Invisible Themepark

Category: People You’ve Never Heard Of

  • Theodore Marcuse: Character Actor Destined for Greatness, Cut Down in His Prime

    Theodore Marcuse: Character Actor Destined for Greatness, Cut Down in His Prime

    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 quite mysterious actor who was destined for greatness but was cut down in his prime by a car accident in 1967.

    In one scene from The Twilight Zone, watch how Marcuse, as a briefly sympathetic gangster, milks the scene with the silence, eye movements, a twitch of the mouth:

    Theo Marcuse Had Serious Classical Theater Chops

    Two phrases thrown around about actors are “classically trained” and “does his own stunts.” Both are usually PR. But Marcuse was definitely classically trained.

    Only three weeks before his death, he directed Oedipus Rex at CalTech’s Beckman Stage.

    Every theater season, Marcuse acted at the Ashland (Oregon) Shakespeare Festival.

    In 1949, he directed a production of Medea in Honolulu, Hawaii.

    Directly after the war, his New York debut was in the role of Dimitrios in Antony and Cleopatra.

    Marcuse Was Born in Seattle Washington

    Marcuse Birth Record

    Theodore Marcuse was born August 5, 1920 at Swedish Hospital in Seattle, according to the “T. Marcuse” birth notice in the Seattle Star.

    His father owned a fur shop in Seattle with Jean Klementis called Klementis-Marcuse Company.  According to Fur Age, they specialized in “making furs to order and in remodeling and repairing.”

    Marcuse Served with Distinction During WW II

    Theodore Marcuse U.S. Navy Photo

    Marcuse is in the upper row, right side. He served from 1944-1946 aboard the submarine USS Tirante (SS-420).  He was awarded the Silver Star for bravery.

    Correspondence With Poet Robinson Jeffers

    Where Marcuse Lived

    It is unclear whether 6659 Bonair Place, Hollywood even exists anymore.  Los Angeles County Property Assessor records list a 6666 and a 6671 Bonair Place.  The 6659 designation appears on records, but it appears to have been subsumed by 6659 Whitley Terrace.

    Theodore Marcuse home, 6659 Bonair Place, Hollywood, California

    Marcuse Died in 1967

    Theodore Marcuse Death Notice L.A. Times December 2, 1967

    Not much is known about Marcuse’s death. I have searched for information about Marcuse’s supposed November 29, 1967 traffic accident in Los Angeles and came up empty.  The Los Angeles Times lists no corresponding traffic accident for that day or days following.

    Aside from a Pierce Brothers Mortuary death notice, there is a Eureka (California) Times-Standard article, reading:

    Theodore Marcuse Death

  • 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 spoke with a very distinctive nasal voice that immediately imprints on your brain.  Martin himself reportedly described his characters as “prairie scum.”  Writer Walter Hughes describes Martin’s sidekick role Floyd in The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance as “a gunk-toothed buddy, a screeching, wheezing ugly little man.”

    Yet Martin was a versatile actor.  For the first six years of his career, he played no Western roles.  At age 36, he took on his first Western role in the TV series Frontier.  Other Western roles slowly came his way, until the deluge:  Gunsmoke, Nevada Smith, Daniel Boone, The Big Valley, Bonanza, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.

    He is best known, though, in a non-Western role.  As the sadistic prison gang boss who whips Paul Newman in Cool Hand Luke, Martin’s nasal passages intone the immortal line:  “What we’ve got here is a failure to communicate.”

    So it may seem surprising that Martin–ancient, crotchety Martin, hitching up his trousers and spittin’ tobacco–had a previous earlier life as a finely tuned athlete–a championship swimmer and diver.

    In 1935, the Indianapolis Star-Press reported that a “14 year old swimmer, Strother Martin, Indianpolis [was the] freestyle boys champion.” And that was just the beginning.  Martin piled up both swimming and diving wins all throughout his high school years.

    As a fresh-faced member of the Indianapolis Athletic Club, Martin–nicknamed Tee-Bone–regularly performed as an exhibition diver.

    Strother Martin, Low Board Championship, 1938

    He moved on to the University of Michigan and, as a Wolverine, continued to crush collegiate rivals in high diving events.

    Strother Martin Diving in Florida for Michigan Team

     

    Strother Martin, AAU Champion

     

     

     

  • Johnny Cash Has Five Minutes to Live!

    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.

    Johnny Cash, Five Minutes to Live – 1961

    Definitely late noir:  it came out in 1961, but up and down and all throughout it feels like 1951.  It feels like the sleek, low-slung vehicles of 1961 and the women’s bangs and bobs and sidesweeps of 1961 and the all trappings of 1961 were somehow, mysteriously, sent back in time to 1951.

    Cash turns in a quietly warbly performance as Johnny Cabot, who is baby-faced and creepily misogynistic when he tosses Mrs. Wilson’s ceramics onto the floor and when he forces her to strip and put on a negligee and when he pulls out her hairpins, saying, “Remove your artillery.”

    And it’s free, all free.

     

     

     

  • 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 about:  he had passed over a fledgling actress for the part because she was too nervous and scared.  And that actress’ name?  Liza Minnelli.

    First, let it be said that the episode was no poorer for the lack of Liza Minnelli.  Froug’s starry-eyed view of Minnelli in the early 1980s, when Zicree wrote the book, is predicated on the fact that Minnelli had been a big star in the 1970s.  Or to put it a different way:  Who cares?  Miss Beecher did a perfectly fine job in that part.

    In the pre-Internet days, I had no idea what Froug meant about “we all know what become of her.”  I just assumed he meant that Beecher disappeared from the scene–nudge, nudge, sarcasm.

    Bonnie Beecher (Jahanara Romney) Today

    Jaharana Romney – 2016

    Far from disappearing, Bonnie Beecher married counter-culture icon Wavy Gravy, born Hugh Romney, in 1965.  She later became Jahanara Romney, and the couple had a son, Jordan.

    Even prior to that episode, she had been a familiar figure in many circles; it is even said that she was the inspiration for Bob Dylan’s “Girl From the North Country.”

    To this day, I still have no idea what Froug meant.  While he was an amazing producer and writer, he wasn’t exactly a tuned-in and turned-on type.

  • 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 know Van Cleef from Westerns. This Van Cleef is known to film buffs.  The second–Van Cleef as the rescuer of tiny dogs–is less well-known.

    Lee Van Cleef, Kansas City Confidential

    Long before Van Cleef appeared in For a Few Dollars More, The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly, and other Italian-directed Westerns, he burned up the celluloid with his portrayals of film noir heavies.

    Lee Van Cleef, Kansas City Confidential

    Because my memory is not what it used to be, I’m always discovering Van Cleef anew in film noir movies. I will encounter this “unknown’ actor with a sharp visage, hawk-like nose, and wolf eyes, and I will think: Oh my God, this dude (whoever he is) can really command celluloid attention. Then I IMDB him and find out it’s Lee Van Cleef.

    Van Cleef was a quiet, menacing presence in classics like Kansas City Confidential and The Big Combo.

    In no way could he ever have been a leading man–at least for that time. Predatory and animalistic, Van Cleef had too much menacing dark-sexual energy to be a leading man in the Fifties and Sixties.

    Also it turns out that he was a real-life badass.  Van Cleef served in the U.S. Navy during WWII  as a soundman and while his ship was in the Mediterranean, he heroically leaped off to save a dog–recalling another heroic badass who attempted to save a dog while chomping on a pipe, F. Bert Farquahrson.

    Lee Van Cleef, Soundman, U.S. Navy

    SAILOR DIVES OFF SHIP TO SAVE PUP WASHED INTO SEA

    How he dived 30 feet from the bridge of the mine-sweeper into the Mediterranean with the pipe he was smoking still tight in his teeth, and won himself a four-legged pal at the same time, is the story told in a letter home from Soundman 2c C. Leroy Van Cleef Jr. 20, U.S. Navy of 198 North Bridge St. H wrote his parents:

    “We were along the coast and had our new mascot aboard. It was a fairly heavy sea (and cold water, I might add). Our mascot happens to be a spaniel of some sort. We call the water-loving hound ‘Rusty’.

    “Well, Rusty was out on the fantail this day and a wave came along, washing her overboard. We had to get permission to break formation and go back for her. That took us about 15 minutes until we finally found her. I was up on the bridge at the time, smoking my pipe. Well, I shed the knife I had on and my shoes, and yelled up for permission to go after her. ‘Permission granted.’

    “So I dove off the bridge. When I hit the water, I heard something snap in my mouth. That happened to be my pipe while diving about 30 feet. I don’t know how my teeth escaped breaking. Luck, I call it. However, I got Rusty all right. She was swimming to beat everything. Quite a current too. They threw us a life ring and pulled us aboard.

    “Yesterday I was out on the fantail and the sea was rushing up on the deck. Rusty came up and snuggled around my legs. I guess that swim was worth my favorite pipe.”

    Van Cleef Real Life: Addendum

    With many actors, it can be hard to pick apart their histories prior to fame. They seem to only exist in fame mode. But there is no shortage of information about Lee-Van-Cleef-as-a-real-person.

    For one, we know that when he was ten years old, he fractured his wrist. From the Bridgewater NJ Courier-News, July 9, 1935:

    As a side note, it’s rather touching that the local paper reported on children’s’ fractured fingers and wrists.

    From the same newspaper dated Monday March 29, 1937, we know that Van Cleef was confirmed by the First Reformed Church (probably the previous day, Sunday):

     

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