Jean Shepard (1933 - 2016)

Jean Shepard Jean Shepard was born Ollie Imogene Shepard on Nov. 21, 1933 in Oklahoma, but was raised in California, where she was influenced greatly by the West Coast country sound. She started her musical career playing in an all-female group called The Melody Ranch Girls, who caught the eyes and ears of Capitol Records […]

Ronald Winans (1956 - 1956)

Ronald Winans The multi-award winning musical dynasty, The Winans Family said good bye to Ronald Winans, the second eldest of the ten siblings, on the morning of June 17th. Winans endured a massive heart-attack in 1997, but because of much prayer he experienced a miraculous recovery after the doctors had given him up for dead. […]

Charles Keating JR (1923 - 2014)

Charles Keating JR Charles H. Keating Jr., who went to prison and came to symbolize the $150 billion savings-and-loan crisis a generation ago after fleecing thousands of depositors with regulatory help from a group of United States senators known as the Keating Five, has died. He was 90. The death was confirmed Tuesday night by […]

Brandon Lee (1965 - 1993)

Brandon Lee Actor Brandon Lee, the 28-year-old son of the late kung fu star Bruce Lee, was killed Wednesday after a small explosive charge used to simulate gunfire went off inside a grocery bag during filming on a movie set in Wilmington, N.C. Brandon Lee, who many believed was on the threshold of stardom similar to […]

Bill Nunn (1952 - 2016)

Bill Nunn Bill Nunn, a versatile actor best known for playing the role of Radio Raheem, the boombox-toting neighborhood philosopher killed by police officers in Spike Lee’s 1989 film “Do the Right Thing,” died on Saturday in Pittsburgh. He was 63. His death was announced on social media by Mr. Lee. His wife, Donna, told […]

Jack Warden (1920 - 2006)

Jack Warden was born John Warden Lebzelter Jr. in Newark, New Jersey, the son of Laura M. (née Costello) and John Warden Lebzelter, who was an engineer and technician. He was of Pennsylvania Dutch (German) and Irish ancestry. Reared in Louisville, Kentucky, he was expelled from high school for fighting and eventually fought as a professional […]

Robert Bolt (1924 - 1995)

Robert Bolt was born in Sale, Cheshire. At Manchester Grammar School his affinity for Sir Thomas More first developed. He attended the University of Manchester, and, after wartime service in the RAF (1943–1946), the University of Exeter. For many years he taught English and history at Millfield School and only became a full-time writer at […]

Alma Reville (1899 - 1982)

Alma Reville was born in Nottinghamshire, the second daughter of Matthew Edward and Lucy Reville (née Owen). The family moved to London when Reville was young, as her father got a job at Twickenham Film Studios; Reville often visited her father at work and eventually got a job there as a tea girl. At 16, […]

Robert Fuest (1927 - 2012)

Born in London, Robert Fuest served a period of time in post-war Germany with the Royal Air Force in National Service air-lifting coal over the Berlin Wall, after which he attended Wimbledon and Hornsey Schools of Art. For a time he lectured at Southampton College of Art. Fuest also spent time as a drummer in […]

Jon Finch (1942 - 2012)

After performing in amateur theatre groups and singing in a folk group, Jon Finch did his National Service (National Service had been abolished at this time-) in The Parachute Regiment and stayed on as a member of the SAS Reserve Regiment, training at weekends and several nights a week. He resigned from the military as […]

Harold Pinter (1930 - 2008)

Harold Pinter CH CBE (/ˈpɪntər/; 10 October 1930 – 24 December 2008) was a Nobel Prize-winning English playwright, screenwriter, director and actor. One of the most influential modern British dramatists, his writing career spanned more than 50 years. His best-known plays include The Birthday Party (1957), The Homecoming (1964), and Betrayal (1978), each of which […]

Vivien Merchant (1929 - 1982)

Vivien Merchant took her stage name as a composite of the actress Vivien Leigh and her brother, who was a merchant seaman (cited by Michael Billington). She began acting professionally in 1942, with supporting juvenile roles in repertory, progressing to West End roles in such works as Noël Coward’s Sigh No More and Ace of […]

Barry Foster (1927 - 2002)

Barry Foster was born John Barry Foster in Beeston, Nottinghamshire, the son of a toolsetter. His family moved to Hayes, Hillingdon (then in Middlesex) when he was a few months old. He attended Southall County Grammar School. After leaving school, Foster worked as a plastics organic chemist at the local EMI Central Research Laboratories, while […]

Angus Scrimm (1926 - 2016)

Angus Scrimm Coscarelli was about to direct what would become the cult classic horror movie “Phantasm.” Up till then, he knew his lead actor chiefly as a kindly journalist who loved classical music and small, fuzzy dogs. But now he found a new, ominous Scrimm examining his makeup in the mirror. As Coscarelli watched from […]

Bud Yorkin (1926 - 2015)

Bud Yorkin was born in Washington, Pennsylvania. He earned a degree in engineering from Carnegie Tech, now Carnegie Mellon University, in Pittsburgh. In 1954, Bud Yorkin became the producer of NBC’s The Tony Martin Show, a 15-minute variety program which preceded the nightly news on Monday evenings. In 1955, he produced and directed the live 11-episode […]

Jacques Demy (1931 - 1990)

After working with the animator Paul Grimault and the filmmaker Georges Rouquier, Jacques Demy directed his first feature film, Lola, in 1961, with Anouk Aimée playing the eponymous cabaret singer. The Demy universe here emerges full-fledged. Characters burst into song (courtesy of composer and lifelong Demy-collaborator Michel Legrand); iconic Hollywood imagery is lovingly appropriated as […]

Marvin Yancy (1950 - 1985)

Marvin Yancy was born on May 31, 1950, in Chicago, Illinois, as Marvin Jerome Yancy, to Reverend Robert Yancy Sr., who was the pastor of Fountain of Life Baptist Church, at the time of his death in 1977, and his mother, Anne. This was when Marvin stepped into the pastoral role of the church that […]

Carole Cole (1944 - 2009)

Carole Cole was born in Medford, Massachusetts and was the adopted daughter of Nat King Cole and adopted sister of Natalie Cole. Her biological mother, Carol Hawkins, was the sister of Nat King Cole’s wife, Maria. Through her mother, Cole was related to educator Charlotte Hawkins Brown. Carole Cole received an associate’s degree at Cazenovia College […]

Tammy Vincent (1962 - 1979)

Tammy A. Vincent was an American teenager who was murdered in September 1979. Her body was not identified until 2007, twenty-eight years after her murder. Despite the fact that her identity was discovered, the case remains unsolved, although a prime suspect has been selected. It was believed she may have been a victim of the […]

Arnold Schuster (1927 - 1952)

Arnold L. Schuster (1927 – March 8, 1952) was a Brooklyn clothing salesman and amateur detective known for his involvement in the capture of bank robber Willie “The Actor” Sutton and for Schuster’s subsequent murder by either the Gambino crime family, friends of Willie Sutton, or any one of the many suspects police questioned about […]

Shawty Lo (1976 - 2016)

In 2003, Shawty Lo formed the hip hop group D4L, with fellow Atlanta-based rappers Fabo, Mook-B and Stoney. Shawty Lo subsequently launched his indie record label D4L Records. Shawty Lo self-funded the group in its early days. He explained that the group’s name stands for “Down for Life”. The group signed to the indie label […]

Keith Emerson (1944 - 2016)

Keith Emerson Santa Monica Police confirmed to Billboard that Keith Emerson died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head and his death has been ruled a suicide. Keith Emerson, one of the most legendary keyboardists in rock history thanks to his work in Emerson, Lake & Palmer and The Nice, died at age 71 […]

Phife Dawg (1970 - 2016)

Phife Dawg Malik Taylor, the rapper known as Phife Dawg whose nimble, clever rhymes helped launch A Tribe Called Quest to both commercial and critical success, died Tuesday at the age of 45 from complications resulting from diabetes. Rolling Stone has confirmed the rapper’s death. Taylor had had health issues for years, undergoing a kidney transplant in 2008 […]

George Martin (1926 - 2016)

George Martin George Martin, the Grammy Award-winning producer affectionately known as the “Fifth Beatle,” has died at the age of 90. Martin was credited for giving The Beatles their first recording contract and subsequently produced a majority of their albums. News of George Martin’s death was confirmed by Ringo Starr. At the suggestion of Brian […]

Robert Cone (1957 - 2016)

Robert Cone was a native of Manchester, New Hampshire, born in 1957. He graduated from Memorial High School, Manchester, NH in 1975. He graduated from the United States Military Academy with a Bachelor of Science Degree in 1979 and was commissioned as a second lieutenant in the Armor Branch. Cone earned a Master of Arts […]

Curtis Hanson (1945 - 2016)

Curtis Hanson was born in Reno, Nevada, and grew up in Los Angeles. He was the son of Beverly June (Curtis), a real estate agent, and Wilbur Hale “Bill” Hanson, a teacher. Hanson dropped out of high school, finding work as a freelance photographer and editor for Cinema magazine. Curtis Hanson began screenwriting in 1970, when […]

Terry Kohler (1934 - 2016)

Terry Kohler was born on May 14, 1934, in Sheboygan, Wisconsin. His father was Walter J. Kohler, Jr. (1904–76), a sales executive at the Kohler Company, president of The Vollrath Company, and a three-term Governor of Wisconsin. His mother was Marie Celeste McVoy Kohler (1900-1974), a Chicago socialite who had been married and divorced and […]

Rolf Herricht (1927 - 1981)

Rolf Herricht graduated from school in 1943 after passing a ‘War Abitur’, a form of an Abitur designated to free school pupils to be mobilized. In 1945, he was drafted to the Volkssturm and assigned as an anti-aircraft battery assistant. After the war’s end, he began working as property master and stage manager in a theater […]

Jürgen Frohriep (1928 - 1993)

Jürgen Frohriep was born in the port city of Rostock. When he was 11 the war broke out, towards the end of which he was involved in national air-defence as a “Flak helper”. When the war ended, in May 1945, Frohriep, by now aged 17, found that his home city had become part of the […]

Fred Delmare (1922 - 2009)

Werner Vorndran was the son of a carpenter and a seamstress and grew up in Hüttensteinach at Sonneberg, where as an adolescent he appeared on a peasant stage. After his time in the Volksschule he learned the trade of a tool and die maker. As military volunteer he went to the marine in Bremerhaven. At […]