Gail Fisher (1935 - 2000)

The youngest of five children, Gail Fisher was born in Orange, New Jersey. Her father died when she was two years old and she was raised by her mother, Ona Fisher, who raised her family with a home operated hair styling business while living in the Potter’s Crossing neighborhood of Edison, New Jersey. She graduated […]

Flora Finch (1867 - 1940)

Flora Finch was born into a music hall and travelling theatrical family in London and was taken to the United States as a young child. She kept up the family tradition and worked in theatre and the vaudeville circuit right up until her 30s. She had her first film roles at the American Mutoscope and Biograph […]

Virginia Field (1917 - 1992)

Virginia Field (4 November 1917 – 2 January 1992) was a British-born film actress. She was born Margaret Cynthia Field in London. Her father was the judge of Leicester County Court Circuit. Her mother was a cousin of Confederate General Robert E. Lee and her aunt was British stage actress and director Auriol Lee. She was […]

Sylvia Field (1901 - 1998)

Born Harriet Louisa Johnson in Allston, Massachusetts, she attended Arlington High School in Arlington, Massachusetts. Field began her acting career on the stage. She made her Broadway debut at age 17 in 1918 in The Betrothal (1918). After appearing in various stage productions, Field made her film debut in the 1928 drama The Home Girl. Sylvia […]

Mary Fickett (1928 - 2011)

Mary Fickett was born in Buffalo, New York and raised in Bronxville, a suburb of New York City. She attended Wheaton College in Massachusetts, and made her theatrical debut in 1946 on Cape Cod. In 1949, she made her Broadway debut appearing in I Know My Love, a comedy starring Alfred Lunt and Lynn Fontanne. […]

Helen Ferguson (1901 - 1977)

Helen Ferguson (July 23, 1901 – March 14, 1977) was an American actress later turned publicist. Born in Decatur, Illinois in 1901, she graduated from Nicholas High School of Chicago and the Academy of Fine Arts. Helen Ferguson was a newspaper reporter before entering the motion picture field. It is thought she made her debut in films […]

Elsie Ferguson (1883 - 1961)

Born in New York City, Elsie Ferguson was the only child of Hiram and Amelia Ferguson, her father was a successful attorney. Raised and educated in Manhattan, she became interested in the theater at a young age and made her stage debut at seventeen as a chorus girl in a musical comedy. She quickly became […]

Verna Felton (1890 - 1966)

Verna Felton was born in Salinas, California. Her father, a doctor, died when she was seven years old. When going over his accounts after his death, Felton’s mother discovered that though her husband had a large medical practice in San Jose, there were no records of his patients’ payments for treatment and no cash in […]

Edith Fellows (1923 - 2011)

Edith Marilyn Fellows was born on May 20, 1923 in Boston, Massachusetts, the only child of Willis and Harriet Fellows. Her mother abandoned her a few months after her birth. At the age of two, she moved to Charlotte, North Carolina with her father and paternal grandmother, Elizabeth Fellows. As a toddler, she took dancing lessons […]

Maude Fealy (1883 - 1971)

Born Maude Mary Hawk in 1883 in Memphis, Tennessee, the daughter of actress and acting coach, Margaret Fealy. Her mother remarried to Rafaello Cavallo, the first conductor of the Pueblo, Colorado Symphony Orchestra, and Maude Fealy lived in Colorado off and on for most of her life. At the age of three, she performed on […]

Louise Fazenda (1895 - 1962)

Of Portuguese ancestry, Louise Fazenda was born in Lafayette, Indiana. Her father, Joseph Fazenda, was a merchandise broker. After moving west Louise attended Los Angeles High School and St. Mary’s Convent. Before trying motion pictures, she worked for a dentist, a candy store owner, and a tax collector and on stage. Louise Fazenda got her start […]

Julia Faye (1893 - 1966)

Julia Faye was born Julia Faye Covell at her grandmother’s home near Richmond, Virginia. Her father was French. She had lived in St. Louis, Missouri prior to coming to Hollywood in 1916, to visit friends. She visited one of the film studios and was introduced to Christy Cabanne. The two reminisced about St. Louis and discovered […]

Frances Faye (1912 - 1991)

Born as Frances Cohen, Frances Faye’s showbiz career began at the age of 15 in nightclubs where she first became a star. She appeared in one Bing Crosby film; Double or Nothing singing “After You”. She wrote the song “Well All Right” recorded by the Andrews Sisters. Faye made her solo recording debut in 1936. […]

Myrna Fahey (1933 - 1973)

Myrna Fahey was born in Carmel, Maine, near Bangor in 1933, but grew up in Southwest Harbor near Bar Harbor, Maine, where she was a cheerleader at Pemetic High School. She began competing in local beauty pageants in the early 1950s. She acted one season at the Pasadena Playhouse before breaking into TV, and became […]

Faye Emerson (1917 - 1983)

Faye Emerson was born to Lawrence and Emma (née Smythe) Emerson in the tiny community of Elizabeth, Louisiana. She moved with her mother to San Diego before the war, where she took up acting and by 1940 was a Hollywood starlet. Faye Emerson appeared in a number of crime dramas, co-starring with Zachary Scott in three: […]

Patricia Ellis (1916 - 1970)

Born Patricia Leftwich in Birmingham, Michigan, the daughter of Alexander and Margaret Leftwich, her father was “an eminent New York producer of musical shows.” She had a brother, Alexander Leftwich Jr. Her childhood activities included singing and dancing, and she learned French and German. A 1932 newspaper article said, “Since she was able to walk, Patricia […]

Mary Ellis (1897 - 2003)

Mary Ellis was born May Belle Elsas in New York City in 1897. She made her debut with the Metropolitan Opera on December 14, 1918, in the world premiere of Puccini’s Il trittico, creating the role of Genovieffa in Suor Angelica, the second of the evening’s three one-act operas. Later in the run, she also […]

Patricia Elliott (1938 - 2015)

Patricia Elliott was born July 21, 1938 in Gunnison, Colorado to Clyde and Lavon (née Gibson) Elliott. She claimed direct descent from President Ulysses S. Grant, John Winthrop (first governor of Massachusetts) and Mary Lyon (founder of what would become Mount Holyoke College). She graduated from South High School, Denver. Patricia Elliott graduated from the University […]

Vera Ellen (1921 - 1981)

Vera-Ellen Westmeier Rohe was born in Norwood, Ohio, a suburb of Cincinnati, to Martin F. Rohe, a piano dealer, and Alma Catherine Westmeier, both descended from German immigrants. Her hyphenated name originated in her mother’s dream in which she had a daughter named “Vera-Ellen.” Vera Ellen began dancing at age 10 and quickly became proficient. (One […]

Ruth Elder (1902 - 1977)

Ruth Elder (1902-1977) was a pilot and actress. She carried private pilot certificate P675, and was known as the “Miss America of Aviation.” Ruth Elder was a charter member of the Ninety-Nines. Known as “Miss America of Aviation,” she was the first woman to attempt a flight across the Atlantic from the United States to […]

Dagmar (1921 - 2001)

After her marriage to Angelo Lewis in 1941, she moved to New York where he was a Naval officer, stationed at Navy Ferry Command on Long Island. Dagmar adopted Jennie Lewis as her stage name (taken from her real life married name, Virginia Lewis). To keep busy, she became a fashion photographer’s model, and in […]

Nora Eddington (1924 - 2001)

Born in Chicago, Illinois in 1924, the daughter of Jack Eddington of the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s office, Nora Eddington was nineteen when she met Errol Flynn in February 1943 – at the time, she was working at the courthouse where Flynn’s notorious 1943 trial for statutory rape was taking place. Flynn was acquitted and […]

Minta Durfee (1889 - 1975)

She met Roscoe Arbuckle when he was attempting to get started in theater, and the two married in August 1908. Durfee entered show business in local companies as a chorus girl at the age of seventeen. She was the first leading lady of Charlie Chaplin. Minta Durfee and Arbuckle separated in 1921, just prior to a […]

June Duprez (1918 - 1984)

The daughter of American vaudeville performer Fred Duprez and Australian Florence Isabelle Matthews, June Duprez was born in Teddington, Middlesex, England, during an air raid in the final months of World War I. June Duprez began acting in her teens with the Coventry repertory company after studying at the Froebel Institute, and was a film extra […]

Mildred Dunnock (1901 - 1991)

Born in Baltimore, Maryland, she graduated from Western Senior High School. Dunnock was a school teacher who did not start acting until she was in her early thirties. She attended Goucher College where she was a member of Alpha Phi sorority. After a couple of roles in Broadway productions during the 1930s, Mildred Dunnock won praise […]

Josephine Dunn (1906 - 1983)

Josephine Dunn (May 1, 1906 – February 3, 1983) was an American film actress of the 1920s and 1930s. Born in New York City, Dunn began her career in Hollywood with a small role alongside Thelma Todd in the 1926 film Fascinating Youth. Dunn became associated with what would become known as the “Algonquin Round Table”, […]

Mary Duncan (1895 - 1993)

Mary Duncan was born Mary Annie Dungan in Northumberland County, Virginia, the sixth of eight children born to Capt. William Dungan and his wife, Ada Thaddeus Douglass. She attended Cornell University before settling on acting as a career. She began her career as a child actress playing on the Broadway stage from 1910. In 1926 […]

Steffi Duna (1910 - 1992)

Born Stephanie Berindey in Budapest of Czech extraction, Steffi Duna started dancing at the age of nine and first attracted attention as a thirteen-year-old ballet dancer in Europe. Duna made her first stage appearance performing dramatized fairy tales at the Children’s Theater of Budapest. Initially opposed to the idea, her father sent her to the […]

Margaret Dumont (1882 - 1965)

Margaret Dumont was born Daisy Juliette Baker in Brooklyn, New York, the daughter of William and Harriet Anna (née Harvey) Baker. As a child, she lived in the South, where she was mainly raised by her godfather, writer Joel Chandler Harris. She grew to stand 5′ 9″ (1.75 m). Margaret Dumont trained as an operatic singer […]

Joanne Dru (1922 - 1996)

Born as Joan Letitia LaCock in Logan, West Virginia, Joanne Dru came to New York City in 1940 at the age of eighteen. After finding employment as a model, she was chosen by Al Jolson to appear in the cast of his Broadway show Hold On to Your Hats. When she moved to Hollywood, she […]