J. Lee Thompson
Born August 1, 1914
Died August 30, 2002
Underappreciated Brit. Born in Bristol John Lee Thompson attended Dover College and became a bantamweight boxer after leaving school before turning his fists to the stage. He found he could write plays and had two performed in the West End before he was 20. The first was bought by a film studio and he was asked to write the screenplay. When the second was snapped up, he was asked to direct. His clipped British accent also gave him work as a dialogue coach on Alfred Hitchcock films including Jamaica Inn (1939). As with many of his generation, his career was interrupted by the Second World War and he became a tailgunner in a B-29. After the war he directed Murder Without Crime (1950) and wrote No Place For Jennifer (1950). In February 1954, The Weak And The Wicked which starred Glynis Johns and Diana Dors was released. It was written and directed by Thompson and was the true story of Joan Henry who became his second wife. The film was based on the book Who Lie In Gaol written by Henry. During the filming, she told Dors that she was writing another book about a condemned woman’s last days in the death cell. That film, supposedly based on the last days of Ruth Ellis, was Yield To The Night (1956) and it allowed Diana Dors to be taken seriously as a dramatic actress, although critic Leslie Halliwell described it as a “gloomy melodrama”. It was the only British film that year at the Cannes Film Festival. The Weak And The Wicked was a smash hit and set Thompson off on the journey that was to peak with The Guns Of Navarone (1961). His other films included: For Better, For Worse (1954), An Alligator Named Daisy (1955), Woman In A Dressing Gown (1957), The Good Companions (1957), No Trees In The Street (1958), Ice-Cold In Alex (1958) (for the film Sir John Mills was required to down a glass of beer in one gulp. At first the drink was ginger ale but Thompson decided that it did not look right and so a real pint of lager was substituted. Unfortunately, it took eight takes to get the scene right by which time Mills was in his own words “drunk as a Lord”. He spent the rest of the day knocking over scenery and props), Tiger Bay (1959) and North West Frontier (1959), about an Allied plan to destroy German artillery. Alexander McKendrick was slated to direct the film but was sacked for “creative differences” 10 days before filming was due to begin. The film starred Gregory Peck, Anthony Quinn, David Niven, Anthony Quayle, Stanley Baker and Richard Harris. During shooting the crew managed to accidentally sink a Greek Navy ship and the captain was court-martialled. Thompson appeared as a witness for the captain and said “that it was entirely my fault. It was quite a debacle.” The film was almost destroyed by the weather when the rain washed away much of the plaster set. It took three weeks to rebuild. The film was nominated for seven Academy Awards including Best Picture and Best Director but only won one for Best Visual Effects. The Guns Of Navarone brought him to the attention of Hollywood and he was given Cape Fear (1962). He stayed in Hollywood where he worked on Taras Bulba (1962), Kings Of The Sun (1963), What A Way To Go! (1964), Return From The Ashes (1965), Eye Of The Devil (1967), Mackenna’s Gold (1969), Before Winter Comes (1969), Conquest Of The Planet Of The Apes (1972), Battle For The Planet Of The Apes (1973), Huckleberry Finn (1974), The Greek Tycoon (1978), Happy Birthday To Me (1981), 10 To Midnight (1983), The Evil That Men Do (1984), King Solomon’s Mines (1985), Murphy’s Law (1986), Death Wish 4: The Crackdown (1987), Messenger Of Death (1988) and Kinjite: Forbidden Subjects (1989). Thompson never retired but found work difficult to come by because of his age. He was the microphone boom operator on the 1998 slasher film Bride Of Chucky. J. Lee Thompson was married four times: Lucille Kelly, Joan Henry, Florence known as ‘Bill’ Bailey, by whom he had two children Lesley and Peter (who predeceased him), and finally Penny.
CAUSE: Thompson died in Sooke, British Columbia, Canada, of congestive heart failure. He was 88.
Marshall Thompson
Born November 27, 1925
Died May 18, 1992
Nice TV vet. Born in Peoria, Illinois, James Marshall Thompson was known to millions of television viewers as Dr Marsh Tracy in the children’s serial Daktari (Swahili for doctor) from January 11, 1966 until January 15, 1969. His nice guy persona on the show was no act – his co-stars called him “the original boy scout”. In fact it was as nice guys that Thompson was almost nearly always cast. He made his film début in Henry Aldrich, Boy Scout (1944) playing, of all things, a boy scout patrol leader. His other films included: The Purple Heart (1944) as a crewman of the Mrs Murphy, Reckless Age (1944) as Roy Connors, Blonde Fever (1944) as Freddie Bilson, The Clock (1945) as Bill, The Valley Of Decision (1945) as Ted Scott, Twice Blessed (1945) as Jimmy, They Were Expendable (1945) as Ensign Snake Gardner, The Cockeyed Miracle (1946) as Jim Griggs, Bad Bascomb (1946) as Jimmy Holden, The Show-Off (1946) as Joe Fisher, The Secret Heart (1946) as Brandon Reynolds, Gallant Bess (1947) as Tex Barton, The Romance Of Rosy Ridge (1947) as Ben Mac Bean, B.F.’s Daughter (1948) as the sailor, Homecoming (1948) as Staff Sergeant ‘Mac’ McKeen, Words And Music (1948) as Herbert Fields, Command Decision (1948) as Captain George Washington Bellpepper Lee, Roseanna McCoy (1949) as Tolbert McCoy, Battleground (1949) as Private Jim Layton, the narrator in Stars In My Crown (1950), Mystery Street (1950) as Henry Shanway, Devil’s Doorway (1950) as Rod MacDougall, Dial 1119 (1950) as Gunther Wyckoff, The Tall Target (1951) as Lance Beaufort, The Basketball Fix (1951) as Johnny Long, My Six Convicts (1952) as Blivens Scott, The Rose Bowl Story (1952) as Steve Davis, The Caddy (1953) as Bruce Reeber, Port Of Hell (1954) as Marshall ‘Marsh’ Walker, Crashout (1955) as Billy Lang, Cult Of The Cobra (1955) as Tom Markel, To Hell And Back (1955) as Johnson, Battle Taxi (1955) as 2nd Lieutenant Tim Vernon, Good Morning, Miss Dove (1955) as Wilfred Banning Pendleton III, Down Liberty Road (1957), Lure Of The Swamp (1957) as Simon Lewt, La Grande Caccia (1957) as Marsh Connors, Fiend Without A Face as Major Jeff Cummings, The Secret Man (1958) as Dr Cliff Mitchell, It! The Terror From Beyond Space (1958) as Colonel Edward Carruthers, First Man Into Space as Commander Charles Ernest ‘Chuck’ Prescott, Flight Of The Lost Balloon (1962) as Doctor Farady, No Man Is An Island (1962) as Jonn Sonnenberg, A Yank In Vietnam (1964) as Major Benson, The Mighty Jungle (1964) as Marsh Connors, Clarence, The Cross-Eyed Lion (1965) as Doctor Marsh Tracy, the shaving man in Zebra In The Kitchen (1965), Around The World Under The Sea (1966) as Dr Orin Hillyard, To The Shores Of Hell (1966) as Major Greg Donahue, George (1972) as Jim Paulsen which spawned a television series of the same name, The Turning Point (1977) as Carter, a geologist in The Formula (1980), a director in White Dog (1982) and Bog (1983) as Dr Brad Wednesday. He also appeared in a number of TV movies including Dallas: The Early Years (1986) as Dr Ted Johnson. His brother-in-law was the actor Richard Long.
CAUSE: He died of congestive heart failure in Royal Oak, Michigan, aged 66.
Ingrid Thulin
Born January 27, 1926
Died January 7, 2004
Aloof blonde. Born in Sollefteå, Ångermanland, Sweden, the daughter of a fisherman, Ingrid Thulin trained at the Royal Dramatic Theatre in Stockholm. She appeared in pantomime and in 1948 made her début with a small role in Ake Ohberg’s Dit Vindarna Bar. But it was her work with Ingmar Bergman at the Malmo Theatre from the mid-Fifties that assured her reputation as one of her country’s finest dramatic actors. It was her first film for Bergman, Smultronstället (1957), that put her in the public eye. She won jointly (with fellow Swedes Bibi Andersson and Eva Dahlbeck) the Best Actress Award at Cannes in 1958 for Brink Of Life. Hollywood beckoned and she appeared opposite Robert Mitchum in Foreign Intrigue (1956) and then with Glenn Ford in Vincente Minnelli’s remake of the Valentino flick Four Horsemen Of The Apocalypse (1962) as Marguerite Laurier but both movies flopped. It was not helped by the fact that her thick Swedish accent proved impossible for Americans to understand and her voice was dubbed (by Angela Lansbury) before the film could be released. She made only one more film in Tinseltown, the ironically named Return From The Ashes in 1965 playing Dr Michele Wolf but this, too, was a failure. Her other films included: Känn
Dej Som Hemma (1948) as Elsa Carlsson, Havets Son (1949) as Gudrun, Kärleken Segrar (1949) as Margit Dahlman, Hjärter Knekt (1950) as Gunvor Ranterud, När Kärleken Kom Till Byn (1950) as Agneta, Leva På “Hoppet” (1951) as Yvonne, Möte Med Livet (1952) as Viola, Kalle Karlsson Från Jularbo (1952) as Elsa, En Skärgårdsnatt (1953) as Ingrid, Göingehövdingen (1953) as Anna Ryding, Aldrig I Livet (1957) as Lily, Nattlek (1966) as Irene, Domani Non Siamo Più Qui (1967) as Gioia, Adélaïde (1968) as Elisabeth Hermann, La Caduta Degli Dei (1969) as Sophie Von Essenbeck, Malastrana (1971) as Jessica, Monismanien (1975), Salon Kitty (1976) as Kitty Kellermann, The Cassandra Crossing (1976) as Dr Elena Stradner, En Och En (1978) as Ylva, Il Giorno Prima (1987) as Mrs Havemeyer and Il Cuore Di Mamma (1988) as Eloisa. Her last film was La Casa Del Sorriso (1988). She also directed three films – a short and two features – Hängivelse (1965), En Och En (1978) and Brusten Himmel (1982), which she also wrote. In 1951 Ingrid Thulin married Claes Sylvander. After they divorced in 1955 she married Harry Scheim, founder of the Swedish Film Institute, the following year. They divorced in 1989.
CAUSE: She died, aged 77, of cancer in Stockholm.
Carol Thurston
Born September 27, 1921
Died December 31, 1969
Youthful bloom. Born in Forsyth, Montana, Carol Thurston fought off competition from Simone Simon and Yvonne DeCarlo to land the part of Tremartini in The Story Of Dr. Wassell (1944). She found a niche playing naïfs in The Conspirators (1944) as Rosa, China Sky (1945) as Siu-Mei, Swamp Fire (1946) as Toni Rousseau, The Last Round Up (1947) as Lydia Henry, Jewels Of Brandenburg (1947) as Carmelita Mendoza, Arctic Manhunt (1949) as Narana, Apache Chief (1949) as Watona, Killer Ape (1953) as Shari, Conquest Of Cochise (1953) as Terua and Yukon Vengeance (1954) as Yellow Flower. Her career began to grind inexorably to a halt in the mid-Fifties when she was too old to play ingénues. Her last film was The Hypnotic Eye (1960), in which she played Doris Scott.
CAUSE: She died by her own hand aged 48.
Gene Tierney
Born November 20, 1920
Died November 6, 1991
JFK’s squeeze. Born in Brooklyn, New York, Gene Eliza Tierney came from a wealthy background and appeared on Broadway before making her film début opposite Henry Fonda in The Return Of Frank James (1940) as Eleanor Stone at 20th Century Fox. It was at Fox that she spent most of her career although it seemed that the studio didn’t really know what to do with her and she was often miscast. She was linked romantically with playboys John F. Kennedy (for whom, she claimed, she spurned the advances of Tyrone Power) and Aly Khan and was described by one critic as “a woman of exotic and quite unusual beauty”. Her films included: Hudson’s Bay (1940) as Barbara Hall, Belle Starr (1941) as Belle Starr, Tobacco Road (1941) as Ellie May Lester, Sundown (1941) as Zia, Thunder Birds (1942) as Kay Saunders, China Girl (1942) as Miss Young, Son Of Fury as Eve, Heaven Can Wait as Martha, Laura (1944) as Laura Hunt, Leave Her To Heaven (1945) as Ellen Berent for which she was nominated for an Oscar, Dragonwyck (1946) as Miranda Wells, The Ghost And Mrs Muir (1947) as Lucy Muir, That Wonderful Urge (1948) as Sara Farley, Whirlpool (1949) as Ann Sutton, Where The Sidewalk Ends (1950) as Morgan Taylor, Night And The City (1950) as Mary Bristol, On The Riviera (1951) as Lilli, Way Of A Gaucho (1952) as Teresa, Plymouth Adventure (1952) as Dorothy Bradford, Personal Affair (1953) as Kay Barlow, Never Let Me Go (1953) as Marva Lamarkins, Black Widow (1954) as Iris, The Egyptian (1954) as Baketamon and The Left Hand Of God (1955) as Anne Scott following which she retired. She suffered a nervous breakdown and became a voluntary inmate of a mental institution. Otto Preminger tempted her out of retirement to play Washington hostess Dolly Harrison in Advise And Consent (1962) but although she made a handful of films and appeared in the television series Scruples, she preferred a quiet retirement in Texas. On June 1, 1941, she married designer Oleg Cassini after eloping with him to Las Vegas. They had two daughters: Daria (b. prematurely in Columbia Hospital, Washington, October 14, 1943, weighing 2½lb) and Christina (b. New York, November 18, 1948). Daria was born blind and severely retarded and today lives in an institution. Her disabilities may have been caused by a fan of her mother’s, who though infected with German measles and quarantined, was determined to meet and shake her hand. The couple divorced in Santa Monica on February 28, 1952, when Tierney claimed Cassini was more interested in playing tennis than their marriage. On July 11, 1960, she married Houston oilman Howard Lee who was previously married to Hedy Lamarr. He died in 1980 and she never remarried.
CAUSE: She died aged 70 in Houston, Texas, from emphysema.
Lawrence Tierney
Born March 15, 1919
Died February 26, 2002
‘The handsome bad man of the screen’. Born to Irish parents and educated in Brooklyn, New York, Lawrence Tierney achieved real fame late in life when he played the gangster who arranged the heist in Reservoir Dogs (1992). Tierney was one of three sons of a policeman, who all became actors. The others were Scott Brady (b. Brooklyn, New York, September 13, 1924, d. Los Angeles, California, April 16, 1985 from emphysema) and Ed Tracy (b. Brooklyn, New York, May 13, 1928, d. Orange, California, December 18, 1985) from whom he was estranged. Tierney often played thugs and his off-screen life was fodder for the gossip columns. Tierney was an outstanding athlete and gained an athletics scholarship to Manhattan College, but left to become a labourer on the New York aqueduct. He worked briefly as a model for Sears-Roebuck but eventually took to acting and his talent was soon recognised. In 1943 he signed a contract with RKO. It was when he played the title role in Dillinger in 1945 while on loan to the independent producers Maurice and Frank King that he first established himself. Returning to RKO he appeared in Kill Or Be Killed (1946) and The Devil Thumbs A Ride (1947). During this period, Tierney also appeared in Born To Kill (1947), San Quentin (1950) and The Greatest Show On Earth (1952). Off screen Tierney gained a reputation as a bad boy. His offences included hitting a waiter in the face with a sugar bowl. In 1961 he was convicted of breaking a student’s jaw when he kicked him in the face. The same year he gatecrashed a party hosted by Elizabeth Taylor and was sent to jail for disturbing the peace. He had violated his probation, having been arrested the previous year for drunken driving. In 1963 he was arrested on a charge of drunkenness after a woman claimed that he had driven her around for hours, having kidnapped her, and the following year he was found guilty of attempting to throttle a taxi driver. In January 1973 he was stabbed in a brawl outside a bar near the hotel where he lived in on 9th Avenue, New York. In June 1975 he was questioned by the police in connection with the apparent suicide of Bonnie Jones, a 24-year old woman, who fell out of her fourth floor window. Tierney said that he “had just gotten there, and she just went out the window”. He also had a serious alcohol problem. He gave up the demon drink in the late Eighties. “I finally wised up,” he said. “I threw away about seven careers through drink.” He made a serious attempt to return to acting as a character actor. In 1987 he appeared in Tough Guys Don’t Dance, which told the story of a writer who drinks so much that he cannot remember if he committed a murder. Romantically, he was linked with Dorothy Lovett, Betsy von Furstenburg, Shelley Winters and Yvonne de Carlo. His nephew Michael said, “The people who knew Larry knew that wasn’t all that there was to Larry. He was a wacky, kind of quirky, comical guy, and a very nice man to a lot of people.”
CAUSE: Tierney died from pneumonia. in Los Angeles, California, aged 82.
Ann Todd
Born January 24, 1909
Died May 6, 1993
Cool and refined. Born in Hartford, Cheshire, she was educated at St Winifred’s School in Eastbourne before being trained at the Central School of Speech Training and Dramatic Art in London and making her stage début at the Arts Theatre on January 28, 1928, as a Faery Child in The Land Of Heart’s Desire. Her first film came three years later, Keepers Of Youth (1931) as Millicent, but it would be almost another decade and a half before she became a star as a result of her performance
as Francesca Cunningham in The Seventh Veil (1945). Her films included: These Charming People (1931) as Pamela Crawford, The Return Of Bulldog Drummond (1934) as Phyllis Drummond, Things To Come (1936) as Mary Gordon, South Riding (1938) as Madge Carne, Action For Slander as Ann Daviot, Poison Pen as Ann Rider, Granny Get Your Gun (1940) as Charlotte Westcott, Little Orvie (1940) as Patsy Balliser, Ships With Wings (1941) as Kay Gordon, Danny Boy (1941) as Jane Kaye, On The Sunny Side (1942) as Betty, Dixie Dugan (1943) as Imogene Dugan, Perfect Strangers (1945) as Elena, Gaiety George (1946) as Kathryn Davis, Daybreak (1947) as Frankie, So Evil My Love (1948) as Olivia Harwood, Madeleine (1950) as Madeleine Smith, Time Without Pity (1956) as Honor Stanford, Taste Of Fear (1961) as Jane Appleby, Ninety Degrees In The Shade (1965) as Mrs Kurka, The Fiend (1971) as Birdie Wemyss and The Human Factor (1980) as Mrs Castle. Towards the end of her life Todd directed documentaries. Her autobiography was entitled The Eighth Veil, a reference to the film that made her famous; she also wrote two novels. She was married and divorced three times. Her husbands were Victor Malcolm by whom she had one son, Nigel Tangye by whom she had one daughter and Sir David Lean, who directed her in a number of films.
Fade to Black: A Book of Movie Obituaries Page 169
