Sheridan Downey (1884 - 1961)

In 1938, Sheridan Downey ran for the U.S. Senate as a supporter of the proposed “Ham and Eggs” government pension program. He defeated incumbent Senator William Gibbs McAdoo, the former son-in-law of Woodrow Wilson, in the Democratic primary by more than 135,000 votes. Despite the strong backing McAdoo received from the White House and a […]

Paul Douglas (1907 - 1959)

Paul Douglas worked originally as an announcer for CBS radio station WCAU in that city, relocating to network headquarters in New York in 1934. Douglas co-hosted CBS’s popular swing music program, The Saturday Night Swing Club, from 1936 to 1939. He made his Broadway debut in 1936 as the Radio Announcer in Doty Hobart and Tom […]

John Chafee (1922 - 1999)

John Chafee became active in behind-the-scenes Rhode Island politics by helping elect a mayor of Providence in the early 1950s. He successfully ran for a seat in the Rhode Island House of Representatives in 1956 and later became the minority leader. He was re-elected in 1958 and 1960, the latter a year when many Republicans […]

Douglas Greer (1921 - 2016)

Douglas Greer orn in Ottawa, Canada in 1921, Douglas Greer moved to Glendale, California in 1924. He began working in the movies at age seven after winning a freckle contest. His freckles subsequently led to him landing the role of a character named “Turkey Egg” in the Our Gang. Greer recalls he received the name […]

Robert Stigwood (1934 - 2016)

Robert Stigwood Robert Stigwood, the impresario who managed the Bee Gees and produced 1970s blockbusters “Grease” and “Saturday Night Fever,” has died. He was 81. Stigwood’s office said he died Monday. The cause of death was not announced. Born in Adelaide, Australia, in 1934, Stigwood moved to Britain in the 1950s and soon became an […]

Stanley Siegel (1936 - 2016)

Stanley Siegel Stanley Siegel, an irreverent New York television talk-show host whose unscripted interviews coupled Jack Paar’s raw candor with Oscar Wilde’s credo that nothing succeeds like excess, died on Jan. 2 in Los Angeles. He was 79. The cause was pneumonia, his nephew Richard Propper said. “The Stanley Siegel Show” was broadcast live at […]

Vanity (1959 - 1970)

Vanity   Denise Matthews, the singer, model and actress known as Vanity, who toured with Prince in the 1980s before eschewing her wild persona for life as a minister, died on Monday in Fremont, Calif. She was 57. Ms. Matthews’s sister Renay Matthews confirmed the death. She said Ms. Matthews had checked into a hospital […]

Frank Carlson (1893 - 1987)

Born in 1893 near Concordia, Kansas, Frank Carlson attended public schools and Kansas State University before serving in World War I as a Private. After the war, he returned to Concordia to farm. He was elected as a Republican to first the Kansas House of Representatives in 1928 and then to the United States House […]

Styles Bridges (1898 - 1961)

Styles Bridges ran for governor of New Hampshire in 1934, and won, becoming the nation’s youngest governor at the time, according to John Gunther’s book, Inside U.S.A. He was elected to the United States Senate in 1936, and would serve until his death in 1961. In 1937 he retired from the Army Reserve Corps, in […]

John Bricker (1893 - 1986)

During World War I, John Bricker served as first lieutenant and chaplain in the United States Army in 1917 and 1918. He was subsequently the solicitor for Grandview Heights, Ohio, from 1920 to 1928, assistant Attorney General of Ohio from 1923 to 1927, a member of the Public Utilities Commission of Ohio from 1929 to […]

Lloyd Bentsen (1921 - 2006)

First elected in the Truman landslide of 1948, Lloyd Bentsen served three successive terms in the United States House of Representatives. With the South, including Texas, still mostly home to Yellow dog Democrats, winning the Democratic nomination was tantamount to election, and Bentsen was unopposed by Republicans in each of his three House campaigns. He […]

William Benton (1900 - 1973)

William Benton was born in Minneapolis, Minnesota. He was educated at Shattuck Military Academy, Faribault, Minnesota, and Carleton College in Northfield, Minnesota until 1918, at which point he matriculated at Yale University, where he contributed to campus humor magazine The Yale Record and was admitted to the Zeta Psi fraternity. He graduated in 1921 and began […]

Warren Rudman (1930 - 2012)

From 2004 to 2006, Warren Rudman also led a team of attorneys that investigated accounting practices at Fannie Mae. Prior to the September 11 attacks, Rudman had served on a now oft-cited and praised national panel investigating the threat of international terrorism. He, along with fellow former Senator Gary Hart (D-CO), chaired the panel, and both […]

Harry Byrd (1887 - 1966)

Harry Byrd (June 10, 1887 – October 20, 1966) of Berryville in Clarke County, Virginia, was an American newspaper publisher, and political leader of the Democratic Party in Virginia. He was the leader of the “conservative coalition” in the United States Senate, which largely blocked most liberal legislation after 1937. He was a descendant of one […]

Rod Grams (1948 - 2013)

After David Durenberger announced he would not seek reelection, Rod Grams surprised many by announcing, just months into beginning his first term in the U.S. House, that he would run for the U.S. Senate. However, Grams faced opposition for the Republican party endorsement from State Senator Gen Olson, Bert McKasy (former chief of staff to […]

Jeremiah Denton (1924 - 2014)

Jeremiah Denton ran as a Republican for a U.S. Senate seat from his home state of Alabama in 1980. He first easily defeated former U.S. Congressman Armistead Selden in the Republican primary. Selden was the candidate of choice of the Republican establishment in the state. He then achieved a surprise victory with 50.15 percent of […]

Harlan Mathews (1927 - 2014)

Harlan Mathews served as deputy to the governor until January 1993. Al Gore, who had been Tennessee’s junior Senator since 1985, was elected Vice President of the United States as Bill Clinton’s running mate in November 1992, and resigned his position as Senator in preparation for his inauguration as Vice President on January 20, 1993. […]

Howard Baker (1925 - 2014)

Howard Baker began his political career in 1964, when he lost to the liberal Democrat Ross Bass in a U.S. Senate election to fill the unexpired term of the late Senator Estes Kefauver. In the 1966 U.S. Senate election for Tennessee, Bass lost the Democratic primary to former Governor Frank G. Clement, and Baker handily […]

Alan Dixon (1927 - 2014)

Alan Dixon served as a member of the Illinois House of Representatives from 1951 to 1963 and as a member of the Illinois State Senate from 1963 to 1971, serving as Minority Whip for part of that time. In the fall of 1970, Karl Rove, a future White House Deputy Chief of Staff in the George […]

Jim Jeffords (1934 - 2014)

Jim Jeffords won a seat in the Vermont State Senate in 1966. He followed that success in 1968 with a victory in the race for attorney general of Vermont. He was a Presidential Elector for Vermont in 1972, and voted for reelection of the Nixon-Agnew ticket. Jeffords sought the Republican Party nomination for Governor in 1972, […]

Edward Brooke (1919 - 2015)

In 1966, Edward Brooke defeated former Governor Endicott Peabody with 1,213,473 votes to 744,761, and served as a United States Senator for two terms, from January 3, 1967, to January 3, 1979. The black vote had, Time wrote, “no measurable bearing” on the election as less than 3% of the state’s population was black, and […]

Wendell Ford (1924 - 2015)

Wendell Ford (September 8, 1924 – January 22, 2015) was an American politician from the Commonwealth of Kentucky. He served for twenty-four years in the U.S. Senate and was the 53rd Governor of Kentucky. He was the first person to be successively elected lieutenant governor, governor and United States senator in Kentucky history. The Senate […]

Richard Schweiker (1926 - 2015)

In 1960, Richard Schweiker was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives from Pennsylvania’s 13th congressional district. At the time, the Montgomery County-based district included Schweiker’s home town of Norristown and several affluent suburban communities in the Philadelphia Main Line. A moderate to liberal Republican, he defeated conservative incumbent John Lafore in the Republican primary. […]

Dale Bumpers (1925 - 2016)

Dale Bumpers was virtually unknown when he announced his campaign for governor in 1970. Despite his lack of name recognition, his oratorical skills, personal charm, and outsider image put him in a runoff election for the Democratic nomination with former Governor Orval Faubus. Two other serious candidates were Attorney General Joe Purcell of Benton in […]

Marlow Cook (1926 - 2016)

Marlow Cook was elected to the Kentucky House of Representatives in 1957 and again in 1959. He served on a special committee analyzing education in the state and also on a planning committee. Cook was elected to two terms as Jefferson County Judge, the equivalent of a mayoral position administering populous Jefferson County, which, by the […]

Conrad Burns (1935 - 2016)

Conrad Burns faced an unexpectedly difficult reelection campaign in 2000. In February 1999, he announced that he would break his 1988 promise to hold office for only two terms, saying, “Circumstances have changed, and I have rethought my position.” Later that same month, while giving a speech about American dependence on foreign oil to the […]

Johnny Desmond (1919 - 1985)

Johnny Desmond was born in Detroit, Michigan; and as a boy, sang on a local radio station, but at age 15 he quit to work at his father’s grocery. He still retained a love of music, however, and briefly attended the Detroit Conservatory of Music before heading to the nightclub circuit, playing piano and singing. In […]

Bob Denver (1935 - 2005)

While teaching at Corpus Christi in 1958, Bob Denver shot the pilot for the TV series The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis, and left teaching for his first professional acting job as a regular on the series when it was picked up in 1959. From 1959 to 1963, Denver appeared on Dobie Gillis as Maynard […]

Vernon Dent (1895 - 1963)

In the early 1920s, Vernon Dent was a fixture at the Mack Sennett studio, working with comedians Billy Bevan, Andy Clyde, and especially Harry Langdon. Dent alternately played breezy pals and blustery authority figures opposite Langdon’s timid character. Sennett voided all contracts when it came time to retool his studio for sound, and Dent moved […]

Reginald Denny (1891 - 1967)

Born in Richmond, Surrey, England, Reginald Denny (sources differ on his birth name giving variously Reginald Daymore, Reginald Leigh Daymore and Reginald Leigh Dugmore Denny) began his stage career at age seven in The Royal Family and in The Merry Widow at age 16, the year he left St. Francis Xavier College, Mayfield, Sussex. Years […]