Leela Naidu (1940 - 2009)

Leela Naidu was born in Bombay (now Mumbai), India. Her father, Dr Pattipati Ramaiah Naidu, a well known nuclear physicist , hailed from Madanapalle, Chittoor Dist., Andhra Pradesh, who had worked under the supervision of Nobel Laureate Marie Curie for his doctoral thesis in Paris, running one of her labs and was Scientific Advisor to […]

Anne Nagel (1915 - 1966)

Anne Nagel was born Anne Dolan in Boston, Massachusetts, Nagel was enrolled by her parents in a religious preparatory school with the expectation she would become a nun. But part-time work in her teens as a photographer’s model and membership in a Boston theater company turned her away from religious life.[citation needed] Meantime Nagel’s mother […]

Mae Murray (1885 - 1965)

Mae Murray first began acting on the Broadway stage in 1906 with dancer Vernon Castle. In 1908, she joined the chorus line of the Ziegfeld Follies, moving up to headliner by 1915. Murray became a star of the club circuit in both the United States and Europe, performing with Clifton Webb, Rudolph Valentino, and John […]

Rosemary Murphy (1925 - 2014)

Rosemary Murphy was born in Munich, Germany in 1925, the daughter of American parents Mildred (née Taylor) and Robert Daniel Murphy, a diplomat. The family left Germany in 1939 due to the onset of World War II. Murphy, whose résumé came to include French and German films, attended Manhattanville College and trained as an actress at […]

Ona Munson (1903 - 1955)

Ona Munson was born Owena Wolcott in Portland, Oregon. She first came to fame on Broadway as the singing and dancing ingenue in the original production of No, No, Nanette. From this, Munson had a very successful stage and radio career in the 1930s in New York. She introduced the song “You’re the Cream in […]

Meg Mundy (1915 - 2016)

Meg Mundy was born in Marylebone, London. Her mother, Australian opera singer Clytie Hine (1887–1983), studied at the Elder Conservatorium of Music in Adelaide, South Australia. Her father was English cellist John Mundy. The couple emigrated to the United States in 1921 with their two children. Their father became orchestra manager of the Metropolitan Opera. […]

Cookie Mueller (1949 - 1989)

Cookie Mueller grew up with her parents Frank Lennert Mueller (d. 1984) and Anne (Sawyer) Mueller (d. 1995, aged 82) in the Baltimore suburbs in a house near the woods, a mental hospital and railroad tracks. Mueller had many pets as a child, including many turtles (one named Fidel), a dog named Jip, snakes, and tadpoles. […]

Dorothy Morris (1922 - 2011)

Dorothy Morris was born Dorothy Ruth Morris and raised in Los Angeles, California, the daughter of a Methodist minister. She was the younger sister of Caren Marsh Doll, who later became a dancer and stand-in for Judy Garland. Morris studied acting under famed drama teacher Maria Ouspenskaya. She did a screen test for the female […]

Karen Morley (1909 - 2003)

Karen Morley born Mildred Linton in Ottumwa, Iowa, Morley lived there until she was thirteen years old. When she moved to Hollywood, she attended Hollywood High School and later graduated from UCLA. After working at the Pasadena Playhouse, she came to the attention of the director Clarence Brown, at a time when he had been looking […]

Toshia Mori (1912 - 1995)

Toshia Mori began her film career in the late 1920s in silent films as a teenager. In Mr. Wu (1927) she was credited as Toshia Ichioka. In Streets of Shanghai (1927), she was credited as Toshiye Ichioka. In The Man Without a Face she was also credited as Toshiye Ichioka. (The film is presumed lost.) […]

Zully Moreno (1920 - 1999)

Zully Moreno was born on 17 October 1920 in the town of Villa Ballester, part of the General San Martín Partido in Buenos Aires Province, Argentina. She dreamed of becoming an actress, but went to work as a seamstress at a young age due to financial hardship, after her father’s death when she was ten years […]

Denise Morelle (1926 - 1984)

Denise Morelle was born in Montreal on 3 December 1926, into a working-class family with seven children. She first appeared on television in 1955 on the television series Beau temps, mauvais temps. Among her most famous roles from her 30-year career was that of Dame Plume from the show La Ribouldingue. On 17 July 1984, Denise […]

Polly Moran (1883 - 1952)

Polly Moran (June 28, 1883 – January 25, 1952) was an American actress and comedian. Born in Chicago, Illinois, Moran started out in vaudeville, and widely toured North America, as well as various other locations that included Europe and South Africa. An attractive Irish beauty, she left vaudeville in 1914 after signing for Mack Sennett at […]

Peggy Moran (1918 - 2002)

Peggy Moran (October 23, 1918 – October 24, 2002) was an American film actress who appeared in films between 1938 and 1943. Born Mary Jeanette Moran in Clinton, Iowa, Moran starred in a number of B movies like The Mummy’s Hand (1940), Slightly Tempted (1940), Treat ‘Em Rough (1942) with Eddie Albert and William Frawley, and […]

Dolores Moran (1924 - 1982)

Dolores Moran’s brief career as a film actress began in 1942 with some uncredited roles in such films as Yankee Doodle Dandy (as “the Pippirino”, with whom George blows off a date to go with Mary). By 1943, she had become a popular pin-up girl and appeared on the cover of such magazines as Yank. […]

Constance Moore (1920 - 2005)

Constance Moore was born in Sioux City, Iowa, but her family moved away when she was aged six months and she spent most of her formative years in Dallas, Texas. All she wanted was to sing, and in the 1930s she got a job with CBS radio. While working on one of their musical series […]

Cleo Moore (1924 - 1973)

Cleo Moore made her film debut in 1948, playing a small role in Embraceable You. She also played the leading lady in the film serial Congo Bill and worked for Warner Brothers briefly in 1950. She worked for RKO Radio Pictures from 1950–52, making such films as Hunt the Man Down and Gambling House. She signed […]

Mary Ann Mobley (1937 - 2014)

Mary Ann Mobley was born in 1937 in Brandon, Mississippi. After serving her reign as Miss America 1959, Mobley embarked on a career in both film and television. She signed a five-year contract with MGM. She made her first five television appearances on Burke’s Law from 1963-1965, and went on to make multiple appearances on […]

Isa Miranda (1909 - 1982)

Isa Miranda (5 July 1909 – 8 July 1982) was an Italian actress with an international film career. A native of Bergamo, Ines Isabella Sampietro worked as a typist whilst attending the drama academy in Milan and training as a stage actress. She went on to play bit parts in Italian films in Rome. She […]

Mary Minter (1902 - 1984)

Mary Minter At the age of five, Mary Minter accompanied her sister, Margaret, on an audition because no babysitter was available. She was noticed by the director and given her first part. She began her stage career and was frequently employed afterward, widely noted for both her talent and visual appeal. To avoid child labor […]

Jan Miner (1917 - 2004)

Jan Miner, the daughter of a dentist and a painter, whose siblings included three brothers, Sheldon, Donald and Lyndsey, studied at the Vesper George School of Art in her native Boston, Massachusetts. She went on to study acting with Lee Strasberg and others before making her stage debut in 1945, in a Boston production of […]

Marilyn Miller (1898 - 1936)

Marilyn Miller appeared for the Shuberts in the 1914 and 1915 editions of The Passing Show, a Broadway revue at the Winter Garden Theatre, as well as in The Show of Wonders (1916) and Fancy Free (1918). But it was Florenz Ziegfeld who made her a star after she performed in his Ziegfeld Follies of […]

Eve Miller (1923 - 1973)

Eve Miller’s original surname was “Turner” but she changed it when she began her career in movies. Born in Los Angeles, California, she was raised in San Francisco. Her father was a piano salesman. During the early years of World War II Miller worked as a welder in a shipyard. However before the war ended […]

Gertrude Michael (1911 - 1964)

Gertrude Michael (June 1, 1911 – December 31, 1964) was an American film, stage and television actress. Born as Lillian Gertrude Michael in Talladega, Alabama, she reportedly graduated from high school at the age of 14. She became a singer on the radio. She attended the University of Alabama and Converse College, Spartanburg, SC. Her childhood […]

Eve Meyer (1928 - 1977)

Eve Meyer (born Evelyn Eugene Turner; December 13, 1928 – March 27, 1977) was an American pin-up model, motion picture actress, and film producer. Much of her work was done in conjunction with sexploitation filmmaker Russ Meyer to whom she was married from 1952 to 1969. She was killed in the Tenerife airport disaster in […]

Mayo Methot (1904 - 1951)

Mayo Methot was married three times and had no children. At the age of 19, she married Cosmopolitan Productions cameraman Jack Lamond. They divorced in 1927. In 1931, Methot married Percy T. Morgan, the co-owner of the Cock n’ Bull restaurant on Hollywood’s Sunset Boulevard. Methot divorced Morgan in February 1937, claiming that Morgan would […]

Iris Meredith (1915 - 1980)

Iris Meredith (June 3, 1915 in Sioux City, Iowa – January 22, 1980) was a B-movie actress of the 1930s and 1940s film era. She starred mostly in heroine roles, in westerns. Born as Marie Shunn, Meredith began her film career in the early 1930s, often starring in film serials while on contract with Columbia Pictures. […]

Audrey Meadows (1922 - 1996)

Audrey Meadows After high school, Audrey Meadows sang in the Broadway musical Top Banana before becoming a regular on television in The Bob and Ray Show. She was then hired to play Alice on The Jackie Gleason Show after the actress who originated the role, Pert Kelton, was forced to leave the show due to […]

Lois Maxwell (1927 - 2007)

Moving to Hollywood at the age of 20, Lois Maxwell won the actress Golden Globe Award for Most Promising Newcomer for her role in the Shirley Temple comedy That Hagen Girl (1947).[3] In 1949, she participated in a Life magazine photo layout, in which she posed with another up-and-coming actress, Marilyn Monroe. It was at […]

Jenny Maxwell (1941 - 1981)

Jenny Maxwell (born Jennifer Helene Maxwell) (September 3, 1941 – June 10, 1981) was an American film and television actress, probably best remembered for her role in the 1961 Elvis Presley film Blue Hawaii. Of Norwegian descent (the original name of Moksvold was changed when the family emigrated in 1949), and a distant relative of Marilyn […]