Biographie
Gregory Nelson "Greg" Joseph has had a dual career: as writer, Hollywood biographer and former journalist and television critic who counts a Pulitzer Prize among his achievements, and as an actor honored with a prestigious Hollywood acting award whose performances have been recognized in festivals throughout the United States and abroad. He appeared as a Guest Programmer on Turner Classic Movies on the cable channel's 25th anniversary, and that same year was invited by The New York Times to meet with its op-ed editors for the second annual "Evening With Letters" conference after being handpicked as one of paper's top 30 regular contributors. In September 2021, the Sixth Floor Museum at Dealey Plaza, a museum located on the spot occupied by the alleged assassin of President John F. Kennedy, invited Greg to participate in its Oral History Project "to chronicle the assassination ... and present the contemporary culture within the context of presidential history."
The tall (six-feet-two-and-a-half), lean and angular actor, known for his many looks and ability to change his appearance to fit a wide range of characters in a variety of genres, stars as a military veteran in "The Last Dance," a romantic drama named an Official Selection of the Cannes Film Festival Short Film Corner; won Best of Festival character acting honors at the Hollywood Shockfest Film Festival for re-creating an iconic horror favorite in "Ritual," which won two other top awards at Shockfest and was also an Official Selection at the Shockerfest International Film Festival in Los Angeles, the Big Bear Horror-Fi Film Festival, A Night of Horror International Film Festival in Sydney, Australia, the Indie Horror Film Festival in Chicago, the Chicago Horror Film Festival, and the Guam International Film Festival; has the lead as a polygamist cult leader in "When the Dogs Cried Out," a film à clef that won Best Ensemble Acting at the New York First Run Film Festival as well as a National Board of Review Commendation; was nominated as Best Lead Actor at the Show Low International Film Festival for his portrayal of a deadly Middle East sentencing judge in "Zarin," a drama inspired by a true story that was also an Official Selection of the Love International Film Festival in Los Angeles and the Online Global Peace Film Festival; stars as a murderous rogue cop being pursued by his police-detective son in "Cover," which was a Semi-Finalist in the Action/Cut Short Film Competition in Los Angeles; stars as the film's only character, a fanatical collector who makes a grisly discovery in the park, in "Detector," a thriller chosen as an Official Selection of the Phoenix Film Festival; and stars as the title character, a washed-up ventriloquist, in the two-character drama "The Amazing Mortimer," which won Best of Fest honors at the Southern Arizona Independent Film Festival, was a top winner at the Broadcast Education Association (BEA) Festival of Media Arts, and was an Official Selection of the Phoenix Film Festival.
Other recent portrayals include The Soulless Gunfighter opposite Danny Trejo and Bill Engvall in the Western satire "Cowboy Dreams" (an Official Selection of three prominent Hollywood film festivals--the HollyShorts Film Festival, an annual Academy Award®-qualifying independent short film festival, the L.A. Shorts International Film Festival, and the Dances With Films Film Festival, where it was also an Opening Night Showcase Film; it also was a featured presentation and Official Selection of the Phoenix Film Festival); the co-starring role of the veteran astronaut in the science fiction TV series "H.O.P.E."; the pivotal role of the lead attorney in "Poison Sky," a feature film about the environment, with Kevin Sorbo ("Hercules: The Legendary Journeys," "Andromeda"); and the role of the minister in the feature film "Room for Rent," which stars scream queen Lin Shaye ("A Nightmare on Elm Street," "Critters," the "Insidious" film series).
Greg made his big screen debut in an auspicious way _ co-starring opposite Michael Douglas in the major feature "Adam at Six A.M.," which was produced by screen legend Steve McQueen ("Bullitt") and has since gone on to achieve cult status.
He was nominated for the 2015 Governor's Arts Award, an honor described as "the most prestigious, recognizing excellence in artistic expression and outstanding contributions to the arts community," as well as for the 2016 Filmstock Film Festival Barry E. Wallace Citizenship Award, for "those that promote encouragement and positive influences in their film community."
He continues to hone his craft, most recently studying improvisation with Oscar-winner Alan Arkin ("Little Miss Sunshine"), a founding member of Second City.
In April 2019, he appeared on Turner Classic Movies (TCM) with host Ben Mankiewicz as a guest programmer as part of the cable channel's silver anniversary after winning a national contest as one of the country's top 25 "super classic movie fans," and was in a number of promotional spots marking the occasion. In addition, Greg has won two other TCM contests testing his knowledge of classic films, being chosen to represent his state in TCM Spotlight's "50 States in 50 Movies," and for his essay on "Hollywood's Greatest Year."
Greg was born and reared in Kansas City, Missouri, the only child of Theodore Joseph, a jeweler who as a young man dreamed of leaving his native Cleveland to go to Hollywood and become an actor himself, and Marcella (Nelson) Joseph, an artist and graduate of the Kansas City Art Institute who studied with the famous muralist Thomas Hart Benton, whose work adorns the Harry S. Truman Presidential Library.
He attended Rockhurst High School, a Jesuit college preparatory school in Kansas City, and began acting at age 13 in local stage productions. He went on to earn an honors degree in Speech and Theatre from the University of Missouri-Kansas City, where he was nominated for a Woodrow Wilson Teaching Fellowship and was inducted into the Phi Kappa Phi National Honor Society, the nation's oldest all-discipline honor society, which recognizes students both for being ranked scholastically at the top of their class and for their integrity and high ethical standards.
At UMKC, he studied with artist-in-residence Robin Humphrey, a former Broadway actress who had been a member of Lee Strasberg's first class of students at the New York Actors Studio with Marlon Brando, and also taught Drama on a graduate assistantship through the university.
His first professional acting job came in his senior year, when he performed with The Missouri (now Kansas City) Repertory, appearing in productions of "The Miser" and "Oedipus Rex," the latter directed by Alexis Minotis, a film veteran (Alfred Hitchcock's "Notorious") and co-founder of the Royal Theatre of Athens with his wife, actress Katina Paxinou (Oscar winner for "For Whom the Bell Tolls").
That same year, Greg was invited to audition for John Houseman as the Oscar-winning actor-producer, perhaps best known for his collaboration with Orson Welles, was assembling his first Drama Division class at The Juilliard School.
Months after graduation, he landed a principal role in the McQueen-Douglas production "Adam at Six A.M.," which was shooting both in Missouri and in Hollywood.
Greg's unusually assured performance in the film as Ed, the straight arrow young pharmacist vying for the hand of leading lady Lee Purcell _ a role that was to have been cast in Hollywood _ drew praise from the film's producers and writers, who invited him to the West Coast. He accepted, and moved into a small apartment across from the iconic Grauman's Chinese Theatre in the heart of Hollywood.
Greg, who had worked as a reporter for The Kansas City Star while in college, continued to write upon moving to Hollywood as a means of supplementing his income and complementing his acting.
He supplied jokes for Johnny Carson's "Tonight Show," then returned to newspapers, reporting for several of the largest dailies in the United States, moving freely among breaking news, investigative work, entertainment, and arts criticism, with many of his articles appearing in syndication worldwide.
He went on to win a number of writing and reporting awards, including sharing the 1979 Pulitzer Prize as a member of The San Diego Tribune staff for its coverage of one of the worst commercial airliner crashes in U.S. history. His other notable assignments included traveling to the Middle East during the infamous hostage crisis in Iran.
Greg is also an award-winning profile writer whose subjects span the cultural spectrum and are among the most influential figures of the 20th and early-21st centuries. Writers including Ray Bradbury, Neil Simon (the most commercially successful playwright in American history), Irving Stone, Joseph Wambaugh, Leo Rosten, Nora Ephron, David Halberstam, Haynes Johnson and David McCullough. Newspaper columnists Ann Landers and Erma Bombeck. Igor Cassini, syndicated gossip columnist for the Hearst newspaper chain, one of the journalists who wrote under the pseudonym "Cholly Knickerbocker" and coined the term "jet set" (the brother of Oleg Cassini, fashion designer for Jackie Kennedy). James Kavanaugh, a former Roman Catholic priest who wrote the seminal 1967 book on Church reform, "A Modern Priest Looks at His Outdated Church." NASA astronauts Sally Ride, the first American woman in space, and Richard O. Covey, mission control spacecraft communicator during the Challenger disaster and pilot of the first Space Shuttle flight after the tragedy. Lillian Boyer, American wing-walker christened "Empress of the Air" for her many aerial stunts performed from 1920 to 1928. Nuclear physicist Harold Brown, former U.S. Secretary of Defense and U.S. Secretary of the Air Force, at the time president of the California Institute of Technology (Caltech). Navy Commander Lloyd "Pete" Bucher, who, along with his ship and crew, were captured by the North Koreans in 1968 in what came to be known as "the Pueblo incident." Activists Bella Abzug and Angela Davis. Presidents' sons Elliott Roosevelt (Franklin D. Roosevelt) and Michael Reagan (Ronald Reagan). "King of Torts" attorney Melvin Belli. Influential pediatrician and activist Benjamin Spock. Children's author Theodor "Dr. Seuss" Geisel. Classic animators including four of Disney's "Nine Old Men," Joseph Barbera of Hanna-Barbera, legendary Warner Bros. Looney Tunes auteur Chuck Jones, former Disney-Pixar chief John Lasseter, and "Simpsons" creator Matt Groening. Dancer-choreographers Agnes de Mille and Mikhail Baryshnikov. Fess "Davy Crockett" Parker. Hall of Fame baseball legend Willie Mays. Baseball player-turned-Hall of Fame broadcaster Joe Garagiola. Boxers Sugar Ray Robinson (often described as the greatest pound-for-pound fighter in the history of the sport), Muhammad Ali and Ken Norton. Film luminaries including directors Frank Capra, Billy Wilder, Robert Wise, Stanley Kramer, Richard Donner, Richard Rush, Tony Bill, Wes Craven and Spike Lee, and actors Cary Grant (in one of his last interviews), Jimmy Stewart, Jackie Cooper, Paul Henreid, Norman Lloyd, Gregory Peck, Rod Steiger, Jack Lemmon, Cliff Robertson, Peter Falk, Robert Loggia, Barry Bostwick ("The Rocky Horror Picture Show"), Dick Van Dyke, George Peppard, June Allyson, Eva Marie Saint, Jane Russell, Cyd Charisse, Patty Duke, Janet Leigh, Pam Grier, Jean Stapleton, Carroll O'Connor, Christopher Reeve, Jim Carrey, John Goodman, Ann Jillian, Keenen Ivory Wayans, Robert Urich, and Richard Dean Anderson ("MacGyver"). Joyce Selznick, niece of "Gone With the Wind" producer David O. Zelznick, talent agent, screenwriter and casting director whose discoveries included '50s matinee idol Tony Curtis (father of Academy Award-winning actress Jamie Lee Curtis). Deaf actor, director, author and teacher Howie Seago, a central figure of the American Deaf Community, whose career has ranged from the National Theatre of the Deaf to the Oregon Shakespeare Festival to television ("Star Trek: The Next Generation"). Comedians Bob Hope, Mort Sahl, Jerry Seinfeld, and David Steinberg. Will Rogers Jr. (discussing his iconic late humorist father). Network TV news anchors Douglas Edwards (the first presenter of a nationally regularly scheduled television newscast by an American network) and Tom Brokaw (author of "The Greatest Generation"). Documentary filmmaker Ken Burns ("Brooklyn Bridge," "The Civil War"). TV executive Fred Silverman (the first person to be programming chief of each of The Big Three networks). Composer Frederick Loewe of the "My Fair Lady" songwriting duo Lerner and Loewe. Stage critic Clive Barnes ("the most powerful man on Broadway"). Musicians Frankie Laine, Patti Page, Joan Baez, Graham Nash, Kenny Rogers and Tony Orlando. Oscar-winning cinematographer Haskell Wexler (named one of the 10 most influential in the history of film). Makeup guru Michael Westmore of the legendary Hollywood makeup dynasty. Actor, screenwriter and director Buck Henry ("The Graduate," "Get Smart"). "The last silents star" Diana Serra "Baby Peggy" Cary. Silent film star Mary MacLaren (Douglas Fairbanks Sr.'s co-star in the 1921 silent film classic "The Three Musketeers" -- and one-time girlfriend of Rudolph Valentino). Christina "Mommie Dearest" Crawford. Early-Hollywood publicist Andy Hervey (Warner Bros.' very first). "Voice of Snow White" Adriana Caselotti from the groundbreaking Disney animated feature (whose voice also can be heard in the film classics "The Wizard of Oz" and "It's a Wonderful Life"). And some of nascent television's most beloved figures, including TV's first super star Milton Berle, the first "Tonight Show" host Steve Allen, Harry von Zell and George Fenneman (announcers and straight men to George Burns and Gracie Allen, and Groucho Marx, respectively), Johnny Carson's sidekick Ed McMahon, "Star Trek" creator Gene Roddenberry and the star of the original TV series William Shatner, Robert Stack (Eliot Ness on TV's classic "The Untouchables"), James Arness (Matt Dillon on TV's long-running "Gunsmoke"), Barbara Hale (Della Street on "Perry Mason") and her husband Bill Williams ("The Adventures of Kit Carson"), Donna Douglas (Elly Mae Clampett on "The Beverly Hillbillies"), "Leave It to Beaver" mom Barbara "June Cleaver" Billingsley, "Father Knows Best" dad Robert "Jim Anderson" Young (who later morphed into TV's "Marcus Welby, M.D."), and revered children's show personalities Fran Allison ("Kukla, Fran and Ollie"), Buffalo Bob Smith ("Howdy Doody") and Bob Keeshan ("Captain Kangaroo").
He also pulled back the curtain on a number of entertainment classics, gathering behind-the-scenes accounts from people who were closely involved in those productions. Films such as "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs," "Mr. Smith Goes to Washington," "Casablanca," "It's a Wonderful Life," "On the Waterfront" and "Some Like It Hot"; radio's most infamous broadcast, Orson Welles' 1938 Halloween Eve "night-that-panicked-America" "War of the Worlds" program, for which he interviewed the man who wrote the show's script, and television series ranging from "Gunsmoke" to "Star Trek" to "Sesame Street" to "The Tonight Show," for which he talked to stars, writers, producers and network presidents.
He interviewed those who had taken part in nine of the first 25 films chosen for preservation by the Library of Congress National Film Registry for their historical, cultural and/or aesthetic significance (since 1989, some 850 films of all lengths and types have been selected).
In January 1991, escorted by then-CNN president Tom Johnson, he became the first print journalist permitted inside CNN during the first Persian Gulf War, the first time in history a war was being covered in real time, live, on television. CNN was the only 24-hour TV news network at the time, and the war was broadcast globally, watched by everyone from heads of state (including those of adversaries) to average people sitting at home in their living rooms, more than a billion viewers worldwide. The watershed reporting put CNN, and the concept of nonstop television news coverage, on the cultural map, something we now take for granted.
He wound up his long journalism career as a TV critic, first of The San Diego Tribune (now The San Diego Union-Tribune), then of The Arizona Republic.
In June 2019, he was invited by The New York Times to meet with its op-ed editors for the second annual "Evening with Letters" conference after being handpicked as one of the paper's top 30 regular contributors from across the U.S.
In September 2021, the Sixth Floor Museum at Dealey Plaza, a museum located on the spot occupied by the alleged assassin of President John F. Kennedy at the time of the killing, invited Greg to participate in its Oral History Project "to chronicle the assassination ... and present the contemporary culture within the context of presidential history." The museum supports the Dealey Plaza National Historical Landmark District and the John F. Kennedy Memorial Plaza.
Greg thus far has written two books, a collection of his profiles and a political thriller, both of which are now seeking publishers. He is also writing several screenplays.
Greg has been a member of the Screen Actors Guild (now SAG-AFTRA) since 1970. His industry activities include service on SAG's Prime-Time TV Nominating Committee, its National Committee for Performers with Disabilities, and its State Board of Directors; on the National Academy of Television Arts & Sciences (Emmy) Regional Board of Governors; on the Film & Media Coalition Board of Directors, and as a member of the Television Critics Association.
He is listed as actor, critic and advocate in Who's Who in America and Who's Who in the World, and is a recipient of the 2017-2018 Albert Nelson Marquis Lifetime Achievement Award.
Greg and his wife of 50 years, Mary, have three children (John, Jacqueline and Caroline) and two granddaughters (Frida and Lily).
