Jan Miner (1917 - 2004)

Jan Miner, the daughter of a dentist and a painter, whose siblings included three brothers, Sheldon, Donald and Lyndsey, studied at the Vesper George School of Art in her native Boston, Massachusetts. She went on to study acting with Lee Strasberg and others before making her stage debut in 1945, in a Boston production of […]

Marilyn Miller (1898 - 1936)

Marilyn Miller appeared for the Shuberts in the 1914 and 1915 editions of The Passing Show, a Broadway revue at the Winter Garden Theatre, as well as in The Show of Wonders (1916) and Fancy Free (1918). But it was Florenz Ziegfeld who made her a star after she performed in his Ziegfeld Follies of […]

Eve Miller (1923 - 1973)

Eve Miller’s original surname was “Turner” but she changed it when she began her career in movies. Born in Los Angeles, California, she was raised in San Francisco. Her father was a piano salesman. During the early years of World War II Miller worked as a welder in a shipyard. However before the war ended […]

Gertrude Michael (1911 - 1964)

Gertrude Michael (June 1, 1911 – December 31, 1964) was an American film, stage and television actress. Born as Lillian Gertrude Michael in Talladega, Alabama, she reportedly graduated from high school at the age of 14. She became a singer on the radio. She attended the University of Alabama and Converse College, Spartanburg, SC. Her childhood […]

Eve Meyer (1928 - 1977)

Eve Meyer (born Evelyn Eugene Turner; December 13, 1928 – March 27, 1977) was an American pin-up model, motion picture actress, and film producer. Much of her work was done in conjunction with sexploitation filmmaker Russ Meyer to whom she was married from 1952 to 1969. She was killed in the Tenerife airport disaster in […]

Mayo Methot (1904 - 1951)

Mayo Methot was married three times and had no children. At the age of 19, she married Cosmopolitan Productions cameraman Jack Lamond. They divorced in 1927. In 1931, Methot married Percy T. Morgan, the co-owner of the Cock n’ Bull restaurant on Hollywood’s Sunset Boulevard. Methot divorced Morgan in February 1937, claiming that Morgan would […]

Iris Meredith (1915 - 1980)

Iris Meredith (June 3, 1915 in Sioux City, Iowa – January 22, 1980) was a B-movie actress of the 1930s and 1940s film era. She starred mostly in heroine roles, in westerns. Born as Marie Shunn, Meredith began her film career in the early 1930s, often starring in film serials while on contract with Columbia Pictures. […]

Audrey Meadows (1922 - 1996)

Audrey Meadows After high school, Audrey Meadows sang in the Broadway musical Top Banana before becoming a regular on television in The Bob and Ray Show. She was then hired to play Alice on The Jackie Gleason Show after the actress who originated the role, Pert Kelton, was forced to leave the show due to […]

Lois Maxwell (1927 - 2007)

Moving to Hollywood at the age of 20, Lois Maxwell won the actress Golden Globe Award for Most Promising Newcomer for her role in the Shirley Temple comedy That Hagen Girl (1947).[3] In 1949, she participated in a Life magazine photo layout, in which she posed with another up-and-coming actress, Marilyn Monroe. It was at […]

Jenny Maxwell (1941 - 1981)

Jenny Maxwell (born Jennifer Helene Maxwell) (September 3, 1941 – June 10, 1981) was an American film and television actress, probably best remembered for her role in the 1961 Elvis Presley film Blue Hawaii. Of Norwegian descent (the original name of Moksvold was changed when the family emigrated in 1949), and a distant relative of Marilyn […]

Osa Massen (1914 - 2006)

Osa Massen (13 January 1914 – 2 January 2006) was a Danish actress who went on to become a successful movie actress in Hollywood. She became a naturalized citizen of the United States in 1941. Born Aase Madsen Iversen in 1914, she began her career as a newspaper photographer, before becoming an actress. She first came […]

Michelle Triola (1932 - 2009)

Michelle Triola was born in Los Angeles, California. She never had children. She lived with actor Dick Van Dyke from 1976 until her death. Triola majored in theater arts at UCLA. She was a lounge singer and dancer. She danced in the original 1958 Broadway production of Flower Drum Song, directed by Gene Kelly. Her film […]

Vivian Martin (1891 - 1987)

Vivian Martin was born in Sparta, Michigan and began her career as a child actress on the stage with comedian Lew Fields. Her early theatrical appearances included Stop Thief, Officer 666, The Only Son and with Richard Mansfield in Cyrano de Bergerac. A winsome and pretty blonde, Martin entered the motion pictures industry in 1914. With […]

Nan Martin (1927 - 2010)

Nan Martin born in Decatur, Illinois and raised in Santa Monica, California, she went to the Santa Monica High School.Her first film role was The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit (1956). Her other film roles included The Mugger (1958), For Love of Ivy (1968), Goodbye Columbus (1969), Doctor Detroit (1983), All of Me (1984), […]

Trudy Marshall (1920 - 2004)

Trudy Marshall was born in Brooklyn, New York, the daughter of Madeline (née Breedan) and Frederick Marshall. A popular magazine cigarette girl during her modeling days for Harry Conover, she was at different times “The Old Gold Girl”, “The Chesterfield Girl”, and “The Lucky Strike Girl”. She was signed by 20th Century-Fox in 1942 and groomed […]

Nini Marshall (1903 - 1996)

Nini Marshall was born in Buenos Aires to Pedro and María Ángela Traveso, a well-to-do family in Rosario, in 1903. Losing her father at two months of age, she was raised by her mother, who affectionately called her “Niní.” They relocated to the Buenos Aires neighborhood of Caballito when Niní was in her teens, and […]

Joan Marshall (1931 - 1992)

Joan Marshall was born Joan Schrepfermann in Chicago, where she was also raised. She began her career as a showgirl in Chicago clubs. After appearing as a dancer in the film The Chicago Kid (1945) and in a part in the television series Have Gun – Will Travel (1958), she moved to California around 1959. […]

Joan Marsh (1913 - 2000)

Joan Marsh (July 10, 1913 – August 10, 2000), born Nancy Ann Rosher, and briefly known as Dorothy D. Rosher, was an American film actress. Her father was Charles Rosher, an award-winning cinematographer. She was a child actress before becoming an adult thespian. Joan Marsh made her first film appearances as an infant in 1915. She […]

June Marlowe (1903 - 1984)

June Marlowe was born Gisela Valaria Goetten to German parents in St. Cloud, Minnesota. She was a prolific actress in silent films during the 1920s, appearing in films opposite John Barrymore and Rin Tin Tin. She was one of the WAMPAS Baby Stars of 1925. Her career did well until the introduction of talking pictures. […]

Mona Maris (1903 - 1991)

Mona Maris’ ambition to become an actress originated during World War I, when she was a pupil in Luders, France. Together with her classmates she wrote, directed, and presented short plays to entertain soldiers billeted near the school. After graduation Maris begged to go to England and her mother finally relented. In England she found […]

Lya Mara (1897 - 1960)

Lya Mara (1 August 1897 – 1 March 1960) was one of the biggest stars of the German silent cinema. Lya Mara was born Aleksandra Gudowicz in a Polish family in Riga, Livonia. As a young girl she wanted to become a chemist, as then famous Maria Skłodowska-Curie. Just before World War I, in 1913 Lya […]

Irene Manning (1912 - 2004)

Irene Manning was born Inez Harvuot on July 17, 1912 in Cincinnati, Ohio, in a family of five siblings. Both of her parents were singers. Her family loved to go on outdoor picnics where the featured activity was group singing. This family environment helped Irene to develop a keen interest in singing at a very […]

Anna Manahan (1924 - 2009)

Anna Manahan was born in County Waterford in what was then the Irish Free State (now the Republic of Ireland). Her career began when, as a young woman, she was recruited by the legendary Irish impresarios and theatrical directors Micheál MacLiammóir and Hilton Edwards. She later married stage director Colm O’Kelly, who died not long […]

Nancy Reagan (1921 - 2016)

Nancy Davis Reagan (born Anne Frances Robbins; July 6, 1921 – March 6, 2016) was an American actress and the wife of the 40th President of the United States, Ronald Reagan. She was the First Lady of the United States during her husband’s 2 presidential terms from 1981-1985 and 1985-1989. Nancy Reagan was born in New […]

Anna Magnani (1908 - 1973)

Anna Magnani (Italian pronunciation: [ˈanna maɲˈɲaːni]; 7 March 1908 – 26 September 1973) was an Italian stage and film actress. She won the Academy Award for Best Actress, along with four other international awards, for her portrayal of a Sicilian widow in The Rose Tattoo. Born in Rome, she worked her way through Rome’s Academy of […]

Cleo Madison (1883 - 1964)

Cleo Madison began her acting career on stage with the Santa Barbara Stock Company. She made her first professional appearances on the stages of the Burbank Theatre and the Belasco in 1911. She played the role of the mother in Captain Swift. In March 1912 she debuted as the leading female player in Ernest Shipman’s […]

Dorothy Mackaill (1903 - 1990)

By 1920, Dorothy Mackaill had begun making the transition from “Follies Girl” to film actress. That same year she appeared in her first film, the Wilfred Noy-directed mystery, The Face at the Window. Mackaill also appeared in several comedies of 1920 opposite actor Johnny Hines. In 1921 she appeared opposite Anna May Wong, Noah Beery, […]

Marion Mack (1902 - 1989)

Marion Mack was born Joey Marion McCreery in Mammoth, Utah. After graduating from high school, she sent a letter and a photograph to director Mack Sennett expressing her desire to be an actress. Sennett’s manager wrote back informing Mack that they would give her an interview if she ever came to Hollywood. Mack, her father […]

Cynthia Lynn (1936 - 2014)

Cynthia Lynn (born Zinta Valda Ziemelis; April 2, 1936 – March 10, 2014) was a Latvian-born American actress. Cynthia Lynn was born in Latvia as Zinta Valda Ziemelis. She and her mother fled in 1944, eventually arriving in the United States in 1950. Cynthia Lynn is best known as “Fraulein Helga” in Hogan’s Heroes during the first […]

Laurette Luez (1928 - 1999)

Laurette Luez was the second of three children born in Honolulu, Hawaii to Frank and Francesca Luiz, vaudeville singers and dancers who performed traditional Hawaiian and Spanish music. Luez’s father was Hawaiian with some Portuguese ancestry. Her mother was Australian, the daughter of an actor. Luez first showed up on stage doing a hula dance […]