The Silver Screen Oasis

Here is a hint about our current Mystery Guest:

Among the Broadway colleagues who helped me to organize our famous war effort contribution was Tallulah Bankhead. We both appeared in a movie about it, although the movie was essentially fiction.

Selena Royle.

Selena Royle it is!

Her father, Edwin Milton Royle, wrote a play called "The Squaw Man," which Cecil B. de Mille made in to a very successful movie.

Royle, and several other female members of the American Theater Wing started the Stage Door Canteen. Royle was know for her charitable works, which she began during the Depression. But Royle got into trouble with HUAC, and decided to leave the US. She and her husband, French actor Georges Renavent, moved to Mexico, where they welcomed artists, writers and other cultural types into their home in Guadalajara. Royle published a cookbook called "A Gringa's Guide to Mexican Cooking."

I've got another Mystery Guest for you:

Do you know me?

My first name sounds like a nickname, but it isn't. I started performing as a youngster, singing with my family. By the time I was a young adult, I had developed a distinctive voice, and I formed my own group, which appeared in several films in the early 1930s. By the mid-30s, I was appearing on my own, and before long I was one of film's major character actors. My voice is probably as well known as my face.

I wanted one of Hollywood's honors so badly that I went very publicly overboard trying to get it. Major comeuppance was directed at me for that behavior by one of the most famous and acid wits of the entertainment industry.

In later years, you could hear me at Disneyland or meet me in Las Vegas, where I promoted a casino.

Who am I?

Chill Wills.

You are right, Ken, our MG is Chill Wills.

Nominated for an Oscar in 1960, he launched an overly-enthusiastic campaign, including taking out large ads in all the Hollywood trade papers. He told his colleagues he sure would like to win, and that he loved them all, and they were all his cousins.

Wills took a lot of flak for taking matters into his own hands when it was the studios who usually waged such campaigns. Groucho Marx took out an answering ad, telling Wills he was delighted to be his cousin, but that he had voted for Sal Mineo. Peter Ustinov was the winner that year.

Another Guest has arrived:

Do you know me?

I played several bit parts at first, but then got a recurring role in a popular series of films about the medical profession. My first "big" role was in a Hitchcock movie. I've made almost 100 screen appearances, on film and on television, and had my own TV show briefly. It was the sort of talk and entertainment show that was popular in early TV. My last TV appearance was on an episode of "Murder, She Wrote."

My second husband was famous in his own right. Although he was not in show business, he was a well-known public figure with a reputation as an ornery character. He had a nickname that described his personality well. Because of the nature of his job, we spent time living in several different cities, including New York.

I have since retired from show business to do work for my religious affiliation.

Who am I?

Laraine Day, the one time wife of Leo, " the lip ", Durocher manager of the NY Giants & the Brooklyn Dodgers. Ms Day is a Mormon.

ken123 wrote:Laraine Day, the one time wife of Leo, " the lip ", Durocher manager of the NY Giants & the Brooklyn Dodgers. Ms Day is a Mormon.

Ken, you're a Grand Master. Correct in all details.

Lucky for me it's been a slow day at the office, because yet another Mystery Guest has signed in:

I had a lot of energy. My entry on IMBd lists almost 300 screen apperances. Like many aspiring actors of my generation, after college I went to New York to study with Eva LeGalienne, and I had quite a few roles on Broadway before I went to Hollywood in the 1940s.

I've played everything: drama, comedy, adventure, westerns, science fiction - you name it, I've probably been in it at least once. I played average guys, but as I matured my patrician looks and mellow voice put me in more authoritative parts. My background prepared me for it - I came from a well-to-do New York family. I seem to have been most often cast as a doctor, and I could call upon my memories of my own father, who was a prominent doctor in New York.

In one of my movies I was a doctor who conducted a famous experiment with tragic consequences, but it made a star of the young lead. I was in so many TV shows that most viewers certainly knew my face, if not my name.

I was very active in the governance of the film industry as well. And -- today is my birthday.

Who am I?

Are you Anthony Franciosa

After thinking it over, I really wracked my brain, i decided Franciosa must be wrong. I'd like to chsnge that to Milton Selzer.

melwalton wrote:After thinking it over, I really wracked my brain, i decided Franciosa must be wrong. I'd like to chsnge that to Milton Selzer.

Sorry, Mel, but neither of those is the one.

Our MG appeared in a very popular episode of "Star Trek," probably the most popular of all. The fan sites love to point out that he had already appeared in several films with most of the stars, and our MG was probably the best known of them until they were in "Star Trek." He was in several films and TV shows about time travel, one as a series regular.

In fact, our MG was in so many scifi movies and TV shows, that the Academy of Science Fiction, Fantasy and Horror Film gave him a lifetime achievement award.

Whit Bissell?

You are Whit Bissell, aren't you?