Raaj Kumar (1926 - 1996)

Raaj Kumar was born in Loralai, Balochistan, Pakistan in a Kashmiri Pandit family. In the late 1940s he moved to Mumbai, India where he became Sub-inspector of the Mumbai Police. He married Jennifer, an Anglo-Indian, whom he met on a flight where she was the airhostess. She later changed her name to Gayatri per Hindu […]

Heather Sears (1935 - 1994)

Although not from an acting family (her father was a distinguished London doctor), she was already performing in plays at the age of 5 and even writing them at the age of 8. Sears had a long association with France and French culture which began in her childhood when she spent summers in Brittany with […]

Alain Cuny (1908 - 1994)

Alain Cuny (12 July 1908 – 16 May 1994) was a French actor. He was born René Xavier Marie in Saint-Malo, Brittany, and studied medicine for a while before entering the film industry as a costume and set designer. Cuny started acting in the 1930s. Among his most notable films are Les Visiteurs du soir (1942), […]

Marjorie Weaver (1913 - 1994)

Marjorie Weaver Born in Crossville, Tennessee to John Thomas Weaver and his wife, Ellen (née Martin), she attended the University of Kentucky, and later the Indiana University, with interests in music. Weaver began her acting career as a stage actress in the early 1930s, and also worked as a model during that period, as well […]

Ernest Clark (1912 - 1994)

Clark was the son of a master builder in Maida Vale, and was educated nearby at St Marylebone Grammar School. After leaving school he became a reporter on a local newspaper in Croydon. He had always wanted to be an actor and when offered a job with the local rep, he took it and apart […]

David Langton (1912 - 1994)

David Langton was born Basil Muir Langton-Dodds to a middle class family in Motherwell, Lanarkshire in 1912. His father was a wine merchant and Langton’s family moved to England when he was four years old. He attended a prep school in Bath, Somerset and left education at the age of 16. Langton’s father had always […]

Richard Rust (1938 - 1994)

Rust’s mother died when he was five, and his father was an officer in the United States Navy. Therefore, Rust lived with an aunt in New York City, where he studied at the Neighborhood Playhouse at 340 East 54th Street in Manhattan. In 1957, Rust was chosen as a replacement in Eugene O’Neill’s Long Day’s Journey […]

Janis Carter (1913 - 1994)

Janis Carter (October 10, 1913 – July 30, 1994) was a film and television actress working in the 1940s and 1950s. After attending Mather College in Cleveland, Ohio, Carter headed to New York in an attempt to start an opera career. Although unsuccessful in opera, she was working on Broadway when she was spotted on stage […]

Jack Bailey (1907 - 1980)

A former vaudeville musician and World’s Fair barker, Bailey is best remembered as the host of Queen for a Day, a daytime game show which first aired on the Mutual Radio Network in 1945 and later moved to television, where it ran locally in the Los Angeles area from 1948 through 1955, on the NBC […]

Ron Vawter (1948 - 1994)

Vawter was born in Latham, New York, to Matilda (Buttoni) and Elton Lee Vawter. His maternal grandparents were Italian. He originated roles in Rumstick Road, Nayatt School, Point Judith (an epilog), Route 1 & 9, Hula, L.S.D. (…Just the High Points…), Frank Dell’s The Temptation of Saint Antony, North Atlantic, and Brace Up!. He appeared […]

Lili Damita (1904 - 1994)

Born Liliane Marie-Madeleine Carré in Blaye, France, she was educated in convents and ballet schools in several European countries, including France, Spain and Portugal. At 14, she was enrolled as a dancer at the Opera de Paris. As a teenager, she was performing in popular music halls, eventually appearing in the Revue at the Casino de […]

Stephen McNally (1911 - 1994)

Born in New York City, McNally attended Fordham University School of Law and was an attorney in the late 1930s before he pursued his passion for acting. He was a one time president of the Catholic Actors Guild. He started his stage career using his real name Horace McNally and began appearing uncredited in many World […]

Ralph Michael (1907 - 1994)

Ralph Michael (26 September 1907 – 9 November 1994) was an English actor. He was born as Ralph Champion Shotter in London. His film appearances included Dead of Night, A Night to Remember, Children of the Damned, Grand Prix, The Assassination Bureau, and Empire of the Sun. Television credits include: The Adventures of Robin Hood, A […]

Terry Scott (1927 - 1994)

Scott was born and brought up in Watford, Hertfordshire and educated at Watford Field Junior School and Watford Grammar School for Boys. He was the youngest of three children, and the only surviving son after his brother Aubrey died when Scott was six. After National Service in the Navy, at the end of World War […]

Olan Soule (1909 - 1994)

Born in La Harpe, Illinois to Elbert and Ann Williams Soule (descendants of three Mayflower passengers), Olan left Illinois at the age of seven and arrived in Des Moines, Iowa, where he lived until he was seventeen. He then launched his theatrical career by joining Jack Brooks’ tent show in Sabula, Jackson County, in eastern […]

Tom Villard (1953 - 1994)

Villard was born in Waipahu, Hawaii and grew up in Spencerport, New York, the son of Diane Ruth (MacNaughton), a teacher of the emotionally handicapped, and Ronald Louis Villard, a photochemical engineer. He attended Allegheny College in Meadville, Pennsylvania, before moving to New York City to attend the Lee Strasberg Theatre and Film Institute and […]

Steven Keats (1945 - 1994)

The son of Jewish emigrants from Denmark,[citation needed] Keats was a popular and prolific actor of the 1970s. He grew up in Canarsie, Brooklyn, New York, graduated from the New York School for the Performing Arts (now Fiorello H. LaGuardia High School of Music & Art and Performing Arts). After serving a tour of duty […]

Nick Cravat (1912 - 1994)

Nicholas Cuccia (pronounced coo-cha; January 10, 1912 – January 29, 1994), better known by his stage name Nick Cravat, was an American actor and stunt performer. Cravat was born in New York City, New York. He took his stage name from a character in a play he had seen and liked. Cravat and Burt Lancaster met as […]

Christopher Collins (1949 - 1994)

Collins was born Christopher Lawrence Latta in Orange, New Jersey, and grew up in the Morningside Heights section of Manhattan, New York City. His legal name became Christopher Charles Collins when his stepfather adopted him. Collins’ biological father, Robert Latta, was a New York stage actor. His mother, Jane Morin, worked as an advertising executive. […]

Charles Drake (1917 - 1994)

Drake was born as Charles Ruppert in New York City. He graduated from Nichols College and became a salesman. In 1939, he turned to acting and signed a contract with Warner Brothers. He was not immediately successful. During World War II Drake served in the United States Army. Drake returned to Hollywood in 1945, his […]

Derek Jarman (1942 - 1994)

Jarman’s first films were experimental super 8 mm shorts, a form he never entirely abandoned, and later developed further in his films Imagining October (1984), The Angelic Conversation (1985), The Last of England (1987) and The Garden (1990) as a parallel to his narrative work. The Garden was entered into the 17th Moscow International Film […]

Tamara Toumanova (1919 - 1996)

After moving to Paris, Toumanova was given piano lessons and studied ballet with Olga Preobrajenska, who she described as her “first and only permanent teacher” and an “immortal friend”. At the age of six, the ballerina Anna Pavlova invited young Toumanova to perform in one of her gala concerts (08.06.1925). Toumanova danced a polka choreographed […]

Tommy Rettig (1941 - 1996)

Rettig was born to a Jewish father, Elias Rettig, and a Christian Italian-American mother, Rosemary Nibali, in Jackson Heights in the Queens borough of New York City. He started his career at the age of six, on tour with Mary Martin in the play Annie Get Your Gun, in which he played Little Jake. Before his […]

Ted Bessell (1935 - 1996)

Born in Flushing, New York, Bessell grew up in Manhasset on Long Island, New York. He was originally gearing up for a career as a classical musician. As a 12-year-old child prodigy, he performed a piano recital at Carnegie Hall. Bessell played lacrosse in high school with future football star and actor Jim Brown. However, after […]

Mark Lenard (1924 - 1996)

Lenard was born Leonard Rosenson in Chicago, Illinois, the son of a Russian Jewish immigrant, Abraham, and his wife, Bessie, but was raised in the small town of South Haven, Michigan, where his family owned a tourist resort. He joined the United States Army in 1943 and trained to be a paratrooper during World War […]

Juliet Prowse (1936 - 1996)

Prowse was born in Bombay, British India to South African parents and reared in South Africa. She began studying dance at the age of four. In her early twenties she was dancing at a club in Paris when she was spotted by a talent agent and eventually signed to play the part of “Claudine” in […]

Joe Seneca (1919 - 1996)

Joe Seneca (January 14, 1919 – August 15, 1996) was an American film and television actor who had a lengthy Hollywood career, portraying bit parts in many major films and television sitcoms spanning from the 1970s to the 1990s. He played the father of Danny Glover’s character in the film Silverado. Seneca was born Joel McGhee […]

Whit Bissell (1909 - 1996)

Born in New York City, Bissell was the son of prominent surgeon Dr. J. Dougal Bissell. He trained with the Carolina Playmakers, a theatrical organization associated with the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He had a number of roles in Broadway theatre, including the Air Force show Winged Victory, when he was an […]

Ronald Howard (1918 - 1996)

Howard was born in South Norwood, London, the son of Ruth Evelyn (Martin) and film actor Leslie Howard. He attended Tonbridge School. After graduating from Jesus College, Cambridge, Ronald Howard became a newspaper reporter for a while but decided to become an actor. His first film role was an uncredited bit part in Pimpernel Smith (1941), […]

Vince Edwards (1928 - 1996)

Edwards was born in the Brownsville section of Brooklyn, New York City, New York, to Julia and Vincento Zoino. He and his twin brother, Anthony, were the youngest of seven children. He was a standout on his high school swim team and went on to study at Ohio State University on an athletic scholarship. He […]