Theodore Marcuse brought gravitas to the decidedly airy, unsubstantial world of 1960s television. Theodore Marcuse cross-sectioned the world network TV at that time. Name a show, he was there: Star Trek, Hogan’s Heroes, The Untouchables, Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, Wild Wild West, and far more. Marcuse was a bald, ballsy, confident, and… Continue reading Theodore Marcuse: Character Actor Destined for Greatness, Cut Down in His Prime
Category: People You’ve Never Heard Of
Celluloid Prairie Scum and Lithe Championship Diver: Strother Martin’s Two Lives
Strother Martin in Rooster Cogburn, 1975 Strother Martin was a character actor who rose to the very top of the character category. While his credits run from 1950 to 1980, his character star shone the brightest in the 1960s and 1970s, when he was often conscripted to play time-worn, hard-bitten, tobacco-spittin’ codgers in Westerns. Martin… Continue reading Celluloid Prairie Scum and Lithe Championship Diver: Strother Martin’s Two Lives
Johnny Cash Has Five Minutes to Live!
He’s a goddamn door-to-door maniac! He’s a milky faced, baby-faced cruel psychopath of a guitar-strumming KILLER. It’s our favorite warbler–Johnny Cash, in the late noir thriller Five Minutes to Live, directed by Ludlow Flower, Jr., who cast his wife Cay Forrester in the role of imperiled housewife Nancy Wilson. Definitely late noir: it came out… Continue reading Johnny Cash Has Five Minutes to Live!
Twilight Zone: “We All Know What Became of Bonnie Beecher”
And I chose Bonnie Beecher, and we all know what became of Bonnie Beecher. William Froug, in The Twilight Zone Companion, by Marc Scott Zicree These are the curious words uttered by Twilight Zone producer William Froug, in reference to a May 22, 1964 episode titled “Come Wander With Me.” What Froug was so upset… Continue reading Twilight Zone: “We All Know What Became of Bonnie Beecher”
Lee Van Cleef, Official Badass and Savior of Little Dogs
Everybody knows the Lee Van Cleef of late 1960s spaghetti Westerns. So why should I put him in the category of People You’ve Never Heard Of? Because there are two sides to him that many people don’t know about. The first one–Van Cleef as a film noir tough–is not known to most people who only… Continue reading Lee Van Cleef, Official Badass and Savior of Little Dogs