Trax Colton Born Louis Morelli, he was a brief contract player for studio 20th Century Fox in the early 1960s. Before being discovered, he was a used car salesman. Fox
Trax ColtonBorn Louis Morelli, he was a brief contract player for studio 20th Century Fox in the early 1960s. Before being discovered, he was a used car salesman. Fox hoped to capitalize on his Rock Hudson-type sex appeal and cast him in two big movies opposite stars, The Marriage-Go-Round (1961) opposite Susan Hayward and James Mason and It Happened in Athens (1962) starring Jayne Mansfield. Mansfield and Colton had a brief love affair during their filming time together. Fox's plans to make him a heartthrob never panned out and he left the industry.
It Happened in Athens wound up sitting on the shelf for nearly two years; and then it was only released as a double-bill offering and marketed as a farce. No one escaped the wreckage unscathed: Fox unceremoniously dropped Jayne's contract, and newcomer Trax Colton, whose star-making vehicle this was to have been, and who was our latest never made another film. To be fair, as illustrated in the clip below, Colton may have been pretty to look at; but anyone who makes Jayne Mansfield's acting seem nearly as accomplished as Katharine Cornell's probably would have had a relatively short shelf life under any circumstances.
The handsome actor ; "Trax Colton" was the invention of Henry Willson, the notorious Hollywood agent who renamed, groomed, and created (and most likely fellated) such favorites as Rock Hudson, Tab Hunter, Guy Madison, Rory Calhoun, and scores of other would-be heartthrobs. By the time Morelli/Colton arrived at Fox in 1960, however, Willson's golden touch had tarnished to the point where the agent's own homosexuality was such an open secret in Hollywood, that his handsome male clients were almost immediately assumed to be gay, bisexual, or at least "cooperative" with Willson -- and in the aftermath of Confidential magazine scandals involving Hudson and Hunter, this didn't always set Willson's novice clients' careers up for success.
Presumably disillusioned with Hollywood, Morelli/Colton disappeared after filming Athens; his one other, previous credit was a small role in another 1960 Fox production, The Marriage-Go-Round, which more successfully introduced another newcomer, Julie Newmar. We haven't been able to dig up any more information about him before or after his brief Hollywood sojourn, We can only hope that Louis Morelli has lived a contented and happy life since 1960.
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Tippi Hedren in publicity still for The Birds (1963, Dir. Alfred Hitchcock)
The morning before filming, an embarrassed looking assistant director came to her dressing room. “He couldn’t look at me,” [Tippi Hedren] recalls. “He looked at the floor. He looked at the walls. He looked at the ceiling. I said, ‘What’s the matter with you?’ And he said, ‘The mechanical birds don’t work. We have to use real ones’.”
She believes, however, that there had never been any intention to use props. “There were cartons, huge cartons, filled with ravens — very nicely — I mean they weren’t in misery or anything — and three prop men with great big leather gauntlets up to their shoulders. And they hurled birds at me for five days. By the very end of it they had me on the floor.
“Rita Riggs [the wardrobe supervisor] had put bands around my body, about an inch thick, and they tied the birds very loosely to me with the elastic around their little ankles and finally, on the last day, one of them jumped from my shoulder and really cut me, way too close to my eye. And I just got the birds off and just sat in the middle of the set crying, because I was totally exhausted.”
Cary Grant, who visited the set during her ordeal, told her that she was the bravest girl he’d met. Hitchcock, however, would stay in his office until the cameras were ready to roll, as if embarrassed at what he was asking his star to endure. But if Hedren survived the ordeal, Melanie was less lucky. The movie ends with her being escorted, helpless, out of the house — this clever, feisty, controlling person a virtual zombie. "Catatonic,” she agrees.
“Well, that’s what Hitchcock loves to do with his women. Take a woman who is in control of herself, very sure of herself, and beat her up and see how much she can take.” But why? “Well, I think there’s some sort of psychological mishap going on there, don’t you?”
-excerpted from The Times interview with Hedren, where she discusses her experiences working with Hitchcock. The title -"The Birds Attacked me But, Hitch Was Scarier" -provides a clue as to how Hedren saw that relationship.
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On playing Catwoman:
“I had never seen any of the segments before. I don’t think I even read the comic. I knew nothing about what they were looking for. But since people have always thought of me as a cat, it seems, and told me that I move ‘catlike’, I was just myself. More.” -Eartha Kitt(photo by Gordon Parks)
Eartha Kittdances during Dizzy Gillespie’s set at the Newport Jazz Festival (1954)
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Denise Nichols, Actress, Singer, Dancer
Born Grace Nichols c. 1933 in Robbins, IL; daughter of Samuel Earl (a factory worker and civic leader) and Lishia Mae (Parks) in the small Chicago suburb of Robbins, Illinois, Nichelle Nichols entered a fiercely independent and determined family. Her paternal grandfather was a white Southerner who defied the conventions of his time and alienated his wealthy parents by marrying a black woman.
It was this grandfather who settled in Robbins, an integrated community, in the early part of the century. Nichols's father was a businessman who served as mayor of Robbins during the Prohibition era. Her mother had been a scholar who hoped to attend law school. Because both of her parents had children from previous marriages, Nichelle was born into a large, close-knit family.
She was an opening act for comedian Redd Foxx and she earned a part as a principal dancer in the film version of Porgy and Bess.
Her younger brother, Thomas committed suicide with the cult members in Rancho Santa Fe, near San Diego. [March 1997]
Although ignored in the "famous actors/actresses" in African-American cinema, including "famous celebrities" during Black History Month, Nichols was one of the first black actresses to portray a character on a TV show and science-fiction series who was treated the same as characters of other races, and to all of Star Trek (1966) fans, the TV series and films that followed set the standard for multiculturalism (where people of different races, ethnicity and genders are integrated and a sense of equality coexists).
With Star Trek (1966) co-star William Shatner she shared the first on-screen kiss between a black female and white male on American television. This resulted in a deluge of mail - 99% of which was positive.
She became the first African-American to place her hand prints in front of Hollywood's Chinese Theatre. In 1992 she was awarded a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.
In her autobiography, Nichols stated that she was involved in an extramarital affair with Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry for several years in the 1960s. When Roddenberry's health was fading, Nichols co-wrote a song for him, titled Gene, that she performed at his funeral.
In early 1951 at age 18, she married a dancer who was 15 years her senior. Within four months they split and in August of 1951 she bore his son. She remarried in 1968, this time to a songwriter, but that marriage also ended in divorce a few years later.
Discovered by Duke Ellington in her mid-teens, she toured with both Ellington and Lionel Hampton as a lead singer and dancer. Decades later, in 1992, she went back to her singing "roots", starring in a dramatic one-woman musical show called "Reflections", in which she became 12 separate song legends.
From the late 1970s until 1987, Nichelle Nichols was employed by NASA and was in charge of astronaut recruits and hopefuls. Most of the recruits that she launched were minority candidates of different races and/or ethnicities, as well as gender She lived in Houston, Texas during her years as a Johnson Space Center employee.
Fed up with the racist harassment, culminating with her learning that the studio was withholding her fan mail, she submitted her resignation from Star Trek (1966). She withdrew it when Martin Luther King personally convinced her that her role was too important as a breakthrough to leave.
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Mickey Hargitay, Bodybuilder, Actor
(January 6, 1926-September 14, 2006)
Died in Los Angeles of multiple myeloma at 80
Father of Mariska Hargitay
Husband of Jayne Mansfield
Hosted a TV exercise show in 1959.
He fled escape the compulsory Hungary in 1947 to Soviet military draft.
He was an exceptional soccer player and former European speed-skating champion.
He did not begin bodybuilding until arriving in the U.S. in 1947.
He performed an adagio act with Mary, his first wife, in nightclubs.
Mr. Universe, Mr. America and Mr. Olympia (all in 1955)
First recipient of the Joe Weider Lifetime Achievement Award (1999)
Arnold Schwarzenegger portrayed him in a 1982 TV movie.
A magazine cover of Steve Reeves (Hercules) inspired his decision to enter bodybuilding.
He had a cameo (as Mansfield's boyfriend) in the film version of Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter?
He later became a successful real estate investor and contractor.
He made a guest appearance in a 2003 episode of Law & Order SVU
He saw his daughter win an Emmy.
After ex-wife Jayne Mansfield’s death, Mickey arranged to have a heart-shaped headstone erected for her at her place of burial.
Inspired to body-build after seeing a magazine cover of Steve Reeves ("Hercules"), Mickey won the "Mr. Universe" competition in 1955 and later appeared as Hercules himself in the Italian film "The Loves of Hercules" co-starring his then-wife, Jayne Mansfield.
While Mickey was posing in Mae West’s popular revue at New York's Latin Quarter, Jayne Mansfield happened to catch the show. When her dinner companion asked her what she wanted that evening, she quipped, "I'll have a steak and the man on the left." The elderly Ms. West, never to be outdone in the vanity department, tried to break up the attention-grabbing couple but failed. They married two years later in what would become one of the most publicized marriages in Hollywood history.
Mansfield initially divorced Hargitay on 1 May 1963; she divorced him again in Juarez, Mexico. On 26 August 1964, the California Superior Court recognized the Mexican divorce pronouncement.
His career began when Mae West noticed him on the October 1953 cover of Strength and Health Magazine and made him a member of her muscleman night-club act.
He sued Mansfield's estate in September, 1967 for over $275,000 to support their 3 children; in their 1964 divorce decree, Mansfield agreed to pay child alimony.
He worked as a plumber and carpenter before his big break. He remodeled much of his and Jayne Mansfield’s Beverly Hills mansion, The Pink Palace, including building its famous heart-shaped pool.
Son 'Zoltán Hargitay' was critically injured by a "tame" lion while visiting the Jungleland Zoo in the San Fernando Valley, but made a full recovery (December 1966).
Father with Mansfield of: sons Mickey Hargitay jr, Zoltan Hargitay and daughter Mariska Hargitay. He also has a daughter, Tina (b. 1949), by his first wife, Mary Birge.
His father was extremely athletic and brought up his sons to become athletes. The family had an acrobatic act that they performed in the large opera houses throughout Hungary.
He walked into an Indianapolis gym one day in 1947 never having lifted weights before and astounded the owner when he was capable of lifting 215 pounds over his 180 pound frame.
Mickey was declared to be Jayne Mansfield's official widower after a court ruled her divorce from him was void.
Mickey Hargitay died on September 14, 2006, aged 80, from multiple myeloma.
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Q: Odd that Charlie Chaplin sends his daughters to a convent. It certainly can’t be said that he has any sympathy with the Church. And why on earth does he send you to a convent?
Geraldine Chaplin: “For the discipline. My father’s fanatical about discipline. Besides I was so wild, when I was ten, that I don’t know what would have happened if the nuns hadn’t brought me up. They were strict, the nuns, as strict as father, but they were so gentle too. And then the nuns gave me something I didn’t have, they gave me religion. You see, we Chaplin kids were never baptized into any religion. That’s the way father wanted and wants it. We’d never heard any talk of God, we’d never heard a prayer and…well, now I’ll tell you a very silly, a very odd thing.
The first day I went into class, all the girls were standing up praying. I didn’t know about praying, you see, and so I thought they were reciting a lesson. But the second day they stood up again and recited the same lesson again, so I thought, that’s odd, didn’t they say the same lesson yesterday? I turned to one of the girls and asked her: ‘What are you doing?’ ‘We’re praying,’ she said. ‘Praying?’ I said. ‘Yes, praying,’ she said. “Praying to whom?” I said. ‘Praying to God,’ she said. ‘God who?’ I said.
Well, the girl looked at me in amazement and didn’t say any more. So then, when the lesson was over, I went to the nuns and asked who God was: was he the head of the school? The nuns said yes, God was also the head of the school. So then I asked the nuns if I could meet this head of the school and the nuns replied that this head of the school was very good and was taking care of me. If I spoke to Him, He would listen and… well, it was like a fairy tale only more beautiful, and I believed it…”
Q: Is it really true that until you were ten you’d never heard religion spoken of?
Chaplin: “No. Never….my father says he’d have liked to be religious, that it would have been a great help to him, but he just can’t be. If he could, he says, he’d put more trust in people. My father is a man with no illusions, and we all grew up without any illusions - except for the early years, when we thought it was Father Christmas who brought us cookies. But by now even the youngest of the children know the cookies come from mother and father, that there is no such person as Father Christmas.”
Q: I’m going to ask, and I beg you to answer me sincerely because, I believe, it’s a very important question. A question that, obviously, concerns your father. This, Geraldine: are you afraid of him?
Chaplin: Certainly I’m afraid of my father… Certainly. Very, very afraid. And not only because he’s so unbending, so difficult, so strict. Not only because he always turns out to be right in the end, whatever he says or does. But because… because… how can I put it… I feel this constant reproof, this constant comparison, because I feel I’m in his shadow all the time, all the time, like all of us….yes, I feel that only when I’m no longer in his shadow, when I’m no longer afraid of him, that only then will I be able to do something myself.
-1965 Interview in the Limelighters
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Laurence Olivier, Joan Fontaine, and Alfred Hitchcock on the set of Rebecca (1940)
[While filming Rebecca],Hitchcock built up his power over Joan Fontaine while keeping her nervous & vulnerable enough to enhance the nervous, vulnerable character she was playing.
She was not, it must be said, all that popular on the set. Olivier, still smarting over the fact that Fontaine had beaten out [his lover] Vivien Leigh for the part, treated his costar with transparent disdain. Olivier’s “attitude helped me subconsciously,” Fontaine later conceded in No Bed of Roses. “His resentment made me feel so dreadfully intimidated that I was believable in my portrayal.”
Hitchcock encouraged these tensions as grist for the scenes between his two stars. When, during the first week of shooting, Fontaine expressed shock after Olivier used a four-letter word, Hitchcock stepped in. “I say Larry old boy, do be careful,” he cautioned. “Joan is just a new bride.” When Olivier asked who the husband was, Fontaine replied that she had married Brian Aherne. “Couldn’t you do better than that?” he flung over his shoulder before striding off imperiously. The retort demolished her; Aherne was a lightweight, often typecast as an English gentleman, and Fontaine said later that she could never look at him with the same eyes again. (An impulsive marriage to begin with, it would also be a short-lived one.)
Not just Olivier but the entire cast, behaved like a “cliquey lot.” United by their superiority and their purer Englishness, they sneered at the least-seasoned player behind her back, or so Fontaine believed. Hitchcock took advantage of this, too, drawing on Fontaine’s insecurity to inform her performance in Rebecca. Ordering Fontaine to the set on her day off, the director surprised the actress by throwing her a birthday party. She was equally surprised that the important cast members didn’t bother to show up; they stayed in their dressing rooms.
Hitchcock could have summoned them – but their absence suited his strategy.
It wasn’t really a matter of “Divide & Conquer” as Fontaine described it in her autobiography. It was Hitchcock forcing a movie actress to become her character, by treating Fontaine like Mrs. De Winter. The actress felt as alone, as terrified, as de Winter’s young bride felt in Rebecca’s world.
-Alfred Hitchcock: A Life in Darkness & Light
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Alan Ladd& Veronica Lakein publicity still for The Blue Dahlia (1946)
(Lake & Ladd were initially teamed together for pragmatic reasons - at 4’11”, Lake was the only actress short enough to be paired with the 5’5” Ladd. The couple proved popular with audiences, despite their mutual dislike, and the two would go on to star together in noir classics like The Blue Dahlia,This Gun For Hire, and The Glass Key)
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Harry Belafonte, Actor, Singer, Dancer, Producer
(March 1, 1927- )
Grew up in Jamaica
Birth name is Harold George Belafonte, Jr.
Acted in 'The Player,' 'Fidel,' 'Odds Against Tomorrow,' 'Carmen Jones,' 'The World, the Flesh and the Devil,' 'The Angel Levine,' 'Island in the Sun,' 'Swing Vote,' 'Buck and the Preacher,' 'Uptown Saturday Night,' 'Kansas City' and 'White Man's Burden'
Recorded the albums 'Calypso,' 'Belafonte Sings of the Caribbean,' 'Belafonte at Carnegie Hall,' 'Belafonte Returns to Carnegie Hall,' 'Jump Up Calypso,' 'My Lord, What a Mornin',' 'Belafonte at the Greek Theater,' 'The Midnight Special,' 'Streets I Have Walked,' 'Belafonte Sings of Love' and 'Homeward Bound.'
Won an Emmy for Outstanding Performance in a Variety or Musical Program or Series (1960)
He has had many meetings with Fidel Castro.
He is divorced.
He has 5 children
He married his second wife, Julie, a year after divorcing his first wife, Marguerite.
He is a trained dancer.
He took a cheap shot at Colin Powell, saying he was the 'house ******.' Powell reportedly, laughed-off his insults.
Despite being a calypso singer his songs were dubbed by LaVern Hutcherson in 'Carmen Jones.'
His salary for Carmen Jones (1954) was $1,800/week
Alan Sherman wrote a parody song 'Harry and Bella Fonte.'
He was on his high school track team.
He is a well respected stage actor.
His 1956 album, 'Calypso,' was the first LP to sell over a million units.
He has been married to the same woman, Julie, since 1957.
Three out of four of his children have attained semi-successful careers in show business.
He allowed himself to be roasted at the Friars Club.
His album Midnight Special (1962) featured the first-ever recorded appearance by a then young harmonica player named Bob Dylan
He underwent surgery for prostate cancer in 1996.
He appeared in the 1946 American Negro Theatre play "Days of Our Youth" in 1946. Sidney Poitier eventually replaced Harry and was spotted by a talent agent who ignited his Hollywood career.
His triumphant success as an entertainer in the arts did not protect him from racial discrimination, particularly in the South. As a result, he refused to perform in the southern region of the U.S. from 1954 until 1961.
In 1968, Belafonte appeared on a Petula Clark TV special on NBC. In the middle of a song, Clark smiled and briefly touched Belafonte's arm. The show's sponsor, Plymouth Motors, wanted to cut out the segment, but Clark, who had ownership of the special, told NBC that the performance would be shown intact or not at all. American newspapers published articles reporting the controversy and, when the special aired, it grabbed huge ratings. Clark's gesture marked the first time in which two people of different races made friendly bodily contact on U.S. television.
Harold George Belafonte, Jr., was born March 1, 1927, in Harlem, NY. The son of Caribbean-born immigrants, Belafonte was the son of Melvine, a housekeeper (of Jamaican descent), and Harold George Belafonete, Sr., a Martinican who worked as chef in the Royal Navy. He returned with his mother to her native Jamaica at the age of eight, remaining there for the next five years.
At the beginning of World War ll, Belafonte returned to Harlem with his mother and brother. He had trouble integrating into the new environment and later dropped out of high school to join the U.S. Navy, after his honorable discharge, he resettled in New York City to forge a career as an actor, where he worked odd jobs until two free tickets to the American Negro Theatre (A.N.T.) changed his life.
Belafonte auditioned for the A.N.T. and earned his first leading role in Juno and the Paycock. In 1953 he made his film debut opposite Dorothy Dandridge in Bright Road. He won a Tony in 1954 for his performance in Almanac.
At the end of the 1940s, he took classes in acting at the Dramatic Workshop of the New School in New York with the influential German director Erwin Piscator alongside Marlon Brando, Tony Curtis, Walter Matthau, Bea Arthur and Sidney Poitier.
In the early 1950s, Belafonte developed a strong relationship with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Belafonte worked tirelessly to mobilize artists in support of the civil rights movement. Belafonte hosted former South African President Nelson Mandela on his triumphant visit to the United States. Belafonte has maintained his commitment to service as a UNICEF goodwill ambassador.
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“I defy any pretty girl who is rocketed to stardom in a sex nymphette role to stay on a level path. Lolita exposed me to temptations no girl of that age should undergo. From the time I was about 16, I’d go totally wacko, totally crazy, for about three months at a time, then go into such deep depressions that I wouldn’t even leave the house to go to the grocery store.
I hate the spotlight, I hate people looking at me, I don’t like strangers asking me questions. I like to be left alone. I enjoy my security, my safeness with a private life. I was once on a television show, a talk show. My brother had just died two days before that. The interviewer opens his show by saying - and now I was 16 years old - he said, ‘Did your brother kill himself because you played Lolita?’ I didn’t say a thing. I got up and I walked off. I couldn’t even dignify that. I had no words. That’s typical of the reason that I can’t be a movie star. I never could.
Am I going to be Lolita when I’m 50? Much as I appreciated Lolita in her day, I’d like to leave her now.” -Sue Lyon, after her early retirement from films (1962)
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Interview as 1960s time capsule (also, why one should have always thought twice before accepting a gift from Dennis Hopper):
“Two hours before midnight on New Year’s Eve, Jane Fonda was coiled like Cleopatra’s asp on the living room sofa of her father’s lush townhouse. That afternoon she learned she had won the NY Film Critics Award for best actress of 1969 for They Shoot Horses, Don’t They?
Optimism was high. So was Jane. “You don’t mind if I turn on, do you?” she asked impishly. Then her long fingernails carefully rolled the tobacco out of a Winston cigarette and replaced the ordinary old stuff that only causes cancer with fine gray pot she had just brought back from India? Morocco? She couldn’t remember; all she knew was it wasn’t that tacky stuff they mix with hay in Tijuana, this was the real thing.
Then she lay back on the sofa, inhaled a lung full of dreams. “I’m very optimistic about the world tonight. I wonder if, at 10pm on New Year’s Eve in 1959, people looked back on the 50’s and thought their decade was as productive as ours has been. I don’t think so. It was the end of a time when people had been fed sleeping pills by Eisenhower. Things are more exciting now. We’ve stepped on the moon! People are more alive in every walk of life. Take a simple thing like turning on – doctors, lawyers, politicians – I don’t know anyone who doesn’t turn on.”
There was a noise on the stairs. It was her father Henry Fonda, looking straight and spruce enough to be the conductor of the Yale Glee Club and his pretty wife Shirlee, the fifth Mrs. Fonda.
Jane leaped up and waved her arms frantically to blow the pot smoke out of the room. “This reminds me of the times I used to clean this place on my hands & knees after my parties before my father came home. If only he knew how many bodies have passed out on this floor.”
The Fondas toasted the New Year with champagne & Jane decided to call Peter [Fonda] in New York. They all sang “Happy Decade” to Peter and after they hung up, Jane rolled her eyes. “Boy, was he stoned!”
Henry Fonda saw it all clear and made a mental association. “Have you seen Dennis Hopper lately?”
“I was at his ex-wife’s house just before Christmas,” said Jane, “and you know what he gave his daughter? A Polaroid camera box filled with hair. He had cut his hair off and wanted his child to have it as a Christmas gift! It wasn’t even clean – just dirty, matted hair. So I don’t know what kind of scene he’s into now.”
The subject turned to 1970. Biafra. Slum housing. Strikes. Corruption in Congress. “We’ll always be pouring money into military wars,” said Jane glumly. “I’m not happy about the political situation either.”
“Where are we all headed?” asked Mrs. Fonda. “The Far, Far Right,” answered her husband. Jane looked dour. “Come to think about it,” she said, a few minutes into the beginning of her brand new decade, “I take back what I said earlier about the world getting better. The only thing I’m optimistic about is me.”
-excerpted from Rex Reed’s New York Times Fonda profile, December 1969
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