Jack Arnold (1912 - 1992)

Motion Pictures, Television Director. A former stage and screen actor, he joined in the US Signal Corps in the 1940s and worked with famed documentary filmmaker Robert Flaherty. After the war Arnold directed and produced about 25 documentaries for government agencies and private industries, getting an Oscar nomination for best documentary feature for “With These […]

Jack Bailey (1907 - 1980)

A former vaudeville musician and World’s Fair barker, Bailey is best remembered as the host of Queen for a Day, a daytime game show which first aired on the Mutual Radio Network in 1945 and later moved to television, where it ran locally in the Los Angeles area from 1948 through 1955, on the NBC […]

Jack Barry (1918 - 1984)

Television Game Show Producer, Host. He was involved in the quiz show scandals of the late 1950s while hosting “Twenty-One,” which formed the basis of the movie “Quiz Show” (1994). (bio by: A.J. Marik)

Jack Benny (1894 - 1974)

Jack Benny Actor, Producer, Comedian. He is best remembered for his comically inept violin playing (he was actually a very good violin player), his carefully constructed image as a penny-pincher, and for never being older than 39. His most famous joke was as a man confronted by a robber who demands “Your money or your […]

Jack Beutel (1915 - 1989)

Actor. He is best remembered as a western actor in both film and television. He was born in Dallas, Texas and moved to Los Angeles, California in the late 1930s to pursue a film career. He found a job as an insurance clerk and was soon noticed by an agent and was signed in 1941 […]

Jack Buchanan (1891 - 1957)

After a brief attempt to follow his late father’s profession and a failure at acting in Glasgow, Jack Buchanan came to London and became a music hall comedian under the name of Chump Buchanan and first appeared on the West End in September 1912 in the comic opera The Grass Widow at the Apollo Theatre. […]

Jack Buetel (1915 - 1989)

Jack Buetel (September 5, 1915 – June 27, 1989) was an American film and television actor. Born in Dallas, Texas, Buetel moved to Los Angeles, California in the late 1930s with the intention of establishing a film career. Unable to find such work, he was employed as an insurance clerk when he was noticed by an […]

Jack Carson (1910 - 1963)

Jack Carson was born in Carman, Manitoba to Elmer and Elsa Carson. In 1914, the family moved to Milwaukee, Wisconsin, which he always thought of as his home town. He attended high school at Hartford School, Milwaukee and St. John’s Military Academy, Delafield, but it was at Carleton College that he acquired a taste for […]

Jack Carter (1922 - 2015)

Jack Carter Carter was born in New York City, New York, in 1922 to a Jewish family. Carter served in the United States Army Air Corps during World War II. He hosted an early television variety program called Cavalcade of Stars on the DuMont Network. He was lured to NBC to host his own program […]

Jack Cassidy (1927 - 1976)

He was born in Richmond Hill, New York, the son of Charlotte (née Koehler) and William Cassidy. His father, who was engineer at the Long Island Rail Road, was of Irish descent and his mother was of German ancestry.  Cassidy achieved his greatest success as a musical performer on Broadway, appearing in Alive and Kicking, […]

Jack Catton (1920 - 1990)

General Jack Catton (February 5, 1920 – December 5, 1990) was a United States Air Force four-star general and was commander of the Air Force Logistics Command with headquarters at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base and of the Military Airlift Command. General Catton was born in Berkeley, California, in 1920. He attended Fairfax High School in […]

Jack Clement (1931 - 2013)

Raised and educated in Memphis, Clement was performing at an early age, playing guitar and Dobro; before embarking on his music career he served in the Marines. In 1953, he made his first record for the Sheraton label in Boston, Massachusetts but did not immediately pursue a full-time career in music, instead choosing to study […]

Jack Coffer (1938 - 1967)

Jack Colvin (1934 - 2005)

Colvin was born in Lyndon, Kansas, twenty-seven miles south of Topeka. He began his stage career as a child performer. At the age of seventeen Colvin became a private student of Michael Chekhov. Although he appeared in hundreds of films and television shows, he always returned to the theatre. His stage roles include Marchbanks in […]

Jack Cunningham (1970 - 1967)

British Actor. Film and television credits include “Billy Liar,” “The Sundowners,” “The Ten Commandments,” “Dial M for Murder,” “Z Cars,” “Dixon of Dock Green,” “Doctor Who,” “Coronation Street.” (bio by: Genet)

Jack Dawn (1892 - 1961)

Makeup Artist. He was head of the makeup department at MGM Studios beginning in 1939. He developed many innovations that are still in use today. Through out his long career with MGM he is credited in over two hundred films. Some of his credits include, “A Christmas Carol” (1938), “Ninotchka” (1939), “The Wizard of Oz” […]

Jack DeLeon (1924 - 2006)

Comedic Actor. Best known for playing gay characters on sitcoms from the 1970s. His best known role was that as Marty on Barney Miller. He also appeared on other shows such as Sanford & Son and Starsky & Hutch. He shifted to voice-over work during the 1980s. He was a founding member of ‘Yarmy’s Army’. […]

Jack Dempsey (1895 - 1983)

Jack Dempsey Heavyweight Champion of the World from 1919 to 1926. The legendary Dempsey was born in Manassa, Colorado, one of 11 children. At 16 he left home and traveled on freight trains and fought to earn money. Then Dempsey met manager Jack ‘Doc’ Kearns and started knocking out legitimate contenders like Fireman Jim Flynn, […]

Jack Diamond (1897 - 1931)

Jack Diamond Born on July 10, 1897, in Philadelphia, Jack Diamond became a leading figure in organized crime during the Prohibition era. He established liquor-smuggling enterprises in New York City and upstate New York, where he lived for a time after shooting and killing men in his Hotsy Totsy club. He was found dead in […]

Jack Diamond (1897 - 1931)

Jack Diamond Gangster bootlegger. Born Jack Moran on July, 1897, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, to an Irish immigrant family. After his mother, Sara’s death, Diamond moved with his father and brother to Brooklyn, New York. Growing up impoverished, Diamond turned to street gangs and became involved in theft and violent crime as a teen. He later […]

Jack Dodson (1931 - 1994)

Jack Dodson (May 16, 1931 – September 16, 1994) (born John S. Dodson in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania) was an American television actor best remembered for the milquetoast character Howard Sprague in The Andy Griffith Show and its spin-off Mayberry R.F.D. From 1959 until his death in 1994, Dodson was married to television art director Mary Dodson. […]

Jack Dragna (1891 - 1956)

Organized Crime Figure. Made member of the Chicago Cosa Nostra. The most successful, but least known of any Los Angeles crime boss. He was not a publicity seeker like Bugsy Siegel and Mickey Cohen, which allowed him to die of natural causes and not to pass away in jail. He lived in Los Angeles most […]

Jack Elam (1920 - 2003)

Elam was born in Miami in Gila County in south central Arizona, to Millard Elam and Alice Amelia Kirby. His mother died in 1922 when Jack was two years old. By 1930, he was living with his father, older sister Mildred, and their stepmother, Flossie Varney Elam. He grew up picking cotton and lost the sight […]

Jack Ganzhorn (1881 - 1956)

American actor in the silent era (1910s and 20s). (bio by: A.J. Marik)

Jack Germond (1928 - 2013)

Germond was born in Boston, Massachusetts, an only child, and raised in a middle-class household in Boston and Trenton, New Jersey. When he was 13, his family moved to Mississippi, and then to Baton Rouge, Louisiana, where Germond finished high school. After attending Louisiana State University for one semester, he served in the U.S. Army […]

Jack Gilford (1907 - 1990)

Jack Gilford was born Jacob Aaron Gellman on the Lower East Side of Manhattan and grew up in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. His parents were Romanian-born Jewish immigrants Sophie “Susksa” (née Jackness), who owned a restaurant, and Aaron Gellman, a furrier. Gilford was the second of three sons, with an older brother Murray (“Moisha”) and a younger […]

Jack Greene (1930 - 2013)

Jack Greene Jack Henry Greene was born on January 7, 1930, in Maryville, Tennessee. He learned to play guitar at age ten, and Greene’s first involvement with the music industry came when he was still a teenager, working as a disc jockey at radio station WGAP in Maryville. By the age of 18, Jack Greene was a regular on the Tennessee Barn Dance show on WNOX,Knoxville, Tennessee. […]

Jack Guzik (1886 - 1956)

Gangster.

Jack Gwillim (1909 - 2001)

Born in Canterbury, Kent, England, he served in the Royal Navy for over twenty years, attaining the rank of Commander. During his time in the Navy, he became a champion boxer and rugby player, and when he was discharged he was one of the youngest men ever to obtain the rank of Commander in the […]

Jack H. Skirball (1896 - 1985)

Movie Producer, Developer, Philantropist. Skirball attended the University of Cincinnati and Western Reserve College in Cleveland then went on to study for the rabbinate at Hebrew Union College. After his ordination in 1921, he served as an assistant rabbi in Cleveland for two years and rabbi of a temple in Evansville, Indiana, for seven years. […]