8-12 Happy birthday to Sam J. Jones.

08-12 Happy birthday to Sam J. Jones, Born: August 12, 1954.

Samuel Gerald “Sam J.” Jones is an American actor. He is best known for playing the title character in the 1980 film Flash Gordon.
In 1975, prior to his first screen roles, Jones appeared in full frontal nude under the alias Andrew Cooper III as the centerfold for a photo-spread in the June issue of Playgirl magazine.
He made his first film appearance in the 1979 romantic comedy film 10. His appearance in 10 allowed him to beat Kurt Russell and Arnold Schwarzenegger for his most famous role, that of Flash Gordon in the 1980 film of the same name. Jones dyed his hair blonde for this role. The film was moderately successful at the box office grossing $27.1M in North America, and $22m in the UK – double its $20M budget. However, a falling out between Jones and the producers helped to scrap the planned trilogy.
After the release of Flash Gordon, Playgirl magazine reprinted his 1975 photo-spread in their January 1981 issue, this time using his real name. He went on to play Chris Rorchek in the TV series Code Red (1981–1982). He had guest roles in other TV shows including The A-Team, Hunter, and Riptide. In 1987, he played the lead role in a TV adaptation of Will Eisner’s comics character The Spirit. He also played the title character in the short-lived NBC sci-fi series The Highwayman. In the late 1980s and early 1990s he portrayed Johnny Valentine on the HBO series 1st & Ten.
Jones starred in the 1986 theatrical release My Chauffeur[6] and the straight-to-video movies Jungle Heat (1985), Jane and the Lost City (1987), Under the Gun (1988), Silent Assassins (1988), Whiteforce (1988), Driving Force (1989), and One Man Force (1989). In the 1990s, Jones had roles in films including In Gold We Trust (1990), Maximum Force (1992), Fist of Honor (1993), Hard Vice (1994), Enter the Shootfighter (1995), Texas Payback (1995), The Killer Inside (1996), Earth Minus Zero (1996), Baja Run (1996) and American Tigers (1996), and guest roles in the TV shows Baywatch, Diagnosis Murder and Walker: Texas Ranger.
In 2001, Jones was cast in Animal Planet’s family series Hollywood Safari as a park ranger. He appeared in “Deadman Switch”, an episode of the television series Stargate SG-1. In 2007, he played the prisoner Krebb in the Sci Fi Channel original television series Flash Gordon. He also had extended cameos (as himself, with his blond Flash Gordon hairstyle) in both the 2012 comedy film Ted and its 2015 sequel, Ted 2.

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7-31 Happy birthday to the late Ted Cassidy.

07-31 Happy birthday to the late Ted Cassidy, Born: July 31, 1932 and passed away on January 16, 1979.

Theodore Crawford Cassidy, better known as Ted Cassidy, was a very tall (6′ 9″), gravel-voiced actor who played Ruk, the ancient android discovered by Roger Korby, in the Star Trek episode “What Are Little Girls Made Of?” and who also did voice over roles for the series. He was best known, however, for portraying the macabre butler Lurch on the television series, The Addams Family.

Cassidy filmed his scenes between Friday 29 July 1966 and Tuesday 9 August 1966 at Desilu Stage 10. He also recorded the voice-over for Balok’s puppet during this period.

He started working in films in 1960, voicing the Martian in the science fiction film The Angry Red Planet. In 1964, he made his television debut as Lurch on The Addams Family. While auditioning for the role of Lurch, which was supposed to be a non-speaking role, Cassidy ad-libbed the famous “You rang?” line, which was written into the series. Cassidy also played the role of Thing (the disembodied hand) on The Addams Family, a role that was credited to “itself”. The only times Cassidy did not play Thing were in those scenes in which Lurch and Thing appeared together. For these scenes, the show’s associate producer lent a hand by “playing” Thing.

Cassidy’s large size earned him roles as physically impressive characters, such as the villainous Injun Joe on the short-lived television series The New Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, the bully Harvey Logan in the classic 1969 Western film Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, and even as Goliath in James L. Conway’s 1978 mini-series Greatest Heroes of the Bible.
In the meantime, his deep bass voice was sought after for voice-over roles, such as Metallus on Space Ghost, the Thing on The Fantastic Four, and Brainiac and the Black Manta on Challenge of the SuperFriends

In 1973, Cassidy played Isiah in Gene Roddenberry’s unsold pilot entitled Genesis II. Cassidy would reprise his role in the pilot’s 1974 re-working Planet Earth. Those two pilots, which featured the exploits of a Rip Van Winkle/Buck Rogers-type hero named Dylan Hunt, served as the basis for Roddenberry’s Andromeda, the lead character of which had the same name.

Besides Star Trek, other shows on which Cassidy has guest-starred included Lost in Space, The Man from U.N.C.L.E., The Beverly Hillbillies, I Dream of Jeannie, Tarzan, Mannix, Bonanza, and a two-parter on The Bionic Woman. He made his film debut opposite Julie Newmar in 1969’s Mackenna’s Gold and also appeared in such films as 1976’s Harry and Walter Go to New York, 1977’s The Last Remake of Beau Geste and 1978’s Goin’ Coconuts. In addition, he had a role in Susan Oliver’s 1977 short film Cowboysan. Cassidy was an early auditioner for the title role of The Incredible Hulk television series, and wound up providing the opening voice-over narration for each episode of that show, in addition to supplying some part of the Hulk’s roars and growls.

Cassidy died of complications following open heart surgery in 1979, leaving behind a long-time girlfriend and two children. Cassidy’s final work was Filmation’s animated sci-fi TV movie Flash Gordon: The Greatest Adventure of All.

In the 1990s, Cassidy’s most famous role, Lurch from The Addams Family, was assumed by TNG guest star Carel Struycken for the Addams Family feature films: The Addams Family in 1991, Addams Family Values in 1993, and Addams Family Reunion in 1998.

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3-21 Happy birthday to Timothy Dalton.

03-21 Happy birthday to Timothy Dalton, Born: March 21, 1946.

Timothy Peter Dalton] is an English actor. He is known for portraying James Bond in The Living Daylights (1987) and Licence to Kill (1989), as well as Rhett Butler in the television miniseries Scarlett (1994).
Dalton quickly moved to television, working mainly with the BBC, and in 1968 made his film debut as Philip II of France in The Lion in Winter. This was the first of several period dramas, which included a remake of Wuthering Heights in 1970 in which he portrayed Heathcliff. After a few more films, Dalton took a break in 1971 to concentrate on the theatre, performing with the Royal Shakespeare Company and other troupes throughout the world. In 1975, Dalton and Vivien Merchant headed the cast of a revival of Noël Coward’s The Vortex.

With two notable exceptions, the films Mary, Queen of Scots (1971) and Permission to Kill (1975), he remained a theatre actor until 1978. That year he starred in Sextette as the husband of 85-year-old Mae West, hailing his return to cinema and the beginning of his American career. While in the United States, Dalton worked mainly in television, although he starred in several films. During this time, he played Prince Barin in the 1980 cult science fiction classic Flash Gordon and played Mr. Rochester in the 1983 BBC serial of Jane Eyre. Dalton starred alongside Jonathan Pryce in the 1985 film The Doctor and the Devils.

Dalton co-starred with Joan Collins in the miniseries, Sins (1986). He was also replaced in two films in which he’d been signed to appear. He was offered the role of real-life British Prime Minister William Lamb in the film Lady Caroline Lamb. The filmmakers replaced him with Jon Finch at the last moment; Dalton sued for breach of contract and won an out-of-court settlement.

In 1985, Dalton was set to play Don Alfonso de la Torré in Roman Polanski’s film Pirates. The two men did not get along, so Polanski replaced Dalton with Damien Thomas

Dalton also played in the Doctor Who TV series.

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3-09 Happy birthday to Ornella Muti.

03-09 Happy birthday to Ornella Muti, Born: March 9, 1955.

Muti modeled as a teenager and made her film debut in 1970 in La moglie più bella (aka The Most Beautiful Wife). She has primarily worked in Italian films but she made her English-speaking film debut as Princess Aura in Flash Gordon in 1980. American movies she appeared in include Love and Money (1982), Casanova (1987), Wait Until Spring, Bandini (1989), A Season of Giants (1990), Oscar (1991), Once Upon a Crime (1992), Somewhere in the City (1998) and To Rome with Love (2012).

She is mostly known to the French for appearing in a television commercial of Giovanni Panzani pasta. She was voted “The Most Beautiful Woman in the World” in 1994 by a worldwide poll of readers of the magazine Class.

In 2008, Muti introduced her own line of jewellery. She opened new shops in Paris, Milan, Rome, Riga, Moscow and Almaty.

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2-07 Happy birthday to the late Buster Crabbe.

02-07 Happy birthday to the late Buster Crabbe, Born: February 7, 1908 and passed away on April 23, 1983.

Clarence Linden “Buster” Crabbe II was an American competitive swimmer and actor. He won the 1932 Olympic gold medal for 400m freestyle swimming before subsequently breaking into acting. He starred in a number of popular films in the 1930s and 1940s. He also played the title role in the serials Flash Gordon and Buck Rogers.

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