Tris Speaker (1888 - 1958)

Tristram Edgar Speaker (April 4, 1888 – December 8, 1958), nicknamed “The Grey Eagle”, was an American baseball player. Considered one of the best offensive and defensive center fielders in the history of Major League Baseball (MLB), he compiled a career batting average of .345 (sixth all-time). His 792 career doubles represent an MLB career […]

Honus Wagner (1874 - 1955)

Johannes Peter “Honus” Wagner (/ˈhɒnəs ˈwæɡnər/; February 24, 1874 – December 6, 1955) was an American baseball shortstop who played 21 seasons in Major League Baseball from 1897 to 1917, almost entirely for the Pittsburgh Pirates. Honus Wagner won eight batting titles, tied for the most in National League history with Tony Gwynn. He also […]

Christy Mathewson (1880 - 1925)

Christopher “Christy” Mathewson (August 12, 1880 – October 7, 1925), nicknamed “Big Six”, “The Christian Gentleman”, “Matty”, and “The Gentleman’s Hurler” was a Major League Baseball right-handed pitcher who played 17 seasons with the New York Giants. He was among the most dominant pitchers in baseball history, and ranks in the all-time top ten in […]

Bill Tilden (1893 - 1953)

William Tatem Tilden II (February 10, 1893 – June 5, 1953), nicknamed “Big Bill,” was an American male tennis player. He is often considered one of the greatest tennis players of all time. Tilden was the World No. 1 player for six years from 1920 through 1925. He won 15 Major singles titles including ten […]

Frank Deford (1938 - 2017)

Benjamin Franklin “Frank” Deford III (December 16, 1938 – May 28, 2017) was an American sportswriter and novelist. Over the course of four decades, he was a regular sports commentator on NPR’s Morning Edition radio program (from 1980 to 2017). Frank Deford wrote for Sports Illustrated magazine from 1962 until his death in 2017, and […]

Tom Graham (1950 - 2017)

Thomas Lawrence Graham (April 15, 1950 – May 30, 2017) was an American football linebacker in the National Football League. From 1972 until 1978, he played for the Denver Broncos, the Kansas City Chiefs, the San Diego Chargers, and the Buffalo Bills. He played college football at the University of Oregon. From 1969-71, linebacker Tom […]

Elena Verdugo (1925 - 2017)

Elena Verdugo made numerous film appearances through the 1940s, including several Universal horror films. While filming the Abbott and Costello comedy Little Giant (1946), she met and married screenwriter Charles R. Marion, who also wrote for the comedy team’s radio show. Verdugo starred with Gene Autry and Stephen Dunne in the movie The Big Sombrero […]

Jack McCloskey (1925 - 2017)

Jack McCloskey played one game for the Philadelphia Warriors of the NBA during the 1953 season, scoring 6 points in that game. He served as head coach of the University of Pennsylvania from 1956 to 1966, and of Wake Forest from 1966 to 1972. Following that, he served as the head coach of the Portland […]

Coy Wayne Wesbrook (1958 - 2016)

According to his testimony, Coy Wayne Coy Wayne Wesbrook went to visit his ex-wife, Gloria Jean Coons, at her home in Channelview, Texas, in the Greater Houston area. He was invited to a party at Coons’ apartment along with other friends Diana Ruth Money, and three other males. Wesbrook had gone there with hopes of […]

Adam Kelly Ward (1982 - 2016)

Adam Kelly Ward (August 11, 1982 – March 22, 2016) was an American convicted murderer executed by the state of Texas by lethal injection. On June 13, 2005, Adam Ward encountered Michael Walker, a code enforcement officer, taking photographs of Ward’s home in Commerce, Texas. Ward was washing a car at the time, and he […]

Ledell Lee (1965 - 2017)

Ledell T. Lee (July 31, 1965 – April 20, 2017) was an Arkansas death row inmate executed for the 1993 murder of his neighbor, Debra Reese. He was convicted in 1995 and the Arkansas Supreme Court affirmed the conviction in 1997. Reese, 26-years-old at the time of her death, was found dead in her home […]

Pablo Vasquez (1977 - 2016)

On April 18, 1998, Pablo Vasquez went to a party in Donna, Texas, with his 15-year-old cousin, Andres Rafael “Andy” Chapa. During the party he became intoxicated with cocaine and alcohol. At the party he met Cardenas, and while walking from the party to a house, Vasquez hit Cardenas on the head with a pipe […]

Christopher Wilkins (1968 - 2017)

Christopher Chubasco Wilkins (September 29, 1968 – January 11, 2017) was a Texas inmate sentenced to death and executed for a 2005 double murder. On October 27, 2005, Christopher Wilkins shot and killed Willie Freeman and Mike Silva. Freeman had allegedly cheated Wilkins in a drug deal; Silva was with Freeman at the time and […]

Frances Marion (1888 - 1973)

Frances Marion worked as a journalist and served overseas as a combat correspondent during World War I. She documented women’s contribution to the war effort on the front lines, and became the first woman to cross the Rhine after the armistice. On her return home, she moved to Los Angeles and was hired as a […]

Maurice Tourneur (1876 - 1961)

Born Maurice Thomas in the Epinettes district (17th arrondissement) of Paris, France, his father was a wholesaler. As a young man, Maurice Thomas first trained as a graphic designer and a magazine illustrator but was soon drawn to the theater. In 1904, he married the actress, Fernande Petit. They had a son, Jacques (1904–1977), who […]

Alice Terry (1900 - 1987)

Alice Terry started in films as an extra during her mid-teens. For two years she worked in cutting rooms at Famous-Players-Lasky. This work would help her later on when she worked with her husband. Alice Terry was married to Rex Ingram, a prominent director. One of her biggest problems in her career was being the […]

Frank Keenan (1858 - 1929)

Frank Keenan (April 8, 1858 – February 24, 1929) was an American stage and film actor and stage director and manager during the silent film era. He was among the first stage actors to star in Hollywood, and he pursued work in film features a number of years. Born in Dubuque, Iowa, Keenan acquired his […]

Reginald Baker (1886 - 1945)

Born in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada, Reginald Barker’s family moved to Scotland when he was an infant and then to the United States. Living in California, Reginald Barker wrote, produced, and acted in his first play at the age of sixteen following which he acted and handled stage manager duties with a traveling stock company. At […]

Tsuru Aoki (1892 - 1961)

Born in Tokyo, Japan, Tsuru Aoki emigrated to Los Angeles, California in 1903 with her aunt and uncle, Otojirō Kawakami, who had previously owned a theatrical group called “Kawakami-za” in Japan. Aoki was later adopted by another uncle Aoki Toshio and relocated to San Francisco. Toshio worked as a sketch artist for a local newspaper. […]

Sessue Hayakawa (1889 - 1973)

Sessue Hayakawa (早川 雪洲? Hayakawa Sesshū, June 10, 1889 – November 23, 1973) was a Japanese actor who starred in Japanese, American, French, German, and British films. Hayakawa was one of the biggest stars in Hollywood during the silent era of the 1910s and 1920s. He was the first actor of Asian descent to find […]

Carl Foreman (1914 - 1984)

Born in Chicago, Illinois, to a working-class Jewish family, he was the son of Fanny (Rozin) and Isidore Foreman. He studied at the University of Illinois. As a student in the 1930s, he became an advocate of revolutionary socialism and joined the American Communist Party. After graduating from university, Carl Foreman moved to Hollywood where […]

Peter Ustinov (1921 - 2004)

Sir Peter Ustinov, CBE FRSA (born Peter Alexander von Ustinov; /ˈjuːstɪnɒf/ or /ˈuːstɪnɒf/; 16 April 1921 – 28 March 2004) was an English actor, writer, dramatist, filmmaker, theatre and opera director, stage designer, screenwriter, comedian, humorist, newspaper and magazine columnist, radio broadcaster, and television presenter. He was a fixture on television talk shows and lecture […]

Peter van Eyck (1911 - 1969)

Peter van Eyck, born Götz von Eick (16 July 1911 in Steinwehr, Pomerania, German Empire [now Kamienny Jaz, Poland] – 15 July 1969 in Männedorf near Zürich, Switzerland), was a German actor. After graduating from high school he studied music. In 1931 he left Poland, living in Paris, London, Tunis, Algiers and Cuba, before settling in […]

Albert Broccoli (1909 - 1996)

At the beginning of the 1950s, Albert Broccoli moved once more, this time to London, where the British government provided subsidies to film productions made in the UK with British casts and crews. Together with Irving Allen, Broccoli formed Warwick Films that made a prolific and successful series of films for Columbia Pictures. When Broccoli became […]

Desmond Llewelyn (1914 - 1999)

Desmond Llewelyn was chosen for the role of Q because of his work with director Terence Young in the 1950 war film They Were Not Divided, in which he played a tank gunner. Beginning with From Russia with Love in 1963, Llewelyn appeared as Q, the quartermaster of the MI6gadget lab (also known as Q […]

Terence Young (1915 - 1994)

Terence Young began his film career as a screenwriter in British films of the 1940s, working, for example, on Brian Desmond Hurst’s On the Night of the Fire (1939), Dangerous Moonlight (1941), and A Letter From Ulster (1942). In 1946, he returned to assist Hurst with the script of Theirs is the Glory, which recaptured […]

Gert Fröbe (1913 - 1988)

Karl Gerhart Fröbe was born in Oberplanitz, today part of Zwickau. He was initially a violinist, but he abandoned it for Kabarett and theatre work. Gert Fröbe joined the Nazi Party in 1929 at the age of 16 and left in 1937. During the Nazi regime, he aided two German Jews by hiding them from the […]

Cornelius Ryan (1920 - 1974)

On a trip to Normandy in 1949 Cornelius Ryan became interested in telling a more complete story of Operation Overlord than had been produced to date. He began compiling information and conducting over 1000 interviews as he gathered stories from both the Allies and the Germans, as well as the French civilians. In 1956 he began […]

Gerd Oswald (1919 - 1989)

Gerd Oswald (June 9, 1919 – May 22, 1989) was a director of American films and television. Born in Berlin, Oswald was the son of German film director Richard Oswald and actress Käthe Oswald. He worked as a child actor before emigrating to the United States in 1938. Early production jobs at low-budget studios like Monogram […]

Michael Hinz (1939 - 2008)

Michael Hinz (28 December 1939 – 6 November 2008) was a German actor. Hinz came from an acting family, his parents were Werner Hinz and Ehmi Bessel, both actors, as well as his brother Knut and half-sister Dinah. After growing up in Berlin and Hamburg, Hinz had his first theatrical role in 1958 in Terence Rattigan’s The […]