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. […]

Jimmy Jewel (1909 - 1995)

The son of a comedian and actor who also used the stage name Jimmy Jewel, the youngster made his stage debut in Robinson Crusoe in Barnsley, at the age of four, performed with his father from the age of 10 and subsequently became stage manager for the family show.  When young Jimmy started his own […]

Harriet Nelson (1909 - 1994)

She was born Peggy Louise Snyder in Des Moines, Iowa, the daughter of Hazel Dell (née McNutt) and Roy Hilliard Snyder. She appeared on the vaudeville stage when she was three years old and made her debut on Broadway in her teens.  She frequented the Cotton Club, began smoking at age 13, was briefly married […]

Bert Freed (1919 - 1994)

Born and raised in The Bronx, New York, Freed began acting while attending Penn State University, and made his Broadway debut in 1942. Following World War II Army service in the European Theatre, he appeared in the Broadway musical The Day Before Spring in 1945 and dozens of television shows between 1947 and 1985. His […]

Henry Mancini (1924 - 1994)

Mancini was born in the Little Italy neighborhood of Cleveland, and was raised near Pittsburgh, in the steel town of West Aliquippa, Pennsylvania. His parents emigrated from the Abruzzo region of Italy. Mancini’s father, Quinto (born March 13, 1893, Scanno, Italy) was a steelworker, who made his only child begin piccolo lessons at the age […]

Giulietta Masina (1921 - 1994)

Giulia Anna Masina was born in San Giorgio di Piano, Bologna. Her parents were Gaetano Masina, a violinist and a music teacher, and Anna Flavia Pasqualini, a schoolteacher. Nonetheless, she spent most of her childhood and adolescence in Rome at the home of a widowed aunt. Masina had three elder siblings: Eugenia, and twins Mario […]

Frank Thring (1926 - 1994)

Thring was born in Melbourne, the son of Frank Thring Snr. (known as F. W. Thring) and Olive (née Kreitmeyer), and was educated at the Melbourne Grammar School. His father was the head of the theatrical firm J. C. Williamson’s in the 1920s, and subsequently Efftee Studios in the 1930s, in Melbourne, Australia. He has […]

Lilia Skala (1896 - 1994)

Skala was born Lilia Sofer in Vienna, Austria. Her mother, Katharina Skala, was Catholic, and her father, Julius Sofer, was Jewish and worked as a manufacturers representative for the Waldes Koh-i-noor Company. Skala was one of the first women to graduate in architecture and engineering from the University of Dresden, before practicing architecture professionally in […]

Tom Ewell (1909 - 1994)

Ewell was born Samuel Yewell Tompkins in Owensboro, Kentucky. His family expected him to follow in their footsteps as lawyers or whiskey and tobacco dealers but Ewell decided to pursue acting instead. Ewell began acting in summer stock in 1928 with Don Ameche, before moving to New York City in 1931. He enrolled in the […]

Lynne Frederick (1954 - 1994)

Frederick was born in Hillingdon, Middlesex to Andrew Frederick (1914-1983) and Iris C. (née Sullivan) Frederick (1928-2006). Her mother became a casting director for Thames Television. Lynne’s parents separated when she was two years old, and she was brought up by her mother, Iris, and her grandmother, Cecilia, at Market Harborough, Leicestershire.  Having originally aspired […]

Fernando Rey (1917 - 1994)

Rey was born in A Coruña, Spain, the son of Captain Casado Veiga. He studied architecture, but the Spanish Civil War interrupted his university studies which led him to his success.  In 1936, Rey began his career in movies as an extra, sometimes even getting credited. It was then that he chose his stage name, […]

Gilbert Roland (1905 - 1994)

He was born Luis Antonio Dámaso de Alonso in Ciudad Juárez, Chihuahua, Mexico, and originally intended to become a bullfighter like his father. When the family moved to the United States, however, he became interested in acting when he was picked at random for a role as an extra. He chose his screen name by […]