Martin Milner (1931 - 2015)

Martin Milner was born on December 28, 1931, to film distributor Sam Gordon Milner and Paramount Theater circuit dancer Mildred (née Martin) in Detroit, Michigan. The family left Detroit when he was a young child and moved frequently before settling in Seattle, Washington, by the time he was nine. There he became involved in acting, […]

Alberta Watson (1955 - 2015)

Alberta Watson was born in Toronto, Ontario in 1955. She grew up in Toronto with her mother Grace, a factory worker, and her brother. She began performing with a local Toronto theater group, T.H.O.G. (Theater House of God), of the Bathurst Street United Church at age 15. Watson took a workshop for the Hair musical. While […]

Darren Shahlavi (1972 - 2015)

Darren Shahlavi was born to Iranian immigrant parents at Stockport, Cheshire, England on 5 August 1972. At the age of 7, Shahlavi started studying Judo in a rented acting theatre, and would arrive early to peek at the actors performing, after discovering Bruce Lee and Jackie Chan films he dreamed of being in action films […]

Stanley Baker (1928 - 1976)

William Stanley Baker was born in Ferndale, Rhondda Valley, Glamorgan, Wales, the youngest of three children. His father was a coal miner who lost a leg in a pit accident but continued working as a lift operator at the mine until his death. Baker grew up a self-proclaimed “wild kid” interested in only “football and […]

King Vidor (1894 - 1982)

King Vidor (pronounced “vee-dor”) was born in Galveston, Texas, where he survived the great Galveston Hurricane of 1900.  A freelance newsreel cameraman and cinema projectionist, Vidor made his debut as a director in 1913 with The Grand Military Parade. In Hollywood from 1915, he worked as a screenwriter and as director of a series of […]

Ronald Neame (1911 - 2010)

Ronald Neame’s parents were the photographer Elwin Neame and the actress Ivy Close. He studied at University College School and Hurstpierpoint College. His father died in 1923, and Neame took a job with the Anglo-Persian Oil Company as an office boy. Later, through his mother’s contacts in the British film industry, Neame started at Elstree […]

Mary Clare Absalom (1892 - 1970)

Mary Clare Absalom was born in 1892. She trained at a dramatic school and began her career on the London stage at the age of 18 in 1910. She appeared in the film The Black Spider in 1920, and thereafter divided her time between the stage and the cinema. In September 1936 she played the […]

Soledad Miranda (1943 - 1970)

Soledad Miranda was born Soledad Rendón Bueno on 9 July 1943 in Seville, Spain. Soledad (whose name translates as solitude or loneliness) was the niece of the famous Spanish singer-actress-flamenco dancer Paquita Rico. Soledad was the first child of parents who had little money and, eventually, six children. It was necessary to contribute to the […]

Sonny Tufts (1911 - 1970)

Bowen Charlton Tufts III (nicknamed “Sonny”) was born in Boston, Massachusetts into a prominent banking family. The Tufts family patriarch, Peter Tufts, sailed to America from Wilby, Norfolk, England in 1638. His great uncle was businessman and philanthropist Charles Tufts, for whom Tufts University is named. Sonny Tufts attended the Phillips Exeter Academy and later broke […]

Alec Clunes (1912 - 1970)

Alexander “Alec” Sheriff de Moro Clunes (17 May 1912 – 13 March 1970) was an English actor and theatrical manager Among the plays he presented were Christopher Fry’s The Lady’s Not For Burning. Alec Clunes gave the actor and dramatist Peter Ustinov his first break with his production The House of Regrets. His film career was […]

Susan Bieke Neilson (1956 - 2006)

Neilson was born August 27, 1956 in Ann Arbor and was a lifelong Michigan resident. In 1977, she received an A.B. degree in political science from the University of Michigan Honors College. Neilson received her law degree in 1980 from Wayne State University Law School. Following graduation she practiced products liability, commercial litigation, medical malpractice, […]

Roxwell Kent (1882 - 1971)

Rockwell Kent was born in Tarrytown, New York, the same year as fellow American artists George Bellows and Edward Hopper. Kent was of English descent. Kent lived much of his early life in and around New York City where he attended the Horace Mann School. In his mid-40s he moved to an Adirondack farmstead that […]

Johann Nestroy (1801 - 1862)

Johann Nestroy was born in Vienna, where he was a law student from 1817 to 1822, before abandoning his studies to become a singer. He joined the Theater am Kärntnertor, beginning with Sarastro in The Magic Flute on 24 August 1822. After a year of singing in Vienna, he went to Amsterdam where he appeared […]

Sally Benson (1897 - 1972)

Sally Benson, the daughter of Alonzo Redway and Anna Prophater Smith, moved with her family from her birthplace of St. Louis to New York, where she attended the Horace Mann School, studied dance and then started working when she was 17 years old. At age 19, she married Reynolds Benson. The couple had a daughter […]

Paul Hindemith (1895 - 1963)

Born in Hanau, near Frankfurt am Main, Paul Hindemith was taught the violin as a child. He entered Frankfurt’s Hoch’sche Konservatorium, where he studied violin with Adolf Rebner, as well as conducting and composition with Arnold Mendelssohn and Bernhard Sekles. At first he supported himself by playing in dance bands and musical-comedy groups. He became […]

Thorton Wilder (1897 - 1975)

Thorton Wilder was born in Madison, Wisconsin, the son of Amos Parker Wilder, a newspaper editor and U.S. diplomat, and Isabella Niven Wilder. All of the Wilder children spent part of their childhood in China. His older brother, Amos Niven Wilder, was Hollis Professor of Divinity at the Harvard Divinity School, a noted poet, and […]

Clyde Geronimi (1901 - 1989)

Clito Enrico “Clyde” Geronimi (June 12, 1901 – April 24, 1989), known as Gerry, was an Italian-American animation director. He is best known for his work at Walt Disney Productions. Clyde Geronimi was born in Chiavenna, Italy, immigrating to the United States as a young child. Geronimi’s earliest work in the animation field was for the […]

Dorothy Thompson (1893 - 1961)

Dorothy Thompson was born in Lancaster, New York, in 1893 to Margaret and Peter Thompson. Margaret died when Dorothy was seven (in 1901), leaving Peter, a Methodist preacher, to raise his daughter alone. Peter soon remarried, but Dorothy did not get along with his new wife, Elizabeth Abbott Thompson. In 1908, Peter sent Dorothy to […]

Sinclair Lewis (1885 - 1951)

Sinclair Lewis’s earliest published creative work—romantic poetry and short sketches—appeared in the Yale Courant and the Yale Literary Magazine, of which he became an editor. After graduation Lewis moved from job to job and from place to place in an effort to make ends meet, write fiction for publication and to chase away boredom. While […]

Bram Stoker (1847 - 1912)

Bram Stoker was born on 8 November 1847 at 15 Marino Crescent, Clontarf, on the northside of Dublin, Ireland. His parents were Abraham Stoker (1799–1876), from Dublin, and Charlotte Mathilda Blake Thornley (1818–1901), who was raised in County Sligo. Stoker was the third of seven children, the eldest of whom was Sir Thornley Stoker, 1st […]

Kate Chopin (1850 - 1904)

Kate Chopin was born Katherine O’Flaherty in St. Louis, Missouri. Her father, Thomas O’Flaherty, was a successful businessman who had emigrated from Galway, Ireland. Her mother, Eliza Faris, was a well-connected member of the French community in St. Louis and herself the daughter of Athénaïse Charleville, who was of French Canadian descent. Some of Chopin’s […]

Fredric Brown (1906 - 1972)

Fredric Brown’s science fiction novel What Mad Universe (1949) is a parody of pulp SF story conventions. Martians, Go Home (1955) is both a broad farce and a satire on human frailties as seen through the eyes of a billion jeering, invulnerable Martians who arrive not to conquer the world but to drive it crazy. The […]

Mickey Spillane (1918 - 2006)

Born in Brooklyn, New York City, and raised in Elizabeth, New Jersey, Spillane was the only child of his Irish bartender father, John Joseph Spillane, and his Scottish mother, Catherine Anne. Mickey Spillane attended Erasmus Hall High School, graduating in 1935. He started writing while in high school, briefly attended Fort Hays State College in […]

William Asher (1921 - 2012)

William Asher was born in New York City to stage actress Lillian Bonner and producer Ephraim M. Asher (1887-1937), whose movie credits were mostly as an associate producer. His sister Betty Asher was an MGM publicist for Judy Garland. His father was Jewish, his mother Catholic. Asher’s family moved to Los Angeles when he was […]

Jody McCrea (1934 - 2009)

Jody McCrea served in the United States Army, Special Services. He later briefly hosted Country Style, USA, an Army-produced recruiting television program filmed in Nashville, Tennessee, featuring various country entertainers. He began acting on the 1959–1960 television series Wichita Town with his father. He went on to star in films (mainly westerns), including the World […]

John Ashley (1934 - 1997)

Born John Atchley, John Ashley was reared in Oklahoma and attended Will Rogers High School in Tulsa and Oklahoma State University in Stillwater, where he studied a BA in Economics. While a student, Ashley visited a friend in California and accompanied him to the set of The Conqueror (1956). He was seen by John Wayne […]

Nestor Paiva (1905 - 1966)

Nestor Paiva (June 30, 1905 – September 9, 1966) was an American actor of Portuguese descent. Nestor Paiva is most famous for portraying Theo Gonzales the innkeeper in Walt Disney’s TV series Zorro and its feature film The Sign of Zorro, as well as Lucas the boat captain in The Creature from the Black Lagoon […]

Antonio Moreno (1887 - 1967)

Born Antonio Garrido Monteagudo in Madrid, Spain, he emigrated to the United States at the age of fourteen and settled in Massachusetts, where he completed his education. Although he claimed to have attended Williston Seminary in Easthampton, Massachusetts, the Archives of the school, now the Williston Northampton School, have no record of his having done […]

Richard Carlson (1912 - 1977)

The son of a lawyer, Richard Carlson was born in Albert Lea in southern Minnesota. He graduated from the University of Minnesota with an Master of Arts degree, summa cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa. He appeared on the Broadway stage in the 1930s after studying and teaching drama in Minnesota. His first film role was […]

Anthony Caruso (1916 - 2003)

Born in Frankfort, Indiana, Anthony Caruso was reared from the age of 10 in Long Beach, California. He made his film debut in Johnny Apollo (1940). During his long career, Caruso often portrayed villains in supporting roles and bit parts. He often played people of different descents like Italians, Indians, Arabs, Persians, Mexicans, Latinos and […]