Jeff Corey

Brooklyn, New York City, New York, USA

Biography

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Jeff Corey (born Arthur Zwerling; August 10, 1914 – August 16, 2002) was an American actor, television director, and teacher. After being blacklisted in the 1950s, he became one of the most prominent and influential acting coaches in Hollywood, whose students included the likes of Kirk Douglas, Jack Nicholson, Robin Williams, James Dean, Jane Fonda, Peter Fonda, James Coburn, Leonard Nimoy, Cher, Barbra Streisand and Rob Reiner. He returned to film and television work in the 1960s, playing many character roles. Early life and education Corey was born Arthur Zwerling in Brooklyn, New York to working-class Jewish immigrant parents. His father, Nathan Zwerling, was from Austria-Hungary, and his mother, Mary (nee Peskin), was from Russia. He attended New Utrecht High School in Brooklyn and was active in the school's Dramatic Society. He received a scholarship to the Feagin School of Dramatic Art, where he furthered his studies. Prior to his acting career, he worked as a salesman of sewing machines. Blacklisted and teacher Corey's career was again interrupted in the early 1950s, when he was summoned before the House Un-American Activities Committee. He refused to give names of alleged Communists and subversives in the entertainment industry and went so far as to ridicule the panel by offering critiques of the testimony of the previous witnesses. That led to his being blacklisted for 12 years. "Most of us were retired Reds. We had left it, at least I had, years before," Corey told Patrick McGilligan, the co-author of Tender Comrades: A Backstory of the Hollywood Blacklist, who teaches film at Marquette University. "The only issue was, did you want to just give them their token names so you could continue your career, or not? I had no impulse to defend a political point of view that no longer interested me particularly... They just wanted two new names so they could hand out more subpoenas." Back to work in the 1960s In 1962, Corey began working in films again, and remained active into the 1990s. He played Hoban in The Cincinnati Kid (1965); Tom Chaney, the principal villain in True Grit (1969); and Sheriff Bledsoe in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (also 1969), who says to the title characters, "I never met a soul more affable than you, Butch, or faster than the Kid, but you're still nothing but two-bit outlaws on the dodge. Television Corey made guest appearances on many television series. He appeared as murder victim Carl Bascom in the Perry Mason episode, "The Case of the Reckless Rockhound" (1964). He was featured on science-fiction series, too, including an episode of The Outer Limits ("O.B.I.T.", 1963) in which he played Byron Lomax; Star Trek ("The Cloud Minders", 1969) in which he played High Advisor Plasus; as Caspay in Beneath the Planet of the Apes (1970), and Babylon 5 ("Z'ha'dum", 1996) in which he played Justin. Personal life Corey married his wife Hope (nee Victorson) in 1938. They had three children. Death Corey died on August 16, 2002, aged 88, after a fall. CLR

Movies

Headmaster is an American half-hour television comedy-drama starring Andy Griffith and broadcast by CBS in the United States during the 1970-71 season. Headmaster marked the return to series television of Griffith, whose previous eponymous show had been one of CBS's major hits of the 1960s prior to his voluntary departure and a program which was still in production, when Headmaster was launched. With Headmaster, Griffith fulfilled his desire to be cast in a television series as something other than a rural bumpkin dispensing folksy wisdom; here his character, Andy Thompson, was the headmaster of a prestigious Californian private school, the Concord School. His wife, Margaret, was an English teacher; his best friend was the school's main athletic coach, Jerry Brownell. Mr. Purdy was the school's caretaker. Despite being aired in the Friday night 8:30 Eastern time slot vacated by the popular Hogan's Heroes, a theme song sung by Linda Ronstadt, and featuring arguably the biggest CBS star of the 1960s, Headmaster did not prove to be popular and was routinely beaten in the Nielsen ratings by both The Partridge Family on ABC and The Name of the Game on NBC. When this pattern became apparent, production of Headmaster was terminated, with the last first-run episode being broadcast January 1, 1971, and the program replaced by a new situation comedy starring Griffith, The New Andy Griffith Show. This replacement program met with little more success than Headmaster, and was last broadcast on May 21, 1971. In June 1971, Headmaster returned to the time slot in reruns, with the last repeat episode being aired on September 10, 1971.

More info
The Headmaster
1970