- published: 10 Jul 2009
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Diane Carol Baker (born February 25, 1938) is an American actress and producer who has appeared in motion pictures and on television since 1959.
Baker was born and raised in Hollywood, California. She is the daughter of Dorothy Helen Harrington, who had appeared in several early Marx Brothers movies, and Clyde L. Baker. Baker has two younger sisters, Patti and Sheri. At the age of 18, Baker moved to New York to study acting with Charles Conrad and ballet with Nina Fonaroff.
After securing a contract with 20th Century Fox, Baker made her film debut when she was chosen by director George Stevens to play "Margot Frank" in the 1959 motion picture The Diary of Anne Frank. In the same year, she starred in Journey to the Center of the Earth with James Mason and in The Best of Everything with Hope Lange and Joan Crawford.
Other Fox films in which Baker appeared include the assassination thriller Nine Hours to Rama, Hemingway's Adventures of a Young Man and The 300 Spartans. Her television work in the late 1950s and 1960s includes appearances on Follow the Sun, Bus Stop, Adventures in Paradise, The Lloyd Bridges Show, The Nurses, The Invaders (in the first episode), and Route 66.
Clifford Parker "Cliff" Robertson III (September 9, 1923 – September 10, 2011) was an American actor with a film and television career that spanned half a century. Robertson portrayed a young John F. Kennedy in the 1963 film PT 109, and won the 1968 Academy Award for Best Actor for his role in the movie Charly. On television, he portrayed retired astronaut Buzz Aldrin in the 1976 adaptation of Aldrin's autobiographic Return to Earth, played a fictional character based on Director of Central Intelligence Richard Helms in the 1977 miniseries Washington: Behind Closed Doors, and portrayed Henry Ford in the 1987 Ford: The Man and the Machine. His last well-known film appearances were in 2002 through 2007 as Uncle Ben in the Spider-Man film trilogy.
Robertson was born on September 9, 1923 in La Jolla, California, the son of Clifford Parker Robertson, Jr. (1902–1968), and his first wife, the former Audrey Olga Willingham (1903-1925). His Texas-born father was described as "the idle heir to a tidy sum of ranching money". Robertson recalled that his father "was a very romantic figure—tall, handsome. He married four or five times, and between marriages he'd pop in to see me. He was a great raconteur, and he was always surrounded by sycophants who let him pick up the tab. During the Depression, he tapped the trust for $500,000, and six months later he was back for more." The actor's parents divorced when he was one, and Robertson's mother died of peritonitis a year later in El Paso, Texas at the age of 21. He was raised by his maternal grandmother, Mary Eleanor "Eleanora" Willingham (née Sawyer, 1875–1957), in California, and rarely saw his father. He graduated in 1941 from La Jolla High School, where he was known as "The Walking Phoenix". He served in the U.S. Merchant Marine in World War II before attending Antioch College (Ohio) and dropping out to work as a journalist for a short time.
Actors: Anthony Mendleson (costume designer), Don Henderson (actor), Billie Whitelaw (actress), Ali MacGraw (actress), James Bernard (composer), Hywel Bennett (actor), Garfield Morgan (actor), Claude Whatham (director), N.J. Crisp (writer), Alan Rowe (actor), Ray Lonnen (actor), Jeffrey Broom (producer), Norma Garment (miscellaneous crew), Edward Abraham (writer), Stephen Riddle (actor),
Genres: Drama, Horror, Thriller,