Barry White (1944 - 2003)

Barry White Say the name Barry White and you’d be hard pressed to follow it with the name of any other recording artist with such a huge, cross-sectional following. He was at home appearing on Soul Train, guesting with a full band on The Today Show, and appearing in cartoon form in various episodes of […]

Peter Collinson (1936 - 1980)

Peter Collinson was born in Cleethorpes, Lincolnshire in 1936. His parents, an actress and a musician, separated when he was two years old; he was raised by his grandparents. From ages eight to 14 he attended the Actor’s Orphanage in Chertsey, Surrey where he had the chance to write and act in many plays. Noël […]

Herbie Faye (1899 - 1980)

In 1956, he appeared as Max in The Harder They Fall, a boxing story starring Humphrey Bogart in his last role. In 1962, he portrayed Charlie the bartender, in another boxing film Requiem for a Heavyweight starring Anthony Quinn. That same year, he appeared as “Lefty” in the episode “Fall Guy” of ABC’s crime drama […]

John Bonham (1948 - 1980)

Bonham was born on 31 May 1948, in Redditch, Worcestershire, England, to Joan and Jack Bonham. He began learning to play at five, making a kit of containers and coffee tins, imitating his idols Max Roach, Gene Krupa and Buddy Rich. His mother gave him a snare drum at the age of ten. He received […]

Barbara Loden (1932 - 1980)

Barbara Loden made her New York theater debut in 1947 in Compulsion and also appeared on stage in The Highest Tree with Robert Redford as well as Night Circus with Ben Gazzara and in the stage version of Come Back to the Five and Dime, Jimmy Dean, Jimmy Dean.  She made her television debut on […]

Sam Levene (1905 - 1980)

Sam Levene (August 28, 1905 – December 28, 1980) was an American Broadway and film actor. He made his Broadway debut in 1927 with five lines in a play titled Wall Street, and over a span of nearly 50 years, appeared on Broadway in 37 Shows, of which 33 were the original Broadway Productions, many […]

Jane Froman (1907 - 1980)

Ellen Jane Froman was born in University City, Missouri, the daughter of Elmer Ellsworth Froman and Anna T. Barcafer. Her childhood and adolescence were spent in the small Missouri town of Clinton. Her father left her mother when Jane was about 5 years old. She developed a stutter around this time, which plagued her all […]

Victor Sen Yung (1915 - 1980)

Sen Yung made his first significant acting debut in the 1938 film Charlie Chan in Honolulu, as the Chinese detective’s “number two son,” Jimmy Chan. In this movie, Sidney Toler replaced the recently deceased Warner Oland as Charlie Chan and Sen Yung replaced Oland’s “number one son” Lee, who had been played by Keye Luke. […]

Barbara Britton (1919 - 1980)

Barbara Maurine Brantingham was born September 26, 1919, in Long Beach, California. Her involvement with stage productions began when she was 14. She attended Polytechnic High School and Long Beach City College, majoring in speech with the intention of working as a speech and drama teacher. While in school she began to show an interest […]

Tony Beckley (1929 - 1980)

Beckley was born in Southampton, Hampshire, England. He was a child out of wedlock and never met his father. His mother, Beatrice Mitchell, was a stewardess who worked on ocean liners such as the RMS Mauretania and the RMS Aquitania. Due to work commitments she was often away and Beckley was brought up mainly by […]

Raoul Walsh (1887 - 1980)

Walsh was born in New York as Albert Edward Walsh to Elizabeth T. Bruff, the daughter of Irish Catholic immigrants and Thomas W. Walsh, an Englishman. Like his younger brother, he was part of Omega Gamma Delta during his high school days. Growing up in New York, Walsh was also a friend of the Barrymore […]

Kay Medford (1919 - 1980)

She was born Margaret Kathleen Regan in 1919 in New York City to James and Mary Regan, first-generation Irish-American parents. She was orphaned in her teens. She adopted the name “Kay Medford” professionally, and began her career after graduating from high school and working as a nightclub waitress.  She was the original “Mama” in Bye […]

Gail Patrick (1911 - 1980)

Gail Patrick was born Margaret LaVelle Fitzpatrick on June 20, 1911, in Birmingham, Alabama. Her parents were Lawrence C. Fitzpatrick, a municipal fireman, and LaVelle Fitzpatrick. After graduating from Howard College, she remained as acting dean of women. She completed two years of law school at the University of Alabama and aspired to be the […]

Dick Haymes (1918 - 1980)

Haymes was born in Buenos Aires, Argentina in 1918. His mother, whom Haymes predeceased, was Irish-born Marguerite Haymes (1894–1987), a well-known vocal coach and instructor. Dick Haymes became a vocalist in a number of big bands, worked in Hollywood, on radio, and in films throughout the 1940s/1950s.  Though never achieving the immensely popular status of […]

Douglas Kenney (1946 - 1980)

Kenney was born in West Palm Beach, Florida, and attended Gilmour Academy, near Cleveland, Ohio, for high school.  While at Harvard University, Kenney was a member of the Signet society and editor of The Harvard Lampoon. There he was part of the first group of newcomers who restyled the college humor magazine. Another of these […]

Lewis Milestone (1895 - 1980)

Milestone was born in Kishinev, in the Bessarabia Governorate of the Russian Empire (now Chişinău, Moldova), to a family of Jewish heritage. He came to the United States in 1912, just prior to World War I. Milestone held a number of odd jobs before enlisting in the U.S. Signal Corps, where he worked as an […]

Yootha Joyce (1927 - 1980)

Yootha Joyce Needham was born in Wandsworth, London, the only child of musical parents Hurst Needham, a well-known singer, and Jessica Revitt, a concert pianist. Her mother named her “Yootha” an Aboriginal name meaning “thirsty” ) Joyce was evacuated to Hampshire during World War II. She left school at 15, then trained at RADA where […]

Fred Beir (1927 - 1980)

Frederick Edwin Beir, known as Fred Beir (September 21, 1927 – June 3, 1980), was an American actor, who appeared mostly on television.  He made guest appearances on TV series like Bonanza, Perry Mason, Maverick, The Andy Griffith Show, Wagon Train, The Twilight Zone (the 1963 episode “Death Ship)”, Ben Casey, The Outer Limits, The […]

George Pal (1908 - 1980)

He was born in Cegléd, Austria–Hungary, the son of György Pál Marczincsak Sr.[citation needed] and his wife Maria. He graduated from the Budapest Academy of Arts in 1928 (aged 20). From 1928 to 1931, he made films for Hunnia Films of Budapest, Hungary.  At the age of 23 in 1931 he married Elisabeth “Zsoka” Grandjean, […]

Imogen Hassall (1942 - 1980)

Named after Shakespeare’s Cymbeline heroine, she was born in Woking, Surrey, to a family of artists and businessmen. Her grandfather, John Hassall, and her aunt, Joan Hassall, worked as illustrators, while her father, Christopher Hassall, was a poet and lyricist. Her godfather is said to have been the composer Ivor Novello, with whom her father […]

Duncan Renaldo (1904 - 1980)

Renaldo told some interviewers that he actually did not know where he was born. Various sources claim that he was born in Oancea, Galați County, Romania as Vasile Dumitru V. Couyanos or Basil Couyanos. Renaldo apparently never knew his biological parents and was raised in several European countries. His birthplace has been generally stated as […]

Terence Fisher (1904 - 1980)

Fisher was one of the most prominent horror directors of the second half of the 20th century. He was the first to bring gothic horror alive in full colour, and the sexual overtones and explicit horror in his films, while mild by modern standards, were unprecedented in his day. His first major gothic horror film […]

Dirch Passer (1926 - 1980)

When he was young, Passer was very shy, and had a dream of becoming an actor, but consented to his father’s wishes by attending J. Lauritzen’s sea training school near Svendborg in 1944. But since he had ongoing problems with seasickness, he later started at De frederiksbergske teatres Elevskole.  During the 1950s he formed a […]

Charles Denner (1926 - 1995)

Denner was born in 1926 in the city of Tarnów in south-eastern Poland, before emigrating with his family to France at the age of four. During World War II, his family took refuge in Brive-la-Gaillarde, where they were helped by Rabbi David Feuerwerker. During WWII Charles Denner was a Free French partisan in the Vercors […]

Alfred Ryder (1916 - 1995)

Alfred Ryder (born Alfred Jacob Corn; January 5, 1916 – April 16, 1995) was an American film, radio and television actor. Ryder is known for appearing in over one hundred television shows, including the starring role as a British criminal who could not be killed in Alcoa Presents: One Step Beyond episode “The Devil’s Laughter’” […]

Mary Beth Hughes (1919 - 1995)

Born Mary Elizabeth Hughes in Alton, Illinois, Hughes’ parents divorced in 1923. After the divorce, Hughes’s mother, Mary Frances Hughes (née Lucas), moved with her only child to Washington, D.C. As a child, Hughes began acting in stage productions. While acting in a school play in the early 1930s, her performance caught the attention of […]

Alexander Knox (1907 - 1995)

Knox was born in Strathroy, Ontario and graduated from the University of Western Ontario. He later moved to Boston, Massachusetts to perform on the stage with the Boston Repertory Theatre. After the company folded following the stock market crash of 1929, Knox returned to London, Ontario where for the next two years he worked as […]

Patric Knowles (1911 - 1995)

In his first American film, Give Me Your Heart (1936), released in Great Britain as Sweet Aloes, Knowles was cast as a titled Englishman of means.  While making The Charge of the Light Brigade (1936) at Lone Pine, California, he befriended Errol Flynn, whom he closely resembled and whose acquaintance he had made in England […]

Christopher Stone (1942 - 1995)

Stone was born Thomas Edward Bourassa in Manchester, New Hampshire.  He appeared in films and on television from the early 1970s until his death in 1995. Stone and his wife, Dee Wallace both appeared together in a number of films including the classic horror films The Howling (1981) and Cujo (1983). They shared top billing […]

Michael Hordern (1911 - 1995)

Hordern was born in the Poplars, an 18th-century townhouse in Berkhamsted, Hertfordshire, the son of Margaret Emily (Murray) and Capt. Edward Joseph Calverly Hordern. He was educated at Windlesham House School and Brighton College, as was his elder brother Peter, who played rugby for Gloucester in the 1930s and was capped four times by England. […]