Natasha Richardson (1963 - 2009)

Natasha Richardson Richardson was born and raised in London, a member of the Redgrave family, known as a theatrical and film acting dynasty. She was the daughter of director and producer Tony Richardson and actress Vanessa Redgrave, granddaughter of actors Sir Michael Redgrave and Rachel Kempson, sister of Joely Richardson, half-sister of Carlo Gabriel Nero […]

Betty Hutton (1921 - 2007)

Betty Hutton Ms. Hutton, a brassy, energetic performer with a voice that could sound like a fire alarm, had the lead role in the 1950 film version of Irving Berlin’s “Annie Get Your Gun” and a starring role in Cecil B. DeMille’s 1952 spectacular, “The Greatest Show on Earth.” She was known for her renditions […]

John Huston (1906 - 1987)

John Huston John Huston, the legendary director and scenarist who made such classic films as ”The Maltese Falcon,” ”The Treasure of the Sierra Madre,” ”The Asphalt Jungle” and ”The African Queen,” died yesterday in Middletown, R.I., at the age of 81. Associates said he had died in his sleep of complications from emphysema. The film […]

Rock Hudson (1925 - 1985)

Rock Hudson He was the son of an auto mechanic and a telephone operator who divorced when he was eight years old. He failed to obtain parts in school plays because he couldn’t remember lines. After high school he was a postal employee and during WW II served as a Navy airplane mechanic. After the […]

Moe Howard (1897 - 1975)

Moe Howard From a very early age he was interested in acting, a talent that was helped along by his voracious memory and capacity for memorizing just about anything, including all of the many books he read and all of the plays he saw when he was skipping school. His parents, however, were displeased by […]

Jerome Howard (1903 - 1952)

Jerome Howard He was the youngest of Jennie and Solomon Horwitz’s five sons, and because of his status as family baby, his mother would often call him “My baby,” leading his four much-older brothers to tease him by calling him Baby and later Babe, a nickname he later grew to like so much he often […]

Edward Everett Horton (1886 - 1970)

Edward Everett Horton Horton started his stage career in 1906, singing and dancing and playing small parts in Vaudeville and in Broadway productions. In 1919, he moved to Los Angeles, California, where he began acting in Hollywood films. His first starring role was in the comedy Too Much Business (1922), and he portrayed the lead […]

Bob Hope (1903 - 2003)

Bob Hope Hope was born in Eltham, London, the fifth of seven sons. His English father, William Henry Hope, was a stonemason from Weston-super-Mare, Somerset, and his Welsh mother, Avis Townes, was a light opera singer from Barry who later worked as a cleaner. They married in April 1891 and lived at 12 Greenwood Street, […]

Darla Hood (1931 - 1979)

Darla Hood Darla Hood was born in a small rural Oklahoma town on Sunday, November 8th, 1931, she grew up as dark-banged cute girl, Darla Hood began her association with the motley “Our Gang” group at the tender age of 2 1/2, as she stated on the The Jack Benny Program (1950). Her father, James […]

William Holden (1918 - 1981)

William Holden Born William Franklin Beedle in O’Fallon, Illinois, he initially followed in his father’s footsteps by studying chemistry at Pasadena Junior College before he signed a contract with Paramount in 1937. His first role was an unaccredited appearance 1938’s “Prison Farm” but he became a star almost effortlessly by virtue of his starring role […]

Alfred Hitchcock (1899 - 1980)

Alfred Hitchcock Alfred Joseph Hitchcock was born in Leytonstone, Essex, England. He was the son of Emma Jane (Whelan; 1863 – 1942) and East End greengrocer William Hitchcock (1862 – 1914). His parents were both of half English and half Irish ancestry. He had two older siblings, William Hitchcock (born 1890) and Eileen Hitchcock (born […]

Charlton Heston (1923 - 2008)

Charlton Heston Heston made his feature film debut as the lead character in a 16mm production of Peer Gynt (1941), based on the Henrik Ibsen play. Shortly thereafter, he played ‘Marc Antony’ in Julius Caesar (1950), however Heston firmly stamped himself as genuine leading man material with his performance as circus manager ‘Brad Braden’ in […]

Rita Hayworth (1918 - 1987)

Rita Hayworth Margarita Carmen Cansino was born on October 17, 1918, in Brooklyn, New York, into a family of dancers. Her father, Eduardo was a dancer as was his father before him. He emigrated from Spain in 1913. Rita’s mother met Eduardo in 1916 and were married the following year. Rita, herself, studied as a […]

Bobby Hatfield (1940 - 2003)

Bobby Hatfield The duo, whose 42-year career featured pop standbys like “Unchained Melody,” “(You’re My) Soul and Inspiration” and “You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feeling,” were in Kalamazoo to kick off a four-day series of performances in Michigan and Ohio.”It’s a shock, a real shock,” Cohen said during a telephone interview. Medley, he said, was “broken […]

George Harrison (1943 - 2001)

George Harrison A master musician, a film producer and actor, best known as the lead guitarist and occasionally lead vocalist of The Beatles, George Harrison was born February 25, 1943, in Liverpool, Merseyside, England. He was also the youngest of four children, born to Harold and Louise Harrison. Like his future band mates, Harrison was […]

Jonathan Harris (1914 - 2002)

Jonathan Harris Jonathan Harris, a versatile character actor perhaps best known for his role as the villainous Dr. Smith in the science-fiction fantasy series ”Lost in Space” on CBS television, died on Sunday in Los Angeles. He was 87 and lived in the Encino section of Los Angeles. He had been hospitalized for a back […]

Leonard Nimoy (1931 - 2015)

Leonard Simon Nimoy was born on March 26, 1931 in the West End of Boston, Massachusetts, the son of Yiddish-speaking Orthodox Jewish immigrants from Iziaslav, Soviet Union (now Ukraine). His parents left Iziaslav separately—his father first walking over the border into Poland—and reunited in the United States. His mother, Dora (née Spinner), was a homemaker, […]

Oliver Hardy (1892 - 1957)

Oliver Hardy Although his parents were never in show business, as a young boy Oliver Hardy was a gifted singer and, by age eight, was performing with minstrel shows. In 1910 he ran a movie theatre, which he preferred to studying law. In 1913 he became a comedy actor with the Lubin Company in Florida […]

Jack Haley (1897 - 1979)

Jack Haley Full name: John Joseph Haley, was the actor who played the part of the Tin Woodman and Hickory in MGM‘s 1939 film, The Wizard of Oz. An established song-and-dance man, Haley was loaned to the MGM studio by his contract-holder, 20th Century Fox, on 4 November 1938. Haley replaced Buddy Ebsen, the actor who […]

Edmund Gwenn (1877 - 1959)

Edmund Gwenn Gwenn was born Edmund Kellaway in Wandsworth, London, on September 26, 1877. He was the oldest boy in the family, which at that time meant he was the only one who really mattered. His father was a British civil servant, and he groomed Edmund to take a position of power in the Empire. […]

Merv Griffin (1925 - 2007)

Merv Griffin He is best remembered as the host of his CBS television talk show, “The Merv Griffin Show,” which ran from 1965 to 1986. Additionally, he created the game shows “Jeopardy!” (1964), “Wheel of Fortune” (1975), “Ruckus” (1991), “Click” (1997), and “Merv Griffin’s Crosswords” (2007) with his own television production companies, Merv Griffin Enterprises […]

Horton Foote (1916 - 2009)

Foote began as an actor after studying at the Pasadena Playhouse in 1931–32. After getting better reviews for plays he had written than his acting, he focused on writing in the 1940s and became one of the leading writers for television during the 1950s, beginning with an episode of The Gabby Hayes Show. The Trip […]

Lorne Greene (1915 - 1987)

Lorne Greene He is most remembered for his role as ‘Ben Cartwright’ on the 1960s television western series “Bonanza,” and as ‘Commander Adama’ in the 1970s television science fiction series “Battlestar Galactica.” Born in Ottawa, Canada, he began his career while attending Canada’s Queen’s University, and after his graduation, started work in radio broadcasting. His […]

Paul Harvey (1918 - 2009)

Harvey was born in Tulsa, Oklahoma. The son of a policeman killed in 1921, Harvey made radio receivers as a young boy. He attended Tulsa Central High School where a teacher, Isabelle Ronan, was “impressed by his voice.” On her recommendation, he started working at KVOO in Tulsa in 1933, when he was 14. His […]

Willem Johan Kolff (1911 - 2009)

Born in Leiden, Netherlands, Kolff was the eldest of a family of 5 boys. Kolff studied medicine in his hometown at Leiden University, and continued as a resident in internal medicine at Groningen University. One of his first patients there was a 22-year old man who was slowly dying of renal failure. This prompted Kolff […]

James Whitmore (1921 - 2009)

Born in White Plains, New York to Florence Belle (née Crane) and James Allen Whitmore, Sr., a park commission official, Whitmore attended Amherst Central High School in Snyder, New York for three years, before transferring to the Choate School in Wallingford, Connecticut, on a football scholarship. He went on to study at Yale University, also […]

Betty Grable (1916 - 1973)

Betty Grable During her lifetime, she would become one of the most prolific singing actresses of her time, starring in over one hundred films, including ‘Pin Up Girl’ and ‘How To Marry A Millionaire’. In 1929, the Grable family went on holiday to California, and Lilian, Betty’s Mother, decided that she and her daughter should […]

Ron Goldman (1968 - 1994)

Ron Goldman Murder Victim. He and a casual friend, Nicole Brown Simpson, were found murdered at her Brentwood condominium, just outside her front door. Ronald Goldman, a waiter at a nearby restaurant, was returning eyeglasses that she had accidentally left there at dinner that night. He is considered an accidental victim of the murder, either […]

John Updike (1932 - 2009)

Updike’s most famous work is his “Rabbit” series (the novels Rabbit, Run; Rabbit Redux; Rabbit Is Rich; Rabbit At Rest; and the novella “Rabbit Remembered”), which chronicles the life of the middle-class everyman Harry “Rabbit” Angstrom over the course of several decades, from young adulthood to death. Both Rabbit Is Rich (1982) and Rabbit At […]

Patrick McGoohan (1928 - 2009)

McGoohan was born in Astoria, Queens, New York City to Thomas McGoohan and Rose Fitzpatrick, who were living in the United States after emigrating from Ireland to seek work. He was brought up as a Roman Catholic. Shortly after he was born, McGoohan’s parents moved back to Mullaghmore, County Leitrim, Ireland, and seven years later, […]