"The Kid" Actress Lita Grey Chaplin 1995 Valhalla Cemetery

Lita Grey (born Lillita Louise MacMurray, April 15, 1908 – December 29, 1995), who was known for most of her life as Lita Grey Chaplin, was an American actress and the second wife of Charlie Chaplin.

Background

She was born in Hollywood, California, and christened Lillita Louise MacMurray. Her father was of Scottish descent and her mother's family descended from an illustrious Spanish family a 9th-generation Californian and a descendant of Antonio Maria Lugo. The Lugos were from Andalucia, Spain and were one of the first to bring horses to the country.[1][2] Misinformation persists to this day that her family was of Mexican descent, despite her family history being well-documented.[3][4]

Personal life

Grey married four times. By her own account, she first met Charlie Chaplin at the age of eight at a Hollywood café and first worked with him at the age of twelve in the part of the “flirting angel” in The Kid.[5] 

Her one-year contract was not renewed after appearing briefly as a maid in "The Idle Class." She met Chaplin again at the age of fifteen when she heard he was testing brunettes for his The Gold Rush.[6] They had an affair and she suspected she had become pregnant by the then-thirty-five-year-old Chaplin. As he could have been imprisoned for having sexual relations with a minor, they married that November in secret in Empalme, Sonora, Mexico to avoid a scandal. They had two sons, Charles Chaplin, Jr. (1925–1968) and Sydney Earl Chaplin (1926–2009).

The marriage was troubled from the start. The two had few interests in common, and Chaplin spent as much time as he could away from home, working on The Gold Rush (in which Grey was to have played the female lead) and later The Circus. They divorced on August 22, 1927, due to his alleged numerous affairs with other women, and he was ordered to pay over US$600,000 and US$100,000 in trust for each child. It was the largest divorce settlement at the time. The divorce was one of the sensational media events of the time. Copies of her lengthy divorce complaint which made scandalous sexual claims against Chaplin were published and publicly sold.

She later married Henry Aguirre and later Arthur Day. According to the 1940 United States Census, Lita and Arthur lived at 38 East 50th Street, in New York City, New York, and that in 1935, she had lived in England. The census listed her occupation as "singer," and Arthur's as "manager personal." She married her fourth husband, Patsy Pizzolongo (aka Pat Longo), on 22 September 1956, in Los Angeles, California. They were divorced in June 1966.

In the 1970s and 1980s she worked as a clerk at Robinson's Department Store in Beverly Hills.

She wrote two autobiographical volumes covering her life with Chaplin. My Life With Chaplin (1966) was by her own admission largely a work of exaggeration and fabrication. She claimed to tell the story as it really was in her second memoir Wife of the Life of the Party (1995).[7] Grey was portrayed by Deborah Moore in the 1992 film Chaplin, though Grey was depicted on screen for less than a minute in the final film.

Kenneth Anger devoted a colorful chapter to Lita Grey in his 1959 book Hollywood Babylon.

The Chaplin biographer Joyce Milton asserted in Tramp: The Life of Charlie Chaplin that the Grey-Chaplin marriage was an inspiration for Vladimir Nabokov's Lolita.

Death

She died in Los Angeles, at age 87 of cancer. Her ashes were scattered in the rose garden (unmarked) in the Garden of Remembrance at Valhalla Memorial Park Cemetery in North Hollywood, California.

Her mother Lillian "Lilith" Grey and her son Charles Spencer Chaplin Jr. are interred together at Hollywood Forever Cemetery in the Abbey of the Psalms, Sanctuary of Trust.

Filmography

Unknown Chaplin (1983) (TV) 
The Devil's Sleep (1949) 
Seasoned Greetings (1933) 
Mr. Broadway (1933) 
The Idle Class (1921) 
The Kid (1921)

References

1. Memoirs Lita Grey Chaplin. 
2. Chaplin, Lita Grey and Jeffrey Vance. (1998). Wife of the Life of the Party. Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press, pg. 2-3. ISBN 0-8108-3432-4. 
3. Black, Esther Bolton. Rancho Cucamonga and Dona Merced. Redlands, CA: San Bernardino County Museum Association, 1975. ISBN 0-915158-09-4 
4. Chaplin, Lita Grey and Jeffrey Vance. (1998). Wife of the Life of the Party. Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press, pg. 2. ISBN 0-8108-3432-4. 
5. "The Gold Rush". http://www.charliechaplin.com/. Charlie Chaplin: The Official Website. Retrieved 2014-09-17. 
6. Chaplin, Lita Grey and Jeffrey Vance. (1998). Wife of the Life of the Party. Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press, 4-13. ISBN 0-8108-3432-4. 
7. Chaplin, Lita Grey; Vance, Jeffrey (1998). Wife of the life of the party. Scarecrow Press. p. 306.

"An American Tragedy" Author Theodore Dreiser 1945 Forest Lawn Glendale Cemetery

Theodore Herman Albert Dreiser (/ˈdraɪsər, -zər/;[1] August 27, 1871 – December 28, 1945) was an American novelist and journalist of the naturalist school. His novels often featured main characters who succeeded at their objectives despite a lack of a firm moral code, and literary situations that more closely resemble studies of nature than tales of choice and agency.[2] Dreiser's best known novels include Sister Carrie (1900) and An American Tragedy (1925). In 1930 he was nominated to the Nobel Prize in Literature.[3]

Early life

Dreiser was born in Terre Haute, Indiana, to Sarah Maria (née Schanab) and John Paul Dreiser.[4] John Dreiser was a German immigrant from Mayen in the Eifel region, and Sarah was from the Mennonite farming community near Dayton, Ohio. Her family disowned her for converting to Roman Catholicism in order to marry John Dreiser. Theodore was the twelfth of thirteen children (the ninth of the ten surviving). Paul Dresser (1857–1906) was one of his older brothers; Paul changed the spelling of his name as he became a popular songwriter. They were reared as Catholics.

After graduating from high school in Warsaw, Indiana, Dreiser attended Indiana University in the years 1889–1890 before dropping out.[5]

Writing career

Within several years, Dreiser was writing as a journalist for the Chicago Globe newspaper and then the St. Louis Globe-Democrat. He wrote several articles on writers such as Nathaniel Hawthorne, William Dean Howells, Israel Zangwill, John Burroughs, and interviewed public figures such as Andrew Carnegie, Marshall Field, Thomas Edison, and Theodore Thomas.[6] Other interviewees included Lillian Nordica, Emilia E. Barr, Philip Armour and Alfred Stieglitz.[7]

Personal life

After proposing in 1893, he married Sara White on December 28, 1898. They ultimately separated in 1909, partly as a result of Dreiser's infatuation with Thelma Cudlipp, the teenage daughter of a work colleague, but were never formally divorced.[8] During part of their married life, the Dreisers owned the House of Four Pillars, an 1830s Greek Revival house in the Toledo, Ohio suburb of Maumee.[9] In 1913, he began a romantic relationship with the actress and painter Kyra Markham (who was much younger than he).[10] In 1919 Dreiser met his cousin Helen Richardson with whom he began an affair.[11] Through the following decades she remained the constant woman in his life, as other more temporary love affairs (such as his 1930s affair with his secretary, Clara Jaeger) bloomed and perished. [12] Helen tolerated Dreiser's affairs, and they eventually married on June 13, 1944.[11]

Interestingly, Dreiser was going to return from his first European holiday in the Titanic but was talked out of going by an English publisher who recommended he board a cheaper boat.[13]

Literary career

Dreiser published his first novel, Sister Carrie, in 1900. Portraying a changing society, he wrote about a young woman who flees rural life for the city (Chicago) and struggles with poverty, complex relationships with men, and prostitution. It sold poorly and was considered controversial because of moral objections to his featuring a country girl who pursues her dreams of fame and fortune through relationships with men. The book has since acquired a considerable reputation. It has been called the "greatest of all American urban novels." [14] It was adapted as a 1952 film by the same name, directed by William Wyler and starring Laurence Olivier and Jennifer Jones.

In response to witnessing a lynching in 1893, Dreiser wrote the short story, "Nigger Jeff" (1901), which was published in Ainslee's Magazine.[15] This period is considered the "nadir" of American race relations, with a high rate of lynchings in Southern states, which from 1890 to 1910 also disfranchised most black citizens from voting, legalized white supremacy and Jim Crow, and suppressed blacks in second-class status for decades.

His second novel, Jennie Gerhardt, was published in 1911. His featuring young woman as protagonists dramatized the social changes of urbanization, as young people moved from rural villages to cities.

Dreiser's first commercial success was An American Tragedy, published in 1925. From 1892, when Dreiser began work as a newspaperman, he had begun:

"to observe a certain type of crime in the United States that proved very common. It seemed to spring from the fact that almost every young person was possessed of an ingrown ambition to be somebody financially and socially." "Fortune hunting became a disease" with the frequent result of a peculiarly American kind of crime, a form of "murder for money," when "the young ambitious lover of some poorer girl" found "a more attractive girl with money or position" but could not get rid of the first girl, usually because of pregnancy.[16]

Dreiser claimed to have collected such stories every year between 1895 and 1935. He based his novel on details and setting of the 1906 murder of Grace Brown by Chester Gillette in upstate New York, which attracted widespread attention from newspapers.[17] While the novel sold well, it was also criticized for his portrayal of a man without morals who commits a sordid murder. The novel was adapted as a film in 1931, by the same name, and again in 1951 (this time it was titled A Place in the Sun).

Though known primarily as a novelist, Dreiser also wrote short stories, publishing his first collection, Free and Other Stories, in 1918, made up of 11 stories.

His story, "My Brother Paul," was a kind of biography of his older brother, Paul Dresser, who became a famous songwriter in the 1890s. This story was the basis for the 1942 romantic movie, My Gal Sal.

Dreiser also wrote poetry. His poem, "The Aspirant" (1929), continues his theme of poverty and ambition: a young man in a shabby furnished room describes his own and the other tenants' dreams, and asks "why? why?" The poem appeared in The Poetry Quartos, collected and printed by Paul Johnston, and published by Random House in 1929.

Other works include Trilogy of Desire, which was based on the life of Charles Tyson Yerkes, who became a Chicago streetcar tycoon. It is composed of The Financier (1912), The Titan (1914), and The Stoic. The last was published posthumously in 1947.

Dreiser was often forced to battle against censorship, because his depiction of some aspects of life, such as sexual promiscuity, offended authorities and challenged popular standards of acceptable opinion.

Political commitment

Politically, Dreiser was involved in several campaigns against social injustice. This included the lynching of Frank Little, one of the leaders of the Industrial Workers of the World, the Sacco and Vanzetti case, the deportation of Emma Goldman, and the conviction of the trade union leader Tom Mooney. In November 1931, Dreiser led the National Committee for the Defense of Political Prisoners (NCDPP) to the coalfields of southeastern Kentucky, where they took testimony from coal miners in Pineville and Harlan on the pattern of violence against the miners and their unions by the coal operators known as the Harlan County War.[18]

Dreiser was a committed socialist, and wrote several non-fiction books on political issues. These included Dreiser Looks at Russia (1928), the result of his 1927 trip to the Soviet Union, and two books presenting a critical perspective on capitalist America, Tragic America (1931) and America Is Worth Saving (1941). He praised the Soviet Union under Stalin during the Great Terror and alliance with Hitler. Theodore Dreiser joined the American Communist Party in August 1945. Although less politically radical friends, such as H.L. Mencken, spoke of Dreiser's relationship with communism as an "unimportant detail in his life," Dreiser's biographer Jerome Loving notes that his political activities since the early 1930s had "clearly been in concert with ostensible communist aims with regard to the working class."[19]

Dreiser died on December 28, 1945 in Hollywood at the age of 74. He is buried at Forest Lawn Glendale Cemetery. 

Legacy

Dreiser had an enormous influence on the generation that followed his. In his tribute "Dreiser" from Horses and Men (1923), Sherwood Anderson writes:

Heavy, heavy, the feet of Theodore. How easy to pick some of his books to pieces, to laugh at him for so much of his heavy prose ... [T]he fellows of the ink-pots, the prose writers in America who follow Dreiser, will have much to do that he has never done. Their road is long but, because of him, those who follow will never have to face the road through the wilderness of Puritan denial, the road that Dreiser faced alone.

Alfred Kazin characterized Dreiser as "stronger than all the others of his time, and at the same time more poignant; greater than the world he has described, but as significant as the people in it," while Larzer Ziff (UC Berkeley) remarked that Dreiser "succeeded beyond any of his predecessors or successors in producing a great American business novel."

Renowned mid-century literary critic Irving Howe spoke of Dreiser as "among the American giants, one of the very few American giants we have had."[20] A British view of Dreiser came from the publisher Rupert Hart-Davis: "Theodore Dreiser's books are enough to stop me in my tracks, never mind his letters—that slovenly turgid style describing endless business deals, with a seduction every hundred pages as light relief. If he's the great American novelist, give me the Marx Brothers every time."[21] The literary scholar F. R. Leavis wrote that Dreiser "seems as though he learned English from a newspaper. He gives the feeling that he doesn't have any native language."[22]

One of Dreiser's strongest champions during his lifetime, H. L. Mencken, declared "that he is a great artist, and that no other American of his generation left so wide and handsome a mark upon the national letters. American writing, before and after his time, differed almost as much as biology before and after Darwin. He was a man of large originality, of profound feeling, and of unshakable courage. All of us who write are better off because he lived, worked, and hoped."[23]

Dreiser's great theme was the tremendous tensions that can arise between ambition, desire, and social mores.[24]

Dreiser Hall (circa 1950) on the Indiana State University campus in Terre Haute, Indiana houses the Communications Program. It was named for Dreiser in 1966.

Dreiser College, at Stony Brook University located in Stony Brook, New York, is named after him.

The Teodora Draizera light rail station in Kiev, Ukraine is named after him.

Works

Fiction

Sister Carrie (1900) 
Jennie Gerhardt (1911) 
The Financier (1912) 
The Titan (1914) 
The "Genius" (1915) 
Free and Other Stories (1918) 
An American Tragedy (1925) 
Chains: Lesser Novels and Stories (1927) 
The Bulwark (1946) 
The Stoic (1947)

Drama

Plays of the Natural and Supernatural (1916) 
The Hand of the Potter (1918), first produced 1921

Nonfiction

A Traveler at Forty (1913) 
A Hoosier Holiday (1916) 
Twelve Men (New York: Boni and Liveright, 1919) 
Hey Rub-a-Dub-Dub: A Book of the Mystery and Wonder and Terror of Life (New York: Boni and Liveright, 1920) 
A Book About Myself (1922); republished (unexpurgated) as Newspaper Days (New York: Horace Liveright, 1931) 
The Color of a Great City (New York: Boni and Liveright, 1923) 
MOODS Cadenced and Declaimed (1926) strictly limited to 550 numbered copies signed by the author of which 535 were for sale 
Dreiser Looks at Russia (New York: Horace Liveright, 1928) 
My City (1929) 
A Gallery of Women (1929) 
Tragic America (New York: Horace Liveright, 1931) 
Dawn (New York: Horace Liveright, 1931) 
America Is Worth Saving (New York: Modern Age Books, 1941) 
Theodore Dreiser: Political Writings, edited by Jude Davies (University of Illinois Press; 2011) 321 pages

References

1. "Dreiser". Random House Webster's Unabridged Dictionary. 
2. Van Doren, Carl (1925). American and British Literature since 1890. Century Company. 
3. http://www.nobelprize.org/nomination/archive/show_people.php?id=2537 
4. University of Pennsylvania Library 
5. Lingeman, Richard (1993). Theodore Dreiser: An American Journey (Abridged Edition). Wiley. 
6. Yoshinobu Hakutani, 'Preface', in Theodore Dreiser, Selected Magazine Articles: v.1: Life and Art in the American 1890s: Vol 1, Fairleigh Dickinson University Press,U.S., 1985, p. 10 
7. Donald Pizer Pizer, Theodore Dreiser: Interviews, University of Illinois Press, 2005, p. xiii [1] 
8. Newlin, Keith (2003). A Theodore Dreiser Encyclopedia. Greenwood Publishing Group. p. 78. ISBN 0-313-31680-5. 
9. Marker #2-48 House of Four Pillars, Ohio Historical Society, 1967. Accessed 2013-03-26. 
10. Clayton, Douglas (1994). Floyd Dell, The Life and Times of An American Rebel. Ivan R. Dee. 
11. Newlin, Keith (2003). A Theodore Dreiser Encyclopedia. Greenwood Publishing Group. p. 101. ISBN 0-313-31680-5. 
12. Mary Lean (21 November 2005). "Clara Jaeger Secretary and mistress to Theodore Dreiser". The Independent. line feed character in |title= at position 13 (help) 
13. Greg Daugherty (March 2012). "Seven Famous People Who Missed the Titanic". Smithsonian Magazine. 
14. Donald L. Miller, City of the Century, (Simon and Schuster, New York, 1996) p. 263. 15. Anne P. Rice (2003). Witnessing lynching: American writers respond. Rutgers University Press. pp. 151–170. ISBN 978-0-8135-3330-8. 
16. Crime and Culture: An Historical Perspective" 
17. Fishkin, Shelley Fisher (1988). From Fact to Fiction. Oxford University Press. 
18. Theodore Dreiser et al., Harlan Miners Speak: Report on Terrorism in the Kentucky Coal Fields (Harcourt, Brace and Co., 1932; rpt. Da Capo Press, 1970). 
19. Jerome Loving, The Last Titan: A Life of Theodore Dreiser. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005. ISBN 0-520-23481-2, ISBN 978-0-520-23481-9. P. 398. 
20. Rodden, John (2005). Irving Howe and the Critics: Celebrations and Attacks. Nebraska U.P. 
21. Hart-Davis (ed). Lyttelton/Hart-Davis Letters, Vol 4 (1959 letters), John Murray, London, 1982. ISBN 978-0-7195-3941-1, Letter dated 30 August 1959 
22. Leavis, F. R., ed Ian Mackillop and Richard Storer, Essays and Documents, London and New York, Continuum, 2005, ISBN 1847144578, p. 77 
23. Riggio, Thomas P., "Biography of Theodore Dreiser," http://www.library.upenn.edu/collections/rbm/dreiser/tdbio.html, Accessed March 22, 2008
24. Leonard Cassuto and Clare Eby, eds. The Cambridge companion to Theodore Dreiser (2004) p. 9

Sources

Cassuto, Leonard and Clare Virginia Eby, eds. The Cambridge Companion to Theodore Dreiser. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004. 
Loving, Jerome. The Last Titan: A Life of Theodore Dreiser. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005.

"The Lone Ranger" Actor Clayton Moore 1999 Forest Lawn Glendale Cemetery

Clayton Moore (September 14, 1914 – December 28, 1999) was an American actor best known for playing the fictional western character the Lone Ranger from 1949–1951 and 1954–1957 on the television series of the same name and two related movies from the same producers.

Early years

Born Jack Carlton Moore in Chicago, Illinois, Moore became a circus acrobat by age 8 and appeared at the Century of Progress exposition in Chicago in 1934 with a trapeze act.[2] He graduated from Stephen K. Hayt Elementary School, Sullivan Junior High School and Senn High School on the far Northside of Chicago.[3]

As a young man, Moore worked successfully as a John Robert Powers model. Moving to Hollywood in the late 1930s, he worked as a stunt man and bit player between modeling jobs. According to his 1996 autobiography I Was That Masked Man, around 1940, Hollywood producer Edward Small persuaded him to adopt the stage name "Clayton" Moore. He was an occasional player in B westerns and the lead in four Republic Studio cliffhangers, and two for Columbia. Moore served in the U.S. Army Air Forces during World War II and made training films (Target--Invisible, etc.) with the First Motion Picture Unit.

The Lone Ranger

In 1949 Moore's work in the Ghost of Zorro serial drew the attention of George Trendle, co-creator and producer of The Lone Ranger, a popular radio series about a mysterious former Texas Ranger, the sole survivor of a six-Ranger posse ambushed by a gang of outlaws, who roamed the West with his Indian companion battling evil and helping the downtrodden. When Trendle brought the series to television, Moore landed the title role. With the "cavalry charge" from Rossini's William Tell Overture as their theme music, Moore and co-star Jay Silverheels made history as the stars of the first Western written specifically for television.[4] The Lone Ranger soon became the highest-rated program to that point on the fledgling ABC network and its first true hit.[5] It earned an Emmy Award nomination in 1950.

Moore was replaced in the third season by John Hart,[6] reportedly due to a contract dispute,[7] but he returned for the final two seasons. The fifth and final season was the only one shot in color. In all, Moore starred in 169 of the 221 episodes produced.[8]

Moore appeared in other television series during his Lone Ranger run, including a 1952 episode of Bill Williams' syndicated Western The Adventures of Kit Carson. He guest-starred in two episodes of Jock Mahoney's series The Range Rider in 1952 and 1953. He and Silverheels also starred in two feature-length Lone Ranger motion pictures.

After completion of the second feature, The Lone Ranger and the Lost City of Gold, in 1958, Moore began 40 years of personal appearances, TV guest spots, and classic commercials as the legendary masked man. Silverheels joined him for occasional reunions during the early 1960s. Throughout his career, Moore expressed respect and love for Silverheels.

Lawsuit over public appearances

In 1979, the owner of the Ranger character, Jack Wrather, obtained a court order prohibiting Moore from making future appearances as The Lone Ranger.[9] Wrather anticipated making a new film version of the story and did not want the value of the character being undercut by Moore's appearances. Wrather did not want to encourage the belief that the 65-year-old Moore would be playing the role in the new picture. This move proved to be a public relations disaster. Moore responded by changing his costume slightly and replacing the Domino mask with similar-looking Foster Grant wraparound sunglasses, and by counter-suing Wrather. He eventually won the suit, and was able to resume his appearances in costume, which he continued to do until shortly before his death. For a time he worked in publicity tie-ins with the Texas Rangers baseball team. (Wrather's new motion picture of the character, The Legend of the Lone Ranger, was released in 1981 and was a critical and commercial failure.)

Moore often was quoted as saying he had "fallen in love with the Lone Ranger character" and strove in his personal life to take The Lone Ranger Creed to heart. This, coupled with his public fight to retain the right to wear the mask, linked him inextricably with the character. In this regard, he was much like another cowboy star, William Boyd, who portrayed the Hopalong Cassidy character. Moore was so identified with the masked man that he is the only person on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, as of 2006, to have his character's name along with his on the star, which reads, "Clayton Moore — The Lone Ranger." He was inducted into the Stuntman's Hall of Fame in 1982 and in 1990 was inducted into the Western Performers Hall of Fame at the National Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. Moore also was awarded a place on the Western Walk of Fame in Old Town Newhall, California.

Death

Clayton Moore died on December 28, 1999, in a West Hills, California, hospital after suffering a heart attack at his home in nearby Calabasas. He was survived by his fourth wife, Clarita Moore, and an adopted daughter, Dawn Angela Moore. Moore was buried at Forest Lawn Memorial Park in Glendale.[1][10][11][12]

Filmography

Film

Year Title Role Note

1937 Forlorn River Cowboy uncredited 
1937 Thunder Trail Cowboy uncredited 
1938 Go Chase Yourself Reporter uncredited 
1939 Burn 'Em Up O'Connor Hospital Interne as Jack Moore 
1940 Kit Carson Paul Terry 
1940 The Son of Monte Cristo Lieutenant Fritz Dorner 
1941 International Lady Sewell 
1941 Tuxedo Junction Bill Bennett 
1942 Black Dragons FBI Agent Richard 'Dick' Martin 

1942 Perils of Nyoka Dr. Larry Grayson 

1942 Outlaws of Pine Ridge Lane Hollister 
1946 The Bachelor's Daughters Bill Cotter 

1946 The Crimson Ghost Ashe 

1947 Jesse James Rides Again Jesse James 

1947 Along the Oregon Trail Gregg Thurston 
1948 G-Men Never Forget Agent Ted O'Hara 
1948 Marshal of Amarillo Art Crandall 
1948 Adventures of Frank and Jesse James Jesse James 
1949 The Far Frontier Tom Sharper 
1949 Sheriff of Wichita Raymond D'Arcy 
1949 Riders of the Whistling Pines Henchman Pete

1949 Ghost of Zorro Ken Mason/ el Zorro 

1949 Frontier Investigator Scott Garnett 
1949 The Cisco Kid Lieutenant 
1949 South of Death Valley Brad 
1949 Masked Raiders Matt Trevett 
1949 The Cowboy and the Indians Henchman Luke 
1949 Bandits of El Dorado B. F. Morgan 
1949 Sons of New Mexico Rufe Burns 
1949/1957 The Lone Ranger The Lone Ranger (TV series) 169 episodes 
1951 Cyclone Fury Grat Hanlon 

1952 Son of Geronimo: Apache Avenger Jim Scott as Clay Moore 

1952 The Hawk of Wild River The Hawk 
1952 Radar Men from the Moon Graber 
1952 Night Stage to Galveston Clyde Chambers 
1952 Captive of Billy the Kid Paul Howard 
1953 Jungle Drums of Africa Alan King as Clay Moore 
1953 Kansas Pacific Henchman Stone 
1953 The Bandits of Corsica Ricardo 
1953 Down Laredo Way Chip Wells 
1954 Gunfighters of the Northwest Bram Nevin 
1955 "Apache Ambush" Townsman 
1956 The Lone Ranger The Lone Ranger (1956 film) 
1958 The Lone Ranger and the Lost City of Gold The Lone Ranger (1958 film)

References

1. "Clayton Moore, the 'Lone Ranger,' dead at 85". CNN. 
2. Goldstein, Richard (1999-12-29). "Clayton Moore, Television's Lone Ranger And a Persistent Masked Man, Dies at 85". New York 
3. "Illinois Hall of Fame". Illinois State Society Of Washington, DC. 
4. Billy Hathorn, "Roy Bean, Temple Houston, Bill Longley, Ranald Mackenzie, Buffalo Bill, Jr., and the Texas Rangers: Depictions of West Texans in Series Television, 1955 to 1967", West Texas Historical Review, Vol. 89 (2013), pp. 102-103 
5. "Jan 30, 1933: The Lone Ranger debuts on Detroit radio". History.com. 
6. McLellan, Dennis (September 22, 2009). "John Hart dies at 91; the other 'Lone Ranger'". Chicago Tribune. 
7. Moore, Clayton; Thompson, Frank (October 1, 1998). I Was That Masked Man. Taylor Trade Publishing. p. 130. ISBN 978-0878332168. 
8. McLellan, Dennis (June 12, 1993). "After 60 Years, the Lone Ranger Still Lives". The Los Angeles Times. 
9. "Who's That Masked Man? Hi-Yo-It's Clayton Moore!". The Los Angeles Times. 1985-01-15. 
10. Vallance, Tom (1999-12-30). "Obituary: Clayton Moore". The Independent (London). 
11. Stassel, Stephanie (1999-12-29). "Clayton Moore, TV's 'Lone Ranger,' Dies". The Los Angeles Times. 
12 "Lone Ranger star dies". BBC. 1999-12-29. 

Autobiography

I Was That Masked Man, by Clayton Moore with Frank Thompson, Taylor Publishing Company, 1996 - ISBN 0-87833-939-6

"The Bride of Frankenstein" Actress Elsa Lanchester 1986 Forest Lawn Hollywood Hills(?)

Elsa Sullivan Lanchester (October 28, 1902 – December 26, 1986) was an English actress with a long career in theatre, film and television.[1]

Lanchester studied dance as a child and after World War I began performing in theatre and cabaret, where she established her career over the following decade. She met the actor Charles Laughton in 1927, and they were married two years later. She began playing small roles in British films, including the role of Anne of Cleves with Laughton in The Private Life of Henry VIII (1933). His success in American films resulted in the couple moving to Hollywood, where Lanchester played small film roles.

Her role as the title character in Bride of Frankenstein (1935) brought her recognition. She played supporting roles through the 1940s and 1950s. 

She was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for Come to the Stable (1949) and Witness for the Prosecution (1957), the last of twelve films in which she appeared with Laughton. Following Laughton's death in 1962, Lanchester resumed her career with appearances in such Disney films as Mary Poppins (1964), That Darn Cat! (1965) and Blackbeard's Ghost (1968). The horror film Willard (1971) was highly successful, and one of her last roles was in Murder By Death (1976).

Early life

Elsa Sullivan Lanchester was born in Lewisham, London.[2] Her parents, James "Shamus" Sullivan (1872–1945) and Edithe "Biddy" Lanchester (1871–1966), were considered Bohemian, and refused to legalise their union in any conventional way to satisfy the era's conservative society. They were both socialists, according to Lanchester's 1970 interview with Dick Cavett. Elsa's older brother, Waldo Sullivan Lanchester, born five years earlier, was a puppeteer, with his own marionette company based in Malvern and later in Stratford-upon-Avon.

Elsa studied dance in Paris under Isadora Duncan, whom she disliked. When the school was discontinued due to the start of World War I, she returned to Britain. At that point (she was about twelve years of age) she began teaching dance in the Isadora Duncan's style and, very enterprisingly, started to give classes to children in her South London district, through which she earned some welcome extra income for her household. At about this time, after the First World War, she started the Children's Theatre, and later the Cave of Harmony, a nightclub at which modern plays and cabaret turns were performed. She revived old Victorian songs and ballads, many of which she retained for her performances in another revue entitled Riverside Nights. She became sufficiently famous for Columbia to invite her into the recording studio to make 78 rpm discs of four of the numbers she sang in these revues: "Please Sell No More Drink to My Father" and "He Didn't Oughter" were on one disc (recorded in 1926) and "Don't Tell My Mother I'm Living in Sin" and "The Ladies Bar" were on the other (recorded 1930).[3]

Her cabaret and nightclub appearances led to more serious stage work and it was in a play by Arnold Bennett called Mr Prohack (1927) that Lanchester first met another member of the cast, Charles Laughton. They were married two years later and continued to act together from time to time, both on stage and screen. She played his daughter in the stage play Payment Deferred (1931) though not in the subsequent Hollywood film version. Lanchester and Laughton appeared in the Old Vic season of 1933–1934, playing Shakespeare, Chekov and Wilde, and in 1936 she was Peter Pan to Laughton's Captain Hook in J. M. Barrie's play at the London Palladium. Their last stage appearance together was in Jane Arden's The Party (1958) at the New Theatre, London.[3]

Film career

Lanchester made her film debut in The Scarlet Woman (1925) and in 1928 appeared in three 'silent shorts' written for her by H.G. Wells and directed by Ivor Montagu (Bluebottles, Daydreams and The Tonic) in which Laughton made brief appearances. They also appeared together in a 1930 'film revue' entitled Comets, featuring British stage, musical and variety acts, in which they sang in duet 'The Ballad of Frankie and Johnnie.' Lanchester appeared in several other early British talkies, including Potiphar's Wife (1931), starring Laurence Olivier. She appeared opposite Laughton again in 1933 as a highly comical Anne of Cleves in The Private Life of Henry VIII. Laughton was by now making films in Hollywood so Lanchester joined him there, making minor appearances in David Copperfield (1935) and Naughty Marietta (1935). These and her appearances in British films helped her gain the title role in Bride of Frankenstein (1935). She and Laughton returned to Britain in 1936 to appear together again in Rembrandt and two years later in Vessel of Wrath, a.k.a. The Beachcomber.[3]

They both returned to Hollywood in 1939 where he made The Hunchback of Notre Dame although Lanchester didn't appear in another film until Ladies in Retirement (1941). 

She and Laughton played husband and wife (their characters were named Charles and Elsa Smith) in Tales of Manhattan (1942) and they both appeared again in the all-star, mostly British cast of Forever and a Day (1943). She then received top billing in Passport to Destiny (1944) for the only time in her Hollywood films. In this, she played a cockney charlady who scrubs her way across occupied Europe in order to assassinate Hitler."[4]

Lanchester played supporting roles in The Spiral Staircase and The Razor's Edge (both 1946). The following year she appeared as the housekeeper The Bishop's Wife with David Niven playing the bishop, Loretta Young his wife, and Cary Grant an angel. Lanchester played a comical role in the 1948 thriller, The Big Clock, in which Laughton starred as a murderous, megalomaniac press tycoon. She had a substantial part as an artist specialising in nativity scenes in Come to the Stable for which she was nominated for a Best Supporting Actress Academy Award (1949).[3]

During the late 1940s and 1950s she appeared in small but highly varied supporting roles in a number of films while simultaneously appearing on stage at the Turnabout Theatre in Hollywood.[5] Here she performed her solo vaudeville act in conjunction with a marionette show, singing somewhat off-colour songs which she later recorded for a couple of LPs.[6][7] Onscreen, she appeared alongside Danny Kaye in The Inspector General (1949), played a blackmailing landlady in Mystery Street (1950) and was Shelley Winters's travelling companion in the Western Frenchie (1950). More supporting roles followed in the early 1950s, including a 2-minute cameo as the Bearded Lady in 3 Ring Circus, about to be shaved by Jerry Lewis. 

She then had another substantial part when she appeared again with her husband in the screen version of Agatha Christie's play Witness for the Prosecution (1957) for which both received Academy Award nominations – she for the second time as Best Supporting Actress, and Laughton, also for the second time, for Best Actor. Neither won. However, Lanchester did win the Golden Globe for Best Supporting Actress for the film.

Lanchester played a witch in Bell, Book and Candle (1958), and appeared in such classics as Mary Poppins (1964), That Darn Cat! (1965) and Blackbeard's Ghost (1968). 

She appeared on 9 April 1959, on NBC's The Ford Show, Starring Tennessee Ernie Ford. She performed in two episodes of NBC's The Wonderful World of Disney. Additionally, she had memorable guest roles in a classic I Love Lucy episode in 1956 and in episodes of NBC's The Eleventh Hour (1964) and The Man From U.N.C.L.E. (1965).[8]

In the 1965–66 television season she was a regular on John Forsythe's sitcom The John Forsythe Show on NBC in the role of Miss Culver, the principal of a private girls' academy in San Francisco. She continued television work into the early 1970s, appearing as a recurring character in Nanny and the Professor, starring Richard Long and Juliet Mills.[9]

Lanchester continued to make occasional film appearances, singing a duet with Elvis Presley in Easy Come, Easy Go (1967) and playing the mother in the original version of Willard (1971). She was Jessica Marbles, a sleuth based on Agatha Christie's Jane Marple, in the 1976 murder mystery spoof, Murder by Death, and she made her last film in 1980 as Sophie in Die Laughing.

She released three LP albums in the 1950s. Two (referred to above) were entitled "Songs for a Shuttered Parlour" and "Songs for a Smoke-Filled Room" and were vaguely lewd and danced around their true purpose, such as the song about her husband's "clock" not working. Charles Laughton provided the spoken introductions to each number and even joined Elsa in the singing of "She Was Poor But She Was Honest." Her third LP was entitled "Cockney London," a selection of old London songs for which Laughton wrote the sleeve-notes.

Personal life

Lanchester married Charles Laughton in 1929.[10]

In 1938 Lanchester published a book about her relationship with Laughton, Charles Laughton and I. In March 1983, Lanchester released an autobiography, entitled Elsa Lanchester Herself. In the book she alleges that she and Charles Laughton never had children because Laughton was homosexual.[11] Maureen O'Hara, a friend and co-star of Laughton, denied this was the reason for the couple's childlessness. She claimed Laughton had told her that the reason he and his wife never had children was because of a botched abortion Lanchester had early in her career of performing burlesque. Lanchester admitted in her autobiography that she had had two abortions in her youth (one being Laughton's), but it is not clear if the second left her incapable of becoming pregnant again.[12]

The two women did not like each other. Lanchester once said of O'Hara, "She looks as though butter wouldn't melt in her mouth, or anywhere else."

Final years

Not long after the release of her autobiography, Lanchester's health took a turn for the worse. Within 30 months, she suffered two strokes, becoming totally incapacitated and requiring constant care. She was confined to bed. In March 1986, the Motion Picture and Television Fund filed to become conservator of Lanchester and her estate which was valued at $900,000.[13]

Death

Elsa Lanchester died in Woodland Hills, California on December 26, 1986, aged 84, at the Motion Picture Hospital from bronchopneumonia. Her body was cremated on January 5, 1987, at the Chapel of the Pines in Los Angeles and her ashes scattered over the Pacific Ocean.[14]

However, there are rumors that her ashes are really in the same crypt as Charles Laughton at Forest Lawn Hollywood Hills Cemetery. Myth or reality?

Filmography

The Scarlet Woman: An Ecclesiastical Melodrama (1925) 
One of the Best (1927) 
The Constant Nymph (1928) 
Bluebottles (1928) 
The Tonic (1928) 
Daydreams (1928) 
Mr Smith Wakes Up (1929) 
Comets (1930) 
Ashes (1930) 
The Love Habit (1931) 
The Stronger Sex (1931) 
Potiphar's Wife (1931) 
The Officer's Mess (1931) 
The Private Life of Henry VIII (1933) 
The Private Life of Don Juan (1934: uncredited) 
David Copperfield (1935) 
Naughty Marietta (1935) 
Bride of Frankenstein (1935) 
The Ghost Goes West (1935) 
Miss Bracegirdle Does Her Duty (1936: unreleased) 
Rembrandt (1936) 
Vessel of Wrath (1938: also titled The Beachcomber) 
Ladies in Retirement (1941) 
Son of Fury: The Story of Benjamin Blake (1942) 
Tales of Manhattan (1942) 
Forever and a Day (1943) 
Thumbs Up (1943) 
Lassie Come Home (1943) 
Passport to Destiny (1944: also titled Passport to Adventure) 
The Spiral Staircase (1946) 
The Razor's Edge (1946) 
Northwest Outpost (1947: also titled End of the Rainbow) 
The Bishop's Wife (1947) 
The Big Clock (1948) 
Come to the Stable (1949) 
The Secret Garden (1949) 
The Inspector General (1949) 
Buccaneer's Girl (1949) 
Mystery Street (1950) 
Girl of the Year (1950: also titled The Petty Girl) 
Frenchie (1950) 
Dreamboat (1952) 
Les Misérables (1952) 
Androcles and the Lion (1952) 
The Girls of Pleasure Island (1953) 
3 Ring Circus (1954) 
Hell's Half Acre (1954) 
The Glass Slipper (1955) 
Witness for the Prosecution (1957) 
Bell, Book and Candle (1958) 
Honeymoon Hotel (1964) 
Mary Poppins (1964) 
Pajama Party (1964) 
That Darn Cat! (1965) - Mrs. MacDougall 
The Man from U.N.C.L.E. (TV) (1965) 
Easy Come, Easy Go (1967) 
Blackbeard's Ghost (1968) 
Rascal (1969) 
Me, Natalie (1969) 
My Dog, the Thief (television) (1969) 
Willard (1971) 
Here's Lucy episode Lucy Goes to Prison—1972 
Terror in the Wax Museum (1973) 
Arnold (1974) 
Murder by Death (1976) 
Die Laughing (1980) 
Night Gallery (Season 2, ep. 15: "Green Fingers")

Legacy

Elsa is best remembered perhaps as the Bride of Frankenstein and was portrayed in the film Gods and Monsters by Rosalind Ayres.

References

Notes

1. Obituary Variety, December 31, 1986. 
2. GRO Register of Births: MAR 1903 1d 1194 LEWISHAM - Elsa Sullivan Lanchester 
3. Maltin 1994, p. 494. 
4. Jewell and Harbin 1982, p. 193. 
5. "Elsa's Gazebo." Time, May 24, 1948. 
6. "New Pop Records." Time, November 6, 1950. 
7. Elsa Lanchester at AllMusic 
8. Favell, Jack. "A Fan Tribute to Elsa Lanchester." Turner Classic Movies. 
9. Elsa Lanchester at the Internet Movie Database 
10. GRO Register of Marriages: MAR 1929 1a 986 ST MARTIN - Charles Laughton=Elsa Sullivan or Lanchester 
11. Houseman, John. "The Bride of Frankenstein'". The New York Times, April 17, 1983.
12. Lanchester 1983
13. Mank 1999, p. 315. 
14. Mank 1999, p. 316.

Bibliography

Callow, Simon. Charles Laughton: A Difficult Actor. Mt Prospect, Illinois: Fromm International, 1987. ISBN 978-0-31224-377-7. 
Higham, Charles. Charles Laughton: An Intimate Biography New York: Doubleday, 1976. ISBN 978-0-38509-403-0. 
Jewell, Richard and Vernon Harbin. The RKO Story. New Rochelle, New York: Arlington House, 1982. ISBN 978-0-70641-285-7. 
Lanchester, Elsa. Charles Laughton and I. San Diego, California: Harcourt, Brace Jovanovich, 1938. ISBN 0-15-164019-X. 
Lanchester, Elsa. Elsa Lanchester, Myself. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1984. ISBN 978-0-31224-377-7. 
Maltin, Leonard. "Elsa Lanchester". Leonard Maltin's Movie Encyclopedia. New York: Dutton, 1994. ISBN 0-525-93635-1. 
Mank, Gregory William. Women in Horror Films, 1930s. Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland and Company, 1999. ISBN 978-0-78640-553-4. 
Singer, Kurt. The Charles Laughton Story. London: R. Hale, 1952. 
Singer, Kurt. The Laughton story; An Intimate Story of Charles Laughton. Philadelphia: Winston, 1954.