SAGWatch – Observing the Screen Actors Guild and AFTRA

We’ve learned that former NED Ken Orsatti has passed away at age 78. Serving 19 years as NED, Ken was a tireless worker for all members. Here’s the union’s official statement.

She was a trailblazer, the first African American signed to a long term studio contract, a singer of amazing range and and an international sensation. Lena Horne appeared in many of the 1940s musicals, but suffered from the racial prejudice that was rampant in Hollywood back then. (The New York Times chronicles this nicely in [...]

The matriarch of the Redgrave acting clan, Lynn Redgrave, had been battling breast cancer for seven years. Recently, while rehearsing for her one-woman show “Nightingale” she told an interviewer the disease had hit stage four, meaning it had spread to other parts of her body. The Redgrave family says she passed away at her home [...]

With a simple line on the show’s premiere in 1956, “Good morning, dear. What would you like for breakfast? Helen Wagner began the role of Nancy Hughes, a role that would keep her working on the CBS soap “As the World Turns” for an amazing 54 years, virtually the entire span of the show. Wagner’s [...]

Actually, it during the 1950s and 60s that Dorothy Provine starred in everything from the ABC series “The Roaring 20s,” to “The Bonnie Parker Story” and “It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad World.” Provine was 75 when she passed away at her home in Bremerton, Washington. She had suffered from emphysema.

Legendary voice actor Allen Swift was already working as a principal on the Howdy Doody Show in 1954 when the star of the show suffered a heart attack. Swift took over the role of Howdy Doody and was an instant hit in the then-fledgling world of the voice over. From his relatively brief stint as [...]