Jayne Meadows (born Jane Cotter; September 27, 1919 – April 26, 2015) was an American stage, film and television actress, as well as an author and lecturer. She was nominated for three Emmy Awards during her career and was the elder sister of actress and memoirist Audrey Meadows as well as the wife of original Tonight Show host Steve Allen.
Luis d'Antin van Rooten (November 29, 1906 – June 17, 1973) was a Mexican-born American actor. He was sometimes credited as Louis Van Rooten.Van Rooten was born in 1906 in Mexico City, Mexico. His father worked as a translator and clerk at the American Embassy. Some sources say his father was killed during the Mexican Revolution.In 1914, when he was 8, Van Rooten emigrated to the United States with his Belgian grandmother. Because he had no papers, his grandmother claimed van Rooten was her son, which resulted in the elongation of his name to Luis Ricardo Carlos Fernand d’Antin y Zuloaga van Rooten.Van Rooten attended a boarding school in Pennsylvania and earned his BA in architecture at the University of Pennsylvania in 1927. He enjoyed a successful career as an architect in Cleveland, Ohio before his love for acting led to a career as one of radio and television's most prolific character actors and narrators.Van Rooten's obituary in The New York Times noted that he worked on as many as 50 shows a month because of his ability to do dialects and criminals. Once, he was bumped off in 10 crime shows in a week.His facility with languages made van Rooten an in-demand military radio announcer during World War II. He conducted a variety of broadcasts in Italian, Spanish, and French. This led to film work, often in roles requiring an accent or skill with dialects.
Toby Wing (born Martha Virginia Wing; July 14, 1915 – March 22, 2001), "Toby" being an old family nickname, was an American actress and showgirl, once called "the most beautiful chorus girl in Hollywood".
Robert O'Hearn (July 19, 1921 – May 26, 2016) was an American set designer. Though known for his productions of theatre and ballet, he was particularly associated with opera. He designed productions for the Metropolitan Opera from 1960 through 1985.
Robert O'Hearn was born in Elkhart, Indiana. He attended Indiana University, where he received his Bachelor of Arts in 1943.
From 1948 through 1952 he worked at the Brattle Theatre at Harvard University, designing numerous productions. (His work is now part of the Harvard Theatre Collection.) Having made his Broadway theatre debut in 1950 doing the set and costume design for The Releapse by John Vanbrugh, O'Hearn began working regularly on Broadway in 1953 beginning with a production of Shakespeare's Love's Labour's Lost.O'Hearn made his Metropolitan Opera debut in 1960 with a production of Gaetano Donizetti's L'elisir d'amore, notable for the unique conceit of having Dr. Dulcamara enter by a descending balloon. O'Hearn designed 13 productions for the Met, usually working in conjunction with stage director Nathaniel Merrill.In addition to working on Broadway and at the Met, O'Hearn designed productions for The New York City Opera, New York Shakespeare Festival, New York City Center Theater, American Ballet Theatre, New York City Ballet, Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, Boston Opera Company, Chicago Lyric Opera, Houston Grand Opera, Ballet West, Los Angeles Civic Light Opera, and the San Francisco Ballet. He designed a production of Der Rosenkavalier for the Canadian Opera Company.In Europe O'Hearn designed productions for the Vienna Volksoper, Bregenzer Festspiele, Hamburg State Opera, as well as productions in Strasbourg, and Karlsruhe.From 1968 through 1988 O'Hearn was a professor at the New York Studio and Forum of Stage Design. Beginning in 1988 until his retirement in 2008, O'Hearn focused exclusively on teaching at the Jacobs School of Music at his alma mater, Indiana University.He died in Bloomington, Indiana on May 26, 2016.
James Prideaux (August 29, 1927 – November 18, 2015) was an American playwright known for The Last of Mrs. Lincoln.
Prideaux was born in 1927 as James Priddy in South Bend, Indiana, the son of Lloyd Priddy, a professional photographer, and Beulah Shirey.Wanting to become an actor, he adopted a new name and relocated to Chicago and then New York, but found his metier as a writer. He wrote for magazines such as Playboy and the Ladies Home Journal and joined the Barr-Wilder-Albee Playwrights Unit, a theater workshop.For The Last of Mrs Lincoln, he won the Drama Desk Award for Most Promising Playwright in 1973. He also wrote Postcards, Lemonade, and The Orphans.Moving to television, he wrote The Secret Storm. He became friends with Katharine Hepburn, who acted in many of his films, such as Mrs. Delafield Wants to Marry (1986), Laura Lansing Slept Here (1988), The Man Upstairs (1992). He received a Primetime Emmy nomination for Outstanding Television Movie for producing Mrs. Delafield Wants to Marry. In 1996, he published his memoirs Knowing Hepburn and Other Curious Experiences.He died of a stroke in West Hills, Los Angeles on November 18, 2015.
Robert Emhardt (July 24, 1914 – December 26, 1994) was an American character actor who worked on stage, in film, and on television. Emhardt was frequently cast as a villain, often a crooked businessman or corrupt politician.
William Horace Marshall (August 19, 1924 – June 11, 2003) was an American actor, director and opera singer. He played the title role in the 1972 blaxploitation classic Blacula and its sequel Scream Blacula Scream (1973), and appeared as the King of Cartoons on the 1980s television show Pee-wee's Playhouse and as Dr. Richard Daystrom on the Star Trek television series. He was 6‘5” (1.96 m) tall and was known for his bass voice.
Lina Abarbanell (January 3, 1879 – January 6, 1963) was an American soprano who performed in grand and light opera and musical comedy. She made her debut at fourteen as Adele in the operetta DIE FLEDERMAUS, at the Royal Opera House in Berlin. She was first introduced to American theatergoers in 1905 as the soubrette in the Josef Strauss operetta Frühlingsluft (Spring Air). Abarbanell made opera history later that year as Hänsel in The Met's debut production of Engelbert Humperdinck's Hänsel und Gretel. Abarbanell spent the following near thirty years performing on Broadway and at venues across America. After her husband's death in 1934, Abarbanell left the stage, but remained active over virtually the remainder of her life as a Broadway casting director, producer, and stage director.
Lili Damita (born Liliane Marie-Madeleine Carré; 10 July 1904 – 21 March 1994) was a French-American actress and singer who appeared in 33 films between 1922 and 1937.
Vernon Steele (born Arturo Romeo Antonietti; 18 September 1882 – 23 July 1955) was a Chilean-born British actor known for his appearances on the Broadway stage and in American films. He often played patrician young men in silent films. Steele was born in Santiago, Chile, the son of Daniel Antonietti, a professor of music, and his English wife, the former Grace Emma Bolton. Vernon Steele was christened Arturo Romeo Antonietti and his family eventually settled in London, England. His sister was the actress Hilda Anthony.