Dixie Carter (1939 - 2010)

Carter was born in McLemoresville, Tennessee, and spent many of her early years in Memphis. She attended college at the University of Memphis and Rhodes College.  In college, she was a member of the Delta Delta Delta sorority. In 1959, Carter competed in the Miss Tennessee pageant, where she placed first runner-up to Mickie Weyland. […]

Wilma Mankiller (1945 - 2010)

Wilma Pearl Mankiller was born in Tahlequah, Oklahoma, the sixth of eleven children, to Charley Mankiller (November 15, 1914 – February 20, 1971) and Clara Irene Sitton (born September 18, 1921). Her father was a full-blooded Cherokee and her mother was a Caucasian woman of Dutch and Irish descent who acculturated herself to Cherokee life. […]

John Forsythe (1918 - 2010)

The eldest of three children, Forsythe was born as Jacob Lincoln Freund on January 29, 1918, in Penns Grove, New Jersey, to Blanche Materson (née Blohm) and Samuel Jeremiah Freund. Blanche was born in Pennsylvania, to David Hyat Blohm, a Russian Jewish immigrant, and to Mary S. Materson, who was born in Maryland, to Jewish […]

Jaime Escalante (1930 - 2010)

Escalante was born to two teachers of Aymara ancestry  on December 31, 1930 in La Paz, Bolivia. He was proud of his Aymara heritage and as an adult would proudly proclaim “The Aymara knew math before the Greeks and Egyptians”. He taught mathematics and physics for 12 years in his mother country before immigrating to […]

Robert Culp (1930 - 2010)

Culp was born in Oakland, California to Crozier Cordell Culp, an attorney, and his wife, Bethel Martin (Collins) Culp. He graduated from Berkeley High School, where he was a pole vaulter and took second place at the 1947 CIF California State Meet. He attended the College of the Pacific, Washington University in St. Louis, San […]

Flip Wilson (1933 - 1998)

Flip Wilson He is remembered for his NBC variety television series “The Flip Wilson Show” that aired from September 1970 until June 1974, as well as his character ‘Geraldine Jones’. Born Clerow Wilson, Jr., one of ten children, his father worked as a handyman during the Great Depression. When he was seven years old, his […]

Esther Rolle (1920 - 1998)

Esther Rolle She is best known for her role as Florida Evans, a no-nonsense wife and mother on the CBS television sitcom Maude for two seasons (1972-1974) and its spin-off series Good Times for five seasons Rolle is best known for her television role as Florida Evans, the character she played on two 1970s sitcoms. […]

Richard Denning (1914 - 1998)

Richard Denning Originally studied business management in Los Angeles but decided to break into acting instead. He won a radio contest called “Do You Want to Be an Actor”, and was awarded a Warner Bros. screen test. Warner rejected him, but Paramount took him on the condition that he change his name to Denning. (Studio […]

Mark Belanger (1944 - 1998)

Mark Belanger Belanger was born in Pittsfield, Massachusetts, where he attended Pittsfield High at which he played baseball and basketball. Where he became one of the first 1,000 point scorers He was recruited by the Orioles as an amateur in 1962, and made his debut with the club on August 7, 1965. He took over […]

Roddy McDowall (1928 - 1998)

Roddy McDowall Roderick McDowall was born in London, the son of a Merchant Mariner father and a mother who had always wanted to be in movies. He was enrolled in elocution courses at age five and by ten had appeared in his first film, Murder in the Family (1938), playing Peter Osborne, the younger brother […]

Sonny Bono (1935 - 1998)

Sonny Bono Entertainer, US Congressman. Until the early 1960s, he had a job delivering meat along the Sunset Strip in California. He became an A&R Man for Phil Spector. Working with people such as Sam Cooke, and Chubby Checker, and writing songs such as ‘Baby Don’t Go’, and ‘Don’t Laugh At Me’ Bono achieved his […]

Alan Shepard (1923 - 1998)

Alan Shepard American Astronaut. The first American into space, he is currently the oldest man to have walked on the moon. Born in Derry, New Hampshire, the son of Army Lieutenant Colonel Alan B. Shepard and Renza Emerson Shepard, Alan Jr graduated from the Admiral Farragut Academy (military high school) in 1941, and received a […]

Dale Evans (1912 - 2001)

Dale Evans The world knew her as “the Queen of the West.” High Desert neighbors knew her as a neighbor, a friend and a matriarch. Friends and fans everywhere are mourning the death of Dale Evans, who died Wednesday of congestive heart failure at her home in Apple Valley with her children by her side. […]

Roy Rogers (1911 - 1998)

Roy Rogers In 1944, Rogers appeared in his first film with actress Dale Evans. The Cowboy and the Señorita sparked an irresistible on-screen chemistry between the two, and Evans quickly gained the nickname “Queen of the Cowgirls,” to match the moniker of her on-and-off-screen sweetheart. Between the years of 1944 and 1951, they appeared in nearly 30 […]

Fess Parker (1924 - 2010)

Fess Parker was born in Fort Worth, Texas, and raised on a farm in Tom Green County near San Angelo. He enlisted in the U.S. Navy in the latter part of World War II, hoping to become a pilot. He was turned down because he was too tall at 6 feet 6 inches (1.98 m). […]

Peter Graves (1926 - 2010)

Peter Graves was born Peter Duesler Aurness on March 18, 1926, in Minneapolis, Minnesota, the son of parents Rolf Cirkler Aurness (1894–1982), a businessman, and his wife Ruth (née Duesler, died 1986), a journalist. Graves’ ancestry was Norwegian, German, and English. The family name originally was “Aursnes,” but when Rolf’s Norwegian father, Peter Aursnes, immigrated […]

J. D. Salinger (1919 - 2010)

Jerome David “J. D.” Salinger was an American writer who won acclaim early in life. He led a very private life for more than a half-century. He published his final original work in 1965 and gave his last interview in 1980.  Salinger was raised in Manhattan and began writing short stories while in secondary school. […]

Pernell Roberts (1928 - 2010)

Roberts was born in 1928 in North Carolina and moved to Waycross, Georgia as an infant, the only child of Pernell Elven Roberts, Sr. (1907–1980), a Dr Pepper salesman, and Minnie (Betty) Myrtle Morgan Roberts (1910–1988). During his high school years, Pernell played the horn, acted in school and church plays and sang in local […]

Jean Simmons (1929 - 2010)

Simmons was born in Lower Holloway, London, to Charles Simmons, a gymnast, and his wife, Winifred (née Loveland) Simmons. Jean was the youngest of four children with siblings Edna, Harold and Lorna. She began acting at the age of 14. During the Second World War, the Simmons family was evacuated to Winscombe, Somerset. Her father, […]

Robert B. Parker (1932 - 2010)

Parker was born in Springfield, Massachusetts. In 1956 Parker married Joan H. Parker, whom he claimed to have met as a toddler at a birthday party. They spent their childhoods in the same neighborhood.  After earning a BA degree from Colby College in Waterville, Maine, Parker served as a soldier in the US Army Infantry […]

Maureen O’Sullivan (1911 - 1998)

Maureen O’Sullivan She is best remembered for her role of Jane in the Tarzan movies of the 1930s and 1940s. Considered Ireland’s first film star, she is also remembered as the mother of actress Mia Farrow. Born Maureen Paula O’Sullivan in County Roscommon, Ireland, she was the daughter of Mary Fraser Lovatt and Charles Joseph […]

Jeanette Nolan (1911 - 1998)

Jeanette Nolan Was an American radio, film, and television actress who was nominated for four Emmy Awards. Nolan graduated from Abraham Lincoln High School in her native Los Angeles, California. In 1935, Nolan married actor John McIntire; the couple remained together until his death in 1991. The couple had two children, one of whom was […]

Dorothy Stickney (1896 - 1998)

Dorothy Stickney Born in Dickinson, North Dakota, Stickney attended the North Western Dramatic School in Minneapolis, Minnesota. She sang and danced as one of the four Southern Belles in vaudeville and began acting in summer stock companies including Atlanta‘s Forsyth Players in the early 1920s before she married Howard Lindsay, to whom she would stay […]

John Derek (1926 - 1998)

John Derek Born Derek Harris in Hollywood in 1926, he had a film-oriented background, his father being the silent film-maker Lawrence Harris and his mother a minor film actress, Dolores Johnson. The producer David Selznick put him under contract as a teenager, and gave him small roles (billed as Derek Harris) in the Selznick productions […]

Frank Sinatra (1915 - 1998)

Frank Sinatra Baritone Frank Sinatra was indisputably the 20th century’s greatest singer of popular song. Though influenced by Bing Crosby’s crooning, and by learning from trombonist Tommy Dorsey’s breath control and blues singer Billie Holiday’s rhythmic swing, Frank Sinatra mainstreamed the concept of singing colloquially, treating lyrics as personal statements and handling melodies with the […]

Alice Faye (1915 - 1998)

Alice Faye Ms. Faye’s warm, husky contralto and demure sexuality in ”Tin Pan Alley,” ”Hello, Frisco, Hello” and ”Alexander’s Ragtime Band” made her one of Hollywood’s top 10 moneymaking stars in 1938 and 1939. Under contract to 20th Century Fox for a little over a decade, during which she made 32 movies, Ms. Faye walked […]

Gene Raymond (1908 - 1998)

Gene Raymond Raymond, romantic leading man in several films of the 1930s and 1940s, died Sunday night at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles of pneumonia, his publicist said. Among the actor’s more memorable films were “Flying Down to Rio” opposite Dolores Del Rio in 1933, which first paired Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers; “Red […]

Peter Lind Hayes (1915 - 1998)

Peter Lind Hayes He was only two when his father, Joseph Conrad Lind Snr, a railroad man and amateur singer, died. Peter attended parochial school in Cairo, Illinois, but, from the age of nine, performed every summer with his mother, Grace Hayes, a vaudeville star. At 16, he wrote a new act for his mother […]

Gene Evans (1922 - 1998)

Gene Evans He was born in Holbrook, Arizona, but reared in Colton, California. His acting career began while he was serving in World War II. He performed with a theatrical troupe of GIs in Europe. Evans made his film debut in 1947 and appeared in dozens of films and television programs. He specialized in playing […]

J T Walsh (1943 - 1998)

J T Walsh He is best remembered for his role of Sergeant Major Dickerson in “Good Morning, Vietnam” (1987) and for his role of Big Bob in “Pleasantville” (1998). Born John Patrick Walsh in San Francisco, California, he attended a Jesuit boarding school in Ireland. After returning from studying at Clongowes Wood College in Ireland, […]