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 […]

Chris Alcaide (1922 - 2004)

Alcaide was born John (“Jack”) Berger to parents George and Frances Conroy Berger in the traditionally steel city of Youngstown, the seat of Mahoning County in eastern Ohio, and served from 1943 to 1946 in the United States Army during World War II. He came to Hollywood, California, after the war to launch his acting […]

Jason Raize (1975 - 2004)

Born in Oneonta, New York, Raize grew up in the Catskills in upstate New York and started acting as a teenager, when his stepmother enrolled him in a summer Shakespeare workshop. In high school, after moving with his father to Oneonta, Raize performed in high school plays and with Oneonta’s Orpheus Theatre. He moved to […]

Richard Ney (1916 - 2004)

Ney was born in New York City, the son of Erwin Maximillian Ney and Charlotte Marie Donaldson. His father also married Rebie Margaret (Flood), daughter of the Rev. Theodore L. Flood, editor of The Chautauquan and Ruth Crosley Pardington, daughter of Arthur Rayner Pardington, of Lincoln Highway fame. Richard Ney was the father of Rick […]

Frances Dee (1909 - 2004)

The younger daughter of Francis “Frank” Marion Dee and his wife, the former Henriette Putnam, Frances Marion Dee was born in Los Angeles, California, where her father was working as a civil-service examiner. She grew up in Chicago, Illinois, where she attended Shakespeare Grammar School and Hyde Park High School, where she went by the nickname […]

Anna Lee (1913 - 2004)

Lee trained at the Royal Albert Hall, [clarification needed] then debuted with a bit part in His Lordship (1932). When she and her first husband, director Robert Stevenson, moved to Hollywood she became associated with John Ford, appearing in several of his films, notably How Green Was My Valley, Two Rode Together and Fort Apache. […]

Noble Willingham (1931 - 2004)

Willingham was the son of Ladelle (née Speights) and Noble Henry Senior, a railroad worker and a farmer. He was born in the small town of Mineola, in Wood County east of Dallas, Texas. After graduating in 1953 from North Texas State University in Denton, he earned a master’s degree in educational psychology from Baylor University […]

John Randolph (1915 - 2004)

Randolph was born in New York City, the son of Jewish immigrants from Russia and Romania. His mother, Dorothy (née Shorr), was an insurance agent, and his father, Louis Cohen, was a hat manufacturer. In the 1930s, he spent his summers at the Pine Brook Country Club in Nichols, Connecticut which was the summer home […]

Ingrid Thulin (1926 - 2004)

Thulin was born in Sollefteå, Ångermanland, northern Sweden, the daughter of Nanna (née Larsson) and Adam Thulin, a fisherman. She took ballet lessons as a girl and was accepted by The Royal Dramatic Theatre (“Dramaten”) in Stockholm 1948. For many years she worked regularly with Ingmar Bergman; among other films, Thulin appeared in Bergman’s Wild Strawberries […]

Bob Keeshan (1927 - 2004)

Keeshan was born in Lynbrook, New York. After an early graduation from Forest Hills High School in Queens, New York in 1945, during World War II, he enlisted in the United States Marine Corps Reserve, but was still in the United States when Japan surrendered. He attended Fordham University on the GI Bill and few […]

Mercedes McCambridge (1916 - 2004)

McCambridge was born in Joliet, Illinois, the daughter of Irish American Roman Catholic parents Marie (née Mahaffry) and John Patrick McCambridge, a farmer. She graduated from Mundelein College in Chicago before embarking on a career. She began her career as a radio actor during the 1930s while also performing on Broadway and continued through the 40s […]

John Drew Barrymore (1932 - 2004)

Barrymore was born in Los Angeles, California to John Barrymore and Dolores Costello. His parents separated when he was 18 months old, and he rarely saw his father afterward. Educated at private schools, he made his film debut at 18, billed as John Barrymore Jr. In 1958, he changed his middle name to Drew, although he […]