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 […]

Louis Jourdan (1921 - 2015)

Louis Jourdan was born Louis Robert Gendre in Marseille, France, in 1921, one of three sons of Yvonne (née Jourdan) and Henry Gendre, a hotel owner. He was educated in France, Turkey, and the UK, and studied acting at the École Dramatique. While there, he began acting on the professional stage, where he was brought […]

Cecil Day-Lewis (1904 - 1972)

Day-Lewis was born in Ballintubbert, Athy/Stradbally border, Queen’s County (now known as County Laois), Ireland. He was the son of the Reverend Frank Cecil Day-Lewis (died 29 July 1937) and Kathleen Blake (née Squires; died 1906). Some of his family was from England (Hertfordshire and Canterbury). His father took on the surname “Day-Lewis” as a […]

Jill Balcon (1925 - 2009)

Jill Angela Henriette Balcon (3 January 1925 – 18 July 2009) was an English film and radio actress. Jill Balcon made her film debut in Nicholas Nickleby (1947), though she was best known for her stage, television, and radio work. Balcon was born in Westminster, London, the daughter of Aileen Freda Leatherman (1904–1988) and Michael Balcon. […]

Michael Balcon (1896 - 1977)

Born in Birmingham, Michael Balcon was the youngest son and fourth of five children of Louis Balcon (c. 1858–1946) and his wife, Laura (née Greenberg; c. 1863–1934), Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe who had met in Britain. Growing up in a respectable but impoverished setting, in 1907 Balcon won a scholarship to Birmingham’s George Dixon […]

Alberto Cavalcanti (1897 - 1982)

Alberto Cavalcanti was born in Rio de Janeiro, the son of a prominent mathematician. He was a precociously intelligent child, and by the age of 15 was studying law at university. Following an argument with a professor he was expelled. His father sent him to Geneva, Switzerland on condition that he did not study law […]

Chips Rafferty (1909 - 1971)

Chips Rafferty was born John William Pilbean Goffage in Broken Hill, New South Wales to John Goffage, an English-born stock agent, and Australian-born Violet Maude Joyce. Gaining the nickname “Chips” as a school boy, Rafferty studied at Parramatta Commercial High School before working in a variety of jobs, including opal miner, sheep shearer, drover, airman […]

Vincente Minnelli (1903 - 1986)

Vincente Minnelli born and baptized as Lester Anthony Minnelli in Chicago, he was the youngest of four known sons, only two of whom survived to adulthood, born to Marie Émilie Odile Lebeau (stage name: Mina Gennell) and Vincent Charles Minnelli. His father was musical conductor of Minnelli Brothers’ Tent Theater. His Chicago-born mother was of […]

Rachel Roberts (1927 - 1980)

Rachel Roberts was born in Llanelli, Carmarthenshire, Wales. After a Baptist upbringing (against which she rebelled), followed by study at the University of Wales and the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, she began working with a repertory company in Swansea in 1950. She made her film debut in the Welsh-set comedy Valley of Song (1953), […]

Kay Kendall (1927 - 1959)

She was born Justine Kay Kendall McCarthy, at Stanley House, Hull Road, in Withernsea, a coastal resort in the East Riding of Yorkshire, England. Kendall’s father was Terrence “Terry” McCarthy (aka Terry Kendall), the vaudevillian son of music hall star Marie Kendall. Kay’s mother was the former Gladys Drewery. She had two elder siblings, Terrence Justin […]

Rouben Mamoulian (1897 - 1987)

Mamoulian was born in Tbilisi, Georgia (ruled at that time by imperial Russia), to an Armenian family. His mother Virginia (née Kalantarian) was a director of the Armenian theater, and his father, Zachary Mamoulian, was a bank president. Mamoulian relocated to England and started directing plays in London in 1922. He was brought to America […]

Brian Keith (1921 - 1997)

Brian Keith was born Robert Alba Keith in Bayonne, New Jersey, on November 14, 1921, to actor Robert Keith and stage actress Helena Shipman, a native of Aberdeen, Washington. Some sources also list his full name as Brian Robert Keith. He was raised Roman Catholic. His parents divorced, and he moved to Hollywood and started […]

Joan Leslie (1925 - 2015)

Joan Agnes Theresa Sadie Brodel was born on January 26, 1925 in Highland Park, Michigan, she was the youngest child of John and Agnes Brodel. John was a bank clerk and Agnes was a pianist. Leslie’s two older sisters, Betty and Mary Brodel, shared their mother’s musical interest and started to learn how to play instruments […]

Peter Yates (1929 - 2011)

The son of an army officer, Peter Yates attended Charterhouse School as a boy, graduated from the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art and worked for some years as an actor, director and stage manager. In the 1950s he started in the film industry as a dubbing assistant and later an assistant director for Tony Richardson […]

Allan Dwan (1885 - 1981)

Born Joseph Aloysius Dwan in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, Allan Dwan,who was the younger son of commercial traveller of woolen clothing Joseph Michael Dwan (1857-1917) and his wife Mary Jane Dwan, nee Hunt, moved with his family to the United States when he was seven years old, on December 4, 1892 by ferry from Windsor to […]

Leo Gordon (1922 - 2000)

Leo Gordon was born in Brooklyn in New York City on December 2, 1922. Reared by his father in dire poverty, Gordon grew up during the Great Depression. He left school in the eighth grade, went to work in construction and demolition, and then joined the New Deal agency, the Civilian Conservation Corps, in which […]

Brian Hutton (1935 - 2014)

Brian Hutton was born in New York City and studied at the Actors Studio. Brian Hutton had a brief acting career between 1954–62, including an appearance as an army deserter in the episode “Custer” in Gunsmoke (series 2, 1956), as well as two guest appearances on Perry Mason in 1957: he played Rod Gleason in […]

Diane Cilento (1933 - 2011)

Diane Cilento was born in Mooloolaba, Queensland, Australia. Her parents, Sir Raphael Cilento and Phyllis, Lady Cilento (née Phyllis Dorothy McGlew),[4] were both distinguished medical practitioners in Queensland. Her paternal great-grandfather was Italian. Her maternal grandfather was merchant and exporter Charles Thomas McGlew. At an early age she decided to follow a career as an actress […]

Eric Ambler (1909 - 1998)

Eric Ambler was born in London into a family of entertainers who ran a puppet show, with which he helped in his early years. Both parents also worked as music hall artists. Later he studied engineering at Northampton Polytechnic in Islington (now City University, London), and served a traineeship with an engineering company. However, his […]

Roy Ward Baker (1916 - 2010)

Born in London where his father was a Billingsgate fish merchant, Roy Ward Baker was educated at a Lycée in Rouen, France, and at the City of London School. From 1934 to 1939, he worked for Gainsborough Pictures, a British film production company based in the Islington district of London. His first jobs were menial, […]