Jean Howard (1910 - 2000)

Jean Howard (born Ernestine Mahoney; October 13, 1910 – March 20, 2000) was an American actress and photographer. She was born in Longview, Texas and died in Beverly Hills, California. A former Ziegfeld Girl and a Goldwyn Girl, Jean Howard studied photography at the Los Angeles Art Center. Howard appeared on Broadway in three productions: The […]

Esther Howard (1892 - 1965)

Esther Howard was born in Helena, Montana in 1892 and made her Broadway debut in 1917 in a play called Eve’s Daughter, which was not a success. She continued to appear regularly on Broadway for the next twelve years, performing in comedies and musicals, including the hit shows Wildflower (1923) and The New Moon (1929), […]

Marianne Hoppe (1909 - 2002)

Born in Rostock, Marianne Hoppe became a leading lady of stage and films in Germany. She was born into a wealthy landowning family and was initially privately educated on her father’s private estate. Later she attended school in Berlin and in Weimar, where she began to attend theatre. Hoppe first performed at 17 as a member […]

Miriam Hopkins (1902 - 1972)

Miriam Hopkins was born in Savannah, Georgia, and raised in Bainbridge, near the Alabama border. In 1909 she briefly lived in Mexico. After her parents separated, she moved as a teen with her mother to Syracuse, New York, to be near her uncle, Thomas Cramer Hopkins, head of the Geology Department at Syracuse University. She attended […]

Helen Holmes (1892 - 1950)

Helen Holmes was born on June 19, 1892 in Illinois While there is uncertainty about her place of birth, Holmes stated in an interview that she was born on a farm in South Bend, Indiana,[3] but grew up in Chicago, Illinois. A 1917 article indicates Holmes was born on her father’s private railroad car, “Estevan”. Holmes […]

Libby Holman (1904 - 1971)

Elizabeth Lloyd Holzman was born May 23, 1904, in Cincinnati, Ohio to a Jewish lawyer and stockbroker, Alfred Holzman (August 20, 1867 – June 14, 1947) and his wife, Rachel Florence Workum Holzman (October 17, 1873 – April 22, 1966). Their other children were daughter Marion H. Holzman (January 25, 1901 – December 13, 1963) […]

Alice Hollister (1886 - 1973)

Alice Hollister (September 28, 1886 – February 24, 1973) was an American silent film actress who appeared in 85 films between 1911 and 1925. Born in Worcester, Massachusetts, she is believed to have been the daughter of French-Canadian immigrants. In 1903, at age seventeen, she married George K. Hollister who a few years later became a […]

Judy Holliday (1921 - 1965)

Judy Holliday was born Judith Tuvim (Hebrew: tovim means good, Yiddish: yomtoyvim means holidays, lit. “good days”) in New York City, she was the only child of Abe Tuvim and Helen (née Gollomb) Tuvim, who were both of Russian Jewish descent. Her father was the Executive Director of the Foundation for the Jewish National Fund […]

Diane Holland (1930 - 2009)

Diane Holland (28 February 1930[3] – 24 January 2009) was a British actress best known for playing Yvonne Stuart-Hargreaves in Hi-de-Hi! from 1980 to 1988. She was unmarried and trained as a dancer before being given the part of Yvonne Stewart-Hargreaves in Hi-de-Hi! (1980) by her brother-in-law, Jimmy Perry. Jimmy, who co-wrote Hi-de-hi!, married Diane’s sister […]

Portland Hoffa (1905 - 1990)

Portland Hoffa (January 25, 1905, Portland, Oregon – December 25, 1990, Los Angeles, California) was an American comedienne, actress, and dancer. As with most of her siblings, including sister Lebanon and brother Harlem, she was named for the city where she was born. She is remembered best as the stage and radio partner of her […]

Dennis Hoey (1893 - 1960)

Dennis Hoey was born Samuel David Hyams in London to Russian parents (another source says Irish and Russian parents.) who owned a bed and breakfast in Brighton. He was educated at Brighton College, and he originally planned to be a teacher. He served in the British Army during World War I. After a career as a […]

Valerie Hobson (1917 - 1998)

In 1935, still in her teens, Valerie Hobson appeared as Baroness Frankenstein in Bride of Frankenstein with Boris Karloff and Colin Clive. She played opposite Henry Hull that same year in Werewolf of London, the first Hollywood werewolf film. The latter half of the 1940s saw Valerie Hobson in perhaps her two most memorable roles: […]

Rose Hobart (1906 - 2000)

Rose Hobart’s father, Paul Kefer, was a cellist in the New York Symphony and her mother, Marguerite was an opera singer. Rose had one sister, Polly. When she was 15, she was cast in Ferenc Molnár’s Liliom, which opened in Atlantic City, New Jersey. Hobart’s Broadway stage debut was on September 17, 1923 at the […]

Jacqueline Hill (1929 - 1993)

Jacqueline Hill was orphaned as a toddler and raised by her grandparents. She was taken out of school at the age of 14 to enable her younger brother to continue. She then worked at Cadbury’s, which had an amateur dramatics society. She was encouraged to apply for, and was awarded, a scholarship at the Royal […]

Dana Hill (1964 - 1996)

Dana Lynne Goetz was born in 1964 in Encino, Los Angeles, California, to Sandy Hill and Theodore Arthur “Ted” Goetz, a director of commercials. A diagnosis of Type I diabetes at an early age ended a promising athletic future. A 1982 article in People magazine reported that at age 10 Dana Hill had placed third […]

Joan Hickson (1906 - 1998)

Born in Kingsthorpe, Northampton, Joan Hickson was a daughter of shoe manufacturer Alfred Harold Hickson and his wife, Edith Mary Bogle. She made her stage debut in 1927, and for several years worked throughout the United Kingdom and achieved success playing comedic, often eccentric characters in London’s West End, including the role of the cockney […]

Ruth Hiatt (1906 - 1994)

Ruth Hiatt was born in Cripple Creek, Colorado. Hiatt made her film debut at the age of nine with the Western Lubin Company in San Diego, California. She made two two-reel comedies The Inner Chamber (1915) and The Vigilantes (1918). Afterward she reuturned to high school which she completed around 1922. As teenager she was discovered […]

Wilna Hervey (1894 - 1979)

Known to friends and family as “Willie,” Wilna Hervey was the only child of the marriage of William Russell Hervey and Anna Van Horn Traphagen. She grew up in affluent circumstances at Beach Ninth Street, Far Rockaway. During her youth in late 1910s, Hervey studied at the Art Students League in New York City, Winold Reiss’ […]

Eileen Herlie (1918 - 2008)

Eileen Herlie was born Eileen Isobel Herlihy to a Catholic father and a Protestant mother in Glasgow, Scotland, and was one of five children. Herlie was trained as a theatre actress. Among her West End London theatre successes were The Eagle Has Two Heads by Jean Cocteau. She was married and divorced from Witold Kuncewicz […]

Emmaline Henry (1928 - 1979)

Creator Sheldon Leonard mentioned in an interview that Henry was a good actress who was easy to work with. A casting director brought her in to audition and to meet him. Sheldon tested her and based on the screen test she got the part of Mrs. Bellows. She was first cast on the show January […]

Brigitte Helm (1906 - 1996)

Brigitte Helm (17 March 1906 – 11 June 1996) was a German actress, best remembered for her dual role as Maria and her double, the Maschinenmensch, in Fritz Lang’s 1927 silent film Metropolis. Born Brigitte Eva Gisela Schittenhelm in Berlin, Helm’s first role was that of Maria in Metropolis which she began work on while only […]

Johanne Heiberg (1812 - 1890)

Johanne Heiberg was the daughter of a stallholder and innkeeper and his Jewish wife. She showed artistic gifts very early and entered ballet school in 1820. With the help of patrons she was promoted to the rank of an actress and made a successful debut in 1827. From then on she was considered the best […]

Susan Hayward (1917 - 1975)

Susan Hayward was born Edythe Marrenner in Brooklyn, New York City, the youngest of three children born to Ellen (née Pearson) and Walter Marrenner. Her paternal grandmother was an actress, Kate Harrigan, from County Cork, Ireland. Her mother was of Swedish descent. She had an older sister Florence (born May 1910) and an older brother […]

Julie Haydon (1910 - 1994)

Born Donella Donaldson in Oak Park, Illinois, Haydon began her acting career when she was 19, touring with Minnie Maddern Fiske in Mrs. Bumstead Leigh. Within two years, she played Ophelia in a production of Hamlet at the Hollywood Playhouse. Shortly after, she began appearing in films, in 1931. Her first film, in which she was […]

Wanda Hawley (1895 - 1963)

Wanda Hawley (July 30, 1895 – March 18, 1963) was a veteran American actress of the silent screen films era. She entered the theatrical profession with an amateur group in Seattle, and later toured the U.S. and Canada as a singer. She co-starred with Rudolph Valentino in the 1922 The Young Rajah, and rose to […]

Phyllis Haver (1899 - 1960)

She was born Phyllis Haver in Douglass, Kansas. When she was young, her family moved to Los Angeles, California, then a city of less than half a million people. Haver attended Los Angeles Polytechnic High. After graduating, she played piano to accompany the new silent films in local theaters. Phyllis Haver auditioned for comedy producer Mack […]

June Haver (1926 - 2005)

Born June Stovenour, June Haver was born in Rock Island, Illinois. She later took the last name of her stepfather Bert Haver. After the family moved to Ohio, seven-year-old Haver entered and won a contest of the Cincinnati Conservatory of Music. At age 10, she moved back to Rock Island, where she began performing for […]

Lilian Harvey (1906 - 1968)

Helene Lilian Muriel Pape was born in 1906, in Hornsey, North London. Her mother, Ethel Marion (Laughton), was English, and her father, Walter Bruno Pape, was a German businessman. At the beginning of World War I the family found itself in Magdeburg, and as they were unwilling and unable to return to England, Lilian Harvey […]

Dorothy Hart (1922 - 2004)

Born in Cleveland, Ohio, Dorothy Hart became a model in her late-teens, and was signed by Columbia in 1946. Her contract stipulated “A-movies only”. Although considered one of the top supporting actresses of her day, she was frequently cast in B movies. Dorothy was attractive, standing 5 ft 6 in, with green eyes and auburn […]

Theresa Harris (1906 - 1985)

Theresa Harris was born on New Year’s Eve 1906 (some sources indicate 1909) in Houston, Texas to Isaiah (1879–1956) and Mable (1883–1964) Harris, both of whom were former sharecroppers from Louisiana. Harris’ family relocated to Southern California when she was 11 years old. After graduating Jefferson High School, she studied at the UCLA Conservatory of Music […]