British postcard in the Greetings Series. Photo: British Lion Films.
Stunning Shirley Eaton (1937) played a cockney bombshell in British films throughout the 1950s and 1960s. She became famous as golden girl Jill Masterson in the third 007 adventure Goldfinger (1964). Five years later, Eaton retired.
Shirley Jean Eaton was born in Edgware, Middlesex, in 1937. She grew up in the suburb of Harrow Weald, where she attended Roe Green Junior School on Princes Avenue. Eaton won a place at the Aida Foster School, a specialist drama school, and remained there until she was sixteen. Her stage debut was at age 12 in Set to Partners (1949) and followed it up the following year with Benjamin Britten's Let's Make an Opera! In 1954 she debuted at the West End debut in Going to Town. All through the fifties she was a singing star both on the stage and on Television. She had her act in Variety shows all over the country and starred at The Prince of Wales Theatre in London in her solo singing act. Throughout her career, she worked with top British male comedy stars from the period including Jimmy Edwards, Max Bygraves, Bob Monkhouse and Arthur Askey. Her female co-stars included Peggy Mount, Thora Hird and Dora Bryan. From 1953 on, she also appeared in the cinema. Her debut was a bit part in the comedy-drama A Day to Remember (Ralph Thomas, 1953) starring Stanley Holloway. She had a supporting part in the comedy Doctor in the House (Ralph Thomas, 1954), about a group of medical students including Dirk Bogarde and Kenneth More. In Great Britain, Doctor in the House was the most popular film at the box office in 1954, and its success spawned six sequels, and the television series Doctor in the House. Other early film roles include Three Men In A Boat (Ken Annakin, 1956) opposite Laurence Harvey, and Date with Disaster (Charles Saunders, 1957), in which she co-starred with Tom Drake. Eaton participated in the British heat of the 1957 Eurovision Song Contest. She also sang and danced with the Crazy Gang in Life Is a Circus (Val Guest, 1958). That year, she also co-starred with William Hartnell and Bob Monkhouse in the comedy Carry On Sergeant (Gerald Thomas, 1958) - the first in the series of Carry On films, with 31 entries. Carry On Sergeant had not been conceived as the start of a series, but after the film's surprising success producer Peter Rogers and director Gerald Thomas set about planning a further project. Eaton returned as a nurse in Carry On Nurse (Gerald Thomas, 1959) which was the year’s top-grossing film in the UK, and after this success, the Carry On series of films evolved. In 1960, Eaton returned one more time in the series, in Carry on Constable (Gerald Thomas, 1960).
Shirley Eaton co-starred with popular pulp novelist Mickey Spillane in the crime film The Girl Hunters (Roy Rowland, 1963). Spillane played his literary creation, private detective Mike Hammer and Eaton was a seductive femme fatale. Between 1962 and 1968, she also made three episodes of the spy thriller TV series The Saint, starring Roger Moore as the suave and sophisticated Simon Templar. Eaton achieved the most recognition for her short performance in Goldfinger (Guy Hamilton, 1964), the third film in the James Bond series. As the gold-painted Jill Masterson, Eaton even gained more recognition than Honor Blackman, who played the other Bond Girl, Pussy Galore. Eaton graced the cover of Life Magazine on 6 November 1964 in her gold-painted persona. Her character's death, being painted head to toe in gold paint and suffering ‘skin suffocation’ led to an urban myth that Eaton had died during filming. She appeared in a 2003 episode of the series MythBusters to dispel the rumour. Goldfinger was the first Bond film to win an Academy Award and was a financial success, recouping its budget in just two weeks. After Goldfinger, Eaton made only a few more films, including a version of the Agatha Christie mystery Ten Little Indians (George Pollock, 1965) co-starring Hugh O'Brian, the science fiction film Around the World Under the Sea (Andrew Marton, 1966) starring Lloyd Bridges, and the spy story The Million Eyes of Sumuru (Lindsay Shonteff, 1967). Eaton played the beautiful but evil Sumuru who plans world domination by having her sexy all-female army eliminate male leaders and replace them with her female agents. She reprised her role in Jesus Franco's The Girl from Rio/The Seven Secrets of Sumuru (1970). Then she retired to spend more time with her family. Eaton was married to Colin Lenton Rowe from 1957 until he died in 1994. The couple had two children. In 1999, Shirley Eaton published an autobiography titled Golden Girl. Her new art/autobiography book Under My Skin will be published Spring of 2014 and she is publishing an art Calendar for 2014 with her photography.
Sources: Gary Brumburgh (IMDb), Wikipedia, and IMDb.
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Belgian postcard. Photo: Eagle Lion.
Red headed Moira Shearer (1926-2006) was a luminous star of the British ballet. She became an international film idol with her unforgettable debut as the young ballerina Vicky in The Red Shoes (1948), a classic of the British cinema and probably the most popular film about ballet ever.
Moira Shearer King was born in Dunfermline, Scotland, in 1926. She was the daughter of actor Harold V. King. In 1931 her family moved to Ndola, Northern Rhodesia. Her mother pushed her into ballet and Moira received her first dancing training under a former pupil of Enrico Cecchetti. She returned to Britain in 1936 and trained with Flora Fairbairn in London for a few months before she was accepted as a pupil by the Russian teacher Nicholas Legat. After three years with Legat, she joined the Sadler's Wells Ballet School. However, after the outbreak of the World War II, her parents took her to live in Scotland. The Scottish beauty with her flaming red hair made her debut with Mona Inglesby's International Ballet in 1941 before moving on to the famous Sadler's Wells in 1942. There she was second only to the world renowned prima ballerina, Margot Fonteyn. From 1942 to 1952 Shearer danced all the major classic roles and a full repertoire of revivals and new ballets. She came to international attention for her first film role as the doomed heroine in the ballet-themed film The Red Shoes (Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger, 1948). The film employs the story within a story device. Victoria Page (Shearer), a young, unknown dancer from an aristocratic background meets at a party Boris Lermontov (Anton Walbrook), the ruthless but charismatic impresario of the Ballet Lermontov. He invites her to join his famous ballet company. She becomes the lead dancer in a new ballet called The Red Shoes, itself based on the fairy tale The Red Shoes by Hans Christian Andersen. Vicky is torn between the powerful impresario and a struggling composer (Marius Goring) whom she loves. The film got rave reviews and became one of the highest earning British films of all time. Shearer’s role and the film were so powerful that although she went on to star in other films, she is primarily known for playing ‘Vicky.’ She toured the United States with the Sadler's Wells Ballet in 1949 and in 1950/51. Moira Shearer’s second film was the magnificent spectacle The Tales of Hoffmann (Michael Powell, Emeric Pressburger, 1951), an adaptation of Jacques Offenbach's final opera, Les contes d'Hoffmann. The film co-starred Robert Helpmann and Léonide Massine. It is not just a film of a staged opera, but a true cinematic opera that makes use of film techniques not available in an opera house. Powell and Pressburger were nominated for the Grand Prize of the 1951 Cannes Film Festival, and won the Exceptional Prize. They also won the Silver Bear award for Best Musical at the 1st Berlin International Film Festival.
In 1953, a combination of ill-health, injury and her wish to make a name for herself as an actress made Moira Shearer decide to retire from the ballet stage at age 27. She co-starred with James Mason in a segment of The Story of Three Loves (Vincente Minnelli, Gottfried Reinhardt, 1953), a romantic anthology film made by MGM. She appeared as Titania in A Midsummer Night's Dream at the 1954 Edinburgh Festival. The following year she starred in the British film comedy The Man Who Loved Redheads (Harold French, 1955) based on the play Who is Sylvia? by Terence Rattigan. She toured as Sally Bowles in the play I am a Camera in 1955 and appeared at the Bristol Old Vic as G.B. Shaw’s Major Barbara in 1956. Shearer worked again for Powell on the controversial film Peeping Tom (Michael Powell, 1960) about a sexually repressed serial killer (Karlheinz Böhm) who murders women and films their expressions of terror and dying gasps on film. Its controversial subject and the extremely harsh reception by critics effectively destroyed Powell's career as a director. However, it attracted a cult following, and in later years, it has been re-evaluated and is now considered a masterpiece. A year later she appeared in the musical 1-2-3-4 ou Les Collants noirs/Black Tights (Terence Young, 1961) with Zizi Jeanmaire and Cyd Charisse. It would be Shearer’s last film. Shearer was on the BBC's General Advisory Council from 1970 to 1977 and the Scottish Arts Council from 1971 to 1973. In 1972, she was chosen by the BBC to present the Eurovision Song Contest when it was staged in Edinburgh. In 1977 she played Madame Ranevsky in Anton Chekhov's Cherry Orchard at the Royal Lyceum Theatre in Edinburgh and, in 1978, was Judith Bliss in Noel Coward's Hay Fever. She wrote two books, biographies of the choreographer George Balanchine and the actress Ellen Terry, and a column for The Daily Telegraph. She also gave talks on ballet worldwide. The choreographer Gillian Lynne persuaded her to return to ballet to play the mother of artist L. S. Lowry (Christopher Gable) in the ballet film A Simple Man (1987, Gillian Lynne) for the BBC. In 1950, Moira Shearer had married writer and broadcaster Ludovic Kennedy. The couple had a son, Alastair, and three daughters, Ailsa, Rachel and Fiona. In 2006, Moira Shearer died of natural causes in Oxford, England at the age of 80
Sources: Anna Kisselgoff (The New York Times), Steve Crook (IMDb), The Telegraph, Wikipedia and IMDb.
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British postcard in the Picturegoer Series, London, no. W. 512. Photo: British Lion.
The Sons of the Pioneers are one of the United States' earliest Western singing groups. Known for their vocal performances, their musicianship, and their songwriting, they produced innovative recordings that have inspired many Western music performers and remained popular through the years. Since 1933, through many changes in membership, the Sons of the Pioneers have remained one of the longest-surviving country music vocal groups. Between 1935 and 1984, the Sons of the Pioneers appeared in 87 films.
In the spring of 1931, Ohio-born Leonard Slye, the cowboy singer who would later change his name to Roy Rogers, arrived in California and found work as a truck driver, and later as a fruit picker for the Del Monte company in California's Central Valley. He entered an amateur singing contest on a Los Angeles radio show called Midnight Frolics and a few days later got an invitation to join a group called the Rocky Mountaineers. In September 1931, Canadian-born Bob Nolan answered a classified ad in the Los Angeles Herald-Examiner that read, "Yodeler for old-time act, to travel. Tenor preferred." Not comfortable singing solo, Leonard Slye wanted to hire another singer for the Rocky Mountaineers and had placed the ad that led to meeting Bob Nolan. After listening to the tall, slender, tanned Nolan sing and yodel, Slye hired Nolan on the spot. Although Nolan stayed with the group only a short time, he stayed in touch with Slye. Nolan was replaced by Vern Spencer, better known as Tim Spencer, who had been working in a Safeway Stores warehouse. In the spring of 1932, Slye, Spencer, and another singer, Slumber Nichols, left the Rocky Mountaineers to form a trio, to join Benny Nawahi and His International Cowboys, then left on a personal appearance tour of the Southwest, barnstorming radio stations along the way, as the O-Bar-O Cowboys. Spencer left the O-Bar-O Cowboys and quit music for a while. Slye joined Jack LeFevre and His Texas Outlaws, who were a popular act on a local Los Angeles radio station. Slye, convinced that a yodeling trio was the way to go, re-connected with Spencer and Nolan and formed The Pioneer Trio in early 1933, The three young singers rehearsed for weeks honing their singing. While Slye continued to work with his radio singing group, Spencer and Nolan began writing songs for the group. By early 1934, the group consisted of Leonard Slye, Bob Nolan, and Tim Spencer on vocals, with Nolan playing string bass and Slye playing rhythm guitar. During that time, fiddle player Hugh Farr joined the group, adding a bass voice to the group's vocal arrangements. He also sang lead on some songs. Later that year, they were hired at KFWB (the Warner Bros, station in L.A.), working in the mornings as The Pioneer Trio, in the afternoons as as The Gold Star Cowboys (after their sponsor), and in the evenings on a show called 'Painting the West in Song' with the Jack Joy Orchestra. Te "Pioneers Trio" became the "Sons of the Pioneers" through the radio station announcer Henry Hall's chance remark. Asked why he'd changed their name, Hall said they were too young to have been pioneers, but that they could be sons of pioneers. The name was received well and fit the group, who were no longer a trio. By the summer of 1934, the Sons of the Pioneers' popularity and fame extended beyond the Los Angeles area and quickly spread across the United States through short syndicated radio segments that were rebroadcast all over the country. They signed a recording contract with the newly founded Decca label, and the Sons of the Pioneers made their first commercial recording. One of the first songs recorded by the Sons of the Pioneers during that first August session was written by Bob Nolan, 'Tumbling Tumbleweeds', that would soon become a staple in their repertoire. The original title Over the next two years the group would record 32 songs for Decca.
In the cinema, The Sons of the Pioneers appeared in two shorts and a feature film called The Old Homestead (William Nigh, 1935). with Mary Carlisle Soon followed Westerns starring Gene Autry, Dick Foran and Bing Crosby. Between 1935 and 1984, the Sons of the Pioneers appeared in 87 films, several shorts, and a television series. In 1935 they signed with Columbia Pictures to supply the music for the studio's Charles Starrett B-Westerns, starting with Galland Defender (David Selman, 1935). In 1937, Leonard Slye was offered a contract as an actor with rival Republic Pictures. Part of that deal required him to leave the singing group. Leonard Slye was rechristened Roy Rogers, and went on to achieve major success as a singing cowboy in films. Roy Rogers and the Sons of the Pioneers remained close throughout the coming years. When the Starrett unit disbanded at the end of the 1941 season, the Pioneers rejoined Rogers at Republic and were soon appearing as highly popular supporting players in the Rogers Westerns, like Red River Valley (Joseph Kane, 1941). Changes to the group (made up with Rogers, Nolan, Spencer and the Farr brothers) first came when Spencer left the group for a while in 1936, and was replaced by Lloyd Perryman. Spencer returned and made it a six-member group, and after Rogers left to pursue his own career as a Singing Cowboy, his replacement was 'Pat Brady'. Following their third production-year season with Republic, the group was renamed Bob Nolan and the Sons of the Pioneers. Nolan was reluctant to be the "leader" of the group, which had been formed as a co-operative outfit with no formal leader, but he bowed to the demands of show business; agents, music publishers, and recording companies insisted that co-operative bands needed a name to promote them. Because Bob Nolan's featured appearances with Starrett had made him the most recognisable of the Pioneers, Nolan reluctantly became the 'front' for the group. The group remained billed as such until Nolan left in 1949. In addition to their appearances and filmed performances, their music was used in numerous other films and television shows. These included John Ford's films Wagon Master (1949) and Rio Grande (1950) with John Wayne and Maureen O'Hara, and they performed the theme song for the John Ford classic The Searchers (1956). Tumbling Tumbleweeds was used in the Coen Brothers film The Big Lebowski (1998). In 1971, Bob Nolan and Tim Spencer were both elected to the Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame. In 1972, most of the surviving members of the Sons of the Pioneers, including the original Pioneer Trio of Roy Rogers, Bob Nolan, and Tim Spencer, gathered at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles for one last performance. In 1980, the Sons of the Pioneers were inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame. In 1979, Bob Nolan returned to the studio for the final time and recorded a successful solo album of classics and newer compositions titled Bob Nolan – The Sound of a Pioneer. The late 1970s saw the passing of an era, as many of the founding members of the group died. Tim Spencer died in 1976. Lloyd Perryman, who had been with the group since 1936, died in 1977. Hugh Farr, who had retired from the group in 1958, died in 1980. Bob Nolan died also in 1980. Following the death of Lloyd Perryman in 1977, Dale Warren, who had joined the group in 1952 and continued on until his death in 2008, took over the leadership of the Sons of the Pioneers, guiding them into the 2000s. They continued to perform in concert and recorded as well with a lineup that featured, amongst many others, Luther Nallie (guitar, vocals), Rusty Richards (vocals), Doye O'Dell (guitar, vocals), Billy Armstrong (fiddle), Billy Liebert (accordion), Gary LeMaster (lead guitar) and Rome Johnson (vocals). The current "Trail Boss" of the Sons of the Pioneers is Tommy Nallie (vocals, bass), who joined the group in 1983. Other current band members are Ken Lattimore (vocals, fiddle), Roy ("Dusty") Rogers, Jr. (vocals, MC), John Fullerton (vocals, guitar), and Paul Elliott (fiddle). In 2001, a book about the group was published, titled The Sons of the Pioneers by Bill O'Neal and Fred Goodwin.[ Another book about the group, first published in 1974, is called Hear My Song, The Story of the Celebrated Sons of the Pioneers by Ken Griffis,.
Sources: Wikipedia and IMDb
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Dutch postcard. Photo: British Lion.
Fresh-faced Patricia Roc (1915-2003) was between 1943 and 1953 one of Britain's top 10 box office stars. The elegant, well spoken actress seemed the epitome of the English rose. She had international success in such Gainsborough costume dramas as Madonna of the Seven Moons (1945) and The Wicked Lady (1945), and in When the Bough Breaks (1947), in which she played an unmarried mother.
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British postcard in the Picturegoer Series, London, no. D 290. Photo: British Lion.
Distinguished British actor and novelist Sir Dirk Bogarde (1921-1999) was Britain's number one box office draw of the 1950s, gaining the title of ‘The Matinee Idol of the Odeon’. In the 1960s, he abandoned his heart-throb image for more challenging parts in films by Joseph Losey, John Schlesinger, Luchino Visconti, Liliane Cavani and Rainer Werner Fassbinder. Bogarde made a total of 63 films between 1939 and 1991.
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