Alfonso Reyes (1889 - 1959)

Alfonso Reyes’ parents were Bernardo Reyes and Aurelia Ochoa. His father was in important government positions during the government of Porfirio Díaz, such as the governorship of Nuevo León and the Secretary of War and Navy. Alfonso Reyes was educated primarily in Mexico City. In 1909, he and other like-minded young intellectuals such as Martín Luis Guzmán […]

Mario Benedetti (1920 - 2009)

Mario Benedetti was born in Paso de los Toros in the department of Tacuarembó to Brenno Benedetti (pharmaceutical and chemical winemaker) and Matilde Farrugia, a family of Italian descent. Mario completed six years of primary school at the Deutsche Schule in Montevideo, where he also learned German, which allowed him later to be the first […]

Elena Garro (1916 - 1998)

Elena Garro was born to a Spanish father and a Mexican mother on December 11, 1916 in Puebla, Mexico. Frequently, Elena Garro is said to have been born in 1920, but that is wrong. (Hand Written Original Birth Certificate recorded February 7, 1917, says “11 Diciembre de PROX. Pasado,” which means Dec. 11, 1916: She […]

Juan Rulfo (1917 - 1986)

It was at the University that Juan Rulfo first began writing under the tutelage of a coworker, Efrén Hernández. In 1944, Rulfo had co-founded the literary journal Pan. Later, he was able to advance in his career and travel throughout Mexico as an immigration agent. In 1946, he started as a foreman for Goodrich Euzkadi, […]

Octavio Paz (1914 - 1998)

Octavio Paz was introduced to literature early in his life through the influence of his grandfather’s library, filled with classic Mexican and European literature. During the 1920s, he discovered Gerardo Diego, Juan Ramón Jiménez, and Antonio Machado, Spanish writers who had a great influence on his early writings. As a teenager in 1931, Paz published […]

Pina Pellicer (1934 - 1964)

Pina Pellicer was born in Mexico City to César Pellicer Sánchez, a lawyer, and Pilar López de Llergo. Her uncle Carlos Pellicer was a modernist poet. Of her seven siblings, her younger sister Pilar Pellicer also became an actress best known for her roles in numerous telenovelas; another younger sister, Ana, is a sculptor and […]

Paul Shenar (1936 - 1989)

Paul Shenar was born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, the son of Mary Rosella (née Puhek) and Eugene Joseph Shenar. Paul Shenar became involved in theatre at an early age, working in Milwaukee playhouse productions. After graduating from high school, he enlisted in the United States Air Force. Following his military career he began acting again. Shenar gained […]

Míriam Colón (1936 - 2017)

Míriam Colón was born in Ponce, Puerto Rico. She was a young girl in the 1940s when her recently divorced mother moved the family to a public housing project called Residencial Las Casas in San Juan. She attended the Román Baldorioty de Castro High School in Old San Juan, where she actively participated in the […]

Charles Dubin (1919 - 2011)

Charles Dubin (February 1, 1919 – September 5, 2011) was an American film and television director. From the early 1950s to 1991, Dubin worked in television, directing episodes of Tales of Tomorrow, Omnibus, The Defenders, The Big Valley, The Virginian, Hawaii Five-O, M*A*S*H, Matlock, The Rockford Files, Murder, She Wrote and among other notable series. […]

Geraldine Doyle (1924 - 2010)

Because the “We Can Do It!” poster was created for an internal Westinghouse project, it did not become widely known until the 1980s, when it was rediscovered and used by advocates of women’s equality in the workplace. In 1984, Doyle came across an article in Modern Maturity magazine which showed a photo of an unidentified […]

Harold Dow (1947 - 2010)

Harold Dow was born in Hackensack, New Jersey. He attended the University of Nebraska at Omaha. Dow had been a correspondent for the CBS TV investigative news series 48 Hours since 1990, after having served as a contributor to the broadcast since its premiere on January 1988. He had been a contributing correspondent for 48 […]

Peter Godfrey (1899 - 1970)

Peter Godfrey began his career as a conjuror, clown, actor and director in repertory theatres around the United Kingdom. However, he became increasingly dissatisfied with the standard repertory plays, being himself attracted to the experimental works of American and Continental directors, and the avant-garde playwrights of the 1920s. To stage such plays, he and his […]

Hayden Rorke (1910 - 1987)

Hayden Rorke was born in Brooklyn, New York in 1910. He was the son of screen and stage actress Margaret Rorke (née Hayden), and he took his stage forename from her maiden name. He attended Brooklyn Preparatory School, a Jesuit school, where he served as president of the Dramatics Society and the Student Government and […]

Barton MacLane (1902 - 1969)

Barton MacLane was born in Columbia, South Carolina on Christmas Day, 1902. He attended Wesleyan University in Middletown, Connecticut, where he excelled at American football. His first movie role, in The Quarterback (1926), was a result of his athletic ability. He then attended the American Academy of Dramatic Arts. He made his Broadway debut in 1927, […]

Mervyn LeRoy (1900 - 1987)

Mervyn LeRoy worked in costumes, processing labs and as a camera assistant until he became a gag writer and actor in silent films, including The Ten Commandments in 1923. LeRoy credits Ten Commandments director, Cecil B. DeMille, for inspiring him to become a director: “As the top director of the era, DeMille had been the […]

Frank McHugh (1898 - 1981)

Born in Homestead, Pennsylvania, Frank McHugh came from a theatrical family. His parents ran a stock theatre company and as a young child he performed on stage. His brother Matt and sister Kitty performed an act with him by the time he was ten years old, but the family quit the stage about 1930. Another […]

Allen Jenkins (1900 - 1974)

Allen Jenkins was born Alfred McGonegal on Staten Island, New York on April 9, 1900. He studied at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts. In his first stage appearance, he danced next to James Cagney in a chorus line for an off-Broadway musical called Pitter-Patter, earning five dollars a week. He also appeared in Broadway […]

Irving Reis (1906 - 1953)

Irving Reis, (born May 7, 1906, in New York City – died July 3, 1953, in Woodland Hills, California) was a radio program producer and director, and a film director. Irving Reis was born into a Jewish family (Reis being a common Portuguese-Sephardic surname). Reis began his career as a motion picture photographer. The most notable of […]

Al Jarreau (1940 - 2017)

Al Jarreau Al Jarreau, the acrobatically skilful, warmly soulful American singer, who has died aged 76, always seemed too generous an individual to get much pleasure out of proving knowalls wrong. But by the third decade of a career in which the jazz cognoscenti had often been snooty about his commercial leanings, and pop tastemakers […]

George Steele (1937 - 2017)

George Steele George Steele, Born William James Myers in 1937, the future WWE Hall of Fame member started out with a football career in mind like so many other wrestlers, but saw his career cut short due to knee problems. That led him to the wrestling rings of Detroit, where he started his career as […]

Ivan Koloff (1942 - 2017)

Ivan Koloff Ivan Koloff — the “Russian Bear” whom pro wrestling fans loved to hate as the Cold War stand-in for the Soviet Union — has died at 74, his daughter and World Wrestling Entertainment confirmed. Koloff, who lived in Winterville, North Carolina, died Saturday after a long struggle against liver cancer, NBC station WITN […]

Judge Joseph Albert Wapner Jr (1919 - 2017)

Judge Joseph Albert Wapner Jr Joseph A. Wapner, a retired California judge whose flinty-folksy style of resolving disputes on the show “The People’s Court” helped spawn an entire genre of courtroom-based reality television with no-nonsense jurists and often clueless litigants, died Feb. 26 at his home in Los Angeles. He was 97. A grandson, Gabriel […]

Louisa Horton (1920 - 2008)

Louisa Fleetwood Horton Hill (September 10, 1920 – January 25, 2008) was an American film, television and stage actress, who used her given name, Louisa Horton, professionally. She was the former wife of the late The Sting director, George Roy Hill. Louisa Horton was born to Jeter Rice and Frances Breckinridge (née Steele) Horton in Beijing, […]

Strother Martin (1919 - 1980)

Strother Martin was born in Kokomo in Howard County in north central Indiana. For a short time, the Martins moved to San Antonio, Texas but soon returned to Indiana. As a child, he excelled at swimming and diving; he was nicknamed “T-Bone Martin” because of his diving expertise. At 17, he won the National Junior […]

George Roy Hill (1921 - 2002)

George Roy Hill was born in Minneapolis, Minnesota, to George Roy and Helen Frances (Owens) Hill, part of a well-to-do Roman Catholic family with interests in the newspaper business; the family owned the Minneapolis Tribune. Hill was no relation to George W. Hill, director and cinematographer of numerous silent movies and early sound films in […]

Anatoli Firsov (1941 - 2000)

Anatoli Vasilievich Firsov (Russian: Анатолий Васильевич Фирсов; 1 February 1941 – 24 July 2000) was a Russian ice hockey left wing and center, who competed internationally for the USSR. In the IIHF World Championships, he won the scoring title four times and was named the best forward three times. He was also named the most […]

Karl Engel (1923 - 2006)

Karl (Rudolf) Engel (Birsfelden, 1 June 1923 – Chernex, 2 September 2006) was a Swiss pianist. In 1952 Karl Engel was awarded the second prize at the Queen Elisabeth competition. Throughout his concert career, he cultivated the art song repertory and worked extensively on works of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, Ludwig van Beethoven and Robert Schumann. He […]

Irmgard Seefried (1919 - 1988)

Irmgard Seefried (9 October 1919 – 24 November 1988) was a distinguished German soprano who sang opera and lieder. Maria Theresia Irmgard Seefried was born in Köngetried, near Mindelheim, Bavaria, Germany, the daughter of educated Austrian-born parents. She studied at Augsburg University before making her debut in Aachen as the priestess in Verdi’s Aida in 1940. […]

Geoffrey Parsons (1929 - 1995)

Geoffrey Parsons was born in the Sydney suburb of Ashfield, to a working-class family. He had two older brothers and a large extended family. He originally intended to study architecture, but his love of music prevailed. He studied with Winifred Burston (a student of Ferruccio Busoni) at the NSW State Conservatorium of Music from 1941 […]

Kathleen Ferrier (1912 - 1953)

Kathleen Mary Ferrier, CBE (22 April 1912 – 8 October 1953) was an English contralto singer who achieved an international reputation as a stage, concert and recording artist, with a repertoire extending from folksong and popular ballads to the classical works of Bach, Brahms, Mahler and Elgar. Her death from cancer, at the height of […]