Ronnie Montrose (1947 - 2012)

Ronnie Montrose It wasn’t prostate cancer that killed guitar legend Ronnie Montrose. He beat that gremlin into the dirt, as he did so many obstacles to his career and musical expression. But Montrose, who was immensely proud of being a “survivor,” simply couldn’t vanquish the clinical depression that plagued him since he was a toddler. […]

Sheldon Moldoff (1920 - 2012)

Sheldon Moldoff Shelly was much in demand throughout the forties, working for DC on many strips.  One of his favorites was one he created — The Black Pirate, featured in Action Comics. In 1953, he became Bob Kane’s main ghost and I guess I need to explain that working arrangement… Kane never drew Batman on […]

Paulette Goddard (1910 - 1990)

Goddard was the only child of Joseph Russell Levy (1881–1954), who was Jewish, and the son of a prosperous cigar manufacturer from Salt Lake City, and of Alta Mae Goddard (1887–1983), who was Episcopalian and of English heritage. They married in 1908 and separated while their daughter was very young, although the divorce did not […]

Lina Romay (1954 - 2012)

Lina Romay Romay was born Rosa Maria Almirall on June 25, 1954, in Barcelona, Cataluna, Spain. Her cinematic pseudonym was taken from a singer/actress in mambo king Xavier Cugat‘s band in the 1940s. Following graduation from high school, Romay studied the arts, married actor/photographer Raymond Hardy (they later divorced), and began acting in stage productions. […]

Elyse Knox (1917 - 2012)

Elyse Knox As a B-movie actress in the 1940s, Elyse Knox was perhaps best known for the only horror film she ever made, “The Mummy’s Tomb,” with Lon Chaney Jr. as the monster who kidnaps her. She later recalled working through the night on the abduction and graveyard scenes with Chaney, miserable in heavy makeup […]

Mary Martin (1913 - 1990)

Martin was born in Weatherford, Texas. Her life as a child, as she describes it in her autobiography My Heart Belongs, was secure and happy. She had close relationships with both her mother and father, as well as her siblings. Her autobiography details how the young actress had an instinctive ear for recreating musical sounds. […]

Keith Haring (1958 - 1990)

Keith Haring was born in Reading, Pennsylvania, on May 4, 1958. He was raised in Kutztown, Pennsylvania, by his mother Joanne Haring, and father Allen Haring, an engineer and amateur cartoonist. He had three younger sisters, Kay, Karen and Kristen. Haring became interested in art at a very early age spending time with his father […]

Robert Hegyes (1951 - 2012)

Robert Hegyes who played Juan Epstein, the Sweathog voted Most Likely to Take a Life, on the 1970s sitcom “Welcome Back, Kotter,” died on Thursday in Edison, N.J. He was 60. The cause was cardiac arrest, a spokesman for John F. Kennedy Medical Center in Edison, where Mr. Hegyes was pronounced dead, told Reuters. Broadcast […]

Bob Weston (1947 - 2012)

Bob Weston The long-lasting pop band Fleetwood Mac is also one of the most controversial, its several changes of style and personnel often arising from romantic entanglements rather than musical differences. Bob Weston, who has died aged 64 of a gastrointestinal haemorrhage and cirrhosis of the liver, was the band’s lead guitarist in the early […]

Fred Milano (1939 - 2012)

Fred Milano Fred Milano, one of the original members of Dion and the Belmonts, who wove his backup tenor tones into the musically seamless harmonies of 1950s and ’60s hits like “A Teenager in Love” and “Where or When,” died on Sunday at a hospital on Long Island. He was 72 and lived in Massapequa, […]

Greg Giraldo (1965 - 2010)

Greg Giraldo Greg Giraldo, a comedian famous for his stinging insult humor, disgruntled rants and frequent appearances on Comedy Central’s highly watched roast series, died on Wednesday at Robert Wood Johnson University Hospital in New Brunswick, N.J. He was 44. Mr. Giraldo had been hospitalized since Saturday night after he was found unconscious in a […]

Anne Meara (1929 - 2015)

Meara was born in Brooklyn, New York, the daughter of parents of Irish descent, Mary (née Dempsey) and Edward Joseph Meara, a lawyer. She was raised in Rockville Centre, New York on Long Island, an only child. When Anne was 11 years old, her mother committed suicide.  When she was 18, Meara spent a year […]

Patrick Macnee (1922 - 2015)

The elder of two sons, Macnee was born in Paddington, London in 1922 to Daniel Macnee (1877-1952) and Dorothea Mary Hastings (1896-1984). His father trained race horses in Lambourn, and was known for his dress sense; he had served as an officer in the Yorkshire Dragoons in the First World War. His maternal grandmother was […]

Amanda Peterson (1971 - 2015)

Peterson was born Phyllis Amanda Peterson to Dr. James and Sylvia Peterson. A native of Greeley, Colorado, she was the youngest of three children; her older siblings are sister, Anne Marie, and her brother, James Jr. Eventually, Peterson became known professionally as Amanda Peterson and was called “Mandy” by friends and family.  While living in […]

Omar Sharif (1932 - 2015)

Omar Sharif, whose surname means “noble” or “nobleman” in Arabic, was born on 10 April 1932, as Michel Demitri Chalhoub in Alexandria, Egypt, to a Melkite Greek Catholic family of Lebanese descent. His father, Joseph Chalhoub, a precious woods merchant originally from Zahle, moved to Egypt in the early 20th century, particularly Alexandria, where Omar […]

Roger Rees (1944 - 2015)

Rees was born in Aberystwyth, Wales, the son of Doris Louise (née Smith), a shop clerk, and William John Rees, a police officer. He studied art at the Camberwell College of Arts and the Slade School of Fine Art, turning to acting when he was painting backdrops at the Wimbledon Theatre and was asked to […]

Joan Sebastian (1951 - 2015)

Joan Sebastian was born in the rural town of Juliantla in Guerrero, and began composing at the age of seven. His mother had enrolled him to a school near Guanajuato when he was eight years old, and later returned to his hometown three years later.  At age fourteen, his mother sent him away to a […]

Alex Rocco (1936 - 2015)

Rocco was born as Alexander Federico Petricone in Cambridge, Massachusetts in 1936, but raised in nearby Somerville, the son of Mary (née DiBiase; October 1909–August 1978) and Alessandro Sam Petricone. He was of Italian descent.  According to organized crime turncoat Vincent Teresa, Alex was a hanger-on with the Winter Hill Gang of the Boston area. […]

Beau Kazer (1951 - 2014)

Beau Kazer (May 22, 1951 – December 30, 2014) was a Canadian actor who worked primarily on television. He was best known for his recurring role as Brock Reynolds on the American soap opera The Young and the Restless.  Kazer studied drama at the Stella Adler Studio of Acting. After graduation, Kazer landed his first […]

Stuart Scott (1965 - 2015)

Scott was born Stuart Orlando Scott in Chicago, Illinois on July 19, 1965 to O. Ray and Jacqueline Scott. When he was 7, Scott and his family moved to Winston-Salem, North Carolina. Scott had a brother named Stephen and two sisters named Susan and Synthia.  He attended Mount Tabor High School for 9th and 10th […]

Taylor Negron (1957 - 2015)

Negron was born in Glendale, California, the son of Lucy (née Rosario) and Conrad Negron, Sr. He was born of two parents of Puerto Rican descent. Often Taylor joked that he was of Jewish, Iranian, or other nationalities, but those were loving light-hearted jokes. Negron grew up in La Cañada Flintridge, California, and was an […]

David Adler (1882 - 1949)

David Adler was born on January 3, 1882 in Milwaukee, Wisconsin to a German Jewish family. He was the only son to Isaac David Adler, a prosperous wholesale manufacturer of men’s clothing, and Therese Hyman Adler. David Adler had one sister, Frances, who would go on to become a prominent interior designer. He also had […]

Ruth Sobotka (1925 - 1967)

The daughter of prominent Austrian architect and interior designer, Walter Sobotka (1888–1972) and Viennese actress, Gisela Schönau, Ruth Sobotka immigrated to the United States from Vienna with her parents in 1938. She studied set design at The University of Pennsylvania and graduated from the Carnegie Institute of Technology. After studying at the School of American […]

Syrie Maugham (1879 - 1955)

Gwendoline Maud Syrie Barnardo was born in England, a daughter of Thomas John Barnardo, the founder of the Barnardo’s charity for destitute children, and his wife, the former Sarah Louise “Syrie” Elmslie.  In a career that lasted from 1922 until her death, Syrie Maugham became a legendary interior designer credited for designing the first all-white […]

Jean-Michel Frank (1895 - 1941)

Jean-Michel Frank was born in Paris, a son of Léon Frank, a banker, and his wife and cousin, the former Nanette Frank. From 1904, he attended the Lycée Janson de Sailly in Paris. He began law school in 1911, but in 1915, he was hit by the double blow of the death of his two […]

Lorenzo Mongiardino (1916 - 1998)

In 1936 Renzo Mongiardino moved from Genoa to Milan to study architecture; in 1942 he graduated from the Politecnico di Milano, together with Giò Ponti.  Beginning in 1944, Mongiardino collaborated Domus magazine, writing many articles. During this period he also began his multifaceted career, focusing primarily on the creation of residential and theatre environments.  In […]

Kenneth Battelle (1927 - 2013)

Kenneth Everette Battelle was born in Syracuse, New York, the eldest son with four younger sisters. His father was a shoe salesman, who divorced his mother when Kenneth was 12, leaving their son to support his family through cooking and washing dishes, selling beer and working as an elevator operator. Aged 17, he joined the […]

Rosalía Mera (1944 - 2013)

Rosalia Mera was born in A Coruña, Galiza, Spain in 1944. She dropped out of school at age eleven to work as a sales assistant in a clothing shop.  Mera began designing gowns and lingerie in her home with her then-husband, Amancio Ortega Gaona. The couple opened the first Zara store in 1975 in A […]

Christian Audigier (1958 - 2015)

Audigier was born Christian Ginutti on 21 May 1958 in Avignon.  Audigier began working in the fashion industry at the age of fifteen. He designed a line of denim that was inspired by his love for rock and roll, specifically The Rolling Stones. His designs became so popular that a top executive from MacKeen Jeans […]

Dorothea Dix (1802 - 1887)

Born in the town of Hampden, Maine, she grew up first in Worcester, Massachusetts. At the age of twelve, she sought refuge with her wealthy grandmother in Boston to get away from her alcoholic parents and abusive father. She was the first child of three born to Joseph Dix and Mary Bigelow, who had deep […]