WORLD WAR TWO – The stars & their stories – PT67.

WORLD WAR TWO – The stars & their stories – PT67.

March 7, 2022 Alan Royle 2

ANNA MAY WONG (1905-61)                  Anna May Wong, the first Chinese-American movie star, was born Wong Liu Tsong in Los Angeles in 1905. She managed to have a relatively successful screen career (mostly in silent features), in an era that was deeply racist. It was a time when the taboo against […]

WORLD WAR TWO – The stars & their stories – PT66.

WORLD WAR TWO – The stars & their stories – PT66.

February 17, 2022 Alan Royle 0

  JACK WESTON (1924-96)                         Weston hailed from Cleveland, Ohio, the son of a shoe repairman. He stayed with the Cleveland Playhouse, where he joined their children’s theatre, until he was drafted into the United States Army at the age of nineteen in August 1943. He served in Italy for two […]

WORLD WAR TWO – The stars & their stories – PT65.

WORLD WAR TWO – The stars & their stories – PT65.

February 2, 2022 Alan Royle 0

JACK WEBB (1920-82)                   Californian Jack Webb starred in one of the earliest monster hit TV shows – Dragnet – from 1951-59, and then from 1967-70 in a second series of the same name. He played Sgt. Joe Friday. In fact, it was Jack’s friendship with an LAPD police consultant that […]

WORLD WAR TWO – The stars & their stories – PT64.

WORLD WAR TWO – The stars & their stories – PT64.

January 18, 2022 Alan Royle 2

JACK WARDEN (1920-2006)                    There have been numerous excellent American character actors, and Jack Warden was one of the best. Born in Newark, New Jersey to a German-Irish father and an Irish mother, he was expelled from high school at seventeen for repeatedly fighting. This led to him turning to professional […]

WORLD WAR TWO – The stars & their stories – PT63.

WORLD WAR TWO – The stars & their stories – PT63.

January 3, 2022 Alan Royle 2

  PETER USTINOV (1921-2004)                  Born in London in 1921, Peter Ustinov had ancestral connections to Russian nobility, as well as to the Ethiopian Royal Family. His mother was seven months pregnant with him and working for the Imperial Mariinsky Ballet and Opera House in St. Petersburg, when she and her […]

WORLD WAR TWO – The stars & their stories – PT62.

WORLD WAR TWO – The stars & their stories – PT62.

December 19, 2021 Alan Royle 0

  SPENCER TRACY (1900-67)                                                                    Spencer Tracy was already forty-one years old when America’s war began on 7 December 1941. He was also married and had previously served in the Navy as a 17 year-old in the Great War. He was still at the Norfolk Navy Yard in Virginia when […]

WORLD WAR TWO – The stars & their stories – PT61.

WORLD WAR TWO – The stars & their stories – PT61.

December 4, 2021 Alan Royle 4

                 GENE TIERNEY (1920-91)                                                                        One of the saddest wartime Hollywood tales involved actress Gene Tierney. She actually attended the Hollywood Canteen just once and, a few days after that solitary stint there, developed Rubella (German measles). She was pregnant to her […]

WORLD WAR TWO – The stars & their stories – PT60.

WORLD WAR TWO – The stars & their stories – PT60.

November 19, 2021 Alan Royle 0

GEORGE TAKEI (1937- )                                                                                                                                      George Takei portrayed Lieutenant Hikaru Sulu, helmsman of the USS Enterprise in the original TV series of Star Trek (1966-69). He was born in Los Angeles in 1937 and his father named him George after England’s King George VI, whose coronation had taken […]

WORLD WAR TWO – The stars & their stories – PT59.

WORLD WAR TWO – The stars & their stories – PT59.

November 4, 2021 Alan Royle 6

  JAMES STEWART (1908-97)                    A native of Indiana, Pennsylvania, James Stewart was blessed with an appeal that seemed to transcend all boundaries. His movie career blossomed in the thirties, due mainly to an on-screen image that made him popular with cinema-goers of both genders and all ages. Men considered him […]

WORLD WAR TWO – The stars & their stories – PT58.

WORLD WAR TWO – The stars & their stories – PT58.

October 20, 2021 Alan Royle 0

  HARRY DEAN STANTON (1926-2017)               Born in West Irvine, Kentucky in the Roaring Twenties, he grew up in Lexington, graduated from Lafayette High School in 1944, whereupon he was promptly drafted into the US Navy. Harry served as a cook during the war and was aboard the Landing Ship Tank […]