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 […]

Betty Driver (1920 - 2011)

At the age of 8, Betty Driver began performing professionally, forced by her mother to appear with Terence Byron Repertory Theatre Company.[4] She was singing for the BBC by the age of 10 and began touring across the UK in her first revue at the age of 12. While performing in London at the age […]

Ellen Drew (1915 - 2003)

Ellen Drew (November 23, 1915 – December 3, 2003) was an American film actress. Born Terry Ray in Kansas City, Missouri, Drew worked various jobs and won a number of beauty contests before becoming an actress. Moving to Hollywood in an attempt to become a star, she was discovered while working at an ice cream parlor […]

Louise Dresser (1878 - 1965)

Louise Dresser (October 17, 1878 – April 24, 1965) was an American actress. Born Louise Josephine Kerlin in Evansville, Indiana. Her father was a train conductor who died when she was fifteen years old. She starred in several films in the silent era. She had acted on the stage previously, being a Vaudeville singer at age fifteen […]

Ruth Draper (1884 - 1956)

Ruth Draper was born in New York City, the youngest child of Dr. William Henry and Ruth (née Dana) Draper. Her father, who was born in Brattleboro, Vermont, had the affluence to support a large family with the help of several servants. Ruth Draper’s mother was the daughter of Charles Anderson Dana, editor and publisher […]

Frances Drake (1912 - 2000)

Frances Drake (October 22, 1912 – January 18, 2000) was an American actress, best known for playing Eponine in Les Misérables (1935). Frances Drake was born in New York City as Frances Morgan Dean to a wealthy family. She was educated at Havergal College in Canada and was in London visiting relatives when the stock market […]

Dona Drake (1914 - 1989)

Dona Drake was born Eunice Westmoreland in Miami, Florida, in 1914 to Joseph Andrew Westmoreland of Arkansas and his wife, Novella Smith of Alabama. She was one of their five children. Entering show business in the 1930s, she used the names Una Velon, Rita Rio and Rita Shaw. She settled on the stage name Dona Drake […]

Ellen Albertini Dow (1913 - 2015)

Ellen Albertini Dow (November 16, 1913 – May 4, 2015) was an American character actress. She portrayed feisty old ladies and may be best known as the rapping grandmother in The Wedding Singer (1998). Dow’s other film roles include the elderly lady who “outs” her grandson in Wedding Crashers, Disco Dottie in 54, the recipient […]

Billie Dove (1903 - 1997)

Billie Dove (May 14, 1903 – December 31, 1997) was an American actress. Billie Dove was born Bertha Bohny in 1903 to Charles and Bertha (née Kagl) Bohny, Swiss immigrants. As a teen, she worked as a model to help support her family and was hired as a teenager by Florenz Ziegfeld to appear in his […]

Yolande Donlan (1920 - 2014)

The daughter of James Donlan, a character actor in Hollywood films of the 1930s, it is speculated by some that she had uncredited roles in films such as Pennies From Heaven (1936) and Love Finds Andy Hardy (1938), but this has not been confirmed. Her early credited roles include Frenchy, the maid in the horror film […]

Columba Domínguez (1929 - 2014)

Columba Domínguez Adalid born on March 4, 1929 in Guaymas, Sonora, Mexico, reaching very young with her family to the Mexico City. When she went to a party with one of her sisters, was discovered by the Mexican film director Emilio Fernández, who was amazed by her beauty with very marked Mexican features and gives […]

Faith Domergue (1924 - 1999)

Born in New Orleans, Faith Domergue was adopted by Adabelle Wemet when she was six weeks old. When Faith was 18 months old (in 1926), Adabelle married Leo Domergue. The family moved to California in 1928 where Domergue attended Beverly Hills Catholic School and St. Monica’s Convent School. While still at University High School, she […]

Claire Dodd (1911 - 1973)

Born Dorothy Arlene Dodd on December 29, 1911 in Baxter, Iowa to Walter Willard Dodd, a farmer whose family were early Jasper County pioneers, and his wife, Ethel Viola (née Cool) Dodd, daughter of Baxter Postmaster Peter J. Cool. As Dorothy Dodd, she attended school in Baxter. When her parents later separated in Montana, she […]

Selma Diamond (1920 - 1985)

Selma Diamond was born in London, Ontario in 1920 to a tailor and his wife, but moved at a young age to Brooklyn, New York. She was graduated from New York University and published cartoons and humour essays in The New Yorker before moving to the West Coast, hiring an agent, and finding work in […]

Joan Diener (1930 - 2006)

Joan Diener (February 24, 1930 – May 13, 2006) was an American theatre actress and singer with a three-and-a-half-octave range. Born in Columbus, Ohio, Joan Diener majored in psychology at Sarah Lawrence College and moonlighted as an actress while still a student. She made her Broadway debut in the 1948 revue Small Wonder, choreographed by Gower […]

Laura Devon (1931 - 2007)

Laura Devon was born May 23, 1931 in Chicago. Her birth name has been given as either Mary Lou Briley or Mary Laura Briley. Her father was identified in the press as Merrill Devon, an automotive engineer, and her mother as Velma Prather. She attended school in Chicago and Grosse Pointe. She entered Wayne State University, […]

Tamara Desni (1913 - 2008)

Tamara Desni (22 October 1913 – 7 February 2008) was a German-born British actress. Born as Tamara Brodsky, the daughter of actress Xenia Desni, Tamara Desni was born in Berlin. Her mother was born in Keiv, then in the Russian Empire, but emigrated to Germany sometime before the Russian Revolution. She became a star of German […]

Dorothy Dene (1859 - 1899)

Dorothy Dene was born in New Cross, London, in 1859; he birth name was Ada Alice Pullen.  She came from a large family of girls, a number of whom earned their living from acting on stage. She lived with her four sisters in an apartment in South Kensington, London. She lived with her four sisters in […]

Myrna Dell (1924 - 2011)

Myrna Dell (March 5, 1924 – February 11, 2011) was an American actress, model, and writer who appeared in several television programs and motion pictures for over four decades. Born under the name Marilyn Adele Dunlap she changed her name to Myrna Dell upon entering show business as a dancer making her debut in A Night […]

Olive Deering (1918 - 1986)

Olive Deering (born Olive Corn; October 11, 1918 – March 22, 1986) was an American actress of film, television, and the stage, active from the late 1940s to the mid-1960s. She was a life member of The Actors Studio, as was her elder brother, Alfred Ryder. Olive Deering was the daughter of Zelda “Sadie” (née Baruchin; […]

Marceline Day (1908 - 2000)

Born Marceline Newlin in Colorado Springs, Colorado and raised in Salt Lake City, Utah, she was the younger sister of film actress Alice Day. Marceline Day began her film career after her sister, Alice Day, became a featured actress as one of the Sennett Bathing Beauties in one and two-reel comedies for Keystone Studios. Day made […]

Virginia Davis (1918 - 2009)

Virginia Davis began working for Walt Disney’s Kansas City company, Laugh-O-Gram Studio, in the summer of 1924. She was hired to act in a film called Alice’s Wonderland, which combined live action with animation. When Laugh-O-Gram failed and Disney moved to Los Angeles, on the basis of Alice’s Wonderland Winkler Pictures signed Disney for a […]

Joan Davis (1907 - 1961)

Joan Davis’ first film was a short subject for Educational Pictures called Way Up Thar (1935), featuring a then-unknown Roy Rogers. Educational’s distribution company, Twentieth Century-Fox, signed Davis for feature films. Tall and lanky, with a comically flat speaking voice, she became known as one of the few female physical clowns of her time. Perhaps […]