In The Spotlight Redux

[mongoII]

****100 STARS*****100 STARS*****100 STARS*****

Celebrating 100 stars featured 'In the Spotlight' on TCM and partially on SSO.

Stars are listed in the order each first appeared on the 'In the Spotlight' thread from #1 thru #100:

*ZACHARY SCOTT
*JESSIE RALPH
*STEVE COCHRAN
*ANNE REVERE
*WILLIAM BENDIX
*IRIS ADRIAN
*DAN DURYEA
*LIZABETH SCOTT
*RICHARD CONTE
*ANN BLYTH
*DANA ANDREWS
*ESTHER HOWARD
*JEFF CHANDLER
*MARIE WINDSOR
*LEO GORCEY
*VIRGINIA GREY
*MANTAN MORELAND
*ELLA RAINES
*BRUCE BENNETT
*KATY JURADO
*ELISHA COOK JR.
*BARBARA NICHOLS
*ROBERT RYAN
*HOPE EMERSON
*JON HALL
*JOAN DAVIS
*VIC MORROW
*GLADYS GEORGE
*ALAN CURTIS
*MAMIE VAN DOREN
*SABU
*MERCEDES McCAMBRIDGE
*TOM NEAL
*LOUISE BEAVERS
*SAL MINEO
*FLORA ROBSON
*EDWARD ARNOLD
*CARMEN MIRANDA
*JOHN PAYNE
*ADELE JERGENS
*RONDO HATTON
*ELSA LANCHESTER
*J. CARROLL NAISH
*JUDY CONOVA
*GILBERT ROLAND
*LINDA DARNELL
*EDMOND O'BRIEN
*AUDREY TOTTER
*AUDIE MURPHY
*PATSY KELLY
*JOHNNY WEISSMULLER
*MARIA OUSPENSKAYA
*BOBBY DRISCOLL
*UNA O'CONNOR
*CORNEL WILDE
*FRANCES FARMER
*ARTHUR KENNEDY
*VIRGINIA O'BRIEN
*KEYE LUKE
*ANN DVORAK
*MARTIN BALSAM
*LUCILE WATSON
*RICHARD CARLSON
*CAROLE LANDIS
*RALPH MEEKER
*DIVINE
*JAN STERLING
*WILLIAM DEMAREST
*MARIA MONTEZ
*ALDO RAY
*NINA FOCH
*FRANK MORGAN
*CORAL BROWNE
*ALAN HALE
*GERALDINE PAGE
*ROBERT CUMMINGS
*ANGELA LANSBURY
*DUB TAYLOR
*TERRY MOORE
*MACDONALD CAREY
*SANDRA DEE
*GRANT WILLIAMS
*DOROTHY MALONE
*GUY MADISON
*NINA MAE McKINNEY
*DENNIS MORGAN
*VERA MILES
*BRIAN DONLEVY
*ANNETTE FUNICELLO
*STERLING HAYDEN
*CAROLYN JONES
*VICTOR MATURE
*FAY BAINTER
*JOHN GAVIN
*BETTY FIELD
*NED SPARKS
*CATHY O'DONNELL
*BRUCE CABOT
*RUBY KEELER
*MONTY WOOLLEY


Visit the thread at your leisure and enjoy your favorites with some amazing photographs.

Many thanks to those members who have supported and enjoyed the thread.
Hopefully...here's to another 100 stars who usually don't get the credit they deserve.

Joe aka Mongo

[knitwit45]

Thanks, Joe, for so much hard work. Your spotlights are the best, highlighting some great "characters" that otherwise would slip right past me.

Here's to the greatest character yet, and we're waiting for a spotlight to shine on.....MONGO JOE!!!!

Nancy

[cinemalover]

Congratualations, Mongo,
You maintain a high quality and valuable thread. I'm glad I don't have to go to the other side to keep up on it. Keep up the stellar work!

[feaito]

Amazing work Joe. Thanks!!

[jdb1]

Thanks for your continued good work, Mongoe Joe. Your entries are always fascinating and fun to read.

Now - after reviewing that long, long list -- just think of all the people you haven't yet written about! It seems we will never run out of things to discuss when it comes to Classic Hollywood.

[Best regards from Judith]

[mongoII]

Many thanks, Nancy, Chris, Fernando, and Judith. I'm glad to know that you've been enjoying 'In the Spotlight'. I appreciate it.

[moira finnie]

Congratulations, Mongo. I hope that you might have at least 100 more profiles in your files. Your thread is indeed a bright spot on this and the TCM board. If I could only give you a dollar for every smile of recognition or new fact that I've learned from you, you'd be at least a millionaire. Yeah, if only...but, in any case, many thanks for all the fun your contributions have given me over the years...or, as a mutual movie friend might put it...

"My mother thanks you, my father thanks you, and I thank you!"

[mrsl]

Mongo:

I know I thanked you on the old board, but I don't think I ever carried it over to here. I'm sorry about that because you are definitely one of the members who contribute more and more every time you post. So. . . thank you again, and please keep up the great work!!!!

Anne

[mongoII]

As always, I thank you Moira. The sketch of Cagney, one of my favorite people, is a gem. I have always appreciated your support throughout the years, as I appreciated your contributions.


And thanks to you dear Anne. I recall your appreciation of my work on the TCM site and always felt that you were behind me.
I enjoy your variety of posts, especially when you are determined to make a point of a subject. Always got a kick when you felt decorum was necessary on the old boards.

[mongoII]

In the Spotlight: ISABEL JEWELL

The dependable actress was born July 19, 1907 in Shoshoni, Fremont County, Wyoming.
Raised on a ranch, Jewell would only rarely be called upon to play a "Western" type during her career.

Jewell was a Broadway actress who achieved immediate success and glowing critical reviews in two productions, "Up Pops the Devil" (1930) and "Blessed Event" (1932).
She was brought to Hollywood for the film version of "Blessed Event", by Warner Brothers.
A petite 4' 11" tall and with platinum blonde hair, Jewell appeared in a variety of supporting roles during the early 1930s and was typecast as a gum-chewing, brassy urban blonde, or as an empty-headed gun moll.
She played stereotypical gangster's women in such films as "Manhattan Melodrama" (1934) and "Marked Woman" (1937).

Glamour shot of Isabel Jewell


Jewell's three best remembered film performances were in "A Tale of Two Cities" (1935), where she was atypically cast as the pathetic seamstress who is sentenced to the guillotine along with Ronald Colman; Capra's "Lost Horizon" (1937), as the consumptive prostitute who finds a new lease on life when she is whisked away to the land of Shangri-La, and "Gone with the Wind" (1939), where she appears briefly as "poor white trash" Emmy Slattery.







Isabel Jewell with Ronald Colman doomed to the guillotine
in "A Tale of Two Cities."



Jewell as Gloria Stone in "Lost Horizon" (1937).


Celebrating a birthday on the set of "Lost Horizon." (left to right, Ronald Colman, Jane Wyatt, Frank Capra, and Isabel Jewell.)


Jewell (below) during a make-up test as 'poor white trash' Emmy Slattery in "Gone With the Wind"


She also appeared in, "Bombshell", "Evelyn Prentice", "Times Square Lady", "Dancing Feet", "Valiant Is the Word for Carrie" with Gladys George, and the "The Crowd Roars".


Jewell as Maria The Fortune-Teller in "The Leopard Man" (1943)


Jewell as Frances Fallon in "The Seventh Victim" (1943).

Her subsequent films included "Northwest Passage", "High Sierra", and the low budget "The Leopard Man", "Born to Kill" good noir, "The Bishop's Wife", "The Snake Pit", "Man in the Attic", etc.




By the end of the 1940s her roles had reduced in significance to the degree that her performances were often uncredited.

In 1946, Isabel finally got to show off the riding skills she'd accumulated in her youth in Wyoming when she was cast as female gunslinger Belle Starr in "Badman's Territory". Denied starring roles because of her height (she was under five feet), Isabel Jewell worked as a supporting player in films until the '50s and in television until the '60s.

In the mid-to late 1930s Ms. Jewell would, on occasion, go out to nightclubs with William Hopper (son of infamous gossip columnist Hedda Hopper. She was married and divorced twice to writer Owen Crump, and actor Paul Marion.

By the end of her career she had appeared in more than one hundred films, between 1930 and 1971. She also did various TV shows.

She died April 5, 1972, age 64 in Hollywood, California, from undisclosed causes.

Isabel Jewell has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame for her contribution to motion pictures.

[Sue Sue Applegate]

Mongo,

You've made such a great contribution to TCM and SSO. Even though I haven't been able to read all your posts, I've enjoyed everyone I've ever read. They are informative, positive, and entertaining. I find myself looking for certain posts you've made whenever I have a question about someone. And one day, I hope to visit them all!

[mongoII]

Christy, I appreciate your interest in my threads, and I thank you.

The boards are all about movies and movie stars, and my aim was/is to practice that format since
I'm an ultimate movie bug.

I hope that you continue to enjoy all the good stuff on SSO.

***************************
Bebop a rebop rhubarb pie

[mongoII]

In the Spotlight: CANADA LEE

Dynamic actor Canada Lee, born Lionel Cornelius Canegata, on March 3, 1907 was an American actor who pioneered roles for African Americans, a champion of civil rights in the 1930s and '40s.

The son of West Indian parents in New York City, Lee tried his hand at many things. He was a concert violinist at the age of twelve. In his early teens, he ran away from home to become a professional jockey, and after growing too large to ride, he decided to try boxing. Before one match an announcer, stumbling over Lionel’s surname, accidentally christened him ‘Canada Lee.’ Lee adopted the mistake as his own, and he quickly rose through the ranks for a chance and file, positioning himself for a shot at the Welterweight title.

Unfortunately a glancing blow to his right eye detached his retina and ended his career as a boxer. Canada left the ring and began to conduct a fifteen-piece orchestra at a nightclub in Harlem, The Jitterbug, which he also managed. Neither the band nor the nightclub could survive the Great Depression; by the mid-30s, Lee was impoverished.

Lee's acting career began by accident. While at a YMCA to apply for a job as a laborer, Lee stumbled upon an audition in progress and was invited to audition. He earned a supporting role in Frank Wilson’s 1934 production of "Brother Moses", which played to a crowd of ten thousand in Central Park. Lee, who received favorable reviews, settled on acting as a new career.

His first major role came in Orson Welles's so-called "voodoo" Macbeth (1936) at the American Negro Theater.
After two more years of work in black theater Lee reunited with Welles for the stage production of Richard Wright's "Native Son". The 1941 production was a spectacular hit, both for Welles and for Lee, whom the The New York Times called "the greatest Negro actor of his era and one of the finest actors in the country."

During World War II, Lee continued to act in plays and in films. He also participated in another milestone as Bosola in a Broadway staging of John Webster's "The Duchess of Malfi". This was one of the first occasions on which a black actor portrayed a white character (Lee wore whiteface).

Lee made his screen debut in "Keep Punching" (1939), a film about boxing. Although he was in too few films, perhaps his most famous role was in Alfred Hitchcock's "Lifeboat" (1944), in which he played a sailor. Lee insisted on changing his dialogue, which had been a semi-comical dialect typical of racist films.

Canada Lee as Joe in "Lifeboat" (1944).


Lee in scenes from "Lifeboat" with William Bendix,
Tallulah Bankhead, John Hodiak, Henry Hull, Walter Slezak,
Mary Anderson, and Hume Cronyn.




In 1947, he played a supporting role in Robert Rossen's "Body and Soul" opposite John Garfield, another boxing picture.


The New York Times Review (November 10, 1947):
"It is Canada Lee, however, who brings to focus the horrible pathos of the cruelly exploited prizefighter. As a Negro ex-champ who is meanly shoved aside, until one night he finally goes berserk and dies slugging in a deserted ring, he shows through great dignity and reticence the full measure of his inarticulate scorn for the greed of shrewder men who have enslaved him, sapped his strength and then tossed him out to die. The inclusion of this portrait is one of the finer things about this film."


In 1949, he took another supporting role in "Lost Boundaries", a drama about passing for white.

Although Canada Lee was the star of the film, his name nor image does not appear on the VHS cover.
The New York Times review (January 24, 1952):

"In this illumination, director Zoltan Korda depends upon the light that is generated in his characters, and no better assist can be imagined than that contributed by Canada Lee. Mr. Lee, the American actor, does a profoundly moving job in capturing the dignity, the fervor and the humility of the old Zulu priest, especially when he is shaken by disillusion and despair. He even conveys the impression of being indigenous to the environment in which he plays."

Along with his varied and successful stage and screen careers, Lee became the first African-American DJ on a major radio station hosting "The Canada Lee Show", and would continue a successful and lengthy radio career as both actor and narrator.

He appeared at numerous USO events; he won an award from the United States Recruiting Office and another from the Treasury Department for his help in selling war bonds. These sentiments would carry on throughout his life, culminating in his early firsthand account of apartheid in South Africa.

By the late 1940s, the rising tide of anti-Communism had made many of his earlier contacts politically dangerous.
The FBI offered to clear Lee’s name if he would publicly call Paul Robeson a Communist. Lee refused and responded by saying, “All you’re trying to do is split my race.”

At the height of the Hollywood blacklist, Lee managed to find work in 1950 as the star of a British film "Cry, The Beloved Country", for which both he and Sidney Poitier were smuggled into South Africa as indentured servants, in order play their roles as African ministers. The film’s message of universal brotherhood stands as Lee's final work towards this aim; after it, the blacklist prevented him from getting work.

Lee’s chronic high blood pressure led to kidney failure and he died of an excruciating blood poisoning known as uremia on May 5, 1952 at age 45 (the same month and year as his friend John Garfield). He was married with one child, actor Carl Lee who died in 1986 at age 59.
Following Canada's death, his name remained overlooked as history marched forward into the era of Civil Rights.

He was a self-trained actor who used his musical training and his background as a jockey and prize fighter, to inform the movement and physicality of his performances. His deep, melodious voice was also a great asset.
He died shortly before he was scheduled to appear before the House Un-American Activities Committee.

The unfortunate fact however is that Canada Lee today, has largely been forgotten by the general public.

[moira finnie]

Hi Mongo,
This is a wonderful portrait of a fine, forgotten actor. I have emailed a nephew of mine this terrific profile. I watched Lifeboat with him during the Holidays last year, and though he's only a teenager, he became completely absorbed in the wonderful Steinbeck story directed by Hitchcock and featuring Mr. Lee and his fellow actors in this very moving and absorbing movie. He was particularly touched by Canada Lee's character and his truthful acting. I'd tried to fill him in on his background with Welles and Garfield, but your piece does it far better. Thank you very much.

[melwalton]

Hi Mongo. I'd like to add my thanks. I just started reading your spotlight posts. They're wonderful. What a lot of work!. You , most certainly, deserve our thanks. Lucky me, I have all those biogs to read and all those pictures. ...mel