Alan Hale Sr. in The Seahawk

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Alan Hale Sr. (born Rufus Edward Mackahan, February 10, 1892-January 22, 1950) was an American movie actor and director, best known for his many supporting character roles, in particular as frequent sidekick of Errol Flynn. He was the father of lookalike actor Alan Hale Jr., best known as "the Skipper" on television's Gilligan's Island.

He was born in Washington, D.C.. His first film role was in the 1911 silent movie The Cowboy and the Lady. He played "Little John" in the 1922 film Robin Hood with Douglas Fairbanks and Wallace Beery, reprised the role sixteen years later in The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938) with Errol Flynn and Basil Rathbone, then played Little John again in Rogues of Sherwood Forest in 1950 with Bo Derek's future husband John Derek as Robin Hood, 28 years after his initial performance in the original Fairbanks classic (this might be the longest period for any actor to appear in the same role in movie history). His other films include It Happened One Night (1934) with Clark Gable, the sound version of Stella Dallas (1937), High, Wide, and Handsome (1937), also The Seahawk, and Captain Blood. He also appeared as the cantankerous Sgt. McGee in the 1943 movie This Is the Army. He directed eight movies during the 1920s and 1930s.

Hale's son Alan Hale, Jr. played the Skipper in Gilligan's Island on television, and the two blond and heavy-set actors closely resembled each other. Oddly, while the father had a long and extremely successful movie career as a supporting actor, his son might actually be seen by more people over time as the Skipper, his only major role aside from a few other television appearances.

Alan Hale died in Hollywood, California following a liver ailment and viral infection and was interred in the Forest Lawn Memorial Park Cemetery in Glendale, California.

Alan Ladd

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Alan Walbridge Ladd, Jr., the dashing actor who made waves in Hollywood for his portrayal as Raven in the 1942 smash hit “This Gun For Hire,” was born on September 3, 1913 in Hot Springs, Ark. to parents Ina Raleigh and Alan Ladd, Sr.

For Ladd, growing up as a young boy in Arkansas was difficult and his family faced a number of obstacles that could have easily sent the young and impressionable boy spiraling towards disaster.

His mother, an English immigrant who came to the United States at the age of 19, did her best to take care of him while his father traveled the country extensively, missing the majority of his son’s formative years. Sadly, tragedy struck the Ladd household for the first time when Ladd’s father unexpectedly passed away, leaving him and his mother financially strapped. Ladd was four years old at the time.

Shortly after his father’s death, Ladd and his mother began picking up the pieces, desperately trying to sort out their future. But tragedy would once again come knocking on the family’s door, when at the age of five, Ladd accidentally burned down his family’s apartment.

Dreaming of a better life, a malnourished and homeless Ladd and his mother moved to Oklahoma City. The family’s stay in the “Sooner” state didn’t last long, however, and soon after re-marrying a local housepainter, Ladd’s mother moved the family to California in search of more lucrative employment opportunities.

Ladd’s family continued their journey west, and in California Ladd was forced to find a job in order to help support his family. By the age of eight, he was picking fruit, delivering papers and sweeping floors simply to help his family make ends meet.

Fortunately, High school was a positive experience for Ladd who quickly got involved in sports and participated in theater. Despite his frail appearance, Ladd excelled in swimming and track, and in 1931, he decided to train for the 1932 Olympics. Training didn’t last long, however, as an injury would sideline him and keep him from participating in the Olympic trials.

Despite the stock market crash that affected the entire nation, the early to mid 1930’s were looking up for Ladd. Still a long way from entering the world of Hollywood, he worked a number of odd jobs including work as gas station attendant, hot dog vendor and a lifeguard.

When Ladd finally broke into the entertainment business he played small bit-parts in radio shows, local theatre productions and found himself working as a grip on the Warner Bros. Studio lot. Ladd’s streak of good luck continued and, in October of 1936, he married Marjorie Jane Harrold. A year later, in 1937, the couple gave birth to their first child, Alan Ladd, II.

Ladd’s early film work consisted of mostly minor parts, such as the role of a reporter in Orson Welles’ 1941 classic, “Citizen Kane.” Despite the initial hardships of getting noticed in the Hollywood community, the persistence of his agent, former screen actress Sue Carol, helped the actor land more important roles.

After divorcing his first wife, Ladd and Carol soon became romantically involved and the couple married in 1942. That same year the actor got his big break with Paramount Pictures’ “This Gun for Hire,” in which he played the paid killer, Raven.

The response to the film was so favorable that Ladd instantly became a star. His co-star in the film, Veronica Lake, matched his look so well that the studio teamed them for several other productions that were extremely popular with moviegoers. Among them were “The Glass Key,” “The Blue Dahlia” and “Saigon.”

Through the mid 1950s, Ladd remained with Paramount, making a number of films where he played dynamic, action-packed roles. The 1953 western film, “Shane,” gave him the opportunity to play an honest character troubled by conflicting emotions. Ladd’s magnetism and his beautiful portrayal of the character made the movie an instant classic.

After the success of “Shane,” Ladd continued making films, but on January 29, 1964, he suddenly and unexpectedly passed away at the age of 51.

Throughout his career, Ladd’s blonde good looks, charisma and stoic presence were apparent in his films and it is this magnetism that will forever keep him in the memory of the audiences and millions of adoring fans around the world who loved him.

Audie Murphy

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The son of poor Texas sharecroppers, Audie Murphy became a national hero during World War II as the most decorated combat soldier of the war. Among his 33 awards was the Congressional Medal of Honor, the highest award for bravery that a soldier can receive. In addition, he was also decorated for bravery by the governments of France and Belgium, and was credited with killing over 240 German soldiers and wounding and capturing many more.

Murphy had tried to enlist in the army in his native Texas, but was rejected because he was too young. When he became old enough, he tried again and was accepted this time. After undergoing basic military training, he was sent to Europe, where he fought in nine major campaigns over three years and rose from the rank of private to a battlefield commission as a second lieutenant. Part of Murphy's appeal to many people was that he didn't fit the "image" most had of a war hero. He was a slight, almost fragile-looking, shy and soft-spoken young man, whose boyish appearance (something he never lost throughout his life; he always looked at least 15 years younger than he actually was) often shocked people when they found out that, for example, during one battle he leaped on top of a burning tank--which was loaded with fuel and ammunition and could have exploded at any second--and used its machine gun to hold off waves of attacking German troops, killing dozens of them and saving his unit from certain destruction and the entire line from being overrun.

In September 1945 Murphy was released from active duty and assigned to inactive status. His story caught the interest of superstar James Cagney, who invited Murphy to Hollywood. Cagney Productions paid for acting and dancing lessons but was reluctantly forced to admit that Murphy--at least at that point in his career--didn't have what it took to become a movie star. For the next several years he struggled to make it as an actor, but jobs were few and far between and mostly bit parts. He finally got a lead role in Bad Boy (1949), and starred in the trouble-plagued production of MGM's The Red Badge of Courage (1951), directed by John Huston. While it's now considered a minor classic, the politics behind the production sparked an irreparable fissure within the ranks of the studio's upper management.

Murphy proved adequate as an actor, but the film, with virtually no female presence (or appeal), bombed badly at the box office. Murphy was eventually signed by Universal-International Pictures, which put him in a string of modestly budgeted westerns, a genre that suited his easygoing image and Texas drawl. He starred in the film version of his autobiography, To Hell and Back (1955), which was a huge hit, setting a box-office record for Universal that wasn't broken for 20 years (it was finally surpassed by Jaws (1975)). One of his better pictures was Night Passage (1957), a western in which he played the kid brother of James Stewart. He worked for Huston again on The Unforgiven (1960). Meanwhile, the studio system that Murphy grew into as an actor crumbled. Universal dumped its "International" tag in 1962 and was bought by MCA, which turned the studio's focus on the more lucrative television industry. It dropped its roster of contract players and hired actors on a per-picture basis only. Murphy, among others, was out.

In addition to his acting career--he made a total of 44 films--Murphy was also a successful rancher and businessman. He bred and raised thoroughbred horses and owned several ranches in Texas, Arizona and California. He was also a songwriter, and penned hits for such singers as Dean Martin, Eddy Arnold, Charley Pride and many others.

His postwar life wasn't all roses, however. He suffered from what is now called Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) but was then called "combat fatigue", and was known to have a hair-trigger temper. He woke up screaming at night and slept with a loaded .45 automatic nearby. He was acquitted of attempted murder charges brought about by injuries he inflicted on a man in a bar fight, and director Don Siegel said in an interview that Murphy often carried a pistol on the set of The Gun Runners (1958) and many of the cast and crew were afraid of him.

He had a short-lived and turbulent marriage to actress Wanda Hendrix, and in the 1960s his increasing bouts of insomnia and depression resulted in his becoming addicted to a particularly powerful sleeping pill called Placidyl, an addiction he eventually broke. He ran into a streak of bad financial luck and was forced to declare bankruptcy in 1968. Admirably, he campaigned vigorously for the government to spend more time and money on taking care of returning Vietnam War veterans, as he more than most others knew exactly what kinds of problems they were going to have.

On May 18, 1971, Murphy was aboard a private plane on his way to a business meeting when it ran into thick fog near Roanoke, VA, and crashed into the side of a mountain, killing all six aboard. He was buried with full military honors in Arlington National Cemetery. According to cemetery records, the only gravesite visited by more people than Murphy's is that of former President John F. Kennedy.

Basil Rathbone authentic signature mounted with picture from Robin Hood

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Basil Rathbone was born in Johannesburg, South Africa, in 1892, but 3 years later, his family was forced to flee South Africa because his father was accused by the Boers of being a British spy at a time when Dutch-British conflicts were leading to the Boer War. The Rathbones escaped to England, where Basil and his two younger siblings, Beatrice and John, were raised by their mother Anna Barbara, a violinist, and their father Edgar Philip, a mining engineer. From 1906 to 1910, Rathbone attended Repton School, where he was more interested in sports than studies, but discovered his interest in the theater. After graduation, he wished to pursue acting as a profession, but his father disapproved and suggested that his son try working in business for a year, hoping his son would forget about acting. Rathbone accepted his father's suggestion and worked as a clerk for an insurance company--for exactly one year. Then he contacted his cousin Frank Benson, an actor managing a Shakespearean troupe in Stratford-on-Avon.

Rathbone was hired as an actor on the condition that he work his way through the ranks, which he did quite rapidly. Starting in bit parts in 1911, he was playing juvenile leads within two years. In 1915 his career was interrupted by the First World War. During his military service, Rathbone became a second lieutenant in the Liverpool Scottish, 2nd Battalion, working in intelligence, and received the Military Cross for bravery. In 1919, released from military service, he returned to Stratford-on-Avon and continued with Shakespeare but after a year moved onto the London stage. The year after that he made his first appearance on Broadway and his film debut in the silent film Innocent (1921).

For the remainder of the decade, Rathbone alternated between the London and New York stage and occasional appearances in films. In 1929 he co-wrote and starred as the title character in a short-running Broadway play called "Judas". Soon afterwards, Rathbone abandoned his first love, the theater, for a film career. During the 1920s, his roles had evolved from the romantic lead to the suave lady-killer to the sinister villain (usually wielding a sword), and Hollywood put him to good use during the 1930s in numerous costume romps, including Captain Blood (1935), The Personal History, Adventures, Experience, and Observation of David Copprfield, the Younger (1935), A Tale of Two Cities (1935), Anna Karenina (1935), and The Last Days of Pompeii (1935), The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938), Tower of London (1939), The Mark of Zorro (1940), and others. Rathbone earned two Oscar nominations for Best Supporting Actor as Tybalt in Romeo and Juliet (1936) and as King Louis XI in If I Were King (1938).

However, it was in 1939 that Rathbone played his best-known and most popular character, Sherlock Holmes, with Nigel Bruce as Dr. Watson, first in The Hound of the Baskervilles (1939) and then in The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (1939), which were followed by 12 more films and numerous radio broadcasts over the next seven years.

Feeling that his identification with the character was killing his film career, Rathbone went back to New York and the stage in 1946. The next year he won a Tony Award for his portrayal of Dr. Sloper in the Broadway play "The Heiress," but afterwards found little rewarding stage work. Nevertheless, during the last two decades of his life, Rathbone was a very busy actor, appearing on numerous television shows, primarily drama, variety, and game shows; in occasional films, such as Casanova's Big Night (1954), The Court Jester (1955), Tales of Terror (1962), and The Comedy of Terrors (1964); and in his own one-man show, "An Evening with Basil Rathbone", with which he toured the U.S.

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Son Of Frankenstein with Basil Rathbone as Dr. Frakenstein

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He was born Philip St. John Basil Rathbone in Johannesburg, South Africa, to English parents Edgar Philip Rathbone and Anna Barbara née George, of the Liverpool Rathbone family. He had two younger siblings, Beatrice and John. The Rathbones fled to England when Basil was three years old, after his father was accused by the Boers of being a British spy near the onset of the Second Boer War at the end of the 1890s.

Basil was educated at Repton School and was engaged with the Liverpool and Globe Insurance Companies. In 1916, he enlisted for the duration of The Great War, joining the London Scottish Regiment[1] as a Private, serving alongside Claude Rains, Herbert Marshall and Ronald Colman. He later transferred with a commission as a Lieutenant to the Liverpool Scottish. In September 1918, he was awarded the Military Cross.

During the 1920s, Rathbone appeared regularly in Shakespearean and other roles on the English stage. He began to travel and appeared at the Cort Theatre, New York in October 1923, and toured in the United States in 1925, appearing in San Francisco in May and the Lyceum Theatre, New York in October. He was in the US again in 1927 and 1930, and in 1931 when he appeared on stage with Ethel Barrymore. He continued his stage career in England, returning to the US late in 1934 where he appeared with Katharine Cornell in several plays.

He commenced his film career in 1925 in The Masked Bride, appeared in a few silent movies, and played the detective Philo Vance in the 1930 movie The Bishop Murder Case, based on the best-selling novel. Like George Sanders and Vincent Price after him, Rathbone made a name for himself in the 1930s by playing suave villains in costume dramas and swashbucklers, including David Copperfield (1935) as the abusive stepfather Mr. Murdstone; Anna Karenina (1935) as her distant husband, Karenin; The Last Days of Pompeii (1935) portraying Pontius Pilate; Captain Blood (1935); A Tale of Two Cities (1935), as the Marquis St. Evremonde; The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938) playing his best remembered villain, Sir Guy of Gisbourne; The Adventures of Marco Polo (1938); and The Mark of Zorro (1940) as Captain Esteban Pasquale. He also appeared in several early horror films; Tower of London (1939) and Son of Frankenstein (1939), portraying the dedicated surgeon Baron Wolf Frankenstein, son of the monster's creator.

He was admired for his athletic cinema swordsmanship (he listed fencing among his favourite recreations). He fought and lost to Errol Flynn in a duel on the beach in Captain Blood and in an elaborate fight sequence in The Adventures of Robin Hood. He was involved in noteworthy sword fights in Tower of London; The Mark of Zorro and The Court Jester (1956). Despite his real-life skill, Rathbone only won once onscreen, in Romeo and Juliet (1936).

Rathbone earned Academy Award nominations for Best Actor in a Supporting Role for his performances as Tybalt in Romeo and Juliet (1936), and as King Louis XI in If I Were King (1938). In The Dawn Patrol (1938), he played one of his few heroic roles in the 1930s, as a Royal Flying Corps (RFC) squadron commander brought to the brink of a nervous breakdown by the strain and guilt of sending his battle-weary pilots off to near-certain death in the skies of 1915 France. Errol Flynn, Rathbone's perennial foe, starred in the film as his successor when Rathbone's character is promoted. Despite his film success, Rathbone always insisted that he wished to be remembered for his stage career. He said that his favorite role was that of Romeo.

In the 1950s, Rathbone excelled in two spoofs of his earlier swashbuckling villains; Casanova's Big Night (1954) opposite Bob Hope and The Court Jester (1956), with Danny Kaye. He appeared frequently on TV game shows, and continued to appear in major motion pictures, including the Humphrey Bogart comedy We're No Angels (1955) and John Ford's political drama The Last Hurrah (1958).

Rathbone also appeared on Broadway numerous times. In 1948, he won a Tony Award for Best Actor for his performance as the unyielding Dr. Austin Sloper in the original production of The Heiress, which featured Wendy Hiller as his timid, spinster daughter. He also received accolades for his performance in Archibald Macleish's J.B., a modernization of the Biblical trials of Job.

Through the 1950s and 1960s, he continued to appear in several dignified anthology programs on television. To support his second wife's lavish tastes, he also took roles in films of far lesser quality, such as The Black Sleep (1956), Queen of Blood (1966), Ghost in the Invisible Bikini (1966, with comic Harvey Lembeck joking, "That guy looks like Sherlock Holmes"), Hillbillys in a Haunted House (1967, also featuring Lon Chaney Jr.), and his last film, a low-budget, Mexican horror film called Autopsy of a Ghost (1968).

He is also known for his spoken word recordings, including his interpretation of Clement C. Moore's "The Night Before Christmas". Rathbone's readings of the stories and poems of Edgar Allan Poe are collected together with readings by Vincent Price in Caedmon Audio's The Edgar Allan Poe Audio Collection on CD. Rathbone also made many other recordings, of everything from a dramatized version of Oliver Twist, to a recording of Prokofiev's Peter and the Wolf (with Leopold Stokowski conducting), to a dramatized version of Charles Dickens's a Christmas Carol.

On television he appeared in two musical versions of Dickens's A Christmas Carol, one in 1954, in which he played Marley's Ghost opposite Fredric March's Scrooge, and the original 1956 live-action version of The Stingiest Man in Town, in which he starred as a singing Ebenezer Scrooge.

Vincent Price and Rathbone appeared together, along with Boris Karloff, in Tower of London (1939) and Comedy of Terrors (1964). Rathbone also appeared with Price in the final segment of Roger Corman's 1962 anthology film Tales of Terror, a loose dramatization of Poe's "Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar."

Basil Rathbone has three stars on the Hollywood Walk of Fame; one for motion pictures at 6549 Hollywood Boulevard; one for radio at 6300 Hollywood Boulevard; and one for television at 6915 Hollywood Boulevard in Hollywood.

Rathbone married actress Ethel Marion Foreman in 1914. They had one son, Rodion Rathbone (1915-1996), who had a brief Hollywood career under the name John Rodion. The couple divorced in 1926. Rathbone was involved briefly with actress Eva Le Gallienne. In 1927, he married writer Ouida Bergere. Basil and his second wife adopted a daughter, Cynthia Rathbone.

Rathbone is a direct descendant of Major Henry Rathbone who with his fiancee Clara Harris were in the Presidential Box as guests of President and Mrs. Lincoln when the President was assassinated.

Be sure to see our Movie Theme and click on The Adventure of Robin Hood, autograph of Basil Rathbone signed as "Sir Guy"