Bill Bixby (1934 - 1993)

Bill Bixby whose long career in television included starring roles in three popular series, died on Sunday at his home in Century City. He was 59. The cause was prostate cancer, said Pamela Golum, a spokeswoman for the NBC-TV show “Blossom.” Mr. Bixby, the show’s director, was on the job until last week. In the […]

Joey Bishop (1918 - 2007)

Joey Bishop Bishop was the least flamboyant of the Rat Pack and no match for the others — Dean Martin, Peter Lawford, Sammy Davis Jr. and Sinatra himself — in their dedication to hell raising. But he shared in their phenomenal success in the early 1960s, when they headlined music and comedy shows at the […]

Fred Berry (1951 - 2003)

Fred Berry The African-American actor Fred Berry, who has died aged 52, found fame as the high school student Rerun Stubbs in the popular, 1970s US television show, What’s Happening!! He was well into his 20s when he joined the sitcom, and continued to play the role well into his 30s. The show began in […]

Milton Berle (1908 - 2002)

Milton Berle Comedy legend Milton Berle was born as Milton Berlinger in New York City on July 12, 1908. He started his career by impersonating Charlie Chaplin at as a young boy. After winning a Chaplin look-alike contest at the age of 5, he began landing film roles. Berle appeared in numerous silent films, including […]

Edgar Bergen (1903 - 1978)

Edgar Bergen American ventriloquist and radio comedian whose career in vaudeville, radio, and motion pictures spanned almost 60 years. Bergen was best known as the foil of his ventriloquist’s dummy Charlie McCarthy. The Edgar Bergen-Charlie McCarthy Show was a permanent fixture on American network radio from 1937 until 1957. Other characters created by Bergen, such […]

Jack Benny (1894 - 1974)

Jack Benny Actor, Producer, Comedian. He is best remembered for his comically inept violin playing (he was actually a very good violin player), his carefully constructed image as a penny-pincher, and for never being older than 39. His most famous joke was as a man confronted by a robber who demands “Your money or your […]

William Bendix (1906 - 1964)

William Bendix William Bendix made a career out of playing lovable big lugs, although he also occasionally got to play sinister and tragic roles with equal success. He was born in New York City, in a cold-water flat at Third Avenue and 45th Street in 1906, the only son of Oscar Bendix and the former […]

Wallace Beery (1885 - 1949)

Wallace Beery In 1902, 16-year-old Wallace Beery joined the Ringling Brothers Circus as an assistant to the elephant trainer. He left two years later after a leopard clawed his arm. Beery next went to New York, where he found work in musical variety shows. He became a leading man in musicals and appeared on Broadway […]

Frank Baum (1856 - 1919)

Frank Baum Born in New York in 1856, Frank Baum had his first best-selling children’s book with 1899’s Father Goose, His Book. The following year, Baum scored an even bigger hit with The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, and went on to write 13 more Oz books before his death in 1919. His stories have formed […]

Richard Basehart (1914 - 1984)

Richard Basehart Mr. Basehart, who starred as Admiral Nelson in the television series ”Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea,” narrated the closing ceremonies of the Olympics on Aug. 12 and suffered the first of several strokes hours afterward, his lawyer, Bruce Stiglitz, said yesterday. He died in Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles, where […]

Lionel Barrymore (1878 - 1954)

Lionel Barrymore Born on April 12, 1878 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania as Lionel Herbert Blythe. He was the oldest child of stage perfomer Maurice Blythe who had gained fame as Maurice Barrymore and his wife Georgina Drew the daughter of celebrated actor John Drew. Lionel along with his sister Ethel and brother John, all aspired for […]

Lynda Lyon Block (1948 - 2002)

Lynda Cheryle Lyon was born February 8, 1948, in Orlando, Florida, to Francis (Frank) Stephen Lyon and Berylene Elisabeth Owen. Lynda, and her sister Denyce (born 1952), lost their father when she was 10, when he died of heart failure. Lynda and her mother were never close, and Block claimed that her mother was both […]

Wanda Jean Allen (1959 - 2001)

Wanda Jean Allen was born in 1959, the second of eight children. Her mother was an alcoholic; her father left home after Wanda’s last sibling was born and the family lived in public housing and scraped by on public assistance.  At the age of 12, Allen was hit by a truck and knocked unconscious, and […]

Christina Marie Riggs (1971 - 2000)

Christina Marie Riggs (September 2, 1971 – May 2, 2000) was a murderer executed in Arkansas by lethal injection. She was convicted of the November 4, 1997, murder of her two young children, Justin Dalton Thomas and Shelby Alexis Riggs. The children were killed in their beds at the family’s Sherwood, Arkansas home. The murder […]

Betty Lou Beets (1937 - 2000)

Born Betty Lou Dunevant to Margaret Louise Smithwick (April 20, 1917 – June 16, 1993) and James Garland Dunevant (September 15, 1912 – February 14, 2003), Beets was hearing-impaired since her childhood and claimed she was sexually abused by her father. According to her supporters, all of her marriages were also plagued with sexual abuse […]

Gene Barry (1919 - 2009)

Gene Barry Born Eugene Klass to parents of Russian-Jewish ancestry, he acted in drama productions and studied music while attending New Utrecht High School. He made his Broadway debut in the 1942 musical “The New Moon”, and appeared in several more stage productions throughout the decade which include “Rosalinda” (1942 to 1944), “The Merry Widow’ […]

Karla Faye Tucker (1959 - 1998)

Karla Tucker was born and raised in Houston, Texas, the youngest of three sisters. Her father Larry was a longshoreman. The marriage of her parents was very troubled, and Tucker started smoking cigarettes with her sisters when she was eight years old. At the age of 10, her parents divorced, and during the divorce proceedings, […]

Elizabeth Edwards (1949 - 2010)

Mary Elizabeth Anania, the daughter of Mary Elizabeth Thweatt Anania (March 11, 1923 – January 25, 2012) and Vincent Anania (April 22, 1920 – March 1, 2008), grew up in a military family, moving many times and never having a hometown. Her father, a United States Navy pilot, was transferred from military base to military […]

Elaine Kaufman (1929 - 2010)

Kaufman was born in Manhattan, on February 10, 1929, and raised in Queens and later the Bronx. After a variety of jobs, including night cosmetician, she started in the restaurant business in 1959, joining Alfredo Viazzi—then her boyfriend—in running his recently opened Greenwich Village restaurant Portofino. Portofino was frequented by people in the downtown publishing […]

Jill Clayburgh (1944 - 2010)

Jill Clayburgh Clayburgh was born in New York City, the daughter of Julia Louise (née Dorr 1910-1975), an actress and theatrical production secretary for producer David Merrick, and Albert Henry “Bill” Clayburgh, a manufacturing executive. Her paternal grandmother was concert and opera singer Alma Lachenbruch Clayburgh.  Clayburgh’s mother was Protestant and her father came from […]

Tom Bosley (1927 - 2010)

Bosley was born in Chicago, the son of Dora (née Heyman) and Benjamin Bosley. Although well known for playing a Catholic priest—and numerous Protestants—Bosley was actually Jewish. During World War II, Bosley served in the United States Navy. While attending DePaul University, in Chicago, in 1947, he made his stage debut in Our Town with […]

Abbey Lincoln (1930 - 2010)

Lincoln was one of many singers influenced by Billie Holiday. She often visited the Blue Note jazz club in New York City. Her debut album, Abbey Lincoln’s Affair – A Story of a Girl in Love, was followed by a series of albums for Riverside Records. In 1960 she sang on Max Roach’s landmark civil […]

Fred Astaire (1899 - 1987)

Fred Astaire Born Frederick Austerlitz, Jr, in Omaha, Nebraska, and the son of an Austrian immigrant, he entered show business at the age of 5, working in both vaudeville and Broadway in partnership with his sister, Adele. When Adele left show business to marry in 1932, he headed for Hollywood. Signed to RKO, he was […]

Edwin Newman (1919 - 2010)

Newman was born on January 25, 1919, in New York City to Myron, a credit manager, and Rose (née Parker) Newman. His older brother was M.W. Newman, a longtime reporter for the Chicago Daily News. Newman married Rigel Grell on August 14, 1944. They had one daughter, Nancy, who was born on October 6, 1945. […]

Daniel Schorr (1916 - 2010)

Schorr was born in the Bronx, New York, the son of Russian Jewish immigrants Tillie Godiner and Gedaliah Tchornemoretz. He began his journalism career at the age of 13, when he came upon a woman who had jumped or fallen from the roof of his apartment building. After calling the police, he phoned the Bronx […]

Vernon Baker (1919 - 2010)

Baker was born on December 17, 1919, in Cheyenne, Wyoming, the youngest of three children. After his parents died in a car accident when he was four, he and his two sisters were raised by their grandparents. His grandfather Joseph S. Baker, a railroad worker in Cheyenne, taught him to hunt in order to feed […]

Philip Workman (1953 - 2007)

Born on June 1, 1953 at Fort Campbell, Kentucky, Workman grew up with his parents on various Army bases. He later joined the Army. Shortly after his 1973 discharge, Workman was sentenced to 5 years in prison in Georgia for burglary and drug possession. He served 25 months.  In 1981, at 28 years old, Workman […]

Robert Glen Coe (1956 - 2000)

On September 1, 1979, Cary Ann Medlin and her stepbrother were riding their bicycles in the neighborhood near their home in Greenfield, Tennessee. Robert Coe pulled up next to them and began to talk to them, acting as if he knew Cary’s father and needed directions to his house. Cary got into Coe’s car to […]

Don Adams (1923 - 2005)

Don Adams Born Donald James Yarmy to a Hungarian-Jewish father and Irish Catholic mother, Adams dropped out of high school and served in the US Marine Corps during World War II. He began in show business as a stand-up comic and impressionist, gaining notice in 1954 as a winner on Arthur Godfrey’s Talent Scouts, which […]

Carolyn Jones (1930 - 1983)

Carolyn Jones She is best remembered for her role of Morticia Frump Addams on “The Addams Family” television show (1964-1966). Born Carolyn Sue Jones in Amarillo, Texas, her father abandoned the family in 1933 when he lost his job in the Great Depression, and her mother moved the family in with her parents, then also […]