Showing posts with label 2019. Show all posts
Showing posts with label 2019. Show all posts

Wednesday, October 16, 2024

Synopsis: Thrust Into Television

Many movie character actresses found steady work and arguably more exposure with the advent of television. 










JULIE ADAMS (1926-2019)

Julie Adams, born Betty Adams, moved to Hollywood to start an acting career at the age of twenty, using her given name until 1949. She was very busy on the big screen for a little more than a decade with numerous Westerns to her credit throughout the 1950s. Pale in comparison to her four decades in television, however.

She co-starred in films opposite some of Hollywood's top leading men, including James Stewart, Rock Hudson, Tyrone Power, Glenn Ford, Charlton Heston, and Joel McCrea. In the middle of all these famous actors were Ricou Browning and Ben Chapman, both playing the Creature from the Black Lagoon, whether underwater or on terra firma, respectively. The 1954 science fiction film was a popular offering for mid-century audiences and brought notoriety to Adams.

Her television roles are too numerous to mention here. A few notable guest-starring roles were for The Andy Griffith Show, in another attempt to find a love interest for the sheriff of Mayberry, five episodes of 77 Sunset Strip, three roles for Alfred Hitchcock Presents, and four episodes of Perry Mason as she sailed into the 1960s. Adams starred opposite Hollywood royalty for twenty-four episodes of The Jimmy Stewart Show and two episodes of The Doris Day Show. She guest-starred on many popular shows of the 1970s and 1980s, including Code Red, with nineteen episodes and ten episodes of Murder, She Wrote, before winding down her career in the early 2000s.

Friday, August 5, 2022

Locomotive Salesman


Tom Fawell (1929-2019) dazzled a generation with his colorful, rakish artwork depicting Electro-Motive Division diesel locomotives on the move. Indeed, he was EMD's illustrator of choice from the early 1960s to 1980. Many of his paintings were featured as the center spread in Fortune Magazine for 25 years. He wanted to portray the feeling of the dynamic power created by a locomotive. His first submission was literally laughed at by the execs, sighting no wheels and the engine appears to be tipping over. But Chicago-based ad agency, Marsteller, convinced GM to run a test and follow up with a readership poll. The results were so favorable that they were ranked "off the charts."

Fawell attended the Chicago Art Institute and later graduated with honors from the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, New York, in 1953. 

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