- published: 22 Jan 2013
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Martin Henry Balsam (November 4, 1919 – February 13, 1996) was an American actor. He is known for his Oscar-winning role as "Arnold Burns" in A Thousand Clowns and his role as "Detective Milton Arbogast" in Psycho.
Martin Balsam was born in The Bronx, New York to Jewish parents Lillian (née Weinstein) and Albert Balsam, who was a manufacturer of ladies sportswear. He attended DeWitt Clinton High School, where he participated in the drama club. He studied at the Dramatic Workshop of The New School in New York with the influential German director Erwin Piscator and then served in the United States Army Air Forces during World War II.
Martin Balsam made his professional debut in August 1941 in a production of The Play's the Thing in Locust Valley. In 1947, he was selected by Elia Kazan and Lee Strasberg to be a player in the Actors Studio television program. He appeared in many other television drama series, including The Twilight Zone (episodes "The Sixteen Millimeter Shrine" and "The New Exhibit"), as a psychologist in the pilot episode, Five Fingers, Target: The Corruptors!, The Eleventh Hour, Breaking Point, Alfred Hitchcock Presents, The Fugitive, and Mr. Broadway, as a retired U.N.C.L.E. agent in The Man from U.N.C.L.E. episode, "The Odd Man Affair", and guest starred in the two-part Murder, She Wrote episode, "Death Stalks the Big Top".
Alphonse Gabriel "Al" Capone (January 17, 1899 – January 25, 1947) was an American gangster who led a Prohibition-era crime syndicate. The Chicago Outfit, which subsequently became known as the "Capones", was dedicated to smuggling and bootlegging liquor, and other illegal activities such as prostitution, in Chicago from the early 1920s to 1931.
Born in the borough of Brooklyn in New York City to Italian immigrants, Capone became involved with gang activity at a young age after being expelled from school at age 14. In his early twenties, he moved to Chicago to take advantage of a new opportunity to make money smuggling illegal alcoholic beverages into the city during Prohibition. He also engaged in various other criminal activities, including bribery of government figures and prostitution. Despite his illegitimate occupation, Capone became a highly visible public figure. He made donations to various charitable endeavors using the money he made from his activities, and was viewed by many to be a "modern-day Robin Hood".
Rodney Stephen "Rod" Steiger (April 14, 1925 – July 9, 2002) was an Academy Award-winning American actor known for his performances in such films as On the Waterfront, The Big Knife, Oklahoma!, The Harder They Fall, Across the Bridge, The Pawnbroker, Doctor Zhivago, In the Heat of the Night, and Waterloo as well as the television programs Marty and Jesus of Nazareth.
Steiger was born in Westhampton, New York, the son of Lorraine (née Driver) and Frederick Steiger, of French, Scottish, and German descent. Steiger was raised as a Lutheran. He never knew his father, a vaudevillian who had been part of a traveling song-and-dance team with Steiger's mother (who subsequently left show business). Steiger grew up with his alcoholic mother before running away from home at age sixteen to join the United States Navy during World War II, where he saw action on destroyers in the Pacific.
Steiger appeared in over 100 motion pictures. He began his acting career in theatre and on live television in the early 1950s. On May 24, 1953, an episode of Goodyear Television Playhouse jump-started his career. The episode was the story of Marty written by Paddy Chayefsky. Marty is the story of a lonely homely butcher from the Bronx in search of love. Refusing to sign a seven-year studio contract, Steiger later turned down the role in the film version in 1955. Signing a studio contract at that time would "pigeon-hole" Steiger as to the roles he would later play and image portrayed on screen; those were two things Steiger objected to throughout his career. The role of Marty was turned over to Ernest Borgnine. Borgnine would receive the Academy Award for Best Actor in a Leading Role. Rod Steiger never regretted his decision to turn down the film role of Marty.
Actors: Kurtwood Smith (actor), Gary Sievers (actor), Richard Portnow (actor), Wallace Langham (actor), John Rothman (actor), Walter Pidgeon (actor), Danny Huston (actor), Ralph Macchio (actor), James D'Arcy (actor), Anthony Hopkins (actor), Spencer Garrett (actor), Rene Auberjonois (actor), David Hill (actor), Michael Wincott (actor), Joel Thingvall (actor),
Plot: In 1959, Alfred Hitchcock and his wife, Alma, are at the top of their creative game as filmmakers amid disquieting insinuations about it being time to retire. To recapture his youth's artistic daring, Alfred decides his next film will adapt the lurid horror novel, Psycho, over everyone's misgivings. Unfortunately, as Alfred self-finances and labors on this film, Alma finally loses patience with his roving eye and controlling habits with his actresses. When an ambitious friend lures her to collaborate on a work of their own, the resulting marital tension colors Alfred's work even as the novel's inspiration haunts his dreams.
Keywords: 1950s, 1960s, actor, actress, adultery, automobile, based-on-book, beach-house, black-humor, blondeActors: Toby Jones (actor), Penelope Wilton (actress), Gero Brugmann (miscellaneous crew), Sean Cameron Michael (actor), Diana Cilliers (costume designer), Imelda Staunton (actress), Grant Babbitt (miscellaneous crew), Patrick Lyster (actor), Sienna Miller (actress), Genevieve Hofmeyr (producer), Philip Miller (composer), Penny Dyer (miscellaneous crew), Anne Bergstedt Jordanova (miscellaneous crew), Leon Clingman (actor), Adrian Galley (actor),
Plot: When Grace Kelly retires from films to marry Prince Rainier Alfred Hitchcock looks for a similar blonde and finds her in TV model,the little known Tippi Hedren,who will star in his film adaptation of horror story 'The Birds'. Hitchcock is obsessed with Tippi sexually and,when she rebuffs his advances,sadistically puts her through five days of filming where she is attacked and injured by real birds. Hitchcock's wife Alma and his assistant Peggy are appalled but can do nothing. Tippi is resolved that she will not give in to Hitchcock despite the situation giving her nightmares. Hitchcock and Tippi make a second film,'Marnie'. Having admitted that Alma is the only woman he has ever had sex with and that he now finds her cold Hitchcock continues to pursue Tippi, bombarding her with phone calls declaring his love for her yet reminding her that he alone made her famous and she owes him. At this stage Tippi demands that her contract be terminated and an end title states that they never worked together again.
Keywords: 1960s, abuse, actor's-life, actress, animal-trainer, aspiring-actress, assistant-director, automobile, backyard, based-on-biography