Diam biography of rory calhoun

Lita Baron, the effervescent Spanish-born singer, dancer, actress and former wife of Hollywood leading man Rory Calhoun, has died. She was

Baron, who appeared in more than a dozen features and performed at such legendary Hollywood hotspots as Ciro’s and The Mocambo, died Dec. 16 in Palm Springs of complications from a broken hip, her family announced.

On a episode of I Love Lucy, she played the bombshell Renita Perez, Ricky’s former dance partner from Cuba, and made Lucy quite jealous.

Known as “Isabelita” early in her career, Baron appeared in such films as Club Havana (); Don Ricardo Returns (); Jungle Jim (), with Johnny Weissmuller and George Reeves; Savage Drums () with Sabu; Jesse James’ Women (); and Red Sundown (), opposite her husband.

She also was seen on the CBS-Desilu series The Texan, a Western that was produced by and starred Calhoun.

Baron had met the handsome actor after a performance at the Sunset Strip nightclub Ciro’s, and they married in and had three daughters, Cindy, Tami and Lorri. The couple divorced in , and she moved to Palm Springs with the kids. Calhoun died in at age

Baron was born Isabel Castro on Aug. 11, , in the province of Andalusia, Spain. When she was 5, she and her family came to America and settled in River Rouge, Mich. In the early s, Baron sang and danced as a featured artist with Xavier Cugat’s orchestra.

The family then moved to a home near the Hollywood Bowl, and she signed a movie deal. Later, she and her bandleader, Bobby Ramos, developed and hosted Latin Cruise, one of the first weekly TV musical variety shows in Los Angeles.

In February, Baron was honored at the Palm Springs Art Museum for Modernism Week. In the iconic Slim Aarons photograph Poolside Gossip, taken at the Richard Neutra-designed Kauffman house in Palm Springs, she is seen at the left walking and wearin

Part of what mesmerizes me about the actresses I love is their distinctive voices. Piper Laurie&#;s indelible talent is, of course, what attracted me to her initially. But part of what grabs me in the gut is her uniquely soft, velveteen whispery voice that seems to come from a deep and delicate place. Such voices are capable of moving mountains. Piper Laurie may have started out as Universal&#;s young ingénue but what she manifested after breaking her chains from the studio that held her back, is a monumental ability to express herself with a depth of emotion. She is evocative, calm, almost solitary, and always remarkable in each of her performances.

Universal Studios might have locked her into formulaic romantic comedies and hyperbolic adventures, something Piper Laurie herself felt restricted by, but even those films are still delightful viewing and she shines in each role. Unfortunately, the label stuck to her name and made it impossible for the actress to get serious scripts. Universal forced her to turn down potential break-out dramatic roles with their constrictive servitude. It wasn&#;t until she took to the stage once again &#; as she has when first starting out in drama class&#; and acted in s television shows featuring extraordinary writing and directing, that she was able to shed the stigma of some of Hollywood&#;s insipid labeling. There were directors and producers who saw something more in Piper Laurie. It is infuriating that she was not given the role director Vittorio DeSica had chosen for her because of Universal&#;s narrow-mindedness and strangling contract. And it is frustrating that there are remarkable performances from s dramatic teleplays and series that are just not available for viewing. The only performance that I can find is Piper Laurie as Kirsten Arnesen Clay in Playhouse 90&#;sDays of Wine and Roses directed by John Frankenheimer.

In April I had the incredible opportunity to sit down and talk with the great actress whi

Domino Kid () is a small movie, the kind of picture that that was relatively inexpensive to make and could be relied on to fill the bottom half of a bill. Somehow, probably due to the wealth of industry experience the people working on such features were able to bring to them, these films often managed to be briskly entertaining while at the same time there was a solid core that explored, to a limited extent at least, the themes one would anticipate from a bigger budget, more ambitious production. In this case, the theme that provides the backbone for the story is revenge, the ethical chasm it represents and the hollowness of the reward it promises those who would pursue it.

Domino Kid is a sparse movie, never putting more people on screen at any one time than is strictly necessary. And there is an urgency to it too, the opening shot is quite literally a shot, one delivered from one anonymous figure in a saloon bar and fatally received in the belly of another. The very abruptness of this beginning, its unsentimental, businesslike violence is an indication of the mood or tone of the story itself. Domino (Rory Calhoun) is a man with a powerful appetite for revenge. Having returned from the Civil War to find his family dead and his home raided, he lives now to visit retribution on those responsible. The first reel has a whiff of what was to come in the western genre about it: those bleakly deserted streets in mean looking towns, the lone avenger clad in a low profile black and white outfit, chewing on a cheroot and with a manner that is largely taciturn yet still capable of the occasional dry witticism, the succession of cold and calculated killings &#; isn&#;t there something suggestive of the early spaghetti westerns to that? Sure I may be reaching here, but the imagery and mood evoked had my mind drifting off in that direction, and of course nothing appears out of the blue in filmmaking, trends and styles evolve and are pick

By John M. Whalen

Rory Calhoun was an actor popular in the s who was known for his troubled youth, having spent time in prison for robbing jewelry stores and driving a stolen car over state lines. Alan Ladd helped him break into movies and befitting his image he played rugged tough guy parts, mostly in westerns and action thrillers. “The Looters” (), a Universal-International film now available on Blu-ray from Kino Lorber, is a typical Rory Calhoun movie, although not a particularly noteworthy one. What saves it from being dismissed as a total misfire is the presence of 50’s icons JulieAdams and Ray Danton (“The Rise and Fall of Legs Diamond”) as co-stars.

In “The Looters” Calhoun plays Jesse Hill, an ex-GI who lives alone in a cabin high in the Colorado Rockies. We first see him repelling down a mountainside to chat with the leader of an Army artillery squad testing out some new weaponry. The officer in charge tells Jesse which areas to avoid once testing begins. Jesse returns to his cabin and finds his solitude has been breached by a visit from Pete Corder (Ray Danton), an old Army pal who saved his life by pulling him out of a foxhole at Anzio. When the surprised Jesse asks what he’s doing here, Pete tells him he’s lived a life of misadventure since his Army days and is flat broke. He thought his old buddy might stake him to a few hot meals and a place to stay for “a few days.” Jesse says okay, but tells his friend he’s as broke as he is. They suddenly hear a plane flying overhead above the clouds. “Probably off course,” Phil remarks.

So, okay we’ve got two plot elements started already: the artillery exercises and the old friend looking for a handout. Then all at once we’ve got plot # 3 started when we’re suddenly in the small airliner we heard earlier flying high over Jesse’s cabin. There we meet “The Creature from the Black Lagoon”’s swimming partner, the great Julie Adams as Sheryl Gregory, an actress/model who’s had a rough and tumble life and has