Darlene Conley (1934 - 2007)

Conley, an Irish American, was born south of Chicago in Chicago Heights, Illinois, the daughter of Melba (née Manthey) and Raymond Conley. In the late 1950s and early 1960s, Conley was employed with the traveling theater group the Chicago Uptown Circuit Players and Playwrights Company. She earned a bit part in the movie The Birds, […]

Anton Rodgers (1933 - 2007)

Rodgers was born in London, the son of Leonore (née Wood) and William Robert Rodgers. His early education was at Westminster School. Later he was educated at the Italia Conti Academy and LAMDA. He appeared on stage from the age of 14. He was well known for his television performances, specifically his long-running roles in […]

Nicholas Worth (1937 - 2007)

Nicholas Worth (September 4, 1937 – May 7, 2007) was an American character actor who portrayed General Marzaq and Premier Romanov in Westwood Studios’ Command & Conquer series of games, Emperor: Battle for Dune, and also voice-acted as Colonel Bulba/Mr. Jones in Freedom Fighters. He also took up several smaller roles in sci-fi programs like […]

Tom Poston (1921 - 2007)

Poston was born in Columbus, Ohio, the son of George and Margaret Poston; his father was a liquor salesman and dairy chemist. After completing high school, Tom Poston attended Bethany College in West Virginia, but did not graduate. While there, he joined Sigma Nu Fraternity. He joined the United States Army Air Forces in 1941. Accepted […]

Dabbs Greer (1917 - 2007)

Greer was born in Fairview in Newton County in southwestern Missouri, the son of Bernice Irene (née Dabbs), a speech teacher, and Randall Alexander Greer, a druggist. Greer moved to Anderson as an infant with his family. At the age of eight, he began acting in children’s theater productions. He attended Drury University in Springfield, […]

Charles Lane (1905 - 2007)

Lane spent a short time as an insurance salesman before taking to the stage at the Pasadena Playhouse. Actor/director Irving Pichel first suggested that Lane go into acting in 1929, and four years later Lane was a founding member of the Screen Actors Guild. He became a favorite of director Frank Capra, who used him […]

Alice Ghostley (1923 - 2007)

Ghostley was born in Eve, Vernon County, Missouri in 1923, to Edna Muriel (née Rooney) and Harry Francis Ghostley, who worked as a telegraph operator. She grew up in Henryetta, Oklahoma. After graduating from high school, she attended the University of Oklahoma but dropped out to pursue a career in theatre. Ghostley first came to Broadway […]

Barry Nelson (1918 - 2007)

Nelson was born Haakon Robert Nielsen in Wellington, New Zealand, the son of Norwegian immigrants, Betsy (née Christophersen) and Trygve Nielsen but moved to America when he was 8 years old on July 1 1926 (His year of birth has been reported variously, but his 1943 Army enlistment record and his 1993 voter registration records […]

Marcheline Bertrand (1950 - 2007)

Born at St. Francis Hospital in Blue Island, Illinois, Bertrand was brought up in the nearby small town of Riverdale. Her parents were Lois June (née Gouwens; 1928–1973) and Rolland F. Bertrand (1923–1985). She had two younger siblings: a sister, Debbie, and a brother, Raleigh. In 1965, Bertrand’s family moved from the Chicago area to […]

Roscoe Lee Browne (1922 - 2007)

Browne was the fourth son of a Baptist minister, Sylvanus S. Browne, and his wife Lovie (née Lovie Lee Usher). Born in Woodbury, New Jersey, Browne first attended historically black Lincoln University in Pennsylvania, where he became a member of Omega Psi Phi fraternity and graduated with a bachelor’s degree in 1946. During World War II, […]

Mala Powers (1931 - 2007)

She was born in San Francisco, California. In 1940, her family moved to Los Angeles. Her father was an executive with United Press. Her mother was a minister. Powers later told a reporter, “I’ve worked in show business since I’ve been seven.” In the summer of her relocation, Powers attended the Max Reinhardt Junior Workshop where […]

Richard Jeni (1957 - 2007)

Richard Jeni was raised in an Italian-American Roman Catholic family in Bensonhurst, Brooklyn. He graduated with honors from Hunter College, earning a bachelor’s degree in comparative politics. After graduating, Jeni went on to do public relations work, but was let go from five different firms in two years before doing an open-mic night in Brooklyn […]

Barbara McNair (1934 - 2007)

Barbara McNair (March 4, 1934 – February 4, 2007) was an American singer and actress. Born Barbara Jean McNair in Chicago, Illinois and raised in Racine, Wisconsin, McNair studied music at the American Conservatory of Music in Chicago. Her big break came with a win on Arthur Godfrey’s TV show Talent Scouts, which led to […]

Laraine Day (1920 - 2007)

Day was born La Raine Johnson in Roosevelt, Utah, one of eight children in an affluent Mormon family. She had a twin brother, Lamar. The family later moved to California where she began her acting career with the Long Beach Players. She was a 1938 graduate of Polytechnic High School in Long Beach, California. In […]

Floyd Westerman (1936 - 2007)

Westerman was born Floyd Westerman (Kanghi Duta) on the Lake Traverse Indian Reservation, home of the Sisseton Wahpeton Oyate, a federally recognized tribe. It is one of the tribes of the Eastern Dakota subgroup of the Great Sioux Nation, living within the U.S. state of South Dakota. Kanghi Duta means “Red Crow” in Dakota (one […]

Kerwin Mathews (1926 - 2007)

Mathews was born in Seattle, Washington and was two years old when he moved with his divorced mother to Janesville, Wisconsin. He attended Janesville High School, graduating in 1943. Mathews said that “a kind high school teacher put me in a play, and that changed my life.” According to a classmate, he was a “handsome […]

Tab Thacker (1962 - 2007)

Talmadge Layne “Tab” Thacker (10 March 1962 – 28 December 2007), was a former NCAA wrestler and actor. While at North Carolina State University Thacker won the NCAA heavyweight wrestling championship in 1984, collecting 4 Atlantic Coast Conference titles along with the Wolfpack. He finished his college career 92-11-1, ranking second in N.C. State history with […]

Bruce Bennett (1906 - 2007)

Harold Herman Brix was the fourth child in a family of five of an immigrant couple from Germany. His eldest brother, and their father’s favored son, Herman, died before Harold’s birth; and he was given his middle name in this child’s memory. To please his father, by high school, he had discontinued using his own […]

Laurie Bartram (1958 - 2007)

She was an actress and ballet dancer who started in 1973. She is perhaps best known for her role as the camp counselor Brenda in the original film Friday the 13th, a performance where she was praised as one of the more “likeable” characters in the film. She also appeared in the soap opera Another […]

James Callahan (1930 - 0200)

James Thomas Callahan (October 4, 1930 – August 3, 2007) was an American film and television actor who appeared in more than 120 films and television programs between 1959 and 2007. He is perhaps best known for his portrayal from 1987 to 1990 of Walter Powell on the syndicated sitcom Charles in Charge, starring Scott […]

Adam Williams (1922 - 2006)

Williams was born in Wall Lake, Iowa. A veteran “bad guy” actor of 1950s film and TV who began his career after distinguished World War II military service as a United States Navy pilot, for which he received the Navy Cross. In 1952, Williams played the lead, a Los Angeles woman killer, in the film, […]

Marian Marsh (1913 - 2006)

Violet Ethelred Krauth was born on October 17, 1913 in Trinidad, British West Indies (now Trinidad and Tobago), the youngest of four children of a German chocolate manufacturer and his French-English wife. Due to World War I, Violet’s father moved his family to Boston, Massachusetts. By the time Violet was ten, the family had relocated to […]

Jeremy Slate (1926 - 2006)

He attended a military academy and joined the United States Navy when he was sixteen. He was barely eighteen when his destroyer assisted in the Normandy Invasion on D-Day (June 6, 1944). After the war he attended St. Lawrence University in Canton, New York, where he graduated with honors in English. He was also president […]

Gary Gray (1936 - 2006)

Born in Los Angeles, California, Gray was the son of to Jeanie Ellen Dickson and John William Gray, aka Bill Gray, a film business manager. On January 28, 1961 he married Jean Charlene Bean. The couple had four daughters and 19 grandchildren. It was two clients of his father’s, Bert Wheeler and Jack Benny, who suggested […]

Carrie Nye (1936 - 2006)

Nye was born Caroline Nye McGeoy in Greenwood, Mississippi; her father was a vice president of a local bank. She attended Stephens College and then went on to the Yale School of Drama. The majority of Nye’s roles were on the stage. She joined the Williamstown Theatre Festival in 1955 and portrayed a number of roles […]

Elizabeth Allen (1929 - 2006)

Born Elizabeth Ellen Gillease in the New Jersey city of Jersey City, across the Hudson River from Manhattan, she began her career as a Ford Agency high-fashion model before landing the television role of the “Away We Go!” girl on The Jackie Gleason Show in the 1950s. Thereafter, she honed her stage skills by joining […]

Herbert Rudley (1910 - 2006)

Herbert Rudley, (March 22, 1910 – September 9, 2006), was a prolific character actor who appeared on stage, in films and on television. Rudley was born in 1910 in Philadelphia and attended Temple University. He left Temple after winning a scholarship to Eva Le Gallienne’s Civic Repertory Theatre. He began appearing on stage in 1926. His […]

Barnard Hughes (1915 - 2006)

Hughes was born in Bedford Hills, New York, the son of Irish immigrants Marcella “Madge” (née Kiernan) and Owen Hughes. He attended La Salle Academy and Manhattan College in New York City. Hughes served in the United States Army during World War II. Hughes was married to actress Helen Stenborg. They married on April 19, […]

Jane Wyatt (1910 - 2006)

Jane Waddington Wyatt was born on August 12, 1910, in Mahwah, New Jersey, but raised in Manhattan. Her father, Christopher Billopp Wyatt, Jr., was a Wall Street investment banker, and her mother, the former Euphemia Van Rensselaer Waddington, was a drama critic for the Catholic World. Both of her parents were Roman Catholic converts. Wyatt had […]

Adrienne Shelly (1966 - 2006)

Shelly was born Adrienne Levine in Queens, New York, to Sheldon M. Levine and Elaine Langbaum. She had two brothers, Jeff and Mark, and was raised on Long Island. She began performing when she was about 10 at Stagedoor Manor Performing Arts Training Center. She made her professional debut in a summer stock production of […]