4 AUG 2019 · Donald John DeFore (August 25, 1913 – December 22, 1993) was an American actor. He is best known for his roles in the sitcom The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet from 1952 to 1957 and the sitcom Hazel from 1961 to 1965, the former of which earned him a Primetime Emmy Award nomination.DeFore was one of seven children born in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, to Joseph Ervin, a railroad engineer who worked at the Chicago and North Western Transportation Company and was also a local politician, and Albina Sylvia DeFore (née Nezerka).[1] DeFore's mother, who occasionally directed plays at their local church, was of Czechoslovakian descent.[2][3] After graduating from Washington High School in Cedar Rapids, DeFore attended the University of Iowa.[4] He initially studied law while also playing basketball, track, and baseball before becoming interested in acting. Since acting was not a major study at the university, he left and enrolled at the Pasadena Community Playhouse, where he won a scholarship and stayed for three years. During this time, he and four fellow students wrote a play called Where Do We Go From Here? It was presented in a little theater in Hollywood with DeFore in the cast. As a young man, DeFore toured the country in stock companies for several years before making his Broadway debut in Where Do We Go From Here? in 1938, when Oscar Hammerstein II offered to take it to Broadway, and DeFore and five of the original cast members went along. The show ran for four weeks, and DeFore was soon recognized as a member of legitimate theater. He remained in New York and won a key role in The Male Animal, which ran for almost eight months on Broadway[6] and eight months on the road. In Hollywood, DeFore's first screen appearance was in a bit part in 1936's Reunion. By the early 1940s, he was appearing regularly in films such as: The Male Animal (1942), A Guy Named Joe (1943), Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo (1944), You Came Along (1945), Without Reservations (1946), It Happened on Fifth Avenue (1947), Romance on the High Seas (1948), My Friend Irma (1949) and Jumping Jacks (1952). In 1946, exhibitors voted him the fourth-most promising "star of tomorrow".[7] DeFore also worked in radio, performing on such programs as Suspense, Old Gold Comedy Theater, and Lux Radio Theatre, but he is best known for his work in television. Beginning in 1952, DeFore had a recurring role as the Nelsons' friendly neighbor, "Thorny", on the ABC sitcom The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet,[8] earning a nomination in 1955 for a Best Supporting Actor in a Regular Series Primetime Emmy Award.[9] In time though, the role of Thorny was superseded by Lyle Talbot as Joe Randolph, and Mary Jane Croft as his wife Clara. From 1954 to 1955, he served as president of the National Academy of Television Arts & Sciences. He was instrumental in arranging for the Emmy Awards to be broadcast on national television for the first time on March 7, 1955.[8] He also served on the board of the Screen Actors Guild.[10] From 1961 to 1965, DeFore was a co-star of the television series Hazel as "Mr. B." (George Baxter), employer of the spirited, domineering housekeeper Hazel Burke, played by Shirley Booth and based on the cartoon character appearing in The Saturday Evening Post.[8] DeFore was not the original actor to portray George Baxter. In the pilot episode, the role was played by character actor Edward Andrews. DeFore took over the role when the series was green-lighted. The series ran on prime time until 1966 when it was canceled by NBC. DeFore and his co-star Whitney Blake were written out of the series when CBS picked up the series for its final season.[11] In 1970 Defore appeared as Mayor Evans on the TV western “The Men From Shiloh” in the episode titled "Colonial Mackenzie Verses The West." In that role he played a murderer which was a major shift from the comedy roles he was better known for on sitcoms like The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet and Hazel. Men From Shiloh was a rebranded name for The Virginian. For his contribution to the television industry, Don DeFore has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame located at 6804 Hollywood Blvd.[

3 MAY 2019 · “The Unknown Comic” is the stage name adopted by Canadian actor and stand-up comic Murray Langston (born June 27, 1945 in Dartmouth, Nova Scotia, Canada), best known for his comic performances on The Gong Show, in which he usually appeared with a paper bag over his head. As of 2015, Langston was making his residence in Bathurst, New Brunswick, Canada.[1][2]

29 APR 2019 · Buy my book. Shooting the Breeze With Baby Boomer Stars ! Find it on Amazon. Wesley Eure (born August 17, 1951) is an American actor, singer, author, producer, director, charity fundraiser, and lecturer. He is best known for appearing as Michael Horton on the American soap opera Days of Our Lives from 1974 to 1981, during which he also starred on the popular children's television series Land of the Lost. He later hosted the popular children's game show Finders Keepers in 1987 and 1988, and co-created the children's educational television show Dragon Tales in 1999. He subsequently published several books (for children and adult), and has produced plays and raised funds for HIV/AIDS and other causes.

7 APR 2019 · I have interviewed over 100 celebrities. This next one is most important interview I have achieved. My subject is Stan Goldman who talks about his mother’s survival during the Holocaust. His book has a long sub title but reveals a good synopsis which is “The Bargain That Broke Adolf Hitler and Saved My Mother.” The real title is “Left to the Mercy of a Rude Stream.” Goldman reviews the horrors of his mother’s captivity, the improbability of her survival, and how Heinrich Himmler arranged for her release from Ravensbruck where she toiled in slave labor. This interview is out of my wheel house but when a Hollywood agent contacted me, I could not turn this one down. If you only listen to only one interview that I have done this should be the one. As the religious Jew I you can understand how important this is to me. OK…for those that really know me that was a partial lie. I am a reform Jew. But it does not matter how religious you are or if you are not Jewish at all …this interview will touch your soul. The history woven through this heartfelt narrative is worth the price of admission. Seven years after the death of his mother, Malka, Stanley A. Goldman traveled to Israel to visit her best friend during the Holocaust. The best friend's daughter showed Goldman a pamphlet she had acquired from the Israeli Holocaust Museum that documented activities of one man's negotiations with the Nazi's interior minister and SS head, Heinrich Himmler, for the release of the Jewish women from the concentration camp at Ravensbrück. While looking through the pamphlet, the two discovered a picture that could have been their mothers being released from the camp. Wanting to know the details of how they were saved, Goldman set out on a long and difficult path to unravel the mystery. After years of researching the pamphlet, Goldman learned that a German Jew named Norbert Masur made a treacherous journey from the safety of Sweden back into the war zone in order to secure the release of the Jewish women imprisoned at the Ravensbrück concentration camp. Masur not only succeeded in his mission against all odds but he contributed to the downfall of the Nazi hierarchy itself. This amazing, little-known story uncovers a piece of history about the undermining of the Nazi regime, the women of the Holocaust, and the strained but loving relationship between a survivor and her son. The son of a Holocaust survivor rehearses the horrors of his mother’s captivity, the improbability of her survival, and the deleterious lingering effects on her—and him. Goldman (Loyola Law School, Los Angeles), the on-air legal editor for Fox News from 1996 to 2006, has several objectives here: to outline a piece of the history of the Holocaust (grim reminders of inhumanity appear on virtually every page), tell his mother’s remarkable story, ruminate about the perpetrators of the atrocities, and condemn those who profited by it, especially Alfried Krupp, whose family and wartime business found great success because of the Nazi war machine—and because of the labor of Jewish slaves. Although the author focuses primarily on his mother, he occasionally employs a wide-angle lens to show us what was going on throughout war-torn Europe; he even deals some with the stories of Anne Frank, Raoul Wallenberg, and other Holocaust icons. His mother’s story is astonishing; her survival, virtually impossible. As the war was winding down, she was working in the concentration camp at Ravensbrück and would almost certainly have died there if not for one man’s negotiation with Heinrich Himmler, who, seeing the end of the war (and realizing what would happen to him), made a deal to release some Jewish women, Goldman’s mother among them. She then traveled to Sweden, stayed about a year and a half and immigrated to America, where she married (the Nazis had shot her first husband) and gave birth to the author. Her dark memories never left her, and Goldman describes his own difficulties dealing with her as she aged and struggled. The author works hard to maintain a scholar’s tone in his text, but throughout, he also shows us the blood of millions seeping through his pages. I knew well a little Jewish woman whose life was spared by a frightened Heinrich Himmler and the saving of her led to the death of Adolf Hitler. So begins the true account of an improbable April 1945 rescue from a Nazi death camp. On April 21 a German Jewish businessman returned from the safety of neutral Sweden to the nation of his birth. He secretly met with Heinrich Himmler and arranged the release of a group of Jewish women (one of whom was my mother) from Ravensbruck. In exchange, Himmler's offer of a cease-fire on the Western front was delivered to the Allied leaders. The news of Himmler's attempt at a separate peace would be a principal cause of Hitler's April 30th suicide. The book also documents the events allowing my mother to survive both the line to the gas chamber in Auschwitz and the allied bombings of Berlin where she toiled in slave labor. Interposed is how the Holocaust affected the remainder of her life as well as much of mine.

13 MAR 2019

10 FEB 2019 · Don Murray's role as Beauregard "Beau" Decker in Bus Stop (1956) marked his film debut. He starred alongside Marilyn Monroe, who played Cherie, the object of his desire. His performance as the innocent cowboy who is determined to get Cherie was well received, and he was nominated for a BAFTA for Most Promising Newcomer and for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor. In 1957, he starred as reserved, married bookkeeper Charlie Sampson in The Bachelor Party.[5] The same year he starred in one of his most successful roles, that of Johnny Pope in the drama A Hatful of Rain. Despite director Fred Zinnemann's intention to typecast the actor as the comical brother Polo, Murray insisted on playing the lead. Thus he portrayed Johnny Pope, a morphine addicted Korean War veteran. The film was one of the first to show the effects of drug abuse on the addicted and those around him. He starred as a blackmailed United States senator in Advise & Consent (1961), a film version of a Pulitzer Prize-winning novel by Allen Drury. The movie was directed by Otto Preminger and cast Murray opposite Henry Fonda and Charles Laughton. He also co-starred with Steve McQueen in the film Baby the Rain Must Fall (1965) and played the ape-hating Governor Breck in Conquest of the Planet of the Apes (1972).n 1976, Murray starred in the film Deadly Hero.[5] In addition to acting, Murray directed a film based on the book The Cross and the Switchblade (1970) starring Pat Boone and Erik Estrada.Murray starred with Otis Young in the ground breaking ABC western television series The Outcasts (1968–69) featuring an interracial bounty hunter team in the post-Civil War West. In 1979, he starred as Sid Fairgate on the long-running prime-time soap opera Knots Landing. He also scripted two episodes of the program in 1980. In 1981 Murray decided to leave the series after two seasons to concentrate on other projects, although some sources say he left over a salary dispute. The character's death was notable at the time because it was considered rare to kill off a star character. The death came in the second episode of season three, following season two's cliffhanger in which Sid's car careened off a cliff. To make viewers doubt that the character had actually died, Murray was listed in the credit sequence for season three; in fact, season three revealed that Fairgate had survived the plunge off the cliff (thus temporarily reassuring the viewers), but died shortly afterwards in hospital. Although he effectively distanced himself from the series after that, Murray later contributed an interview segment for Knots Landing: Together Again, a reunion special made in 2005.In 1956, Murray married Hope Lange, with whom he had co-starred in Bus Stop. They had two children, Christopher and Patricia. They divorced in 1961. In 1962, he married Elizabeth Johnson and then had three children: Coleen, Sean, and Michael.

31 JAN 2019

30 NOV 2018 · CLICK ON LINK ABOVE TO HEAR MY INTERVIEW WITH DONNA: Donna Loren (born March 7, 1947) is an American singer and actress. A prolific performer in the 1960s, she was the "Dr Pepper Girl" from 1963 to 1968, featured female vocalist on Shindig, and a cast member of the American International Pictures Beach Party movie franchise. She was signed to Capitol Records in 1964, releasing several singles and the Beach Blanket Bingo LP soundtrack, which included her signature song "It Only Hurts When I Cry". Loren guest starred on episodic television series including Dr. Kildare, Batman, and The Monkees, as well as appearing regularly on network and local variety and music shows. In 1968, Loren retired from her career to marry and raise a family. She recorded again in the 1980s and ran her own fashion business, ADASA Hawaii, throughout the 1990-2000s. In 2009, she returned to performing, and her most recent releases include the album Love It Away (2010) and the EP Donna Does Elvis in Hawaii (2010), as well as the compilation These Are the Good Times: The Complete Capitol Recordings (2014). Her first book, Pop Sixties: Shindig!, Dick Clark, Beach Party, and Photographs from the Donna Loren Archive, was released in 2017.

11 NOV 2018 · Click on above to hear my interview with Glenn. Glenn Christopher Scarpelli (born July 6, 1966) is an American former child actor and singer. He is perhaps best known for his role as Alex Handris from 1980 to 1983 on the sitcom One Day at a Time.

31 OCT 2018 · George Michael Dolenz Jr. (born March 8, 1945) is an American actor, musician, television director, radio personality and theater director, best known as a vocalist and drummer of the 1960s pop/rock band the Monkees.