Robert Houghton1

M, #79081, b. circa 1878

Family: Catherine (?) b. c 1878

  • Marriage*: Robert Houghton married Catherine (?) on circa 1903 age 25 and 19 at 1st mar.1

Biography

Corresponded with author?
A Contributor to Houghton Surname Project?
Birthcirca 1878England, age 52 in 1930 census1
Marriagecirca 1903age 25 and 19 at 1st mar1
Immigration1924
1930 Census1930Long Beach, Los Angeles Co., CA, USA, age 52, oil field repairman1
ParentsSparents born in England1

Citations

  1. [S1233] 1930 U.S. Federal Census , Long Beach, Los Angeles Co., California; Roll: 130; Enumeration District: 1123; sheet 8B, line 73, dwl 328 1/2-272-287.

Catherine (?)1

F, #79082, b. circa 1878

Family: Robert Houghton b. c 1878

  • Marriage*: Catherine (?) married Robert Houghton on circa 1903 age 25 and 19 at 1st mar.1

Biography

Corresponded with author?
A Contributor to Houghton Surname Project?
Birthcirca 1878England, age 52 in 1930 census1
Marriagecirca 1897age 19
Marriagecirca 1903age 25 and 19 at 1st mar1
Immigration1924
ParentsDparents born in England1

Citations

  1. [S1233] 1930 U.S. Federal Census , Long Beach, Los Angeles Co., California; Roll: 130; Enumeration District: 1123; sheet 8B, line 73, dwl 328 1/2-272-287.

Freda Le Ferre1

F, #79083, b. circa 1915

Biography

A Contributor to Houghton Surname Project?
Corresponded with author?
Birthcirca 1915England, age 15 in 1930 census1
Immigration1924
ParentsDfather born in France, mother born in England

Citations

  1. [S1233] 1930 U.S. Federal Census , Long Beach, Los Angeles Co., California; Roll: 130; Enumeration District: 1123; sheet 8B, line 73, dwl 328 1/2-272-287.

Fred A. Le Ferre1

M, #79084, b. circa 1916

Biography

A Contributor to Houghton Surname Project?
Corresponded with author?
Birthcirca 1916England, age 14 in 1930 census1
Immigration1924
Grandchild
ParentsDfather born in France, mother born in England

Citations

  1. [S1233] 1930 U.S. Federal Census , Long Beach, Los Angeles Co., California; Roll: 130; Enumeration District: 1123; sheet 8B, line 73, dwl 328 1/2-272-287.

Jane Auckland1

F, #79085, b. circa 1854

Family:

Biography

Corresponded with author?
A Contributor to Houghton Surname Project?
Birthcirca 1854Scotland, age 76 in 1930 census1
Immigration1886
1930 Census1930Long Beach, Los Angeles Co., CA, USA, Jane, age 72, divorced; Jessie, 33, divorced1
ParentsDparents born in Scotland

Citations

  1. [S1233] 1930 U.S. Federal Census , Long Beach, Los Angeles Co., California; Roll: 130; Enumeration District: 1124; page 216, sheet 1A, line 9, dwl 911-4-4.

Ellen Elizabeth Sims1

F, #79086, b. 23 May 1896, d. 1 May 1962

Family: Thomas Leonard Houghton b. 2 Sep 1896, d. 1 Nov 1970

Biography

Corresponded with author?
A Contributor to Houghton Surname Project?
BirthMay 23, 1896CA, USA, age 32 in 1930 census; age 43 in 1940 census
Marriagecirca 1912age 14 to ?? Harlan
Marriagecirca 1921age 25 and 19 at first mar.2
1930 Census1930Long Beach, Los Angeles Co., CA, USA, age 33, a carpenter; next door to parents2
1940 Census1940Long Beach, CA, USA, age 42, board of education, school officer3
1950 US Census1950Long Beach, Los Angeles Co., CA, USA, age 53, cementing contracting co. proprietor
DeathMay 1, 1962Los Angeles, CA, USA
ParentsDparents born in OH2

Citations

  1. [S1326] California Birth Index, 1905-1995, online Ancestry. Com, Birthdate: 11 Sep 1926; Birth County: Los Angeles.
  2. [S1233] 1930 U.S. Federal Census , Long Beach, Los Angeles Co., California; Roll: 130; Enumeration District: 1125; page 250, sheet 20A, line 13, dwl 731-493-678.
  3. [S1479] 1940 U.S. Federal Census , Long Beach, Los Angeles, California; Roll: m-t0627-00373; Page: 11B; Enumeration District: 59-114.

Donald Harlan1

M, #79087, b. circa 1914

Biography

Corresponded with author?
A Contributor to Houghton Surname Project?
Birthcirca 1914CA, USA, age 16 in 1930 census1
ParentsSparents born in CA1

Citations

  1. [S1233] 1930 U.S. Federal Census , Long Beach, Los Angeles Co., California; Roll: 130; Enumeration District: 1125; page 250, sheet 20A, line 13, dwl 731-493-678.

Leonard Wayne Houghton1

M, #79088, b. 11 September 1926, d. 25 November 2009

Family: Virginia Mae Gier b. 16 Feb 1930

Biography

A Contributor to Houghton Surname Project?
Corresponded with author?
BirthSep 11, 1926Los Angeles Co., CA, USA, age 3 7/12 in 1930 census; age 13 in 1940 census1
Mil. EnlsJan 1, 1946
Mil. DraftJan 1, 1946
MarriageJul 6, 1948Long Beach, CA, USA
1950 US Census1950Long Beach, Los Angeles Co., CA, USA, age 23, airplane manufacturing template maker
SSDIbefore 1951CA, USA
DeathNov 25, 2009Seodona, AZ, USA

Citations

  1. [S1326] California Birth Index, 1905-1995, online Ancestry. Com, Birthdate: 11 Sep 1926; Birth County: Los Angeles.
  2. [S1233] 1930 U.S. Federal Census , Long Beach, Los Angeles Co., California; Roll: 130; Enumeration District: 1125; page 250, sheet 20A, line 13, dwl 731-493-678.

Lydia (?)1

F, #79089, b. circa 1899

Family: William Arnold Houghton b. 10 Sep 1894, d. 4 Feb 1980

Biography

A Contributor to Houghton Surname Project?
Corresponded with author?
Birthcirca 1899England, age 21 in 1920 census1
Marriageage 29 and 251
ParentsDparents born in England1

Citations

  1. [S1232] 1920 U.S. Federal Census , San Diego, San Diego Co., CA, Roll: T625_131 Page: 5A ED: 277; line 32, dwl 3685-123-145.

Louise Dorothy Houghton1,2

F, #79090, b. 25 May 1926

Family: William T. Schnaufer

Biography

A Contributor to Houghton Surname Project?
Corresponded with author?
BirthMay 25, 1926Long Beach, Los Angeles Co., CA, USA, age 3 10/12 in 1930 census1,2
MarriageMay 1, 1948Long Beach Co., CA, USA

Citations

  1. [S1233] 1930 U.S. Federal Census , Long Beach, Los Angeles, California; Roll: 131 ; Enumeration District: 1149; page 57, sheet 5A, line 15, dwl 3411-115-114.
  2. [S1326] California Birth Index, 1905-1995, online Ancestry. Com, Birthdate: 25 May 1926; Birth County: Los Angeles.

Milford C. Alsenz1

M, #79091, b. circa 1903

Family: Marie Ethel Houghton b. 29 Aug 1907, d. 9 Jun 1994

Biography

A Contributor to Houghton Surname Project?
Corresponded with author?
Birthcirca 1903KS, USA, age 27 in 1930 census1
Marriagecirca 1924age 21 and 181
1930 Census1930Long Beach, Los Angeles Co., CA, USA1
1940 Census1940Long Beach, CA, USA, age 37
ParentsSparents born in KS1
Problem2 marriages

Citations

  1. [S1233] 1930 U.S. Federal Census , Long Beach, Los Angeles, California; Roll: 131 ; Enumeration District: 1152; page 171, sheet 18A, line 34, dwl 5821-507-509.
  2. [S1369] California Marriage Index, 1960-1985, online Ancestry. Com, State of California. California Marriage Index, 1960-1985. Microfiche. Center for Health Statistics, California Department of Health Services, Sacramento, California.

Edward C. Alsenz1

M, #79092, b. circa 1927

Biography

A Contributor to Houghton Surname Project?
Corresponded with author?
Birthcirca 1927CA, USA, age 2 7/12 in 1930 census1

Citations

  1. [S1233] 1930 U.S. Federal Census , Long Beach, Los Angeles, California; Roll: 131 ; Enumeration District: 1152; page 171, sheet 18A, line 34, dwl 5821-507-509.

Charles R. Alsenz1

M, #79093, b. circa 1928

Biography

A Contributor to Houghton Surname Project?
Corresponded with author?
Birthcirca 1928CA, USA, age 1 7/12 in 1930 census1

Citations

  1. [S1233] 1930 U.S. Federal Census , Long Beach, Los Angeles, California; Roll: 131 ; Enumeration District: 1152; page 171, sheet 18A, line 34, dwl 5821-507-509.

Jane Houghton1

F, #79094, b. circa 1924

Biography

Corresponded with author?
A Contributor to Houghton Surname Project?
Birthcirca 1924MA, USA, age 6 in 1930 census; age 16 in 1940 census1
1940 Census1940Belmont, Middlesex Co., MA, USA, age 38, married, department store office clerk (husband not enumerated)2

Citations

  1. [S1233] 1930 U.S. Federal Census , Los Angeles, Los Angeles, California; Roll: 133 ; Enumeration District: 29; sheet 9B, line 76, dwl 1035-63-64.
  2. [S1479] 1940 U.S. Federal Census , Belmont, Middlesex, Massachusetts; Roll: T627_1603; Page: 3B; Enumeration District: 9-71; line 43, dwl 12.

Earnestine Houghton1,2

F, #79095, b. 8 February 1921, d. 12 January 2009

Family: Wilbur Barker

Biography

A Contributor to Houghton Surname Project?
Corresponded with author?
BirthFeb 8, 1921Los Angeles Co., CA, USA, age 9 in 1930 census1,2
MarriageMay 9, 1976Reno, NV, USA
DeathJan 12, 2009Newport Beach, CA, USA

Citations

  1. [S1233] 1930 U.S. Federal Census , Los Angeles, Los Angeles, California; Roll: 133 ; Enumeration District: 52; sheet 9B, line 75, dwl 1534-148-182.
  2. [S1326] California Birth Index, 1905-1995, online Ancestry. Com, Birthdate: 8 Feb 1921; Birth County: Los Angeles.

Lee Earnest Houghton Jr1,2

M, #79096, b. 9 June 1922

Family: Marion Bartlett b. c 1924

Biography

A Contributor to Houghton Surname Project?
Corresponded with author?
BirthJun 9, 1922Los Angeles Co., CA, USA, age 7 in 1930 census; age 17 in 1940 census1,3
Marriage
1950 US Census1950Beverly Hills, CA, USA, age 27, freight firm, truck fleet, auto body builder
ResearchEdith Fay Bowler marriage?

Citations

  1. [S1233] 1930 U.S. Federal Census , Los Angeles, Los Angeles, California; Roll: 133 ; Enumeration District: 52; sheet 9B, line 75, dwl 1534-148-182.
  2. [S1326] California Birth Index, 1905-1995, online Ancestry. Com, Birthdate: 9 Jun 1922; Birth County: Los Angeles.
  3. [S1326] California Birth Index, 1905-1995, online Ancestry. Com, Birthdate: 9 Jun 1922; Birth County: Los Angeles.

Elizabeth "Betty" Izant1

F, #79097, b. circa 1911

Biography

A Contributor to Houghton Surname Project?
Corresponded with author?
Birthcirca 1911OH, USA, age 19 in 1930 census1

Citations

  1. [S1233] 1930 U.S. Federal Census , Los Angeles, Los Angeles, California; Roll: 134 ; Enumeration District: 71; sheet 25B, line 63, dwl 5051-145-160.

Melvin Houghton1

M, #79098, b. circa 1845

Family: Grace (?) b. c 1859

  • Marriage*: Melvin Houghton married Grace (?) on circa 1928 age 83 and 69.1

Biography

A Contributor to Houghton Surname Project?
Corresponded with author?
Birthcirca 1845MI, USA, age 85 in 1930 census1
Marriagecirca 1928age 83 and 691
1930 Census1930Los Angeles, Los Angeles Co., CA, USA, age 851
ParentsSfather born in PA, mother born in USA1

Citations

  1. [S1233] 1930 U.S. Federal Census , Los Angeles, Los Angeles, California; Roll: 135 ; Enumeration District: 83; page 215, sheet 4A, line 36, dwl 1529-94-98.

Grace (?)1

F, #79099, b. circa 1859

Family: Melvin Houghton b. c 1845

Biography

A Contributor to Houghton Surname Project?
Corresponded with author?
Birthcirca 1859IN, USA, age 71 in 1930 census1
Marriagecirca 1928age 83 and 691
ParentsDfather born in OH, mother born in LA1

Citations

  1. [S1233] 1930 U.S. Federal Census , Los Angeles, Los Angeles, California; Roll: 135 ; Enumeration District: 83; page 215, sheet 4A, line 36, dwl 1529-94-98.

Zella Cooper

F, #79100, b. 13 March 1891, d. 24 July 1953

Biography

Corresponded with author?
A Contributor to Houghton Surname Project?
BirthMar 13, 1891IL, USA, age 45, CA, in 1940 cens; age 58, IL, in 1950 census1
1950 US Census1950Morro, San Luis Obispo Co., CA, USA, age 54, automobile assembly man
DeathJul 24, 1953San Luis Obispo, CA, USA1
BurialForest Lawn Memorial Park (Glendale), Glendale, Los Angeles Co., CA, USA, Plot: Haven of Peace, Map 1, Lot 290, Space 3
ParentsDCooper and Caskey1

Citations

  1. [S654] Electronic Web Site, , Rootsweb.Com, Houghton Surname, California Death Records, 1940-1997, Feb. 4, 2002.

Dr. Karl Herbert Houghton M. D.1,2

M, #79101, b. 28 September 1911, d. 7 August 2008

Family 1: Virginia Adams b. 5 Jun 1912, d. 23 Apr 1985

  • Marriage*: Dr. Karl Herbert Houghton M. D. married Virginia Adams on 1935.4

Family 2: Dorothy B. (?) b. 28 Feb 1924, d. 1 Jan 1995

Biography

NotableY
Corresponded with author?
A Contributor to Houghton Surname ProjectY
BirthSep 28, 1911Salt Lake, UT, USA, age 8 in 1920 census; age 18 in 1930 census3,4
Marriage19354
EducationUniversity of Southern California, Los Angeles, Los Angeles Co., CA, USA, School of Medicine
Residence1940Hollywood, Los Angeles Co., CA, USA
1940 Census1940Fort Snelling, Richfield, Hennepin Co., MN, USA, age 28, Captain medical corp, US Army5
Research
Milit-BegRank: COL; Branch: US Air Force, WWII, Korea, prisoner of war1
Marriage1
Note1973Received the Louis H. Bauer Founders Award: Established to honor Louis H. Bauer, M.D., founder of the Aerospace Medical Association. It is given annually for the most significant contribution in aerospace medicine
Researchbetween 1973 and 1979American Men & Women of Science. A biographical directory of today's leaders in physical, biological, and related sciences. 12th edition, Physical & Biological Sciences. Seven volumes. New York: R.R. Bowker, 1971-1973. (AmMWSc 12P)
American Men & Women of Science. A biographical directory of today's leaders in physical, biological, and related sciences. 13th edition, Physical & Biological Sciences. Seven volumes. New York: R.R. Bowker, 1976. (AmMWSc 13P)
American Men & Women of Science. A biographical directory of today's leaders in physical, biological, and related sciences. 14th edition. Eight volumes. New York: R.R. Bowker, 1979. (AmMWSc 14)3
DeathAug 7, 2008Mesa, AZ, USA, age 964
ObituaryAug 16, 2008Albuquerque Journal (NM) - August 16, 2008
Karl Herbert Houghton passed away in Mesa, AZ on Thursday, August 7, 2008. Karl was 96 years old and died from natural causes. He was born September 28, 1911 to Mabel and George Houghton in Salt Lake City, UT. Karl attended Oregon State University and UCLA, where he affiliated with Beta Theta Phi. Upon graduating from the University of Southern California School of Medicine, he joined the Army as a Second Lieutenant for further medical training. He married Virginia Adams in 1935, and a daughter, Judith Ann was born. The family was stationed in Manila when war with Japan became imminent. The women and children were evacuated to the United States. Karl stayed behind with the Army and in 1942 was captured on Bataan, participated in the Death March, and was imprisoned in POW camps for the duration of World War II. After the war, Capt. Houghton joined the Air Force, where he became involved with the Embassy in London and the Atomic Energy Commission. Upon retirement as a full Colonel, he went to work with McDonald Douglas as a medical advisor in the Areospace Program. His second wife, Dorothy, preceded him in death. His survivors include his daughter, Judith Jardine (Len) of Mesa, AZ; granddaughters, Pam Rheinschild (Rob) of Hailey, ID and Tracy Penkoff of Mesa, AZ; great -granddaughters, Jessie Penkoff and Royce Rheinschild. A Military Service will be held at the Santa Fe National Cemetery on Monday, October 6, 2008 at 11:30 a.m.4
BurialOct 6, 2008Santa Fe National Cemetery, Santa Fe, NM, USA, COL USAF; WWII KO; PRISONER OF WAR; FATHER, GRANDFATHER, GREAT GRANDFATHER DOCTOR4
Notable(1911-2008) He survived the Bataan Death March and was on the Atomic Energy Commission

Citations

  1. [S882] Ancestry.Com, online www.ancestry.com, National Cemetery Administration. U.S. Veterans Cemeteries, ca.1800-2004 [database online]. Provo, Utah: MyFamily.com, Inc., 2005. Original data: National Cemetery Administration. Nationwide Gravesite Locator.: Houghton surname.
  2. [S1233] 1930 U.S. Federal Census , Los Angeles, Los Angeles, California; Roll: 137 ; Enumeration District: 119; sheet 2B, line 51, dwl 428-6-45.
  3. [S882] Ancestry.Com, online www.ancestry.com, Biography and Genealogy Master Index (BGMI): Houghton Surname.
  4. [S93] Newspaper Obituary, HOUGHTON, Karl Herbert; 96; Salt Lake City UT>Mesa AZ; AZ Republic; 2008-8-16.
  5. [S1479] 1940 U.S. Federal Census , Richfield, Hennepin, Minnesota; Roll: T627_1926; Page: 10A; Enumeration District: 27-48; line 16.

George Shepard Houghton1

M, #79102, b. 4 June 1914, d. 15 September 2016

Family 1: Jane Rosily Kellog b. c 1914

Family 2: Geraldine Farnum

  • Marriage*: George Shepard Houghton married Geraldine Farnum on 1946.1
  • Divorce*: George Shepard Houghton and Geraldine Farnum were divorced in 1948.

Family 3: Mabel L. Carter b. 23 Dec 1923, d. 3 Feb 2004

Biography

Corresponded with author?
A Contributor to Houghton Surname Project?
BirthJun 4, 1914Salt Lake City, UT, USA, age 5 in 1920 census; age 15 in 1930 census2,1
MarriageOct 14, 1935Los Angeles Co., CA, USA3,1
1940 Census1940Los Angeles, Los Angeles Co., CA, USA, age 25, motion picture studio actor3
DivorceOct, 1945
Marriage19461
Divorce1948
MarriageNov 16, 1975San Diego Co., CA, USA4
DeathSep 15, 2016Hoodsport, WA, USA
BiographyBorn George Shephard Houghton on June 4, 1914, in Salt Lake City, Utah, Shep is the youngest of two sons born to George Henry Houghton and Mabell Viola Shephard. Far from being born into show business, his father was an insurance company representative who moved his family to Hollywood for business reasons in 1927. As luck would have it, they rented a house on Bronson Avenue just two blocks from Paramount Studio's iron front gate, and not far from the Edwin Carreau studio. Picked off the street by an assistant producer, Shep's first work in the movie industry was in 1927 as a Mexican youngster in Carreau's production of Ramona, released in 1928. As a thirteen-year old he also worked in Emil Janning's The Last Command, and continued to work for director Josef von Sternberg in several subsequent pictures. He found movie work to his liking, and out of high school he worked through Central Casting for Mascot Productions, Universal Studios, Paramount Pictures, Fox Film Corporation, and Warner Brother's, where he became a favorite in the Busby Berkeley musicals as a dancer and chorus singer. In 1935 he married Jane Rosily Kellog, his high school sweetheart. Together they had one child, Terrie Lynn, born on September 22, 1939. They were divorced in October, 1945. In 1946 he married Geraldine Farnum, daughter of featured actor Franklin Farnum. They had also one child, Peter William, born August 19, 1947. He and Gerry were divorced in 1948.

Shep was a talent in television from its earliest days. He acted in many recurring roles, beginning with the Jack Benny Program in 1950. That show, and Shep's work in it, lasted until 1965. He worked on many programs through their entire runs, with the notable exception of the original Star Trek of 1966, in which he appeared in only the first three episodes. In addition to these productions, he worked on the I Love Lucy show from 1951 to 1957, and Wagon Train, Perry Mason, The Lucy-Desi Comedy Hour, Mr. Lucky, The Untouchables, and The Twilight Zone, all in the 1950s.

The 1960s brought him steady work in My Three Sons, The Andy Griffith Show, The Dick Van Dyke Show, The Loretta Young Show, both The Lucille Ball Show and the renewed Lucy-Desi Comedy Hour, Hogan's Heroes, Mannix, and Marcus Welby. In the 1970s he worked on The Mary Tyler Moore Show. Shep was a charter member of both SAG and SEG, and continued to work in both movies and television until his retirement in 1976. He and Mel Carter Houghton were married in 1975, and continue to live happily ever after. She lets him play golf very nearly every day.
IMDb Mini Biography By: Mike Gross mgross@dswebnet.com

Wikipedia:
     
Shep Houghton
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Shep Houghton
Born      George Shephard Houghton, June 4, 1914, Salt Lake City, Utah, U.S.
Died      December 15, 2016 (aged 102), Hoodsport, Washington, U.S.
Occupation      Actor, Years active      1927–76

George Shephard "Shep" Houghton[1] (June 4, 1914 – December 15, 2016)[2][3] was an American actor and dancer. He had small roles in Gone with the Wind and The Wizard of Oz[2] and at the time of his death in 2016 he was the oldest surviving cast or crew member from both movies. Houghton was born in Salt Lake City, Utah on June 4, 1914.[2] He was born to a family of farmers. His parents were George Henry Houghton (1883-1958) and Mabell Viola Shephard (1883-1972). His family moved to Hollywood for business reasons in 1927. They settled not far from Paramount Pictures' studios. In 1927, Houghton appeared in his first movie, Underworld, a silent movie.[6] He was a dancer during his early career and taught actress Greta Garbo how to waltz for a role in Conquest (1937). In 1939, Houghton appeared in two movie classics, first as Ozmite and a Winkie Guard in the Wizard of Oz and as a Southern dandy in Gone with the Wind. He played many recurring roles, beginning with the Jack Benny Program in 1950. He worked on the program until 1965. He appeared in Star Trek: The Original Series, in which he appeared in only the first three episodes. In addition to these productions, he worked on the I Love Lucy show from 1951-57. He also appeared on episodes of Wagon Train, Perry Mason, The Lucy-Desi Comedy Hour, Mr. Lucky, The Untouchables, and The Twilight Zone.
The 1960s, he appeared in My Three Sons, The Andy Griffith Show, The Dick Van Dyke Show, and The Loretta Young Show. In movies, Houghton appeared as a slave in Spartacus and as a dancer in Hello, Dolly!. In the 1970s, he worked on The Mary Tyler Moore Show. His last role was as a juror in the final episodes of Ellery Queen. He retired from acting later that year.

In 1935 he married Jane Rosily Kellogg. The couple divorced in 1945. He married actress Geraldine Farnum in 1946, but they divorced in 1948. The couple had two children.[6] In the early 1950s he worked for television, mostly as a dancer. He married Mel Carter in 1975. Houghton died on December 15, 2016 in Hoodsport, Washington at the age of 102.

Refrences

"Who is Shep Houghton?". Omnilexica.com. Retrieved December 30, 2014.
"The 100-Year-Old Who Taught Garbo to Waltz by Matt Weinstock". Lareview of Books.org. Retrieved December 30, 2014.
"Shep Houghton (1914-2016)". Dial M For Movies. 2017-05-11. Retrieved 2017-06-11.
"GONE WITH THE WIND Actress Mary Anderson Dead at 96". Altfg.org. Retrieved December 30, 2014.
"Weekend Reading: Shooting an Elephant, Again; the Naughtiest Song of 1909". The New Yorker.com. Retrieved December 30, 2014.

Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License;



Filmography: The Hindenburg - Radio Operator: Hand Close-ups (uncredited); 1972 The Woman I Love (TV movie); Party Guest (uncredited); 1971 Mongo's Back in Town (TV movie), Photographer (uncredited); 1969 Hello, Dolly! Dancer/Singer (uncredited); 1965/I Harlow Announcer (uncredited); 1964 Kitten with a Whip, Minor Role (uncredited); 1964 Send Me No Flowers, Sam Scheffing (uncredited); 1963 Palm Springs Weekend, Maitre d' (uncredited); 1962 Billy Rose's Jumbo, Elephant Rider (uncredited); 1961-1962 The Adventures of Ozzie & Harriet (TV series), Charlie / Maynard; – Backyard Pet Show (1962) … Maynard; – Dancing Lessons (1961) … Charlie; 1959 Al Capone, Policeman (uncredited); 1956-1957 Dragnet (TV series);– The Big License Plates (1957); – The Big Cat (1956); 1957 Man Afraid. Bit Role (uncredited); 1956 Around the World in Eighty Days, Specialty Dancer (uncredited); 1953 Julius Caesar,Soldier (uncredited); 1952 Androcles and the Lion, Gladiator (uncredited); 1951 Show Boat, Specialty Dancer (uncredited); 1951 Lullaby of Broadway, Specialty Dancer (uncredited); 1951 The Red Badge of Courage, Union Soldier (uncredited); 1950 Copper Canyon, Specialty Dancer (uncredited); 1948 Joan of Arc, French Soldier (uncredited); 1948 Tap Roots, Orderly (uncredited); 1948 Easter Parade, Specialty Dancer (uncredited); 1947 The Perils of Pauline, Song-and-Dance Man (uncredited); 1946 The Big Sleep, Nightclub Patron (uncredited); 1946 Black Angel, Specialty Dancer (uncredited); 1946 Night and Day, Dancer and Singer (uncredited); 1945 Rhapsody in Blue, Specialty Dancer (uncredited); 1945 Objective, Burma!, Paratrooper (uncredited); 1944 Shine on Harvest Moon, Specialty Dancer (uncredited); 1944 Lady in the Dark, Specialty Dancer (uncredited); 1941 Louisiana Purchase
Singer/Dancer (uncredited); 1941 Ziegfeld Girl, Chorus Boy (uncredited); 1941 Back Street, Ship's Officer (uncredited); 1940 Too Many Girls, Chorus Boy (uncredited); 1940 Boom Town
Saloon Brawler (uncredited); 1940 Broadway Melody of 1940, Specialty Dancer (uncredited); 1939 Gone with the Wind, Southern Dandy (uncredited); 1938 The Dawn Patrol, Young Recruit (uncredited); 1938 The Big Broadcast of 1938, Bar Patron (uncredited); 1937 Rosalie, Dancer (uncredited); 1937 Conquest, Palace Guard (uncredited); 1937 Broadway Melody of 1938, Dancer (uncredited); 1937 Topper, Waiter (uncredited); 1936 Born to Dance, Dancer (uncredited); 1936 The Charge of the Light Brigade, Soldier (uncredited); 1936 Mary of Scotland, Soldier (uncredited); 1936 The Great Ziegfeld, Dancer (uncredited); 1935 A Midsummer Night's Dream, Dancer (uncredited); 1935 Broadway Melody of 1936, Specialty Dancer (uncredited); 1935 Dante's Inferno, Dancer (uncredited); 1935 Gold Diggers of 1935, Specialty Dancer (uncredited); 1934 Flirtation Walk, Cadet (uncredited); 1934 The Gay Divorcee
Dancer (uncredited); 1934 Cleopatra, Roman Soldier (uncredited); 1934 Murder at the Vanities, Chorus Boy (uncredited); 1934 George White's Scandals, Specialty Dancer (uncredited);
1934 Coming-Out Party, Dancer (uncredited); 1933 Flying Down to Rio, Dancer (uncredited); 1933 42nd Street, Chorus Boy (uncredited); 1928 Ramona, Mexican Boy (uncredited);
1928 The Last Command, Russian Youth (uncredited); 1927 Underworld, Street Kid (uncredited); Show ShowMiscellaneous Crew (3 titles), Show ShowStunts (2 titles); 1950 King Solomon's Mines (stunt double: Richard Carlson - uncredited); 1948 Joan of Arc (stunts - uncredited); Mr. Houghton played the part of the Manor Lord in the Munchkinland scene from the Wizard of Oz.




The 100-Year-Old Who Taught Garbo to Waltz

By Matt Weinstock

JUNE 4, 2014

IN Doctor Dolittle and the Secret Lake, there is a bewitching sequence in which Dolittle is granted audience with an ancient turtle who claims to have been a passenger on Noah’s Ark. Dolittle eagerly fills notebook after notebook with antediluvian gossip, but his critter associates are skeptical. “Meself, I don’t believe a word of the yarn,” mutters Cheapside the sparrow. As a child, I was in Cheapside’s camp. What turtle wouldn’t lie about having witnessed the flood that destroyed most of humanity? Similarly, what 99-year-old among us could resist the impulse to reshape his life into a Forrest Gumpian panorama that features most of the major figures of the 20th century?

The impulse to self-Gump is natural, I think. As your contemporaries fall away, one by one, they must seem to bequeath the era to you. Sure, you could take on the drab, thankless role of the debunker, but almost everyone chooses to mythologize. Being the last survivor of your generation is like heading off to college in your 90s — it’s the last opportunity for drastic reinvention. At 91, Fay Wray laughed, “Now I feel that whatever I say has to be accepted. No one can deny me anything. Anything!” In her 80s, Leni Riefenstahl liked to defend her fraudulent accounts of the Berlin Olympics by saying, “Ask anyone who was there” — knowing, of course, that there were very few such people left.

Shep Houghton, who turns 100 today, could shape his era if he wanted. As a Hollywood background player (a “non-talker,” as he put it), Houghton appeared in the margins of an extraordinary string of classics: Gold Diggers of 1935, The Wizard of Oz, Gone with the Wind, Shadow of a Doubt, The Big Sleep, Show Boat,and Spartacus. During a career that stretched from Josef von Sternberg silents to Streisand musicals, Houghton was propositioned by a Munchkin, blew off Lucille Ball, and taught Greta Garbo to waltz for the 1937 costume drama Conquest. “She’d never waltzed,” said Houghton, who at the time was in the skeleton dance crew of an MGM musical that had suspended production. “The studio hated to have you on salary and not work,” he said, “so I spent a couple of days with her, showing her how to make a pivot, putting her leg in back, and turning. She learned quite rapidly. She was kind of a standoffish person — but every time I saw her subsequently, she’d say, ‘Hi, Shep!’ I’d say, ‘Hi, Greta!’”

It all sounds like a darling hoax, devised to exploit our culture’s fetishization (from Zelig to The Butler) of the unknown witness, the all-seeing Nobody. But Houghton is exceedingly credible; in fact, during a three-hour conversation at his lakeside Washington home this March, his memories seemed so modest, authentic, and potato-sack plain that I sometimes became frustrated with him for not delivering more. Did he not know that he was history’s piggy bank, built solely to collect gossip about Ginger Rogers, built in order to be smashed open by a journalist 80 years hence?

As Houghton semi-apologetically told me, he spent most of his spare time on soundstages engrossed in Book-of-the-Month Club selections. “I just got bored with the same chatter,” he said. “[The other extras] used to call me the Professor, because I was always reading.” The most Gumpian thing about Shep Houghton was his ignorance that so many of his movies were headed for immortality. “They all ran together, into a big ball of string,” he said.

You usually only stayed on a show for three days, so I worked on a good dozen movies a month. Half the time you’d see a clipboard with a number, not the name of the picture — cause they hadn’t settled on a name yet. I’d learn from the crew whether a picture was good or bad. Electricians were my best critics, cause they watched the scenes from the day it was first rolling. If they said the picture was good, I’d go to the movie. If they said it was a turkey, I’d leave it alone.

So he skipped seeing Escape from the Planet of the Apes, and caught The Wizard of Oz.

Shep Houghton was born on June fourth, 1914, and his earliest memories are being forced to wear velvet knickers on his first day of school and being struck so hard by his father that he lost consciousness. “He hated me,” he said. “My father and I never got along.” More happily, he remembers the Portland kiddie matinees of his youth: Chaplin’s The Gold Rush, live performances by John Philip Sousa, and Fritz Lang’s Metropolis — the last of which “impressed me so much I went through it three times. I went in the morning, and got home in the dark.” When Houghton was 13 his family moved to Hollywood, to a little Spanish Colonial two blocks from Paramount Studios’ front gate. As Houghton writes in Cast of Thousands, a slender, unpublished memoir, one Saturday he noticed a two-reel comedy being filmed on his block and “became fascinated by a mock-up car, the phony type with a man under the hood to steer it.” While Houghton was gawking, a man emerged from the nearby Edwin Carewe studio and asked him, “Kid, you want to work for a while?”

He began doing extra work on Saturdays while still attending high school, playing a Russian in von Sternberg’s The Last Command (1928) and a serape-wearing Mexican in Ramona (1928). Houghton can remember shooting in glass-roofed sets, where orchestras played between takes and hand-cranked cameras could be heard “whirling, whirling, whirling” during takes. The transition to talkies pissed him off, he explains in Cast of Thousands,because “studios began filming at night to avoid city sounds. Still in school, I was left out.” (During this lull Houghton worked in a bingo parlor, where he gave Mickey Rooney’s mother her winnings in the form of cigarette cartons and kept an eye on Mickey, who spent the games napping on the ladies’ room couch. Show people in their late 90s love to brag about having seen baby Mickey Rooney; it is a sort of claim to prehistory.)

After graduating from Fairfax High in 1932, Houghton continued in background work; older extras shared little tips for surviving in Prohibition-era Hollywood, directing him to “an Italian restaurant outside of Paramount that would serve you red wine in a coffee cup.” Anthony Slide’s book-length history of the extra, Hollywood Unknowns, delineates the Joadlike plight of the thousands of extras who were unable to find regular work: men built a small shantytown near Universal, women were coerced into sleeping with assistant directors, and one mother drunkenly tried to raffle off her baby to Central Casting for $500. Houghton told me that he was an “outsider” himself until he bought a house using one of the earliest Federal Housing Administration loans. (The loan number was 154.) He clued in his Central Casting superiors, who “all went out and bought houses,” and continually gave Houghton “the greatest assignments” in return — starting with Cecil B. DeMille’s Cleopatra (1934), in which he dodged rubber-tipped arrows as a Roman soldier.

In 1940 the Hollywood Citizen News noted, “The caste system among extras is incredibly strict.” Apparel defined one’s position, and as a full-dress extra (or “stuffed dummy,” in industry slang), Houghton was almost always at the top. In accordance with 1934’s Motion Picture Code Provisions Governing Extras, he maintained his own tuxedo, boulevard clothes, and riding habits, and earned $15 a day. $10 extras were simply required to have “smart” business suits, bathing suits, and lounging pajamas; $7.50 extras needed only “ordinary street clothes”; and $5-a-day “vags” (short for vagabonds) were used for mob scenes. (Studios provided the wardrobe for period and military films, for which the daily rate was $7.50.) In order to book full-dress jobs, some male extras lived five or six to an apartment and pooled their garments; Houghton’s clothes were scattered among the houses of various family members, and he sometimes lost jobs because it took an hour of driving to put together a coherent tuxedo.

When he showed up tuxedo-less — as in the 1937 screwball comedy Topper, where he played a nightclub waiter — Houghton’s status plummeted. “I got on the set, where all my friends were in tuxedoes, and they wouldn’t even talk to me,” he said. “They got very haughty — a waiter.” (Non-speaking waiters, as well as silent butlers, ministers, and gangsters, were paid only $10 a day.) “I was just standing there [during the take],” said Houghton, “because I hadn’t been told what to do. Constance Bennett said, ‘For chrissakes, the head waiter’s gotta saysomething!’” The first assistant director balked — giving dialogue to an extra meant that his salary shot to $25 — but Bennett won out. “When I came back [to the other extras], I was the king of the mob,” said Houghton. “I was an ac-tor.”

Topper
Houghton delivering his first movie line—“Good evening, Mrs. Kirby”—in Topper.

Most movie stars were too preoccupied to gab with background players, but Houghton said that Clark Gable “loved to talk about fishing and guns. He’d throw the goddamn script under the director’s seat, and come over and talk to us.” Houghton first worked with Gable on Cain and Mabel (1936), which costarred Marion Davies, who still toted around a personal orchestra to play mood music between camera setups. “As soon as they said cut, she’d say, ‘Orchestra!’” explained Houghton. “They’d play away, and she’d bring in a five-gallon tub of ice cream, and cookies. She was a very pleasant girl, but you would never dare talk to her. Hearst was too goddamned powerful; he had two bodyguards standing close by.”

Although Houghton played a soldier in Mary of Scotland (1936) and fired cannons in The Charge of the Light Brigade (1936), he preferred working in musicals. Partly this was because of the genuine danger involved in war pictures — on Light Brigade, three extras died in a single day due to horse-related accidents — but mostly it was “because I got so tired of diving in and getting a new job every day.” Musicals were steady work: they rehearsed for months, dancers were put on weekly salaries, and once you’d learned the steps it was harder to be replaced. Records of movie music were given to performers to take home and memorize in the weeks before shooting, so Houghton had the scoopish thrill of hearing new songs by Cole Porter, Harry Warren, and Harold Arlen months before they burrowed into the national consciousness.

Houghton became a fixture in Busby Berkeley’s kaleidoscopic dance routines; in “The Words Are in My Heart,”he was one of 56 dancers who hid in the shells of white grand pianos and propelled them, Flintstones-style, with his feet. “They had lines on the floor, and there were little places you could peek out and see,” Houghton said. In Berkeley’s dark, fascistic “Lullaby of Broadway” number, Houghton was one of 120 dancers who gave little Heil Hitlers and pushed the singer Wini Shaw off a balcony. John Waters once called it “the most aggressive tap-dancing I’ve ever seen in my life. It is an army — it’s like a cult, really, like Jim Jones or the Manson family. Zombie tappers.”

GoldDiggers
Houghton as a nameless piano in Gold Diggers of 1935.

Though Houghton had never tapped before, he was tucked away in the “attics” of the soundstage and managed to get away with two-stepping the entire “Lullaby” routine. Today he is somewhat dismissive of Busby Berkeley. “He was really a better cameraman than he was a choreographer,” he said. “He was always way up in the ceiling; a lot of boom shots [on the camera crane]. I never saw him dance. When we worked for Berkeley, we did more formations.” Houghton danced in the first Astaire-Rogers movies, Flying Down to Rio (1933) and The Gay Divorcee (1934), and those too consisted of formation work. “What they were buying was appearance,” he said. “They weren’t buying my dancing feet.” Because of that, dance extras eventually “learned how to dance and not perspire. You’d turn very carefully and smoothly.”

Fred Astaire had no such luxury. “I always laughed at things like this: he wore woolen underwear underneath his suit, so he wouldn’t sweat through his suit,” Houghton said. “He sweated so much that his stand-in had to go in at lunchtime while Fred was having lunch, and launder it and dry it and get it to him so he could put it on for the afternoon.” Houghton never interacted with Astaire — “He didn’t talk to many people, wherever he went” — but he remained a personal hero, as the rare balletic dancer who could “still be masculine. That was the trick. They had a lot of dancers from New York that they’d get rid of before a picture was finished, because they just had too much flame in them.”

According to Houghton, an ensemble dancer’s homosexuality was accepted as long as he could perform strapping masculinity on screen. If anyone camped it up too much, the dance director would make a note of it, and “they just wouldn’t come back the next day.” (In 1943, Warner Bros. produced a film of This Is the Army, the jingoistic stage show that had featured a cast of 300 soldiers, and had functioned as a sort of clandestine mecca for homosexuals in the armed forces. “They had signed all the soldiers and moved the show out to Hollywood,” Houghton said, “but they were too limp-wristed for the dance director, LeRoy Prinz.” Houghton was one of several Hollywood dancers Prinz called to appear in the foregrounds of shots. “He said, ‘Get some guys with balls in the front; let the butterflies fly in the back.’”)

This is the sort of talk you’d expect from someone who predates women’s suffrage, the Scopes trial, and bubble gum. I was reminded of John Jeremiah Sullivan’s remark, in his essay on the 92-year-old writer Andrew Lytle, that battling Lytle’s “racism, chauvinism, anti-Semitism, class snobbery, and what I can only describe as medieval nostalgia, seemed as absurd as debating these things with a caveman. Shut up and ask him what the cave art means.” But Houghton is no caveman. Although he clings to the lingo of a casually bigoted era, he was always a social progressive. It struck him as “ridiculous” when censors demanded that the navels in “Lullaby of Broadway” be covered with little flesh-toned patches, or when Paramount called him to reshoot an entire airplane sequence because the lady pilot had been wearing slacks. “It tells you how corny they were in those days,” he said. Houghton’s social circles were fluid: he went out for fried chicken with the Mills Brothers and invited gay dancer friends to his house parties. “They came with their boyfriends, and would flounce around,” he said fondly. “This is my friend, they’d say — not This is my boyfriend. We didn’t make it our business, we didn’t insult them. Many of them were so clever.”

Zieg
Houghton (directly behind the fronds on Judy Garland’s costume) in Ziegfeld Girl.

The one marginalized group for which Houghton reserves bile is the Munchkins. “The Munchkins were bastards, hard to get along with,” he said. “You’d come in and a little Munchkin girl about this high would flirt, and [her husband] would see her flirting with me, and he’d get so goddamn mad and want to fight. I’d say, ‘Relax, relax.’” Houghton also recalled an incident wherein a Munchkin “slipped and fell in the toilet. The next morning they put a toitie in there — a trainer for little girls and boys. He got so goddamn mad he smashed that thing on the set. I was back there dying laughing.” (In her indispensible The Making of The Wizard of Oz, Aljean Harmetz confirms the toilet anecdote, but argues that a handful of rotten, lecherous Munchkins ruined the reputations of the rest; most, she says, were well-mannered professionals.)

Houghton only worked on Oz for 10 days, while production on another film was held up. “I’d be an Emerald City townsperson one day and Soldier of the West another day,” he said. “The body was there, and they’d just change uniforms. They didn’t want to get me too established in anything, because I had to go back to this other set.” That “other set” may have been Gone With the Wind, for which Houghton filmed at least two scenes: he waltzed in the charity bazaar where Rhett bids on a widowed Scarlett, and was one of the rowdy Southerners who hightailed it out of the Twelve Oaks barbecue when war was declared.

Houghton’s own feelings on war were more complicated — “To be a good soldier, you’ve got to be completely brainless,” he told me — so it came as a relief when he received a paternity deferment from World War II. (He had married in 1935, and his daughter, Terrie, was born in 1939.) For the duration of the war, Houghton marched on Burbank soundstages: in This Is the Army, Objective, Burma!, and Ernst Lubitsch’s To Be or Not to Be. For Lubitsch, Houghton played one of the Nazis escorting Jack Benny through occupied Warsaw; the scene was shot on the Goldwyn backlot, which had been covered with “cornflakes that were bleached” to simulate snow. One afternoon the tiny Goldwyn commissary was full, so Houghton and a handful of other extras went out for lunch on Hollywood Boulevard in their Nazi uniforms. “Soon a police car arrived and escorted us back to the studio as an ounce of prevention,” Houghton writes in Cast of Thousands. “The very next day Goldwyn began having our lunches catered.” After a few similar incidents, studios ordered that any actor in uniform “remove their jacket and carry it over their arm when outside the studio. This was done for the entire four-year period of the war.”

Actors also had to check in their guns with the prop department when production broke for lunch. “They were very conscious about that stuff,” said Houghton, recalling that Ronald Reagan once forgot to retrieve his gun after lunch and blamed the property man, whom he tried to have fired. “When he’s got to check in a hundred guys with guns, he’s gonna worry about one little jackass like Ronald Reagan, who was just a player?” asked an incredulous Houghton. “He never got anywhere. I think his monkey picture was the biggest thing he ever made.”

I considered pointing out that he’d become the leader of the free world, but it seemed irrelevant. The near-comic absence of historical context in Houghton’s anecdotes is what makes them so precious. Reagan was just a “little jackass” in the 1940s, and Garbo was merely “standoffish” in 1937, so that’s how Houghton leaves them — his encounters with stars haven’t ballooned into My Week with Marilyn–style myth. He was terse, for example, on the subject of Lucille Ball, who “was after my baby-white body” in the early 1930s, when they posed for a cruise ad. “I burst off and took her girlfriend,” he said. “She scared the hell out of me, with all that red hair and makeup. I was only 21. She was four, five years older — and tough. I was used to little quiet high school girls.” Later, Houghton briefly dated Judy Garland’s sister Virginia Gumm (“She’d have barbecues at her home,” he said, “but Judy never came down”) and flirted with Ava Gardner. In 1951, when the MGM backlot became fogbound during the filming of Show Boat, production halted and the cast spent a few hours around a piano, singing songs from the score. Houghton danced with Gardner, he said, “and we made a date for that night, but she got a cold from being out in the cold weather” and cancelled. “She was a gorgeous creature,” he added. “I read her book, and MGM was a bastard to her.”

The studios were bastards to everyone then. Houghton remembered Louis B. Mayer bursting onto one set, “almost crying,” asking a horde of extras to work till 10 p.m. without overtime. “He said, ‘I’ll put you on the preferred list; you’ll work on the best sets we have.’ Never did a thing for the extras.” In late 1942, Houghton spent a grueling eight hours doing a “staged waltz scene” in Alfred Hitchcock’s Shadow of a Doubt. (The footage, set to the “Merry Widow Waltz,” recurs throughout the film as a canary-like harbinger of doom.) The dance director rehearsed them for six hours, then Hitchcock “came over from shooting the actual picture,” and they filmed for an additional two hours under his supervision. “Nobody had eaten except Hitchcock,” who enjoyed “a fine steak dinner,” Houghton writes in Cast of Thousands. “The very next day the State Labor Board stepped in. Hitchcock’s studio was fined $10,000 and a newly modified code ordered that all industry workers be either released or fed every five and a half hours of work.”

Shadow
An unfed Houghton waltzing in Shadow of a Doubt.

“Unions did a lot for people in the business,” Houghton told me. When extras left the Screen Actors Guild to form their own union in 1945, he said, “I was vice president.” (The SAG-AFTRA historian Valerie Yaros confirmed in an email that Houghton joined the Screen Extras Guild on April 4, 1946, but said that their SEG records did not list him as a board member or officer. Houghton had misremembered, it seems.) Extra work remained scarce — according to Anthony Slide, 90 percent of SEG members were unemployed in January 1948 — but Houghton continued to appear in choice projects.He was a sulky roulette player in The Big Sleep (1946), a topless drummer in a headscarf and Genie cuffs in Night and Day (1946), and a French soldier in Joan of Arc (1948). The Fred Astaire–Judy Garland musical Easter Parade was one of many films in which Houghton played a nightclub patron. “They wanted you to laugh and talk and never say a word,” he said. “At the end of the day, they’d make a track of [the extras talking], so they could put it in as loud or as soft as they wanted.”

In the 1950s Houghton branched into television (he appeared in episodes of I Love Lucy, Dragnet, and The Adventures of Ozzie & Harriet), while still finding time to do crowd work in The Red Badge of Courage (1951), Julius Caesar (1953), and Jailhouse Rock (1957). “He was a strange guy,” Houghton said of Elvis Presley.

In our group we were all conscious of politics, and conscious of studio business, so we got pretty glib when the camera wasn’t rolling. And he came over like a little kid, and stood in the group, looking at us, as we were talking. He didn’t say a word. Then he got on that stage, and they turned the music on, and he was — to me — great.

Jailhouse1
Jailhouse2
Elvis in Jailhouse Rock, singing to blasé nightclubbee Houghton.

As Houghton’s extra cronies rose in the business, they sometimes slipped him dialogue, which he recited obsessively in the days leading up to the shoot. In 1961’s Back Street he tells an airline attendant, “I have to be in Chicago by tomorrow”; in 1964’s Send Me No Flowers, he slaps Rock Hudson and Tony Randall on the back, says, “Good morning Arnold, George,” and immediately ducks out of the frame — as if rendered bashful by the attention.

By the 1960s, Houghton felt that the town of Hollywood, once “a little village,” had grown vast, unsavory, and prostitute-riddled. “The whole picture business was changing,” he explained. “The big moguls were gone, and so many second assistants and first assistants who had done the selecting [of extras] were retiring. After going in and out of the pearly gates for thirty years, the studio guards didn’t know your name, even. And the directors were all bearded and strange.” Houghton had worked on Gene Kelly’s first film in 1942, and Kelly threw Houghton a bone by flying him to upstate New York for the crowd scenes in Hello, Dolly! (1969). (He can be seen descending the Harmonia Gardens staircase and nodding to the head waiter.) Houghton stuck it out for a few more movies —Escape from the Planet of the Apes (1971), Mongo’s Back in Town (1971) — before retiring in 1976. His name had never appeared in the credits of a film.

The oblivion-bound Hollywood extra was seen as a figure of pathos as far back as 1917, when Motion Picture Magazine reported that a female background player had died while filming the war picture Civilization. Her husband had no photograph of her, so when the movie was released in Los Angeles, he “haunted the theater […] night after night,” hoping to glimpse her face among the mob.[1] (He never did.) My efforts to find Shep Houghton on screen were similarly frustrating. Sometimes I recognized the Yorick skull of a head I’d seen in Washington, but Houghton’s large, beautiful, slightly hooded blue eyes don’t quite read on film. In black and white, they are so pale that they fuse with his skin; even in his most prominent bits — catching a drunken Lana Turner in Ziegfeld Girl (1941), watching Maximilian Schell browbeat Montgomery Clift in Judgment at Nuremberg (1961) — Houghton’s emotions remain unreadable. He is a perfect paper doll, with nothing in his face but deference for the gods in the foreground. I watched dozens of his movies, and even after I’d picked him out from the crowd, Waldo-style, it was a struggle to keep my eye from drifting.

Nuremberg
Houghton, at bottom left, in Judgment at Nuremberg.

Houghton doesn’t watch his movies much today. “It’s so disappointing,” he said. “When you work in a picture, you’re so much in it, you know — and then when the picture comes out you’re not even in the damn shot.” He has no Baby Jane allegiance to the culture of his youth; the man who appeared in Gone with the Wind got Django Unchained from Netflix and loved it. He’s also fond of Clint Eastwood movies, “even the one with the girl fighter,” and recently finished the first season of Heroes, which he thought was “strange and stupid.” When I visited, a scheme was afoot in Houghton’s extended family to photograph him for The Today Show, which honors centenarians by displaying their faces on jam labels.

“Strawberry jam, or something?” asked Houghton when the subject came up.

“I don’t know what kind of jam you’ll be,” said his daughter, Terrie. “They don’t say the jam. They just put you on a Smucker’s jar.” She paused. “Probably strawberry.”

Terrie moved from Oklahoma to live with Houghton after his third wife died in 2004. He has weathered a few strokes, which have left him with a slight speech impediment. “I have to be careful now,” he told me. “I lose words.” Houghton still trades stocks online and drives his stick-shift Honda on grocery runs — though he’s “a little worried” that he won’t be able to get his license renewed; apparently it gets harder after you hit 100. He griped briefly about “the clowns that want to do 55 in 30-mile zones, with 16 tons of timber on the truck. I just pull over, let them go by. I’m in no hurry. I’ve got all the time in the world!”

I hope he does. Talking to Shep Houghton was like having a tin can through which I could talk to 1933 — it had been dangling for years, waiting for someone to pick it up. And now I’m reluctant to put that tin can down. No matter how tinny, no matter the gaps or inconsistencies, it is a beautiful sound. After leaving Houghton’s house, I headed down winding, incestuous roads that seemed designed to weed out 99-year-old drivers, unable to get the song “Lonesome Polecat” out of my head. It’s a mopey he-man ballad from Seven Brides for Seven Brothers, a 1954 MGM musical so bland that everyone in it seems like a Houghtonian extra, milling around with their Books-of-the-Month and waiting for the real stars to emerge. I turned on the car radio. I have an almost evangelical belief that a station somewhere will always be playing my songs, my hermetic little obsessions — the voices of my dead — and that if I can’t find it on a given radio dial, it’s just a failure on the part of my thumbs. “Lonesome Polecat” would be playing somewhere; I was sure of it.
__________________

[1] Sheridan-Bickers, H. “Extra Ladies and Gentlemen,” Motion Picture Magazine Sept. 1917: 85.1
Notable(1914-2016) Film actor and dancer, 1927-1975; A munchkin (as The Singer Midgets) in the movie Wizard of Oz and multiple movies and TV series.5

Citations

  1. [S654] Electronic Web Site, , http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0396473/bio
  2. [S1233] 1930 U.S. Federal Census , Los Angeles, Los Angeles, California; Roll: 137 ; Enumeration District: 119; sheet 2B, line 51, dwl 428-6-45.
  3. [S1479] 1940 U.S. Federal Census , Los Angeles, Los Angeles, California; Roll: T627_377; Page: 5A; Enumeration District: 60-1306; line 29, dwl 12305.
  4. [S1369] California Marriage Index, 1960-1985, online Ancestry. Com, State of California. California Marriage Index, 1960-1985. Microfiche. Center for Health Statistics, California Department of Health Services, Sacramento, California.
  5. [S654] Electronic Web Site, , http://www.thewizardofozmovie.com/credits.html

Stearl Montgomery Houghton1

M, #79103, b. 6 May 1899, d. 8 August 1955

Family 1: Nellie Sarah Franz b. 2 Dec 1883, d. 12 Jul 1963

Family 2: Eleanor V. Steiner

Biography

Corresponded with author?
A Contributor to Houghton Surname Project?
BirthMay 6, 1899Tyler, Smith Co., TX, USA, May 1899, age 1 in 1900 census; age 11 in 1910 census; age "38" in 1930 census; age 41 in 1940 census; Les McKinzie: 6 May 18921,2,3
Research
Mil. DraftSep 12, 1918Tulsa, Tulsa Co., OK, USA, age 19, a laborer; next of kin: Laura O'Brien, mother; he lost an eye in WWI1
MarriageOct 23, 1923Santa Ana, Los Angeles Co., CA, USA, age 31 and 16 at 1st mar4
No Childrn
1930 Census1930Los Angeles, Los Angeles Co., CA, USA, age 38, decorating artist4
1940 Census1940Reno, Washoe Co., NV, USA, age 41, building painter5
Divorce
MarriageSep 29, 1947Carson City, NV, USA
Occupation1955Private detective
DeathAug 8, 1955Reno, Washoe Co., NV, USA, of suicide (gunshot to head)6
BurialMt. View Cemetery, Reno, NV, USA
BiographyStearl was born in Tyler, Texas to J.B. Houghton and Laura Monroe Payne. He worked on Ranches in the Lake Arthur, New Mexico area in his youth, and as a painter and decorator in the 1920's and 1930's in the Los Angeles area.
He married Nellie S McKinzie (Franz) on October 23, 1923 in Santa Ana, California (Marriage Certificate lists his father as John M). The Houghtons moved to the Reno area in the late 1930's. He divorced Nellie then married Elenore Steiner (Tomlinson) on September 29, 1947 in Carson City, Nevada.
He then worked in the 40's and 50's as a detective in the International Detective agency taking on the nickname of Sam. He died on August 6, 1955 in Reno, Nevada.
His nephew Buddy named his son after Stearl, the uncle who taught his mother english.
ResearchDeath certificate gives Frank Houghton as father

Citations

  1. [S1308] World War I Draft Registration Cards, 1917-1918, online http://content.ancestry.com, Roll: 1852231.
  2. [S1231] 1910 U.S. Federal Census , Lake Arthur, Chaves, New Mexico; ED 27, p. 7 B; line 56, dwl 142-143.
  3. [S1230] 1900 U.S. Federal Census , Lubbock, Lubbock, Texas; Roll: T623_1624; Page: 16A; Enumeration District: 52; line 11, dwl 197-198.
  4. [S1233] 1930 U.S. Federal Census , Los Angeles, Los Angeles, California; Roll: 137 ; Enumeration District: 129; page 239, sheet 13A, line 31, dwl 4826-297-304.
  5. [S1479] 1940 U.S. Federal Census , Reno, Washoe, Nevada; Roll: T627_2281; Enumeration District: 16-21; line 73, dwl 187.
  6. [S415] E-mail from Les McKinzie, Oct. 3, 2008.

Nellie Sarah Franz1,2

F, #79104, b. 2 December 1883, d. 12 July 1963

Family: Stearl Montgomery Houghton b. 6 May 1899, d. 8 Aug 1955

Biography

A Contributor to Houghton Surname Project?
Corresponded with author?
BirthDec 2, 1883NE, USA, age 40 in 1930 census; age 56 in 1940 census1
Marriage1903John C. McKinzie 1868–1933
MarriageOct 23, 1923Santa Ana, Los Angeles Co., CA, USA, age 31 and 16 at 1st mar1
No Childrn
1940 Census1940Reno, Washoe Co., NV, USA, age 41, building painter3
Divorce
1950 US Census1950Los Angeles, CA, USA, age 66, widowed, no occup.
SSNbefore 1951CT, USA
DeathJul 12, 1963CA, USA
ParentsDfather born in MI, mother born in IL1

Citations

  1. [S1233] 1930 U.S. Federal Census , Los Angeles, Los Angeles, California; Roll: 137 ; Enumeration District: 129; page 239, sheet 13A, line 31, dwl 4826-297-304.
  2. [S415] E-mail from Les McKinzie, Oct. 3, 2008.
  3. [S1479] 1940 U.S. Federal Census , Reno, Washoe, Nevada; Roll: T627_2281; Enumeration District: 16-21; line 73, dwl 187.

Marguerite Rachel McKinzie

F, #79105, b. circa 1908

Biography

Corresponded with author?
A Contributor to Houghton Surname Project?
Birthcirca 1908WA, USA, age 22 in 1930 census1

Citations

  1. [S1233] 1930 U.S. Federal Census , Los Angeles, Los Angeles, California; Roll: 137 ; Enumeration District: 129; page 239, sheet 13A, line 31, dwl 4826-297-304.

Bruce Duane Houghton1,2

M, #79106, b. 26 October 1920, d. 25 February 2001

Family: Sylvia Janett Grafe b. 19 Sep 1920, d. 14 Feb 2013

Biography

Corresponded with author?
A Contributor to Houghton Surname Project?
BirthOct 26, 1920Sanger, Fresno Co., CA, USA, age 9 in 1930 census; age 19 in 1940 census1,2,3
MarriageSep 10, 1942CA, USA4
Research19442
Milit-BegJul 27, 1944Rank: MM3; Branch: US Navy
Milit-EndMay 2, 19462
1950 US Census1950Yucaipa, San Bernardino Co., CA, USA, age 29, refrigeration repair
SSNbefore 1951CA, USA
DeathFeb 25, 2001Prescot, AZ, USA2
BurialMar 19, 2001Riverside National Cemetery, Riverside, CA, USA, Section 45 Site 26322

Citations

  1. [S1233] 1930 U.S. Federal Census , Los Angeles, Los Angeles, California; Roll: 138 ; Enumeration District: 134; sheet 10B, line 86, dwl 2125-24-25.
  2. [S882] Ancestry.Com, online www.ancestry.com, National Cemetery Administration. U.S. Veterans Cemeteries, ca.1800-2004 [database online]. Provo, Utah: MyFamily.com, Inc., 2005. Original data: National Cemetery Administration. Nationwide Gravesite Locator.: Houghton surname.
  3. [S1326] California Birth Index, 1905-1995, online Ancestry. Com, Birthdate: 26 Oct 1920; Birth County: Fresno.
  4. [S1392] Intelius, online http://www.intelius.com/

Edith Houghton1

F, #79107, b. circa 1873

Biography

A Contributor to Houghton Surname Project?
Corresponded with author?
Birthcirca 1873Canada, age 57 in 1930 census1
Immigration1886
1930 Census1930Los Angeles, Los Angeles Co., CA, USA, age 57, a dressmaker, single1
ParentsDparents born in English Canada
Research

Citations

  1. [S1233] 1930 U.S. Federal Census , Los Angeles, Los Angeles, California; Roll: 139 ; Enumeration District: 169; page 161 sheet 10A; line 26, dwl 415-24-25.

Helen Houghton1

F, #79108, b. circa 1905

Biography

A Contributor to Houghton Surname Project?
Corresponded with author?
Birthcirca 1905PA, USA, age 25 in 1930 census1
1930 Census1930Los Angeles, Los Angeles Co., CA, USA, age 25, dept. store saleslady1
ParentsDparents born in PA1

Citations

  1. [S1233] 1930 U.S. Federal Census , Los Angeles, Los Angeles, California; Roll: 140 ; Enumeration District: 187; page 240, sheet 6A; line 26, dwl 531-34-150.

Keziah (?)1

F, #79109, b. circa 1702

Family: Ebenezer Haughton b. 28 Jul 1699

Biography

Corresponded with author?
A Contributor to Houghton Surname ProjectY
Birthcirca 17021
Marriage2
ContributnDec, 2004

Citations

  1. [S415] E-mail from Phyllis, e-mail address, Dec 2004.
  2. [S415] E-mail from Phylli Miller, e-mail address, Dec 2004.

Keziah Horton1,2

F, #79110, b. 20 March 1739, d. 21 March 1807

Family: Daniel Shipman b. 13 Mar 1733, d. 27 Apr 1809

Biography

Corresponded with author?
A Contributor to Houghton Surname ProjectY
BirthMar 20, 1739Hebron, CT, USA1
Marriage1
DeathMar 21, 18071
Contributn

Citations

  1. [S415] E-mail from Phyllis, e-mail address, Dec 2004.
  2. [S415] E-mail from Phylli Miller, e-mail address, Dec 2004.