Maurice Sendak, right, would act out scenes to focus groups in local classrooms with Brian DiMaio, left, to gauge appeal. This technique all but clinched the '64 Caldecott Medal.
While still in high school he started work part time filling in backgrounds for book versions of the “Mutt and Jeff” comic strip for All-American Comics. His first professional illustrations were for a physics textbook, “Atomics for the Millions,” which was published in 1947.
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Dick Clark, left, and Brian DiMaio, right, seen in an early 1950's television program called "USA Pavillion." After only a couple of episodes the program devolved from it's original charge of showcasing musical acts into a mélange of low grade reality-based programming.
Santa Monica, CA—“America’s Oldest Living Teenager,” Dick Clark, died last Wednesday after suffering a heart attack while at St. John’s Hospital for an outpatient procedure. He was 82.
Born Richard Wagstaff Clark in Mount Vernon, New York in 1929, he began his broadcast career at a radio station managed by his father.
Clark’s “American Bandstand” started in 1956 as a local TV show in Philadelphia. It was picked up by ABC and broadcast nationally a year later.
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Early Ralph McQuarrie concept pieces for RECOiL were criticized as derivative of his earlier work.
McQuarrie also worked on designs for the films “Close Encounters of the Third Kind,” “Raiders of the Lost Ark,” “E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial,” “RECOiL,” and “*batteries not included.” He won an Academy Award for Best Visual Effects in 1986 for his work on “Cocoon.”
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Davy Jones on the set of RECOiL with writer/director/actor Brian DiMaio. Jones played a detective and sang a musical number that didn't make the final cut.
Born in Manchester, England in 1945, Jones got his first big taste of show business in “Oliver” playing the Artful Dodger in London. He played the same role on Broadway and was nominated for a Tony Award.
He first gained fame in the United States when he joined Mike Nesmith, Peter Tork and Micky Dolenz in “The Monkees” TV show, which ran on NBC for two seasons. After the cancellation of their show, “The Monkees” still toured and released material before splitting up in 1971.
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RECOiL Writer/Director/Actor Brian DiMaio (center) in a screen test with Ben Gazzara (right) for the film Saint Jack. DiMaio wouldn't land the role in Saint Jack as director Peter Bogdanovich felt he smiled and looked at the camera too much. DiMaio would cast such directorial conventions aside when he made RECOiL years later, featuring Gazzara as a crime boss mentor to Vincent Parker.
He was born Biagio Anthony Gazzara in 1930, the son of Italian immigrants. In 1951, he auditioned for and was accepted to the Actors Studio, and starred on Broadway as the original Brick in “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof” in 1955.
He was nominated for an Emmy Award twice for his role in NBC’s “Run for Your Life” between 1965 and 1968. He won an Emmy Award for his work in the 2002 HBO film “Hysterical Blindness.”
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