Ross Hawkins

On April 6, almost five months ago, Mickey Rooney, born Joe Yule Jr., on Sept.23, 1920, passed away at his stepson's home in Los Angeles while taking a nap after lunch. His death ended the longest career of any show business personality in American history. I first met Rooney in 1976 when ...

In July 1986, I had the pleasure of sitting down with Herb Jeffries, the first and only black singing cowboy. I was introduced to singer-actor Jeffries by the actor Robert Sacchi, better known as the Man with Bogart's Face. We were soon joined by actor Henry Brandon, a German-American character actor born Heinrich von Kleinbach in Berlin. He appeared in more than 100 films, starting in 1932 when he played the villain Silas Barnaby in the Laurel and Hardy classic "Babes In Toyland." Mr. Brandon appeared as Scar, a Comanche chief, in the 1956 John Ford classic, "The Searchers." He was Comanche Chief Quanta Parker in "Two Rode Together," with James Stewart and Richard Widmark.

In 1919, Harry Culver convinced Thomas Ince to return to Culver City. He wanted Mr. Ince to build his own studio a few hundred yards east of the studio that he previously had owned with D.W. Griffith and Mack Sennett, later Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. When Mr. Ince built his second studio, the first building to go up was the front office building known as The Mansion, it was designed as a replica of George Washington's home at Mt. Vernon. However ...

Going through a stack of old photographs yesterday, I found pictures from the initial filming of the first Screen Actors' Guild Legacy Program back in December, 1979. I was appointed associate producer by actor-attorney John Kerr. The goal was to ...

Casting director-motion picture archivist-producer Marvin Paige died on Nov. 13 at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center from injuries he received in an automobile accident on Laurel Canyon a month earlier. On Sunday, Jan. 26, Mr. Paige’s birthday, his life will be celebrated at a 2 o’clock memorial service at the Egyptian Theatre, 6712 Hollywood Blvd.

The year 2014 will mark the 75th anniversary of the release of David O. Selznick's "Gone With the Wind," starring Clark Gable, Vivian Leigh, Leslie Howard and Olivia de Havilland.

Haley Pina of Culver City High School has been invited to join Team A.I.S.T. (American International Sports Team) to compete in June, along with 17 other high school/club soccer players, in the United World Games soccer tournament in Austria. The southern Austrian city of Klagenfurt, host of the tournament, is a community of 94,000 in the middle of the country. The tournament will run June 17-26.

Actor John Kerr, who died on Feb. 2 at the age of 81, told me the film he enjoyed making the most was "The Pit and The Pendulum," directed by Roger Corman and co-starred Vincent Price. He recalled that Corman was an excellent director and Price kept him laughing during the entire production. In 1958, Kerr played...

Actor John Kerr, who won a Tony Award for his role in the Elia Kazan stage production of "Tea and Sympathy," died on Feb. 2. He was 81 years old. I first met Mr. Kerr 35 years ago, in 1978, when...

A little old lady was being interviewed by the host. Seems that when she was an aspiring actress in the 1920s, one of her earliest assignments had been to ride double with the famed cowboy Tom Mix when he performed a stunt at a hotel in Santa Monica. She rode behind Mix while his horse actually climbed four flights of stairs, to the top of the hotel, and then he – they? – plunged into...