Excerpt
FRED ASTAIRE 18991987
Cant act. Cant sing. Balding. Can dance a little.” Not much of an appraisal of a budding Hollywood wannabe. What happened to the Paramount executive who wrote that report of a screen test is unknown, but the potential failure he was writing about? Fred Astaire.
While it is rumored that Astaire was born in tails and a top hat, he was actually a regular baby, born in Omaha, Nebraska, to a family named Austerlitz. The name Astaire was borrowed from an uncle, whose last name was LAstaire, when Fred and his sister Adele were developing their dancing act for vaudeville. The team was so successful that they appeared in top Broadway shows in the 1920sLady Be Good, Funny Face, The Gay Divorcee, and The Band Wagon among them . . .
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OLIVER NORVELL HARDY 18921957
Imagining Oliver Hardy without Stan Laurel is akin to imagining Chang without Eng. If ever there was a pair that made up a whole, these were the guys. Although Hardy had appeared in over 300 films before Hal Roach Studio Director Leo McCarey paired him with Laurel, Babe” Hardy, as he was known to friends, is remembered only for being the larger half of the most popular film comedy duo ever.
And that's no slight. Ollie was the beloved screen ignoramus who never recognized his own stupidity because his inseparable friend Stanley was ostensibly the dimmest light on the planet . . .
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GINGER ROGERS 19111995
Rogers and Astaire together againbut only here in Oakwood. As part of the most famous ballroom dancing team in movie history, Rogers was often cited by feminists who claimed that she did everything Astaire did but backwards and on high heels.” All true, and Ginger Rogers could also act. She proved it by quitting her career as a dancer and musical comedy lead in order to try to make it as a serious actress. She not only made itin such films as Stage Door (1937), Primrose Path (1940), Ill Be Seeing You and Lady in The Dark (1944), Weekend at The Waldorf (1945), and Perfect Strangers (1950)but also won an Oscar for her role as a working class girl in Kitty Foyle (1940).
Lets flashback to the beginning. Virginia Katherine MacMath was born in Independence, Missouri. The name Ginger” came from the way a cousin mispronounced Virginia, and Rogers was her mothers maiden name . . .
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W.C. FIELDS 18801946
A W.C. Fields film character once said, "Life's a funny thing; you're lucky if you get out of it alive." Fields needn't have worried. Through his films and adoring fans, he gained his own immortality. Fields was born William Claude Dukenfield in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, where his childhood was anything but happy. Forced to work in his father's grocery store, William escaped stern reality by juggling, one of his innate talents. But practicing with store produce, which William often dropped and bruised, exhausted his father's patience. Eventually the youth fled to seek his own way.
By the time Fields was in his late teens, he was charming European royalty with a comic juggling act. He hit the big time when he was hired as a regular act in the Ziegfeld Follies; soon he became one of the highest paid men in the country, earning much more than the president and deservedly so, as his acts always satisfied the audience.
Using W.C. Fields as his stage name, he segued effortlessly into movie roles that embodied his curmudgeonly, put-upon heavy-drinking persona. Fields started in short films but soon moved to features, with The Old Fashioned Way, Poppy, It's a Gift, The Bank Dick, and My Little Chickadee (costarring Mae West) among his credits.
Fields heavy drinking caused failing health, which virtually ended his film career. But he managed to connect with fans via radio, where he had a famous
"feud" with Charlie McCarthy, the wise-guy dummy of popular ventriloquist Edgar Bergen. A nonreligious man, Fields was surprised in what would turn out to be his deathbed by friends who caught him reading the Bible. "Just looking for loopholes," he explained.
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