Stan Musial (1920 - 2013)

Stanley Frank “Stan” Musial (/ˈmjuːziəl/ or /ˈmjuːʒəl/; born Stanisław Franciszek Musiał; November 21, 1920 – January 19, 2013), nicknamed “Stan the Man”, was an American Major League Baseball (MLB) outfielder and first baseman. He spent 22 seasons playing for the St. Louis Cardinals, from 1941 to 1944 and 1946 to 1963. Widely considered to be […]

Ted Williams (1918 - 2002)

Theodore Samuel Williams (August 30, 1918 – July 5, 2002) was an American professional baseball player and manager. He played his entire 19-year Major League Baseball (MLB) career as a left fielder for the Boston Red Sox from 1939–1942 and 1946–1960. Nicknamed “The Kid”, “The Splendid Splinter”, “Teddy Ballgame”, “The Thumper” and “The Greatest Hitter […]

Tom Tresh (1938 - 2008)

Born in Detroit, Michigan, Tom Tresh graduated from Allen Park High School. He then attended Central Michigan University. While Tresh played a majority of his games in the outfield, he opened the 1962 season for the Yankees at shortstop, filling in for Tony Kubek who was performing military service. Not until Derek Jeter in 1996 […]

Yogi Berra (1925 - 2015)

Lawrence Peter “Yogi” Berra (May 12, 1925 – September 22, 2015) was an American professional baseball catcher, manager, and coach who played 19 seasons in Major League Baseball (MLB) (1946–63, 1965) (all but the last for the New York Yankees). He was an 18-time All-Star and 10-time World Series champion as a player. Berra had […]

Kurt Vonnegut (1922 - 2007)

Kurt Vonnegut (/ˈvɒnᵻɡət/; November 11, 1922 – April 11, 2007) was an American writer. In a career spanning over 50 years, Vonnegut published 14 novels, three short story collections, five plays, and five works of non-fiction. He is most famous for his darkly satirical, best-selling novel Slaughterhouse-Five (1969). Born and raised in Indianapolis, Indiana, Vonnegut attended […]

Frances Cress Welsing (1935 - 2016)

Frances Cress Welsing (born Frances Luella Cress; March 18, 1935 – January 2, 2016) was an American Afrocentrist psychiatrist. Her 1970 essay, The Cress Theory of Color-Confrontation and Racism (White Supremacy), offered her interpretation on the origins of what she described as white supremacy culture. She was the author of The Isis Papers: The Keys to […]

John Henrik Clarke (1915 - 1998)

By the 1920s, the Great Migration and demographic changes had led to a concentration of African Americans living in Harlem. A synergy developed among the artists, writers and musicians and many figured in the Harlem Renaissance. They began to develop supporting structures of study groups and informal workshops to develop newcomers and young people. Arriving in […]

Larry Jennings (1933 - 1997)

In 1964, Karrell Fox told Larry Jennings about the Magic Castle. Knowing that Dai Vernon now lived in Hollywood, Jennings quit his job as a combustion engineer. He and Nina moved to California and lived at 2005 Ivar Street, Apt. 7. In Hollywood, Larry got a job working for Leo Behnke’s father in the plumbing […]

Jan Němec (1936 - 2016)

Němec’s career as a filmmaker started in the late 1950s when he attended FAMU, the most prestigious institution for film training in Czechoslovakia. At that time, Czechoslovakia was a communist state subservient to the USSR, and artistic and public expression was subject to censorship and government review. However, thanks largely to the failure of purely […]

Jaromil Jireš (1935 - 2001)

Jaromil Jireš (10 December 1935 – 24 October 2001) was a director associated with the Czechoslovak New Wave movement. During the 1960s, Jireš was often in conflict with censors, limiting his output. His 1963 film The Cry was entered into the 1964 Cannes Film Festival. It is often described as the first film of the Czechoslovak […]

Evald Schorm (1931 - 1988)

Evald Schorm was born into a peasant family, and spent his childhood at the family farm in Elbančice near Mladá Vožice. After communists confiscated the family property, he was expelled from school and moved to Zličín near Prague, together with his parents. Schorm had to become a construction worker, but in 1956 he was finally […]

Věra Chytilová (1929 - 2014)

Věra Chytilová was born in Ostrava, Czechoslovakia on 2 February 1929. She had a strict Catholic upbringing, which would later come to influence many of the moral questions presented in her films. While attending college, Chytilová initially studied philosophy and architecture, but abandoned these fields. She then worked as a draftsman, fashion model and as a […]

Jan Werich (1905 - 1980)

Between 1916 and 1924, Jan Werich attended “reálné gymnasium” (equivalent to high school) in Křemencová Street in Prague (where his future partner, Jiří Voskovec, also studied). He studied law at the Charles University Law School from 1924 to 1927, from which he made an early departure to begin his artistic career and forge one of […]

George Voskovec (1905 - 1981)

George Voskovec was born as Jiří Wachsmann in Sázava, Bohemia, present-day Czech Republic. He attended school in Prague and Dijon, France. In 1927, together with Werich, he joined the Osvobozené divadlo (Liberated Theater), which had been created two years earlier by members of the avant-garde Devětsil group, Jiří Frejka and Jindřich Honzl. After disagreements led […]

Adam Roarke (1937 - 1996)

Adam Roarke (August 8, 1937 – April 27, 1996) was an American actor and film director. Roarke was born Richard Jordan Gerler in Brooklyn, New York, where he was a street gang member during his youth. His father was a vaudeville comedian and his mother was a chorine, showgirl. Richie, as he was affectionately called by friends, […]

Jack Starrett (1936 - 1989)

Jack Starrett (November 2, 1936 – March 27, 1989) was an American actor and film director. He is credited as Claude Ennis Starrett, Jr. in some of his films. Starrett is perhaps best known for his role as Gabby Johnson, a parody of George “Gabby” Hayes, in the 1974 classic parody film Blazing Saddles and […]

Carol Ohmart (1927 - 2002)

Born in Salt Lake City, Utah, into a Mormon family her father was C. Thomas Ohmart, a dentist who was first a professional actor, and Armelia Ohmart. She attended East High School in Salt Lake City, Utah, and graduated from Lewis and Clark High School in Spokane, Washington. Carol Ohmart won the Miss Utah 1946 title […]

Giuseppe Taddei (1916 - 2010)

In a nearly 60-year career Giuseppe Taddei left his mark in baritone roles both tragic and villainous, and as a basso-buffo, opera’s comic relief. Raised in Genoa, he started attending the opera with his mother as a toddler, and was soon entertaining his parents’ friends. (One legend has him at around age eight singing on […]

Ebe Stignani (1903 - 1974)

Ebe Stignani (10 July 1903 [or 1904] – 5 October 1974) was an Italian opera singer, who was pre-eminent in the dramatic mezzo-soprano roles of the Italian repertoire during a stage career of more than thirty years. Born in Naples in 1903 (some sources cite her year of birth as 1904), Ebe Stignani studied music for […]

Gina Cigna (1900 - 2001)

Gina Cigna (6 March 1900 – 26 June 2001) was a French-Italian dramatic soprano. Gina Cigna was born in Angers, department of Maine-et-Loire, to parents of Italian origin. She trained as a pianist at the Paris Conservatory studying with Alfred Cortot and graduated with a gold medal. She then started a career as a recitalist. […]

Vittorio Gui (1885 - 1975)

Vittorio Gui (14 September 1885 – 16 October 1975) was an Italian conductor, composer, musicologist and critic. Gui was born in Rome in 1885. He graduated in humanities at the University of Rome and also studied composition at the Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia; his principal composition teachers were the noted composers Giacomo Setaccioli and Stanislao […]

Gianni Raimondi (1923 - 2008)

Gianni Raimondi (17 April 1923 – 19 October 2008) was an Italian lyric tenor, particularly associated with the Italian repertory. Born in Bologna, Raimondi studied at the Music Conservatory of his native city with Antonio Melandri, and Gennaro Barra-Caracciolo and in Mantua with Ettore Campogalliani. He made his stage debut in 1947 in Rigoletto at the […]

Sesto Bruscantini (1919 - 2003)

Sesto Bruscantini was born in Civitanova Marche, Marche, Italy. After obtaining a law degree, he turned to vocal studies in Rome, with Luigi Ricci at the Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia. He won a vocal contest organized by RAI in 1947 and made his debut at La Scala in Milan in 1949, as Geronimo in […]

Leyla Gencer (1928 - 2008)

Leyla Gencer was born in Polonezköy (near Istanbul) to a Turkish father and a Polish mother. Her father, Hasanzade İbrahim Bey (who took the surname Çeyrekgil under the Surname Law of 1934), was a wealthy businessman, whose family was from the city of Safranbolu. Her mother, Lexanda Angela Minakovska, was from a Roman Catholic family […]

Magda Olivero (1910 - 2014)

Magda Olivero (25 March 1910 – 8 September 2014) was an Italian operatic soprano. Her career started in 1932 when she was 22, and later took her to opera houses around the world. Born as Maria Maddalena Olivero in Saluzzo, Italy, she made her operatic debut in 1932 on radio in Turin radio singing Nino Cattozzo’s […]

Giuseppe Di Stefano (1921 - 2008)

Giuseppe Di Stefano was born in Motta Sant’Anastasia, a village near Catania, Sicily, in 1921. He was the only son of a carabiniere turned cobbler and his dressmaker wife. Di Stefano was educated at a Jesuit seminary and briefly contemplated entering the priesthood. After serving in the Italian military (and briefly taking lessons from the Swiss […]

Cesare Siepi (1923 - 2010)

Born in Milan (his year of birth is debated between 1919 and 1923, though 1923 is given as official), he began singing as a member of a madrigal group. Cesare Siepi often claimed to have been largely self-taught, having attended the music conservatory in his home city for just a short time. His operatic career […]

Mario Del Monaco (1915 - 1982)

Mario Del Monaco was born in Florence to a musical upper-class family. As a young boy he studied the violin but had a passion for singing. He graduated from the Rossini Conservatory at Pesaro, where he first met and sang with Renata Tebaldi, with whom he would form something of an operatic dream team of […]

Giulietta Simionato (1910 - 2010)

Born at Forlì, Romagna, Giulietta Simionato studied in Rovigo and Padua, and made her operatic debut at Montagnana in 1928. In 1928, she sang in Verdi’s “Rigoletto”. The first fifteen years of her career were frustrating, she was only given small parts, but she attracted growing attention in the late 1940s, and by the end […]

Anna Moffo (1932 - 2006)

Anna Moffo was born in Wayne, Pennsylvania, USA to Italian parents, Nicola Moffo (a shoemaker) and his wife Regina Cinti. After graduating from Radnor High School, she turned down an offer to go to Hollywood and went instead to the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia where she studied with Eufemia Giannini-Gregory, sister of soprano […]