Gale Anne Hurd
Gale Anne Hurd was born on October 25, 1955 in Los Angeles, California. After graduating from Stanford University, she joined New World Pictures as executive assistant to Roger Corman, the company president. She worked her way up through various administrative positions and eventually became involved in production. She formed her own production company, Pacific Western Productions, in 1982 and went on to produce a number of box-office hits including The Terminator (1984), Aliens (1986) and The Abyss (1989). All were directed by James Cameron, whom she later married and divorced. She also later married and divorced Brian De Palma. She is currently the recording secretary for the Producers Guild of America.
Gale Harold
Gale Harold was born and raised in Atlanta, Georgia. After studying photography and printmaking at the San Francisco Art Institute, Harold began studying acting at the suggestion of writer and producer Susie Landau Finch, who at the time was working at American Zoetrope. After three years of training and theatre work, Harold was cast and starred for five years as "Brian Kinney", the lead character in the Showtime adaptation of the British series "Queer As Folk". Harold's film credits include Wake, Particles of Truth (Tribeca Film Festival), Rhinoceros Eyes (Toronto Film Festival), Fathers and Sons, The Unseen, and Falling For Grace. Along with executive producer David Bowie and producer Mia Bays, Gale co-produced the film Scott Walker: 30th Century Man, directed by Stephen Kijak. The film's world premiere was at the London Film Festival, and debuted internationally at the Berlin International Film Festival. The film's U.S. premiere was at the South By Southwest Film Festival. Harold appears as Connor Lang in Rockne S. O'Bannon and Kevin Murphy's SYFY series, "Defiance". Gale recently had regular roles on the series "The Secret Circle" and 'Hellcats". He has recurred on Emmy and Golden Globe award winning shows including "Deadwood", "Desperate Housewives", and "Grey's Anatomy". He has made guest appearances on "Street Time" "The Unit", "Law and Order SVU", and "CSI: NY". Harold's stage credits include Tennessee Williams' Suddenly Last Summer opposite Carla Gugino and Blythe Danner for the Roundabout Theatre Company, Williams' Orpheus Descending directed by Lou Pepe at Theater/Theatre. Harold's performance was called "brilliant" by the LA Times. The play received the McCulloh Award For Revival from the Los Angeles Dramatic Critics Circle 2011. He has also performed in Austin Pendelton's Uncle Bob at the Soho Playhouse, Gillian Plowman's Me and My Friend at The Los Angeles Theatre Center, and various productions with A Noise Within Repertory Company.
Gale Page
Born on July 29, 1910, to R.L. and Isabel Rutter in Spokane, Washington, Gale Page was christened Sally Perkins Rutter in the beginning. Coming from a political family, her uncle, Miles Poindexter (1868-1946), was a U.S. senator from the state of Washington who later became an ambassador to Peru. Her great-grandfather was Joseph Gale (1807-1881), the first governor of Oregon. A one-time radio actress and singer with Ted Weems' Orchestra, she appeared on radio soaps such as "Masquerade" (as blues singer Gertrude Lamont) and as Gloria Marsh on "Today's Children." Spotted for films by Warner Bros, she moved to Hollywood in 1938 and her moniker immediately changed by the studio to the more marquee-friendly "Gale Page." A lovely, wholesome-faced, curly-haired brunette, Gale was a brief fixture in films nominally consigned to play pleasant, decorative roles in such potboilers as Crime School (1938) (her debut), Indianapolis Speedway (1939), and They Drive by Night (1940). She was handed the role of her career as one of musical sisters in the classic tearjerker Four Daughters (1938) co-starring with the three Lane sisters (Priscilla Lane, Rosemary Lane, Lola Lane) when Universal passed on casting their fourth sister, Leota Lane. She went on, with the others, to co-star in the three sequels Daughters Courageous (1939), Four Wives (1939) and Four Mothers (1941). Gale appeared in only 16 films during her career, including the action adventure Heart of the North (1938); the Humphrey Bogart crime drama You Can't Get Away with Murder (1939); the musical comedy Naughty But Nice (1939); the action drama Indianapolis Speedway (1939), the domestic drama A Child Is Born (1939), the film noir They Drive by Night (1940); the William Saroyan classic The Time of Your Life (1948). Gale additionally won the lead femme role as the altruistic wife of Knute Rockne All American (1940) starring Pat O'Brien in the title role and Ronald Reagan whose famous catchphrase ("Win just one for the Gipper") showed up here. After completing a secondary role in the film noir Anna Lucasta (1949) starring Paulette Goddard, Gale abandoned the screen for family life. She reappeared just once in a movie a few years later with the soapy Shirley Booth vehicle About Mrs. Leslie (1954). She also was sporadically seen on several episodes of the TV anthology Robert Montgomery Presents (1950), as well as guest appearances on "The United States Steel Hour," "Hawaiian Eye," "Sam Benedict" and, her last, "The Eleventh Hour" in 1964. Page was first married to Frederick Tritschler, with whom she had a son. Following their 1939 divorce, she married Count Aldo Solìto de Solis, a pianist and composer. Their son, Luchino Solito de Solis Jr., was featured on Broadway in a juvenile role in the 1956 production of "Waiting for Godot." Gale died of lung cancer on January 8, 1983, in Santa Monica, California, at age 72.
Gale Payne
Gale Payne is an actress, known for Soulless (2018), Elastic Heart (2016) and The Spanking (2018).
Gale Robbins
Minor league singer/actress Gale Robbins was a knockout-looking hazel-eyed redhead who made a modest dent in post-war Hollywood films. Born Betty Gale Robbins in Chicago, Illinois (some say Mitchell, Indiana) on May 7, 1921, she was the eldest of five daughters of Arthur E., a doctor, and Blanche Robbins, and educated at Chicago's Jennings Seminary at Aurora, Illinois and Flower Tech. Gale had a natural flair for music and appeared in glee clubs and church choirs in the early days. She graduated from her Chicago high school in 1939. She started out in entertainment as a model for the Vera Jones Modeling School in Chicago, but her singing talents soon took over. Signed by a talent agency, she sang with Phil Levant's outfit in 1940 and later teamed with some male singers for a swing band that called themselves "The Duchess and Her Dukes." She went on to work with some of the top radio and live 'big bands' of that era including the Jan Garber and Hal Kemp orchestras, her best showcase was working for Art Jarrett in 1941 when he took over Kemp's band. 20th Century-Fox caught sight of this slim looker while she was singing for 'Ben Bernie (I)'s outfit and was quickly signed her up, her first film being the pleasant time-filler In the Meantime, Darling (1944). A semi-popular cheesecake pin-up, Gale appeared on the cover of "Yank, The Army Weekly" in 1944, was heard on radio, and toured with Bob Hope in Europe the next year. Her post-war parts, mostly sultry second leads, were typically lightweight in nature. She was often lent out to other studios and not always in a singing mode. Gale's better known film work includes Race Street (1948), The Barkleys of Broadway (1949), Three Little Words (1950), The Fuller Brush Girl (1950) and Calamity Jane (1953). Gale went on to host the Hollywood House (1949) and also appeared on The Colgate Comedy Hour (1950) in 1951. In the late 50s the gal with the smooth and sexy vocal style released an easy-listening album ("I'm a Dreamer") for the Vik Label backed by Eddie Cano & His Orchestra. She covered such standards as "Them There Eyes" and "What Is This Thing Called Love." After her final film appearance in Quantrill's Raiders (1958) and a few additional TV parts on such programs as "Bourbon Street Beat," "77 Sunset Strip," "The Untouchables," "Perry Mason" and "Mister Ed," Gale phased out her career to focus full-time on raising her family. Married to her high school sweetheart Robert Olson in November of 1943 while he was serving in the Air Force, her husband turned to construction engineering as a career and they had two children. After her 47-year-old husband was tragically killed on February 4, 1967, in a building accident, a distraught Gale, left the States for a time with her two daughters, and decided to make a transatlantic comeback of sorts appearing in nightclubs in Japan and the Orient. She later was glimpsed in the film Stand Up and Be Counted (1972) and appeared on stage in Stephen Sondheim's musical "Company" in 1975. She also made ends meet as an interior decorator. Gale died of lung cancer in February of 1980, and interred at Forest Lawn Cemetery.
Gale Sondergaard
Sly, manipulative, dangerously cunning and sinister were the key words that best described the roles that Gale Sondergaard played in motion pictures, making her one of the most talented character actresses ever seen on the screen. She was educated at the University of Minnesota and later married director Herbert J. Biberman. Her husband went to find work in Hollywood and she reluctantly followed him there. Although she had extensive experience in stage work, she had no intention of becoming an actress in film. Her mind was changed after she was discovered by director Mervyn LeRoy, who offered her a key role in his film Anthony Adverse (1936); she accepted the part and was awarded the very first Academy Award as Best Supporting Actress. LeRoy originally cast her as the Wicked Witch in The Wizard of Oz (1939), but she felt she was not right for that role. Instead, she co-starred opposite Paul Muni in The Life of Emile Zola (1937), a film that won Best Picture in 1937. Sondergaard's most-remembered role was that of the sinister and cunning wife of a husband murdered by Bette Davis' character in The Letter (1940). Sondergaard continued her career rise in films such as Juarez (1939), The Mark of Zorro (1940), The Black Cat (1941), and Anna and the King of Siam (1946). Unfortunately, she was blacklisted when she refused to testify during the McCarthy-inspired "Red Scare" hysteria in the 1950s. She eventually returned to films in the 1960s and made her final appearance in the 1983 film Echoes (1982). Gale Sondergaard passed away of an undisclosed illness at the Motion Picture and Television Hospital in Woodland Hills, California, at the age of 86.
Gale Storm
The youngest of five children, and born with the drab, unlikely name of Josephine Cottle on April 5, 1922, this pleasantly appealing, Texas-born, auburn-haired beauty was only seventeen months old when her father, William, passed away. The family moved from Bloomington (her home town) to McDade (between Austin and Houston), where her mother, Minnie, made ends meet as a seamstress and milliner. The family eventually settled in Houston, where Gale took dance and ice skating lessons, developed a strong interest in acting, and performed in high school dramatics. Encouraged by her teachers, Gale by chance entered and was chosen the winner of a local radio talent contest called Jesse L. Lasky's "Gateway to Hollywood" in 1939. This took her and her mother to Hollywood, where she captured the national contest title. Handed the more exciting stage moniker of "Gale Storm", she was soon put under contract to RKO Pictures. Although she was dropped by the studio after only six months, she had established herself enough to find work elsewhere, including at Monogram and Universal. Appearing in a number of "B" musicals, mysteries and westerns, her wholesome, open-faced prettiness made her a natural for filming. The programmers, however, that she co-starred in were hardly the talk of the town. Making her inauspicious debut with Tom Brown's School Days (1940), her '40s movies bore such dubious titles as Let's Go Collegiate (1941), Freckles Comes Home (1942), Revenge of the Zombies (1943), Sunbonnet Sue (1945), Swing Parade of 1946 (1946), and Curtain Call at Cactus Creek (1950), indicating the difficulty of finding material worthy of her talent. Arguably, her better movies include the family Christmas tale It Happened on Fifth Avenue (1947), which co-starred Don DeFore; the overlooked western comedy The Dude Goes West (1948) opposite Eddie Albert; and the film noir piece The Underworld Story (1950) with Dan Duryea. After years of toiling in films, Gale finally turned things around at age 30 by transplanting herself to the small screen. Her very first TV series, My Little Margie (1952), which was only supposed to be a summer replacement series for I Love Lucy (1951), became one of the most watched sitcoms in the early '50s while showing up in syndicated reruns for decades. Co-starring the popular film star Charles Farrell as her amiable dad, Gale's warmth and ingratiating style suited TV to a tee, making her one of the most popular light comediennes of the time. She segued directly into her second hit series as a cruise ship director in The Gale Storm Show: Oh! Susanna (1956), which was better known as "Oh! Susannah" after it went into syndication. Co-starring woebegone Zasu Pitts as the ship's manicurist and her "Ethel Mertz" counterpart, this show lasted a season longer than her first. In the midst of all this, the (gasp!) thirty-something star dared to launch her own Las Vegas nightclub and pop recording careers. Always looking much younger than she was, she produced a number of Billboard chart makers, including "I Hear You Knocking" (her first hit), "Memories Are Made of This", "Ivory Tower" and her own cover of "Why Do Fools Fall in Love". Her most successful song of the decade was "Dark Moon", which peaked at #4. Gale's film career took a sharp decline following the demise of her second series in 1960. Most of her focus was placed modestly on the summer stock or dinner theater circuit, doing a revolving door of tailor-made comedies and musicals such as "Cactus Flower", "Forty Carats", "The Unsinkable Molly Brown" and "South Pacific". She finally appeared again on TV in a The Love Boat (1977) segment in 1979 after nearly a two-decade absence. It was later revealed in Gale's candid autobiography "I Ain't Down Yet" (1981) and on the talk show circuit that the disappearance was triggered by a particularly vicious battle with alcohol. Years later, Gale became an outspoken and committed lecturer, helping to remove the stigma attached to such a disease, particularly as it applied to women. Fully recovered, she has been widowed twice (by actor Lee Bonnell in 1986 and Paul Masterson in 1996). Incredibly accommodating over the years, Gale has appeared on the nostalgia and film festival circuits to the delight of her many fans. She died on June 27, 2009, at a Danville, California convalescent home at age 87.
Galeazzo Ciano
Gian Galeazzo Ciano, 2nd Count of Cortellazzo and Buccari was an Italian diplomat and politician who served as Foreign Minister in the government of his father-in-law, Benito Mussolini, from 1936 until 1943. He was born in Livorno, Italy, in 1903. He was the son of Costanzo Ciano and his wife Carolina Pini; his father was an Admiral and World War I hero in the Royal Italian Navy (for which service he was given the aristocratic title of Count by Victor Emmanuel III). His son Galeazzo was accustomed to living a high-profile and glamorous life, which he maintained almost until the end of his life. Father and son both took part in Mussolini's 1922 March on Rome. After studying Philosophy of Law at the University of Rome, Galeazzo Ciano worked briefly as a journalist before choosing a diplomatic career; soon, he served as an attaché in Rio de Janeiro. On 24 April 1930, when he was 27 years old, he married Benito Mussolini's daughter Edda Mussolini, and they had three children (Fabrizio, Raimonda and Marzio), though he was known to have had several affairs while married. Soon after their marriage, Ciano left for Shanghai to serve as Italian consul. On his return to Italy in 1935, he became the minister of press and propaganda in the government of his father-in-law. Ciano volunteered for action in the Italian invasion of Ethiopia (1935-36) as a bomber squadron commander. He received two silver medals of valor and reached the rank of captain. His future opponent Alessandro Pavolini served in the same squadron as a lieutenant. Upon his highly trumpeted return from the war as a "hero" in 1936, he was appointed by Mussolini as replacement Foreign Minister. Ciano began to keep a diary a short time after his appointment and kept it active up to his 1943 dismissal as foreign minister. In 1937, he was allegedly involved in planning the murder of the brothers Carlo and Nello Rosselli, two exiled anti-fascist activists killed in the French spa town of Bagnoles-de-l'Orne on 9 June. Also in 1937, prior to the Italian annexation in 1939, Gian Galeazzo Ciano was named an Honorary Citizen of Tirana, Albania. Before World War II, Mussolini may have been preparing Ciano to succeed him as Duce. At the start of the war in 1939, Ciano did not agree with Mussolini's plans and knew that Italy's armed forces were ill-prepared for a major war. When Mussolini formally declared war on France in 1940, he wrote in his diary, "I am sad, very sad. The adventure begins. May God help Italy!" Ciano became increasingly disenchanted with Nazi Germany and the course of World War II, although when the Italian regime embarked on an ill-advised "parallel war" alongside Germany, he went along, despite the terribly-executed Italian invasion of Greece and its subsequent setbacks. Throughout 1941 and thereafter, Ciano made derogatory and sarcastic comments about Mussolini behind his back and was surprised that these comments were reported to the Duce, who did not take them lightly; for his part, Ciano ignored well meaning friends who advised moderation. On top of that, friends and acquaintances sought his protection and aid on various matters not having to do with his official position, which in turn resulted in further caustic remarks. In addition, two relatively minor incidents wounded his overblown self-importance and vanity. One was his being excluded from a projected meeting between Mussolini and Franco. The other involved in being reprimanded for a rowdy celebration of an aviator in Bari; he wrote a letter to Mussolini stating that the Duce had "opened a wound in him which can never be closed." His own self-worth seemed to cloud his judgment, forgetting that he had acquired his position by marrying the boss' daughter. In late 1942 and early 1943, following the Axis defeat in North Africa, other major setbacks on the Eastern Front, and with an Anglo-American assault on Sicily looming, Ciano turned against the doomed war and actively pushed for Italy's exit from the conflict. He was silenced by being removed from his post as foreign minister. The rest of the cabinet was removed as well on 5 February 1943. He was offered the post of ambassador to the Holy See, and presented his credentials to Pope Pius XII on 1 March. In this role he remained in Rome, watched closely by Mussolini. The regime's position had become even more unstable by the coming summer, however, and court circles were already probing the Allied commands for some sort of agreement. On the afternoon of 24 July 1943, Mussolini summoned the Fascist Grand Council to its first meeting since 1939, prompted by the Allied invasion of Sicily. At that meeting, Mussolini announced that the Germans were thinking of evacuating the south. This led Dino Grandi to launch a blistering attack on his longtime comrade. Grandi put on the table a resolution asking King Victor Emmanuel III to resume his full constitutional powers - in effect, a vote leading to Mussolini's ousting from leadership. The motion won by an unexpectedly large margin, with Ciano voting in favor. Mussolini's replacement was Pietro Badoglio, an Italian general in both World Wars. Mussolini did not think that the vote had any real value, and showed up at work the next morning like any other day. That afternoon, the king summoned him to Villa Savoia and dismissed him from office. Upon leaving the villa, Mussolini was arrested. For the next two months he was moved from place to place to hide him and prevent his rescue by the Germans. Ultimately, Mussolini was sent to Gran Sasso, a mountain resort in Abruzzo. He was kept in complete isolation in a hotel in Campo Imperatore until rescued by German paratroopers on 12 September 1943. Mussolini then set up a puppet government in the area of northern Italy still under German occupation called the Italian Social Republic. Ciano was dismissed from his post by the new government of Italy put in place after his father-in-law was overthrown. Ciano, Edda and their three children fled to Germany on 28 August 1943 in fear of being arrested by the new Italian government. The Germans turned him over to Mussolini's administration. He was then formally arrested on charges of treason. Under German and Fascist pressure, Mussolini had Ciano imprisoned before he was tried and found guilty. After the Verona trial and sentence, on 11 January 1944, Ciano was executed by a firing squad along with four others (Emilio De Bono, Luciano Gottardi, Giovanni Marinelli and Carlo Pareschi) who had voted for Mussolini's ousting.
Galen Crawley
Galen Crawley is an actress, known for What's the Matter with Gerald? (2016).
Galen De La Cruz
Galen De La Cruz is known for Money Talks the Anthology, Citizen Ashe (2021) and Black Ink Crew (2012).