Tommy Noonan

Name: Tommy Noonan
Date of Birth: April 29, 1921
Place of Birth: Bellingham, Washington

Mini-bio: Slim, often bespectacled comedy performer Tommy Noonan started off in experimental theater alongside his half-brother, actor John Ireland, who went on to have an enviable career of his own. Performing...( read more) in repertory in the early '40s, Tommy's stage work was interrupted by a stint in the Navy during WWII. He ended up in New York and briefly on Broadway before RKO signed him up for post-war films and he relocated out West. By this time, brother John, who was already a well-known film commodity, had met and married movie actress Joanne Dru, whose brother was a singer/actor named Pete Marshall. With a solid background in comedy and burlesque, Noonan hooked up with straight man Marshall to form the '50s comedy duo of "Noonan and Marshall," appearing to a modicum of success in clubs and on TV (including "The Ed Sullivan Show"). The teaming, however, did not prevent them from boosting their own individual careers. Actually, Tommy did much better solo those days as a film support (similar to Tony Randall's roles in the next decade) in top quality films. He held his own as Marilyn Monroe's smitten schmuck of a boyfriend in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1953) and Judy Garland's blunt, piano-playing pal in A Star Is Born (1954). During the slimmer times of the late '50s, Tommy produced and wrote a couple of meager film vehicles to showcase his comedy team as a second-string "Martin and Lewis," but the films The Rookie (1959) and Swingin' Along (1961) were flat, tired and went completely unnoticed upon their release. These failures broke the duo up for good. (Pete Marshall went on to successfully host the TV game show "The Hollywood Squares" as Peter Marshall.) Pickings were definitely meager for Tommy in the '60s, and he resorted to producing and co-starring in a couple of exploitive soft-core "comedy" vehicles. Promises! Promises! (1963), which showcased a quickly fading Jayne Mansfield, and 3 Nuts in Search of a Bolt (1964), which starred the equally unmemorable Mamie Van Doren, were unmitigated disasters. His last producing effort was the thoroughly ridiculous Cottonpickin' Chickenpickers (1967). Tommy died a few days before his 46th birthday in 1968 of a brain tumor. He is not related to actor/writer/director/composer Tom Noonan (born 1951).

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Tommy Noonan Movies

What Happened Was... (R, 1994)
The Monster Squad (PG-13, 1987)
3 Nuts in Search of a Bolt (3 Nuts and a Bolt) (Unrated, 1964)
Promises! Promises! (Unrated, 1963)
The Rookie (Unrated, 1959)
Bundle of Joy (Unrated, 1956)
Ambassador's Daughter (Unrated, 1956)
How To Be Very, Very Popular (Unrated, 1955)
Violent Saturday (Unrated, 1955)
A Star Is Born (PG, 1954)

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in which film where there two cheerleading teams and and head of one of the cheerleading teams moved to a different school and cheered for them and enter a comp against them and (host rihanna) they could be in a rihanna music video and win computers for there school Answer »
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