Fran Ryan (1916 - 2000)

Fran Ryan began performing at the age of 6 at Oakland’s Henry Duffy Theatre. She attended Stanford University for three years, and during World War II was a member of the USO entertaining troops. She performed comedy, singing and acting on stage in California and Chicago and launched her television career two decades later. Her […]

Rosalind Russell (1907 - 1976)

Rosalind Russell started her career as a fashion model and was in many Broadway shows. Against parental objections, she took a job at a stock company for seven months at Saranac Lake and then Hartford, Connecticut. Afterwards, she moved to Boston, where she acted for a year at a theater group for Edward E. Clive. […]

Gail Russell (1924 - 1961)

At the age of 19 Gail Russell made her film debut in the 1943 film Henry Aldrich Gets Glamour. Russell appeared in several more films in the early and mid-1940s, the most notable being The Uninvited (1944) with Ray Milland and Our Hearts Were Young and Gay (1944), in which she co-starred with Diana Lynn. […]

Zelda Rubinstein (1933 - 2010)

In 1978 Zelda Rubinstein decided to pursue an acting career. She studied acting at the University of California. Poltergeist was her first major film role. She remained active in film and television thereafter, frequently portraying various psychic characters, such as her appearance on Jennifer Slept Here. She also narrated the horror television series, Scariest Places […]

Ruth Royce (1893 - 1971)

Ruth Royce (February 6, 1893 – May 7, 1971) was an American vaudeville performer and silent film actress from Versailles, Missouri. Royce appeared in the serial, The Vanishing Dagger (1920), which starred Eddie Polo and C. Norman Hammond. In 1923, Royce, along with other Hollywood actors, participated in a vaudeville show at Universal City. Royce assisted […]

Patsy Rowlands (1931 - 2005)

Patsy Rowlands made her debut in the Carry On films in Carry On Again Doctor in 1969 and soon became a regular member of the team, usually playing the dowdy, put-upon wife or the long-suffering secretary. Between 1969 and 1975 she appeared in nine of the films in increasingly large roles, including Carry On Loving, […]

Ruth Roland (1892 - 1937)

Born in San Francisco, California, Ruth Roland’s father managed a theatre and she became a child actress who went on to work in vaudeville. She was hired by director Sidney Olcott who had seen her on stage in New York City. She appeared in her first film for Kalem Studios in 1909 and along with […]

Roxie Roker (1929 - 1995)

Roxie Roker is known for her role as Helen Willis on The Jeffersons. She began her professional career with the Negro Ensemble Company and became a successful stage actress. She won an Obie Award in 1974 and was nominated for a Tony Award for her portrayal of Mattie Williams in The River Niger. She was […]

Beth Rogan (1931 - 2015)

Beth Rogan was born Jenifer Puckle on 19 July 1931 in Walmer, Kent. She was always known as Jeni to friends and family. Her father was Kenneth Puckle, a major in the Royal Marines and a veteran of the Gallipoli campaign and her mother was Enid Puckle (née Gray). She had a sister, Priscilla, who […]

May Robson (1858 - 1942)

On 17 September 1883, May Robson became an actress in Hoop of Gold at the Brooklyn Grand Opera House stage. Her name was incorrectly spelled “Robson” in the billing, which she used from that point forward “for good luck”. Over the next several decades, she flourished on the stage as a comedienne and character actress. […]

Flora Robson (1902 - 1987)

Her father discovered that Flora Robson had a talent for recitation and, from the age of five, she was taken around by horse and carriage to recite, and to compete in recitations. This established a pattern that remained with her. Flora Robson made her stage debut in 1921, aged 19. In cinema she was often chosen […]

Dany Robin (1927 - 1995)

Dany Robin (French pronunciation: ​[dani ʁɔbɛ̃]; 14 April 1927 – 25 May 1995) was a French actress of the 1950s and the early 1960s. Dany Robin was born Danielle Robin in Clamart. She performed with Peter Sellers in The Waltz of the Toreadors, and co-starred opposite Kirk Douglas in the 1953 romantic drama Act of Love. […]

Lynne Roberts (1922 - 1978)

Born in El Paso, Texas, Lynne Roberts was the daughter of Hobart M. Roberts, a bookkeeper, and May Holland. The family moved to Los Angeles in the 1920s. Lynne Roberts began working as an actress in the 1930s, under contract to Republic Pictures. At the age of 14, in 1936, she played a role in Bulldog […]

Beverly Roberts (1914 - 2009)

Beverly Roberts was born in Brooklyn, New York, she was first spotted by a Warner Bros. talent scout while singing in a nightclub in 1935. Having performed as a stage actress prior to that, she was signed to a contract with Warner Brothers, starring in her first film in 1936, titled The Singing Kid, in […]

Lyda Roberti (1906 - 1938)

Born in Warsaw, then part of Imperial Russia, Lyda Roberti was the daughter of a German father and a Polish mother. Her father was a professional clown. As a child she performed in the circus as a trapeze artist, and was a vaudeville singer. As her family toured Europe and Asia, Roberti’s mother left her […]

Dorothy Fay (1915 - 2003)

Dorothy Fay was born Dorothy Fay Southworth in Prescott, Arizona, the daughter of Harry T. Southworth and Harriet Fay Fox. Her father was a medical doctor. Fay attended the University of Southern California in Los Angeles, California, and studied acting at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in London. She began her motion picture career […]

Elisabeth Risdon (1887 - 1958)

Elisabeth Risdon, born Elizabeth Evans in London, England, graduated from the Royal Academy of Arts in 1918 with high honours. She attracted the attention of George Bernard Shaw and was cast as the lead in his biggest plays. Besides her performances for Shaw, she was leading lady for actors like George Arliss, Otis Skinner, and […]

Cleo Ridgely (1894 - 1962)

Cleo Ridgely was born Freda Cleo Helwig in New York City. She was the daughter of August Helwig and Catherine Emily Sommerkamp. She had two sisters, Christina and Martha. Cleo Ridgely starred with Ruth Roland in a girl detective series in the 1920s and co-starred in a number of films with Wallace Reid and Lew Cody. […]

Lucille Ricksen (1910 - 1925)

Lucille Ricksen began her career as a professional child model and actress similar to other actresses her age such as Madge Evans, Helen Chandler and Kittens Reichert, starting at age 4. Through these roles, Ricksen rose to fame and provided a revenue for her parents. In 1920, she arrived with her mother, Ingeborg, in Hollywood […]

Shirley Rickert (1926 - 2009)

Shirley Rickert (March 25, 1926 – February 6, 2009) was an American child actress who was briefly the “blonde girl” for the Our Gang series in 1931, during the Hal Roach talkie period. Shirley Rickert’s most notable appearances were in the films Love Business and Bargain Day, in which her spit-curls were the centerpiece of her […]

Joan Rice (1930 - 1997)

Joan Rice (3 February 1930 – 1 January 1997) was a British film actress. One of four sisters from a broken home, she spent eight years in a convent orphanage in Nottingham. Upon arriving in London she first took a job as a waitress. After being crowned “Miss Nippy” in an in-house beauty contest, she was […]

Florence Rice (1907 - 1974)

Florence Rice (February 14, 1907 – February 23, 1974) was an American film actress. Florence Rice was born in Cleveland, Ohio, the daughter of Grantland Rice and Fannie Katherine Hollis, who became an actress during the early 1930s and after several Broadway roles, eventually made her way to Hollywood where she acted in almost fifty films […]

Candice Rialson (1951 - 2006)

Candice Ann Rialson (December 18, 1951 – March 31, 2006), also known as Candy Rialson, was an American actress known for her starring role in Hollywood Boulevard (1976). Candice Rialson was born in Santa Monica, California, won Miss Hermosa Beach aged 18 and worked as a go-go dancer. She worked in television and found herself appearing in […]

Vera Reynolds (1899 - 1962)

Vera Reynolds (November 25, 1899 – April 22, 1962) was an American film actress. Born in Richmond, Virginia in 1899, she started out as a dancer, worked as one of the Sennett Bathing Beauties, and became a leading lady in silent motion pictures. Among her film credits are starring roles in Sam Wood’s Prodigal Daughters (1923), […]

Dorothy Revier (1904 - 1993)

Dorothy Revier (April 18, 1904 – November 19, 1993) was an American actress. She was educated in the public schools of Oakland before going to New York City to study classical dancing. Later she went to Paris, France, to study and was discovered by a talent agent while working in a cabaret. She made her film debut […]

Estelle Reiner (1914 - 2008)

Estelle Reiner was born Estelle Lebost in The Bronx, New York City, and graduated from James Monroe High School. She was a visual artist and met her future husband, Carl Reiner, while she was working in the Catskills, designing stage sets for hotel shows. She married Reiner in 1943, and had three children Rob, Lucas […]

Ada Rehan (1859 - 1916)

Ada Rehan (April 22, 1859 – January 8, 1916) was an Irish born American actress. Ada Rehan was born as Delia Crehan in County Limerick, Ireland, and brought to the United States at about the age of six years. Her date of birth was later disputed by a critic who wrote in the Boston Globe on […]

Florence Reed (1883 - 1967)

Florence Reed (January 10, 1883 – November 21, 1967) was a stage and film actress. She is remembered for several outstanding stage productions, including The Shanghai Gesture, The Lullaby, The Yellow Ticket and The Wanderer. Her best remembered movie role was as Miss Havisham in the 1934 production of Great Expectations. In this version, however, […]

Joyce Redman (1915 - 2012)

Joyce Redman was born in Northumberland and grew up in County Mayo, Ireland. She was born into an Anglo-Irish family and educated by a private governess in Ireland, along with her three sisters. She trained in acting at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in London. Her acting roles were primarily in the theatre and in […]

Marvel Rea (1901 - 1937)

Marvel Rea was in Her Screen Idol (1918) with Ford Sterling and Louise Fazenda. Rea played the character, The Screen Idol’s Heroine. The movie was a humorous satire on the matinee idol of motion pictures. Sennett displayed the technique of illustrating a play within a play in this production. Rea was in movies from 1917 through […]