Rose Gacioch (1915 - 2004)

A native of Wheeling, West Virginia, Rose Gacioch was orphaned at the age of 16. She lied about her age, saying that she was 18 in order to take a job in a corrugating plant in her homeland. She also joined the Little Cardinals, a semi-professional baseball team in town, being the only girl on […]

Gary Bradds (1942 - 1983)

Gary Bradds was selected by the Baltimore Bullets in the 1st round (3rd pick overall) of the 1964 NBA Draft. Bradds played in the North American Basketball League for Benton Harbor in 1965-66 and was Second Team NABL. He played for Columbus in 1966-67 and was named First Team NABL. He played for the Bullets (1964–66) in […]

Abe Saperstein (1902 - 1966)

Abe Saperstein (July 4, 1902 – March 15, 1966) was an owner and coach of the Savoy Big Five, which later became the Harlem Globetrotters. He was born in London, England, to a Jewish family. Saperstein was the commissioner of the American Basketball League, which he founded in 1961 after repeatedly being denied an NBA expansion […]

John Sieba Roosma (1900 - 1983)

John Roosma (September 3, 1900 – November 13, 1983) was an amateur basketball great during the 1920s. He played for the United States Military Academy for five years, graduating in 1926. The Passaic, New Jersey native was a prolific scorer and became the first college player to total 1,000 points for his career. As a member […]

Flo Hyman (1954 - 1986)

Flo Hyman was the second of eight children. As a child, Hyman was abused by her parents and self-conscious about her rapid growth. She made it a habit to try to hide her size. She hunched when she sat and slouched when she walked. But her mother persuaded her to be proud of it and […]

Colleen Hutchins (1926 - 2010)

Colleen Hutchins (May 23, 1926 – March 24, 2010) was Miss America 1952.  She was crowned as Brigham Young University Homecoming Queen in 1947. In September 1951. The first Miss Utah to wear the crown, she took top honors for 1952. Raised in Salt Lake City, she attended Brigham Young University where she was the 1947 […]

Paul Siple (1908 - 1968)

Paul Siple was born in Montpelier, Ohio on December 18, 1908 to Clyde Lavonius Siple and Fannie Hope Allman. His family moved to Erie, Pennsylvania, where he graduated from Central High School in 1926. He became an Eagle Scout in 1923 with 59 merit badges. After an extensive nationwide search in 1928, he was the […]

Harry August Jansen (1883 - 1955)

Harry August Jansen was born on October 3, 1883 in Copenhagen, Denmark. Jansen came to St. Paul, Minnesota at the age of 6 with his family. At the age of 16 Jansen made his stage debut under Charles Wagner. He then set off on a world tour for 5 years as the Great Jansen. In 1922, magician […]

Darryl Dawkins (1957 - 2015)

DARRYL DAWKINS Hoping to follow in Malone’s footsteps, the 18-year-old Darryl Dawkins renounced his college eligibility and applied for the 1975 NBA draft as a hardship candidate. The Philadelphia 76ers made him the fifth overall pick, behind David Thompson, David Meyers, Marvin Webster, and Alvan Adams. According to the New York Daily News, when Dawkins […]

Gary Collins (1938 - 2012)

Gary Collins made a career in television, co-starring, with Jack Warden and Mark Slade, in the 1965 series The Wackiest Ship in the Army. He co-starred, with Dale Robertson and Robert Random, in the 1966-68 series The Iron Horse. He starred in the 1972 television series Sixth Sense, in syndication part of Rod Serling’s Night […]

John Colicos (1928 - 2000)

John Colicos was born in Montreal, Quebec, to a Greek father and a Canadian mother. In 1957 he appeared in Mary Stuart at the Phoenix Theatre in New York City and in 1963 he appeared in Troilus and Cressida at the Stratford Festival in Stratford, Ontario, Canada. His other New York theatre credits are King Lear […]

Lew Cody (1884 - 1934)

Lew Cody (February 22, 1884 – May 31, 1934) was an American stage and film actor whose career spanned the silent film and early sound film age. He gained notoriety in the late 1910s for playing “male vamps” in films such as Don’t Change Your Husband. Lew Cody was born Louis Joseph Côté to Joseph Côté […]

Steve Cochran (1917 - 1965)

From 1949–52 Steve Cochran worked for Warner Brothers in mostly supporting roles (often playing boxers and gangsters), and before that he was under contract to Samuel Goldwyn. He appeared in many films, including The Chase (1946), The Best Years of Our Lives (1946), Copacabana (1947), A Song Is Born (1948), Highway 301 (1950), The Damned […]

Lee Cobb (1911 - 1976)

Lee Cobb performed summer stock with the Group Theatre (New York) in 1936, when they summered at Pine Brook Country Club in Nichols, Connecticut. During World War II Cobb served in the First Motion Picture Unit of the United States Army Air Forces. Cobb entered films in the 1930s, successfully playing middle-aged and even older men […]

Del Close (1934 - 1999)

Del Close was born on March 9, 1934 in Manhattan, Kansas, the son of an inattentive alcoholic father. He ran away from home at the age of 17 to work in a traveling side show, but returned to attend Kansas State University. At age 19 he performed in summer stock with the Belfry Players at […]

Colin Clive (1900 - 1937)

Colin Clive was born in Saint-Malo, France, to an English colonel, Colin Philip Greig, and his wife, Caroline Margaret Lugard Clive. He attended Stonyhurst College and subsequently Royal Military Academy Sandhurst, where an injured knee disqualified him from military service and contributed to his becoming a stage actor. Clive created the role of Steve Baker, the […]

Stanley Clements (1926 - 1981)

Stanley Clements was born Stanislaw Klimowicz in Long Island, New York. Young Stan realized that he wanted a show-business career while he was in grammar school, and when he graduated from college, he toured in vaudeville for two years. He then joined the touring company of the Major Bowes Amateur Hour. In 1941, he was […]

Steve Clark (1960 - 1991)

Before joining Def Leppard in 1978, Steve Clark played cover songs with his small band, Electric Chicken, in Sheffield. Around that time, he met Pete Willis (Def Leppard’s original guitarist and founder). Clark asked for a spot in the band and joined Def Leppard in January 1978. According to Joe Elliott in Behind the Music, […]

Fred Clark (1914 - 1968)

Born in Lincoln, California, Fred Clark made his film debut in 1947 in The Unsuspected. His 20-year film career included nearly seventy films and numerous television appearances. As a supporting player, with his gruff voice, intimidating build, bald head and small moustache beneath an often scowling visage, he was often cast as a testy film […]

Buddy Clark (1912 - 1949)

Buddy Clark was born Samuel Goldberg to Jewish parents in Dorchester, Massachusetts. He made his Big Band singing debut in 1932 as a tenor, with Gus Arnheim’s orchestra, but was not successful. Singing baritone, he gained wider notice in 1934, with Benny Goodman on the Let’s Dance radio program. In 1936 he began performing on […]

Berton Churchill (1876 - 1940)

Born in Toronto, Ontario, as a young man interested in the theater, Berton Churchill appeared in stock companies as early as 1903 and later headed to New York City, where he worked as a newspaper pressman, eventually becoming a foreman and leader of his union. He began an acting career that saw him perform in 30 […]

Merle Haggard (1937 - 2016)

Merle Haggard Merle Haggard’s parents, Flossie Mae (Harp) and James Francis Haggard, moved to California from their home in Checotah, Oklahoma, during the Great Depression, after their barn burned in 1934. They settled with their children, Lowell and Lillian, in an apartment in Bakersfield, while James started working for the Santa Fe Railroad. A woman […]

Mady Christians (1892 - 1951)

Mady Christians was born on January 19, 1892 to Rudolph Christians, a well-known German actor, and his wife, Bertha. Her family moved to Berlin when she was one year old, and to New York in 1912, where her father became the Irving Place Theatre’s general manager. Five years later she returned to Europe to study […]

Alvin Childress (1907 - 1986)

Alvin Childress was born in Meridian, Mississippi. He was educated at Rust College, from which he received a Bachelor of Arts degree in Sociology. When he initially entered college, Childress intended to become a doctor, enrolling in typical pre-med courses. He had no thoughts of becoming involved in acting, but became involved in theater outside […]

Peter Cheyney (1896 - 1951)

Peter Cheyney wrote his first novel, the Lemmy Caution thriller This Man Is Dangerous in 1936 and followed it with the first Slim Callaghan novel, The Urgent Hangman in 1938. The immediate success of these two novels assured a flourishing new career, and Cheyney abandoned his work as a freelance investigator. Sales were brisk; in […]

Albert Chevalier (1861 - 1923)

Albert Chevalier born Albert Onésime Britannicus Gwathveoyd Louis Chevalier; (21 March 1861 – 10 July 1923), was an English music hall comedian, singer and musical theatre actor. He specialised in cockney related humour based on life as a costermonger in London during the Victorian era. Owing to this and his ability to write songs, he […]

Don Chastain (1935 - 2002)

  Don Chastain (September 2, 1935 – August 9, 2002) was an American actor, singer and screenwriter. He was married to Jill Diamond and had one son, Colin Chastain. He worked in television in Los Angeles and New York and toured the United States and Canada with major productions. Leading ladies included Katharine Hepburn; Lauren Bacall; […]

Lonny Chapman (1920 - 2007)

Lonny Chapman was born in Tulsa, Oklahoma, but lived thereafter in Joplin, Missouri. He graduated from Joplin High School and, in 1940, from Joplin Junior College, the predecessor institution of Missouri Southern. He enlisted in the United States Marine Corps served in the South Pacific during World War II. After the war, Chapman graduated from […]

Ben Chapman (1925 - 2008)

Born in Oakland, California, Ben Chapman spent much of his childhood in Tahiti and moved to San Francisco at age 12 or 13. A Marine Corps veteran of the Korean War, he was believed to have earned a Silver Star, a Bronze Star, and two Purple Hearts for battle injuries. However, after his death, the Marine […]

Sydney Chaplin (1885 - 1965)

As Charlie was negotiating his Keystone contract, he suggested Sydney Chaplin be asked to join the company, and Syd and his wife Minnie Chaplin arrived in California in October 1914. Syd made a few comedies there, including the “Gussle” comedies, and the feature-length A Submarine Pirate in 1915, which, second to Tillie’s Punctured Romance, was […]