Thelma "Butterfly" McQueen, Alan Napier & Trevor Howard

Who was born on this date:

Actress Thelma "Butterfly" McQueen was born on January 7, 1911 in Tampa, Florida. She is best known for her debut role as Prissy, Scarlett O’Hara’s maid in the 1939 film, Gone with the Wind (1939). She also appeared in The Women (1939), Mildred Pierce (1945), and Duel in the Sun (1946). She then grew tired of the ethnic stereotypes and ended her film career. She died on December 22, 1995 at Augusta Regional Medical Center in Augusta, Georgia from burns sustained when a kerosene heater she attempted to light malfunctioned and burst into flames. A lifelong atheist, her body was donated to medical science.

Actor Alan Napier was born on January 7, 1903 in King’s Norton, England. He is best known for portraying Alfred on the 1960s TV series Batman. Though his film career had begun in England in the 1930s, he had very little success before the cameras until he arrived and joined the British community in Hollywood in 1941. Film credits include Cat People (1942), The Uninvited (1943), The Song of Bernadette (1943), House of Horrors (1946), Macbeth (1948) and Joan of Arc (1948). In 1966, he was the first to be cast in the Batman TV series, as Bruce Wayne's faithful butler Alfred, a role he played until the series' cancellation in 1968. Napier's career extended into the 1980s, with TV roles and he finally retired in 1981. He suffered a stroke in 1987, hospitalized since June 1988, and had been gravely ill for several days, before his death of pneumonia on August 8, 1988, in the Berkeley East Convalescent Hospital in Santa Monica, California. His cremated remains are interred at the Chapel of the Pines Crematory in Los Angeles. 

Who died on this date:

On January 7, 1988, actor Trevor Howard died. He was born on September 29, 1913 in Cliftonville, England. His film credits include The Way to the Stars (1945), Brief Encounter (1945), I see a Dark Stranger (1945), Green for Danger (1946), They Made Me a Fugitive (1947), The Passionate Friends (1949), The Third Man (1949), and Sons and Lovers (1960), for which he was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Actor. Over time Howard easily shifted to being one of England's finest character actors. Howard's later works included such films as Mutiny on the Bounty (1962), Von Ryan’s Express (1965), The Charge of the Light Brigade (1968), and Superman (1978). He died on January 7, 1988, from a combination of bronchitis and influenza and was buried at the St. Peter Churchyard in Arkley, England.

Vivien Leigh and Fred MacMurray

Who was born on this date:

Actress Vivien Leigh was born on November 5, 1913 in Darjeeling, India, a city near the foot of Mount Everest. Her father Ernest Hartley was a Calcutta stock broker. She began her career on the stage in her early teens and in 1935 appeared on the London stage for the first time. She changed her stage name to Vivien Leigh because it sounded more feminine, using her first husband’s (Herbert Leigh Holman) middle name as her new last name and changed the “a” in Vivian to an “e.” Leigh was known for her fiery personality on and off screen and in a short twenty year film career (1935 to 1965), appeared in nineteen films that included: Things are Looking Up (1935), Gentlemen’s Agreement (1935), Fire Over London (1937), Waterloo Bridge (1940), Caesar and Cleopatra (1945), Anna Karenina (1948), The Deep Blue Sea (1955), and Ship of Fools (1965).  

Leigh is best known for her famous portrayal of firebrand heroine Scarlett O’Hara in Victor Flemings Civil War epic, Gone with the Wind (1939). This performance starring opposite Clark Gable earned her the first of two best actress Academy Awards (1940). Her second best actress Oscar (1952) came in A Street Car Named Desire (1951) in which she portrayed the neurotic Blance DuBois starring opposite Marlon Brando. After 1951, her film career began to wane, and she appeared more on the stage.   

The celebrated actress was beleaguered with illness most of her adult life, she suffered from manic depressive episodes (bipolar disorder), endured the tragedy of two miscarriages, one of which occurred as the result of an onset accident while filming Caesar and Cleopatra (1944), and she contracted tuberculosis in her early thirties. On July 7, 1967, while at her London apartment, Leigh died from the tuberculosis that had plagued most of her adult life. Following her death and as a tribute to the award winning actress, the lights of the West London theater district were dimmed in her honor. Leigh’s ashes are scattered near her country home, on the Lake at Tickerage Mill, East Sussex, England.

Who died on this date:

On November 5, 1991, actor Fred MacMurray died. He was born on August 30, 1908 in Kankakee, Illinois. He appeared in more than 100 movies and was a successful television star in career that spanned nearly a half-century, from 1930 to the 1970s. MacMurray is well known for his role in the 1944 film noir Double Indemnity. Later in his career, he became better known as the paternal Steve Douglas, the widowed patriarch on My Three Sons, which ran on ABC from 1960–1965 and then on CBS from 1965–1972.  

In his heyday, MacMurray worked with some of Hollywood’s greatest names, including Billy Wilder and actors Barbara Stanwyck, Humphrey Bogart and Marlene Dietrich. He played opposite Claudette Colbert in seven films, beginning with The Gilded Lily. He co-starred with Katharine Hepburn in Alice Adams and with Joan Crawford in Above Suspicion, and with Carole Lombard in four films. Despite being typecast as a "nice guy," MacMurray often said his best roles were when he was cast against this type by Wilder. In 1944, he played the role of Walter Neff, an insurance salesman who plots with a greedy wife to murder her husband in Double Indemnity. Sixteen years later he played Jeff Sheldrake, a two-timing corporate executive in Wilder's Oscar winning comedy The Apartment. In another turn in the "not so nice" category, MacMurray played the cynical, duplicitous Lieutenant Thomas Keefer in 1954's The Caine Mutiny.  

MacMurray's career got its second wind beginning in 1959, when he was cast as the father figure in a popular Disney comedy, The Shaggy Dog. In the 1960s, he starred in My Three Sons, which ran for 12 seasons, making it one of America's longest-running television series. Concurrent with My Three Sons, MacMurray stayed busy in films, starring in 1961 as Professor Ned Brainerd in Disney's The Absent Minded Professor and in its sequel, Son of Flubber (1964). Later in life he suffered from a variety of illness, first suffering from throat cancer in the late 1970s and then a stroke in 1988. This stroke left his right side paralyzed and his speech affected, although with therapy he was able to make a remarkable recovery. He also suffered from leukemia but died from pneumonia on November 5, 1991. He was buried at Holy Cross Cemetery in Culver City, California.

Shirley Booth and Hattie McDaniel

Who died on this date:

Actress Shirley Booth was born on August 30, 1898 in Brooklyn, New York. Primarily a theatre actress, Booth's Broadway career began in 1925. Her most significant success was as Lola Delaney, in the drama Come back, Little Sheba, for which she received a Tony Award in 1950. She made her film debut, reprising her role in the 1952 film version for which she won the Academy Award for Best Actress. Despite her successful entry into films, she preferred stage acting, and made only four more films. From 1961 until 1966, she played the title role in the sitcom Hazel, for which she won two Emmy Awards, and was acclaimed for her performance in the 1966 television production of The Glass Menagerie. She retired in 1974 and died on October 16, 1992 after a brief illness at her home on Cape Cod, Massachusetts. She is interred at Mount Hebron Cemetery, Montclair, New Jersey.

On October 26, 1952, actress Hattie McDaniel died. She was the first African-American to win an Academy Award was born in Wichita, Kansas. She began her career in show business in the 1910’s as a band vocalist, continued into radio, then into film, and television. Her award winning film career produced ninety-five motion pictures from 1932 to 1949. She is primarily known for playing house servant roles and is perhaps best recognized as Mammy – the house keeper in Gone with the Wind (1939). It was for this role that she won the best supporting actress Oscar in 1940. Her other notable films include: The Golden West (1932), Judge Priest (1934), The Little Colonel (1935), Show Boat (1936), The Mad Miss Manton (1938), The Shining Hour (1938), and Song of the South (1946). 

McDaniel died on October 26, 1952 at the Motion Picture and Television County Home in Woodland, Hills, California after a long battle with breast cancer. Her funeral service was held at the Independent Church of Christ in Los Angeles where numerous Hollywood dignitaries were in attendance. Outside the church thousands of people waited to pay their last respects to the famed actress. It was McDaniel’s express final wish to be buried at Hollywood Forever Cemetery, but she was denied such a request due to racial bias at the time. Instead she was interred at Angelus Rosedale Cemetery in Los Angeles. Her unassuming grave is located near the front entrance to the cemetery. On the forty-seventh anniversary of her death, October 26, 1999, a memorial cenotaph marker was placed at Hollywood Forever Cemetery by relatives, partially fulfilling her final wish. 

Yvonne De Carlo, Ann Harding, Cammie King

Who was born on this date:

Actress Yvonne De Carlo was born on September 1, 1922 in Vancouver, British Columbia. During her six-decade career, her most frequent appearances in film came in the 1940s and 1950s and included her best-known films, Where She Danced (1945); Crtiss Cross (1949); The Ten Commandments (1956); and Band of Angels (1957). In the early 1960s, De Carlo accepted the offer to play Lily Munster for the CBS television series, The Munsters. Her final appearance on the big-screen was as Aunt Rosa in the 1991 comedy, Oscar. In later years she became a resident of the Motion Picture & Television Home in Woodland Hills, California. She died there on January 8, 2007 from natural causes. Her remains were cremated and given to family, final disposition is unknown.

Who died on this date:

On September 1, 1981, actress Ann Harding died. She was born Dorothy Walton Gatley on August 7, 1902 in San Antonio, Texas. She began acting and made her Broadway debut in 1921. In 1929, she made her film debut in Paris Bound, opposite Fredric March. In 1931, she was nominated for a best actress Academy Award for Holiday. Her performances were often heralded by the critics, who cited her diction and stage experience as assets to the then-new medium of "talking pictures". During this period, she was generally considered to be one of cinema's most beautiful women, with her long waist-length blonde hair as one of her most noted physical attributes. Her films during her peak include The Animal Kingdom, Peter Ibbetson, When Ladies Meet, The Flame Within, and Biography of a Bachelor Girl. Harding, however, eventually became stereotyped as the innocent, self-sacrificing young woman. Following lukewarm responses by both her critics and the public to several of her later 1930s films, she eventually quit making movies when she married the conductor Werner Janssen in 1937. However, she returned in 1942 to make Eyes in the Night and to take secondary roles in other movies. On September 1, 1981, Harding died and her cremated remains are interred at Forest Lawn Memorial Park, Hollywood Hills.

On September 1, 2010, child actress Cammie King died. She was born on August 5, 1934 In Los Angeles, California. She is best known for being one of the actresses who portrayed "Bonnie Blue Butler" in Gone with the Wind (1939). She also provided the voice for the doe "Faline" in the animated Disney film, Bambi (1942). King died on September 1, 2010, at her home in Fort Bragg, California from lung cancer and is buried at Holy Cross Cemetery in Culver City.

www.michaelthomasbarry.com, author of Fade to Black Graveside Memories of Hollywood Greats, 1927-1950

Yul Brynner, Thomas Mitchell, Sally Blane, Laurence Olivier, Frances Langford

Who was born on this date:

Actor Yul Brynner was born on July 11, 1920 in Primorsky Krai, Russia. He was best known for his portrayal of Mongkut, king of Siam, in the Rodgers and Hammerstein musical The King and I, for which he won an Academy Award for Best Actor; he also played the role more than 4,500 times on stage. He is also remembered as Rameses II in the 1956 Cecil B. DeMille film The Ten Commandments, General Bounine in Anastasia and Chris Adams in The Magnificent Seven. Brynner was noted for his distinctive voice and for his shaven head, which he maintained as a personal trademark long after adopting it for his initial role in The King and I. Brynner is one of only nine people who have won both a Tony Award and an Academy Award for the same role.

Brynner was married four times, the first three ending in divorce. He fathered three children and adopted two. According to Marlene Dietrich's daughter Maria Riva (as she wrote in her memoir Marlene Dietrich, 1994), he had a passionate affair with the famous actress during the first production of The King and I. Brynner died of lung cancer on October 10, 1985, in New York City. Knowing he was dying of cancer, Brynner starred in a run of farewell performances of his most famous role, The King and I, on Broadway from January 7 to June 30, 1985.
Throughout his life, Brynner was often seen with a cigarette in his hand. In January 1985, nine months before his death, he gave an interview on Good Morning America, expressing his desire to make an anti-smoking commercial. A clip from that interview was made into just such a public service announcement by the American Cancer Society, and released after his death; it includes the warning "Now that I'm gone, I tell you, don't smoke. Whatever you do, just don't smoke. If I could take back that smoking, we wouldn't be talking about any cancer. I'm convinced of that." He is interred, in France, on the grounds of the Saint-Michel-de-Bois-Aubry Russian Orthodox monastery, near Luzé.

Actor Thomas Mitchell was born on July 11, 1892 in Elizabeth, New Jersey. He was known as one of Hollywood’s greatest character actors. Mitchell is best known for his portrayal of Gerald O’Hara, the father of Scarlett O’Hara in Gone with the Wind (1939). In a show business career that spanned nearly four decades, 1923-1961, he appeared in fifty-seven motion pictures and numerous television programs that include: Lost Horizon (1937), Man of the People (1937), Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939), The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1939), Dark Waters (1944), and High Noon (1952). Other famous films in which he appeared are It’s a Wonderful Life (1946), starring Jimmy Stewart, in which Mitchell portrayed the absent minded, Uncle Billy, and his last film A Pocket Full of Miracles (1961), which starred Bette Davis and Glenn Ford. During his long and successful film career, Mitchell was twice nominated for a best supporting actor Oscar, for the role of Dr. Kersaint in The Hurricane (1937) and won the award for his portrayal of Doc Boone in Stage Coach (1939).

Mitchell was the first actor to win the Triple Crown of acting, best supporting actor Academy Award for Stage Coach (1939), a Tony Award in 1953 for Hazel Flagg, and an Emmy for best actor in 1953. On December 17, 1962, Mitchell died at his Beverly Hills home after a long struggle with bone cancer. His funeral service was private and held at his home with only family members and a few close friends in attendance. Mitchell’s remains were cremated and it is alleged that his ashes are held in storage at the Chapel of the Pines Crematory in Los Angeles, California.

Actress Sally Blane was born on July 11, 1910 in Salida, Colorado. She was the sister of actresses Polly Ann and Loretta Young, and half-sister to actress Georgiana Young, the wife of actor Ricardo Montalban. She made her film debut at the age of seven when she appeared in Sirens of the Sea in 1917. She returned to the film business as an adult in the 1920s where she played small parts in a number of silent films. Her career continued into the 1930s when Blane appeared in a number of low-budget films, among them Once a Sinner (1930), A Dangerous Affair (1930), Arabian Knights (1931), Anabelle's Affairs (1931), Hello Everybody! (1933), City Limits (1934), Against the Law (1934) and This Is the Life (1935). Some of her scenes, including one in Annabell's Affairs, in which she appeared in skimpy lingerie with Jeanette Macdonald and Joyce Compton, were quite risqué for their day, pre-dating the industry's Hays Code that largely forbade such shots after 1934.

Although her film appearances tapered off toward the late 1930s, Blane eventually appeared in over 100 films. She appeared onscreen at one time or another with all her sisters, for example with Georgina in The Story of Alexander Graham Bell (1939). After that Blane appeared in only four more movies in small supporting roles, Fighting Mad (1939), Charlie Chan at Treasure Island (1939), La Fuga (1944) and A Bullet for Joey (1955). Blane died of cancer, as had her sisters Polly and Loretta, on August 27, 1997 and is buried at Holy Cross Cemetery in Culver City, California.

Who died on this date:

On July 11, 1989, actor Laurence Olivier died. He was considered by many to be the greatest actor of his time and a living reincarnation of the traditional Shakespearian thespians of times long past, Sir Laurence Kerr Olivier was born on May 22, 1907 in Dorking, Surrey, England. The youngest of three children, Olivier was raised in a very strict religious home. His father was a high ranking Anglican priest and his mother, while tender and doting, died when Laurence was only twelve. Laurence’s Uncle Sydney Olivier was the first Baron Olivier and was Governor of Jamaica and Secretary of State for India.
His love for acting began at an early age, performing in school plays. Because of his natural talent for the performing arts, his father agreed to support this calling. While a student at the Central School of Speech and Drama in London, he appeared in numerous Shakespearian productions and his roles became more and more significant. Moving to New York City in the late 1920’s, Olivier’s star status rapidly gained momentum and soon caught the eye of Hollywood studio executives. His first foray into film came in 1930 with The Temporary Widow and his first starring role came the next year in The Yellow Ticket (1931), Olivier did not hold either of these films in high regard. Although his greatest successes were to come on the silver screen, he always held contempt for the medium; his first love would always be the stage.

In a show business career that would span nearly six decades (1930-1989), Olivier would appear in over eighty feature films and television programs. His greatest film achievements include; Perfect Understanding (1933), Conquest of the Air (1936), Pride and Prejudice (1940), 21 Days (1940), That Hamilton Woman (1941), The Prince and the Show Girl (1957), Spartacus (1960), Khartoum (1966), Battle of Britain (1969), Dracula (1979), The Jazz Singer (1980), and Clash of the Titans (1981). He was nominated for eight best acting Oscars, Wuthering Heights (1939), Rebecca (1940), The Chronicles History of King Henry V (1944), Hamlet (1948), Richard III (1955), The Entertainer (1960), Othello (1965), Sleuth (1972), and The Boys from Brazil (1978). Olivier was also nominated for a best director and supporting actor Oscar’s for Hamlet (1948) and The Marathon Man (1976), respectively. His only win came in 1949 for his portrayal of the title role of Hamlet, Prince of Denmark in Hamlet (1948). He was also the recipient of two honorary Academy Awards, 1947 for outstanding achievement as an actor, producer, and director for Henry V (1946), and 1979 for lifetime achievement in film.

Unlike his professional career, his personal life was filled with turmoil. He was married three times and divorced twice, most notably to fellow Academy Award winning actress Vivien Leigh. Olivier met Leigh while the pair were still married and carried on a torrid love affair. They eventually married on August 30, 1940, and their tumultuous union lasted twenty years. Throughout his life Olivier was known as notorious womanizer and had numerous affairs which included his second wife Vivien Leigh, Claire Bloom, and his third wife, Joan Plowright. It has been alleged, but never proven, that he was bi-sexual. Rumors of romantic trysts with fellow actors Danny Kaye and Henry Ainley have persisted but no actual evidence has ever been produced. But in a tantalizing 2006 radio interview, Joan Plowright responded to a question about these rumors by saying “If a man is touched by genius, he is not an ordinary person. He doesn’t lead an ordinary life. He has extremes of behavior which you understand and you just find a way not to be swept overboard by his demons.”

Laurence Olivier died on July 11, 1989 at his country home in Steyning, West Sussex, England. The exact cause of his death is in dispute, some sources point to kidney failure and others to complications from a muscle disorder. What is known is that Olivier had been in poor health for many years and just four months prior to his death; the actor had undergone hip replacement surgery after a fall. His cremated remains are interred at Westminster Abbey, London, England in Poets Corner, one of only four actors to have been accorded this honor and he is interred ironically near many of the famous people he portrayed both on stage and screen.

On July 11, 2005, actress Frances Langford died. She was born on April 4, 1913 in Lakeland, Florida. At age 17, she was singing for local dances. Cigar manufacturer Eli Witt heard her sing at an American Legion party and hired her to sing on his local radio show. While singing for radio during the early 1930s, she was heard by Rudy Vallee, who invited her to become a regular on his radio show and from 1935 until 1938 she was a regular performer on Dick Powell's radio show. She made her film debut in Every Night at Eight (1935) she introduced what became her signature song: "I'm in the Mood for Love." She then began appearing frequently in films such as Broadway Melody of 1936 (1935), Born to Dance (1936) and Yankee Doodle Dandy (1942) with James Cagney. During World War II, she joined Hope, Jerry Colonna, and other performers on U.S.O. tours through Europe, North Africa, and the South Pacific, entertaining thousands of G.I.'s throughout the world. Her association with Hope continued into the 1980s. In 1989 she joined him for a USO tour to entertain troops in the Persian Gulf. She died on July 11, 2005 at her Jensen Beach home from congestive heart failure and her ashes were scattered at sea.

http://www.michaelthomasbarry.com/, author of "Fade to Black: Graveside Memories of Hollywood Greats, 1927-1950"

Billy Wilder, Michael Todd, Judy Garland, Fred Astaire, David O. Selznick

Who was born on this date:

Writer, director Billy Wilder was born on June 22, 1906 in Sucha, Austria-Hungry (now Poland). His first foray into show business came at the end of a pen as a screen writer for UFA studios, one of Germany’s top movie producers of the 1920’s. He remained in high demand as a writer in Germany, but eventually fled the country in 1933, when Adolf Hitler took power. Sensing that dangerous times were ahead, he first moved to Vienna, then Paris. It was while in France that Wilder wrote a screen play for Columbia Pictures and his American film career was launched. Arriving in Hollywood in 1934, he was unable to speak English and soon found himself out of work and money. Sharing a room with actor Peter Lorre, Wilder taught himself English by watching baseball games and movies. In 1936, he landed a job as a writer for Paramount Studios and was paired with fellow writer Charles Brackett. The pair of Wilder and Brackett would produce 14 consecutive hit movies.

In a film career that would span four decades (1936-1981), Wilder would write over seventy screen plays, direct twenty-seven feature motion pictures, and produce dozens of other films. His directorial career highlights include; Ninotchka (1939), Hold Back the Dawn (1941), Ball of Fury (1941), The Major and the Minor (1942), Double Indemnity (1944), The Emperor Waltz (1948), A Foreign Affair (1948), Ace in the Hole (1951), Stalag 17 (1953), Sabrina (1954), The Seven Year Itch (1955), Witness for the Prosecution (1957), The Spirit of St. Louis (1957), Some Like It Hot (1959), The Fortune Cookie (1966), and The Front Page (1974).

One of the most successful film writer/ directors in Hollywood history, Wilder was nominated for twelve best writing and eight best directing Oscars. He won both awards in 1946 for The Lost Weekend (1945) and repeated the double victory again in 1961 for The Apartment (1960). Wilder also won for best writing in 1951 for Sunset Blvd. (1950). The acclaimed director died on March 27, 2002 from pneumonia at his Beverly Hills home. He had been in failing health for a few years prior to his death. Wilder is buried at Westwood Memorial Park, Los Angeles in the chapel estates section near actors Caroll O’Conner and Walter Mathau. His tombstone epitaph reads; “I’m a writer but then nobody’s perfect.”

Producer Michael Todd was born on June 22, 1909 Minneapolis, Minnesota. He is best best known for his 1956 production of Around the World in Eighty Days, which won an Academy Award for Best Picture. He is also well-known as the third of Elizabeth Taylor's seven husbands and he was also married to actress Joan Blondell. His first success in show business began on with a Gilbert and Sullivan operetta The Mikado with an all African-American cast. The Hot Mikado, starring Bill "Bojangles" Robinson, opened on Broadway March 23, 1939. Todd went on to produce thirty Broadway shows during his career. Todd's business career was volatile, and failed ventures left him bankrupt many times.

In 1952, Todd made a production of the Johann Strauss II operetta A Night in Venice, complete with floating gondolas at the then-newly constructed Jones Beach Theatre in Long Island, New York. It ran for two seasons. In 1950, Mike Todd formed Cinerama with the broadcaster Lowell Thomas and the inventor Fred Waller. The company was created to exploit Cinerama, a widescreen film process created by Waller that used three film projectors to create a giant composite image on a curved screen. The first Cinerama feature, This is Cinerama, was released in September 1952. Before its release, Todd left the Cinerama Company to develop a widescreen process which would eliminate some of Cinerama's flaws. The result was the Todd-AO process, designed by the American Optical Company. The process was first used commercially for the successful 1955 film adaptation of Oklahoma!. Todd later produced the film for which he is best remembered, Michael Todd's Around the World in 80 Days, which debuted in cinemas on October 17, 1956. Costing $6 million to produce, the movie earned $16 million at the box office. In 1957, Around the World in 80 Days won the Best Picture Academy Award.

Todd's third marriage was to the actress Elizabeth Taylor, with whom he had a tempestuous relationship. The couple was married on February 2, 1957. On March 22, 1958, Todd's private plane Lucky Liz crashed near Grants, New Mexico. The plane, a twin-engine Lockheed Lodestar, suffered engine failure while being flown, grossly overloaded, in icing conditions at an altitude which was too high to sustain flight with only one working engine under those conditions. The plane went out of control and crashed, killing all four on board. His son, Mike Jr., wanted his father's body to be cremated after it was identified through dental records and brought to Albuquerque, New Mexico, but Taylor refused, saying he would not want cremation. Todd was buried at Waldheim Jewish Cemetery in Forest Park, Illinois.

Post script, years later Todd’s remains were desecrated by robbers, who broke into Todd's coffin looking for a $100,000 diamond ring, which, according to rumor, Taylor had placed on her husband's finger prior to his burial. The bag containing Todd's remains was found under a tree near his burial plot. His remains were once more identified through dental records and were reburied in a secret location.

Who died on this date:

Judy Garland's biography was previously discussed on the June 10, 2011 blog - she was born on June 10, 1922 and died on June 22, 1969.

On June 22, 1987, actor Fred Astaire died. He was born on May 10, 1899 in Omaha, Nebraska. His stage and subsequent film career spanned a total of 76 years, during which he made 31 musical films. He is particularly associated with Ginger Rogers, with whom he made ten films. According to Hollywood folklore, a screen test report on Astaire for RKO Pictures, now lost along with the test, is reported to have read: "Can't sing. Can't act. Balding. Can dance a little." The producer of the Astaire-Rogers pictures, Pandro S. Berman, claimed he had never heard the story in the 1930s and that it only emerged years later. Astaire later insisted that the report had actually read: "Can't act. Slightly bald. Also dances.” In any case, the test was clearly disappointing, and David O. Selznick, who had signed Astaire to RKO and commissioned the test, stated in a memo, "I am uncertain about the man, but I feel, in spite of his enormous ears and bad chin line, that his charm is so tremendous that it comes through even on this wretched test." However, this did not affect RKO's plans for Astaire, first lending him for a few days to MGM in 1933 for his Hollywood debut, where he appeared as himself dancing with Joan Crawford in the successful musical film Dancing Lady.

Astaire with Ginger Rogers

Astaire and Rogers made ten films together, including The Gay Divorcee, Roberta (1935), Top Hat (1935), Follow the Fleet (1936), Swing Time (1936), Shall We Dance (1937), and Carefree (1938). Six out of the nine Astaire-Rogers musicals became the biggest moneymakers for RKO; all of the films brought a certain prestige and artistry that all studios coveted at the time. Their partnership elevated them both to stardom. Astaire received a percentage of the films' profits, something extremely rare in actors' contracts at that time; and complete autonomy over how the dances would be presented, allowing him to revolutionize dance on film. Astaire died from pneumonia on June 22, 1987 and is buried at Oakwood Memorial Park Cemetery in Chatsworth, California.

On June 22, 1965, producer/ director David O. Selznick died. He was born on May 10, 1902 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania and is best known for producing Gone with the Wind (1939) and Rebecca (1940), both of which earned him an Oscar for Best Picture. He studied at Columbia University and worked as an apprentice for his father until the elder's bankruptcy in 1923. In 1926, Selznick moved to Hollywood, and with the help of his father's connections, got a job as an assistant story editor at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. He left MGM for Paramount Pictures in 1928, where he worked until 1931, when he joined RKO as Head of Production. His years at RKO were fruitful, and he worked on many films, including A Bill of Divorcement (1932), What Price Hollywood? (1932), Rockabye (1932), Our Betters (1933), and King Kong (1933). While at RKO, he also gave George Cukor his directing break. In 1933 he returned to MGM to establish a second prestige production unit, parallel to that of Irving Thalberg, who was in poor health. His unit's output included Dinner at Eight (1933), David Copperfield (1935), Anna Karenina (1935) and A Tale of Two Cities (1935).

Despite his successes at MGM, Paramount Pictures, and RKO Pictures, Selznick longed to be an independent producer with his own studio. In 1935 he realized that goal by forming Selznick International Pictures and distributing his films through United Artists. His successes continued with classics such as The Garden of Allah (1936), The Prisoner of Zenda (1937), A Star Is Born (1937), Nothing Sacred (1937), The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1938), The Young in Heart (1938), Made for Each Other (1939), Intermezzo (1939) and Gone with the Wind (1939), which remains one of the all-time highest grossing films (adjusted for inflation). It also won seven additional Oscars and two special awards. Selznick also won the Irving G. Thalberg Memorial Award that same year.

In 1940, he produced his second Best Picture Oscar winner in a row, Rebecca, the first Hollywood production for British director Alfred Hitchcock. Selznick had brought Hitchcock over from England, launching the director's American career. Rebecca was Hitchcock's only film to win Best Picture. After Rebecca, Selznick closed Selznick International Pictures and took some time off. His business activities included the loan of his contracted artists to other studios, including Alfred Hitchcock, Ingrid Bergman, Vivien Leigh and Joan Fontaine. He also developed film projects and sold the packages to other producers. Among the movies that he developed but then sold were almost all of Hitchcock's films through to 1947, except for two that he released through Selznick International Pictures or Selznick Releasing Organization, Spellbound and The Paradine Case. In 1944 he returned to producing pictures with the huge success Since You Went Away, which he wrote. He followed that with Spellbound (1945), as well as Portrait of Jennie (1948), a vehicle for Jennifer Jones. In 1949, he co-produced the Carol Reed picture The Third Man with Alexander Korda.

Selznick with his 2nd wife, actress Jennifer Jones

Gone with the Wind overshadowed the rest of Selznick's career. The closest he came to matching it was with Duel in the Sun (1946) featuring future wife Jennifer Jones in the role of the primary character Pearl. With a huge budget, the film is known for causing moral upheaval because of the then risqué script written by Selznick. And though it was a troublesome shoot with a number of directors, the film would turn out to be a major success. Selznick spent most of the 1950’s nurturing the career of his second wife, Jennifer Jones. His last film, the big budget production A Farewell to Arms (1957) starring Jones and Rock Hudson, was ill received. But in 1954, he ventured into television, producing a two hour extravaganza called Light's Diamond Jubilee, which, in true Selznick fashion, made TV history by being telecast simultaneously on all four TV networks: CBS, NBC, ABC, and DuMont. Selznick was married Irene Gladys Mayer, daughter of MGM mogul Louis B. Mayer, in 1930. They separated in 1945 and divorced in 1948. In 1949 he married actress Jennifer Jones and they had one daughter, Mary Jennifer Selznick. Selznick died in 1965 following several heart attacks, and is interred at Forest Lawn Memorial Park Cemetery in Glendale, California.

http://www.michaelthomasbarry.com/, author of "Fade to Black: Graveside Memories of Hollywood Greats, 1927-1950"