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Robert Cummings
Cummings in 1979
Born	Charles Clarence Robert Orville Cummings (1910-06-09)June 9, 1910 Joplin, Missouri, U.S.
Died	December 2, 1990(1990-12-02) (aged 80) Woodland Hills, Los Angeles, California, U.S.
Occupation	Actor
Years active	1933–1986
Spouse	Emma Myers (m. 1931–1933) «start: (1931)–end+1: (1934)»"Marriage: Emma Myers to Robert Cummings" Location: (linkback:http://en-wiki.pop.wn.com/index.php/Robert_Cummings) Vivian "Vivi" Janis (m. 1933–1945)[1] Mary Elliott (m. 1945–1970) «start: (1945)–end+1: (1971)»"Marriage: Mary Elliott to Robert Cummings" Location: (linkback:http://en-wiki.pop.wn.com/index.php/Robert_Cummings) Regina Young[1] (m. 1971–?) Janie Cummings (m. 1989–1990)

Charles Clarence Robert Orville Cummings (June 9, 1910 – December 2, 1990), mostly known professionally as Robert Cummings but sometimes as Bob Cummings,^[2][3] was an American film and television actor.

Cummings performed mainly in comedies, but was effective in his few dramas, especially two Alfred Hitchcock films, Saboteur (1942) and Dial M for Murder (1954).^[4]

Early life and career[link]

Bob Cummings was born in Joplin, Missouri, a son of Dr. Charles Clarence Cummings and his wife Ruth Annabelle Kraft.^[5] His father was a surgeon, who was part of the original medical staff of St. John's Hospital in Joplin. He was the founder of the Jasper County Tuberculosis Hospital in Webb City, Missouri.^[6][7] Cummings' mother was an ordained minister of the Science of Mind.^[5]

While attending Joplin High School, Cummings was taught to fly by his godfather, Orville Wright.^[4][6][7] His first solo was on 3 March, 1927.^[8] During high school Cummings would give Joplin residents rides in his plane for $5 per person.^[6][7] When the government began licensing flight instructors, Cummings was issued flight instructor certificate number 1, making him the first official flight instructor in the United States.^[9]

Cummings studied briefly at Drury College in Springfield, Missouri, but his love of flying caused him to transfer to the Carnegie Institute of Technology in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.^[7] He studied aeronautical engineering for a year before being forced to drop out for financial reasons, his family having lost heavily in the 1929 stock market crash.^[7] Since the American Academy of Dramatic Arts in New York City paid its male actors $14 a week, Cummings decided to study there.^[1]

He studied drama for two years before appearing in Broadway in 1931.^[7] As British actors were heavily in demand, Cummings traveled to England and learned to mimic an upper-class English accent.^[7] He had a brief career on Broadway under the name Blade Stanhope Conway, posing as an Englishman.^[1][7]

In 1933, he met and married his second wife, Vivian Janis. They were both appearing in the Ziegfeld Follies, with Cummings as the male lead opposite comedian, Fanny Brice.^[7][10] In 1934, he moved to Hollywood, where he acted at first under the name Bruce Hutchens, assuming the persona of a wealthy Texan.^[1][7] He made his film debut the following year in The Virginia Judge.^[7]

Cummings then decided to use his own name, acting throughout the 1930s as a contract player in a number of supporting roles.^[7]

Achieving stardom[link]

He achieved stardom in 1939 in Three Smart Girls Grow Up, opposite Deanna Durbin. His many film comedies include: The Devil and Miss Jones (1941) with Jean Arthur, and The Bride Wore Boots (1946) with Barbara Stanwyck. Cummings gave memorable performances in three notable dramas: Kings Row (1942) with friend Ronald Reagan, Saboteur (1942) with Priscilla Lane and Norman Lloyd, and Dial M for Murder (1954), with Grace Kelly and Ray Milland.^[4][7] Cummings also starred in You Came Along (1945), which featured a screenplay by Ayn Rand. The Army Air Forces pilot Cummings played ("Bob Collins") died off camera, but was resurrected ten years later for his television show.

Cummings was chosen by producer John Wayne as his co-star to play airline pilot Captain Sullivan in The High and the Mighty, partly due to Cummings's flying experience. However, director William A. Wellman overruled Wayne and hired Robert Stack for the part.^[11]

Cummings made his mark in the CBS Radio network's dramatic serial entitled Those We Love, which ran from 1938 to 1945. Cummings played the role of David Adair, opposite Richard Cromwell, Francis X. Bushman, and Nan Grey.

World War II[link]

In November 1942, Cummings joined the United States Army Air Corps.^[12] During the war he served as a flight instructor.^[4][7] Cummings had worked as a flight instructor for many years prior to the war.^[7] He was, in fact, the first certified flight instructor in the United States, having gained certification in 1938.^[7] After the war, Cummings served as a pilot in the United States Air Force Reserve.

Television career[link]

Cummings began a long career on television in 1952, starring in the comedy My Hero. He received an Emmy award for his portrayal of "Juror Number Eight," in the first televised performance of Twelve Angry Men, a live production which aired in 1954 (Henry Fonda played the same role in the feature film adaptation).^[7] Cummings was one of the anchors on ABC's live broadcast of Disneyland's opening day in 1955.

From 1955 through 1959, Cummings starred on a successful NBC sitcom, The Bob Cummings Show (known as Love That Bob in reruns), in which he played Bob Collins, an ex-World War II pilot who became a successful professional photographer, and as a bachelor in 1950's Los Angeles, thought himself to be quite the ladies' man. This sitcom was noted for some very risque humor for its time. His co-stars were Rosemary DeCamp, as his sister, Margaret MacDonald, and Dwayne Hickman, as his nephew, Chuck MacDonald. Cummings also was a guest on the NBC interview program Here's Hollywood. He also made an appearance at Disneyland's grand opening on July 17, 1955.^[7]

In 1960, Cummings starred in "King Nine Will Not Return," the opening episode of the second season of The Twilight Zone.

The New Bob Cummings Show followed on CBS for one season, from 1961 to 1962. He also starred one season in My Living Doll which co-stars Julie Newmar as Rhoda the robot (1964), another CBS sitcom. His last significant role was the 1973 TV movie Partners in Crime, co-starring Lee Grant. He also appeared as Gopher's dad Eliott Smith on The Love Boat in 1979.

Personal life[link]

Cummings married five times and fathered seven children. He was a staunch advocate of natural foods and a healthy diet and authored a book, Stay Young and Vital in 1960, on health foods and exercise.^[13]

Cummings' son, Tony Cummings, played Rick Halloway in the daytime serial Another World in the early 1980s.

Death[link]

On December 2, 1990, Cummings died of kidney failure and complications from pneumonia at the Motion Picture & Television Country House and Hospital in Woodland Hills, California.^[14] He was interred in the Great Mausoleum at Forest Lawn Cemetery in Glendale, California.

Filmography[link]

This filmography as actor is believed to be complete. Cummings also served as producer on 1948's Let's Live a Little.

References[link]

External links[link]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Robert Cummings

• Robert Cummings at the Internet Movie Database
• Robert Cummings at AllRovi
• Robert Cummings at the Internet Broadway Database
• Robert Cummings at Find a Grave

Peter Lorre
(1946)
Born	László Löwenstein (1904-06-26)26 June 1904 Rózsahegy (now Ružomberok), Austria-Hungary (now Slovakia)
Died	23 March 1964(1964-03-23) (aged 59) Los Angeles, California, U.S.
Occupation	Actor
Years active	1929–64
Spouse	Celia Lovsky (1934–45) Kaaren Verne (1945–50) Anne Marie Brenning (1953–64) 1 child

Peter Lorre (26 June 1904 – 23 March 1964) was an Austrian-American actor frequently typecast as a sinister foreigner.

He caused an international sensation with his portrayal of a serial killer who preys on little girls in the German film M (1931). Later he became a popular featured player in Hollywood crime films and mysteries, in particular with Humphrey Bogart and Sydney Greenstreet, and as the star of the successful Mr. Moto detective series.

Early life[link]

Lorre was born László Löwenstein on 26 June 1904, as the first child of Jewish couple Alajos Löwenstein and Elvira Freischberger, in the Austrian-Hungarian town of Ružomberok in present-day Slovakia, then known by its Hungarian name Rózsahegy. His parents had recently moved there, following his father's appointment as chief bookkeeper at a local textile mill. Beside working as a bookkeeper, Alajos Löwenstein also served as a lieutenant in the Austrian army reserve, which meant that he was often away on military manoeuvres.^[1] When Lorre was four years old, his mother died, probably of food poisoning, leaving Alajos with three very young sons, the youngest only a couple of months old. He soon remarried, to his wife's best friend, Melanie Klein, with whom he had two more children. However, Lorre and his stepmother never got on, and this coloured his childhood memories.^[1]

At the outbreak of the Second Balkan War in 1913, Alajos moved the family to Vienna, anticipating that this would lead to a larger conflict and that he would be called up. He was, at the outbreak of World War I in 1914, and served on the Eastern front during the winter of 1914-1915, before being put in charge of a prison camp due to heart trouble.^[2]

Acting career[link]

In Europe (1922-1935)[link]

Lorre began acting on stage in Vienna at the age of 17, where he worked with the famous Viennese Art Nouveau artist and puppeteer Richard Teschner. He then moved to the then German town of Breslau, and later to Zürich in Switzerland.

In the late 1920s, the young and short (165 cm (5 ft 5 in)) actor moved to Berlin, where he worked with German playwright Bertolt Brecht, including a role in Brecht's Mann ist Mann and as Dr. Nakamura in the musical Happy End (music by composer Kurt Weill), alongside Brecht's wife Helene Weigel and co-stars Carola Neher, Oskar Homolka and Kurt Gerron.

The actor became much more widely known after director Fritz Lang cast him as a child killer in the film M (1931). In 1932 he appeared alongside Hans Albers in the science fiction film F.P.1 antwortet nicht about an artificial island in the mid-Atlantic.

When the Nazis came to power in Germany in 1933, Lorre took refuge first in Paris and then London, where he was noticed by Ivor Montagu, Alfred Hitchcock's associate producer for The Man Who Knew Too Much (1934), who reminded the director about Lorre's performance in M. They first considered him to play the assassin in the film, but wanted to use him in a larger role, despite his limited command of English,^[3] which Lorre overcame by learning much of his part phonetically. He also was featured in Hitchcock's Secret Agent (1936).

Hollywood (1935-1964)[link]

Eventually, Lorre went to Hollywood, where he specialized in playing sinister foreigners, beginning with Mad Love (1935), directed by Karl Freund. He starred in a series of Mr. Moto movies, a parallel to the better known Charlie Chan series, in which he played John P. Marquand's seminal character, a Japanese detective and spy. He did not enjoy these films — and twisted his shoulder during a stunt in Mr. Moto Takes a Vacation — but they were lucrative for the studio and gained Lorre many new fans. In 1939, he was picked to play the role that would eventually go to Basil Rathbone in Son of Frankenstein; Lorre had to decline the part due to illness. In 1940, Lorre co-starred with fellow horror actors Bela Lugosi and Boris Karloff in the Kay Kyser movie You'll Find Out.

Left to right: Sydney Greenstreet and Lorre in The Maltese Falcon (1941), the first of nine films together.

Lorre enjoyed considerable popularity as a featured player in Warner Bros. suspense and adventure films. Lorre played the role of Joel Cairo in The Maltese Falcon (1941) and portrayed the character Ugarte in Casablanca (1942).^[4] Lorre made nine movies altogether with Sydney Greenstreet counting The Maltese Falcon and Casablanca, most of them variations on the latter film, including Background to Danger (1943, with George Raft); Passage to Marseille (1944, reteaming them with Casablanca stars Humphrey Bogart and Claude Rains); The Mask of Dimitrios (1944, with character actor Greenstreet receiving top billing); The Conspirators (1944, with Hedy Lamarr and Paul Henreid); Hollywood Canteen (1944); Three Strangers (1946), a suspense film about three people who are joint partners on a winning lottery ticket starring top-billed Greenstreet, Geraldine Fitzgerald, and third-billed Lorre cast against type by director Jean Negulesco as the romantic lead; and Greenstreet and Lorre's final film together, suspense thriller The Verdict (1946), director Don Siegel's first movie, with Greenstreet and Lorre finally billed first and second, respectively.

Lorre also branched out (without Greenstreet) into comedy with the role of Dr. Einstein in Arsenic and Old Lace, filmed by director Frank Capra in 1941, released in 1944, and starring Cary Grant and Raymond Massey. In 1941, Peter Lorre became a naturalized citizen of the United States.

After World War II, Lorre's acting career in Hollywood experienced a downturn, whereupon he concentrated on radio and stage work. In Germany he co-wrote, directed and starred in Der Verlorene (The Lost One) (1951), a critically acclaimed art film in the film noir style. He then returned to the United States where he appeared as a character actor in television and feature films, often spoofing his 'creepy;' image.

In 1954, he was the first actor to play a James Bond villain when he portrayed Le Chiffre in a television adaptation of Casino Royale, opposite Barry Nelson as an American James Bond. (In the spoof-film version of Casino Royale, British comedian Ronnie Corbett comments that SMERSH includes among its agents not only Le Chiffre, but also "Peter Lorre and Bela Lugosi".) Also in 1954, Lorre starred alongside Kirk Douglas and James Mason in 20,000 Leagues under the Sea.

A famous story is told in Hollywood that in 1956, both Lorre and Vincent Price attended Bela Lugosi's funeral. According to Price, Lorre asked him "Do you think we should drive a stake through his heart just in case?"^[5] However, according to Lugosi biographers Arthur Lennig and Gary Don Rhodes, neither actor attended Lugosi's funeral.^[6][7]

In 1959, Lorre appeared in NBC's espionage drama Five Fingers, starring David Hedison, in the episode "Thin Ice". In the early 1960s he worked with Roger Corman on several low-budgeted, tongue-in-cheek, and very popular films. He appeared in a supporting role in the 1961 film, Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea. In 1961, he was interviewed on the NBC program Here's Hollywood.

Marriages and family[link]

He was married three times: Celia Lovsky (1934 – 13 March 1945, divorced); Kaaren Verne (25 May 1945 – 1950, divorced) and Anne Marie Brenning (21 July 1953 – 23 March 1964, his death). In 1953, Anne Marie bore his only child, Catharine. His daughter Catharine made headlines after serial killer Kenneth Bianchi confessed to police investigators after his arrest that he and his cousin and fellow "Hillside Strangler" Angelo Buono had stopped Catharine Lorre disguised as police officers with the intent of abducting and murdering her in 1977, but after learning that she was the daughter of Peter Lorre, the pair let her go. It was only after Bianchi was arrested that Catharine Lorre realized whom she had met.^[8] Catharine died in 1985 of complications arising from diabetes.^[9]

In 1963 an actor named Eugene Weingand, who was unrelated to Lorre, attempted to trade on his slight resemblance to the actor by changing his name to "Peter Lorie", but his petition was rejected by the courts. After Lorre's death, however, he referred to himself as Lorre's son.^[10]

Health and death[link]

Lorre had suffered for years from chronic gallbladder troubles, for which doctors had prescribed morphine. Lorre became trapped between the constant pain and addiction to morphine to ease the problem. It was during the period of the Moto films that Lorre struggled and overcame his addiction.^[11]

Abruptly gaining a hundred pounds in a very short period and never fully recovering from his addiction to morphine, Lorre suffered many personal and career disappointments in his later years. He died in 1964 of a stroke. Lorre's body was cremated and his ashes interred at the Hollywood Forever Cemetery in Hollywood. Vincent Price read the eulogy at his funeral.^[12]

Legacy and mimicry[link]

Lorre has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, at 6619 Hollywood Boulevard.

Lorre's distinctive accent and large-eyed face became a favorite target of comedians and cartoonists. In particular, several Warner Bros. cartoons used a caricature of Lorre's face with an impression by Mel Blanc, including Birth of a Notion, Hair-Raising Hare and Racketeer Rabbit An additional impression is Howard Morris' voicing of the character Weirdly Gruesome in several episodes of "The Flintstones" dating from about 1964.^{[citation needed]}

Books and comics[link]

In the early 1940s, the adventures of Batman and Robin appeared in daily newspapers. One story, The Two-Bit Dictator of Twin Mills, drawn by Batman co-creator Bob Kane, featured a hitman called Jojo who was, according to writer Al Schwartz, made to look like Lorre.^[13]

Films, television, and music[link]

Musician and filker Tom Smith won a Pegasus award for Best Classic Filk Song in 2006 entitled "I Want to be Peter Lorre" which appears on his filk album "Homecoming: MarCon 2005", which includes his vocal impersonation of the actor.^[14]

The Jazz Butcher's song "Peter Lorre" was first featured on the group's Conspiracy album, which was released in May 1986.^[15]

The stop motion film Corpse Bride features "The Maggot", a small green worm who lives inside the title character's head. His features and voice (provided by Enn Reitel) are caricatures of Peter Lorre. "From the very beginning Tim wanted the Maggot to be a Peter Lorre-esque character, and we had a good time working with that and it went through various design changes," said co-director Mike Johnson in the book Tim Burton's Corpse Bride: An Invitation to the Wedding.

On September 11, 2007 Brooklyn-based punk band The World/Inferno Friendship Society released a full-length album about Lorre called Addicted to Bad Ideas: Peter Lorre's Twentieth Century, which traces Lorre's film career, drug addiction, and death. It has been performed at the Famous Spiegeltent. The album was subsequently adapted into a multi-media stage production directed by Jay Scheib, which premiered at Webster Hall in New York City on January 9, 2009, and went on to play major arts festivals around the world, including Spoleto Festival USA (Charleston, SC), Luminato Festival (Toronto), Noorderzon Festival (Groningen, Holland) and Theaterformen (Hanover, Germany).

Filmography[link]

See also[link]

Biography portal

References[link]

Notes

Further reading

• Peter Lorre. Midnight Marquee Press. 1999. ISBN 1-887664-30-0. 
• Youngkin, Stephen D., James Bigwood, and Raymond Cabana (1982). The Films of Peter Lorre. Citadel Press. ISBN 0-8065-0789-6. 
• Youngkin, Stephen D. (2005). The Lost One: A Life of Peter Lorre. University Press of Kentucky. ISBN 0-8131-2360-7. http://books.google.com/books?isbn=0813123607. 

External links[link]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Peter Lorre

• Peter Lorre at the Internet Movie Database
• Peter Lorre at Find a Grave
• Peter Lorre at AllRovi
• Watch Peter Lorre in Fritz Lang's M
• The Lorre Library of Sound
• The Peter Lorre Companion
• Photographs of Peter Lorre
• The Lodger on Mystery in the Air, 1947, starring Peter Lorre and Agnes Moorehead
• Listen to Jack Benny Show 1941-03-09 (402) Guest Peter Lorre - Murder at the Racquet Club
• Listen to Jack Benny Podcast 1946-03-24 (579) Guest Peter Lorre - I Stand Condemned
• Mystery in the Air (1947)

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

William Asher (born August 8, 1921) is an American television and film producer, film director, and screenwriter. He was one of the most prolific early directors in the budding television industry, producing or directing over two dozen of the leading television series.

With television in its infancy, he introduced the early sitcom Our Miss Brooks, adapted from the radio show, and then became the leading director of I Love Lucy, in 1952, directing most of the episodes over the next 5 years. In 1964 he produced and directed Bewitched, which became one of the leading shows on television, and starred his wife, Elizabeth Montgomery. As a result of his early success, he was thought of as an "early wunderkind of TV-land," and is today considered "the man who invented the sitcom."^[1]

He was nominated four times for an Emmy, winning once for directing Bewitched in 1964. He was also nominated for the DGA award in 1951 for I Love Lucy.

Early life and career[link]

Born in New York City, his mother was actress Lillian Bonner and his father was Jewish American producer Ephraim M. Asher, whose film credits include Dracula (1931) and Frankenstein (1931), which he co-produced with Carl Laemmle. His sister, four years his senior, was Betty Asher, a publicist for Judy Garland at MGM.^[2] Asher's family moved to Los Angeles when he was 10, and he would often spend his free time visiting his father at the studio.^[3]

When Asher was 11, his parents divorced, and he moved back to New York to live with his mother. His sister remained in Los Angeles and lived at a friend's home. He remembers his early years as being "a terrible period" in his and his sister's life, however:

My mother was an unfortunate woman. She was an alcoholic. My sister and I were abused terribly by her. I don't talk about that very often, but it's a fact I had to live with, and it was horrible. There was no reason for it; she would just go into a rage. . . . And my father, who was otherwise a gentle, sweet, wonderful man, looked the other way. It was very sad. They were divorced when I was about eleven or twelve, I think. She beat us all the time.^[3]

As a result of having to live in New York with his mother under those conditions, he dropped out of school.

I felt hopeless. I sort of hung out with guys on the street, and I kind of forgot about the picture business. When I was about fifteen, I was able to get into the army. That way I could get away from my mother. I lied about my age, and they accepted me.^[3]

He served in the Army Signal Corps.^[1] His father, then living in Los Angeles, died in 1937 at the age of 49, when Asher was 16. While in the Signal Corp, Asher notes that he was "not a very good worker:"^[3]

I got into fights, and I was not happy there. I wasn't happy anywhere because of my mother. So they sent me to the infantry, and I went to a basic training program, and I wouldn't take any orders. I wouldn't take orders from anyone. I was bad; it was that simple. I was just kind of a rough kid. And they finally gave up on me, but I started writing. I had no education, but I started writing anyway.^[3]

When the war ended, Asher had by then managed to get a number of his short stories published in leading magazines. He says that "by working at it, I became a pretty good short story writer, which almost nobody knows."^[3] He moved back to Southern California with the goal of entering a career in the film industry. In 1948, at the age of 27, he co-wrote, co-produced and co-directed a low budget film, Leather Gloves. However, he was soon drawn away from films by the new medium of television.^[4] Asher got a job writing short story "fillers" for various TV shows, and his stories evolved into a series called Little Theatre."This was my debut as a director," he states. The series led to him receiving a contract with Columbia pictures to work on a musical film with producer Harry Cohn.^[3]

Subsequently, Asher received an offer from CBS Studios, which was looking for new directors for television shows. His first TV pilot turned into a long-running series, Our Miss Brooks, which was a TV version of the popular radio show of the same title, starring Eve Arden. In 1952, Desi Arnaz asked him to also direct a few episodes of the recently started series, I Love Lucy, and the show survived its first season. By the time the show was discontinued in 1957, Asher had directed 110 out of the show's 179 episodes,^[1] along with a large portion of Our Miss Brooks, which stayed on the air until 1956. Looking back at the first year of I Love Lucy, Asher says they knew the show was good, but they didn't know it would last:

When we did the show, we thought, "That's it, we're done with it." We never dreamed it would last this long. Lucille Ball, obviously, was one of TV's true pioneers.^[5]

During his career, with a history of delivering quality television sitcoms, he was considered an "early wunderkind of TV-land, blazing a path in the new medium" of television.^[1] Writer and producer William Froug describes Asher as a "hyphenate of a different stripe, a director-producer." After seeing Asher direct so many different and successful sitcoms, he notes that Asher was one of many "restless Hollywood professionals who, like nomads, drifted from job to job, always delivering competent, if not inspired work." He considers them to have been the "backbone" of the early television industry.^[6]

His most famous works include directing episodes of The Colgate Comedy Hour (1950), I Love Lucy (1951), Our Miss Brooks (1952), General Electric Theater (1953), Make Room for Daddy (aka The Danny Thomas Show) (1953), December Bride (1954), The Dinah Shore Chevy Show (1956), Sally (1957), The Twilight Zone (1959), The Patty Duke Show (1963), Bewitched (1964), Gidget (1965), The Dukes of Hazzard (1979), Private Benjamin (1981) and Alice (1976–85). He produced all 254 episodes of Bewitched (1964 to 1972), as well as directing many episodes. Both series still run in syndication in dozens of languages today.^[7]

During his career he collaborated with many television writers, directors and actors, including Sidney Sheldon, Dick Van Dyke, Jim Backus, Telly Savalas, Sammy Davis Jr., Peter Lawford, Joey Bishop, Blake Edwards and Judy Garland. He also befriended President John F. Kennedy, and together with Frank Sinatra, planned Kennedy's 1961 Inaugural.^[1] However, he considers his "glory days" in television to have been the time he spent producing and directing his "creation," Bewitched, starring his wife Elizabeth Montgomery.^[1] Montgomery played the part of Samantha, and Bewitched became "the hottest new show of 1964," staying in the top 10 for 5 straight years.^[8]

He also directed several movies, and wrote and directed the popular beach movies starring Annette Funicello and Frankie Avalon - Muscle Beach Party (1964), Bikini Beach (1964), and Beach Blanket Bingo (1965). Television historian Wheeler Dixon suggests that the Beach Party films were not only "visions of paradise" for the audience, but also for Asher, who used them "to create a fantasy world to replace his own troubled childhood."^[3]

Asher recalls the highlights of his years as a director:

When I look back at my own work, Bewitched stays with me the most, and Lucy, and the Beach Party pictures. The scripts of the Beach Party films were sheer nonsense, but they were fun and positive. . . . When kids see the films now, they can get some idea of what the '60s were like like. The whole thing was a dream, of course. But it was a nice dream.^[3]

Asher received a star in Palm Springs' Walk of Stars - located at 100 North Palm Canyon Drive, and dedicated in November 2003.

Personal life[link]

In 1963 Asher married actress Elizabeth Montgomery, and the following year began producing and directing the new TV series, Bewitched, with Montgomery starring. The show was considered a blockbuster and continued until 1972. They had three children and divorced in 1973.

Asher resides in California, with his fourth wife, Meredith.^[1]

His family continues on in show business. Asher's daughter (with Montgomery) Rebecca Asher is a script supervisor.

John Asher, his adopted son (from his marriage to actress Joyce Bulifant), starred in the TV series Weird Science (as Gary) and then directed Hilary Swank in Kounterfeit. He continued his directorial endeavors with Diamonds, starring Kirk Douglas, Dan Aykroyd, Lauren Bacall and Jenny McCarthy (John Asher's former wife).

Television filmography[link]

References[link]

External links[link]

• William Asher at the Internet Movie Database
• William Asher Interview at Archive of American Television, March–April, 2000]

Professor Raymond Turner (born 28 April 1947) is an English logician and theoretical computer scientist based at the University of Essex. He is best known for his work on logic in computer science and for his pioneering work in the philosophy of computer science. He is on the editorial boards for the "Journal of Logic and Computation"^[1] and the "Stanford Encyclopaedia of Philosophy: Editor Logic, Computation, and Agency."^[2]

Books[link]

• Logics for Artificial Intelligence, 121 pages, E. Horwood, 1984, ISBN 0-470-20123-1
• Truth and Modality for Knowledge Representation, 119 pages, Pitman, 1990, ISBN 0-273-03186-4
• Constructive Foundations for Functional Languages, 288 pages, McGraw-Hill Publishing Co, 1 May 1991, ISBN 0-07-707411-4
• Computable Models, 240 pages, Springer, 2009, ISBN 1-84882-051-8

References[link]