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1-7 of 7
- Music Artist
- Music Department
- Actor
Sam Cooke was born January 22, 1931 in Clarksdale, Mississippi. He was one of eight children of Charles Cook Sr., a Baptist minister. When Sam sang as a little boy in church, everyone made note that his voice had "something special". He sang in church and in local gospel choirs until a group called the Highway Q.C.'s asked him to sing with them at various venues. By the time he reached 20, Sam's voice was a finely honed instrument and he was noted for bringing the spirit up in churchgoers.
When Sam replaced R.H. Harris, the legendary lead singer for the extremely popular gospel group The Soul Stirrers, it was the beginning of his meteoric rise. Cooke sang with the group for six years, traveling back and forth across the country and gaining a wealth of knowledge regarding how black people were treated. His refusal to sing at a segregated concert led to what many have described as one of the first real efforts in civil disobedience and helped usher in the new Civil Rights Movement.
After several gospel albums, Sam decided it was time to cross over from gospel (against almost everyone's advice) to record some soul and rhythm & blues. His hypnotically smooth voice, not to mention his finely chiseled good looks, brought him almost instant success. His first single released in 1957 was "You Send Me", which sold over a million copies and made Sam an "overnight success" in the business. He was on his way to becoming the biggest voice on the radio. Record producers vied to sign him to a contract. In 1960 he became the first major black artist to sign with RCA Records. Sam was not happy with the deal and when the time was right decided to start his own publishing company (KAGS Music) to keep control over his music and his own record company (SAR/Derby) to keep control of his money.
Sam married his high school sweetheart, Barbara Campbell, in 1959 and they had three children. Tragically, their youngest child, Vincent, drowned in their swimming pool at age four in June 1964.
On the night of December 11, 1964, Sam had withdrawn some money to buy Christmas presents. The manager of the motel he was staying in, Bertha Franklin, who had shot and killed a man six months previously at the same motel, made arrangements with a local prostitute named Elisa Boyer to pick up Sam at a local bar and bring him back to the motel. As he and the woman entered the motel room Sam was struck on the head and momentarily knocked out. Boyer, who was known as a "drunk roller" who would rob her clients, took Sam's money and met Franklin at the motel office.
When Cooke regained consciousness he was disoriented, in addition to being without his pants and his wallet. He stumbled to the motel office and saw Boyer and Franklin counting his money ($2,500 - a considerable amount of money at the time) through the window. He demanded his pants, money and wallet back. When they didn't open the door, Cooke knocked on it as hard as he could and it came off the hinges. When he got up off the floor Mrs. Franklin shot him and then instructed Boyer to run down the street and call police from a phone booth. Boyer told them a phony story about a rape and left the scene and subsequently disappeared. Sam was dead when the police arrived and, since Boyer had stolen his wallet, they had no idea who it was and took it as a routine justified homicide in the ghetto.
The coroner's inquest should have been a slam-dunk, but not one pertinent question was asked by an investigator, nor was a background check made that would have revealed Bertha Franklin's deadly past. The authorities simply took her made-up story as "gospel". Sam's murder was chalked up as just another unidentified "rapist" killed in Watts. It wasn't until the following Monday morning that a reporter found out Sam Cooke was signed in to the motel registry as himself and that one of the world's greatest talents and a true human being was dead, under shady circumstances that might never have been covered by the media.- Actor
- Soundtrack
He had a long career in theater before making movies, playing hundreds of roles, mostly rustic bumpkins, in stage and stock. His film career included two isolated early films: White Woman (1933) and Soak the Rich (1936). It began in earnest with the part of Orion Peabody in the Spencer Tracy-Katharine Hepburn wartime drama Keeper of the Flame (1942); Kilbride was already fifty-four by then. The movie public really came to recognize him when he played the part of Pa Kettle (against Marjorie Main's Ma) in The Egg and I (1947), a role he reprised for seven more "Ma and Pa Kettle" movies, the last of which, and the last of his career, was in 1955.- Alma Mahler-Werfel (Vienna, 1879 -- New York, 1964) - born in a wealthy bourgeois Viennese family, the daughter of the popular painter Emil Jakob Schindler and his wife Anna von Bergen - was arguably one of the greatest femmes fatales of the turn-of-the-century Europe: an era that was not only rich in femmes fatales, but worshiped - and feared - them. As a young girl, Alma was hailed as "the most beautiful girl in Vienna"; and throughout her life she inspired the admiration and love of some of the most talented men of her time. She was courted by Gustav Klimt, Paul Kammerer, Max Burckhard, and Alexander von Zemlinsky, among others.
In 1902, at the age of twenty-two, Alma married the famous composer (and director of the Vienna Court Opera) Gustav Mahler, with whom she then had two daughters (one of them, Maria, died at a very early age, the other one, Anna, grew up to be a well-known sculptor). Shortly after the death of her young daughter, Alma began an affair with the up-and-coming architect Walter Gropius (who became of the leading masters of 20th century architecture). After Mahler's death, in 1911, she engaged in a lengthy affair with the painter Oskar Kokoschka, who became obsessed with her (which led to a series of bizarre incidents, including the making of a life-size doll in Alma's likeness).
In 1915, Alma married her old flame Gropius. The following year she gave birth to their much-adored daughter, Manon. (Manon died suddenly, in April of 1935, leaving her mother - and a host of admirers - distraught with grief.) As early as 1917, during one of Gropius' frequent military leaves, she met the writer Franz Werfel, with whom she started living around the time of her divorce from Gropius (1920) and whom she eventually married (1929). With Werfel - who was Jewish, therefore in danger during the Nazi regime - she moved to the USA and remained there until her death, in 1964.
Upon close scrutiny it could be argued that Alma's life wasn't particularly easy, even though she lived in leisure for most of her lifetime. She seemed to have endured a lot of heartache; and, perhaps no less tragically, she had stifled her own considerable musical talent. (A few of her musical compositions - piano pieces - have been preserved.) She willingly resigned herself to serve as a muse to some of the most famous and talented men of her time. And that she did, in the grandest of styles: so much so that that the inspiration she provided could be rightly described as her greatest and proudest achievement. - Writer
- Script and Continuity Department
- Director
John Grey was born on 19 December 1885 in Manhattan [now in New York City], New York, USA. He was a writer and director, known for Fighting Fate (1925), Wide Open (1927) and Super Speed (1925). He died on 11 December 1964 in Los Angeles, California, USA.- Actor
- Writer
Wallace Geoffrey was born on 24 July 1907 in Southall, Middlesex, England, UK. He was an actor and writer, known for Detective Lloyd (1932), The Scotland Yard Mystery (1934) and The Living Dead (1933). He died on 11 December 1964 in Denham, Buckinghamshire, England, UK.- Beatrice Warde was born on 5 June 1890. She was an actress, known for Outrage (1950). She died on 11 December 1964 in Los Angeles, California, USA.
- Music Department
- Soundtrack
Educated at Wayne University, he wrote short stories and television and radio scripts and plays. He also authored the novel "The Circle on the Plain" and the play "Next Case". Joining ASCAP in 1957, he wrote songs for films and records in collaboration with his brother Les and Karl Suessdorf. His song compositions include "Shooting Star", "Calypso Boogie", "A Gun Is My True Love", "Black Sheep", "Destination Honeymoon", and "Memories of Maine".