Joseph Wagstaff was an American actor, musician, singer and dancer.
Joseph Wagstaff was an American actor, musician, singer and dancer.
His father, Spencer George Wagstaff came from Hamilton, Ontario, Canada. He went to Detroit to work as an agent for the Grand Trunk Canadian National Railway. His father died in 1925 and his obituary lists him as leaving a widow and three sons, Earl, Sumner and Joseph. The obituary lists Joseph as a musical comedy actor. [1]
In the 1930 U.S. Census Joseph Wagstaff was listed as a silent and sound film actor. [2]
Song of Kentucky -1929 Joe played the part of Jerry Reavis and performed the songs "a night of happiness","sitting by the window","rapsody" and "don't blame me." Other actors in this film were Hedda Hopper, Dorothy Burgess, Herman Bing and Bert Woodruff. There was a sound track (record) available for this film.[ citation needed ]
Let's Go Places (1930), the working title of this was "Hollywood Nights", the name was changed along the way. This is said to be a lost film and I do not know if any copies are still in existence. The New York Times newspaper described this as being a singing talking film. Other actors in this film were Betty Grable, Lola Lane, Frank Richardson and Walter Catlett. [7]
Wagstaff performed with the following orchestras and performers:
Joe was performing in the Detroit and Harbor Springs areas of Michigan until well into the 1990s in the summer months.
Yankee Doodle Dandy is a 1942 American biographical musical film about George M. Cohan, known as "The Man Who Owned Broadway". It stars James Cagney, Joan Leslie, Walter Huston, and Richard Whorf, and features Irene Manning, George Tobias, Rosemary DeCamp, Jeanne Cagney, and Vera Lewis. Joan Leslie's singing voice was partially dubbed by Sally Sweetland.
Ferdinand Rudolph von Grofé, known as Ferde Grofé was an American composer, arranger, pianist and instrumentalist. He is best known for his 1931 five-movement tone poem, Grand Canyon Suite, and for having orchestrated George Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue prior to its 1924 premiere.
Carl Henry Vogt, known professionally as Louis Calhern, was an American stage and screen actor. For portraying Oliver Wendell Holmes in the film The Magnificent Yankee (1950), he was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actor.
Jacqueline Alice Irene Newlin, professionally known as Alice Day, was an American film actress who began her career as one of the Sennett Bathing Beauties.
William Lee Tracy was an American stage, film, and television actor. He is known foremost for his portrayals between the late 1920s and 1940s of fast-talking, wisecracking news reporters, press agents, lawyers, and salesmen. From 1949 to 1954, he was also featured in the weekly radio and television versions of the series Martin Kane: Private Eye, as well as starring as the newspaper columnist Lee Cochran in the 1958–1959 British-American crime drama New York Confidential. Later, in 1964, he was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor and a Golden Globe for his supporting role in the film The Best Man.
Sam Levene was a Russian Empire-born American Broadway, film, radio and television actor and director. In a career spanning over five decades, he originated some of the most legendary comedic roles in American theatrical history, including Nathan Detroit, the craps-shooter extraordinaire, in the 1950 original Broadway production of Guys and Dolls (1950), Max Kane, the hapless agent, in the original 1932 Broadway production of Dinner at Eight (1932); Patsy, a professional if not always successful gambler, in the longest running and original Broadway production of Three Men on a Horse (1935); Gordon Miller, the shoestring producer, in the original Broadway production of Room Service (1937); Sidney Black, a theatrical producer, in Moss Hart's original Broadway production of Light Up the Sky (1948), Horace Vandergelder, the crotchety merchant of Yonkers, in the premier UK production of Thornton Wilder's The Matchmaker (1954), a play that became the basis for the musical Hello Dolly, Lou Winkler, a businessman in the original Broadway production of Fair Game (1957) a comedy by Sam Locke that Larry Gelbart attributed its 217-performance run mostly to the performance and drawing power of Sam Levene who starred in the comedy with Ellen McRae, a 25-year ingenue making her Broadway debut and who later changed her name to Ellen Burstyn; and Al Lewis, the retired vaudevillian, in the original Broadway production of The Sunshine Boys (1972), Neil Simon’s salute to vaudevillians opposite Jack Albertson as Willie Clark, a role Levene performed 466 times on Broadway, first with Jack Albertson until October 28, 1974 and later opposite Jack Gilford, October 30, 1974 until February 10, 1975. In 1984, Levene was posthumously inducted in the American Theatre Hall of Fame and in 1998, Sam Levene along with the original Broadway cast of the 1950 Guys and Dolls Decca cast album posthumously inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame.
John Frederick Coots was an American songwriter. He composed over 700 popular songs and over a dozen Broadway shows. In 1934, Coots wrote the melody with his then chief collaborator, lyricist Haven Gillespie, for the biggest hit of either man's career, "Santa Claus Is Comin' to Town." The song became one of the biggest sellers in American history.
Joseph Mansfield Santley was an American actor, singer, dancer, writer, director, and producer of musical theatrical plays motion pictures and television shows. He adopted the stage name of his stepfather, actor Eugene Santley.
Little Johnny Jones is a musical by George M. Cohan. The show introduced Cohan's tunes "Give My Regards to Broadway" and "The Yankee Doodle Boy." The "Yankee Doodle" character was inspired by real-life Hall of Fame jockey Tod Sloan.
Ivah Mae Wills Coburn was an American actress and Broadway producer.
Hans-Werner Janssen was an American conductor of classical music, and composer of classical music and film scores. He was the first New York born conductor to lead the New York Philharmonic. For his film work he was nominated for six Academy Awards.
Harold Huber was an American actor who appeared on film, radio and television.
Conway Tearle was an American stage actor who went on to perform in silent and early sound films.
George Michael Cohan was an American entertainer, playwright, composer, lyricist, actor, singer, dancer and theatrical producer.
Danny Dare was an American choreographer, actor, director, writer, and producer of the stage, screen, and film.
Donald George Novis was an English-born American actor and tenor.
Seven Keys to Baldpate is a 1913 play by George M. Cohan based on a novel by Earl Derr Biggers. The dramatization was one of Cohan's most innovative plays. It baffled some audiences and critics but became a hit, running for nearly a year in New York, another year in Chicago and receiving later revivals; Cohan starred in the 1935 revival. Cohan adapted it as a film in 1917, and it was adapted for film six more times, and later for TV and radio. The play "mixes all the formulaic melodrama of the era with a satirical [farcical] send-up of just those melodramatic stereotypes."
Louise Groody (1897–1961) was an American Broadway musical comedy star of the 1920s who introduced to New York audiences the song "Tea for Two" in the musical No, No, Nanette.
LeRoy Jerome Prinz was an American choreographer, director and producer, who was involved in the production of dozens of motion pictures, mainly for Paramount Pictures and Warner Brothers, from 1929 through 1958, and choreographed Broadway musicals. He was nominated three times for the Academy Award for Best Dance Direction in the 1930s, and won the Golden Globe in 1958.
George M. Cohan's Theatre was a Broadway theatre that was built in 1911, and demolished in 1938.