Timelines for year 1959
Rock Hudson
The media first began to suspect he had serious health problems when he came to Carmel, California, in July 1985 to help his Pillow Talk co-star Doris Day launch her cable series, "Doris Day's Best Friends" . His gaunt appearance and obvious disorientation suddenly became the focus of what was meant to be a joyous reunion of one of Hollywood's favorite on-screen couples. He died just three months later.
Michael Landon
Best remembered by the public for his role as Little Joe on "Bonanza" and for his starring role as Charles Ingalls on "Little House on the Prairie" .
His father died of a heart attack in February 1959.
Wore lifts in "Bonanza" so he would not be dwarfed by considerably taller co-stars Dan Blocker and Lorne Greene.
Like his "Bonanza" co-star Lorne Greene, Landon was a staunch supporter of the Republican Party.
Charlton Heston
He played three roles after they had been turned down by Burt Lancaster. In 1958 the producers of Ben-Hur offered Lancaster $1 million to play the title role in their epic, but he turned it down because, as an atheist, he did not want to help promote Christianity. Lancaster also said he disagreed with the "violent morals" of the story. Three years later, in 1961 Lancaster announced his intention to produce a biopic of Michelangelo, in which he would play the title role and show the truth about the painter's homosexuality. However, he was forced to shelve this project due to the five-month filming schedule on Luchino Visconti's masterpiece The Leopard . Heston starred as Michelangelo in The Agony and the Ecstasy and even in his autobiography thirty years later was still denying that the painter had been gay, despite all evidence to the contrary. Lancaster also turned down the role of General Gordon in Khartoum .
Cited actor Gary Cooper as a childhood role model. Heston starred opposite Cooper in The Wreck of the Mary Deare . Heston commended Cooper for being able to perform his own stunts, such as being under water for long periods of time, despite being in poor health and getting older.
Heston's Hollywood mansion is filled with memorabilia from his career. He and his wife have lived in the same house near Los Angeles's Mulholland Drive for more than forty years. Built by the actor's father after Heston won the Academy Award for best actor in Ben-Hur , the postmodern style home - inside and out - is filled with the memorabilia. Sitting on a table in the back yard is the figure of a Roman, whip in hand, lashing vigorously at four straining horses harnessed to a chariot. Mounted on the entrance of his study are the two great brass ring knockers from the movie set's House of Hur. Hung above the fireplace is a painting of a lumbering Conestoga wagon and, nearby, a pencil sketch of friend Sir Laurence Olivier portraying King Lear. From most windows sparkle views of canyons. In the home's central hallway hang twenty paintings of Heston in signature roles: Ben-Hur, Moses, Richelieu, Michelangelo, the Planet of the Apes marooned astronaut Commander Taylor, the steel-willed Major Dundee, Soylent Green detective Thorn, Andrew Jackson in The President's Lady , tough ranch foreman Steve Leech riding through The Big Country , and cattle poke Will Penny from Heston's favorite film.
Accepted the role in Ben-Hur after Burt Lancaster turned it down.
Was not hesitant about repeating roles: Played Ben Hur in Ben-Hur (live action) and Ben Hur (V) (animated); Andrew Jackson in the biography The President's Lady , then in The Buccaneer ; Marc Antony in Julius Caesar and Antony and Cleopatra . (Richelieu does not count, as The Three Musketeers: The Queen's Diamonds and The Four Musketeers: Milady's Revenge were filmed at the same time.).
Ricky Nelson
Johnny Cash wrote the song "Restless Kid" for him to sing in Howard Hawks' Rio Bravo . However, music director Dimitri Tiomkin insisted that Nelson perform the folk song "Cindy" and Dimitri Tiomkin's own "My Rifle, My Pony and Me". Johnny Cash's evocative "Restless Kid", which sums up Ricky's Rio Bravo character "Colorado" in less than two minutes, never appeared in the film. Instead, it was released on Nelson's third album, "Ricky Sings Again" (Imperial LP 9061 /Imperial LP 12090 , 1959).
Doris Day
After her Pillow Talk co-star Rock Hudson died of AIDS in 1985, Day told the press that she had never known he was a homosexual.
Rod Serling
In 1994, 19 years after his death, he returned to "host" the pre-show area of "The Twilight Zone Tower of Terror" attraction at The Disney-MGM Studios Theme Park in Orlando, Florida. Through clever use of carefully edited vintage "Twilight Zone" footage, new footage processed in black & white and special additional dialogue recorded by a Serling soundalike (reportedly selected personally by Serling's widow, Carol), Serling appears in a "Twilight Zone" episode based on the ride's storyline and introduces theme park visitors to the attraction. This brief introduction, which is shown on a special vintage television in the attraction's pre-show area, represents the first "new" introduction of "The Twilight Zone" that he appears in since the series' end in 1964.
He wanted Richard Egan to do the narration for "Twilight Zone" because of his rich, deep voice. However, due to strict studio contracts of the time, Egan was unable to. Serling said "It's Richard Egan or no one. It's Richard Egan, or I'll do the thing myself," which is exactly what happened.
Along with many other famous faces, he was a pie-in-the-face recipient on "The Soupy Sales Show" (aka The Soupy Sales Show). Serling's turn came in 1962.
Ingmar Bergman
After their daughter Maria had been born out of wedlock in 1959, he finally married Ingrid Bergman (Ingrid von Rosen) in 1971. This was his only marriage which didn't end in divorce.
Gary Cooper
Met Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev at a luncheon organized by Charles Feldman at Twentieth Century Fox on 19 September 1959. Kruschev personally invited Cooper and his wife and daughter on a six-day, United States Information Agency-sponsored trip to Moscow and Leningrad. After Cooper entertained some Soviet dignitaries at his house in Hollywood, Hedda Hopper publicly denounced him as "soft on Commies".
An uncomfortable aspect of They Came to Cordura was that besides looking far too old for his character, Cooper was looking so ill, and was actually filming against medical advice. Towards the end of the movie he was dragged a hundred yards along the ground by a railroad handcar, something Stanley Kauffmann complained about in the "New Republic".
He formed his own production company, Baroda Productions, in 1958. In 1959 the company made three of his more unusual films: The Hanging Tree , They Came to Cordura and The Wreck of the Mary Deare .