Let's Connect an Author, Actress & Film Director to Alabama!

On a blog by author BV Lawson called In Reference to Murder, I recently read a review of Hugh Cosgro Weir's 1914 short story collection, Miss Madelyn Mack, Detective. I do such things on long winter evenings. The five stories describe cases of one of the early American female detectives in fiction and her pal, reporter Nora Noraker. At the end of the review Lawson notes that two silent films had been made from the stories and starred Alice Joyce as Madelyn Mack.

Well, as I often do in these situations, I wondered if there was an Alabama connection buried in here somewhere. Lawson says author Weir was born in Illinois and worked as a journalist in Ohio. He also wrote stories for the pulp magazines. The FictionMags Index lists a number of stories for Weir and gives his dates as 1884 to 1934. Some brief searching produced nothing more on Weir, so I moved along.

What about Alice Joyce? From her Wikipedia page we learn that she appeared in more than 200 films between 1910 and 1930; she died in 1955. Joyce was born in Kansas City, so no Alabama link there. But wait--what do I see? Her third husband, from 1942 until 1945, was none other than film director Clarence Brown. And there you have it--the Alabama connection.

Say what? It's like this. Born in Massachusetts, Brown developed an interest in films as a young man. He served in World War I and by 1920 he was directing and continued in that role into the early 1950's. Brown's films were nominated for some 38 Oscars; he was nominated for best director five times, but never won. He directed Joan Crawford in six films and Greta Garbo in seven. He also worked with Clark Gable and Jimmy Stewart and directed Intruder in the Dust based on the novel by William Faulkner. 

Brown died in 1987 at the age of 97. So where's the Alabama link? Brown's family moved to Tennessee when he was 11, and he graduated from the University of Tennessee in Knoxville at age 19 with two engineering degrees. He worked briefly for the Stevens-Duryea car manufacturer in Massachusetts, and then moved to Birmingham to set up an auto dealership, the Brown Motor Car Company. Brown later said after visiting a nearby nickelodeon on lunch break, he decided to enter the film business. In 1913 he went to work for Peerless Studios in Fort Lee, New Jersey, then a center of silent movie production.

Brown is one of three prominent film directors with Birmingham connections. I'll be doing a blog post on all of them one of these days. 
    

Alice Joyce [1890-1955] in Photoplay magazine in 1917

Source: Wikipedia 

Clarence Brown [1890-1987]

Source: Wikipedia 

Film Actresses from Alabama Before 1960 (5): Cathy O'Donnell

I recently watched They Live by Night on Turner Classic Movies; I don't remember ever seeing this classic film noir before. The movie is based on Edward Anderson's 1937 novel, Thieves Like Us, which I read some years ago. The book is included in a Library of America collection of six crime novels, putting it alongside such impressive titles as James M. Cain's The Postman Always Rings Twice and Horace McCoy's They Shoot Horses, Don't They? In 1974 director Robert Altman filmed another version of the novel, using the novel's title. However, unlike the original film, that one did not star Alabama native Cathy O'Donnell.

O'Donnell was born Ann M. Steely on July 6, 1923, the first child of Harold G. and Ora L. Steely. Younger brother Joe was born two years later. At the time the family lived in Siluria Village, an unincorporated area for the workers at the Buck Creek Cotton Mills. Harold, apparently known as "Henry", was a teacher at Thompson High School and also operated the Siluria Community House, which included a silent movie theater. The facility eventually burned, but later served as the site of the Alabaster YMCA for several decades.

Young Ann probably attended first grade at Thompson Elementary, but the family soon moved to Greensboro. Henry died there in 1935, and Ora moved the two children to Oklahoma City when Ann was twelve. She graduated from Classen High School there and briefly studied at a business college. She entered Oklahoma City University, where she studied drama and appeared in some student productions. In 1944 she left the city and headed to Hollywood.

She first appeared uncredited as a night club patron in Wonder Man in 1945. Including that role, she acted in only 18 films in her career, but several were significant. 

The following year she played the high school sweetheart of a double amputee in The Best Years of Our Lives. That film, which told the story of U.S.. servicemen adjusting to civilian life, won seven Oscars and was a major box office success.

Over the rest of her career O'Donnell starred with Farley Granger in two crime dramas, the aforementioned They Live By Night and Side Street. She also appeared opposite Kirk Douglas in Detective Story [1951] and James Stewart in The Man From Laramie [1955]. In her final film she had a sizable role in the 1959 epic Ben-Hur. 

In the 1960's she guest-starred on such TV shows as Perry Mason, Bonanza, The Rebel and Zane Gray Theater. 

In April 1948 O'Donnell married Robert Wyler, a film producer and older brother of director William Wyler. O'Donnell died from cancer complications in April 1970. The couple had no children. She is buried in Forest Lawn Memorial Park in Glendale, California. I have yet to determine what happened to her mother and younger brother. 

This article gives more details about the Steely family in Alabama, based on research by Bobby Joe Seales:

Bryant, Joseph D. Long-ago Hollywood actress came from Shelby mill town. Birmingham News 8 June 2005

Source: TCM.com





Cathy O'Donnell & Farley Granger are on the run in "They Live by Night" (1949)
Source: TCM.com

Another scene from They Live By Night

Source: Tumblr

O'Donnell and Granger starred together in another film, Side Street [1950]

Cathy O'Donnell in 1959, the year she made her final film, Ben-Hur

Source: Wikipedia

Source: Tumblr

Alabama Natives on the Cover of TV Guide

I stumbled into the TV Guide magazine cover archive again recently and decided to look for some Alabama natives who have made one or more over the years. Here's what I found; comments are below the covers. Some of these individuals appeared on more covers than shown here.

TV Guide began national weekly publication in April 1953. I have limited these choices to people born in Alabama; I'm sure there are many with other Alabama connections. Maybe I'll do a post on some of them in the future. I've probably missed some Alabama natives, too. 

December 7, 1957

Well, a photo of actress Tallulah Bankhead didn't make this cover, but her name did! By this time Tallulah was famous for her stage, film and radio appearances.

September 25, 1976

Kate Jackson was born in Birmingham, but attended school in Mountain Brook. She started college at the University of Mississippi, and left before graduating to study acting in New York City. She has had a long career, especially in television. After a supporting role on The Rookies, she starred in two very successful programs, Charlie's Angels and Scarecrow and Mrs. King.

February 11, 1984

 

By 1988 Jackson had appeared on at least four more covers of TV Guide.

November 18, 1989

Courtney Cox is another Mountain Brook girl who grew up to become a well-known actress, especially for the television series Friends. She has appeared in numerous other TV programs and theatrical films.

 

June 8, 2002

July 25, 1970

Hiding behind the kid on the left and the piece of watermelon is George Lindsey, who played "Goober" Pyle on the Andy Griffith Show and its followup, Mayberry R.F.D. His character was a cousin of Gomer Pyle, played by another Alabama native Jim Nabors. For the record, we have a cat named Goober. 

March 21, 1964

Jim Nabors was born in Sylacauga in 1930. A few years after graduation from the University of Alabama, Nabors ended up performing an act in Los Angeles in which he could use his talents for both comedy and singing. He was soon discovered by Andy Griffith and made an appearance on the Andy Griffith Show as the character of Gomer Pyle. Intended very as a one-shot, the character turned out to be popular and became a regular. Nabors eventually moved the character to another very successful show, Gomer Pyle, U.S.M.C. 

November 21, 1964

September 20, 1969

Nabors' long career in entertainment has included television, films, touring stage productions, nightclub shows and the release of 28 albums featuring his rich baritone. Nabors has appeared on the cover of TV Guide at least eight times.

Film Actresses from Alabama Before 1960 (3): Dorothy Sebastian

Dorothy Sebastian's film career flamed briefly in the late 1920's and early 1930's and then just as quickly burned out. During that period she did appear in major roles in several high-profile films with other stars of the time.

She was born in Birmingham on April 26, 1903, one of five children of Robert and Stell Sabiston. Robert was a minister and the couple had served as foreign missionaries before settling in Birmingham. Stell was a painter, and Dorothy and her mother operated a small shop selling portraits and needlepoint creations. 

Dorothy eloped with her high school sweetheart, but the marriage ended in 1924. At this point she headed to New York and what she hoped would be a dance and acting career. She played a chorus girl that year on Broadway in George White's Scandals which opened in June and ran for 196 performances. She appeared in that show with her new last name.

Sebastian managed to get a screen test with United Artists and appeared in her first five films in 1925. In 1927 she was the female lead in a Tom Mix western, The Arizona Wildcat. The next year she played along with Joan Crawford and fellow Alabama native John Mack Brown in the drama Our Dancing Daughters. 

Her acting career continued into the early sound era. In 1929 she appeared in Spite Marriage with Buster Keaton, who was her lover at the time. She also had an affair with director Clarence Brown. Interestingly, Brown had operated an auto dealership in Birmingham before World War I.

In the early 1930's Sebastian asked for a raise in her MGM contract, but the studio refused and dropped her from its roster. She appeared in a few more films before she married William Boyd, better known as cowboy hero Hopalong Cassidy. That marriage ended in 1936 in a bitter divorce. 

Sebastian continued to appear in a few small roles until her final film appearance in 1948. During World War II she worked in a defense factory where she met her future third husband, businessman Herman Shapiro. She died of cancer in April 1957.

A lengthy biography can be found at the Internet Movie Database along with a complete list of her films. A web site devoted to Sebastian can be found here. 

Unless otherwise noted, images are from the Lantern media history digital library.

Dorothy Sebastian

Source: Wikipedia 

Source: BhamWiki

Picture-Play Magazine 1926

Photoplay 1927

Screenland 1928

Motion Picture Classic 1928

The 1928 silent film Our Dancing Daughters starred two Alabama natives, Sebastian and Johnny Mack Brown, who was a football great at the University of Alabama before heading to Hollywood.

Dorothy Sebastian, Joan Crawford, and Anita Page in a publicity still for OUR DANCING DAUGHTERS (1928):

Source: The Hollywood Revue blog



Film Actresses from Alabama Before 1960 (2): Gail Patrick

Christian Esquevin, who writes "Silver Screen Modes", a blog devoted to classic Hollywood films, has called her "The Forgotten Star." Gail Patrick's screen career lasted 16 years, 1932 until 1948. She appeared in such films as Mississippi [1935] with W.C. Fields, Bing Crosby and Joan Bennett; My Man Godfrey [1936] with William Powell and Carole Lombard; and My Favorite Wife [1940] with Cary Grant, Irene Dunne and Randolph Scott. She often played the "other woman" or as Esquevin says, the "perfect bitch." 

Before she ever left for Hollywood, Patrick had established herself in a rather unusual way for a woman in early 20th century Alabama. She was born Margaret Lavelle Fitzpatrick in Birmingham on June 20, 1911. The family can be found living at 432 40th Street in the 1920 U.S. Census. Her father Laurence Fitzpatrick was born in Kentucky and worked as a fireman. Her mother "Larul" was a Mississippi native. At that census Margaret was listed as age 8; older brother Laurence Jr. was 14 and younger brother Richard was 4. All three children were Alabama natives.

By the 1930 census the family had relocated to 208 59th Place. The city of Birmingham now employed Laurence as a fire inspector. The mother's name had been corrected to LaVelle. The household had expanded by two members, a 20 year-old female lodger and a 13 year-old female listed as "lodger/orphan."

In that census Margaret's age was given as 19. By then she had probably already graduated from Woodlawn High School and entered Howard College in East Lake [now Samford University in Homewood]. After graduation from Howard, she joined the faculty and served as Acting Dean of Women for a period. 

She had begun to take pre-law courses at the University of Alabama when she decided to enter an acting contest. The event was sponsored by Paramount Studios and held at the Alabama Theatre. Paramount was looking for "Miss Panther Woman". Margaret did not get the part, but the studio offered her a contract and in the summer of 1932 she headed to Hollywood. 

In her first role she played a secretary in the film If I Had a Million. If you look at the film's entry at the Internet Movie Database, you'll find her near the bottom of the full cast list. Her part was uncredited, but she's already going by "Gail Patrick." She made eight films that first year in Hollywood.

By the late 1940's she had retired from acting. She began designing children's clothes and opened a shop on Rodeo Drive called Enchanted Cottage. Patrick and her business were included in a 1947 short film Unusual Occupations. Several of her famous customers and their children were featured. The store operated for eight years. 

By that time her first two marriages were also behind her. The first husband was Robert Howard Cobb, owner of the famed Brown Derby restaurant; that union lasted from 1936 until 1940. Arnold Dean White was her second husband; they married in 1944 and divorced the following year.

In 1947 Patrick married Cornwell Jackson, who just happened to be the literary agent for Earle Stanley Gardner. Gardner was a prolific author best known for his series of Perry Mason novels. Jackson secured the film rights to those novels, and through his company Paisano Productions Patrick became producer of the very successful Perry Mason television series. Gardner had disliked a series of film adaptations done in the 1930's, and wanted no more appearances by his character outside his novels. Apparently Patrick talked him into changing his mind.

The series premiered on September 21, 1957, and ended its run on CBS on May 22, 1966. That last episode, "The Case of the Final Fade Out", featured Patrick as a courtroom spectator and Gardner as one of the judges. 

Her marriage to Jackson ended in 1969. She married her last husband John E. Velde, Jr., in 1974. Patrick died of leukemia on July 6, 1980. According to her entry at the Find-A-Grave site, Patrick's ashes were scattered in the Pacific Ocean. 

In her will she left over a million dollars to the Hollywood Wilshire YMCA, which named a teen center and park after her. She also gave a million dollars to the Delta Zeta sorority. 

You can read the transcript of an interview with Patrick done a year before her death here. Wikipedia has an entry for her, as does the BhamWiki. You'll find her Internet Movie Database entry here. I've include a number of Gail Patrick photographs below, along with comments as needed.

This blog post is part of a series I'm doing. The first one featured Lois Wilson.  

Until 1957 this building was "Old Main" on the Howard College campus in the East Lake area of Birmingham. In that year the school moved to its current campus in Homewood and became Samford University in 1965.  

Source: BhamWiki.com 

Source: BhamWiki.com 

A 1939 studio publicity photo

Source: Wikipedia




Patrick as she appeared in Modern Screen magazine in August 1939




Advertisement for one of her films from Motion Picture Herald in 1946





From Picture Play Magazine in 1936





Patrick as she appeared in the Spanish version of Moving Picture World in 1943




Patrick as she appeared in the Spanish version of Moving Picture World in 1936




Patrick is one of the actresses in this fashion spread in Movie Classic magazine in 1935.




Gail Patrick stands beside a statue on the lower right, posing in Movie Classic October 1935; her new picture is Smart Girl.




Patrick in Photoplay December 1936




Patrick poses with a turkey in this spread from Photoplay in 1938




Source: Find-A-Grave

Jackson in 1961 as Executive Producer of Perry Mason

Source: Wikipedia

Film Actresses from Alabama before 1960 (1): Lois Wilson

Source: BhamWiki.com

One of the earliest actresses from Alabama to find success in Hollywood, Lois Wilson is probably unknown to most state residents today. Although born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, on June 28, 1894, her family soon moved to Birmingham where she grew up. 

We can find some interesting information about the family in the 1910 U.S. Census. Her father is A.K. Wilson, a Canadian native. Her mother Constance was born in Pennsylvania. Also listed are three other daughters, all younger than Lois, and grandfather William Wilson. The family lived in the city's 15th Ward. 

She graduated from Alabama Normal College in Livingston, which is now the University of West Alabama. Apparently Wilson just missed the era of famed educator and reformer Julia Tutwiler, who directed the school from 1881 until 1910.

By 1915 Wilson was teaching school. We can assume her ambitions ran beyond that; she entered a Miss Birmingham contest sponsored by the Birmingham News and Universal Pictures. By winning she received a trip to Hollywood for an audition. After a brief period in Chicago, she won her first film role--a small part in a short, The Palace of Dust. She made four other films in 1915 alone. By the time she more or less retired from the movies in 1941, Wilson had acted in more than 100 silent and sound motion pictures.

Wilson appeared with various established or up-and-coming film stars of the silent and early sound eras: Pola Negri in Bella Donna [1923], Rudolph Valentino and Bebe Daniels in Monsieur Beaucaire [1924], Louise Brooks in The Show Off [1926], Bette Davis in Seed, Davis' second film [1931] and Tom Mix in Rider of Death Valley [1932].

She worked with Russian ballerina Anna Pavlova in The Dumb Girl of Portici in 1916. Wilson played heroine Molly Wingate in one of the most popular westerns of the silent era, The Covered Wagon [1923]. In that same year she appeared in Hollywood, one of the earliest films using cameos by a parade of stars--in this case ones such as Gloria Swanson, Douglas Fairbanks, Noah Beery, Mary Astor, William S. Hart and Alan Hale. She played Shirley Temple's mother in Bright Eyes [1934].

In 1922 Wilson was in the first group of WAMPAS Baby Stars of actresses expected to be major stars. That campaign was a promotional effort by the Western Association of Motion Picture Advertisers and ran annually until 1934.

In 1926 she played Daisy Buchanan in the first film version of The Great Gatsby released just a year after the novel was published. Like so many silent films, this one has not survived but a one-minute trailer does exist. Thus we have an Alabama actress playing a character based on Alabama native Zelda Fitzgerald. 

Wilson made other films with Alabama connections. In 1921 she played the title character in Miss Lulu Bett; her male co-star in the film was Milton Sills. A few years later Sills would star in Men of Steel, a picture filmed mostly in Birmingham. In 1922 she appeared in Manslaughter with Thomas Meighan. Two years later Meighan would be in the Birmingham area to film Coming Thru. 

After 1941 Wilson made only one more movie, The Girl from Jones Beach in 1949. The comedy starred Ronald Reagan and Virginia Mayo; Wilson played the mother of Mayo's character. She did not completely retire from acting, however. She had a couple of roles in Broadway productions and did network television work on the soap operas The Guiding Light and The Secret Storm.  

Wilson was a good friend of silent film star Gloria Swanson and made an appearance on the 1957 episode of the television series This Is Your Life when it profiled Swanson. In 1950 Swanson had played former silent star Norma Desmond in Sunset Blvd., one of the great films about Hollywood. 

Wilson died at 93 on March 3, 1988, in Riverside Hospital in Reno, Nevada. She is buried in Forest Lawn Memorial Park in Glendale, California. She never married. Whether she ever returned to Alabama after leaving in 1915 is currently unknown. 

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Picture-Play Magazine December 1918
In the section titled "Favorite Picture Players" she follows Mary Pickford and Alice Joyce

Wilson made the cover of Picture-Play in 1923.

Motion Picture Studio Directory for 1919
Wilson's entry is in the right hand column, 3rd down