May 14 - Richard Deacon

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On this day, in 1921, Richard Deacon was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. As a young boy, Richard’s family moved across the state border to Binghamton, New York where he would finish his childhood years. After graduating from Binghamton Central High School, alongside the other future Binghamton star Rod Serling, he would serve in the Army Medical Corps during World War II. Following the end of the war, Richard returned home, began working as a lab technician at Binghamton General Hospital and started taking courses at nearby Ithaca College with the intent of becoming a doctor. Along the way, he was bitten by the acting bug, though, and he never become a actual doctor, but he did get to play one on tv several times.

Richard began acting in the late Forties in college productions which naturally led to regional theater stages. He eventually crossed paths with Helen Hayes, who told him that while he would probably never become a leading man, he should definitely pursue a career as a character actor. He took the advice to heart and built a massive body of work on it.

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Richard’s film and television careers both started in the Fifties. His first film role was as an MP in 1953’s Invaders from Mars, which also featured future co-star Barbara Billingsley. Over the next five years, before his debut on the small screen, Richard appeared in 34 films, ranging from comedies like Abbot and Costello meet the Mummy (pictured) to dramas like The Power and the Prize to musicals like Carousel. He would grace the cast list of over 100 movies before his career was over, but it wasn’t until he started making weekly visits in everyone’s living rooms that he became someone everyone knew.

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Richard made his television debut on The Jack Benny Show in 1954 but his first recurring role was on the venerable sitcom Leave It To Beaver.  He spent six years as Fred Rutherford, father to Lumpy Rutherford, one of Wally Cleaver’s friends. His most famous role started in 1961 (and actually overlapped his Beaver gig for a year). Richard was cast as Melvin Cooley on The Dick Van Dyke Show (pictured). For five seasons, he masterfully played the butt of Morey Amsterdam’s jokes, occasionally also doing producer duties for his brother in law Allen Brady on the show within a show. Following the end of that series, Richard had recurring roles on The Phyllis Diller Show, The Beverly Hillbillies and The Mothers-In-Law. In 1969, he returned to the stage, making his Broadway debut as a replacement Horace Vandergelder in Hello, Dolly, reteaming with Phyllis Diller for almost a year.

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Richard joined the Disney family early in his career. In 1958, he starred as Uncle Archie McCloud in the serial Walt Disney Presents: Annette on the original Mickey Mouse Club (pictured). He later appeared in a string of films for the company throughout the Sixties, including That Darn Cat!, Lt. Robin Crusoe, USN, The Gnome-Mobile, Blackbeard’s Ghost, and The One and Only, Genuine, Original Family Band. His final Disney appearance came in 1984 when he was part of the cast of The Hoboken Chicken Emergency, a film that aired on the newly minted Disney Channel.

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Throughout the Seventies and into the Eighties, Richard made dozens of guest appearances on everything from Maude to The Love Boat (of course) to a recurring role as Sheriff Masters on BJ and the Bear. He even continued to land a handful of big screen roles in films like The Man From Clover Grove, Rabbit Test (Billy Crystal’s debut) and The Happy Hooker Goes Hollywood (pictured). He was also something of a gourmet chef in his private life and hosted a microwave cooking show in Canada, publishing a companion cookbook to go along with it. In 1983, twenty years after Leave It To Beaver went off the air, Richard reprised his role of Fred Rutherford for a made for tv reunion movie, Still the Beaver. The reunion was so successful that a new Beaver series was developed (which would air its first season on the Disney Channel) and Richard was slated to be a part of it, but it wasn’t to be. Before filming could start, he suffered a heart attack on August 8, 1984 at his home in Los Angeles, California. Paramedics rushed him to the hospital, but he was pronounced dead on arrival. He was 63.

October 28 - Elsa Lanchester

On this day, in 1902, Elsa Sullivan Lanchester was born in Lewisham, London, England. As the daughter of severely Bohemian parents, Elsa was born into a life with theatrical leanings. Her older brother Waldo would start his own marionette company. Prior to World War I, Elsa spent time in Paris studying dance under Isadora Duncan. She hated it so much that she was probably the only person who wasn't terribly sad that war broke out and closed the school. Not that she was done with dance.

During the Great War, as it was then known, 12 year old Elsa began earning extra money for her family by teaching little girls in her South London neighborhood how to dance. And not just how to dance, but how to dance like Isadora Duncan. She wasn't even a teenager yet and she'd already learned how to give the people what they want.

After the Great War ended, Elsa continued in her entrepreneurial vein and started a children's theater and then a nightclub, Cave of Harmony. In the Cave, she performed in both plays and a cabaret act, singing everything from old Victorian ballads to modern tunes. Elsa gained enough notoriety that Columbia Records made a couple of 78 recordings of her (one of the songs being "Please Sell No More Drink to My Father").

Elsa began doing more serious work in the theaters of London. An appearance in a 1927 play called Mr. Prohack introduced her to a fellow cast member she found intriguing, Charles Laughton. Within two years, the pair was married and would act together on stage and screen throughout their lifetimes, including a turn in 1936 when Elsa played Peter Pan to Laughton's Captain Hook.

Elsa made her first film appearance in 1925 in The Scarlet Letter. She continued doing British movies throughout the remainder of the Twenties and the beginning of the Thirties. Sometimes she appeared with her husband, sometimes she worked with the likes of Laurence Olivier or H.G. Wells. By 1935, Laughton had begun appearing in American films and Elsa joined him in Hollywood. After a couple of minor roles, she landed the most iconic role of her career: the title character in 1935's Bride of Frankenstein.

During the Forties, Elsa took on all sorts of supporting roles in multiple films, playing everything from a housekeeper to an artist. She was nominated for a Best Supporting Actress Oscar as a nativity scene painter in 1949's Come to the Stable. As the Fifties rolled on, Elsa continued to work steadily with people like Danny Kaye, Shelley Winters and Jerry Lewis. In 1957, she appeared with her husband in Agatha Christie's Witness for the Prosecution, for which they both earned Academy Award nominations and she won a Golden Globe.

Elsa's first job with Disney was as the beleaguered departing nanny, Katy Nanna, at the beginning of Mary Poppins. She would then play Mrs. MacDougall in That Darn Cat! with Dean Jones and Emily Stowecroft in Blackbeard's Ghost, with Jones and Peter Ustinov. Later she would be Mrs. Formby for two episodes of Walt Disney's Wonderful World of Color entitled "My Dog, the Thief."

For the remainder of her career, Elsa would do everything from memorable guest appearances on I Love Lucy to singing a duet with Elvis in Easy Come, Easy Go. You might see her on The Man From U.N.C.L.E. on your television set and then go to the movies and see her with Ernest Borgnine in Willard. The last thing you would have watched her in was the film Die Laughing, which also starred the voice of the Beast, Robbie Benson.

In 1983, Elsa published her autobiography, Elsa Lanchester Herself, detailing her 64 year career in entertainment and her 33 year marriage to Charles Laughton. Sadly, several months after the release of her book, Elsa would suffer a stroke followed by another one the next year. Left completely incapacitated, she would be confined to bed until her passing on December 26, 1986. She was 84.

Also on this day, in American history: Macy's Department Store