Bette Davis

Bette Davis. Photo: Corbis / Getty

(Born April 5, 1908, Lowell, MA; died October 6, 1989)

Often referred to as "The First Lady of the American Screen," Bette Davis was most recognized by her succinct, deep-timbered, slightly grave, no-nonsense voice. After several years of fighting through three serious illnesses and "learning to walk again twice," she returned to work on October 30, 1984, starring with Helen Hayes and John Mills in Agatha Christie's "Murder With Mirrors," a television movie which was broadcast early the following year on the CBS Television Network. On the first morning of filming in the fog-drenched, soggy gardens of a "stately home" in Hertfordshire, England, she proclaimed it "one of the really wonderful days of my life."

The actress, whose career spanned six decades, was born Ruth Elizabeth Davis April 5, 1908, in Lowell, Massachusetts, where her father, Harlow Davis, had a law practice. After the divorce of her parents in 1916, she and her sister Barbara and their mother, Ruth Favor Davis, who had taken up photography as a profession, lived in various New England communities. While in her freshmen year of high school, Bette abandoned plans to become a dancer in favor of an acting career. After performing in school productions, summer stock and with semi-professional groups, she went to New York for an interview with Eva Le Gallienne. The established actress found her lacking in seriousness and advised her to study in some other field. Undaunted, she enrolled -- and later won a scholarship to -- John Murray Anderson's acting school in New York.

From there, she joined George Cukor's stock company playing at the Lyceum Theatre in Rochester and made her professional debut in Broadway. After a season with the Provincetown Players in New York City and two Ibsen roles with a touring repertory company, Davis bowed on Broadway in the domestic comedy Broken Dishes. The following year, while appearing in a short-lived Broadway play Solid South, she made a screen test for Universal Pictures and was signed.

She arrived in Hollywood as a contract actress in December, 1930. She made her film debut in 1931 in Bad Sister. Her major achievements began, however, with the film version of Somerset Maugham's novel Of Human Bondage in 1934 and continued with her two Academy Award-winning roles as Best Actress -- for Dangerous in 1935 and Jezebel in 1938. She also earned eight additional Oscar nominations, for Dark Victory, The Letter, The Little Foxes, Now Voyager, Mr. Skeffington, All About Eve, The Star, and What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? She was also named Best Actress by the New York Film Critics for her role as Margo Channing in All About Eve, establishing the much imitated line "Fasten your seatbelts, it's going to be a bumpy night."

She developed a reputation for cajoling and even badgering Warner brothers into buying stories she believed in, such as Jezebel, The Man Who Came to Dinner, Now Voyager, and Dark Victory. "You know it took me three years to get Mr. Warner (Jack L. Warner) to make Dark Victory, " she recalled in 1984. "He said, 'Who wants to see a story about a girl who dies?' But he saw it was a great part and finally let me do it. I never thought it was sad. It was very hopeful, and I loved doing it." "I miss motion picture executives like Jack Warner, Louis B. Mayer and Darryl Zanuck," she added. "They were gamblers. They gave us all a chance. They gave me a career."

The actress's career had its "bumpy nights" -- and days -- but its highlights have outshone them. She sailed smoothly into the age of television, winning an Emmy Award for her performance in the drama Strangers: The Story of a Mother and Daughter. Other television films in which she starred are While Mama, The Disappearance of Aimee, The Dark Secret of Harvest Home, Family Reunion, and Right of Way, in addition to Murder with Mirrors. Davis never gave up her big screen roles, however. She is one of the very few stars in history who celebrated the 50th anniversary of the start of her film career by starring in a new movie. That was in the 1980 film The Watcher in the Woods, her 85th. For her luminous screen career, she received a Lifetime achievement Award from The Film Institute in 1977.

First published at The Kennedy Centre.

Graham Chapman biography

Graham Chapman. Photo courtesy Kera Tellyspotting

Graham Chapman was born on January 8, 1941 in Leicester, England while a German air raid was in progress. Graham's father was a chief police inspector and probably inspired the constables Graham often portrayed later in comedy sketches. Graham studied medicine in college and earned an M.D., but he practiced medicine for only a few years.

At Cambridge, he took part in a series of comedy revues and shortly after completing his medical studies at St. Bartholomew's Hospital, Graham realized what he wanted to do with his life. He wanted to perform comedy. In 1969, Graham along with University friends John Cleese, Eric Idle, Michael Palin, Trry Jones and American Terry Gilliam formed their own comedy group called Monty Python. Their BBC TV series Monty Python’s Flying Circus 91969), which aired a short while later was a an instant hit. Their often self-referential style of humor was delightfully original but completely accessible to most audiences in the UK.

Before the show appeared on public television in the US, many people assumed that Americans would find Monty Python much too British to consider it funny. But PBS never had a larger audience than when stations began to air it during the early 1970s. The classic routines have since become standard college humor.

So enduring was the Python humor that fans know entire sketches such as "The Pet Shop," "Nudge-Nudge, Wink-Wink," "Argument Clinic," and "Penguin on the Telly." Graham was a standout of the group with his tall, blond profile and his zany characters (one of the more memorable was Colonel Muriel Volestrangler, a vaguely military-type character who would stop a sketch because it was "much too silly").

Graham was openly gay long before it was socially acceptable, and was open about his long-term relationship with writer David Sherlock, who lived with him for 24 years. He even adopted and raised a teenage runaway named John Tomiczek. Graham played the title role in the movie Monty Python’s life of Brian (1979) as well as King Arthur in Monty Python and the Holy Grail (1975).By the late 1970s, most of the Python members were pursuing independent movie projects and the group was slowly fading into obscurity after their last successful effort Monty Python’s the Meaning of Life (1983). Also in 1983, Graham co-wrote and starred in the movie Yellowbeard (1983), which received negative reviews.

In 1988, Graham began working on another series when his health began to decline. A longtime alcoholic, who suffered liver damage before he stopped drinking for good in 1977, Graham began to have trouble concentrating at work. In November 1988, a routine visit to a dentist revealed a malignant tumor on one of his tonsils which was surgically removed. A visit to the doctor a few months later revealed another tumor on his spine which had to be removed which confined him to a wheelchair. During most of 1989, he underwent a series of surgical operations and radiation therapy but for every tumor that was found and removed, another would form either along his spine or in his throat. By July 1989, his cancer was declared terminal and that he would not survive the year, yet he continued to pursue treatments which included chemotherapy. In his wheelchair, he attended the September 1989 taping for the Monty Python's 20th anniversary special. But on October 1, he was hospitalized after a massive stroke which turned into a hemorrhage. He died at the Maidstone hospital at age 48 on October 4, 1989 from complications of the stroke as well as throat and spinal cancer.

- IMDb mini biography by: matt-282

Published at IMDb.

Laurence Olivier

Laurence Olivier. Photo: Allan Warren

The ashes of Laurence Olivier, Baron Olivier of Brighton, the greatest actor of his generation, are buried in the south transept of Westminster Abbey. He lies near the graves of actors David Garrick and Sir Henry Irving, in front of Shakespeare’s memorial. He died on 11th July 1989 at his home in Sussex but his ashes were not buried here until 16th September 1991, at a private ceremony. A memorial service was held in the Abbey on 20th October 1989 and items symbolic of his life and work were carried in procession by, among others, Douglas Fairbanks, Michael Caine and Peter O'Toole. The address was given by Sir Alec Guiness. A recording of Olivier reading an extract from Act 4 of Shakespeare's Henry V was played during the service, the first time the voice of the deceased had been heard during their memorial service in the Abbey.

His memorial stone was unveiled on 23rd September 1991 by Sir John Gielgud, who had given a memorable reading at the service in 1989. The stone is of Westmorland green slate and was cut by Ieuan Rees. 

The inscription reads:

1907 LAURENCE OLIVIER O.M. ACTOR 1989

He was born in Dorking, Surrey on 22nd May 1907, a son of the Reverend Gerard Kerr Olivier and his wife Agnes. While attending a choir school in London he appeared in a play aged ten and was seen by famous actress Ellen Terry who declared him to be a great actor even at that early age. In 1930 he married Jill Esmond and in the following year, while in a play on Broadway, he was talent spotted and invited to Hollywood. But his career did not take off at that time and he returned to London and with Gielgud's assistance built his reputation as a major classical actor. Returning to Hollywood at the end of the decade he finally had success there, beginning with Wuthering Heights. His first marriage was dissolved and he married Vivien Leigh in 1940 and the following year returned to England to join the Fleet Air Arm. He directed and starred in the morale boosting film Henry V and was knighted in 1947. In 1981 he was appointed to the Order of Merit.

First published at Westminster Abbey.