Hollywood, California. She also has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 6654 Hollywood Boulevard.

In November 2006, Reynolds received the "Lifetime Achievement Award" from Chapman University (Orange, California). On May 17, 2007, she was awarded an honorary degree of Doctor of Humane Letters from the University of Nevada, Reno, (Reno, Nevada) where she had contributed for many years to the film-studies program.

Reynolds last Cd was a Christmas Record with the late Donald O'Connor entitled "Chrissy the Christmas Mouse". It received rave reviews and was arranged by Angelo DiPippo and produced by Dr. Fillardi.

Film memorabilia[link]

Reynolds has amassed a large collection of movie memorabilia, beginning with the landmark 1970 Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer auction, and displayed them, first in a museum at her Las Vegas hotel and casino during the 1990s and later in a museum close to the Kodak Theater in Los Angeles. On several occasions, she has auctioned off items from the collection.

The museum was to relocate to be the centerpiece of the Belle Island Village tourist attraction in the resort city of Pigeon Forge, Tennessee, but the developer went bankrupt.^[9][10] The museum itself filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy^[11] in June 2009.^[9]

Todd Fisher, Reynolds' son, announced that his mother was "heartbroken" to have to auction off her collection.^[9] It was valued at $10.79 million in the bankruptcy filing.^[10] The Vancouver Sun reported that Profiles in History has been given the responsibility of conducting a series of auctions beginning in June and continuing into December 2011.^[12] Among the "more than 3500 costumes, 20,000 photographs, and thousands of movie posters, costume sketches, and props" to be sold are Charlie Chaplin's bowler hat and Marilyn Monroe's white "subway dress", whose skirt is lifted up by the breeze from a passing subway train in the film The Seven Year Itch (1955).^[12]

On June 18, 2011, the subway dress was sold for $4.6 million dollars, far in excess of pre-auction estimates of $1-2 million.^[13] Another Monroe dress, which she wore in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, fetched $1.2 million, four times the upper pre-sale expectation.^[13]

Personal life[link]

Marriages[link]

Reynolds has been married three times. Her first marriage was to singer Eddie Fisher in 1955. They are the parents of Carrie and Todd Fisher. A public scandal ensued when Fisher and Elizabeth Taylor fell in love following the death of Taylor's then-husband Mike Todd, and Reynolds and Fisher were divorced in 1959. In 2011, first on The Oprah Winfrey Show only weeks before Elizabeth Taylor's death from congestive heart failure, Reynolds explained that she and Taylor happened to be traveling on the ocean liner Queen Elizabeth at the same time when they made up. Reynolds sent a note to Taylor's room, and Taylor sent a note in reply asking to have dinner with Reynolds and end their feud. The two reconciled, and, as Reynolds put it, "...we had a wonderful evening with a lot of laughs".

Her second marriage, to millionaire businessman Harry Karl, lasted from 1960 to 1973. He was previously married to Marie McDonald. Reynolds later found herself in financial difficulty because of Karl's gambling and bad investments.

Reynolds was married to real estate developer Richard Hamlett from 1984 to 1996. They purchased Greek Isles Hotel & Casino, a small hotel and casino in Las Vegas, but it was not a success. In 1997, Reynolds was forced to declare bankruptcy.^[14]

Charity work[link]

Since 1955, Reynolds has been active in the Thalians Club, a charitable organization, devoted to children and adults with mental health issues. In 2011 she stepped down after 55 years of involvement, and is now an emeritus member.

In keeping with the celebrity tradition of the Shenandoah Apple Blossom Festival of Winchester, Virginia, Reynolds was honored as the Grand Marshal of the 2011 ABF that took place from April 26 to May 1, 2011.^[15]

Filmography[link]

Features:

Short subjects:

• A Visit with Debbie Reynolds (1959)
• The Story of a Dress (1964)

Television work[link]

See also[link]

	Biography portal
	Film portal
	Music portal
	Television portal
	Theatre portal

• List of American film actresses
• List of people from California
• List of people from Texas

References[link]

Further reading[link]

• Reynolds, Debbie (with Columbia, David Patrick) (1988). Debbie: My Life. William Morrow and Company. ISBN 978-0-688-06633-8. 

External links[link]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Debbie Reynolds

• debbiereynolds.com, Reynolds's official website
• Debbie Reynolds at the Internet Broadway Database
• Debbie Reynolds at the Internet Movie Database
• Debbie Reynolds' Hollywood Motion Picture Museum website
• Debbie Reynolds at TVGuide.com
• Radio appearance WSRQ "Big Band Files w/Doug Miles
• Photographs and literature
• Debbie Reynolds at Emmys.com