Silvana Mangano (1930 - 1989)

Born in Rome to an Italian father and an English mother (Ivy Webb from Croydon), Silvana Mangano lived in poverty caused by the Second World War. Trained for seven years as a dancer, she was supporting herself as a model. In 1946, at age 16, Mangano won the “Miss Rome” beauty pageant and through this, she […]

June Vincent (1920 - 2008)

June Vincent (July 17, 1920 – November 20, 2008) was an American actress. June Vincent was born Dorothy June Smith in Harrod, Ohio, the daughter of Sybil Irwin and the Rev. Willis E. Smith. She began her career in film in the early 1940s. She later became a successful television actress appearing in many programs throughout […]

Josephine Hutchinson (1903 - 1998)

She was born in Seattle, Washington. Her mother, Leona Roberts, was an actress best known for her role as “Mrs. Meade” in Gone with the Wind. Through her mother’s connections, Hutchinson made her film debut at the age of thirteen in The Little Princess, starring Mary Pickford. She later attended the Cornish School of Music […]

Lilyan Tashman (1896 - 1934)

Lilyan Tashman was born the tenth and youngest child of a Jewish family in Brooklyn, New York, the daughter of Rose (née Cook), who was born in Germany, and Maurice Tashman, a clothing manufacturer from Bialystok, Poland. She freelanced as a fashion and artist’s model while attending Girl’s High School in Brooklyn and eventually entered […]

Edmund Lowe (1890 - 1971)

Edmund Lowe’s career included over 100 films in which he starred as the leading man. Edmund Lowe is best remembered for his role as Sergeant Quirt in the 1926 movie, What Price Glory. (Lowe reprised his role from the movie in the radio program Captain Flagg and Sergeant Quirt, broadcast on the Blue Network September […]

Asta Nielsen (1881 - 1972)

Asta Sofie Amalie Nielsen was born in the Vesterbro section of Copenhagen, Denmark, the daughter of an often unemployed blacksmith and a washerwoman. Nielsen’s family moved several times during her childhood while her father sought employment. They lived for several years in Malmö, Sweden where her father worked in a corn millery and then a […]

Kenne Duncan (1903 - 1972)

Kenne Duncan (February 17, 1903 – February 5, 1972) was a Canadian-born B-movie character actor. Hyped professionally as “The Meanest Man in the Movies,” the vast majority of his over 250 appearances on camera were Westerns, but he also did occasional forays into horror, crime drama, and science fiction. He also appeared in over a […]

William Boyd (1895 - 1972)

Boyd was born in Hendrysburg in Belmont County, located 26 miles east of Cambridge, Ohio. He was reared in Tulsa, Oklahoma, the son of day laborer Charles William Boyd and his wife, the former Lida Wilkens. Following his father’s death, he moved to California and worked as an orange picker, surveyor, tool dresser and auto […]

Nigel Green (1924 - 1972)

The son of a professor, Nigel Green attended King’s College School, Wimbledon and the University of London followed by the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art. During the Second World War, he trained as an Observer in the Royal Navy’s Fleet Air Arm. He appeared on stage at the Old Vic before making his first forays into […]

Brian Donlevy (1901 - 1972)

Brian Donlevy was born in 1901 in Portadown, County Armagh, Ireland, to Rebecca (née Parks) and Thomas Donlevy. Sometime between 1910 and 1912 the family moved to Sheboygan Falls, Wisconsin, where Donlevy’s father worked as a supervisor at the Brickner Woolen Mills. When the local Army National Guard company was called into service for the Pancho […]

Janet Munro (1934 - 1972)

Janet Munro (28 September 1934 – 6 December 1972) was an English actress. Janet Munro starred in three Disney film releases, Darby O’Gill and the Little People (1959), Third Man on the Mountain (1959) and Swiss Family Robinson (1960), as well as The Horsemasters (1961), which aired on Disney’s weekly television series. Other film credits include […]

Isabel Jewell (1907 - 1972)

Born in Shoshoni, Fremont County, Wyoming, Isabel Jewell was educated at St. Mary’s Academy in Minnesota and at Hamilton College in Kentucky. After years in theater stock companies, including an 87-week stint in Lincoln, Nebraska, she hit the big time after getting a part on Broadway in “Up Pops the Devil” (1930). She received glowing critical […]

Joi Lansing (1928 - 1972)

Joi Lansing was born Joy Brown in Salt Lake City, Utah, in 1928 to Jack Glenn Brown, a shoe salesman, and Virginia Grace (née Shupe) Brown, a housewife. She would later be known as Joyce Wassmansdorff, which was the surname of her stepfather. The family moved to Los Angeles in 1940. She began modeling in […]

Reginald Owen (1887 - 1972)

The son of Joseph and Frances Owen, Reginald Owen studied at Sir Herbert Tree’s Royal Academy of Dramatic Art and made his professional debut in 1905. In 1911 he starred in the original production of Where the Rainbow Ends as Saint George which opened to very good reviews on 21 December 1911. Reginald Owen had […]

Leo Carroll (1886 - 1972)

Leo Carroll was born in Weedon Bec, Northamptonshire, to William and Catherine Carroll. His Roman Catholic parents named him after then-Pope Leo XIII. In 1897, his family lived in York, where his Irish-born father was a foreman in an ordnance store. In the 1901 Census for West Ham, London, his occupation is listed as “wine […]

Jerome Cowan (1897 - 1972)

Jerome Palmer Cowan (October 6, 1897 – January 24, 1972) was an American stage, film, and television actor. At eighteen he joined a travelling stock company, shortly afterwards enlisting in the United States Navy during World War I. After the war he returned to the stage and became a vaudeville headliner, then gained success on […]

Akim Tamiroff (1899 - 1972)

Akim Tamiroff was born in Tiflis, Russian Empire (now Tbilisi, Georgia), of Armenian ancestry. He trained at the Moscow Art Theatre drama school. He arrived in the U.S. in 1923 on a tour with a troupe of actors and decided to stay. Tamiroff managed to develop a career in Hollywood despite his thick Russian accent. Tamiroff’s […]

Gia Scala (1934 - 1972)

Gia Scala was born Josephine Grace Johanna Scoglio in Liverpool, Lancashire, to a Sicilian father, Pietro Scoglio, and an Irish mother, Eileen O’Sullivan. She had one sister, Tina Scala, also an actress. Gia was raised in Messina, and Mili San Marco, Sicily, the latter was upon her grandfather—Natale Scoglio’s estate. He was the largest agriculturist […]

Rosemarie Frankland (1943 - 2000)

Born in Rhosllannerchrugog, Denbighshire, in north-east Wales in 1943, Rosemarie Frankland moved to Lancashire, England, as a child. She took part in many beauty pageants and won the title of Miss Wales and, later in 1961 in London, she became (as Miss United Kingdom) the first British woman and the seventh European (Sweden won the […]

Marilyn Maxwell (1921 - 1972)

Marilyn Maxwell was a native of Clarinda, Iowa. She started her professional entertaining career as a radio singer while still a teenager before signing with Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer in 1942 as a contract player. Among the programs in which she appeared were Beat the Band and The Abbott and Costello Show. The head of MGM, Louis B. Mayer, […]

Dorothy Wellman (1913 - 2009)

Wellman was born Dorothy Coonan in Minneapolis, Minnesota. She moved to Los Angeles, California with her family as a child. Her career as a dancer began at the age of 14 with Warner Brothers Studios. Her early film credits as an on-screen dancer and actress included small, uncredited parts in such early talkies as The Broadway […]

Rochelle Hudson (1916 - 1972)

The Oklahoma City-born actress, Rochelle Hudson, may be best remembered today for costarring in Wild Boys of the Road (1933), playing Cosette in Les Misérables (1935), playing Mary Blair, the older sister of Shirley Temple’s character in Curly Top, and for playing Natalie Wood’s mother in Rebel Without a Cause (1955). During her peak years in […]

Meena Kumari (1932 - 1972)

Meena Kumari was the third daughter of Ali Baksh and Iqbal Begum. Khursheed and Madhu were her two elder sisters. At the time of her birth, her parents were unable to pay the fees of the doctor who had delivered her, so her father left her at a Muslim orphanage. However, he picked her up […]

Tom Neal (1914 - 1972)

Born in Evanston, Illinois, Tom Neal was one of three children born to banker Thomas, Sr. and Mayme Neal (née Martin). He had two older sisters, Mary Elizabeth and Dorothy Helen. His great uncle was John Drew. Neal and his sisters were raised in a spacious ten-room home in Chicago. He attended Lake Forest Academy […]

Lane Chandler (1899 - 1972)

Lane Chandler was born as Robert Chandler Oakes on a ranch near Culbertson, Montana, the son of a horse rancher. At an early age, the family relocated to Helena, Montana, where he graduated from high school. He briefly attended Montana Wesleyan College (which later merged and became part of Rocky Mountain College), but quit to […]

Marie Wilson (1916 - 1972)

Born in Anaheim, California, Marie Wilson began her career in New York City as a dancer on the Broadway stage. She gained national prominence with My Friend Irma on radio, film and later, television. The show made her a star but typecast her almost interminably as the quintessential dumb blonde, which she played in numerous […]

John Litel (1892 - 1972)

John Litel (December 30, 1892 – February 3, 1972) was an American film and television actor. During World War I, Litel enlisted in the French Army and was twice decorated for bravery. Back in the U.S. after the war, Litel enrolled in the American Academy of Dramatic Arts and began his stage career. In 1929, he started […]

Esma Cannon (1905 - 1972)

Her film début was an uncredited part in The Man Behind the Mask (1936); she was first credited as Polly Shepherd in The Last Adventurers (1937), and she appeared in 64 films over the next 26 years. She had small parts in three early Powell and Pressburger films: The Spy in Black (1939), Contraband (1940) […]

Lane Bradford (1922 - 1973)

Lane Bradford (August 29, 1922 – June 7, 1973) was an American actor. Bradford was born in Yonkers, New York, the son of actor John Merton (1901-1959). Lane Bradford was the brother of actor Robert Lavarre. Bradford appeared in many television series and “B” western movies. On stage, he co-starred in Desperadoes’ Outpost (1952), The Great Sioux […]

Arlene Martel (1936 - 2014)

In 1962, Arlene Martel made her first of two appearances on Perry Mason, as Fiona Cregan in “The Case of the Absent Artist”. Later, she guest starred as Sandra Dunkel in “The Case of the Dead Ringer” (1966) when Raymond Burr played a dual role, that of Mason and as the actual murderer, Grimes. Martel […]