Gary Cooper and Fay Wray at Halloween costume party in 1931 (they both got their starts in the silent industry)
Showing posts with label Fay Wray. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Fay Wray. Show all posts
Monday, October 16, 2017
Monday, March 13, 2017
Born Today March 13: Paul Fix
1901-1983
Character actor Paul Fix was born on the date in Dobbs Ferry, New York to German immigrant parents. There is confusion about his birth name, some give it as Peter Paul Fix (though his World War I service record lists him a Paul Peter Fix); other seemingly less reliable sources, have his birth name as Paul Fix Morrison. What ever the case, he would become a familiar face in westerns of all sort in the 1940's or 50's. He would even go on to be the first doctor on the USS Enterprise in the pilot for the original Star Trek series. He got his start in acting after returning from the Great War around 1920 in and around New York. In the early 1920's, he moved to Los Angeles. Fix first appeared on film in 1924 in the uncredited role of "bellhop" in the Paul Semon vehicle The Perfect Clown, a film that also featured Oliver Hardy. His first credited role came in 1928 in the Fay Wray/Gary Cooper film The First Kiss. He was also in the 1929 partial silent Lucky Star, with some talking sequences provided by Western Electric. He would suffer through several uncredited roles in the early 1930's, before finding a home in early talking westerns. The first full sound film he was in came in 1930 with a small uncredited role in Ladies Love Brutes. By the mid-1950's he had gotten into television as well. He is probably best known for his recurring role in the series The Rifleman. He is also recognizable in the recurring role of a district attorney in Perry Mason. He was also in a number a cult horror films through the years, from 1956's The Bad Seed to the hokey 1972 release Night Of The Lepus. Fix died on the 14th of October in 1983 of renal (kidney) failure at the age 82 in Los Angeles. He is buried, with his wife, in Woodlawn Cemetery in Santa Monica.
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Tuesday, September 15, 2015
Born Today September 15: Fay Wray
1907-2004
No introductions needed here! Every horror fan knows her as the original "scream queen"--mostly for her turn in King Kong 1933, but she was plenty "screamy" in other films she made around this time as well. My personal favorite of these is The Mystery Of The Wax Museum starring Lionel Atwill, directed by the great Michael Curtiz, also made in 1933, and up until the late 1960's was considered to be a lost film. So much is made of her appearances and noise in early talking horror films, that not much attention is paid to her silent career. Born Vina Fay Wray in Cardston, Alberta, Canada; the family soon relocated to Los Angeles here in the US. She began as an extra when she was barely into her teens, and was one of the few child actors that seemed to weather the transition to adult actor better than most. Far from being a silent horror star, she was in a number of short slapsticks early on. If she can be said to have specialized in any genre in the 1920 it was westerns ironically. She passed away at the age of 96 on the 8 of August 2004, in New York City. She is another very famous celebrity interred in the famous Hollywood Forever Cemetery.
Her Early Film Work:
Gasoline Love (1923) (short)
Sweet Daddy (1924) (short)
Just A Good Guy (1924) (short)
The Coast Patrol (1925) (the first feature length film she was in.)
Sure-Mike! (1925) (short slapstick)
What Price Goofy? (1925) (short)
Isn't Life Terrible? (1925) (short with Charley Chase & Oliver Hardy)
Thundering Landlords (1925) (short, first featured credit in title cards)
Chasing The Chaser (1925) (short)
Madame Sans Jane (1925) (short written by Hal Roach)
No Father To Guide Him (1925) (short)
Unfriendly Enemies (1925) (short)
Your Own Back Yard (1925) (an Our Gang short)
A Lover's Oath (1925) (partially lost film)
Moonlight And Noses (1925) (partial lost short)
Ben-Hur (1925) (her slave girl appearance in this is still unconfirmed)
WAMPAS Baby Stars Of 1926 (the fist time she is credited with "self")
Our Wild Time (1926) (short)
Don Key (Son Of Burro) 1(926) (short)
The Snow Cowpuncher (1926) (short, part of the Mustang Western series)
Loco Luck (1927) (A Blue Streak Western)
A One Man Game (1927) (A Blue Streak Western)
Spurs And Saddles (1927) (A Blue Streak Western)
A Trip Through The Paramount Studio (1927) (as Herself)
The Legion Of The Condemned (1928) (lost film)
Street Of Sin (1928) (lost film)
The Wedding March (1928) (an Erich von Stroheim directed film)
The Honeymoon (1928) (another Stroheim film)
The Four Feathers (1929) (early talkie, William Powell and Noah Berry were in this, dialog by Western Electric, soundtrack and sound effects by MovieTone)
Thunderbolt (1929) (two versions circulated, one silent the other in mono, with sound by Western Electric)
Pointed Heels (1929) (early musical, sound by MovieTone, early two strip technicolor, with some parts in black and white)
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