1736) Michael Medwin

 Michael Hugh Medwin (1923 – 2020). English stage and film actor and film producer.

Medwin's West End theatre credits include Man and Superman, The Rivals, Love for Love, Duckers and Lovers, Alfie, St Joan of the Stockyards, and What the Butler Saw. At the National Theatre he played a season which included Weapons of Happiness, Volpone and The Madras House. He also played Lloyd Dallas in one of the casts of the long-running production of Noises Off in the early 1980s.

He is probably best known for his role as radio boss Don Satchley in the BBC television detective series Shoestring, as well as for playing Scrooge's nephew Harry in the film version of Scrooge, a musical based on Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol.

He made many film appearances, taking a leading role as Ginger Edwards in the 1953 Guy Hamilton film The Intruder. Others included Carry On Nurse (1959) and The Longest Day (1962), before turning to producing films.

Among the films he produced for Memorial Enterprises, a company he established with actor Albert Finney, are Charlie Bubbles (1967), directed by Finney, and Lindsay Anderson's If.... (1968), which won the Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival.

- "As a young actor, with red hair and wide grin, he ranged effortlessly from war drama to light comedy..." https://web.archive.org/web/20200307234906/https://www.telegraph.co.uk/obituaries/2020/02/27/michael-medwin-actor-familiar-face-1950s-tv-cinema-later-television/

1542) Desmond Tester

Sydney Desmond Tester (1919 – 2002). English film and television actor, host and executive.

He made his first stage appearance at the age of 11, in The Merry Wives of Windsor, 1930, receiving positive reviews from London.

From 1934 he became better known as a child actor. Tester's characters were often doomed to untimely deaths in such early films as Carol Reed's Midshipman Easy (1935), Tudor Rose (1936), The Stars Look Down (1939) and Sabotage (1936). He was a musical prodigy in Robert Stevenson's Non-Stop New York (1937) and a drummer boy in The Drum (1938).

After the Second World War, he moved to Australia and embarked in careers in radio, theatre, and television. He spent fifteen years at Channel Nine, taking charge of children's programming, and became more involved behind the scenes in production and publicity. He compered "Desmond and the Channel 9-Pins" an Australian children’s television series which aired from 1957 to 1962 on Sydney station TCN-9. In 1961, Tester retired from appearing on-screen on the series, but continued to write, produce and direct the show.

On 10 November 1939 Tester was registered as a conscientious objector, conditional upon performing farm work, which he did on a pig farm, saying he liked it. He also said, "We know from history that war does not rid the world of fear. War breeds war and greater fear".

 

- "An alternative story is that the formidable actress-manager Nancy Price had noticed his shock of red hair and given him his first credited role..." https://elhg.org.uk/discovery/lives/lives-desmond-tester/

 

- "SYDNEY DESMOND TESTER, young red-haired actor who played the Highland drummer-boy with Sabu in the film "The Drum," recently appared as a conscientious objector before the South Eastern Tribunal at Southwark." https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/58975044

 

 

1536) Patrick McGoohan

Patrick Joseph McGoohan (1928 – 2009). Irish-American actor, director, screenwriter, and producer of film and television.
Born in the United States to Irish emigrant parents, he was raised in Ireland and England. He began his career in England in the 1950s and rose to prominence for his role as secret agent John Drake in the ITC espionage programme Danger Man (1960–1968). He then produced and created The Prisoner (1967–1968), a surrealistic television series in which he starred as Number Six, an unnamed British intelligence agent who is abducted and imprisoned in a mysterious coastal village. Beginning in the 1970s, McGoohan maintained a long-running association with Columbo, writing, directing, producing and appearing in several episodes. His notable film roles include Dr. Paul Ruth in Scanners (1981) and King Edward I in Braveheart (1995). He was a BAFTA Award and two-time Primetime Emmy Award winner.

- "Auburn hair and light blue eyes." https://www.imdb.com/name/nm0001526/bio

 
- "... McGoohan was a naural ginger haired guy... he dyed his hair blond for John Drake..." https://forums.digitalspy.com/.../patrick-mcgoohan...

 

1467) Virginia Van Upp

Virginia Van Upp (1902 – 1970). American film producer and screenwriter.

Virginia Van Upp performed in several silent films as a child actress. She soon worked her way up in the film industry becoming a script writer, film editor, script reader, casting director, and agent.

She was only one of three female producers in Hollywood at the time. (The others were Joan Harrison who was associated with Alfred Hitchcock, and Harriet Parsons, daughter of influential gossip columnist Louella Parsons.)

As a producer, her work was often uncredited, such as the recutting of Orson Welles' vehicle for his wife Rita Hayworth, the expensive The Lady from Shanghai.

Perhaps Van Upp's best remembered production is film Gilda (1946), which she co-wrote and carefully supervised.

 

- “She is a lovely looking person with the very prettiest shade of red hair, and is charming, vivacious, and natural,”... Various profiles of her took care to inform readers that she stood a delicate five-foot-three, with flame red hair and green eyes." https://hazlitt.net/.../whatever-happened-virginia-van-upp

 

- "Virginia was a buxom lady in her latter forties with a mop of flaming red hair." https://books.google.it/books?id=xrweBgAAQBAJ&pg=PA229...

 

 

1459) Jimmy Lydon

James Joseph Lydon (1923 – 2022). American actor and television producer.

In 1937, Jimmy, not knowing what he wanted to do, tried his hand at acting. His first role was Danny in the Broadway play Western Waters. He had been allowed to audition for the part after fabricating a list of roles he had previously portrayed. In the next couple of years, he learned the acting craft while performing in plays such as Sunup to Sundown, Prologue to Glory, Sing Out the News, and The Happiest Days. In 1939, he moved with his family to Hollywood to seek film roles.

Between 1941 and 1944, under contract to Paramount Pictures, Lydon starred as the screechy-voiced, adolescent Henry Aldrich in the movie series of that title. After completing the Aldrich series, the 21-year-old Lydon signed a contract in 1944 with Republic Pictures. He appeared in the acclaimed 1947 film Life with Father in the role of college-bound Clarence.

Lydon easily gained roles in the new medium of television. He portrayed Chris Thayer on The First Hundred Years. The show was CBS' first daytime soap opera. It was performed live for three seasons of 300 episodes.

After working increasingly in television in the 1950s, he turned to production and helped to create the detective series 77 Sunset Strip, as well as the sitcom M*A*S*H.

 

- “I was the only natural redhead,” said Lydon." https://eu.thespectrum.com/.../jimmy-lydon.../85830388/

 

- "Encouraged by a family friend to audition for the theater and lie about his lack of experience, the red-haired, freckle-faced Mr. Lydon went into acting..." https://www.washingtonpost.com/.../actor-jimmy-lydon-dead/

 

- "Jimmy Lydon was the only one with naturally red hair, but he still had to get his hair dyed with the rest of the cast." https://moviestvnetwork.com/.../life-with-father-could...

 

 

1188) Cy Feuer

Cy Feuer (1911 – 2006). American theatre producer, director, composer, musician, and half of the celebrated producing duo Feuer and Martin. He won three competitive Antoinette Perry Awards for Excellence in Theatre and a Lifetime Achievement Tony Award. He was also nominated for an Oscar for 1938's Storm Over Bengal.

- "Cy was an exuberant man with freckles and his red hair always in a brush cut."  https://books.google.it/books…

- "He was a man with a barreling energy, a little guy with red hair and freckles..."  https://books.google.it/books…

1085) Hallie Flanagan

Hallie Flanagan Davis (née Ferguson, 1889 – 1969). American theatrical producer and director, playwright, and author, best known as director of the Federal Theatre Project, a part of the Works Progress Administration (WPA).

- "Born in 1890, red-haired Hallie Ferguson spent her first ten years in a South Dakota town, often staging plays in the living room with her brothers and sisters."  https://www.ontheissuesmagazine.com/cafe2.php?id=137

- "Hallie Flanagan, a diminutive, red-haired academic theatre artist..."  https://books.google.it/books…

- "The 'small, red-haired lady with the firm mouth and the ferocity of a roused lion' as John Houseman once described her..."  https://books.google.it/books…

- "Pert, red-haired, dinamic, fiery Flanagan was controversial from the beginning."  https://books.google.it/books…

781) Burgess Meredith

Oliver Burgess Meredith (1907 – 1997). American actor, director, producer and writer. Active for more than six decades, Meredith has been called "a virtuosic actor" and "one of the most accomplished actors of the century". A lifetime member of the Actors Studio by invitation, he won several Emmy. He was the first male actor to win the Saturn Award for Best Supporting Actor twice, and was nominated for two Academy Awards.
He established himself as a leading man in Hollywood with critically acclaimed performances as George Milton in Of Mice and Men (1939), Ernie Pyle in The Story of G.I. Joe (1945), and the narrator of A Walk in the Sun (1945).
Meredith was known later in his career for his appearances on The Twilight Zone and for portraying arch-villain The Penguin on the 1960s TV series Batman and boxing trainer Mickey Goldmill in the Rocky film series. For his performances in The Day of the Locust (1975) and Rocky (1976), he received nominations for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor.
He was married to actress Paulette Goddard.
He was a descendant of the house of Howard through Catherine Howard, the fifth wife of King Henry VIII.

- "Burgess Meredith, red-headed dynamo of the stage and screen..." https://books.google.it/books…

- "... Burgess Meredith, his red hair aflame in the brilliant sun of a beautiful Indian summer day."  https://books.google.it/books…

735) Robert Z. Leonard

Robert Zigler Leonard (1889 – 1968). American film director, actor, producer, and screenwriter.
He was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Director for The Divorcee and The Great Ziegfeld (starring William Powell and Myrna Loy). Both were also nominated for Best Picture, and the latter won. Leonard was brought in late by MGM as a reliable director who could get its Pride and Prejudice (1940), starring Greer Garson and Laurence Olivier, onto the big screen. He directed more than 160 films.

- "... and her big, red-headed director-husband Robert Z. Leonard..." https://books.google.it/books…

731) Ida Lupino

 Ida Lupino (1918 – 1995). English-American actress, singer, director, and producer. She is widely regarded as one of the most prominent, and one of the only, female filmmakers working during the 1950s in the Hollywood studio system. With her independent production company, she co-wrote and co-produced several social-message films and became the first woman to direct a film noir with The Hitch-Hiker in 1953. She is also the first female star to direct herself in a sound film (The Bigamist, 1953)
Throughout her 48-year career, she made acting appearances in 59 films and directed eight others, working primarily in the United States, where she became a citizen in 1948. She also directed more than 100 episodes of television productions in a variety of genres including westerns, supernatural tales, situation comedies, murder mysteries, and gangster stories. She was the only woman to direct episodes of the original The Twilight Zone series, as well as the only director to have starred in the show.
Lupino was born in Herne Hill, London, to actress Connie O'Shea (also known as Connie Emerald) and noted music hall comedian Stanley Lupino, a member of the theatrical Lupino family, a centuries-old theatrical dynasty dating back to Renaissance Italy.

- "She had auburn hair and violet eyes framed by half-inch-long lashes." https://www.nytimes.com/…/ida-lupino-film-actress-and-direc…

- "She let her bleached blonde hair return to its original auburn..."  https://shadowsandsatin.wordpress.com/…/ida-lupino-dont-me…/

- "... the teen star dropped her Paramount contract, scrubbed her face, reverted back to her natural auburn hair and went freelance." https://www.theguardian.com/film/2002/apr/22/artsfeatures2

600) Anderson Lawler

Anderson Lawler (1902 – 1959). American film and stage actor and producer, who had a career lasting from the 1920s through the 1950s. He began on Broadway, before moving to featured and supporting roles in Hollywood over a ten-year career at the very beginning of the talking picture era. After the end of his acting career, Lawler would move to the production end of the film industry, as well as becoming a producer of legitimate theater in the late 1940s and 1950s.

- "A well-born Virginian, tall, thin, freckled, with a choirboy's face and plentyful red hair..." https://books.google.it/books…

- "He stood tall and like Kate was heavily freckled with red hair." https://books.google.it/books…

- "If anything, the tall, thin, freckled-faced young man looked like a choirboy under all that red hair." https://books.google.it/books…

427) Charles Laughton

Charles Laughton (1899 – 1962). English stage and film actor. Laughton was trained in London at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art and first appeared professionally on the stage in 1926. In 1927, he was cast in a play with his future wife Elsa Lanchester, with whom he lived and worked until his death.
He played a wide range of classical and modern parts, making an impact in Shakespeare at the Old Vic. His film career took him to Broadway and then Hollywood, but he also collaborated with Alexander Korda on notable British films of the era, including The Private Life of Henry VIII, for which he won the Academy Award for Best Actor for his portrayal of the title character. He portrayed everything from monsters and misfits to kings. Among Laughton's biggest film hits were The Barretts of Wimpole Street, Mutiny on the Bounty, Ruggles of Red Gap, Jamaica Inn, The Hunchback of Notre Dame and The Big Clock. In his later career, he took up stage directing, notably in The Caine Mutiny Court-Martial and George Bernard Shaw's Don Juan in Hell, in which he also starred. He directed one film, the thriller The Night of the Hunter.
Daniel Day-Lewis cited Laughton as one of his inspirations, saying: "He was probably the greatest film actor who came from that period of time. He had something quite remarkable. His generosity as an actor, he fed himself into that work. As an actor, you cannot take your eyes off him."

- "His considerable physical bulk, his red hair and doughy facial features seemed like the stuff villains were made of, not heroes." https://books.google.it/books…

- "Laughton's hair was red as well, but the complexion is more sallow." http://www.headlesshearseman.com/paint.html

83) Billy Wilder

Samuel "Billy" Wilder (1906 - 2002). Austrian-born American filmmaker, screenwriter, producer, artist and journalist whose career spanned more than five decades. He is regarded as one of the most brilliant and versatile filmmakers of Hollywood's Golden Age. With The Apartment, Wilder became the first person to win Academy Awards as producer, director, and screenwriter for the same film.

"An ebullient youth with curly red hair".

https://books.google.it/books

"His twin trademarks were the pork pie hats he always wore - to hide his red hair - and the caustic observations that never allowed anyone to get really close to him."

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-107321/Billy-Wilder-dies-95.html

61) Emilie Charlotte Langtry

Emilie Charlotte Langtry (née Le Breton; 1853 – 1929), known as Lillie (or Lily) Langtry and nicknamed "The Jersey Lily", was a British-American socialite, actress and producer.
Born on the island of Jersey, upon marrying she moved to London in 1876. Her looks and personality attracted interest, commentary, and invitations from artists and society hostesses, and she was celebrated as a young woman of great beauty and charm.
By 1881, she had become an actress and starred in many plays in the UK and the United States, including She Stoops to Conquer, The Lady of Lyons, and As You Like It, eventually running her own stage production company. In later life she performed "dramatic sketches" in vaudeville. She was also known for her relationships with noblemen, including the Prince of Wales (the future king Edward VII), the Earl of Shrewsbury, and Prince Louis of Battenberg. She was the subject of widespread public and media interest. 
Frank Miles completed several sketches of her that became very popular on postcards. Another guest, Sir John Everett Millais, also a Jersey native, eventually painted her portrait. She also sat for Sir Edward Poynter and is depicted in works by Sir Edward Burne-Jones. She became much sought-after in London society, and invitations flooded in. She is sometimes regarded as the first pin-up.

- "Famous red-haire people include... actress and London socialite Lilie Langtry..." https://books.google.it

- "Langtry was a tall, curvaceous lady with Titian red hair and portraits of her sold in shops for a penny." http://chrisenss.com/the-jersey-lillie/

- "Still in mourning following the recent death of her favourite brother, she wore only a plain black gown with her red-gold hair gathered in a simple knot at the nape of her neck." https://www.theislandwiki.org/index.php/Lillie_Langtry_-_a_biography

- "When she was a tall young woman with an unruly twist of reddish hair, she went with her father to watch a yacht trying to make shore in a storm." https://clickamericana.com/topics/celebrities-famous-people/lillie-langtry-the-scandalous-jersey-lily-1958

- "She was by all accounts astonishingly beautiful, with reddish hair and deep blue eyes."  https://www.encyclopedia.com/women/encyclopedias-almanacs-transcripts-and-maps/langtry-lillie-1853-1929

Portrait by Sir Edward John Poynter

Portrait by Herbert Gustave Schmalz

A Jersey Lily by Millais

Portrait by George F. Miles

Mrs Lillie Langtry, by George Frederic Watts, 1880