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 […]

Edward Albert (1951 - 2006)

Albert was born Edward Laurence Heimberger in Los Angeles, California, to actor Eddie Albert (1906-2005), and Mexican actress Margo (1917- 1985). Albert made his motion picture debut in a 1965 drama, The Fool Killer, as a runaway orphan who crossed paths with a disturbed Civil War veteran, played by Anthony Perkins. He is best known for […]

Red Buttons (1919 - 2006)

Red Buttons was born Aaron Chwatt on February 5, 1919, in New York City, to Jewish immigrants Sophie (née Baker) and Michael Chwatt. At sixteen years old, Chwatt got a job as an entertaining bellhop at Ryan’s Tavern in City Island, Bronx. The combination of his red hair and the large, shiny buttons on the […]

Dana Reeve (1961 - 2006)

Reeve was born Dana Charles Morosini in Teaneck, New Jersey to Charles Morosini, a cardiologist, and Helen Simpson Morosini, who died in February 2005. She grew up in the town of Greenburgh, New York, where she graduated from Edgemont High School in 1979. She graduated summa cum laude in English Literature from Middlebury College in Vermont in […]

Maureen Stapleton (1925 - 2006)

Stapleton was born Lois Maureen Stapleton in Troy, New York, the daughter of John P. Stapleton and Irene (née Walsh) , and grew up in a strict Irish American Catholic family. Her father was an alcoholic and her parents separated during her childhood. Stapleton moved to New York City at the age of eighteen, and did […]

Franklin Cover (1928 - 2006)

Cover was born on November 20, 1928 in Cleveland, Ohio to Britta Schreck and Franklin Held Cover. He graduated from Denison University in 1951. His career started on the stage acting in Henry IV, Part 1 and Hamlet. He also appeared in Forty Carats with Julie Harris. He made his television debut on Naked City […]

Tom Bell (1933 - 2006)

Thomas George Bell was born on 2 August 1933 in Liverpool, Lancashire, England. Evacuated as a child during the Second World War, he lived with three different families in Morecambe, Lancashire. In 1948, at age 15, Bell began to act in his first school plays, and though he never dominated the performances he nonetheless demonstrated […]

Phil Brown (1916 - 2006)

Brown was born in Cambridge, Massachusetts. He majored in dramatics at Stanford University, where he was a member of the Beta Theta Pi fraternity. Brown played some of his earliest stage roles as part of New York’s Group Theatre. When it ended, he and other Group Theatre veterans headed to Hollywood, where Brown worked in motion […]

Paul Carr (1934 - 2006)

Carr was born and raised in Marrero, Louisiana. As a teenager, he had an interest in both music and acting. After a short stint in the United States Marine Corps during his late teens, Carr launched his acting career with a role in a New Orleans production of Herman Melville’s Billy Budd. By the middle 1950s, […]

Proof (1973 - 2006)

DeShaun Dupree Holton was born to Sharallene “Pepper” Holton, a single mother. His father, McKinley Jackson, was a music producer who left to pursue his career prior to Holton’s birth. Holton grew up in Warren, Michigan where he met childhood friend and future musical collaborator Marshall Mathers, who would later rise to fame as Eminem. Originally […]

Richard Bright (1937 - 2006)

Bright was born in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, New York, the son of Matilda (née Scott) and Ernest Bright, who was a shipbuilder. Bright began his career doing live television in Manhattan, at the age of 18, and made his film debut in Robert Wise’s Odds Against Tomorrow (1959). He also worked on several movies early in […]

Ileen Getz (1961 - 2005)

Ileen Getz (August 7, 1961 – August 4, 2005) was an American actress, most recognized for her role as Dr. Judith Draper in the television series 3rd Rock from the Sun. Getz was born in Bristol, Pennsylvania. After graduating from Northwestern University, she joined the Econo-Art Theatre Company and Practical Theatre Company, both in Chicago, Illinois. She […]

Jocelyn Brando (1919 - 2005)

Jocelyn Brando, the older sister of Marlon Brando, was born in San Francisco, California, to Marlon Brando, Sr., and Dorothy Julia Pennebaker Brando. Jocelyn and Marlon Brando and their sister Frances grew up mostly in the Midwest—in Omaha, Nebraska, Evanston and Libertyville, Illinois, though the family also spent time in California. The bane of the […]

Lamont Bentley (1973 - 2005)

Artimus Lamont Bentley was born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin and moved to Los Angeles with his mother, Loyce, who wished to pursue a career as a professional singer. He began his career as a child actor appearing in television commercials and guest spots on various television series before landing a role on the short-lived but critically […]

Henry Corden (1920 - 2005)

Corden was born in Montreal, Quebec, Canada as Henry Cohen to Max and Emma Cohen. His father was a meat curer who had been born in Romania; his mother was originally from Russia. The family moved to the Bronx, New York when Corden was a child and he arrived in Hollywood in the 1940s. A […]

Ruth Hussey (1911 - 2005)

Hussey was born in Providence, Rhode Island, October 30, 1911. She was also known as Ruth Carol O’Rourke Her father, George R. Hussey, died of the Spanish flu in 1918 when she was seven years old. Ten years later, her mother married a family friend, William O’Rourke, who had worked at the family’s mail-order silver […]

Harold J. Stone (1913 - 2005)

Harold J. Stone (March 3, 1913 – November 18, 2005) was an American stage, radio, film, and television character actor. Born Harold Hochstein to a Jewish acting family, he began his career on Broadway in 1939 and appeared in five plays in the next six years, including One Touch of Venus and Stalag 17, following which […]

James Booth (1927 - 2005)

He was born in Croydon, Surrey, on 19 December 1927, the son of a probation officer. He was educated at Southend Grammar School, which he left aged 17 to join the army. He rose to the rank of Captain. He spent several years working for an international trading company. However, his interest in acting soon […]

Jack Colvin (1934 - 2005)

Colvin was born in Lyndon, Kansas, twenty-seven miles south of Topeka. He began his stage career as a child performer. At the age of seventeen Colvin became a private student of Michael Chekhov. Although he appeared in hundreds of films and television shows, he always returned to the theatre. His stage roles include Marchbanks in […]

Stephen Elliott (1918 - 2005)

From 1940 to 1942, Elliott studied acting with Sanford Meisner at New York’s Neighborhood Playhouse. After serving in World War II with the United States Merchant Marine, he started a successful career on Broadway with his debut in Shakespeare’s The Tempest; two years later, Elliott was selected by Robert Lewis to be one of The […]