Anneliese Rothenberger (1926 - 2010)

Anneliese Rothenberger was born in Mannheim, Germany. She studied with Erika Müller, and took up her first engagement in Koblenz in 1943. In 1947, Günther Rennert offered her a job at the Hamburg Opera House, where she sang in Rennert’s now famous production of Alban Berg’s Lulu twenty years later, a role she would also […]

Peter Kreuder (1905 - 1981)

Peter Paul Kreuder (18 August 1905 – 28 June 1981) was a German-Austrian pianist, composer and conductor. Peter Kreuder was born in Aachen, the son of a Kammersänger. He enrolled as a piano student at the Cologne Conservatory in 1910, where he performed his first concert one year later, and at music academies in Munich, Berlin […]

Marika Rökk (1913 - 2004)

Marie Karoline Rökk was born in 1913 in Cairo, Egypt, as the daughter of Hungarian architect and contractor Eduard Rökk and his wife Maria Karoline Charlotte née Karoly. She spent her childhood in Budapest, but in 1924 her family moved to Paris. Here she learned to dance and starred with the Hoffmann Girls at the […]

Oskar Karlweis (1894 - 1956)

Oskar Karlweis (10 July 1894, Hinterbrühl – 24 January 1956, New York City) was an Austrian stage and film actor, active internationally. Son of a playwright, Karlweis abandoned his youthful law studies for the stage, first for eight years at Vienna’s Stadttheater. After service in World War I, he was active with Max Reinhardt’s Theater in […]

Mischa Spoliansky (1898 - 1985)

Mischa Spoliansky was born into a Jewish, musical family in Białystok, then part of the Belostok Oblast of the Russian Empire. His father was an opera singer and his sister would later become a pianist and his brother a cellist. After the birth of Mischa the family moved to Warsaw, and later Kalisz. After the […]

Heinz Roemheld (1901 - 1985)

Heinz Roemheld (May 1, 1901 – February 11, 1985) was an American composer. Born Heinz Eric Roemheld in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, he was one of four children of German immigrant Heinrich Roemheld and his wife Fanny Rauterberg Roemheld. Heinrich was a pharmacist, but all the members of the family were musical. Heinz’s brother Edgar (1898-1964) became […]

Victor Young (1900 - 1956)

Victor Young was born in Chicago on August 8, 1900, into a very musical Jewish family, his father being a member of one Joseph Sheehan’s touring Opera company. The young Victor began playing violin at the age of six, and was sent to Poland when he was ten to stay with his grandfather and study […]

Leo Robin (1900 - 1984)

Leo Robin (April 6, 1900 – December 29, 1984) was an American composer, lyricist and songwriter. He is probably best known for collaborating with Ralph Rainger on the 1938 Oscar-winning song “Thanks for the Memory”, sung by Bob Hope and Shirley Ross in the film The Big Broadcast of 1938. Robin was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, […]

Grete Mosheim (1905 - 1986)

Grete Mosheim was born in Berlin, Germany on 8 January 1905, the daughter of Markus Mosheim (1868-1956) and his wife Clara Mosheim née Hilger (1875-1970). Her sister was actress Lore Mosheim, who appeared in at least nine movies. Mosheim started her acting career at the age of 17 and was a member of Deutsches Theater, Berlin […]

Friedrich Hollaender (1896 - 1976)

Friedrich Hollaender was born in London, where his father, operetta composer Victor Hollaender, worked as a musical director at the Barnum & Bailey Circus. Young Hollaender had a solid music and theatre family background: his uncle Gustav was director of the Stern Conservatory in Berlin, his uncle Felix Hollaender was a well-known novelist and drama […]

William Nigh (1881 - 1955)

William Nigh (October 12, 1881 – November 27, 1955) was an American film director, writer, and actor. His film work sometimes lists him as either “Will Nigh” or “William Nye”. Nigh was born in Berlin, Wisconsin. He began his film career as an actor, appearing in 17 films in 1913 and 1914; he also directed […]

Warren William (1894 - 1948)

Warren William appeared in his first Broadway play in 1920, and had soon made a name for himself in New York. William appeared in 22 plays on Broadway between 1920 and 1931. During this period he also appeared in two silent films, The Town That Forgot God (1922) and Plunder (1923). William moved from New […]

Donald Woods (1906 - 1998)

Born Ralph Lewis Zink in Brandon, Manitoba, Donald Woods moved with his family to California and was raised in Burbank. A son of William and Margaret Zink (the family was of German descent; their religion was Presbyterian), his younger brother was actor Russell Conway, born Russell Clarence Zink, in Brandon, Manitoba, Canada, on April 25, […]

James Cruze (1884 - 1942)

James Cruze (March 27, 1884 near Ogden, Utah – August 3, 1942 in Hollywood, California) was a silent film actor and film director. Cruze was born Jens Vera Cruz Bosen. The Vera Cruz middle name came from the battle of Vera Cruz. He was raised in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, but did […]

Frank O’Connor (1881 - 1959)

Born on April 11, 1881, in New York City, Frank O’Connor would begin his film career with a starring role in the 1915 silent film, The Voice in the Fog, which also starred Donald Brian and Adda Gleason. He starred or had featured roles in six more films between 1917 and 1920, before focusing on […]

Theodore Hardeen (1876 - 1945)

Theodore Hardeen was born as Ferenc Dezső Weisz (also spelled Ferencz Dezso Weisz) in Budapest, Hungary, and went by the name of Theodore Weiss when the family was living in Appleton, Wisconsin. He was known as “Deshi” and later “Dash” by his parents. In 1893, Hardeen performed with Houdini at Coney Island as “The Brothers Houdini”. […]

Bess Houdini (1876 - 1943)

Wilhelmina Beatrice Rahner (January 23, 1876 – February 11, 1943), better known as Bess Houdini, was the stage assistant and wife of Harry Houdini. Wilhelmina Beatrice Rahner was born in Brooklyn, New York, U.S. in 1876 to German immigrants Gebhard Rahner (a cabinet maker) and Balbina Rahner (née Bugel). Bess Houdini was working at Coney Island in […]

Dai Vernon (1894 - 1992)

Dai Vernon was born in Ottawa as David Frederick Wingfield Verner. While performing, he often mentioned that he had learned his first trick from his father at age seven, adding that he had “wasted the first 6 years” of his life. His father was a government worker and an amateur magician. Vernon studied mechanical engineering […]

Douglas Henning (1947 - 2000)

Douglas James Henning (May 3, 1947 – February 7, 2000) was a Canadian magician, illusionist, escape artist and politician. Shortly after university, Henning was awarded a Canada Council for the Arts grant. The terms of the grant required Henning to study magic. He did so, traveling to view first hand the talents of such magic greats […]

Robert Harbin (1908 - 1978)

Robert Harbin (born Ned Williams 14 February 1908 Balfour, South Africa – 12 January 1978 Westminster, London, UK) was a British magician and author. He is noted as the inventor of a number of classic illusions, including the Zig Zag Girl. He also became an authority on origami. The young Ned Williams first got interested in […]

Duke Ellington (1899 - 1974)

Edward Kennedy “Duke” Ellington (April 29, 1899 – May 24, 1974) was an American composer, pianist, and bandleader of a jazz orchestra, which he led from 1923 until his death in a career spanning over fifty years. Born in Washington, D.C., Duke Ellington was based in New York City from the mid-1920s onward, and gained a […]

Ben Webster (1909 - 1973)

Ben Webster learned to play piano and violin at an early age before taking up the saxophone, although he did return to the piano from time to time, even recording on the instrument occasionally. Once Budd Johnson showed him some basics on the saxophone, Webster began to play that instrument in the Young Family Band […]

Stan Getz (1927 - 1991)

Stan Getz’s reputation was greatly enhanced by his featured status on Johnny Smith’s 1952 album Moonlight in Vermont, that year’s top jazz album. The single of the title tune became a hit that stayed on the charts for months. In the mid to late 1950s working from Scandinavia, Getz became popular playing cool jazz with Horace […]

Mack Gordon (1904 - 1959)

Mack Gordon (born Morris Gittler, June 21, 1904 – February 28, 1959) was an American composer and lyricist of songs for the stage and film. He was nominated for the best original song Oscar nine times in eleven years, including five consecutive years between 1940 and 1944, and won the award once, for “You’ll Never […]

Oliver Wallace (1887 - 1963)

Oliver Wallace was born on August 6, 1887, in London. After completing his musical training, he went to the United States in 1904, becoming a US citizen ten years later. He initially worked primarily on the West Coast as a conductor of theater orchestras and as an organist accompanying silent films. At the same time, […]

Sammy Cahn (1913 - 1993)

Sammy Cahn was born Samuel Cohen in the Lower East Side of New York City, the only son (he had four sisters) of Abraham and Elka Reiss Cohen, who were Jewish immigrants from Galicia, then ruled by Austria-Hungary. His sisters, Sadye, Pearl, Florence, and Evelyn, all studied the piano. His mother did not approve of […]

Moose Charlap (1928 - 1974)

Mark “Moose” Charlap (December 19, 1928 – July 8, 1974) was a Jewish-American Broadway composer best known for Peter Pan (1954), for which Carolyn Leigh wrote the lyrics. The idea for the show came from Jerome Robbins, who planned to have a few songs by Charlap and Leigh. It evolved into a full musical, with […]

Adolph Green (1914 - 2002)

Adolph Green was born in the Bronx to Hungarian Jewish immigrants Helen (née Weiss) and Daniel Green. After high school, he worked as a runner on Wall Street while he tried to make it as an actor. He met Comden through mutual friends in 1938 while she was studying drama at New York University. They […]

Jule Styne (1905 - 1994)

Jule Styne attended Chicago Musical College, but before then he had already attracted attention of another teenager, Mike Todd, later a successful film producer, who commissioned him to write a song for a musical act that he was creating. It was the first of over 1,500 published songs Styne composed in his career. In 1929, […]

Patricia Neway (1919 - 2012)

Born on Ditmas Avenue in Kensington, Brooklyn to Irish-American parents, Patricia Neway grew up in Rosebank, Staten Island. Her father was a printing plant foreman who had briefly worked in vaudeville as the high tenor in a vocal quartet. She attended the Notre Dame Academy on Staten Island and then Notre Dame College, where she […]