Tsuru Aoki (1892 - 1961)

Born in Tokyo, Japan, Tsuru Aoki emigrated to Los Angeles, California in 1903 with her aunt and uncle, Otojirō Kawakami, who had previously owned a theatrical group called “Kawakami-za” in Japan. Aoki was later adopted by another uncle Aoki Toshio and relocated to San Francisco. Toshio worked as a sketch artist for a local newspaper. […]

Sessue Hayakawa (1889 - 1973)

Sessue Hayakawa (早川 雪洲? Hayakawa Sesshū, June 10, 1889 – November 23, 1973) was a Japanese actor who starred in Japanese, American, French, German, and British films. Hayakawa was one of the biggest stars in Hollywood during the silent era of the 1910s and 1920s. He was the first actor of Asian descent to find […]

Carl Foreman (1914 - 1984)

Born in Chicago, Illinois, to a working-class Jewish family, he was the son of Fanny (Rozin) and Isidore Foreman. He studied at the University of Illinois. As a student in the 1930s, he became an advocate of revolutionary socialism and joined the American Communist Party. After graduating from university, Carl Foreman moved to Hollywood where […]

Peter Ustinov (1921 - 2004)

Sir Peter Ustinov, CBE FRSA (born Peter Alexander von Ustinov; /ˈjuːstɪnɒf/ or /ˈuːstɪnɒf/; 16 April 1921 – 28 March 2004) was an English actor, writer, dramatist, filmmaker, theatre and opera director, stage designer, screenwriter, comedian, humorist, newspaper and magazine columnist, radio broadcaster, and television presenter. He was a fixture on television talk shows and lecture […]

Peter van Eyck (1911 - 1969)

Peter van Eyck, born Götz von Eick (16 July 1911 in Steinwehr, Pomerania, German Empire [now Kamienny Jaz, Poland] – 15 July 1969 in Männedorf near Zürich, Switzerland), was a German actor. After graduating from high school he studied music. In 1931 he left Poland, living in Paris, London, Tunis, Algiers and Cuba, before settling in […]

Albert Broccoli (1909 - 1996)

At the beginning of the 1950s, Albert Broccoli moved once more, this time to London, where the British government provided subsidies to film productions made in the UK with British casts and crews. Together with Irving Allen, Broccoli formed Warwick Films that made a prolific and successful series of films for Columbia Pictures. When Broccoli became […]

Desmond Llewelyn (1914 - 1999)

Desmond Llewelyn was chosen for the role of Q because of his work with director Terence Young in the 1950 war film They Were Not Divided, in which he played a tank gunner. Beginning with From Russia with Love in 1963, Llewelyn appeared as Q, the quartermaster of the MI6gadget lab (also known as Q […]

Terence Young (1915 - 1994)

Terence Young began his film career as a screenwriter in British films of the 1940s, working, for example, on Brian Desmond Hurst’s On the Night of the Fire (1939), Dangerous Moonlight (1941), and A Letter From Ulster (1942). In 1946, he returned to assist Hurst with the script of Theirs is the Glory, which recaptured […]

Gert Fröbe (1913 - 1988)

Karl Gerhart Fröbe was born in Oberplanitz, today part of Zwickau. He was initially a violinist, but he abandoned it for Kabarett and theatre work. Gert Fröbe joined the Nazi Party in 1929 at the age of 16 and left in 1937. During the Nazi regime, he aided two German Jews by hiding them from the […]

Cornelius Ryan (1920 - 1974)

On a trip to Normandy in 1949 Cornelius Ryan became interested in telling a more complete story of Operation Overlord than had been produced to date. He began compiling information and conducting over 1000 interviews as he gathered stories from both the Allies and the Germans, as well as the French civilians. In 1956 he began […]

Gerd Oswald (1919 - 1989)

Gerd Oswald (June 9, 1919 – May 22, 1989) was a director of American films and television. Born in Berlin, Oswald was the son of German film director Richard Oswald and actress Käthe Oswald. He worked as a child actor before emigrating to the United States in 1938. Early production jobs at low-budget studios like Monogram […]

Michael Hinz (1939 - 2008)

Michael Hinz (28 December 1939 – 6 November 2008) was a German actor. Hinz came from an acting family, his parents were Werner Hinz and Ehmi Bessel, both actors, as well as his brother Knut and half-sister Dinah. After growing up in Berlin and Hamburg, Hinz had his first theatrical role in 1958 in Terence Rattigan’s The […]

Bernhard Wicki (1919 - 2000)

Bernhard Wicki (28 October 1919 – 3 January 2000) was an Austrian actor and film director. Wicki studied in the city of Breslau such topics as Art History, History and German Literature. In 1938, he transferred to the drama school of the Staatliches Schauspielhaus in Berlin. In 1939, because of his membership in the Bündischen Jugend […]

Virginia Fox (1902 - 1982)

Virginia Fox Zanuck (April 2, 1902 – October 14, 1982) was an American actress who starred in many silent films of the 1910s and 1920s. Virginia Fox was born in Wheeling, West Virginia (though her grave erroneously lists Charleston, W.Va. as her place of birth), the daughter of Marie (née Oglseby) and Frederick Fox. While on vacation […]

Richard Zanuck (1934 - 2012)

Richard Zanuck married three times. On January 14, 1958, he married Lili Charlene Gentle (b. March 4, 1940), an actress from Birmingham, Alabama, and second cousin of Tallulah Bankhead. The marriage, which produced two daughters, Virginia and Janet, was dissolved in 1968. On October 26, 1969, Zanuck and his protégé, actress Linda Harrison, together with […]

Brad Grey (1957 - 2017)

Brad Grey was formerly chairman and chief executive officer of Paramount Pictures Corporation. Grey was named CEO in 2005. In his position, Grey was responsible for overseeing all feature film development and production for films distributed by Paramount Pictures Corporation including Paramount Pictures, Paramount Vantage, Paramount Classics, Paramount Insurge, MTV Films and Nickelodeon Movies. He […]

Steve Palermo (1949 - 2017)

Steve Palermo was born on October 9, 1949 in Worcester, Massachusetts. He studied education at Norwich University, Leicester Junior College and Worcester State College. While in school, he worked as a baseball umpire. Barney Deary, who headed Major League Baseball’s Umpire Development Program, discovered Palermo working a Little League all-star game. As a result, Palermo […]

Peace Pilgrim (1908 - 1981)

Peace Pilgrim (July 18, 1908 – July 7, 1981) born Mildred Lisette Norman, was an American non-denominational spiritual teacher, mystic, pacifist, vegetarian activist and peace activist. In 1952, she became the first woman to walk the entire length of the Appalachian Trail in one season. She also walked across the United States to speak with […]

Dorothy Day (1897 - 1980)

Dorothy Day, Obl.S.B., (November 8, 1897 – November 29, 1980) was an American journalist, social activist, and Catholic convert. Day initially lived a bohemian lifestyle before gaining fame as a social activist after her conversion. She later became a key figure in the Catholic Worker Movement and earned a national reputation as a political radical, perhaps […]

Eudora Welty (1909 - 2001)

Eudora Welty was born in Jackson, Mississippi on April 13, 1909, the daughter of Christian Webb Welty (1879–1931) and Mary Chestina (Andrews) Welty (1883–1966). She grew up with younger brothers Edward Jefferson and Walter Andrews. Eudora’s mother was a school teacher. Eudora soon developed a love of reading, reinforced by her mother who believed that […]

John Kennedy Toole (1937 - 1969)

John Kennedy Toole (/ˈtuːl/; December 17, 1937 – March 26, 1969) was an American novelist from New Orleans, Louisiana, whose posthumously published novel A Confederacy of Dunces won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. He also wrote The Neon Bible. Although several people in the literary world felt his writing skills were praiseworthy, Toole’s novels were […]

Walker Percy (1916 - 1990)

Walker Percy was born in 1916 in Birmingham, Alabama, as the first of three boys to LeRoy Pratt Percy and Martha Susan Phinizy. His father’s Mississippi Protestant family included his great-uncle LeRoy Percy, a U.S. Senator, and LeRoy Pope Percy, a Civil War hero. In February 1917, Percy’s grandfather committed suicide. This seemed to set […]

Flannery O’Connor (1925 - 1964)

Regarding her emphasis of the grotesque, Flannery O’Connor said: “anything that comes out of the South is going to be called grotesque by the northern reader, unless it is grotesque, in which case it is going to be called realistic.” Her texts usually take place in the South and revolve around morally flawed characters, while […]

Eugene O’Neill (1888 - 1953)

After his experience in 1912–13 at a sanatorium where he was recovering from tuberculosis, he decided to devote himself full-time to writing plays (the events immediately prior to going to the sanatorium are dramatized in his masterpiece, Long Day’s Journey into Night). Eugene O’Neill had previously been employed by the New London Telegraph, writing poetry […]

Robert Schumann (1810 - 1856)

Robert Schumann (8 June 1810 – 29 July 1856) was a German composer and influential music critic. He is widely regarded as one of the greatest composers of the Romantic era. Schumann left the study of law, intending to pursue a career as a virtuoso pianist. He had been assured by his teacher Friedrich Wieck that he could […]

Dmitri Shostakovich (1906 - 1975)

Dmitri Dmitriyevich Shostakovich (Russian: Дми́трий Дми́триевич Шостако́вич (help·info), tr. Dmitriy Dmitrievich Shostakovich, pronounced [ˈdmʲitrʲɪj ˈdmʲitrʲɪɪvʲɪtɕ ʂəstɐˈkovʲɪtɕ]; 25 September [O.S. 12 September] 1906 – 9 August 1975) was a Russian pianist and composer of the Soviet period. He is regarded as one of the major composers of the 20th century. Dmitri Shostakovich achieved fame in the Soviet Union under the patronage of Soviet […]

Tennessee Williams (1911 - 1983)

In the late 1930s, as the young playwright struggled to have his work accepted, Tennessee Williams supported himself with a string of menial jobs that included a notably disastrous stint as caretaker on a chicken ranch in Laguna Beach, California. In 1939, with the help of his agent, Audrey Wood, he was awarded a $1,000 […]

Lillian Hellman (1905 - 1984)

Lillian Florence Hellman (June 20, 1905 – June 30, 1984) was an American dramatist and screenwriter known for her success as a playwright on Broadway, as well as her left-wing sympathies and political activism. She was blacklisted after her appearance before the House Committee on Un-American Activities (HUAC) at the height of the anti-communist campaigns […]

Gregg Toland (1904 - 1948)

Gregg Toland, A.S.C. (May 29, 1904 – September 28, 1948) was an American cinematographer noted for his innovative use of lighting and techniques such as deep focus, examples of which can be found in his work on Orson Welles’s Citizen Kane and John Ford’s The Long Voyage Home. Toland was born in Charleston, Illinois on May […]

Lee Garmes (1898 - 1978)

Lee Garmes, A.S.C. (May 27, 1898 – August 31, 1978) was an American cinematographer. During his career, he worked with directors Howard Hawks, Max Ophüls, Josef von Sternberg, Alfred Hitchcock, King Vidor, Nicholas Ray and Henry Hathaway, whom he had met as a young man when the two first came to Hollywood in the silent […]