William Cameron Menzies (1896 - 1957)

William Cameron Menzies was born in New Haven, Connecticut to Scots immigrant parents, Charles A. and Helen originally from Aberfeldy, Scotland. He studied at Yale and the University of Edinburgh, and after serving in the US Army during World War I he attended the Art Students League of New York. Menzies joined Famous Players-Lasky, later to […]

Morris Ankrum (1896 - 1964)

Born Morris Nussbaum in Danville in Vermilion County in eastern Illinois, Morris Ankrum originally began a career in academics. After graduating from The University of Southern California with a law degree, he went on to an associate professorship in economics at the University of California, Berkeley. While at Berkeley he became involved in the drama […]

Hugh Marlowe (1911 - 1982)

Hugh Marlowe was born Hugh Herbert Hipple in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and began his stage career in the 1930s at the Pasadena Playhouse in California. Marlowe was usually a secondary lead or supporting actor in the films he appeared in. In 1939-40, Marlowe was in two network radio programs. He was Jim Curtis in the soap opera […]

Barbara Read (1917 - 1963)

Born in Port Arthur, Ontario, Canada, Barbara Read relocated to California during the mid-1930s. Read received her first movie contract while living with in Laguna Beach, California. She was watching a film production in Laguna when she was spotted and offered a screen test. She was given a six-month contract with the production company. When […]

William Talman (1915 - 1968)

Talman was born in Detroit, Michigan, to Ada Barber and William Whitney Talman, a vice president of an electronics company. His maternal grandparents, Catherine Gandy and James Wells Barber, were immigrants from England. Talman founded the drama club at the Cranbrook School in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan. He continued to act at Dartmouth College and the University […]

William Hopper (1915 - 1970)

William DeWolf Hopper, Jr., was born January 26, 1915, in New York City. He was the only child of noted actor, singer, comedian and theatrical producer DeWolf Hopper and his fifth wife, actress Hedda Hopper. William Hopper had one older half-brother, John A. Hopper, from his father’s second marriage in the 1880s. Hopper made his […]

Hedda Hopper (1885 - 1966)

Hedda Hopper was born Elda Furry in Hollidaysburg, Pennsylvania, the daughter of Margaret (née Miller 1856-1941) and David Furry, a butcher, both members of the German Baptist Brethren. Her siblings included Dora, Sherman, Cameron, Edgar, Frank and Margaret. Her family was of Pennsylvania Dutch (German) descent. The family moved to Altoona when Elda was three. She […]

Dalton Trumbo (1905 - 1976)

Dalton Trumbo was born in Montrose, Colorado, the son of Maud (née Tillery) and Orus Bonham Trumbo. His family moved to Grand Junction in 1908. He was proud of his paternal ancestor, a Franco-Swiss immigrant named Jacob Trumbo (possibly anglicized spelling of Trumbeau), who settled in the colony of Virginia in 1736. Trumbo graduated from […]

Victor Jory (1902 - 1982)

Born in Dawson City, Yukon, of American parents, he was the boxing and wrestling champion of the United States Coast Guard during his military service, and he kept his burly physique. Victor Jory toured with theater troupes and appeared on Broadway, before making his Hollywood debut in 1930. He initially played romantic leads, but later […]

Rod Cameron (1910 - 1983)

Cameron was born Nathan Roderick Cox in Calgary, Alberta. He moved to Hollywood as a young man and started out as a stuntman and bit player for Paramount Pictures. His early films include Heritage of the Desert with Donald Woods and Russell Hayden, Rangers of Fortune with Fred MacMurray, and Henry Aldrich for President with […]

Walter Slezak (1902 - 1983)

Born in Vienna, Austria, the son of opera tenor Leo Slezak and Elsa Wertheim, he studied medicine for a time and later worked as a bank teller. He was talked into taking his first role, in the 1922 Austrian film Sodom und Gomorrah, by his friend and the film’s director, Michael Curtiz. In his early […]

John Hodiak (1914 - 1955)

John Hodiak was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, the son of Walter Hodiak (October 25, 1888 – August 21, 1962) and Anna Pogorzelec (February 28, 1888 – October 17, 1971). He was of Ukrainian and Polish descent. Hodiak grew up in Hamtramck, Michigan. Hodiak had his first theatrical experience at age 11, acting in Ukrainian and Russian […]

Ralph Nelson (1916 - 1987)

Ralph Nelson was born into a Swedish-American family in Long Island City, New York in 1916. He became interested in the theater while attending high school, and won an oratory contest sponsored by the “New York Times” in 1932. His interest in the theater lead him to Broadway, where he worked as an errand boy […]

Sylvia Ashley (1904 - 1977)

Sylvia Ashley was born Edith Louisa Sylvia Hawkes in Paddington, London, England, a daughter of Arthur Hawkes and Edith Florence Hyde. (Although she preferred giving her year of birth as 1906, the England and Wales Civil Registration Index, Vol. 1a, Page 26, shows it was recorded during the June quarter of 1904, District of Paddington.) […]

Anna Held (1872 - 1918)

Born in Warsaw, Congress Poland, Russian Empire, she was the daughter of a German-Jewish glove maker, Shimmle (aka Maurice) Held, and his French-Jewish wife, Yvonne Pierre. Sources of her year of birth range from 1865 to 1873. In 1881, antisemitic pogroms forced the family to flee to Paris, France. When her father’s glovemaking business failed, […]

William Horatio Powell (1892 - 1984)

An only child, William Horatio Powell was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, the son of Nettie Manila (née Brady) and Horatio Warren Powell, on July 29, 1892. His father was born in West Middlesex, Pennsylvania (where Powell spent his boyhood summers), to William S. and Harriet Powell. Powell showed an early aptitude for performing. In 1907, […]

Dick Powell (1904 - 1970)

Dick Powell was born in Mountain View, the seat of Stone County in northern Arkansas. The family moved to Little Rock in 1914, where Powell sang in church choirs and with a local orchestras and started his own band. Powell attended the former Little Rock College, before he started his entertainment career as a singer […]

Frank Borzage (1894 - 1962)

Frank Borzage’s father, Luigi Borzaga, was born in Ronzone, (then Austria-Hungary, now Italy) in 1859. As a stonemason, he sometimes worked in Switzerland; he met his future wife, Maria Ruegg (b. 1860, Ricken, Switzerland, – d. 1947, Los Angeles), where she worked in a silk factory. Borzaga emigrated to Hazleton, Pennsylvania in the early 1880s […]

Val Lewton (1904 - 1951)

Lewton was born Vladimir Ivanovich Leventon (Russian: Владимир Иванович Левентон, Ukrainian: Володимир Іванович Левентон) in Yalta, Imperial Russia (now in Ukraine), in 1904. He was of Jewish descent, the son of moneylender Max Hofschneider and Nina Leventon, a pharmacist’s daughter. The family converted to Christianity. He was nephew of actress Alla Nazimova. His mother left his […]

Arthur Freed (1894 - 1973)

Arthur Freed was born to a Jewish family in Charleston, South Carolina, and began his career as a song-plugger and pianist in Chicago. After meeting Minnie Marx, he sang as part of the act of her sons, the Marx Brothers, on the vaudeville circuit, and also wrote material for the brothers. He soon began to […]

Cedric Gibbons (1893 - 1960)

Austin Cedric Gibbons (March 23, 1893 – July 26, 1960) was an Irish art director and production designer for the film industry. He also made a significant contribution to motion picture theater architecture from the 1930s to 1950s. He is credited as the designer of the Oscar statuette in 1928. Nominated for thirty-eight Oscars himself […]

Walter Plunkett (1902 - 1982)

Walter Plunkett (June 5, 1902 in Oakland, California – March 8, 1982) was a prolific costume designer who worked on more than 150 projects throughout his career in the Hollywood film industry. Born in Oakland, California, Walter Plunkett studied law at the University of California, where he was a member of the California-Alpha chapter of Sigma […]

Orry-Kelly (1898 - 1964)

Orry-Kelly was born in Kiama, New South Wales, Australia, and was known as Jack Kelly. His father William Kelly was born on the Isle of Man and was a gentleman tailor in Kiama. Orry was a name of an ancient King of the Isle of Man. Orry-Kelly was sent to Sydney at age 17 to […]

Norman Norell (1900 - 1972)

Norman Norell (born Norman David Levinson on April 20, 1900 in Noblesville, Indiana; died October 25, 1972 in New York City) was an American fashion designer known for his elegant suits and tailored silhouettes. The son of a haberdasher, from early childhood Norell had an ambition to become an artist. After spending a short period at […]

Hattie Carnegie (1880 - 1956)

Hattie Carnegie (15 March 1880 – 22 February 1956) was a fashion entrepreneur based in New York City from the 1920s to the 1960s. She was born in Vienna, Austria-Hungary as Henrietta Kanengeiser. The second oldest of seven children, Hattie Carnegie’s father was an Austrian Jewish artist and tailor, thought to have introduced her to the […]

Irene Sharaff (1910 - 1993)

Sharaff was born in Boston and studied at the New York School of Fine and Applied Arts, the Art Students League of New York, and the Académie de la Grande Chaumière in Paris. After working as a fashion illustrator in her youth, Sharaff turned to set and costume design. Her debut production was the 1931 Broadway […]

Jean Louis (1907 - 1997)

Jean Louis (born Jean Louis Berthault: October 5, 1907 in Paris, France – April 20, 1997 in Palm Springs, California, USA) was a French-born, Hollywood costume designer and an Academy Award winner for Costume Design. Before coming to Hollywood he worked in New York for fashion entrepreneur Hattie Carnegie, where the clientele included Joan Cohn, […]

Sidney Luft (1915 - 2005)

He was born Michael Sidney Luft in New York City, to Jewish immigrants from Russia and Germany. His family moved to Westchester County, where he grew up. Luft was once an amateur boxer and bar-room brawler and had the nickname “One-Punch Luft.” He was a pilot in the Royal Canadian Air Force and in the early […]

Florence Ryerson (1892 - 1965)

Florence Ryerson was born in Glendale, California. She was the daughter of Charles Dwight Willard and Mary McGregor. Charles Dwight Willard (1860-1914), journalist and political reformer, was an 1883 graduate of the University of Michigan, worked on the Los Angeles Times and Los Angeles Herald, and was author of The Fall of Ulysses – An […]

Sam Peckinpah (1925 - 1984)

David Samuel “Sam” Peckinpah was born February 21, 1925, in Fresno, California, where he attended both grammar school and high school. He spent much time skipping classes with his brother to engage in cowboy activities on their grandfather Denver Church’s ranch, including trapping, branding, and shooting. During the 1930s and 1940s, Coarsegold and Bass Lake […]