Stewart Stern (1922 - 2015)

Stewart Henry Stern (March 22, 1922 – February 2, 2015) was a two-time Oscar-nominated and Emmy award winning American screenwriter. He is best known for writing the screenplay for the iconic film Rebel Without a Cause (1955), starring James Dean. In addition to Rebel Without a Cause, Stewart Stern’s most notable screenwriting credits include Sybil, which […]

R. J. Adams (1942 - 2015)

R. J. Adams was born in St. Catharines, Ontario where he spent his early childhood until his family headed across the border to Niagara Falls, New York. Known to his friends as Bob Adams, the aspiring actor/radio D.J. spent just a couple of years attending Bishop Duffy High school before dropping out and moving to […]

Sally Forrest (1928 - 2015)

Born in San Diego, Sally Forrest studied dance from a young age and shortly out of high school was signed to a contract by MGM. to Michael and Marguerite (née Ellicott) Feeney. Her father was a U.S. Navy career officer, who moved his family to various naval bases, finally settling in San Diego. He and […]

Lorena Rojas (1971 - 2015)

Lorena Rojas (born Seydi Lorena Rojas Gonzalez; 10 February 1971 – 16 February 2015) was a Mexican actress and singer, best known for her leading roles in popular telenovelas. Seydi Lorena Rojas Gonzalez was born in Mexico City, Mexico and began her artistic career in 1990 when she participated in the telenovela Alcanzar Una Estrella produced […]

June Fairchild (1946 - 2015)

June Fairchild was born June Edna Wilson on September 3, 1946, in Manhattan Beach, California. Her father was a musician who specialized in writing gospel songs and music. Fairchild was raised in Manhattan Beach and graduated from Aviation High School in Redondo Beach. She was hired as a member of the Gazzarri Dancers on the […]

Blaze Starr (1932 - 2015)

Starr was born on April 10, 1932 in rural Wayne County, West Virginia, along Twelvepole Creek, (also spelled Twelve Pole Creek) the second eldest of 11 siblings born to Lora (née Evans) and Goodlow Fleming). Reared in the Newground Hollow (also spelled New Ground Hollow) area of Wilsondale, West Virginia, she left home at either age […]

Marília Pêra (1943 - 2015)

Marília Soares Pêra (Marilia Pera da Graça Mello, after she married), was born on January 22, 1943 in the neighborhood of Rio Comprido, in Rio de Janeiro. From 14 to 21 years, works as a dancer in musicals and revue as Minha Querida Lady (1962), starring Bibi Ferreira, and O Teu Cabelo Não Nega (1963) biography […]

Gregg Palmer (1927 - 2015)

Brown-haired and brown-eyed Gregg Palmer was born in San Francisco, California, to Norwegian parents. His father was a carpenter. He entered the United States Army Air Corps, forerunner of the Air Force, and became a cryptographer during World War II. He was discharged in 1946 as a sergeant. Sometimes known as “Grizzly”, Palmer worked as […]

Don Harron (1924 - 2015)

Don Harron’s parents owned and operated Harron’s Cleaners and Dyers in Toronto. Beginning at the age of 10, he earned extra money for the family during the Great Depression, doing “chalk talks” telling humorous stories while drawing caricatures in coloured chalk at company or club banquets, making $10 or $15 a talk. As a result […]

Wally Cassell (1912 - 2015)

Wally Casell (March 3, 1912 – April 2, 2015), born as Oswaldo Silvestri Trippilini Rolando Vincenza Castellano, was an Italian-born American film-noir character actor and businessman. Castellano was born in Agrigento, Sicily, and moved with his family to the United States when he was two years of age. He began his film career in 1942, initially […]

Oliver Sacks (1933 - 2015)

Oliver Wolf Sacks, CBE, FRCP (9 July 1933 – 30 August 2015) was a British neurologist, naturalist and author who spent his professional life in the United States. Oliver Sacks felt that the brain was the “most incredible thing in the universe” and therefore important to study. He became widely known for writing best-selling case […]

Daws Butler (1916 - 1988)

Daws Butler was born on November 16, 1916 in Toledo, Ohio, the only child of Ruth Butler and Charles Allen Butler. The family later moved from Ohio to Oak Park, Illinois, where Butler got interested in impersonating people. In 1935, the future voice master started as an impressionist, entering multiple amateur contests and winning most of them. […]

John Stephenson (1923 - 2015)

John Winfield Stephenson was born in Kenosha, Wisconsin, the oldest son of Ray and Martha Stephenson. Stephenson went to Ripon College and was active in campus drama. Stephenson wanted to be a lawyer and studied at the University of Wisconsin Law School. After serving in the United States Army Air Forces, as a gunner and […]

Mary Healy (1918 - 2015)

Mary Healy was born April 14, 1918, in New Orleans, Louisiana. Crowned Miss New Orleans in 1935, Healy performed as a singer in the New Orleans area. She made her first screen appearance in Josette (1938). In 1939 she had major film roles in Second Fiddle and Star Dust, in which she sang the title […]

Pierre Brice (1929 - 2015)

Pierre Brice was born in Brest, France. When he was 19, Brice enlisted in the French Army and fought in the First Indochina War. While patrolling in Indochina, one of his team triggered a mine and its explosion sent Brice whirling through the air, but left him virtually unhurt. Later he served as a paratrooper […]

Setsuko Hara (1920 - 2015)

Setsuko Hara was born Masae Aida (会田 昌江 Aida Masae?) in what is now Hodogaya-ku, Yokohama in a family with three sons and five daughters. Her elder sister was married to film director Hisatora Kumagai, which gave her an entry into the world of the cinema and she went to work for Nikkatsu Studios in […]

Saeed Jaffrey (1929 - 2015)

Saeed Jaffrey, OBE (Punjabi: ਸਈਦ ਜਾਫ਼ਰੀ, Urdu: سعید جعفری; Hindi: सईद जाफ़री; 8 January 1929 – 15 November 2015) was an Indian-born British actor whose versatility and fluency in multiple languages allowed him to straddle radio, stage, television and film in a career that spanned over six decades and more than a hundred and fifty […]

Lynn Borden (1937 - 2015)

Born Lynn Freyse in Detroit, Michigan to Bill (1898–1969) and Evelyn S. Freyse (1908–2003), her family moved to Cleveland, Ohio and later Tucson, Arizona, in hopes of coping with her mother’s health needs, which required a warm, dry climate. She had a brother, Steve. Lynn’s father, a Detroit native, was a cartoonist who drew the […]

Holly Woodlawn (1946 - 2015)

Holly Woodlawn was born as Haroldo Santiago Franceschi Rodriguez Danhakl in Juana Díaz, Puerto Rico, to an American soldier of German descent, and Aminta Rodriguez, a native Puerto Rican, and grew up in Miami Beach, where she came out at a young age. She adopted the name Holly from the heroine of Breakfast at Tiffany’s, […]

Richard Johnson (1927 - 2015)

Richard Johnson was born in Upminster, Essex, the son of Frances Louisa Olive (née Tweed) and Keith Holcombe Johnson. Johnson went to Felsted School, then trained at RADA and made his first professional appearances on stage in Manchester with John Gielgud’s company in a production of Hamlet in 1944. He served in the Royal Navy from […]

Terry Pratchett (1948 - 2015)

Terry Pratchett was born on 28 April 1948 in Beaconsfield in Buckinghamshire, England, the only child of David and Eileen Pratchett, of Hay-on-Wye[1] and he attended Holtspur School. His family moved to Bridgwater, Somerset, briefly in 1957, following which he passed his eleven plus exam in 1959, earning a place in High Wycombe Technical High […]

Melody Patterson (1949 - 2015)

Melody Patterson (April 16, 1949 – August 20, 2015) was an American actress known for her role as Wrangler Jane in the 1960s television series F Troop. Patterson, who began her career performing in plays at the age of four, attended the Hollywood Professional School and later studied at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts in […]

Windell Middlebrooks (1979 - 2015)

Windell Middlebrooks was born in Fort Worth, Texas. He was an alumnus of Sterling College in Sterling, Kansas, where he earned a Bachelor’s degree in Theatre/Communications, the Los Angeles Film Studies Center, and University of California, Irvine, where he earned a Master of Fine Arts in acting in 2004. For one season, he worked at the […]

Shirley Stelfox (1941 - 2015)

Born at Dukinfield, Cheshire, on 11 April 1941, Shirley Stelfox early caught the acting bug, despite suffering from bilateral amblyopia, leaving her short-sighted. She managed to overcome this handicap to secure a place at RADA wherever classmates were Edward Fox, John Thaw and Sarah Miles. After Royal Academy of Dramatic Art Stelfox started straight at the […]

Jonathan Crombie (1966 - 2015)

Jonathan Crombie was born in Toronto on October 12, 1966. His father, David Crombie, was the mayor of Toronto from 1972 to 1978 and a Canadian federal Cabinet Minister in the 1980s. Crombie attended Lawrence Park Collegiate Institute, where he was spotted by casting agent Diane Polley performing in a production of The Wizard of […]

Harris Wittels (1984 - 2015)

Harris Wittels was born in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, the son of Dr. Ellison Wittels and Maureen (née Davidson) Wittels, and raised in Houston, Texas. Wittels described his father as “the funniest dude alive”. He had one older sister, voiceover actress Stephanie Wittels. He was Jewish, and had his bar mitzvah at Temple Emanu-El, across the […]

Marjorie Lord (1918 - 2015)

In 1935, at the age of 16, Marjorie Lord made her Broadway debut in The Old Maid with Judith Anderson. Her other Broadway appearances came in Signature (1945), Little Brown Jug (1946), and The Girl in the Freudian Slip (1967). Although most of Lord’s success came in television, she said in 1963: “I am primarily a […]

Coleen Gray (1922 - 2015)

Coleen Gray was born Doris Bernice Jensen on October 23, 1922 in Staplehurst, Nebraska, the daughter of a farmer. After graduating from high school, she studied drama at Hamline University, and graduated cum laude with a Bachelor of Arts. She travelled to California, and worked as a waitress in a restaurant in La Jolla. After […]

George Coe (1929 - 2015)

George Coe (May 10, 1929 – July 18, 2015) was an American film, stage and television actor. George Coe was born George Julian Cohen in Jamaica, Queens, New York. His Broadway theater career began in 1957 and included turns as “M. Lindsey Woolsey” opposite Angela Lansbury in the original production of Mame; as “Owen O’Malley” in […]

George Cole (1925 - 2015)

George Cole was born in Tooting, London. He was given up for adoption at ten days old and adopted by George and Florence Cole, Tooting council employee and cleaner respectively. He attended secondary school in nearby Morden. He left school at 14 to be a butcher’s boy, and had an ambition to join the Merchant […]