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Evans Evans, a character actor who’d made some minor forays into television when she was cast in what would become her most remembered role as a kidnap victim in 1967’s Bonnie and Clyde, died Sunday, June 16. She was 91.

Additional details were not available. Her death was announced in a public obituary.

Born in Bluefield, West Virginia, on November 26, 1932, Evans was resident of Sherman Oaks, California, the widow of director John Frankenheimer. The two wed on December 13, 1963, and remained married until his death on July 6, 2002.

After a string of single appearances on such ’60s episodic TV programs as The Donna Reed Show, Wagon Train, Death Valley Days and Alfred Hitchcock Presents, Evans was cast in what would become her signature role for 1967’s Bonnie and Clyde: As Velma Davis, she and scene partner Gene Wilder, in his big screen debut, portrayed two young lovebirds who, while kissing on their front porch,...

Chicago – There was a time in Hollywood when the character actor was a familiar and reassuring presence in great movies and TV series. Shirley Knight, who worked from 1959-2018, was one of those reliable performers. Knight passed away on April 22nd, 2020, at the age of 83.

Shirley Knight was born in Kansas, and came up through the famous Pasadena Theatre School and the Hb Studio in New York City in the 1950s. Her unique look and talent was evident in her Oscar nominated roles in “The Dark At the Top of the Stairs” (1960) and “Sweet Bird of Youth” (1962). She worked steadily in film during the 1960s, with roles in “The Group” (1966) and “Petulia” (1968), which have become cult favorites.

In subsequent years, she was cast in films as diverse as “Beyond the Poseidon Adventure” (1979). “Endless Love” (1981), “As Good As it Gets” (1997), “Paul Blart: Mall Cop” (2009) and the Blumhouse Production, “Mercy” (2014). On TV,...

Even more sad news is coming in this week as the Emmy and Tony-winning actress Shirley Knight has passed away. Known for her work in movies like The Dark at the Top of the Stairs and Sweet Bird of Youth, Knight was a veteran actress whose impressive performances have stuck with viewers for decades. Reportedly, Knight died on Wednesday due to "natural causes" at the San Marcos, Texas home of her daughter, actress Kaitlin Hopkins.She was 83 years old.

Shirley Knight was born in Goessel, Kansas, on July 5, 1936. Knowing very early in life she wanted to perform, Knight had begun studying to be an opera singer at the age of eleven. After graduating from high school, Knight attended Phillips University and Wichita State University, going on to study at the Pasadena Theatre School to train as an actress. She would make her movie debut in the 1959 movie Five Gates to Hell,...

Shirley Knight, a two-time Oscar nominee and Emmy-winning actress, died at her daughter’s home in Texas. She was 83.

Knight died of natural causes, her actress daughter Kaitlin Hopkins announced in a note mourning her mother she posted on Facebook. The Kansas native died on Wednesday.

“Early this morning April 22nd you passed away, and your sweet soul left us for a better place. I was at your side and you went peacefully. To me, you were ‘just mom”’ to some you were ‘Miss Knight’, ‘Miss Shirley’, ‘Mama Shirley’ (to my students), ‘Shirl the Girl’ (to your friends), and ‘Shirley Knight’ to your fans,...

Shirley Knight, the daring actress and darling of Tennessee Williams who received Oscar nominations for her work in her third and fourth films, The Dark at the Top of the Stairs and Sweet Bird of Youth, has died. She was 83.

Knight died Wednesday of natural causes at the home of her daughter, actress Kaitlin Hopkins, in San Marcos, Texas.

Knight was known for taking bold chances during her career — as when she portrayed a promiscuous woman who confronts a young black male (Al Freeman Jr.) on the New York subway in the incendiary 1966 independent film Dutchman ...

Harriet Frank Jr., who collaborated with her husband, Irving Ravetch, on the Oscar-nominated screenplays for “Norma Rae” and “Hud,” died on Tuesday at her home in Los Angeles. She was 96.

Her nephew Michael Frank announced her death to the New York Times.

Frank and Ravetch worked on 17 features together after meeting while writers at MGM. She and Ravetch were married from 1946 until his death in 2010 at age 89.

Frank and Ravetch worked on eight movies directed by Martin Ritt, starting with “The Long, Hot Summer” in 1958, followed by “The Sound and the Fury” in 1959 and “Hud” in 1963. “Hud,” based on Larry McMurtry’s “Horseman, Pass By,” was nominated for seven Academy Awards. In addition to the Oscar nomination, the “Hud” screenplay received the best written American drama award from the Writers Guild of America and an award from the New York Film Critics Circle.

Frank, Ravetch and Ritt collaborated on 1974’s “Conrack,...

The Supporting Actress Smackdown of 1960 is coming on Sunday July 21st. Meet The Panelists Here. The readers (that's you!), collectively, are the final panelist each month. If you want to participate please email in your votes by Friday July 19th.

Glynis Johns, The Sundowners Shirley Jones, Elmer Gantry Shirley Knight, The Dark at the Top of the Stairs Janet Leigh, Psycho Mary Ure, Sons and Lovers

How it's done? You grade each nominee on a scale of 1 (poor) to 5 (absolute perfection) hearts... vote only on the performances you've seen, please, as votes are weighted so no performance is rewarded or punished for being abundantly seen or underseen. ...

Anthony Ray, a son of Rebel Without a Cause director Nicholas Ray who appeared in John Cassavetes' Shadows and earned an Oscar nomination for producing An Unmarried Woman, has died. He was 80.

Ray died June 29 in Saco, Maine, after a long illness, his family announced.

Just after he turned 20, Ray appeared on Broadway in the Elia Kazan-William Inge drama The Dark at the Top of the Stairs, which debuted in December 1957 and ran for more than 450 performances.

In Shadows (1958), Cassavetes' admired feature debut, Ray portrayed Tony, a young man who sleeps with a virgin (Lelia Goldoni) and is surprised to ...

Anthony Ray, a son of Rebel Without a Cause director Nicholas Ray who appeared in John Cassavetes' Shadows and earned an Oscar nomination for producing An Unmarried Woman, has died. He was 80.

Ray died June 29 in Saco, Maine, after a long illness, his family announced.

Just after he turned 20, Ray appeared on Broadway in the Elia Kazan and William Inge drama The Dark at the Top of the Stairs, which debuted in December 1957 and ran for more than 450 performances.

In Shadows (1958), Cassavetes' admired feature debut, Ray portrayed Tony — a young man who sleeps with a virgin (Lelia Goldoni) and ...

Earlier this week,Transport Grouppresented Promises, Promises- its second musical in this season'sAnne L. BernsteinConcert Series- featuringJohn CarianiThe Band's Visit Tony nominee Fiddler on the Roof,Donna Lynne ChamplinCrazy Ex-Girlfriend Sweeney Todd Obie Award for Tg's The Dark at the Top of the Stairs, Jessica Fontanta Cinderella Tg's Once Upon a Mattress,Santino FontanaCrazy Ex-Girlfriend Tootsie Tony nominee Cinderella,Stanley BahorekAmazing Grace, Queen of the Mist,Lauren BlackmanAnastasia,Hannah CorneauHedwig and the Angry Inch,Marc KudischFinding Neverland, Hand to God,Sean McLaughlinHello Dolly,Bruce SabathCagney,Tally SessionsWar Paint, andAli StrokerSpring Awakening.

Just last night,Transport Grouppresented Promises, Promises- its second musical in this season'sAnne L. BernsteinConcert Series- featuringJohn CarianiThe Band's Visit Tony nominee Fiddler on the Roof,Donna Lynne ChamplinCrazy Ex-Girlfriend Sweeney Todd Obie Award for Tg's The Dark at the Top of the Stairs, Jessica Fontanta Cinderella Tg's Once Upon a Mattress, Santino FontanaCrazy Ex-Girlfriend Tootsie Tony nominee Cinderella,Stanley BahorekAmazing Grace, Queen of the Mist,Lauren BlackmanAnastasia,Hannah CorneauHedwig and the Angry Inch,Marc KudischFinding Neverland, Hand to God,Sean McLaughlinHello Dolly,Bruce SabathCagney,Tally SessionsWar Paint, andAli StrokerSpring Awakening.

(See previous post: Fourth of July Movies: Escapism During a Weird Year.) On the evening of the Fourth of July, besides fireworks, fire hazards, and Yankee Doodle Dandy, if you're watching TCM in the U.S. and Canada, there's the following: Peter H. Hunt's 1776 (1972), a largely forgotten film musical based on the Broadway hit with music by Sherman Edwards. William Daniels, who was recently on TCM talking about 1776 and a couple of other movies (A Thousand Clowns, Dodsworth), has one of the key roles as John Adams. Howard Da Silva, blacklisted for over a decade after being named a communist during the House Un-American Committee hearings of the early 1950s (Robert Taylor was one who mentioned him in his testimony), plays Benjamin Franklin. Ken Howard is Thomas Jefferson, a role he would reprise in John Huston's 1976 short Independence. (In the short, Pat Hingle was cast as John Adams; Eli Wallach was Benjamin Franklin.) Warner...

Teresa Wright: Later years (See preceding post: "Teresa Wright: From Marlon Brando to Matt Damon.") Teresa Wright and Robert Anderson were divorced in 1978. They would remain friends in the ensuing years.[1] Wright spent most of the last decade of her life in Connecticut, making only sporadic public appearances. In 1998, she could be seen with her grandson, film producer Jonah Smith, at New York's Yankee Stadium, where she threw the ceremonial first pitch.[2] Wright also became involved in the Greater New York chapter of the Als Association. (The Pride of the Yankees subject, Lou Gehrig, died of Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis in 1941.) The week she turned 82 in October 2000, Wright attended the 20th anniversary celebration of Somewhere in Time, where she posed for pictures with Christopher Reeve and Jane Seymour. In March 2003, she was a guest at the 75th Academy Awards, in the segment showcasing Oscar-winning actors of the past. Two years later,...

Teresa Wright and Matt Damon in 'The Rainmaker' Teresa Wright: From Marlon Brando to Matt Damon (See preceding post: "Teresa Wright vs. Samuel Goldwyn: Nasty Falling Out.") "I'd rather have luck than brains!" Teresa Wright was quoted as saying in the early 1950s. That's understandable, considering her post-Samuel Goldwyn choice of movie roles, some of which may have seemed promising on paper.[1] Wright was Marlon Brando's first Hollywood leading lady, but that didn't help her to bounce back following the very public spat with her former boss. After all, The Men was released before Elia Kazan's film version of A Streetcar Named Desire turned Brando into a major international star. Chances are that good film offers were scarce. After Wright's brief 1950 comeback, for the third time in less than a decade she would be gone from the big screen for more than a year.

Phyllis Diller, the wild-haired, eccentrically-dressed performer credited with opening the doors of stand-up comedy to women, passed away at her home in Los Angeles. She was 95 years old.

She was born Phyllis Ada Driver on July 17, 1917 in Lima, Ohio to Perry Marcus and Frances Ada (Romshe) Driver. After graduating from Central High School, she headed to Chicago's Sherwood Music Conservatory, where she continued to study piano, with dreams of one day becoming a concert pianist. From the Conservatory, she transferred to Bluffton College in Ohio, where she became the school's newspaper editor and oversaw the publication of humor pieces.

In November 1939, at the age of 22, she married Sherwood Anderson Diller and gave birth to a son, Peter, in 1940. She would have five more children: Sally (1944), a son who died two weeks after being born (1945), Suzanne (1946), Stephanie (1948), and Perry (1950). Perry would later manage his mother's business affairs. Contrary to popular belief, she is no relation to Susan Lucci.

During WWII, the fledgling Diller clan moved to Michigan, where she began to mine her home-making experiences for jokes. She also worked as an advertising copywriter at this time. After the war, the Dillers moved to San Francisco, where she found work as a secretary at the radio station KROW. Later that year, she was in front of the camera for the first time with a program titled "Phyllis Dillis, the Homely Friendmaker" for Bay Area Radio-Television. She continued working in Bay Area television, this time at KGO-TV, where she was invited to participate in the station's show "Belfast Pop Club", co-hosted by Willard Anderson and Don Sherwood.

Both Anderson and Sherwood encouraged her to pursue her stand-up comedy ambitions, and in 1955, she landed a two-week gig at the venerable San Francisco nightclub, The Purple Onion, where her self-deprecating wit and unique laugh kept her on the stage for the better part of two years. The buzz created by her act reached Hollywood, and she made her first rounds on talk and variety shows with the likes of Jack Benny and Red Skelton.

Her appearance on "The Tonight Show" with Jack Parr was her breakthrough, and led to recurring gigs as a contestant on "You Bet Your Life" with host Groucho Marx, "What's My Line?", "I've Got a Secret", and "Hollywood Squares". She appeared on the silver screen as well, making her debut in William Inge's drama, Splendor in the Grass. In 1961, she made her stage debut in The Dark at the Top of the Stairs. Appearances in films with Bob Hope -- Boy, Did I Get a Wrong Number!, The Private Navy of Sgt. O'Farrell, and Eight on the Lam -- began a lifelong bond between the two performers, who would co-star in numerous TV specials; in fact, Diller would be featured in every Bob Hope Christmas Special from 1965 through 1994. At the height of the Vietnam war in 1966, Diller joined Hope's USO troupe overseas.

As her star rose, husband Sherwood managed her career, though the relationship broke down and the couple divorced in 1965. By this point, however, Sherwood had become a staple of her act, as she made jokes about a husband named "Fang," while she smoked from a exaggerated cigarette holder -- which would become the comedienne's signature prop, paried with her increasingly outlandish wardrobe and hairstyles. Soon after her divorce, she married Ward Donovan, whom she met while appearing on stage in "Wonderful Town". Worth noting is the fact that Joan Rivers was one of her writers at this period in her career.

In the late 1960s, she starred in a pair of short-lived series, "The Pruitts of Southampton" and variety show "The Beautiful Phyllis Diller Show", though she found her greatest success elsewhere, from her continued guest appearances on talk, variety, and game shows. Toward the end of the decade, she began a successful string of guest spots on "Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In". Harkening back to her film debut, she gained notices for her work in the drama The Adding Machine with Milo O'Shea.

For three months, at the start of the 1970s, she appeared on Broadway in "Hello, Dolly!", stepping in for Carol Channing. On TV, she frequented on Dean Martin's celebrity roast specials and "the Mike Douglas Show". She cut hit comedy records, published her first books, and continued working the stand-up circuit. A new source of laughs -- her own plastic surgery -- stood in humorous contrast with other Hollywood performers.

Her on-screen career began to wane in late in the decade and into the 1980s, with guest appearances on "The Love Boat", "Celebrity Hot Potato", and a revamped version of "Hollywood Squares".

In the 1990s, roles in B movies Dr. Hackenstein and Silence of the Hams were minor cultural blips, but in 1998 she regained the spotlight for her voice role as the Queen ant in the second Pixar movie, A Bug's Life. She also had a recurring role on "The Bold and the Beautiful". A year later, she suffered a heart attack and was fitted with a pacemaker.

By 2002 she mostly retired from the stage and screen, though she appeared in the 2005 documentary The Aristocrats, notable because Diller, who steered clear of graphic material, did not recite the content of the famous dirty joke. An autobiography, Like a Lampshade in a Whorehouse, was published that same year; in 2006, a DVD version of the project was released, and she voiced several roles for "Robot Chicken" and, later, "Family Guy". She cameoed in 2007 on "Boston Legal" as a supposed lover of William Shatner's Denny Crane. A planned appearance later in the year for her 90th birthday on "The Tonight Show with Jay Leno" was canceled when she fractured her back.

Diller was a long-time member of the Society of Singers, a non-profit organization dedicated to helping singers in need. Two cities proclaimed "Phyllis Diller Day"s: Philadelphia (2001) and San Francisco (2006).

She is survived by daughters Sally and Suzanne and son Perry.

Chicago – The wake of the 1960s still resonates on our shores, and entertainment was a viable leader during the era for breaking new barriers. At the recent Hollywood Celebrities & Memorabilia Show, Shirley Knight, Barbara Parkins and Victoria Sellers were reminders of those special times.

The Hollywood Celebrities & Memorabilia Show occurred in September of 2010. The show is a biannual event that brings celebrities to Chicago to meet, sign autographs and interact with their admirers. Joe Arce of HollywoodChicago.com was there to add the photographic spice to the proceedings.

Shirley Knight of “Sweet Bird of Youth” (1962) and “Petulia” (1968)

Shirley Knight has been a working actress since doing an uncredited role in the classic “Picnic” (1955). She made a substantial mark in the early 1960s by being nominated for a Best Actress in a Supporting Role for her first two major films – “The Dark at the Top of the Stairs” (1960) and “Sweet Bird of Youth...

Irving Ravetch on the set of Hombre (top); Patricia Neal, Paul Newman, Hud (middle); Sally Field, Norma Rae (bottom) Screenwriter-producer Irving Ravetch, best known for the movies he co-wrote with wife Harriet Frank Jr., among them The Dark at the Top of the Stairs, Hud, and Norma Rae, died Sunday, Sept. 19, at Los Angeles' Cedars Sinai Hospital. Ravetch, who had been suffering from a "lingering illness," was 89. Two Ravetch-Frank Jr. collaborations, both directed by Martin Ritt, were nominated for Academy Awards: Hud (1963), an intelligent modern-day Western starring Paul Newman and Academy Award winners Patricia Neal (who died a couple of weeks ago) and Melvyn Douglas, and Norma Rae (1979), a sensitive drama about labor and human relations that earned Sally Field her first Best Actress Oscar. Ravetch (born Nov. 14, 1920, in Newark, N.J.) and Frank Jr. (born in 1917 and still alive), co-wrote — sometimes with other writers [...]...

Irving Ravetch, who with Harriet Frank Jr. formed one of the great husband-and-wife screenwriting teams in Hollywood history, died Sunday at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles after a lingering illness. He was 89.

Ravetch and Frank shared Academy Award nominations for their adapted screenplays for "Hud" (1963) and "Norma Rae" (1979), which contributed to Oscar wins for actresses Patricia Neal and Sally Field, respectively.

The couple teamed on 18 other films, many of which are regarded as some of the finest Hollywood films produced during the 1960s, '70s and '80s, including "The Sound and the Fury" (1959), "The Dark at the Top of the Stairs" (1960), "Home From the Hill" (1960), "The Long Hot Summer" (1965), "Hombre" (1967), "The Rievers" (1969), "The Cowboys" (1972), "Conrack" (1974) and "Murphy's Romance" (1985).

In 1988, Ravetch and Frank were awarded the WGA's Laurel Award for Screen Writing Achievement. In addition to co-writing "Hud," "Hombre" and "The Rievers," Ravetch served as a producer on those films.