Harry Carey (1878 - 1947)

When a boating accident led to pneumonia, Harry Carey wrote a play, Montana, while recuperating and toured the country performing in it for three years. His play was very successful, but Carey lost it all when his next play was a failure. In 1911, his friend Henry B. Walthall introduced him to director D.W. Griffith, […]

Candy Candido (1913 - 1999)

Candy Candido’s distinctive, four-octave speaking voice became familiar to radio listeners and moviegoers. Speaking his lines in his normal tenor, he would suddenly adopt a high, squeaky soprano and just as suddenly plunge into a gruff bass. His weekly repetition of “I’m feeling mighty low” on Jimmy Durante’s radio show made it a national catchphrase. […]

David Canary (1938 - 2015)

After a semi-regular role as Russ Gehring in the prime time serial Peyton Place, David Canary came to international prominence in 1967 on the Western series Bonanza. In 1967, he appeared in the now-classic western movie Hombre, in which he was featured with Paul Newman, Richard Boone, and Cameron Mitchell. Canary guest starred in a […]

Godfrey Cambridge (1933 - 1976)

While pursuing an acting career, Godfrey Cambridge supported himself with a variety of jobs, including “cab driver, bead-sorter, ambulance driver, gardener, judo instructor, and clerk for the New York City Housing Authority,” as well as cleaning airplanes and making popcorn bunnies. His first role was as a bartender in the off-Broadway play Take a Giant Step. […]

Henry Calvin (1918 - 1975)

Henry Calvin hosted a 1950 NBC radio show and appeared on Broadway (most notably in Kismet as the Wazir of Police). In 1952, he portrayed Big Ben on the children’s TV series Howdy Doody. and made his film debut in Crime Against Joe as Red Waller four years later. His character in Zorro, Sergeant Demetrio Lopez […]

Joseph Calleia (1897 - 1975)

Joseph Calleia was born in Notabile in the Crown Colony of Malta on August 4, 1897. His father was an architect. Calleia studied at St. Julian’s and St. Aloysius Colleges. At age 12 he used the English pound given to him for Christmas to buy two dozen harmonicas, and organized a local band whose performances were […]

Charlie Callas (1924 - 2011)

Charlie Callas was born in Brooklyn, New York, as Charles Callias and served in the United States Army during World War II. He began his career as a drummer playing in groups with Bernie Cummins, Tommy Dorsey, Claude Thornhill, and Buddy Rich. He dropped a vowel from his legal name, Callias, when he took to […]

Rory Calhoun (1922 - 1999)

Rory Calhoun worked at a number of odd jobs. In 1943, while riding horseback in the Hollywood Hills, he met actor Alan Ladd, whose wife, Sue Carol was an agent. She landed Calhoun a one-line role in a Laurel and Hardy comedy, The Bullfighters, credited under the name Frank McCown. Shortly afterwards, the Ladds hosted […]

Louis Calhern (1895 - 1956)

Louis Calhern was born in Brooklyn, New York. His father was a tobacco dealer. His family left New York while he was still a child and moved to St. Louis, Missouri, where he grew up. While Calhern was playing high school football, a stage manager from a touring theatrical stock company spotted him, and hired […]

Adolph Caesar (1933 - 1986)

Adolph Caesar (December 5, 1933 – March 6, 1986) was an American actor. Adolph Caesar was born in Harlem, Manhattan, New York City, New York, as the youngest of three sons born to a Dominican mother. Caesar appeared in Norman Jewison’s film A Soldier’s Story, for which he received a nomination for “Best Actor in a Supporting […]

Ralph Byrd (1909 - 1952)

Ralph Byrd married actress and model Virginia Carroll in 1936. The couple remained together until Byrd’s death in 1952. Byrd was a good, all-purpose actor with a gift for delivering dialogue in a natural, ingratiating way. His screen characters could be breezy and affable, or tough and authoritative as the role required. Once established in Republic […]

Charles Butterworth (1896 - 1946)

Charles Butterworth (July 26, 1896 – June 13, 1946) was an American actor specializing in comedy roles, often in musicals. Butterworth’s distinct voice was the inspiration for the Cap’n Crunch commercials from the Jay Ward studio. Voice actor Daws Butler based Cap’n Crunch on the voice of Butterworth. Charles Butterworth was born to a physician in […]

Merritt Butrick (1959 - 1989)

Merritt Butrick was born in Gainesville, Florida and was an only child. He graduated in 1977 from Tamalpais High School in Mill Valley, California. He attended the California Institute of the Arts for acting, but was dismissed from the school. His first screen role was as a rapist in two 1981 episodes of the police drama […]

Francis Bushman (1883 - 1966)

Francis Bushman was born in Baltimore, Maryland. As a young man Bushman joined the Maryland Athletic Club and began a body building regimen that would give him his famous film physique. He cited Sandow as one of his body building influences. In New York he worked as a sculptor’s model often posing in the nude […]

Charles Brown (1922 - 1999)

In the late 1940s, a rising demand for blues was driven by an increasing white teenage audience in the South which quickly spread north and west. Blues singers such as Louis Jordan, Wynonie Harris and Roy Brown were getting much of the attention, but what writer Charles Keil dubs “the postwar Texas clean-up movement in […]

Ronnie Burns (1935 - 2007)

Ronnie Burns was born in Evanston, Illinois, Ronnie Burns was five weeks old when he was adopted in Chicago September 27, 1935, by George Burns and Gracie Allen. His older sister, Sandra Jean, had been adopted the year before and was then 13 months old. According to George Burns, Ronnie had been the most sickly […]

Victor Buono (1938 - 1982)

In the summer of 1959, a talent scout from Warner Bros. saw the heavy-set Victor Buono play Falstaff at the Globe and took him to Hollywood for a screen test. Buono made his first network TV appearance playing the bearded poet Bongo Benny in an episode of 77 Sunset Strip. Over the next few years, […]

John Bunny (1863 - 1915)

John Bunny was born in New York City, Bunny was raised in Brooklyn where he attended high school and worked as a grocery clerk before joining a small minstrel show touring the East Coast. He went on to jobs as stage manager for various stock companies and performed in vaudeville before being drawn to the […]

Richard Bull (1924 - 2014)

Richard Bull was born on June 26, 1924 in Zion, Illinois. After years of living in Los Angeles, he moved back to Chicago in 1994 with his wife Barbara Collentine. Bull and Collentine, also 89, moved to the Motion Picture & Television Fund home from Chicago in September 2012. Richard Bull is best remembered for his […]

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 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. […]

Patty Duke (1946 - 2016)

Patty Duke Her son, actor Sean Aston (Lord of the Rings, Rudy) says he wouldn’t be the man he is today without her. “I am who I am today because of my mom. She was told not to have me. She had me anyway and together we were a team, it was us against the […]

Edgar Buchanan (1903 - 1979)

Edgar Buchanan appeared in more than one hundred films, including Penny Serenade (1941) with Cary Grant, Tombstone, the Town Too Tough to Die (1942), The Talk of the Town (1942) with Ronald Colman and Jean Arthur, The Man from Colorado (1948), Cheaper by the Dozen (1950), She Couldn’t Say No (1954), Ride the High Country […]

John Bubbles (1902 - 1986)

John Bubbles was born in Louisville, Kentucky on February 19, 1902, but soon moved with his family to Indianapolis. There, he formed a partnership with Ford L. “Buck” Washington known as “Buck and Bubbles,” with Buck playing stride piano and singing while Bubbles tapped, beginning in 1919. The two appeared in the Ziegfeld Follies of […]

Nigel Bruce (1895 - 1953)

Nigel Bruce was the second son of Sir William Waller Bruce, 10th Baronet (1856–1912) and his wife Angelica, Lady Bruce (died 1917), daughter of General George Selby, Royal Artillery. Bruce was born in Ensenada, Baja California, Mexico, while his parents were on holiday there. His older brother was the author and adventurer Sir Michael Bruce, […]

Raymond Brown (1928 - 1998)

Raymond Brown was born in New York City, the son of Robert H. and Loretta Brown, Raymond studied at The Catholic University of America where he received a bachelor’s degree in 1948 and a Master of Arts degree in 1949 as a Basselin scholar. In 1951 he joined the scholarly Society of Saint-Sulpice following his […]

Peter Brown (1935 - 2016)

As a contract player for Warner Brothers, Peter Brown appeared in the films Red Nightmare and Darby’s Rangers. Though his role in Onionhead was cut from the completed film, the producer Julius Schermer hired him for Deputy Johnny McKay in Lawman, an important part that lasted from 1958 to 1962. Brown was the last surviving […]

Arthur Brough (1905 - 1978)

Arthur Brough (5 feet 2 inches (1.57 m)) originally wanted to become a teacher, but failed to gain such employment, and worked in a solicitor’s office. He found this job too mundane and he began to take an interest in the theatre. After indulging in amateur theatricals, Brough attended the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art […]

Edward Brophy (1895 - 1960)

Edward Brophy was born in New York City, American. His screen debut was in Yes or No (1920). In 1928, with only a few minor film roles to his credit, Brophy was working as a junior production executive for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer when he was chosen to appear with Buster Keaton in one sequence of Keaton’s film The […]

Bill Baird (1914 - 1978)

Bill Baird There’s little doubt Bill Baird is one of the most popular magicians in Heaven today. He certainly was on earth, with a legion of friends who were stunned by news of his death the very morning of the day many were preparing to leave for Abbott’s annual Get-Together at Colon. Bill, whose real […]