Joaquín Cordero (1922 - 2013)

Joaquín Cordero (Spanish pronunciation: [xoakin kordero];(August 16, 1922 – February 19, 2013) was a Mexican actor of the cinema, theatre and telenovelas. Shortly after his birth, Cordero’s family moved to Mexico City, and in the following years he studied in a seminary and even considered becoming a priest, but eventually he decided to pursue a law […]

Cordell Hull (1871 - 1955)

Cordell Hull (October 2, 1871 – July 23, 1955) was an American politician from the U.S. state of Tennessee. He is known as the longest-serving Secretary of State, holding the position for 11 years (1933–1944) in the administration of President Franklin Delano Roosevelt during much of World War II. Hull received the Nobel Peace Prize […]

Norman Taurog (1899 - 1981)

Norman Taurog was born February 23, 1899 in Chicago, Illinois, to Arthur Jack Taurog and Anita (originally “Annie”) Taurog (née Goldsmith). His father’s naturalization records claim that Arthur was born in the Russian Empire in 1872 or 1873 and naturalized as a minor, while his mother was from New York. Later census records claimed that […]

David Selznick (1902 - 1965)

David Selznick was born David Selznick in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, the son of Florence Anna (Sachs) and silent movie producer and distributor Lewis J. Selznick. His parents were Lithuanian Jewish immigrants and he had four siblings. Selznick added the “O” to distinguish himself from an uncle with the same name. He studied at Columbia University in New […]

Deems Taylor (1885 - 1966)

Deems Taylor was born in New York City to JoJo and Katherine Taylor. He attended New York University. Taylor married three times. His first wife was Jane Anderson. They married in 1910 and divorced in 1918. In 1921, he married Mary Kennedy, who was an actress and a writer. They had a daughter, Joan Kennedy Taylor, […]

Ford Beebe (1888 - 1978)

Ford Beebe (November 26, 1888 – November 26, 1978) was a screenwriter and director. He entered the film business as a writer around 1916 and over the next 60 years wrote and/or directed almost 200 films. He specialized in B-movies – mostly Westerns – and action serials, working on the “Buck Rogers” and “Flash Gordon” serials […]

Ernest Schoedsack (1893 - 1979)

Ernest B. Schoedsack was born in Council Bluffs, Iowa, on June 8, 1893. He ran away from home at age fourteen and worked with road gangs. He went to San Francisco, where he worked as a surveyor. He grew to be 6 ft 5 in (1.96 m), and his friends called him “Shorty.” Schoedsack began his […]

Beatrice Roberts (1905 - 1970)

Alice Beatrice Roberts (March 7, 1905 – July 24, 1970) was an American film actress. She was briefly married to the cartoonist and showman Robert L. Ripley. Beatrice Roberts was born on March 7, 1905 in New York City. She married Robert Ripley at age 14 on October 31, 1919, about the time he invented his […]

Robert Ripley (1890 - 1949)

In 1919 Robert Ripley married Beatrice Roberts. He made his first trip around the world in 1922, delineating a travel journal in installments. This ushered in a new topic for his cartoons: unusual and exotic foreign locales and cultures. Because he took the veracity of his work quite seriously, in 1923, Ripley hired a researcher […]

James Robertson (1742 - 1814)

James Robertson was born in Brunswick County, Virginia, of Scots-Irish and English descent. Around 1750, his father relocated to Wake County, North Carolina. He worked on his father’s farm and had limited formal education. In 1759, young Robertson accompanied explorer Daniel Boone on his third expedition to lands beyond the Allegheny Mountains. The party discovered the […]

Pavel Popovich (1930 - 2009)

Pavel Popovich was born in Uzyn, Kiev Oblast of Soviet Union (now Ukraine) to Roman Porfirievich Popovich (a fireman in a sugar factory) and Theodosia Kasyanovna Semyonov. He had two sisters (one older, one younger) and two brothers (both younger). During World War II, the Germans occupied Uzyn, and burned documents including Popovich’s birth certificate. After […]

Ralph Plaisted (1927 - 2008)

Ralph Plaisted (30 September 1927 – 8 September 2008) and his three companions, Walt Pederson, Gerry Pitzl and Jean-Luc Bombardier, are regarded by most polar authorities to be the first to succeed in a surface traverse across the ice to the North Pole on 19 April 1968, making the first confirmed surface conquest of the […]

Julius Payer (1841 - 1915)

Born Julius Payer, his father Franz Anton Rudolf Payer was a retired officer who died when Julius was only fourteen. Payer attended k.k. cadet school in Łobzów near Cracow (now Poland). Between 1857 and 1859 he studied at the Theresian Military Academy in Wiener Neustadt (near Vienna). In 1859 he served as a sub-lieutenant with […]

Knud Rasmussen (1879 - 1933)

Knud Rasmussen was born in Jakobshavn (now Ilulissat), Greenland, the son of a Danish missionary, the vicar Christian Rasmussen, and an Inuit- Danish mother, Lovise Rasmussen (née Fleischer). He had two siblings, including a brother, Peter Lim. Rasmussen spent his early years in Greenland among the Kalaallit (Inuit) where he learned from an early age […]

Wally Herbert (1934 - 2007)

Walter Herbert was born into an army family in England who emigrated to Egypt on assignment when he was three. They moved on to South Africa for nine years. He studied at the Royal School of Military Survey, then spent 18 months surveying in Egypt and Cyprus. He travelled back to England through Turkey and […]

Zebulon Pike (1779 - 1813)

Zebulon Pike was born during the Revolutionary War on January 5, 1779 near Lamberton, now called Lamington, in Somerset County, New Jersey. Pike would follow in the footsteps of his father, also named Zebulon, who had begun his own career in the military service of the United States beginning in 1775, at the outset of […]

Josephine Powell (1919 - 2007)

Josephine Powell was born in New York City. Powell attended Cornell University, where she earned a BA in 1941. She also attended the New York School for Social Work at Columbia University where she received her Master’s degree in 1945. After her graduation, Powell left the United States to start working for the International Refugee […]

Terry Ramsaye (1885 - 1954)

Terry Ramsaye (2 November 1885, Tonganoxie, Kansas – 19 August 1954, Norwalk, Connecticut) was a film historian and author of A Million and One Nights: A History of the Motion Picture [Through 1925] (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1926). Terry Ramsaye started his professional career as an engineer but switched to journalism when he joined the […]

Mary Akeley (1878 - 1966)

Mary Akeley was born to Richard Watson and Sarah Jane Pittis Jobe on 29 January 1878. She grew up on her parents’ farm in Tappan, Ohio and graduated from Scio College, Ohio. After graduation she taught at a public school until 1901 when she joined Bryn Mawr College. She later transferred to Columbia University, New […]

Delia Akeley (1869 - 1970)

Delia Akeley was born in 1869, although over the years, whether due to Delia’s own misrepresentation or that of others, her birth date has been given as 1875. Mickie ran away from home in her late teens and made her way to Milwaukee, where she married Arthur Reiss, a barber, in 1889. She was just […]

Carl Akeley (1864 - 1926)

Carl Akeley was born in Clarendon, New York, and grew up on a farm, attending school for only three years. He learned taxidermy from David Bruce in Brockport, New York, and then entered an apprenticeship in taxidermy at Ward’s Natural Science Establishment in Rochester, New York. While at Ward’s Carl Akeley also helped mount P.T. […]

Eddie Adams (1933 - 2004)

Eddie Adams joined the United States Marine Corps in 1951 during the Korean War as a combat photographer. One of his assignments was to photograph the entire Demilitarized Zone from end to end immediately following the war. This took him over a month to complete. It was while covering the Vietnam War for the Associated Press […]

Sara Montiel (1928 - 2013)

Sara Montiel started in movies at 15 in her native Spain where she filmed her first movie playing an Islamic princess in the 1948 film Locura de Amor, released in the US as The Mad Queen. Later worked in Mexico, starring in a dozen films in less than five years. Hollywood came calling afterwards, and […]

Jorge Negrete (1911 - 1953)

Jorge Negrete was born and raised in the City of Guanajuato and had one brother and three sisters; Negrete also lived in San Luis Potosí. From an early age, Negrete demonstrated a great brilliance and rapidly became a prominent student in the eyes of his teachers. He spoke six languages: Spanish, German, English, French, Italian, […]

Paola Mori (1928 - 1986)

Paola Mori was born in 1928 to an Italian aristocratic family. By 1953, she had begun carving out a career for herself as a film actress, playing supporting roles in several Italian films. In 1953 Mori met Orson Welles, and soon began a romance. The following year he cast her in the female lead of his […]

Addison Richards (1902 - 1964)

A native of Zanesville, Ohio, Addison Richards was the son of Mr. and Mrs. Addison Richards. His grandfather was a mayor of Zanesville. Following his father’s death in 1942, the family moved to California. Richards was cast in many television series, including the syndicated 1950s crime drama, Sheriff of Cochise, starring John Bromfield. From 1955 to […]

Richard Martin (1917 - 1994)

Though born in Spokane, Washington, Richard Martin’s family moved to a Mexican neighbourhood in West Hollywood, California, where he learned to imitate his friends. He began in films by working as a receptionist for MGM. When a friend made a bet with his agent that the agent couldn’t get Martin an actor’s contract, Martin’s agent […]

Robert Barrat (1889 - 1970)

Robert Harriot Barrat (July 10, 1889 – January 7, 1970) was an American stage, motion picture, and television character actor. Born in New York City, Robert Barrat made his theatrical debut in a stock company in Springfield, Massachusetts. He later acted on Broadway and went into films, acting in some one-hundred and fifty films in a […]

James Seay (1914 - 1992)

James Seay (9 September 1914 in Pasadena, California – 10 October 1992 in Capistrano Beach, California) was an American character actor who often played minor supporting roles as government officials. Although it was a minor part not credited on-screen, his role in the film Miracle on 34th Street is one of his most visible because the […]

Clyde Tolson (1900 - 1975)

Clyde Tolson was born in Laredo, Missouri. He graduated from Laredo High School in 1915 and attended Cedar Rapids Business College from which he graduated in 1918. From 1919 to 1928, he was confidential secretary for three Secretaries of War: Newton D. Baker, John W. Weeks, and Dwight F. Davis. Tolson completed a Bachelor of […]