Leonid Kinskey (1903 - 1998)

Leonid Kinskey (18 April 1903 – 8 September 1998) was a Russian-born film and television actor who enjoyed a long career. Kinskey is best known for his role as Sascha in the film Casablanca (1942). Leonid Kinskey was born in St. Petersburg, Russia. He fled the Russian Revolution and acted on stage in Europe and […]

Russell Simpson (1880 - 1959)

Russell Simpson was born on June 17, 1880 in Danville, California. He attended grammar school in the Danville District in Contra Costa County, California; he graduated on July 2, 1892. At age 18, Simpson prospected for gold in Alaska. He began taking acting classes in Seattle, Washington. He was married to Gertrude Alter from New […]

Rex Ingram (1895 - 1969)

Rex Ingram was born near Cairo, Illinois, on the Mississippi River; his father was a steamer fireman on the riverboat Robert E. Lee. Ingram graduated from the Northwestern University medical school in 1919 and was the first African-American man to receive a Phi Beta Kappa key from Northwestern University. He went to Hollywood as a […]

John Justin (1917 - 2002)

John Justin (24 November 1917 – 29 November 2002) was a British stage and film actor. John Justinian de Ledesma was born in London, England, the son of a well-off Argentine rancher. Though he grew up on his father’s ranch, he was educated at Bryanston School in Bryanston, Dorset. He developed an interest in flying […]

Robert Reed (1932 - 1992)

Robert Reed Robert Reed is best remembered as playing the role of ‘Kenneth Preston’ on the television drama “The Defenders,” that aired from 1961 to 1965 as well as the character ‘Mike Brady’ on the ABC television sitcom “The Brady Bunch,” which aired from 1969 to 1974. Born John Robert Rietz, Jr. in Highland Park, Illinois, […]

Shoeless Joe Jackson (1887 - 1951)

Shoeless Joe Jackson Shoeless Joe Jackson is best known today for being the most recognizable of the eight Chicago White Sox players who were banned forever from Major League baseball for his role in the 1919 “Black Sox” Scandal. Born in Greenville, South Carolina, in 1902 he became a cotton textile worker with Brandon Mills, sweeping […]

Brandon Burlsworth (1976 - 1999)

Brandon Burlsworth Former Arkansas football player and Indianapolis Colts draft pick Brandon Burlsworth died Wednesday in a car crash while travelling to his home, state police said. State police Cpl. Philip Straub said the call came in at 4:17 p.m. that there was a crash involving a car and a tractor-trailer on U.S. 412 near […]

Zoltan Korda (1895 - 1961)

As a young man, Zoltan Korda went to work with his brother Alexander in their native Hungary and in the United Kingdom for his London Films production company. He functioned as a camera operator; for a time he worked in film editing and as a screenwriter. In 1918 and 1920 in Hungary, he directed two […]

Sam Newfield (1899 - 1964)

Sam Newfield, born Samuel Neufeld, (December 6, 1899 – November 10, 1964), also known as Sherman Scott or Peter Stewart, was an American B-movie director, one of the most prolific in American film history—he is credited with directing over 250 feature films in a career that began in the silent era and ended in 1958. […]

Sterling Hayden (1916 - 1986)

Sterling Hayden became a print model and later signed a contract with Paramount Pictures, who dubbed the 6′5″ (1.96 m) actor “The Most Beautiful Man in the Movies” and “The Beautiful Blond Viking God.” His first film, Virginia (1941), starred Madeleine Carroll, with whom he fell in love and married. After two film roles, he […]

Walter Sande (1906 - 1971)

Born in Denver, Colorado, Walter Sande was one of those stern, heavyset character actors in Hollywood no person could recognize by name. Sande showed an early interest in music as a youth and by his college years managed to start his own band. This led to a job as musical director for 20th Century-Fox’s theater […]

Joseph Naish (1896 - 1973)

Joseph Naish’s uncredited bit role in What Price Glory? (1926) launched his career in more than two hundred films. He was twice nominated for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor, the first for his role as Giuseppe in the movie Sahara (1943) in which he delivers one of the most moving speeches in any […]

Sidney Salkow (1911 - 2000)

Sidney Salkow (June 16, 1911 – October 18, 2000) was an American film director (more than 50 motion pictures), screenwriter, and television director. Salkow was educated at the City College of New York, Columbia University and Harvard Law School. After school he returned to New York City and became an assistant director of theater and […]

Rod Daniel (1942 - 2016)

Rollin Augustus “Rod” Daniel III (August 4, 1942 – April 16, 2016) was an American television and film director, active from the late 1970s to the early 2000s. He is best known for his comedy films, including the 1985 Michael J. Fox comedy film Teen Wolf, which was a considerable box office success. Rod Daniel, […]

Bill Cardille (1928 - 2016)

Bill Cardille had a nightly record program on WDAD radio in Indiana County, Pennsylvania, in 1951. He first worked in television at WICU in Erie, Pennsylvania, beginning January 19, 1952. He was for many years a fixture on Channel 11 (formerly call letters WIIC, now WPXI), the NBC affiliate in Pittsburgh, and was the first […]

Keith Wayne (1945 - 1995)

Keith Wayne (January 16, 1945 — September 9, 1995), born Ronald Keith Hartman, was an American actor known for his (only) role as Tom in the George A. Romero film Night of the Living Dead (1968). Keith Wayne was born in Washington, Pennsylvania. His father was Vincent W. Hartman. His mother was Margaret Warga Hartman; […]

Duane Jones (1937 - 1988)

Duane Jones (February 2, 1937 – July 22, 1988) was an American actor, best known for his leading role as Ben in the 1968 horror film Night of the Living Dead. He was director of the Maguire Theater at the State University of New York at Old Westbury, and the artistic director of the Richard […]

Susan Tyrrell (1945 - 2012)

Susan Tyrrell made her Broadway debut in 1965 as a replacement performer in the comedy Cactus Flower. In 1968, as a member of the Repertory Theatre of Lincoln Center, she was in the cast of King Lear and revivals of The Time of Your Life (1969) and Camino Real (1970). Off-Broadway, Tyrrell appeared in the […]

Wyatt Emory Cooper (1927 - 1978)

Wyatt Emory Cooper was born in the small town of Quitman, Mississippi, outside of Meridian, Mississippi, the son of Rixie Jane Annie (née Anderson) and Emmet Debro Cooper. Cooper was from a poor family with deep Southern roots, and later moved to New Orleans, Louisiana, as a young child. In his twenties, Cooper moved to […]

Leopold Stokowski (1882 - 1977)

Leopold Stokowski (18 April 1882 – 13 September 1977) was a British conductor of Polish and Irish descent. One of the leading conductors of the early and mid-20th Century, he is best known for his long association with the Philadelphia Orchestra and for appearing in the film Fantasia. He was especially noted for his free-hand […]

Sidney Lumet (1924 - 2011)

Sidney Lumet (/luːˈmɛt/ loo-met; June 25, 1924 – April 9, 2011) was an American director, producer and screenwriter with over 50 films to his credit. He was nominated for the Academy Award as Best Director for 12 Angry Men (1957), Dog Day Afternoon (1975), Network (1976) and The Verdict (1982). He did not win an […]

Jay Dratler (1911 - 1968)

Jay Dratler (September 14, 1910- September 25, 1968) was an American screenwriter and novelist. Born in New York City, his mother was from Austria. After attending the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in the late 1920s, he studied at the Sorbonne in France and the University of Vienna, becoming fluent in French and […]

Mitchell Leisen (1898 - 1972)

Mitchell Leisen entered the film industry in the 1920s, beginning in the art and costume departments. He directed his first film in 1933 with Cradle Song and became known for his keen sense of aesthetics in the glossy Hollywood melodramas and screwball comedies he turned out. His best known films include the Alberto Casella adaptation […]

Quentin Reynolds (1902 - 1965)

Quentin Reynolds (April 11, 1902 – March 17, 1965) was a journalist and World War II war correspondent. He was a member of Delta Tau Delta International Fraternity. As associate editor at Collier’s Weekly from 1933 to 1945, Reynolds averaged twenty articles a year. He also published twenty-five books, including The Wounded Don’t Cry, London […]

Basil Wright (1907 - 1987)

After leaving Sherborne School, a well known independent school in the market town of Sherborne in Dorset, Basil Wright was the first recruit to join John Grierson at the Empire Marketing Board’s film unit in 1930, shortly after he graduated from Cambridge University. Wright’s 1934 film Song of Ceylon is his most celebrated work. Shot […]

Daniel Chaplin (1820 - 1864)

Daniel Chaplin (January 22, 1820 – August 20, 1864) was a Union army officer in the American Civil War. Under Chaplin’s command, the ill-fated charge of the 1st Maine Heavy Artillery Regiment against Confederate breastworks during Siege of Petersburg resulted on the greatest single loss of life by a Union Regiment in a single action. […]

Alexander Chambers (1832 - 1888)

Alexander Chambers (August 23, 1832 – January 2, 1888) was a US Army officer, who became a general during the American Civil War. Chambers was born in Cattaraugus, New York. He graduated from West Point with the class of 1853 (which also included John Schofield and Philip Sheridan), and was commissioned a second lieutenant. He […]

Joshua Chamberlain (1828 - 1914)

Joshua Chamberlain (born Lawrence Joshua Chamberlain, September 8, 1828 – February 24, 1914)was an American college professor from the State of Maine, who volunteered during the American Civil War to join the Union Army. He became a highly respected and decorated Union officer, reaching the rank of brigadier general (and brevet major general). He is […]

Jack Catton (1920 - 1990)

General Jack Catton (February 5, 1920 – December 5, 1990) was a United States Air Force four-star general and was commander of the Air Force Logistics Command with headquarters at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base and of the Military Airlift Command. General Catton was born in Berkeley, California, in 1920. He attended Fairfax High School in […]

Isaac Catlin (1835 - 1916)

Immediately after President Abraham Lincoln’s call for volunteers at the beginning of the Civil War, Catlin raised a company of infantry and was appointed its captain. The unit, said to be “the first full company which enlisted in the North,” was mustered in on May 14, 1861, as part of Frederick Townsend’s 3rd New York […]