Jean Kent (1921 - 2013)

Born Joan Mildred Summerfield in Brixton, London, the only child of variety performers Norman Field (né Summerfield) and Nina Norre, Jean Kent started her theatrical career in 1931 as a dancer. She used the stage name Jean Carr when she appeared as a chorus girl in the Windmill Theatre in London. She signed to Gainsborough […]

Barbara Kent (1907 - 2011)

Born as Barbara Cloutman in Gadsby, Alberta, to Jullion Curtis and Lily Louise (née Kent) Cloutman, Barbara Kent won the 21-year-old Miss Hollywood Pageant in 1925, the same year she graduated from Hollywood High School. Barbara Kent began her Hollywood career in 1925, aged 18, in a small role for Universal Studios, which signed her to […]

Barbara Kelly (1924 - 2007)

Barbara Kelly was born in Vancouver, British Columbia in 1924. As a child, she was given elocution lessons, and while Kelly hated the stage her mother was a frustrated actress. Kelly’s first professional role was playing the Virgin Mary in a Nativity Play. Kelly’s father, an Irishman, was a lorry driver in Vancouver. Her mother, […]

Merna Kennedy (1908 - 1944)

Merna Kennedy (September 7, 1908 – December 20, 1944) was an American actress of the late silent era and the transitional period into talkies. Kennedy (born as Maude Kahler) was best known during her brief career for her role opposite Charlie Chaplin in the silent film The Circus (1928).  She began performing in vaudeville at age […]

Madge Kennedy (1891 - 1987)

The Siasconset colony was evenly divided among actors and artists, and painters often gave theatrical performances. Madge Kennedy appeared at a painter’s play and impressed one of the professionals there. He commented, “She could act rings around anybody.” The professional was Harry Woodruff who promptly offered her a job in his play, The Genius. Soon […]

Alexa Kenin (1962 - 1985)

Alexa Kenin was born in New York City. Her parents divorced when she was young and her mother, actress Maya Kenin, married character actor John Ryan. Kenin began acting as a child and won her first professional part with a supporting role in the 1972 holiday TV special The House Without a Christmas Tree, which […]

Lisa Kelly (1970 - 2013)

Lisa Kelly was born and raised in Southington, Connecticut. Her mother’s name is Linda. Kelly made her debut in the 1992 Married… with Children episode “Kelly Doesn’t Live Here Anymore”. She appeared again in 1997 in episodes of Charmed and Silk Stalkings, as well as in direct-to-video and television films such as Amityville Dollhouse, Late Last […]

Beatrice Kay (1907 - 1986)

Beatrice Kay (April 21, 1907 in New York City – November 8, 1986) was an American singer, vaudevillian, music hall performer, stage and film actress. She died in North Hollywood, California, aged 79. Born as Hannah Beatrice Kuper, Kay performed as “Honey Kuper” and “Honey Day” for part of her career in vaudeville, radio, motion pictures, […]

Katalin Karády (1910 - 1990)

Katalin Karády was born as Katalin Kanczler, on 8 December 1910 in Budapest. She spent her childhood in Kőbánya district with seven siblings in great poverty. Her parents were Rozália Lőrinc and Ferenc Kanczler, a shoemaker, who Katalin remembered as an aggressive person. Helped by a charity organization, she spent five years in Switzerland and […]

Madeline Kahn (1942 - 1999)

Madeline Kahn was born Madeline Gail Wolfson on September 29, 1942 in Boston, the daughter of Bernard B. Wolfson, a garment manufacturer, and his wife, Freda (née Goldberg). She was raised in a non-observant Jewish family. Her parents divorced when Kahn was two, and she and her mother moved to New York City. In 1953, […]

Suzanne Kaaren (1912 - 2004)

Suzanne Kaaren attended Erasmus Hall High School and Hunter College before being signed by 20th Century Fox in September 1933. In 1931, she won a high-jumping contest in a New York City school contest. Her parents refused to let her compete in the Olympic Games. She collected butterflies as a hobby and had several books […]

Arline Judge (1912 - 1974)

Arline Judge (February 21, 1912 – February 7, 1974) was an American actress who worked mostly in low-budget B movies, but gained some fame for marrying and divorcing seven times. Born in Bridgeport, Connecticut, Judge was educated in a Catholic convent. Arline Judge “got her theatrical start in Broadway musicals and revues such as The Second Little […]

Sonny James (1928 - 2016)

Sonny James Sonny James, the Southern Gentleman, used the popular Nashville sound of the ’60s to countrify pop hits of the past into a form accessible to many, broadening country music’s appeal across the nation. James even moved over to the pop charts for a time in the late ’50s but found the secret of […]

Leatrice Joy (1893 - 1985)

Leatrice Johanna Zeidler was born in New Orleans, Louisiana to dentist Edward Joseph Zeidler, who was of Austrian and French descent, and Mary Joy Crimens Zeidler, who was of German and Irish descent. She had a brother, Billy, who later worked at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. Leatrice Joy attended New Orleans Convent of the Sacred Heart but left when […]

Dorothy Jordan (1906 - 1988)

Born in Clarksville, Tennessee, Dorothy Jordan studied at Southwestern University and the American Academy of Dramatic Arts. She performed in Broadway musicals, including Garrick Gaieties. Jordan made her screen debut in the 1929 film The Taming of the Shrew[2] and went on to make twenty-two more films in the next four years, including Min and Bill […]

Kathryn Joosten (1939 - 2012)

Kathryn Joosten was born Kathryn Rausch in Chicago, Illinois to Dutch-German parents. Her first career was as a psychiatric nurse at Michael Reese Hospital in Chicago, living in nearby Lake Forest, Illinois, where she married a psychiatrist and raised two sons. Following her 1980 divorce, she began acting in community theater in 1982, at age […]

Justine Johnstone (1895 - 1895)

Justine Johnstone (January 31, 1895 – September 4, 1982) was an American stage and silent screen actress. She was later a pathologist and expert on syphilis. Working under her married name, Justine Wanger, she was part of the team that developed the modern intravenous drip technique. She attended Emma Willard School in Troy, New York. An […]

Rita Johnson (1913 - 1965)

Rita Johnson was born Rita Ann Johnson in Worcester, Massachusetts, the daughter of Lillian Johnson. She worked as a waitress in her mother’s lunchroom and sold hot dogs on the Boston-Worcester turnpike. She attended the New England Conservatory of Music. Early in her career, Johnson was busy in radio. “By 1936 she … was appearing in ten […]

Celia Johnson (1908 - 1982)

Celia Johnson was born in Richmond, Surrey, and nicknamed “Betty”, Johnson was the second daughter of Robert and Ethel (née Griffiths) Johnson. Her first public performance was in 1916, when she played a role in a charity performance of King Cophetua and the Beggar Maid to raise funds for returned First World War soldiers. She attended […]

Margaret John (1926 - 2011)

Margaret John was born in Swansea, as a child she wanted to be a nurse or vet, but she could not stand the sight of blood. She occasionally acted at school with her sister Mair. Spotted while acting in a chapel pagent competition, after an audition John trained at the London Academy of Music and […]

Adele Jergens (1917 - 2002)

Born in Brooklyn, New York, Adele Jergens’ birth date is sometimes listed as 1922. Jergens first rose to prominence in the late 1930s, when she was named “Miss World’s Fairest” at the 1939 New York World’s Fair. In the early 1940s, she worked as a Rockette, and was named the Number One Showgirl in New […]

Joyce Ingalls (1950 - 2015)

Joyce Ingalls was born on January 14, 1950, in Charleston, South Carolina, to Frederick G. Ingalls, a U.S. Navy Commander, and Elaine Wright Ingalls, a relative of the Wright Brothers. Ingalls had five sisters and three brothers. Ingalls’ mother died in 1959. Her father remarried JoAnn DiSandro, who raised Joyce Ingalls and her four siblings, as […]

Martha Hyer (1924 - 2014)

Martha Hyer was born in Fort Worth, Texas into a wealthy family, the daughter of Julien Capers Hyer (1894–1974), an attorney and judge, and Agnes Rebecca (née Barnhart; 1892–1969). She was the middle of three sisters, with Agnes Ann (1920–2014) and Jeanne (b. 1928). The Hyers were active in the Methodist church where her father […]

June Hutton (1920 - 1973)

June Hutton’s parents were Marvel Svea Williams and Odie Daniel Cowan. June and her older sister, Ina Ray Hutton, both grew up to be entertainers and performers during the Big Band era. Growing up in Chicago, Hutton attended Hyde Park High School, as did her older sister, Ina. While attending high school, she worked in the […]

Juliette Huot (1912 - 2001)

Juliette Huot debuted in theater and radio in the late 1930s. In particular, plays the role of young Bertine, daughter of Alexis in the soap opera A man and his sin of Claude-Henri Grignon . From 1939 to 1946 , she passes the professional theater playing in the shows of Fridolinades and, subsequently, the play Tit-Coq […]

Martita Hunt (1900 - 1969)

Martita Hunt was born in Buenos Aires, Argentina on 30 January 1900 to English parents Alfred and Marta (née Burnett) Hunt. She spent the first 20 years of her life in Argentina before she returned with her parents to England to attend Queenwood Ladies’ College, in Eastbourne, and then to train as an actress. Martita Hunt […]

Josephine Hull (1877 - 1957)

Josephine Hull was born January 3, 1877 as Mary Josephine Sherwood in Newtonville, Massachusetts, one of four children born to William H. Sherwood and Mary Elizabeth (“Minnie”) Tewkesbury; but would later shave years off her true age. She attended the New England Conservatory of Music and Radcliffe College, both in the Boston area. Josephine Hull made […]

Gladys Hulette (1896 - 1991)

Gladys Hulette was among the principal players in Sappho and Phaon which had its first performance in Providence, Rhode Island on October 4, 1907. She helped support Bertha Kalich in the Percy MacKaye production. As a child she also appeared in Romeo and Juliet (1908) and The Smoke Fairy (1909). On stage, in Blue Bird, […]

Mary Howard (1918 - 2009)

Mary Howard de Liagre, née Rogers (18 May 1913 – 6 June 2009) was an American actress usually credited as Mary Howard. Mary was born in Independence, Kansas, the daughter of William Penn Adair Rogers (Will Rogers) and Betty Blake. Her father, Will Rogers, and the actor Fred Stone were great friends. Will named his third […]

Kathleen Howard (1884 - 1956)

Kathleen Howard (July 27, 1884 – April 15, 1956) was a Canadian-born American opera singer magazine editor and character actress from the mid-1930s through the 1940s. She spent her childhood in Buffalo, New York and is buried in Forest Lawn Cemetery there.  After early vocal training in Buffalo, New York, she studied in Berlin, then […]