Connie Clausen | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Born | June 11, 1923 |
| Died | September 7, 1997 (aged 74) |
| Occupation | Actress, spokesperson, author |
Connie Clausen (born Constance Clausen on June 11, 1923, in Menasha, Wisconsin, [1] and died September 7, 1997, in New York City) was an American actress, author, and literary agent. [2]
Connie Clausen's career began in 1942 at the age of 19 when she was approached by John Ringling North on Main Street in Sarasota, Florida (then the winter quarters for Ringling Brothers Circus), who told her that her long hair would make her a perfect Alice in the following season's "fairy tale"-themed grand finale. She joined the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus and performed as an acrobat in an elephant act. [3] Her experiences in the circus later provided material for her memoir I Love You Honey, but the Season's Over (Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 1961), [1] in which she discussed, among other issues, the "significant gap" between what women did within the circus ring and their treatment outside of it. [4]
After leaving the circus, she worked as a magazine and television writer and started with MGM studios in Hollywood as director of special promotions. [5] Encouraged by an MGM studio photographer, she moved to New York City to begin a career as a Conover Model and as a successful Broadway and television actress. She appeared on Broadway in The Gambler with Alfred Drake and appeared in hundreds of television shows and commercials in the 1950s and 1960s. She was a television spokeswoman for Beech-Nut and Westinghouse Electric Corporation.
In 1971 Connie Clausen began a new career in publishing. As an assistant Vice President of Macmillan, she helped launch two of the company's best sellers, Watership Down and Jonathan Livingston Seagull. [5] In 1978 she started her own literary agency, Connie Clausen & Associates, which had a series of best sellers, including the beauty books by the photographer Francesco Scavullo, [6] the Pulitzer Prize-winning Jackson Pollock: An American Saga by Steven Naifeh and Gregory White Smith, [2] "Eat to Win", "The Rules" and many others. She was also the long-time American agent for the British author Quentin Crisp.
Clausen was portrayed by Swoosie Kurtz in the ITV film production of An Englishman in New York, a sequel to The Naked Civil Servant.
| Year | Title | Role | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1952 | Suspense | Martha | Episode: "The Debt" |
| 1952 | The Web | — | Episode: "The Best of Everything" |
| 1953 | Tales of Tomorrow | — | Episode: "The Lonesome Village" |
| 1953 | Man Against Crime | Joan | Episode: "Free Ride" |
| 1954 | Colonel Humphrey Flack | — | Episode: "Prince Fahz of Baklava" |
| 1954 | The Big Story | Dee Victor | Episode: "The Sioux City Story" |
| 1970–1971 | The Doctors | Mrs. Clark / Helen Fawcett | 3 episodes |
The Greatest Show on Earth is a 1952 American drama film produced and directed by Cecil B. DeMille, shot in Technicolor and released by Paramount Pictures. Set in the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus, the film stars Betty Hutton and Cornel Wilde as trapeze artists competing for the center ring and Charlton Heston as the circus manager. James Stewart also stars as a mysterious clown who never removes his makeup, and Dorothy Lamour and Gloria Grahame also play supporting roles.
Quentin Crisp was an English raconteur, whose work in the public eye included a memoir of his life and various media appearances. Before becoming well-known, he was an artist's model, hence the title of his most famous work, The Naked Civil Servant. He afterwards became a gay icon due to his flamboyant personality, fashion sense, and wit. His iconic status was occasionally controversial, however, due to remarks about subjects like the AIDS crisis. This invited censure from gay activists, including human-rights campaigner Peter Tatchell.
Menasha is a city in Calumet and Winnebago counties in the U.S. state of Wisconsin. The population was 17,353 at the 2010 census. Of this, 15,144 were in Winnebago County, and 2,209 were in Calumet County. The city is located mostly in Winnebago County; only a small portion is in the Town of Harrison in Calumet County. Doty Island is located partially in Menasha. The city's name comes from the Winnebago word meaning "thorn" or "island". In the Menominee language, it is known as Menāēhsaeh, meaning "little island". Menasha is home to the Barlow Planetarium and Weis Earth Science Museum, both housed at the University of Wisconsin-Fox Valley.
Sir John Vincent Hurt was an English actor whose career spanned over five decades. He came to prominence for his role as Richard Rich in the film A Man for All Seasons (1966) and gained BAFTA Award nominations for his portrayals of Timothy Evans in 10 Rillington Place (1971) and Quentin Crisp in television film The Naked Civil Servant (1975) – winning his first BAFTA for the latter. He played Caligula in the BBC TV series I, Claudius (1976). Hurt's performance in the prison drama Midnight Express (1978) brought him international renown and earned Golden Globe and BAFTA Awards, along with an Academy Award nomination. His BAFTA-nominated portrayal of astronaut Kane, in the science-fiction horror film Alien (1979), notably included a scene where an alien creature burst out of his chest, named by several publications as one of the most memorable moments in cinema history.
Concetta Rosa Maria Franconero, known professionally as Connie Francis, is an American former pop singer, actress, and top-charting female vocalist of the late 1950s and early 1960s. Widely recognized as the “First Lady of Rock & Roll,” she is estimated to have sold more than 100 million records worldwide.
Eleanor Jean Parker was an American actress. She was nominated for three Academy Awards for her roles in the films Caged (1950), Detective Story (1951), and Interrupted Melody (1955), the first of which won her the Volpi Cup for Best Actress. She was also known for her roles in the films Of Human Bondage (1946), Scaramouche (1952), The Naked Jungle (1954), The Man with the Golden Arm (1955), A Hole in the Head (1959), The Sound of Music (1965), and The Oscar (1966).
June Allyson was an American stage, film, and television actress, dancer, and singer.
The Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus is an American traveling circus company billed as The Greatest Show on Earth. It and its predecessor shows ran from 1871 to 2017. Known as Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey, the circus started in 1919 when the Barnum & Bailey's Greatest Show on Earth, a circus created by P. T. Barnum and James Anthony Bailey, was merged with the Ringling Bros. World's Greatest Shows. The Ringling brothers had purchased Barnum & Bailey Ltd. following Bailey's death in 1906, but ran the circuses separately until they were merged in 1919.
Irene Hervey was an American film, stage, and television actress who appeared in over fifty films and numerous television series spanning her five-decade career.
Leila Hyams was an American film and stage actress, model, and vaudevillian, who came from a show business family. Her relatively short film career began in 1924 during the era of silent films and ended in 1936,. She started out her career as a vaudevillian, stage performer and model, before embarking on a career in film, and although her career in this genre only lasted around twelve years, the blonde blue-eyed ingenue and leading lady appeared in more than 50 film roles and remained a press favourite, with numerous magazine covers.
Yvette Carmen Mimieux was an American film and television actress. Her breakout role was in The Time Machine (1960). She was nominated for three Golden Globe Awards during her acting career.
Paula Prentiss is an American actress. She is best known for her film roles in Where the Boys Are (1960), What's New Pussycat? (1965), Catch-22 (1970), The Parallax View (1974), and The Stepford Wives (1975).
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Constance Elaine Britton is an American actress, singer, and producer. Britton made her feature film debut in the independent comedy-drama film The Brothers McMullen (1995), and the following year, she was cast as Nikki Faber on the ABC sitcom Spin City. She later starred in the short-lived sitcoms The Fighting Fitzgeralds (2001) and Lost at Home (2003), and appeared in several films, most notably the sports drama film Friday Night Lights (2004) and the thriller film The Last Winter (2006).
"Englishman in New York" is a song by English singer Sting, from his second studio album ...Nothing Like the Sun, released in October 1987. Branford Marsalis played soprano saxophone on the track, while the drums were played by Manu Katché and the percussion by Mino Cinélu.
Dorothy Patrick was a Canadian-American film actress and a John Robert Powers model.
An Englishman in New York is a 2009 biographical film that chronicles the years gay English writer Quentin Crisp spent in New York City, starring John Hurt reprising his role as Crisp from The Naked Civil Servant (1975). The film takes its title from "Englishman in New York", a song about Crisp written by Sting for the 1987 album ...Nothing Like the Sun.
Lady Clover Honey is an American drag queen, comedian and television correspondent who lives and works in New York City. Born Kevin Clover Welsh in Totowa, New Jersey, he moved across the Hudson River to Manhattan in 1998 and then to Jersey City, New Jersey in 2011. Lady Clover Honey is perhaps best known as an Entertainment News Reporter on the television program Under the Pink Carpet, a show that highlights Nightlife and Culture in New York City and is broadcast on NYC Life/NYC Media WNYE-TV, and on WYBE MiND TV in Philadelphia, making her the first recurring Drag personality to be regularly seen in a series on an official NYC media broadcast.
Connie Sawyer was an American stage, film, and television actress, affectionately nicknamed "The Clown Princess of Comedy". She had over 140 film and television credits to her name, but was best known for her appearances in Pineapple Express, Dumb and Dumber, and When Harry Met Sally.... At the time of her death at age 105, she was the oldest working actress in Hollywood, with a career spanning an impressive 85 years, and was the oldest member of the Screen Actors Guild and the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.
Rowena Dolores Heath, also known as Dodie Heath, is an American retired actress of stage, film, and television.
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