Ida Lupino & Una O'Connor

Who was born on this date:

Actress Ida Lupino was was born on February 4, 1918 in Camberwell, England into a family of performers, her father, Stanley Lupino was a music-hall comedian, and her mother, Connie Emerald was an actress. It was after her appearance in The Light That Failed (1939) that Lupino began to be taken seriously as a dramatic actress. As a result, her parts improved during the 1940s. She often described herself as "the poor man's Bette Davis." During this period, Lupino was known for her hard-boiled roles in such films as They Drive by Night (1940) and High Sierra (1941), both opposite Humphrey Bogart. Other notable films credits include Road House and On Dangerous Ground.  

In the mid-1940s, Lupino and her husband Collier Young formed an independent company, The Filmakers [sic], and she became a producer, director and screenwriter of low-budget, issue-oriented films. Her first directing job came unexpectedly in 1949 when Elmer Clifton suffered a mild heart attack and could not finish Not Wanted, Lupino stepped in to finish the film, becoming Hollywood's only female film director of the time. Not only did Lupino take control of production, direction and screenplay, but each of her movies addressed the brutal repercussions of sexuality and dependence. In 1953, she became the first woman to direct in Film Noir with The Hitch-Hiker. She continued acting throughout the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s and her directing efforts during these years were almost exclusively television productions. Lupino died on August 3, 1995 from a stroke while undergoing treatment for colon cancer in Los Angeles. She is buried at Forest Lawn Memorial Park, Glendale. 

Who died on this date:

On February 4, 1959, actress Una O'Connor died. She was born on October 23, 1880 in Belfast, Ireland. For many years, she worked in Ireland and England as a stage actress, Despite her lengthy apprenticeship on stage, she did not attracted much attention from Hollywood until she was chosen by Noel Coward to appear in Cavalcade (1933). She is best remembered for her performances in The Invisible Man (1933) and Bride of Frankenstein (1935). She also appeared in The Informer (1935), The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938), My Favorite Spy (1942), The Canterville Ghots (1944), The Bells of St. Mary’s (1945), Of Human Bondage (1946) and Witness for the Prosecution (1957). O’Connor died on February 4, 1959 from a heart attack in New York City and is buried at Calvary Cemetery in Woodside, New York.

Bonita Granville, Gene Kelly & Boris Karloff

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Actress Bonita Granville was born on February 2, 1923 in Chicago, Illinois. She made her film debut at the age of nine in Westward Passage (1933). Over the next couple of years she played un-credited supporting roles in such films as Little Woman (1933) and Anne of Green Gables (1934) before playing the role of Mary in These Three (1936), for which she was nominated for an Academy Award for best supporting actress. Despite this success, and although she continued to work, the next few years brought her few opportunities to build her career. In 1938, she starred as the saucy mischievous daughter in the multi-Academy Awards nominated hit comedy film Merrily We Live and as girl detective Nancy Drew in the hit film Nancy Drew, Detective. As a young adult, she was once again cast in supporting roles, often in prestigious films such as Now, Voyager (1942), as well as two Andy Hardy films with Mickey Rooney, Andy Hardy's Blonde Trouble (1944) and Love Laughs at Andy Hardy (1946). Her career began to fade by the mid-1940s. Bonita died on October 11, 1988 in Santa Monica, California and is buried at Holy Cross Cemetery in Los Angeles. 

Who died on this date:

On February 2, 1996, actor Gene Kelly died. He was born on August 23, 1912 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He was known for his energetic and athletic dancing style, his good looks and the likeable characters that he played on screen. Kelly was a dominant force in Hollywood musical films from the mid 1940s until the late 1950s. His many innovations transformed the Hollywood musical film, and he is credited with almost single-handedly making the ballet form commercially acceptable to film audiences.  

He began his entertainment career on the Broadway stage in November 1938 as a dancer in Cole Porter’s Leave It to Me!. His first career breakthrough was in the The Time of Your Life, which opened on October 25, 1939, where for the first time on Broadway he danced to his own choreography. In the same year he received his first assignment as a Broadway choreographer, for Billy Rose’s Diamond Horseshoe. Offers from Hollywood began to arrive but Kelly was in no particular hurry to leave New York. Eventually, he signed with David O. Selznick, agreeing to go to Hollywood in October 1941. Selznick sold half of Kelly's contract to MGM and loaned him out for his first motion picture, For Me and My Gal (1942) with Judy Garland. Kelly’s first opportunity to dance to his own choreography came in Thousand Cheers (1943), where he performed a mock-love dance with a mop. 

He achieved his breakthrough as a dancer on film, when MGM loaned him out to Columbia to work with Rita hayworth in Cover Girl (1944), where he created a memorable routine dancing to his own reflection. In his next film Anchors Aweigh (1945), MGM virtually gave him a free hand to devise a range of dance routines, including the celebrated and much imitated animated dances with Jerry Mouse, and his duets with co-star Frank Sinatra. Anchors Aweigh became one of the most successful films of 1945 and it garnered Kelly his first and only Academy Award nomination for Best Actor. In Ziegfield Follies (1946), Kelly collaborated with Fred Astaire. After World War II and his return to Hollywood in the spring of 1946, MGM had nothing lined up and used him in a B-movie, Living in a Big Way. The film was considered so weak that Kelly was asked to design and insert a series of dance routines, and his ability to carry off such assignments was noticed. This led to his next picture with Judy Garland, the film version of Cole Porter's The Pirate, in which Kelly plays the eponymous swashbuckler. Now regarded as a classic, the film was ahead of its time and was not well received.

Although MGM wanted Kelly to return to safer and more commercial vehicles, he ceaselessly fought for an opportunity to direct his own musical film. In the interim, he capitalized on his swashbuckling image in The Three Musketeers and also appeared in Slaughter on Tenth Avenue (1948). He was due to play the male lead opposite Garland in Easter Parade (1948), but broke his ankle playing volleyball. He withdrew from the film and encouraged Fred Astaire to come out of retirement to replace him. Kelly then appeared in Take Me Out to the Ball Game (1949), his second film with Sinatra, where Kelly paid tribute to his Irish heritage in The Hat My Father Wore on St. Patrick's Day routine. It was this musical film which persuaded Arthur Freed to allow Kelly to make On The Town, where he partnered with Frank Sinatra for the third and final time, creating a breakthrough in the musical film genre which has been described as "the most inventive and effervescent musical thus far produced in Hollywood." 

Then two musicals secured Kelly's reputation as a major figure in the American musical film, An American in Paris (1951) and probably the most popular and admired of all film musical of all time Singin’ in the Rain (1952). An American in Paris won six Academy Awards, including Best Picture and, in the same year, Kelly was presented with an honorary Academy Award for his contribution to film musicals and the art of choreography. Kelly, at the very peak of his creative powers, now made what in retrospect is seen as a serious mistake. In December 1951 he signed a contract with MGM which sent him to Europe for nineteen months so that Kelly could use MGM funds frozen in Europe to make three pictures while personally benefiting from tax exemptions. Only one of these pictures was a musical, Invitation to the dance, a pet project of Kelly's to bring modern ballet to mainstream film audiences. It was beset with delays and technical problems, and flopped when finally released in 1956. When Kelly returned to Hollywood the film musical was already beginning to feel the pressures from television, and MGM cut the budget for his next picture. 

Kelly did not return to stage work until his MGM contract ended in 1957, when in 1958 he directed the musical play Flower Drum Song. He continued to make some film appearances, such as Hornbeck in the 1960 Hollywood production of Inherit the Wind. However, most of his efforts were now concentrated on film production and directing. He made frequent appearances on television during the 1960s, but his one effort at television series, as Father Chuck O'Malley in Going My Way (1962–63) was dropped after thirty episodes. Kelly died in his sleep from a stroke on February 2, 1996 at his Beverley Hills home. His body was cremated, per his instructions there was no funeral or memorial services and his remains were given to family. Final disposition is unknown.

On February 2, 1969, actor Boris Karloff died. He was born William Henry Pratt on November 23, 1887 in London, England. Karloff is best remembered for his roles in horror films and his portrayal of Frankenstein’s monster in Frankenstein (1931), Bride of Frankenstein (1935), and Son of Frankenstein (1939). His popularity following Frankenstein was such that for a brief time he was billed simply as "Karloff" or "Karloff the Uncanny." His best-known non-horror role is as the Grinch, as well as the narrator, in the animated television special of Dr. Seuss’s, How the Grinch Stole Christmas (1966). Although he played many sinister characters on screen, Karloff was known in real life as a very kind gentleman who gave generously, especially to children's charities. Karloff lived out his final years in England at his cottage, 'Roundabout,' in the village of Bramshott. After a long battle with numerous ailments, he contracted pneumonia and died on February 2, 1969. He was cremated and his ashes were scattered at the Guildford Crematorium, where he is commemorated by a plaque in the Garden of Remembrance.

Patricia Neal, Clive Colin, Audrey Hepburn & Barbara Stanwyck

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Actress Patricia Neal was born on January 20, 1926 in Packard, Kentucky. She was best known for her film roles in The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951), Breakfast at Tiffany’s (1961), and Hud (1963), for which she won the Academy Award for Best Actress. In 1949, Neal made her film debut in John Loves Mary. That same year, she co-starred with Ronald Reagan in The Hasty Heart. It has been widely alleged that Neal had numerous love affairs with many of her leading male co-stars. Most notably during the filming of The Fountainhead (1949), Neal had an affair with her married co-star, Gary Cooper, whom she had met in 1947 when she was 21 and he was 46. By 1950, Cooper's wife, Veronica, had found out about the relationship and sent Neal a telegram demanding they end it. She suffered a nervous breakdown around this same time, following the end of her relationship with Cooper, and left Hollywood for New York, returning to Broadway. Her health took another turn in 1965, when she suffered three burst cerebral aneurysms during pregnancy, and was in a coma for three weeks. Neal worked sparingly in the following years. She returned to the big screen in The Subject Was Roses (1968), for which she was nominated for an Academy Award. Having won a Tony Award in her inaugural Broadway production (1947) and eventually becoming the last surviving winner from that first ceremony, Neal often appeared as a presenter in later years. Her original Tony was lost, so she was given a surprise replacement in 2006. Neal died at her home in Edgartown, Massachusetts on August 8, 2010 from lung cancer and was buried at the Abbey of Regina Laudis in Bethlehem, Connecticut.

Actor Colin Clive was born on January 20, 1900 in Saint-Malo, France and is best remembered for his portrayal of Dr. Frankenstein in two Universal Frankenstein films, Frankenstein (1931) and Bride of Frankenstein (1935). Although Colin Clive made only three horror films, the two Frankenstein movies and Mad Love (1935), he is widely regarded as one of the essential stars of the genre. His portrayal of Dr. Frankenstein was an inspiration for scores of other mad scientist performances in films over the years. Clive was also an in-demand leading man for a number of major film actresses of the era, including Katharine Hepburn, Bette Davis, Corinne Griffith, and Jean Arthur. He also starred in the 1934 adaptation of Jane Eyre opposite Virginia Bruce. Colin Clive suffered from severe chronic alcoholism and died from complications of tuberculosis on June 25, 1937 at the age of thirty-seven. His cenotaph is located at Chapel of the Pines Crematory, but his ashes were scattered at sea in 1978 after they spent over 40 years unclaimed in the basement of the funeral parlor where his body was brought after his death. 

Who died on this date:

On January 20, 1993, actress Audrey Hepburn died. She was born on May 4, 1929 in Brussels, Belgium. She remains one of the world's most famous actresses of all time, remembered as a film and fashion icon of the twentieth century. After appearing in several British films and starring in the 1951 Broadway play GiGi, Hepburn gained instant Hollywood stardom for playing the Academy Award winning lead role in Roman Holiday (1953). Later performing in Sabrina (1954), The Nun’s Story (1959), Breakfast at Tiffany’s (1961), Charade (1963), My Fair Lady (1964) and Wait Until Dark (1967), Hepburn became one of the great screen actresses of Hollywood’s Golden Age. 

Although she appeared in fewer films as her life went on, Hepburn devoted much of her later life to UNICEF. Her war-time struggles inspired her passion for humanitarian work and, although Hepburn had contributed to the organization since the 1950s, she worked in some of the most profoundly disadvantaged communities of Africa, South America and Asia in the late eighties and early nineties. Upon return from Somalia to Switzerland in late September 1992, Hepburn began suffering from abdominal pains. She went to specialists and received inconclusive results, so decided to be examined while on a trip to Los Angeles. Doctors performed a laparoscopy and discovered abdominal cancer. Hepburn died in her sleep on the evening of January 20, 1993, at her home in Switzerland. After her death, Gregory Peck went on camera and tearfully recited her favorite poem, "Unending Love" by Rabindranath Tagore. She is buried at Tolochenaz Cemetery in Tolochenaz, Switzerland, a small cemetery that sits atop a hill overlooking the village.

On January 20, 1990, actress Barbara Stanwyck died. She was born on July 16, 1907 in Brroklyn, New York. She was nominated for the Academy Award four times, and won three Emmy Awards and a Golden Globe. In 1923, a few months short of her 16th birthday, Ruby auditioned for a place in the chorus at the Strand Roof, a night club over the Strand Theatre in Times Square. A few months thereafter she obtained a job as a Ziegfeld girl in the 1922 and 1923 editions of the Ziegfeld Follies.  

Stanwyck's first film was The Locked Door (1929), followed by Mexicali Rose in 1929. Neither film was successful; nonetheless, Frank Capra chose Stanwyck for his Ladies of Leisure (1930). Numerous memorable roles followed, among them the children's nurse who saves two would be juvenile murder victims in Night Nurse (1931), the ambitious woman from "the wrong side of the tracks" in Baby Face (1933), the self-sacrificing mother in Stella Dallas (1937), the con artist who falls for her would-be victim (played by Henry Fonda) in The Lady Eve (1941), the woman who talks an infatuated insurance salesman (Fred McMurray) into killing her husband in Double Indemnity (1944), the columnist caught up in white lies and Christmas romance in Christmas in Connecticut (1945) and the doomed wife in Sorry, Wrong Number (1948). 

When Stanwyck's film career declined in 1957, she moved to television. Her 1961–1962 series The Barbara Stanwyck Show was not a ratings success but earned her first Emmy Award. The 1965–1969 Western series The Big Valley on ABC made her one of the most popular actresses on television, winning her another Emmy. Years later, Stanwyck earned her third Emmy for The Thorn Birds. In 1936, while making the film His Brother's Wife, Stanwyck met and fell in love with her co-star, Robert Taylor. Following a whirlwind romance, the couple began living together. Their 1939 marriage was arranged with the help of Taylor's studio MGM, a common practice in Hollywood's golden age. Taylor reportedly had affairs during the marriage. When Stanwyck learned of Taylor's fling with Lana Turner, she filed for divorce in 1950 when a starlet made Turner's romance with Taylor public. The decree was granted on February 21, 1951. After the divorce, they acted together in Stanwyck's last feature film The Night Walker (1964). Stanwyck never remarried and collected alimony from Taylor until his death in 1969. Stanwyck was no angel she also had an affair with actor Robert Wagner, whom she met on the set of Titanic. Wagner, who was 22, and Stanwyck, who was 45 at the beginning of the affair, had a four-year romance, as described in Wagner's 2008 memoir, Pieces of My Heart. Stanwyck broke off the relationship. Stanwyck died of congestive heart failure and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease at Saint John's Health Center, in Santa Monica, California on January 20, 1990. Her body was cremated, and her ashes scattered in Lone Pine, California.

Richard Widmark & Elsa Lanchester

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Actor Richard Widmark was born on December 26, 1914 in Sunrise Township, Minnesota. He was nominated for a best supporting actor Academy Award for Kiss Of Death (1947), as the villainous Tommy Udo in his debut film. Early in his career Widmark specialized in similar villainous or anti-hero roles, but he later branched out into more heroic leading and support roles in westerns, mainstream dramas and horror films, among others. Widmark made his debut as a radio actor in 1938 and made his Broadway debut in 1943 with Kiss and Tell. Other film credits include The Street Car with No Name (1948), Don’t Bother to Knock (1952). Pick Up on South Street (1953), The Alamo (1960), Judgment at Nuremberg (1961), How the West was Won (1962), Cheyenne Autumn (1964), Murder on the Orient Express (1974), Coma (1978), and The Swarm (1978). In all, Widmark appeared in over 60 films before making his final movie appearance in the 1991 thriller True Colors. From 1942 until her death in 1997, Widmark was married to playwright Jean Hazlewood. He died after a long illness on March 24, 2008, at his home in Roxbury, Connecticut and is buried at the Roxbury Center Cemetery.

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On December 26, 1986, actress Elsa Lanchester died. She was born on October 28, 1902 in Lewisham, London. She met 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). 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 a best supporting Academy Award for Come to the Stable in 1949 and Witness for the Prosecution 1957. Lanchester died on December 26, 1986 from pneumonia at the Motion Picture Actor Home. Her ashes were scattered at sea.