Classic

Movie fans from around the world had barely recovered from the shock of the recent death of Hollywood comic legend Robin Williams, when it was announced that another Hollywood icon was gone. Lauren Bacall, Golden Globes Cecil B.

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We mourn the passing of Robin Williams who died on August 11 in his home in Northern California. He was 63.

We mourn the passing of James Garner, the actor who embodied debonair leading men with inimitable style in a Hollywood film and TV career that earned him universal accolades, as well as four Golden Globe Awards from no less than 12 nominations. Born in Oklahoma, Garner was a merchant seaman, gas station attendant and carpet layer, in addition to purple-heart Korean war veteran before getting into show business as an understudy for actor Lloyd Nolan during rehearsals of the Broadway-bound The Caine Mutiny Court Martial.

Longtime HFPA member Avik Gilboa, teacher, a Hollywood correspondent and a uniquely charming man of the world, died in Los Angeles on May 19, 2014, at age 85, surrounded by family and friends, following more than a year of failing health. Avik was born of Russian-Polish heritage in Palestine and attended an agricultural boarding school where he was a shepherd.

Dorothy Faye Dunaway was born in rural Bascom Florida on January 14, 1941. She studied theater at Boston University, majoring in Liberal Arts in 1962, joined the training program at New York’s Lincoln Center taught by Elia Kazan where she learned Method acting.

Michael Caine was born Maurice Micklewhite on March 14, 1933 in South London, his father was a fish market porter, his mother a cleaning woman; he was drafted in the British Army at 18 and fought in the Korean War. He succeeded in his ambition of becoming an actor, a rich and famous movie star, despite his Cockney accent and lower class background.

Thomas Sean Connery, born in Edinburgh, Scotland on August 25, 1930, was named Thomas after his paternal grandfather, nicknamed “Tommy” as a child, then “Big Tam” as a grown-up 6’2” athlete. Even after becoming the biggest movie star in the world with the success of the James Bond movies (1962-1971), he would remain proud of his humble beginnings on Fountainbridge Street, where he worked as a milk delivery boy on a horse drawn cart, in the mornings from age 9 and full-time from age 13, when he quit school during World War II.

He didn’t like it when people called him that, but in truth if there was ever a Hollywood legend, that was Mickey Rooney who passed away at the age of 93. Working into his nineties after an unparalleled career spanning nine decades and over 200 films, Rooney seemed immortal, a fixture who survived Hollywood’s Golden Age, and at times the two-time Golden Globe winner could seem like an ambassador from another time.

1913 was a momentous year in Los Angeles. The oil fields were booming, William Mulholland opened the Los Angeles Aqueduct that brought life-giving water to the sleepy hamlet from the faraway Eastern Sierras and in a modest barn-turned-film-studio Hollywood’s first feature-length film was being shot.