Alan J. Pakula (1928 - 1998)

Alan J. Pakula started his Hollywood career as an assistant in the cartoon department at Warner Brothers. In 1957, he undertook his first production role for Paramount Pictures. In 1962, he produced To Kill a Mockingbird, for which he was nominated for a Best Picture Academy Award. Alan J. Pakula had a successful professional relationship […]

Jason Robards (1922 - 2000)

Robards was born in Chicago, the son of Hope Maxine (née Glanville) Robards and Jason Robards, Sr., an actor who regularly appeared on the stage and in such early films as The Gamblers (1929). Robards was of German, English, Welsh, Irish, and Swedish descent. The family moved to New York City, when Jason Jr. was still […]

Luigi Comencini (1916 - 2007)

Luigi Comencini (Italian pronunciation: [luˈiːdʒi komenˈtʃiːni]; 8 June 1916 – 6 April 2007) was an Italian film director. Together with Dino Risi, Ettore Scola and Mario Monicelli, Luigi Comencini was considered among the masters of the commedia all’italiana genre. His first successful movie was L’imperatore di Capri, featuring Totò. Comencini’s 1953 Pane, amore e fantasia, […]

Virna Lisi (1936 - 2014)

Ancona-born Virna Lisi began her film career in her teens. Discovered in Paris by two Neapolitan producers, Antonio Ferrigno and Ettore Pesce, she debuted in La corda d’acciaio (The Steel Rope, 1953). Initially, she did musical films, like E Napoli canta (Napoli Sings, 1953) and the successful Questa è la vita (Of Life and Love, […]

Lee Marvin (1924 - 1987)

Lee Marvin was born in New York City. He was the son of Lamont Waltman Marvin, an advertising executive and the head of the New York and New England Apple Institute, and his wife Courtenay Washington (née Davidge), a fashion writer and beauty consultant. As with his older brother, Robert, he was named in honor […]

Paddy Chayefsky (1923 - 1981)

Sidney Aaron “Paddy” Chayefsky (January 29, 1923 – August 1, 1981) was an American playwright, screenwriter and novelist. He is the only person to have won three solo Academy Awards for Best Screenplay (the other three-time winners, Woody Allen, Francis Ford Coppola, Charles Brackett and Billy Wilder, have all shared their awards with co-writers). He was […]

Delbert Mann (1920 - 2007)

Delbert Martin Mann, Jr. (January 30, 1920 – November 11, 2007) was an American television and film director. Delbert Mann won the Palme d’Or (Golden Palm) at the Cannes Film Festival and the Academy Award for Best Director for the film Marty. It was the first Best Picture winner to be based on a television […]

Terence Rattigan (1911 - 1977)

Terence Rattigan was born in 1911 in South Kensington, London, United Kingdom, of Irish Protestant extraction. He had an elder brother, Brian. They were the grandsons of Sir William Henry Rattigan, a notable India-based jurist, and later a Liberal Unionist Member of Parliament for North-East Lanarkshire. His father was Frank Rattigan CMG, a diplomat whose […]

Anthony Asquith (1902 - 1968)

The Honourable Anthony Asquith (/ˈæskwɪθ/; 9 November 1902 – 20 February 1968) was a leading English film director. He collaborated successfully with playwright Terence Rattigan on The Winslow Boy (1948) and The Browning Version (1951), among other adaptations. His other notable films include Pygmalion (1938), French Without Tears (1940), The Way to the Stars (1945), […]

Iris Tree (1897 - 1968)

Iris Tree (27 January 1897 – 13 April 1968) was an English poet, actress and artists’ model, described as a bohemian, an eccentric, a wit and an adventuress. Her parents were actors Sir Herbert Beerbohm Tree and Helen Maud Tree, and her sisters were actresses Felicity and Viola Tree. An aunt was author Constance Beerbohm, and […]

Jules Furthman (1888 - 1966)

Jules Furthman (March 5, 1888 – September 22, 1966) was a magazine and newspaper writer before working as a screenwriter. Born in Chicago, Illinois, he was the brother of writer Charles Furthman. During World War I Jules wrote under the name “Stephen Fox” as he thought Furthman sounded too German. He wrote screenplays for a number […]

Ronald Colman (1891 - 1958)

He was born in Richmond, Surrey, England, as Ronald Charles Colman, the second son and fourth child of Charles Colman and his wife Marjory Read Fraser. His siblings included Eric, Edith and Marjorie. He was educated at boarding school in Littlehampton, where he discovered that he enjoyed acting, despite his shyness. He intended to study […]

William Farnum (1876 - 1953)

One of three brothers, William Farnum grew up in a family of actors. He made his acting debut at the age of ten in Richmond, Virginia in a production of Julius Caesar, with Edwin Booth playing the title character. His first major success was as the title character of Ben-Hur in 1900 though replacing the original […]

Herbert Mundin (1898 - 1939)

Herbert Mundin was born as Herbert Thomas Mundin in St Helens, then in Lancashire (now part of Merseyside). His father was a nomadic, Primitive Methodist home missionary. His family moved within a short time of his birth to St Albans in Hertfordshire (the 1901 census data reveal that the family lived at St Helens Villa, […]

Frank Lloyd (1886 - 1960)

Frank William George Lloyd (2 February 1886 – 10 August 1960) was a Scottish-American film director, scriptwriter and producer. He was among the founders of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, and was its president from 1934-35. Frank Lloyd was born in Glasgow, Scotland. His mother Jane was Scottish and his father Edmund was […]

Delmer Daves (1904 - 1977)

Born in San Francisco, Delmer Daves first pursued a career as a lawyer. While attending Stanford University, he became interested in the burgeoning film industry, first working as a prop boy on the Western The Covered Wagon (1923) and serving as a technical advisor on a number of films. After finishing his education in law, […]

Movita Castaneda (1916 - 2015)

Movita Castaneda, a Mexican American, was born in Nogales, Arizona, on a train travelling between Mexico and Arizona. Movita began her acting career singing the Carioca to Ginger Rogers and Fred Astaire’s first dance number in the first film in which the famous duo appeared together, Flying Down to Rio (1933). She continued playing exotic […]

Anna Kashfi (1934 - 2015)

Anna Kashfi was born as Joan O’Callaghan in Darjeeling, India, to William Patrick O’Callaghan, a traffic superintendent on the Indian State railways, who was from London but of Irish descent, and his wife, Phoebe. She was raised in Calcutta until she was 13, when the family relocated to Cardiff, Wales. Upon her family’s relocation to Wales, […]

Chief Dan George (1899 - 1981)

Born as Geswanouth Slahoot in North Vancouver, his English name was originally Dan Slaholt. The surname was changed to George when he entered a residential school at age 5. He worked at a number of different jobs, including as a longshoreman, construction worker, and school bus driver, and was band chief of the Tsleil-Waututh Nation […]

William Gibson (1914 - 2008)

William Gibson (November 13, 1914 – November 25, 2008) was an American playwright and novelist. He graduated from the City College of New York in 1938, and was of Irish, French, German, Dutch and Russian ancestry. William Gibson’s most famous play is The Miracle Worker (1959), the story of Helen Keller’s childhood education, which won him […]

Arthur Penn (1922 - 2010)

Arthur Penn was born to a Russian Jewish family in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, the son of Sonia (Greenberg), a nurse, and Harry Penn, a watchmaker. He was the younger brother of Irving Penn, the successful fashion photographer. During the 1920s, he moved in with his mother after she divorced Penn’s father. Some time after, he came […]

Fred Coe (1914 - 1979)

Fred Coe (December 13, 1914 – April 29, 1979), nicknamed Pappy, was a television producer and director most famous for The Goodyear Television Playhouse/The Philco Television Playhouse in 1948-1955 and Playhouse 90 from 1957 to 1959. Among the live TV dramas he produced were Marty and The Trip to Bountiful for ‘Goodyear/Philco’, Peter Pan for […]

Spencer Tracy (1900 - 1967)

Spencer Bonaventure Tracy (April 5, 1900 – June 10, 1967) was an American actor, noted for his natural style and versatility. One of the major stars of Hollywood’s Golden Age, Spencer Tracy was nominated for nine Academy Awards for Best Actor and won two, sharing the record for nominations in that category with Laurence Olivier. Tracy […]

Stanley Kramer (1913 - 2001)

Stanley Earl Kramer (September 29, 1913 – February 19, 2001) was an American film director and producer, responsible for making many of Hollywood’s most famous “message films”. As an independent producer and director, he brought attention to topical social issues that most studios avoided. Among the subjects covered in his films were racism (in The […]

Yip Harburg (1896 - 1981)

Yip Harburg, the youngest of four surviving children (out of ten), was born Isidore Hochberg on the Lower East Side of New York City on April 8, 1896. His parents, Lewis Hochberg and Mary Ricing, were Yiddish-speaking Orthodox Jews who had emigrated from Russia. Isidore later adopted the name Edgar Harburg, and came to be best […]

Charley Grapewin (1869 - 1956)

Born in Xenia, Ohio, Charles Ellsworth Grapewin ran away from home to be a circus acrobat which led him to work as an aerialist and trapeze artist in a traveling circus before turning to acting. He traveled all over the world with the famous P. T. Barnum circus. Interestingly, Charley Grapewin also appeared in the […]

Clara Blandick (1876 - 1962)

She was born Clara Dickey, the daughter of Isaac B. and Hattie (née Mudgett) Dickey, aboard the Willard Mudgett – an American ship captained by her father (named after one of her maternal relatives), and docked in Victoria Harbour, Hong Kong. She was delivered by Captain William H. Blanchard, whose ship, “Wealthy Pendleton,” was anchored […]

Fred MacMurray (1908 - 1991)

Fred MacMurray was born in Kankakee, Illinois, the son of Maleta (Martin) and Frederick MacMurray, both natives of Wisconsin. His aunt was vaudeville performer and actress Fay Holderness. When MacMurray was two years old the family moved to Madison, Wisconsin, and later settled in Beaver Dam, Wisconsin, where his mother had been born in 1880. […]

Marjorie Main (1890 - 1975)

Born Mary Tomlinson in Acton, Indiana, Main attended Franklin College in Franklin, Indiana, and adopted a stage name to avoid embarrassing her father, Samuel J. Tomlinson (married to Jennie L. McGaughey), who was a church minister. She worked in vaudeville on the Chautauqua and Orpheum Circuits, and debuted on Broadway in 1916. Her first film was […]

Phyllis Love (1925 - 2011)

Following her graduation in 1948 from Pittsburgh’s Carnegie Institute of Technology (which later would merge with Mellon Institute of Industrial Research to form Carnegie Mellon University), Phyllis Love made her way to New York, where, in short order, Phyllis Love  would gain entry into the recently formed Actors Studio. Her small screen debut would come […]