Lionel Stander

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Lionel Jay Stander (January 11, 1908 – November 30, 1994) was an American actor who appeared in films, radio, theater, and television.

Early life

Lionel Stander was born in The Bronx, New York City, to Russian-Jewish refugees, the eldest of three children.

He appeared in The Muse of the Unpublished Writer and A Comedy of Greenwich Village during his one-year at Chapel Hill University.

Personal life

Stander was married six times, including Lucy Dietz (1928–1936), Alice Twitchell (1945–1963), Maria (1963), and Stephanie Van Hennick (1971–1994). Except for the last marriage, which ended with his death, all ended in divorce except for the last one. He fathered six children.

At age 86, a stander died of lung cancer in Los Angeles, California. He was buried in Glendale's Forest Lawn Memorial Park Cemetery.

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Career

At the Provincetown Playhouse, a stander's acting career began in 1928 as Cop and First Fairy in Him by E. E. Cummings. He claimed he obtained the positions because one of them wanted shooting craps, which he did well, and a friend in the company volunteered him. He appeared in a string of short-lived performances from the early 1930s, including The House Beautiful, which Dorothy Parker characterized as "the play lousy."

Stander's first credited film role in the Warner-Vitaphone short film In the Dough (1932), with Fatty Arbuckle and Shemp Howard, landed him in 1932. He made several other shorts, the last being The Old Grey Mayor (1935) with Bob Hope in 1935. He was cast in a film directed by Ben Hecht (1935), starring Nol Coward. He moved to Hollywood and signed a deal with Columbia Pictures. Over the next three years, the stander appeared in a number of films, the most notable in Frank Capra's Mr. Deeds goes to Town (1936) with Gary Cooper, Meet Nero Wolfe (1936), Archie Goodwin, The League of Frightened Men (1937), and A Star Is Born (1937) with Janet Gaynor and Fredric March.

Stander's distinctive rumbling voice, tough-minded demeanor, and a natural mimicry of accents made him a hit radio performer. He appeared on The Eddie Cantor Show, Bing Crosby's KMH show, the Lux Radio Theater of a Star Is Born, A Star Is Born, Bing Crosby's KMH display, The Town series with Lionel Barrymore and Agnes Moorehead, the Lincoln Highway Radio Show on NBC, and The Jack Paar Exhibition, among other things.

He appeared on CBS in a short-lived radio show named The Life of Riley (no relation to the radio, film, and television characters made famous by William Bendix). Stander appeared in both Harold Lloyd's film The Milky Way (1936) and its remake ten years later, The Kid from Brooklyn (1946), starring Danny Kaye. He appeared on Danny Kaye's zany comedy-variety radio show on CBS (1946-19747), playing himself as "just the elevator operator" amid Kaye's antics, including future We Miss Brooks actor Eve Arden and bandleader Harry James.

He appeared on several characters on The Woodpecker and Andy Panda animated theatrical shorts, produced by Walter Lantz Productions in the 1940s and 1960s. Woody Woodpecker was the voice of Buzz Buzz Buzzard in 1951 but he was blacklisted from the Lantz studio in 1951 and Dal McKennon replaced him.

Stander spoke out for a variety of social and political causes, and he was a founding member of the Screen Actors Guild. "With the eyes of the entire world on this meeting, will it give the Guild a black eye if its members keep to cross picket lines?" he said at a SAG meeting held during a 1937 studio technician's strike. "Chereers mingled with boos answered the question," the NY Times reported.) In addition, the Stander also supported the United States Studio Union in its fight against the Mob-influenced International Association of Theatrical Stage Employees (IATSE). Ivan F. Cox, a deposed officer of the San Francisco longshoremen's union, has filed a lawsuit against Stander and a number of others, including union president Harry Bridges, actress Fredric March, Franchot Tone, Mary Astor, Jean Muir, and director William Dieterle. According to Time magazine, the charge was "conspiring to propagate Communism on the Pacific Coast," causing Mr. Cox to leave his position."

Stander "a Red son of a bitch" was reportedly branded "a Red son of a bitch" by Columbia Pictures head Harry Cohn in 1938, triggering a US$100,000 fine against every studio that renewed his deal. Despite critical acclaim for his appearances, Stander's film career fell off sharply. He appeared in 15 films in 1935 and 1936, but there were only six in 1937 and 1938. Just six films from 1939 to 1943 were released, none of which were produced by major studios, the most notable of which was Guadalcanal Diary (1943).

In 1940, a stander was one of the first group of Hollywood celebrities to be arrested before the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) for suspected Communist activities. John R. Leech, the self-described former chief functionary" of the Communist Party in Los Angeles, was named as a CP member at a grand jury hearing in August 1940, as well as more than 15 other Hollywood celebrities, including Franchot Tone, Humphrey Bogart, James Cagney, Clifford Odets, and Budd Schulberg. Stander pleaded guilty of the charges after being forced himself into the grand jury hearing, but the district attorney alerted him of it.

Stander appeared in few films in 1944 and 1945. Then participated in a number of predominantly second-rate photographs from independent studios in the late 1940s, with HUAC's attention elsewhere due to World War II. Specter of the Rose (1946); Ben Hecht's The Son of Harold Diddlebock (1947) with Harold Lloyd; and The Bowery Boys (1948). Unfaithfully Yours (1948) with Rex Harrison is one of his best works from his time in life.

HUAC shifted its attention once more to Hollywood in 1947. Howard Rushmore, a writer who had worked with the CPUSA in the 1930s and wrote film reviews for the Daily Worker, testified that writer John Howard Lawson, who had been named as a Communist, had "referred to Lionel Stander as a prime example of how a Communist should not behave in Hollywood" in October. Although standing on television, radio, and in the theater, the stander was still blacklisted from films.

In a "closed-door session" in March 1951, actor Larry Parks, after pleaded with HUAC investigators not to order him to "crawl through the mud" as an informant, named many people as Communists, which made the newspapers two days later. He testified that he knew Stander, but that he did not recall attending any CP meetings with him.

Stander, actor Marc Lawrence, named him as a member of his Hollywood Communist "cell" at a HUAC hearing in April 1951, as well as screenwriter Lester Cole and screenwriter Gordon Kahn. Lawrence testified that Stander "was the guy who introduced me to the party line," and that by joining the CP, he would "get to know the dames more" — which Lawrence, who did not like film-star looks, was a good idea. Stander fired off a telegram to HUAC Chair John S. Wood, calling Lawrence's admission that he was a Communist "ridiculous" and insisting to appear before the committee so he could swear to it under oath. "I respectfully request the opportunity to appear before you at your earliest possible convenience," the telegram read. "Be assured of my cooperation." Stander was slander sued Lawrence for $500,000 in two days. According to Stander), Lawrence left the region ("fled" in Europe.

Stander was blacklisted from television and radio after that. He continued to act in theater and appeared in the 1952-53 revival of Pal Joey on Broadway and on tour, and was Ludlow Lowell in the 1952-53 revival of Pal Joey.

Stander's summoned subpoena came two years before he was released. He finally testified at a HUAC hearing in New York in May 1953, where he made front-page headlines nationally by being uproariously uncooperative, immortalized in Eric Bentley's "Average or Have You Ever Been." The headline in the New York Times was "Stander Lectures House Red Inquiry." Stander testified in a debate against bandleader Artie Shaw, who had tearfully stated in a Committee hearing that the Communist Party had "duped" him, a man of the Communist Party.

Jenny Holzer of UC San Diego engraved "The First Amendment Blacklist Memorial" in stone.

During Stander's 1953 HUAC testimony: here are other HUAC remark:

"Now or yesterday," the stander denied that he was a Communist." However, when asked whether he had ever been a member of a party, he refused to answer, dismissing it as "a trick question."

Stander was blacklisted from the late 1940s to 1965, perhaps the longest period of time.

Stander's acting career went from strength to death after that. On Wall Street, he worked as a stockbroker, a corporate spokesperson, and even a New Orleans Mardi Gras king. In the low-budget The Moving Finger, he did not return to Broadway until 1961 (and then only in a short time) and film in 1963 (although he did have, uncredited, the voice-over narration for the 1961 film noir Blast of Silence.)

Stander's life improved when he arrived in London in 1964 to play in Bertolt Brecht's Saint Joan of the Stockyards, directed by Tony Richardson and Christopher Plummer in a 1963 version of Brecht's The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui. He appeared in the film Promise Her Anything in 1965. Richardson appeared in The Loved One, an all-star cast based on Evelyn Waugh's book, Jonathan Winters, Robert Morse, Liberace, Rod Steiger, Paul Williams, and many others. Roman Polanski played Stander in Cul-de-Sac, opposite Françoise Dorléac and Donald Pleasence in 1966, in his only starring role.

Stander stayed in Europe and eventually settled in Rome, where he appeared in many spaghetti Westerns, most notable portraying a bartender named Max in Sergio Leone's Once Upon a Time in the West. In Fernando Di Leo's 1972 political thriller Caliber 9, he played the villainous mob boss. He met Robert Wagner, who appeared in an episode of It Takes a thief that was shot in Rome. Stander's few English-language films in the 1970s include The Gang That Couldn't Shoot Straight With Robert De Niro and Jerry Orbach, Steven Spielberg's 1941 film, and Martin Scorsese's New York, New York, which also starred De Niro and Liza Minnelli.

In Chris Robinson's television film Revenge Is My Destiny, the stander played a supporting role. He sipped his ever-present drink after real-life Las Vegas comedian Joe E. Lewis, who started his show by announcing "Post Time" when he announced his immortality.

Stander returned to the United States for the role he is best known for: Max, the loyal butler, baker, and chauffeur to the wealthy, teenage detectives Jonathan and Jennifer Hart's Hart to Hart (1984) (and a sequel series of Hart to Hart made-for-television films). Stander received a Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actor (1982), Miniseries, or Television Film.

He appeared in The Transformers: The Film in 1986. In 1991, he appeared in the television series Dream On, playing Uncle Pat in the episode "Toby or Not Toby." In The Last Good Time (1994), Armin Mueller-Stahl and Olivia d'Abo directed by Bob Balaban, his last dramatic film role was as a dying hospital patient.

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