Billy Halop

Billy Halop Online (http://home.comcast.net/~shelga/index.html). Movie reviewer Leonard Maltin said of him: "Droopy-eyed, dark, and suavely handsome, this extremely versatile actor was one of the most respected stage performers of his generation.". ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide. His body was flown back to Puerto Rico where he was given a state funeral attended by thousands. For the rest of his life, Billy Halop supplemented his nursing income with small TV and movie roles, gaining a measure of latter-day prominence as Archie Bunker's cab-driving pal Bert Munson on the '70s TV series All in the Family. He died eight days later at the age of only 54. John's Hospital in Malibu. On October 16, 1994, a few days before his last movie, Street Fighter, was finished, Juliá suffered a stroke in his New York City apartment and fell into a coma.

In 1960, he married a multiple sclerosis victim, and the nursing skills he learned while taking care of his wife led him to steady work as a registered nurse at St. In 1993 he was diagnosed with cancer, but Juliá kept on acting, creating one of his most memorable roles as Brazilian rainforest activist Chico Mendez in The Burning Season (1994), for which he posthumously won a Golden Globe and an Emmy Award. Diminishing film work, marital difficulties and a drinking problem eventually ate away at Halop's show business career. In the popular two Addams Family movies, Juliá played Gomez Addams. A long-standing rivalry between Halop and fellow Dead-Ender Leo Gorcey (both actors wanted to be the leader of the gang) led to Billy's breakaway from the Dead End Kids and its offspring groups, the East Side Kids and the Bowery Boys, though Halop briefly starred in Universal's "Little Tough Guys" films. After serving in World War II, Halop found that he'd grown too old to be effective in the roles that had brought him fame; at one point he was reduced to starring in a cheap "East Side Kids" imitation at PRC studios, Gas House Kids (1946). In Kiss of the Spider Woman (1985), he played a passionate political prisoner, and in Romero (1989) he played the Salvadoran Archbishop Óscar Romero. After several years as a well-paid radio juvenile, Billy was cast as Tommy Gordon in the Broadway production of Sidney Kingsley's Dead End (1935), where thanks to his previous credentials he was accorded star status. Traveling to Hollywood with the rest of the Dead End Kids when Samuel Goldwyn produced a film version of the play in 1937, Billy had no trouble lining up important roles, specializing in tough kids, bullies and reform school inmates in such major pictures as Dust be My Destiny (1939) and Tom Brown's School Days (1940). In 1983, he starred in a spectactularly disastrous made-for-TV adaptation of John Varley's short story Overdrawn at the Memory Bank.

The original leader of the original "Dead End Kids," American actor Billy Halop came from a theatrical family; his mother was a dancer and his sister Florence Halop was a busy radio actress. Although he never became a major film star, Juliá had notable dramatic and comic roles in a number of films and made-for-TV-movies. February 11, 1920 - November 9, 1976. In the early 1980s, Juliá was invited to join Francis Ford Coppola's Zoetrope Studios company and appeared in One From the Heart (1982). The stage successes led to his film debut in The Organization (1971) starring opposite Sidney Poitier. Juliá went on to enjoy great success on the musical stage, winning four Tony Awards for his roles in Two Gentlemen of Verona (1972), Where's Charley? (1975), as Mack the Knife in The Threepenny Opera (1977), and in the Fellini-inspired Nine (1982).

His Shakespearean roles included Edmund in King Lear in 1973 and the title role of Othello in 1979. In 1966, Juliá hooked up with theater impresario Joseph Papp and the New York Shakespeare Festival. He soon found work in off-Broadway theater. Juliá moved to New York City in 1964 and began studying drama with Wynn Handman.

He first came to attention while performing in a nightclub by actor Orson Bean who encouraged him to come to the United States. Juliá was born and grew up in San Juan. His career spanned stage and screen, and included dramatic, comic, and musical roles. Raúl Rafael Juliá y Arcelay (March 9, 1940 - October 24, 1994) was a Puerto Rican actor who lived and worked for many years in the United States.