Janice Rule (1931 - 2003)

Janice Rule was born in Norwood, Ohio, to parents of Irish origin. Her father was a dealer in industrial diamonds. She began dancing at the Chez Paree nightclub at fifteen, which paid for ballet lessons, and was a dancer in the 1949 Broadway production of Miss Liberty. Rule also studied acting at the Chicago Professional School. She […]

Prunella Ransome (1943 - 2002)

Born Prunella Jane Ransome in Croydon, Surrey, she later lived in Titchfield where her father Jimmy Ransome was a public school headmaster from 1952 to 1958. Ransome studied at Elmhurst School for Dance and began her performing career as a teenager. Ransome made her West End debut in a 1959 musical production of Jane Eyre with […]

Cyrinda Foxe (1952 - 2002)

Foxe was born Katheleen Victoria Hetzekian in Santa Monica, California, to an Armenian family. She grew up as an army brat in an abusive household. After graduating high school, she lived in Texas briefly before settling in New York City, where she got a job working as an assistant to Greta Garbo. She later changed […]

James Wheaton (1924 - 2002)

James Wheaton (January 11, 1924 – June 9, 2002), was an American motion picture and television actor. He may be best known as the voice actor “OMM” in George Lucas’s THX 1138, a role for which he was chosen over Orson Welles. Wheaton also appeared in Trouble Comes to Town and Sanford and Son. In the […]

Stratford Johns (1925 - 2002)

Johns was born in Pietermaritzburg and grew up in South Africa, where his parents had emigrated. After serving in the South African navy during World War II, Johns worked for a time in accountancy, but soon became involved in amateur theatre. In 1948, he bought a one-way ticket to Britain and learned his craft working in […]

Tony Martinez (1920 - 2002)

Martínez came to New York City to study at the Juilliard School at the Lincoln Center for Performing Arts. He also studied acting and gained small parts in several films in the late 1940s and early 1950s. In 1954, he made his first television appearance as himself on The Colgate Comedy Hour, again as himself. […]

Daniel Gélin (1921 - 2002)

Gélin was born in Angers, Maine-et-Loire into a Jewish family, the son of Yvonne (Le Méner) and Alfred Ernest Joseph Gélin. When he was ten, his family moved to Saint-Malo where Daniel went to college until he was expelled for ‘uncouthness’. His father then found him a job in a shop that sold cans of […]

Dave King (1970 - 1929)

Born David Kingshott in Twickenham, Middlesex, England, King left school at 12 and joined the Morton Fraser Harmonica Gang at 15. He did his National Service in the RAF and was in the unit’s repertory company, returning to variety on demob and later becoming a solo act. An appearance on Television Music Hall led to […]

Nathan Juran (1907 - 2002)

Juran was born to a Jewish family in Gura Humorului, Romania. In 1912, he immigrated to America with his family, settling in Minneapolis, Minnesota. He earned a bachelor’s degree in Architecture from the University of Minnesota. He also spent a summer studying at the École des Beaux-Arts before earning a master’s degree in Architecture from […]

Astrid Lindgren (1907 - 2002)

Astrid Lindgren grew up in Näs, near Vimmerby, Småland, Sweden, and many of her books are based on her family and childhood memories and landscapes. Lindgren was the daughter of Samuel August Ericsson and Hanna Jonsson. She had two sisters, Stina and Ingegerd, and a brother, Gunnar Ericsson, who eventually became a member of the Swedish […]

Signe Hasso (1915 - 2002)

Signe Eleonora Cecilia Larsson was born in the Kungsholmen parish of Stockholm, Sweden in 1915. She debuted at the Royal Dramatic Theatre in 1927 at the age of 12. In 1933, she made her first film, Tystnadens hus, with German film director/cameraman Harry Hasso, whom she subsequently married. In 1940, she moved to the United States, […]

Ruth Cracknell (1925 - 2002)

Cracknell was born in 1925 in Maitland, New South Wales to Charles and Winifred Cracknell. When she was four years old, the family moved to Sydney. She was educated at North Sydney Girls High School and, after graduating, worked at the Ku-ring-gai Council as a clerk. At 17 she was taken to the theatre by […]

Sylvester Weaver (1908 - 2002)

Weaver was born Sylvester Laflin Weaver, Jr. in Los Angeles, California, the son of Eleanor Isabel (née Dixon) and Sylvester Laflin Weaver. He was of Scottish descent (possibly Clan MacFarlane), as well as of Ulster Scots and early New England ancestry. He was a great-great-grandson of Charles Laflin, a gunpowder manufacturer, who came to America […]

Phyllis Calvert (1915 - 2002)

Born Phyllis Hannah Bickle in Chelsea, she trained at the Margaret Morris School of Dancing and performed from the age of ten, gaining her first film role at the age of 12, in The Arcadians (1927), also known as The Land of Heart’s Desire. Calvert performed in repertory theatre and in several films, before making […]

Wolfgang Preiss (1910 - 2002)

Wolfgang Preiss (27 February 1910 – 27 November 2002) was a German theatre, film and television actor. The son of a teacher, Preiss studied philosophy, German and drama in the early 1930s. He also took private acting classes with Hans Schlenck, making his stage début in Munich in 1932. He went to appear in various theatre […]

Spike Milligan (1918 - 2002)

Milligan was born in Ahmednagar, India, on 16 April 1918, the son of an Irish father, Captain Leo Alphonso Milligan, MSM, RA (1890–1969), who was serving in the British Indian Army. His mother, Florence Mary Winifred Kettleband (1893–1990), was English. He spent his childhood in Poona (India) and later in Rangoon, capital of British Burma. […]

Mary Brian (1906 - 2002)

She was born Louise Byrdie Dantzler in Corsicana, Texas, the daughter of Taurrence J. Dantzler (December 1869 – March 18, 1906) and Louise B. (August 12, 1876 – April 3, 1973). Her brother was Taurrence J. Dantzler, Jr. (August 9, 1903 – April 6, 1973). Her father died when she was one month old and the […]

Chuck Traynor (1937 - 2002)

Charles Everett “Chuck” Traynor (August 21, 1937 – July 22, 2002) was an American pornographer. Traynor was a minor figure in the early US East Coast pornographic film industry and appeared in a number of short “loops” in the early 1970s, usually with his then wife, Linda Lovelace. He was the production manager during the production […]

Maurice Denham (1909 - 2002)

Denham was born in Beckenham, Kent, the son of Eleanor Winifred (née Lillico) and Norman Denham. He was educated at Tonbridge School and trained as a lift engineer. Denham eventually became an actor in 1934 and appeared in live television broadcasts as early as 1938, continuing to perform in that medium until 1997. Like fellow […]

Meg Wyllie (1917 - 2002)

Born in Honolulu, Hawaii, she grew up in the Philippines, where her father worked as an engineer in sugar plantations and moved to New York City in the 1940s. In 1960, she was cast as Mrs. Shafer in the episode “The Captain’s Dilemma” of the CBS military sitcom/drama series, Hennesey, starring Jackie Cooper as a United […]

Guy Stockwell (1934 - 2002)

Guy Harry Stockwell (November 16, 1934 – February 6, 2002) was an American actor who appeared in nearly 30 movies and 250 television series episodes. Stockwell was born in Hollywood, California, the son of Nina Olivette (née Elizabeth Margaret Veronica), an actress and dancer, and Harry Bayless Stockwell, or Harry Stockwell, an actor and singer. His […]

Lawrence Dobkin (1919 - 2002)

A former child actor, Dobkin began working in radio to pay for his studies at the Yale University School of Drama. He understudied on Broadway before serving with a radio propaganda unit of the United States Army Air Corps during World War II. When he returned to network radio he was one of five actors […]

Harold Russell (1914 - 2002)

Harold Russell was born in North Sydney, Nova Scotia, Canada and moved to Massachusetts with his family in 1921, after his father’s death in 1920. In 1941, he was so profoundly affected by the December 7 attack on Pearl Harbor that he enlisted in the Army on the following day. While an Army instructor, and training with […]

Michael Elphick (1946 - 2002)

Elphick grew up in Chichester, Sussex, where his family had a butcher’s shop. He was educated at Lancastrian Secondary Modern Boys School in Chichester, where he took part in several school productions including Noah and A Midsummer Night’s Dream. He initially considered joining the Merchant Navy and helped out in his local boatyard during school […]

Cliff Gorman (1936 - 2002)

Cliff Gorman (October 13, 1936 – September 5, 2002) was an American stage and screen actor. He won an Obie award in 1968 for the stage presentation of The Boys in the Band, and went on to reprise his role in the 1970 film version. Gorman was born in New York City, New York, the son […]

Raf Vallone (1916 - 2002)

Raffaele “Raf” Vallone (17 February 1916 – 31 October 2002) was an Italian footballer, actor and an international film star. Born in Tropea, Calabria, the son of a lawyer, Vallone attended Liceo classico Cavour in Turin, and studied Law and Philosophy at the University of Turin and entered his father’s law firm. He played professional Football […]

Dolores Gray (1923 - 2002)

Born as Sylvia Dolores Finkelstein (but known by Sylvia Dolores Vernon growing up) to Barbara Marguerite Gray (born Marguerite Gray) and Harry Vernon Finkelstein (Stage Name Harry Vernon) in Los Angeles, California. Both her mother and father were Vaudeville actors – which is how they met. Gray’s parents divorced when she was a young child. […]

Katrin Cartlidge (1961 - 2002)

Cartlidge was born in London to an English father and a German Jewish refugee mother. She was educated at the Parliament Hill School for Girls in Camden. Her work on Manchevski’s Before the Rain, and on No Man’s Land made her well known in the Balkans and Bosnia-Herzogovina. Sophie, in Mike Leigh’s Naked, was her first […]

John Agar (1921 - 2002)

Agar was born in Chicago, Illinois, the son of Lillian (née Rogers) and John Agar, Sr., a meat packer. He was educated at the Harvard School for Boys in Chicago and Lake Forest Academy in Lake Forest, Illinois. He graduated from Trinity-Pawling Preparatory School in Pawling, New York, but did not attend college. He and […]

Jeff Corey (1914 - 2002)

Jeff Corey was born Arthur Zwerling[citation needed] in Brooklyn, New York, the son of Mary (née Peskin) and Nathan Zwerling. He attended the Feagin School of Dramatic Art and took part in the New York Federal Theatre Project. He worked with Jules Dassin, Elia Kazan, John Randolph and other politically liberal theatrical personalities. Although he […]