George Chandler (1898 - 1985)

George Chandler (June 30, 1898 – June 10, 1985) was an American actor best known for playing the character of “Uncle Petrie Martin” on the CBS television series, Lassie. He was born in Waukegan, Illinois on June 30, 1898. Chandler served in the United States Army during World War I. George Chandler appeared six times in Bill […]

Adolfo Celi (1922 - 1986)

Adolfo Celi became a film actor in post-war Italy. He left the Italian film industry when he emigrated to Brazil where he co-founded the Teatro Brasileiro de Comédia along with the Brazilian stage greats Paulo Autran and Tônia Carrero in São Paulo He was successful as a stage actor in Argentina and Brazil. He directed […]

Joseph Cawthorn (1868 - 1949)

Joseph Cawthorn (March 29, 1868, New York City, New York – January 21, 1949, Beverly Hills, California) was an American stage and film comic actor. Cawthorn started out in show business as a child, debuting at Robinson’s Music Hall in his hometown of New York in 1872. He appeared in minstrel shows and vaudeville as a […]

Hobart Cavanaugh (1886 - 1950)

Hobart Cavanaugh (September 22, 1886 – April 26, 1950) was an American character actor in films and on stage. He was born in Virginia City, Nevada on September 22, 1886. Cavanaugh attended the University of California. He worked in vaudeville, teaming with Walter Catlett at some point. He appeared in numerous Broadway productions, including the original 1919 […]

Walter Catlett (1889 - 1960)

Walter Catlett was born in San Francisco, California. He started out in vaudeville, teaming up with Hobart Cavanaugh at some point, with a detour for a while in opera, before breaking into acting. He started on stage in 1906 and made his Broadway debut in either The Prince of Pilsen (1911) or So Long Letty (1916). […]

Zachary Scott (1914 - 1965)

Born in Austin, Texas, Zachary Scott was a distant cousin of George Washington, and his grandfather had been a very successful cattle rancher. He was also of direct Greek descent, his full surname being Skotidis. Scott intended to be a doctor like his father, Zachary Scott Sr. (1880–1964), but after attending the University of Texas at […]

Jack Carson (1910 - 1963)

Jack Carson was born in Carman, Manitoba to Elmer and Elsa Carson. In 1914, the family moved to Milwaukee, Wisconsin, which he always thought of as his home town. He attended high school at Hartford School, Milwaukee and St. John’s Military Academy, Delafield, but it was at Carleton College that he acquired a taste for […]

Leo Carrillo (1880 - 1961)

lthough he played many different ethnicities in his acting career, Leo Carrillo was Castillian Spanish and traced his ancestry in Spain to the year 1260. His great-great grandfather José Raimundo Carrillo (1749–1809), was a soldier in the Spanish Portolá expedition colonization of Las Californias, arriving in San Diego on July 1, 1769. Franciscan Friar Junípero […]

Jean Carmet (1920 - 1994)

Jean Carmet (25 April 1920 – 20 April 1994) was a French actor. Jean Carmet began working on stage and then in film in the early 1940s becoming a very popular comedic actor in his native country. He is best known internationally for his role as a French colonist in the 1976 film, La Victoire en […]

Roger Carmel (1932 - 1986)

Roger Carmel starred as milksop Roger Buell in the 1967 NBC sitcom The Mothers-in-Law, but was replaced by Richard Deacon after season 1. Officially, Carmel had a salary dispute with producer Desi Arnaz, although, according to rumors, he was fired because his drug use interfered with production. Carmel’s other guest roles included the accountant Doug Wesley […]

Ron Carey (1935 - 2007)

Ron Carey (December 11, 1935 – January 16, 2007) was an American film and television actor. The 5-foot 4-inch actor was best known for playing ambitious NYPD Police Officer Carl Levitt on TV’s Barney Miller, in which he was almost always surrounded by male actors (and sometimes female guest stars) who stood at least four […]

Harry Carey (1878 - 1947)

When a boating accident led to pneumonia, Harry Carey wrote a play, Montana, while recuperating and toured the country performing in it for three years. His play was very successful, but Carey lost it all when his next play was a failure. In 1911, his friend Henry B. Walthall introduced him to director D.W. Griffith, […]

Candy Candido (1913 - 1999)

Candy Candido’s distinctive, four-octave speaking voice became familiar to radio listeners and moviegoers. Speaking his lines in his normal tenor, he would suddenly adopt a high, squeaky soprano and just as suddenly plunge into a gruff bass. His weekly repetition of “I’m feeling mighty low” on Jimmy Durante’s radio show made it a national catchphrase. […]

David Canary (1938 - 2015)

After a semi-regular role as Russ Gehring in the prime time serial Peyton Place, David Canary came to international prominence in 1967 on the Western series Bonanza. In 1967, he appeared in the now-classic western movie Hombre, in which he was featured with Paul Newman, Richard Boone, and Cameron Mitchell. Canary guest starred in a […]

Godfrey Cambridge (1933 - 1976)

While pursuing an acting career, Godfrey Cambridge supported himself with a variety of jobs, including “cab driver, bead-sorter, ambulance driver, gardener, judo instructor, and clerk for the New York City Housing Authority,” as well as cleaning airplanes and making popcorn bunnies. His first role was as a bartender in the off-Broadway play Take a Giant Step. […]

Henry Calvin (1918 - 1975)

Henry Calvin hosted a 1950 NBC radio show and appeared on Broadway (most notably in Kismet as the Wazir of Police). In 1952, he portrayed Big Ben on the children’s TV series Howdy Doody. and made his film debut in Crime Against Joe as Red Waller four years later. His character in Zorro, Sergeant Demetrio Lopez […]

Joseph Calleia (1897 - 1975)

Joseph Calleia was born in Notabile in the Crown Colony of Malta on August 4, 1897. His father was an architect. Calleia studied at St. Julian’s and St. Aloysius Colleges. At age 12 he used the English pound given to him for Christmas to buy two dozen harmonicas, and organized a local band whose performances were […]

Charlie Callas (1924 - 2011)

Charlie Callas was born in Brooklyn, New York, as Charles Callias and served in the United States Army during World War II. He began his career as a drummer playing in groups with Bernie Cummins, Tommy Dorsey, Claude Thornhill, and Buddy Rich. He dropped a vowel from his legal name, Callias, when he took to […]

Rory Calhoun (1922 - 1999)

Rory Calhoun worked at a number of odd jobs. In 1943, while riding horseback in the Hollywood Hills, he met actor Alan Ladd, whose wife, Sue Carol was an agent. She landed Calhoun a one-line role in a Laurel and Hardy comedy, The Bullfighters, credited under the name Frank McCown. Shortly afterwards, the Ladds hosted […]

Louis Calhern (1895 - 1956)

Louis Calhern was born in Brooklyn, New York. His father was a tobacco dealer. His family left New York while he was still a child and moved to St. Louis, Missouri, where he grew up. While Calhern was playing high school football, a stage manager from a touring theatrical stock company spotted him, and hired […]

Adolph Caesar (1933 - 1986)

Adolph Caesar (December 5, 1933 – March 6, 1986) was an American actor. Adolph Caesar was born in Harlem, Manhattan, New York City, New York, as the youngest of three sons born to a Dominican mother. Caesar appeared in Norman Jewison’s film A Soldier’s Story, for which he received a nomination for “Best Actor in a Supporting […]

Ralph Byrd (1909 - 1952)

Ralph Byrd married actress and model Virginia Carroll in 1936. The couple remained together until Byrd’s death in 1952. Byrd was a good, all-purpose actor with a gift for delivering dialogue in a natural, ingratiating way. His screen characters could be breezy and affable, or tough and authoritative as the role required. Once established in Republic […]

Charles Butterworth (1896 - 1946)

Charles Butterworth (July 26, 1896 – June 13, 1946) was an American actor specializing in comedy roles, often in musicals. Butterworth’s distinct voice was the inspiration for the Cap’n Crunch commercials from the Jay Ward studio. Voice actor Daws Butler based Cap’n Crunch on the voice of Butterworth. Charles Butterworth was born to a physician in […]

Merritt Butrick (1959 - 1989)

Merritt Butrick was born in Gainesville, Florida and was an only child. He graduated in 1977 from Tamalpais High School in Mill Valley, California. He attended the California Institute of the Arts for acting, but was dismissed from the school. His first screen role was as a rapist in two 1981 episodes of the police drama […]

Francis Bushman (1883 - 1966)

Francis Bushman was born in Baltimore, Maryland. As a young man Bushman joined the Maryland Athletic Club and began a body building regimen that would give him his famous film physique. He cited Sandow as one of his body building influences. In New York he worked as a sculptor’s model often posing in the nude […]

Charles Brown (1922 - 1999)

In the late 1940s, a rising demand for blues was driven by an increasing white teenage audience in the South which quickly spread north and west. Blues singers such as Louis Jordan, Wynonie Harris and Roy Brown were getting much of the attention, but what writer Charles Keil dubs “the postwar Texas clean-up movement in […]

Ronnie Burns (1935 - 2007)

Ronnie Burns was born in Evanston, Illinois, Ronnie Burns was five weeks old when he was adopted in Chicago September 27, 1935, by George Burns and Gracie Allen. His older sister, Sandra Jean, had been adopted the year before and was then 13 months old. According to George Burns, Ronnie had been the most sickly […]

Victor Buono (1938 - 1982)

In the summer of 1959, a talent scout from Warner Bros. saw the heavy-set Victor Buono play Falstaff at the Globe and took him to Hollywood for a screen test. Buono made his first network TV appearance playing the bearded poet Bongo Benny in an episode of 77 Sunset Strip. Over the next few years, […]

John Bunny (1863 - 1915)

John Bunny was born in New York City, Bunny was raised in Brooklyn where he attended high school and worked as a grocery clerk before joining a small minstrel show touring the East Coast. He went on to jobs as stage manager for various stock companies and performed in vaudeville before being drawn to the […]

Richard Bull (1924 - 2014)

Richard Bull was born on June 26, 1924 in Zion, Illinois. After years of living in Los Angeles, he moved back to Chicago in 1994 with his wife Barbara Collentine. Bull and Collentine, also 89, moved to the Motion Picture & Television Fund home from Chicago in September 2012. Richard Bull is best remembered for his […]