Douglas Fairbanks Jr. (1909 - 2000)

Douglas Fairbanks Jr Actor. Movie star of the 1930s and 1940s. He was the son of silent film star Douglas Fairbanks Sr., and the first husband of actress Joan Crawford. He began his career during the silent era in bit parts until 1923 when he starred in the film Stephen Steps Out which quickly went […]

Helen Mack (1913 - 1986)

Helen Mack, born Helen McDougall was the daughter of William George McDougall, a barber, and Regina (née Lenzer) McDougall, who had a repressed desire to become an actress. She obtained her education (1921–29) as a youth at the Professional Children’s School of New York City. Vera Gordon was a friend who helped her along as […]

Valli Valli (1882 - 1927)

Valli was educated in London and Paris. As a twelve-year-old, she made her first stage appearance in Gentle Ivy (1894) at Terry’s Theatre in London. She demonstrated her theatrical skill in Berlin in 1895 with a successful run in the musical comedy Morocco Bound. She returned to London’s Drury Lane Theatre, performing the role of […]

Alida Valli (1921 - 2006)

Valli was born in Pola, Istria, Italy (today Pula, Croatia; until 1918 it had formed part of Austria-Hungary). Her paternal grandfather was the Baron Luigi Altenburger (also: Altempurger), an Austrian-Italian from Trento, a descendant of the Counts d’Arco; her paternal grandmother was Elisa Tomasi from Trento, a cousin of the Roman senator Ettore Tolomei. Valli’s […]

Clara Kimball Young (1890 - 1960)

Clarisa Kimball was born in Chicago to Edward M. and Pauline (née Maddern) Kimball, travelling stock actors. She made her stage debut at the age of three, and throughout her early childhood travelled with her parents and acted with their theater company. She attended St. Francis Xavier Academy, Chicago. Afterwards she was hired into a […]

Audrey Young (1922 - 2012)

Actress, Singer. A Big Band performer and veteran of about two dozen movies from the late 1940s, she is better remembered via her long marriage to legendary filmmaker Billy Wilder. Raised in Southern California, she was a part time model when she joined Paramount as a contract player and made her silver screen bow in […]

Anita Page (1910 - 2008)

She was born Anita Evelyn Pomares to Marino, Sr. and Maude (née Mullane) Pomares. She had one brother, Marino Jr., who later worked for her as a gym instructor while her mother worked as her secretary and her father as her chauffeur. Of Salvadoran ancestry, Page’s grandfather was a consul from El Salvador.  Page entered […]

Gloria Talbott (1931 - 2000)

She grew up in Glendale in Los Angeles County, California, a city co-founded by one of her grandfathers. Her sister, Lori Talbott, also became an actress.  Talbott began her career as a child actor in such films as Maytime (1937) , Sweet and Low-down (1944) and A Tree Grows In Brooklyn (1945).  After leaving school, […]

Helen Wagner (1918 - 2010)

Wagner played the soap opera’s matriarch, Nancy Hughes, from its debut on April 2, 1956, until her death. She is acknowledged by the Guinness Book of Records for having the longest run in a single role on television. In fact, Wagner spoke the show’s very first line, “good morning, dear,” and would go on to […]

Wende Wagner (1941 - 1997)

Born to a career U.S. Navy officer and swimming and diving coach father (John H. Wagner) and a mother (Rudy Arnold Wagner) who was a champion skier, Wagner lived in nearly all the Continental United States with her family’s various naval postings. While living in Coronado, California, with her family, Billy Wilder then filming Some […]

Susannah York (1939 - 2011)

York was born Susannah Yolande Fletcher in Chelsea, London, in 1939, the younger daughter of Simon William Peel Vickers Fletcher (1910–2002), a merchant banker and steel magnate, and his first wife, the former Joan Nita Mary Bowring – they married in 1935 and divorced prior to 1943. Her maternal grandfather was Walter Andrew Bowring, CBE, […]

Cheryl Walker (1918 - 1971)

Born in South Pasadena, California to Everett Dale and Pauline S. Walker, Cheryl Walker won the 1938 Tournament of Roses pageant leading to a brief career as a model and the beginning of a brief film career. She appeared in small, uncredited roles in several films from 1938 until her first substantial role in Chasing […]

Charlotte Walker (1876 - 1958)

Walker made her stage debut as a teen. At nineteen she performed in London, England in a comedy called The Mummy. She performed with Richard Mansfield. Later returned to her native Texas.  Walker appeared as June in Trail of the Lonesome Pine, in 1911. She would later reprise the role in Cecil B. DeMille’s 1916 […]

Jean Hagen (1923 - 1977)

Hagen was born as Jean Shirley Verhagen in Chicago, to Christian Verhagen (born August 10, 1890 – died April 1983), a Dutch immigrant, and his Chicago-born wife, Marie. The family moved to Elkhart, Indiana, when she was 12, and she subsequently graduated from Elkhart High School. She studied drama at Northwestern University and worked as […]

Kevin Hagen (1928 - 2005)

Born in Chicago, Illinois, to professional ballroom dancers, Haakon Olaf Hagen and the former Marvel Lucile Wadsworth. When Haakon Hagen deserted his family, young Hagen was reared by his mother, grandmother, and aunts. As a 15-year-old, he relocated to Portland, Oregon, where one of his aunts had taken a teaching job. His family returned to […]

Jimmy MacDonald (1906 - 1991)

He was born in the family home at 268 West Street Crewe, Cheshire on May 19, 1906. His parents were Richard William MacDonald and Minnie Hall. The family emigrated to America when MacDonald was six months old. They travelled via the SS Haverford from Liverpool, England, arriving in Pennsylvania 15 days later.  As a young […]

Kenneth MacDonald (1901 - 1972)

MacDonald began his career as a stage actor, and came to Hollywood in the early 1930’s. He found a few bit parts at first, finally finding steady work in westerns and serials at Columbia Pictures. MacDonald perfected a cool, debonair demeanor, which usually masked an evil side as a con man, outlaw, or thief. His […]

John Abbott (1905 - 1996)

John Kefford (5 June 1905 – 24 May 1996) was an English character actor professionally known as John Abbott. His memorable roles include the invalid Frederick Fairlie in the 1948 film The Woman in White and the pacifist Ayelborne in the Star Trek episode “Errand of Mercy”. He also played Sesmar on an episode of […]

Richard Abbott (1899 - 1986)

Richard Abbott Actor. He was in the original casts of the plays “The Power of Darkness”, “Polly”, and “The Last Mile”. He had many uncredited film roles from the 1930s to 1970s, such as “Love Laughs at Andy Hardy”(1947) and “Green Dolphin Street”(1947) His last role was as ‘Billings’ in “The Last Escape” (1970).

Philip Abbott (1924 - 1998)

A native of Lincoln, Nebraska, Abbott was a secondary lead in several films of the 1950s and 1960s, including Miracle of the White Stallions (1963). He made more than one hundred guest appearances on various television series from 1952–1995, including NBC’s Justice about the Legal Aid Society of New York and The Eleventh Hour, a […]

Gordon Oliver (1910 - 1995)

Actor. Entering films in 1936, Oliver played lead and supporting roles in a number of Warner Bros., and Columbia films before turning to character roles in films for RKO. Later in life he turned to producing. Oliver appeared in 45 films. He was executive producer of both the Peter Gunn and Mr. Lucky TV series for […]

Bill Quinn (1912 - 1994)

Bill Quinn (May 6, 1912 – April 29, 1994) was an American actor.  Quinn appeared in more than 150 acting roles over seven decades, starting in the 1920s in silent films and ending in 1989 in Star Trek V: The Final Frontier. He is best remembered as Archie’s blind friend, Mr. Van Ranseleer, in All […]

Eva Gabor (1919 - 1995)

Born in Budapest to a Hungarian Jewish mother and a Hungarian father, Eva Gabor was the youngest of three daughters of Vilmos Gábor (1884–1962), a soldier, and his wife Jolie (1896–1997), a jeweler. She was the first of the sisters to emigrate to the United States, with her first husband, a Swedish osteopath, Dr. Eric […]

Anthony Quinn (1915 - 2001)

Quinn was born Antonio Rodolfo Quinn Oaxaca in Chihuahua, Mexico, during the Mexican Revolution. His mother, Manuela “Nellie” Oaxaca, was of Aztec ancestry. His father, Francisco (Frank) Quinn, was also born in Mexico, to an Irish immigrant father from County Cork and a Mexican mother. Frank Quinn rode with Mexican revolutionary Pancho Villa, then later […]

Carleton G. Young (1907 - 1971)

Carleton Garretson Young (May 26, 1907 – July 11, 1971) was an American television actor and the voice of the Ellery Queen radio detective character.  From January 10, 1942 until August 1943, he had the title role on The Adventures of Ellery Queen, and from 1943 to 1952, he played Edmond Dantès in Mutual’s version […]

Carleton S. Young (1905 - 1994)

Young appeared in 235 American television and film roles with his first being The Fighting Marines (1935). He ended his career in the 1973 television series The Magician which starred Bill Bixby.  Other films Young was cast in are: Reefer Madness (1936) Navy Blues (1937), Dick Tracy (1937), Valley of the Sun (1942), Flying Leathernecks […]

Alice Calhoun (1900 - 1966)

Born Alice Beatrice Calhoun in Cleveland, Ohio, she made her film debut in a role not credited in 1918 and went on to appear in another forty-seven films between then and 1929. As a star with Vitagraph in New York City, she moved with the company when it relocated to Hollywood. In the comedy, The […]

Margaret Early (1919 - 2000)

Born on Christmas Day 1919 into a devout Baptist family she grew up on a farm in rural Alabama. During her youth she often appeared in religious plays at her church particularly in Christmas pageants. In the 1930s she did stage work and later found herself working in movies. Her first screen role came in […]

Esther Dale (1885 - 1961)

She attended Leland and Gray Seminary in Townsend, Vermont. In Berlin, Germany, she studied music and enjoyed a successful career as a singer of lieder on the concert stage.  In America, she transferred to the acting stage and cultivated a career as an actress in summer stock. She starred in Carrie Nation on Broadway in […]

Uta Hagen (1919 - 2004)

Born in Göttingen, Germany, the daughter of Thyra A. (née Leisner) and Oskar Frank Leonard Hagen, Hagen and her family emigrated to the United States in 1924, when her father received a position at Cornell University. She was raised in Madison, Wisconsin. She appeared in productions of the University of Wisconsin High School and in […]