Dorothy Phillips (1889 - 1980)

Dorothy Phillips (October 30, 1889 – March 1, 1980) was an American stage and film actress. Born Dorothy Gwendolyn Strible in Baltimore, Phillips began her career as a stage actress. She made her film debut in 1911, and appeared in over 150 films during her career. For a while she was nicknamed “Kid Nazimova” for her […]

Jean Peters (1926 - 2000)

Due to her insistence, Jean Peters was given the title role in Anne of the Indies (1951), which the press declared was the film that finally brought her stardom. Before its release, she was cast in Viva Zapata! (1952) opposite Marlon Brando. Julie Harris had been considered for this role. Also in 1951, Peters had […]

Barbara Pepper (1915 - 1969)

Barbara Pepper (May 31, 1915 – July 18, 1969) was an American stage, television, radio, and film actress. She is best known as the first “Doris Ziffel” on the sitcom Green Acres. Born as Marion Pepper in New York City, at age 16 she started life in show business as one of the slender, curvy, and […]

Virginia Pearson (1886 - 1958)

Virginia Pearson (March 7, 1886 – June 6, 1958) was an American stage and film actress. She made fifty-one films in a career which extended from 1910 until 1932. Born in Anchorage, Kentucky, Pearson worked for a brief time as an assistant in the public library in Louisville, Kentucky after completing school. Pearson trained in the […]

Alice Pearce (1917 - 1966)

Alice Pearce was born in New York City, the only child of Margaret Clark and Robert E. Pearce. Her father was a foreign banking specialist, and her family moved to Europe when she was 18 months old. They lived in Brussels, Antwerp, Rome, and Paris. At age nine, she fell off of a swing after […]

Eugenia Paul (1935 - 2010)

Eugenia Paul (March 3, 1935 – May 24, 2010) was an American actress and dancer best known for her role as Elena Torres in the television series, Zorro, which aired on the American television network, ABC. Paul was born Eugenia Popoff in Dearborn, Michigan of Russian heritage. She signed as a dancer with Warner Bros. when […]

Luana Patten (1938 - 1996)

Luana Patten was born in Long Beach, California to Harvey T. Patten and Alma (née Miller) Patten, natives of Enid, Oklahoma. At the age of 3 she was a young model and later was hired by Walt Disney. Patten made her first film appearance in Joel Chandler Harris’s 1946 musical Song of the South with […]

Lee Patrick (1901 - 1982)

Lee Patrick’s debut on the Broadway theatre stage began in November 1922 as part of the supporting ensemble cast for Adele and Fred Astaire in the Jerome Kern and Anne Caldwell musical The Bunch and Judy that ran for eight weeks. It was not until September 1924 that Patrick was once again on the Broadway […]

Dorothy Patrick (1921 - 1987)

During her early career Dorothy Patrick was billed under her birth name, Dorothea Davis, until she married a New York Rangers hockey star, Lynn Patrick, and became Dorothy Patrick. Though she had one son in the marriage, the aspiring actress remained career-bound, not ready to co-star as a housefrau. While appearing at dinner-club showcases in Jersey […]

Christine Pascal (1953 - 1996)

Christine Pascal was born in Lyon, Rhône, Pascal made her film debut at 21 in Michel Mitrani’s Les Guichets du Louvre (1974), and began an association with Bertrand Tavernier with her next film, L’Horloger de Saint-Paul (1974). Other films with Tavernier include Que la fête commence (1975), for which she received a César nomination for […]

Natasha Parry (1930 - 2015)

Born in London, Natasha Parry was the daughter of the Anglo-Greek film director Gordon Parry and his Russian wife. (Some sources say Gordon Parry was her stepfather.) Parry made her stage debut at age 12 in The Wingless Victory. At 14, she was in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, and later she played in Big Ben and […]

Julie Parrish (1940 - 2003)

Julie Parrish was born Ruby Joyce Wilbar, the eldest of six children, to William Robert Wilbar and Gladys Marie Webb. She spent her early years in Lake City, Tennessee, before moving to Tecumseh, Michigan at age 11. There she graduated from high school. Parrish then attended a modeling school in Toledo, Ohio. She won a […]

Helen Parrish (1924 - 1959)

Helen Parrish started in movies at the age of five, getting her first part playing Babe Ruth’s daughter in the silent film Babe Comes Home in 1927. She was featured in the Our Gang comedy shorts and sometimes played the lead character as a child, co-starring with some of the great female stars of the […]

Suzy Parker (1932 - 2003)

Suzy Parker and two of her sisters were tall, all measuring between 5’10” and 6’1″. Sister Dorian (who modelled under the name Dorian Leigh) was the sole exception, standing 5’5″. In 1944, Dorian worked as an advertising copy writer when a coworker encouraged her to go to the Conover Modeling Agency. Dorian was one of […]

Cecilia Parker (1914 - 1993)

Cecilia Parker was born in Fort William, Ontario. She was brought to southern California as a child by her mother, Mrs. Naudy Anna Parker. Her father was an English soldier. Parker graduated from the Convent of the Immaculate Heart in Hollywood in June 1931. At the time she resided with her parents, Mr. and Mrs. […]

Mila Parély (1917 - 2012)

Mila Parély (7 October 1917 – 14 January 2012) was a French actress of Polish ancestry best known for the roles of Belle’s sister in Jean Cocteau’s La Belle et la Bête and as Geneviève in La Règle du jeu.  Born Olga Colette Peszynsky she took to show business early and in 1930 toured America […]

Andrea Palma (1903 - 1987)

Andrea Palma entered the hat business in the early 1920s and opened her own shop, called Casa Andrea (from where she took her first name as an actress, adding the last name of one of her clients, the elegant Mrs. Palma.) Known in the theater world, she had her first opportunity replacing her friend, the […]

Daphne Oxenford (1919 - 2012)

Daphne Oxenford’s best-known role was the voice for BBC radio’s Listen with Mother from 1950 to 1971; she was also a reader on the newspaper review programme What the Papers Say for over thirty years. One of the original cast members of Coronation Street, she played Esther Hayes from 1960 to 1963, 1971 and 1972. […]

Patricia Owens (1925 - 2000)

Patricia Owens (January 17, 1925 – August 31, 2000) was a Canadian-born American actress, working in Hollywood. She appeared in about 40 films and 10 TV episodes in a career lasting from 1943 to 1968. Owens moved to England in 1933 with her parents (her father Arthur Owens who was later to become an MI5 double […]

Seena Owen (1894 - 1966)

Seena Owen’s first important film was A Yankee From the West (1915) under the name Signe Auen at the age of 21. She was later convinced to change her name and settled on Seena Owen, the phonetic spelling of her real name. In 1916 she performed in D. W. Griffith’s Intolerance. The same year she […]

Catherine Owen (1900 - 1965)

First discovered by Laura MacGillivray, the wife of Actors Equity president Frank Gillmore, Catherine Owen appeared on Broadway in the 1920s through early 1930s in productions including The Mountain Man, The Whole Town’s Talking, Trelawny of the Wells, The Love City and The Play’s the Thing. In 1925, Owen was acclaimed as one of the […]

Wanda Osiris (1905 - 1994)

Wanda Osiris (3 June 1905 – 11 November 1994) was an Italian revue soubrette, actress and singer. Born Anna Menzio in Rome, the daughter of a groom, she studied violin at a young age. She debuted on stage in 1923, in the revue Osvaldo mio mi fai morire. She was the major diva of the Italian […]

Elaine Orbach (1940 - 2009)

In 1979 Elaine Orbach married actor Jerry Orbach, a star on stage and later of film and television (Law & Order). They met several years earlier while appearing together in the original Broadway theatre production of the Kander & Ebb musical, Chicago. They also co-starred in a touring production of Neil Simon’s play, Chapter Two. Following […]

Anny Ondra (1903 - 1987)

The daughter of a Czech, Austro-Hungarian officer, Anny Ondra spent her childhood in Tarnów, Pula and Prague. Her father’s name was Bohumír and mother’s name Anna. She had two brothers, Tomáš (Tomas) and Jindřich (Henry). At seventeen she played in the theater and was acting in her first film. The film was directed by her […]

Susan Oliver (1932 - 1990)

By September 1949 and using her new name, Susan Oliver returned to the East Coast to begin drama studies at Swarthmore College, followed by professional training at the Neighborhood Playhouse in New York City. After working in summer stock, regional theater and in unbilled bits in daytime and primetime TV shows and commercials, she made […]

Vivien Oakland (1895 - 1958)

Vivien Oakland (born Vivian Andersen, May 20, 1895 – August 1, 1958), was an American actress best known for her work in comedies in Hollywood in the 1920s and 1930s, most notably with the Hal Roach Studios. Oakland appeared in 142 films between 1915 and 1951.  Her siblings’ names were Edward, Herbert (née Hagbart), and […]

Lena Nyman (1944 - 2011)

Lena Nyman (23 May 1944 – 4 February 2011) was a Swedish film and stage actress. Out of a career that saw her in several dozen Swedish film features she shall probably be remembered for starring in 1967’s controversial “I Am Curious (Yellow)”. Starting in show business at an early age, Lena made her silver […]

Mary Nolan (1902 - 1948)

While working as a model, Mary Nolan was discovered by Florenz Ziegfeld who hired her as a dancer in his Ziegfeld Follies. As a showgirl in New York, she performed under the name “Imogene “Bubbles” Wilson” (the first of four stage names she used during her career). She soon became one of the most popular […]

Greta Nissen (1906 - 1988)

Greta Nissen was born Grethe Rüzt-Nissen in Oslo, Norway, Nissen was originally a dancer. She debuted as a solo ballerina on the National Theatre in 1922. She toured in Norway and participated in several Danish films. Nissen made her Broadway debut as a ballerina in 1924. She had studied ballet with Mikhail Fokine. In early 1924, […]

Alla Nazimova (1879 - 1945)

Alla Nazimova’s theater career blossomed early; and by 1903 she was a major star in Moscow and Saint Petersburg. She toured Europe, including London and Berlin, with her boyfriend Pavel Orlenev, a flamboyant actor and producer. In 1905 they moved to New York City and founded a Russian-language theater on the Lower East Side. The […]