Rosalie Crutchley (1920 - 1997)

Rosalie Crutchley (4 January 1920 – 28 July 1997) was an English actress. Trained at the Royal Academy of Music, Crutchley was known for her television performances, but had a long and successful career in theatre and films, making her stage début at least as early as 1932 and her screen début in 1947. She […]

Don Bexley (1910 - 1997)

Bexley was born on March 10, 1910 in either Jamestown, Virginia or Detroit, Michigan to the late Mr. and Mrs. Thomas Bexley. His father was a Bible scholar and teacher and his mother a classical vocalist. “I was born with a flair for the stage, as I had always been a clown – even during […]

Stubby Kaye (1918 - 1997)

Directors viewed Kaye as a master of the Broadway idiom during the last phase of the musical comedy era. This was evidenced by his introduction of three show-stopping numbers of the era: “Fugue for Tinhorns” and “Sit Down, You’re Rockin’ the Boat” from Guys and Dolls (1950) and “Jubilation T. Cornpone” from Li’l Abner (1956). […]

Diana Lewis (1919 - 1997)

Diana “Mousie” Lewis (September 18, 1919 – January 18, 1997) was an American film actress and a Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer contract star. Born in Asbury Park, New Jersey, Lewis began her film career in All the King’s Horses (1934) and worked steadily over the next few years, usually in minor roles. Her more notable films include It’s a […]

Don Porter (1912 - 1997)

Donald Porter (September 24, 1912 – February 11, 1997) was an American actor who appeared in a number of films in the 1940s, including Top Sergeant and Eagle Squadron, but is perhaps best known for his role as Russell Lawrence, the widowed father of 15-year-old Frances “Gidget” Lawrence (Sally Field) in the 1965 ABC situation […]

Joyce Compton (1907 - 1997)

Joyce Compton (January 27, 1907 – October 13, 1997) was an American actress. She was born Olivia Joyce Compton in Lexington, Kentucky. (Despite frequent erroneous statements to the contrary, her name was not originally “Eleanor Hunt”; she had appeared in the film Good Sport (1931) with Hunt and this confusion in an early press article followed […]

Sally Blane (1910 - 1997)

Blane was born in Salida, Colorado. She was the sister of actresses Polly Ann and Loretta Young, and half-sister of actress Georgiana Young. Blane had her film debut at the age of seven when she appeared in Sirens of the Sea in 1917. She returned to the film business as an adult in the 1920s, playing […]

Irene Hervey (1909 - 1998)

Born Beulah Irene Herwick in Venice, Los Angeles, California. She began her acting career after being introduced to a casting agent from MGM. After a successful screen test, she was signed by the studio and made her screen debut in the 1933 film The Stranger’s Return, opposite Lionel Barrymore. Though signed by MGM, Hervey was loaned […]

Michael Zaslow (1944 - 1998)

Zaslow was born in Inglewood, California. He played Dick Hart on the CBS soap opera Search for Tomorrow and Dr. Peter Chernak on Love Is a Many Splendored Thing. He also played David Renaldi on ABC’s One Life to Live from 1983 to 1986, and in 1998. Zaslow was also a writer for the NBC […]

Daniel Massey (1933 - 1998)

Massey was born in London in 1933. He was educated at Eton College and King’s College, Cambridge. He was a member of the noted Massey family, which included his father, Raymond Massey, his sister, Anna Massey and his uncle Vincent Massey, the first Canadian-born Governor General of Canada. His mother was the actress Adrianne Allen. Living […]

Jonathan Hole (1904 - 1998)

His career began in vaudeville in the 1920s. Hole was also a radio performer active in his native Iowa as well as New York City, Detroit, Chicago, and Los Angeles, California. While working as an announcer on WBBN in Chicago, his last name was temporarily changed to Cole by the station. In 1942 in Chicago, […]

James Villiers (1933 - 1998)

James Michael Hyde Villiers (29 September 1933 – 18 January 1998) was an English character actor and a familiar face on British television. He was particularly memorable for his plummy voice and ripe articulation. Born in London and educated at Wellington College, Berkshire and the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, ‘Gentleman Jim’ Villiers (pronounced Villers) was […]

Henny Youngman (1906 - 1998)

Youngman was born to a Jewish family in London, England. His family moved to Brooklyn, New York, when he was a child. He grew up in New York City, and began as a comedian after he had worked for years at a print shop, where he wrote “comedy cards” containing one-line gags. The comedy cards […]

Dane Clark (1912 - 1998)

Clark was born Bernard Zanville in Brooklyn, New York, the son of Jewish immigrants, Samuel, a sporting goods store owner, and his wife, Rose. The date of birth is a matter of dispute, amongst different sources. He graduated from Cornell University and earned a law degree at St. John’s University School of Law in Queens, […]

Walt Barnes (1918 - 1998)

Barnes earned his nickname of “Piggy” from catching a piglet when a boy. Playing football at Parkersburg High School, he was on the unbeaten 1938 team and played in the 1939 North-South Game. Following military service in the United States Army in World War II as a Army Sergeant he enrolled in Louisiana State University […]

Mary Castle (1931 - 1998)

Castle was born as Mary Ann Noblett to Erby G. Noblett, Sr. and Myrtle A. Noblett (née Brown) in Pampa, Texas. Her mother was one-sixteenth Quapaw Indian. The Nobletts moved to Fort Worth, Texas, then Phillips, subsequently a ghost town in Hutchinson County, Texas, prior to relocating to Long Beach, California. At the age of […]

David Manners (1900 - 1998)

Manners was born Rauff de Ryther Duan Acklom in Halifax, Nova Scotia, the son of British parents, Lilian (Manners) and writer George Moreby Acklom, and the nephew of military figure Cecil Ryther Acklom. Manners originally studied forestry at the University of Toronto, but he found it boring. Over his father’s objections, he pursued a stage […]

Jean Marais (1913 - 1998)

A native of Cherbourg, France, Marais was a son of Alfred Emmanuel Victor Paul Villain-Marais and his wife, the former Aline Marie Louise Vassord. Marais starred in several movies directed by Jean Cocteau, for a time his lover and a lifelong friend, most famously Beauty and the Beast (1946) and Orphée (1949). Marais played over 100 […]

Maidie Norman (1912 - 1998)

Norman was born Maidie Ruth Gamble on a plantation in Villa Rica, Georgia to Louis and Lila Graham Gamble. She was raised in Lima, Ohio, and began studying drama and performing in Shakespeare plays as a child. She graduated from Central High School in Lima in 1930, and attended Bennett College, where she earned a […]

Patricia Hayes (1909 - 1998)

Patricia Lawlor “Pat” Hayes, OBE (22 December 1909 – 19 September 1998) was an English character actress. Hayes was born in Streatham, London. As a child Hayes attended the Sacred Heart School in Wandsworth. She was featured in many radio and television comedy shows between 1940 and 1996, including Hancock’s Half Hour, Ray’s a Laugh, The Arthur […]

Sue Lloyd (1939 - 2011)

The daughter of a GP, Susan Margery Jeaffreson Lloyd was born in Aldeburgh, Suffolk. She attended Edgbaston High School in Birmingham and studied dance as a child, attending Sadler’s Wells Ballet School. As her height (5 feet 8 inches (1.73 m)) increased, her possibilities for a career as a dancer diminished, and she became a […]

Trevor Bannister (1934 - 2011)

In 1960 Bannister appeared on stage at the Cambridge Theatre in London in Billy Liar, which starred Albert Finney. He starred as Darkie Pilbeam, a wartime spiv, in the 1968 television series The War of Darkie Pilbeam, and from 1969 to 1970 he appeared as “Heavy Breathing” in Jack Rosenthal’s sitcom, The Dustbinmen. Shortly afterwards, […]

Gordon Tootoosis (1941 - 2011)

His first acting role was in the film Alien Thunder (1974), with Chief Dan George and Donald Sutherland. He portrayed Albert Golo in 52 episodes of North of 60 in the 1990s. He is best known to British audiences for playing the Native American Joe Saugus, who negotiates the purchase of the Middlesbrough Transporter Bridge […]

Susan Gordon (1949 - 2011)

Susan Lynn Gordon (July 27, 1949 — December 11, 2011) was an American child actress who appeared in films and numerous episodes of television programs such as The Twilight Zone, My Three Sons, and The Donna Reed Show. Gordon was born in Saint Paul, Minnesota, the daughter of film director Bert I. Gordon and his wife […]

Barbara Stuart (1930 - 2011)

Stuart portrayed “Miss Bunny”, the girlfriend of Sergeant Vincent Carter, played by Frank Sutton, on three seasons of CBS’s Gomer Pyle, U.S.M.C. In 1969, Stuart was cast as “Wilma Winslow” on CBS’s The Queen and I. In 1985, she was cast as Marianne Danzig, the wife of a Mafia godfather in the ABC’s crime drama Our […]

Jill Haworth (1945 - 2011)

Haworth was born in Hove, Sussex, to a textile magnate father and a mother who trained as a ballet dancer. She was named Valerie Jill in honour of the day she was born, Victory over Japan Day or V.J. Day. She took ballet lessons at the prestigious Sadler’s Wells Ballet School to escape from an […]

David Hess (1936 - 2011)

Hess was born David Alexander Hess on September 19, 1936 in New York City. His mother, Marjory, was an opera singer. In 1956, Hess recorded the original version of the Otis Blackwell composition “All Shook Up” under the stage name David Hill. The next year the song became a #1 hit single for Elvis Presley. He began […]

George Baker (1931 - 1970)

Baker was born in Varna, Bulgaria. His father was an English businessman and honorary vice consul and his mother a Red Cross nurse who moved to Bulgaria to help fight cholera. He attended Lancing College, Sussex; he then appeared as an actor in repertory theatre and at the Old Vic. Baker’s third wife, Louie Ramsay, […]

Bill Hunter (1940 - 2011)

Hunter was born in Ballarat, a son of William and Francie Hunter. He had a brother, John, and a sister, Marie Ann. During his teens, Hunter was a champion swimmer, and briefly held a world record for the 100 yards freestyle until his record was broken by John Devitt in the very next heat ten minutes […]

Christopher Mayer (1954 - 2011)

Christopher “Chip” Mayer (February 21, 1954 – July 23, 2011), born George Charles Mayer III in Manhattan, New York City, was an American film and TV actor who was best known for portraying Vance Duke on the popular show The Dukes of Hazzard for 19 episodes. Mayer played the role of Vance Duke in the 1982–1983 […]