Elisabeth Fraser (1920 - 2005)

Born as Elisabeth Fraser Jonker in Brooklyn, New York, Fraser began her acting career six weeks after graduating from high school; she was cast as the ingenue in the Broadway production of There Shall Be No Night, which won the Pulitzer Prize for the 1940-1941 season. Fraser obtained a contract with Warner Brothers studios. She […]

Mitch Hedberg (1968 - 2005)

Mitch Hedberg was born February 24, 1968, in Saint Paul, Minnesota, the son of Mary (née Schimscha) and Arne Hedberg. He was of Swedish ancestry. Hedberg graduated from Harding High School in Saint Paul. Hedberg began his standup career in Florida, and after a period of honing his skills, he moved to Seattle and began to […]

Ruth Warrick (1916 - 2005)

She was born in Saint Joseph, Missouri in 1916 (as per her son and the 1930 U.S. census, dated April 3, 1930, which gives her age as 13 as of that date). Her parents were Fred R. & Annie L. Warrick. By writing an essay in high school called “Prevention and Cure of Tuberculosis”, Warrick […]

Ed Bishop (1932 - 2005)

George Victor Bishop was born on 11 June 1932, the son of a Manhattan banker, in Brooklyn, New York. He attended Peekskill High School before a brief spell at teacher training college. Bishop served in the United States Army as a disc jockey with the Armed Forces Radio at St. John’s in Newfoundland where he […]

Michael Sheard (1938 - 2005)

Sheard was born in Aberdeen, Scotland; the son of a church minister, and was trained at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in London. During his national service, Sheard was a Royal Air Force aircraft man. Sheard had a lengthy affiliation with science fiction, and appeared in six televised stories of the BBC science fiction television […]

Maria Schell (1926 - 2005)

Schell was born in Vienna, Austria, the daughter of Margarethe (née Noe von Nordberg), an actress who ran an acting school, and Hermann Ferdinand Schell, a Swiss poet, novelist, playwright, and owner of a pharmacy. Her parents were Roman Catholics. She was the older sister of actor Maximilian Schell and lesser-known actors Carl Schell and […]

Debra Hill (1950 - 2005)

Hill was born in Haddonfield, New Jersey and grew up in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. She entered the movie business in 1975 and was unhappy with the level of condescension she experienced because of her gender. She started as a production assistant on adventure documentaries, and progressed through jobs as a script supervisor, assistant director and second […]

Simone Simon (1910 - 2005)

Born in Béthune, Pas-de-Calais (some sources say Marseille), France, she was the daughter of Henri Louis Firmin Champmoynat, a French Jewish engineer, airplane pilot in World War II, who died in a concentration camp, and Erma Maria Domenica Giorcelli, an Italian housewife. Before settling and growing up in Marseille, Simon lived in Madagascar, Budapest, Turin […]

John Mills (1908 - 2005)

Mills was born Lewis Ernest Watts Mills in Felixstowe, Suffolk, the son of Edith (Baker), a theatre box office manager, and Lewis Mills, a mathematics teacher. He lived in a modest house in Gainsborough Road Felixstowe until 1929. His older sister was Annette Mills, remembered as presenter of BBC Television’s Muffin the Mule (1946–55). He was educated […]

Dana Elcar (1927 - 2005)

Elcar was born in Ferndale, Michigan, the son of Hedwig (née Anderberg) and James Aage Elcar, a carpenter and butcher. Elcar was an alumnus of the University of Michigan where he was a member of the Alpha Tau Omega fraternity. Elcar served a tour a duty in the United States Navy. Elcar was also a […]

Sheree North (1932 - 2005)

North was born as Dawn Shirley Crang in Los Angeles, California, on January 17, 1932, the daughter of June Shoard and Richard Crang. Following her mother’s remarriage to Edward Bethel, she was known as Dawn Shirley Bethel. She began dancing in USO shows during World War II at age ten. In 1948, she married Fred Bessire. […]

Amrish Puri (1932 - 2005)

Amrish Puri was born in Lahore in then British India to a Punjabi-speaking family of Lala Nihal Singh Puri and Mst Ved Kaur. He had four siblings, elder brothers Chaman Puri and Madan Puri (both of whom also became actors), elder sister Chandrakanta, and a younger brother, Harish Puri. He later moved to Shimla and […]

Teresa Wright (1918 - 2005)

Muriel Teresa Wright was born on October 27, 1918 in Harlem, New York City, the daughter of Martha (née Espy) and Arthur Wright, an insurance agent. Her parents separated when she was young. She grew up in Maplewood, New Jersey, where she attended Columbia High School. After seeing Helen Hayes star in Victoria Regina at […]

Joe Ranft (1960 - 2005)

Ranft was born in Pasadena, California, and raised in Whittier. As a child, Ranft developed a love for magic, storytelling, film and comedy. At 15, he became a member of the Magic Castle Junior Group. After graduating from Monte Vista High School, Whittier, in 1978, Mr. Ranft began studying in the character animation program at […]

John Vernon (1932 - 2005)

Vernon was born Adolphus Raymondus Vernon Agopsowicz in Zehner, Saskatchewan, and was baptised at Sacred Heart Catholic parish in the nearby town of Arat. He was one of two sons of Adolf Agopsowicz, a grocer, and his wife Eleonore Krückel (also spelled as Kriekle or Kriekel). Both parents’ families emigrated to the Edenwold district in […]

Nicole DeHuff (1975 - 2005)

DeHuff was born in Antlers, Oklahoma, and raised in Broken Bow, Oklahoma, and Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. She began her acting career by earning a bachelor’s degree in drama from Carnegie Mellon University. She would also meet and later marry executive producer and director Ari Palitz, whom she met at Carnegie Mellon. DeHuff landed her first big […]

Virginia Mayo (1920 - 2005)

Born Virginia Clara Jones in St. Louis, Missouri, she was the daughter of newspaper reporter Luke and wife Martha Henrietta (née Rautenstrauch) Jones. Her family had roots running back to the earliest days of St. Louis, including great-great-great grandfather Captain James Piggott, who founded East St. Louis, Illinois in 1797. Young Virginia’s aunt operated an […]

Frank Gorshin (1933 - 2005)

Gorshin was born on April 5, 1933 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, the son of Catholic parents Frances, a seamstress, and Frank Gorshin, Sr., a railroad worker. He was of Slovenian ancestry. Frank Gorshin’s father, Frank Sr., was a second-generation Slovenian American whose parents emigrated to America from Dolenjska, Slovenia. His mother, Frances or Fanny, nee Prešeren, […]

Ossie Davis (1917 - 2005)

Davis was born Raiford Chatman Davis in Cogdell, Clinch County, Georgia, a son of Kince Charles Davis, a railway construction engineer, and his wife Laura (née Cooper; July 9, 1898 – June 6, 2004). The name Ossie came from a county clerk who misheard his mother’s pronunciation of his initials “R.C.” when he was born. […]

Brock Peters (1927 - 2005)

Peters was born George Fisher in New York City, the son of Alma A. (née Norford) and Sonnie Fisher, a sailor. He was African American. Peters set his sights on a show business career early on, at the age of 10. A product of New York’s famed High School of Music and Art, Peters initially fielded […]

William Hootkins (1948 - 2005)

Hootkins was born in Dallas, Texas. At the age of 15, Hootkins found himself caught up in the FBI’s investigation into the assassination of President John F. Kennedy when he was interviewed about Mrs. Ruth Paine, the woman “harboring” Marina Oswald, the Russian wife of the presumed assassin Lee Harvey Oswald. He had been studying […]

Geraldine Fizgerald (1913 - 2005)

Fitzgerald was born in Greystones, County Wicklow, south of Dublin, the daughter of Edith and Edward Fitzgerald, who was an attorney. Her father was Catholic and her mother a Protestant who converted to Catholicism. She studied painting at the Dublin School of Art. Inspired by her aunt, actress Shelagh Richards, Fitzgerald began her acting career in […]

Dan O’Herlihy (1919 - 2005)

O’Herlihy was born in County Wexford, Ireland, in 1919. His family moved to Dublin at a young age. He was educated at Christian Brothers College in Dun Laoghaire and later studied at University College Dublin, graduating in 1944 with a degree in Architecture. His first acting role came in 1944, when he played the lead in […]

J. D. Cannon (1922 - 2005)

J. D. CANNON Cannon served in the United States Army during World War II. Cannon first appeared on television as Master Sgt. Sherman in the original CBS sitcom, The Phil Silvers Show, also known as You’ll Never Get Rich. He played a recurring character – a lawman named Harry Briscoe working for the Bannerman Detective Agency […]

Cal Bolder (1931 - 2005)

Cal Bolder (June 14, 1931 – January 19, 2005) was an American film and television actor best known for his role as the outlaw turned monster in the 1966 film Jesse James Meets Frankenstein’s Daughter. A native of the small Kansas city of Elkhart, Earl C. Craver was a middle child of six born to Mabel […]

Howard Morris (1919 - 2005)

Morris was born to a Jewish family in The Bronx, New York, the son of Elsie and Hugo Morris, a rubber company executive. During World War II he was assigned to a United States Army Special Services unit where he was the First Sergeant. Maurice Evans was the company commander and Carl Reiner and Werner […]

Lloyd Bochner (1924 - 2005)

At the age of 11, Bochner began his acting career on Ontario radio programs. He went on to garner two Liberty Awards, the highest acting honour in Canada, for his work in Canadian film and theatre. In 1951 he moved to New York City and appeared in early television series such as One Man’s Family […]

Nipsey Russell (1918 - 2005)

Born in Atlanta, Georgia, Russell went to Booker T. Washington High School in Atlanta and attended the University of Cincinnati for one semester in 1936. He served as a medic in the United States Army during World War II, enlisting as a private on June 27, 1941, and returning from Europe in 1945 as a […]

Mason Adams (1919 - 2005)

Adams was born in Brooklyn, New York. He earned an MA degree from the University of Michigan in Theatre Arts and Speech and also attended the University of Wisconsin–Madison, studying theater arts. He made his stage debut in 1940, appearing in summer stock at Baltimore’s Hilltop Theater. Adams was heard on many radio programs during Radio’s […]

Virginia Capers (1925 - 2004)

Born in Sumter, South Carolina, Capers attended Howard University and studied voice at the Juilliard School in New York City. She made her Broadway debut in the musical Jamaica in 1957 as the understudy for Adelaide Hall in the role of Grandma Obeah, taking over the role when Hall left the show. Capers went on to […]