Osa Massen (1914 - 2006)

Osa Massen (13 January 1914 – 2 January 2006) was a Danish actress who went on to become a successful movie actress in Hollywood. She became a naturalized citizen of the United States in 1941. Born Aase Madsen Iversen in 1914, she began her career as a newspaper photographer, before becoming an actress. She first came […]

Michelle Triola (1932 - 2009)

Michelle Triola was born in Los Angeles, California. She never had children. She lived with actor Dick Van Dyke from 1976 until her death. Triola majored in theater arts at UCLA. She was a lounge singer and dancer. She danced in the original 1958 Broadway production of Flower Drum Song, directed by Gene Kelly. Her film […]

Vivian Martin (1891 - 1987)

Vivian Martin was born in Sparta, Michigan and began her career as a child actress on the stage with comedian Lew Fields. Her early theatrical appearances included Stop Thief, Officer 666, The Only Son and with Richard Mansfield in Cyrano de Bergerac. A winsome and pretty blonde, Martin entered the motion pictures industry in 1914. With […]

Nan Martin (1927 - 2010)

Nan Martin born in Decatur, Illinois and raised in Santa Monica, California, she went to the Santa Monica High School.Her first film role was The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit (1956). Her other film roles included The Mugger (1958), For Love of Ivy (1968), Goodbye Columbus (1969), Doctor Detroit (1983), All of Me (1984), […]

Trudy Marshall (1920 - 2004)

Trudy Marshall was born in Brooklyn, New York, the daughter of Madeline (née Breedan) and Frederick Marshall. A popular magazine cigarette girl during her modeling days for Harry Conover, she was at different times “The Old Gold Girl”, “The Chesterfield Girl”, and “The Lucky Strike Girl”. She was signed by 20th Century-Fox in 1942 and groomed […]

Nini Marshall (1903 - 1996)

Nini Marshall was born in Buenos Aires to Pedro and María Ángela Traveso, a well-to-do family in Rosario, in 1903. Losing her father at two months of age, she was raised by her mother, who affectionately called her “Niní.” They relocated to the Buenos Aires neighborhood of Caballito when Niní was in her teens, and […]

Joan Marshall (1931 - 1992)

Joan Marshall was born Joan Schrepfermann in Chicago, where she was also raised. She began her career as a showgirl in Chicago clubs. After appearing as a dancer in the film The Chicago Kid (1945) and in a part in the television series Have Gun – Will Travel (1958), she moved to California around 1959. […]

Joan Marsh (1913 - 2000)

Joan Marsh (July 10, 1913 – August 10, 2000), born Nancy Ann Rosher, and briefly known as Dorothy D. Rosher, was an American film actress. Her father was Charles Rosher, an award-winning cinematographer. She was a child actress before becoming an adult thespian. Joan Marsh made her first film appearances as an infant in 1915. She […]

June Marlowe (1903 - 1984)

June Marlowe was born Gisela Valaria Goetten to German parents in St. Cloud, Minnesota. She was a prolific actress in silent films during the 1920s, appearing in films opposite John Barrymore and Rin Tin Tin. She was one of the WAMPAS Baby Stars of 1925. Her career did well until the introduction of talking pictures. […]

Mona Maris (1903 - 1991)

Mona Maris’ ambition to become an actress originated during World War I, when she was a pupil in Luders, France. Together with her classmates she wrote, directed, and presented short plays to entertain soldiers billeted near the school. After graduation Maris begged to go to England and her mother finally relented. In England she found […]

Lya Mara (1897 - 1960)

Lya Mara (1 August 1897 – 1 March 1960) was one of the biggest stars of the German silent cinema. Lya Mara was born Aleksandra Gudowicz in a Polish family in Riga, Livonia. As a young girl she wanted to become a chemist, as then famous Maria Skłodowska-Curie. Just before World War I, in 1913 Lya […]

Irene Manning (1912 - 2004)

Irene Manning was born Inez Harvuot on July 17, 1912 in Cincinnati, Ohio, in a family of five siblings. Both of her parents were singers. Her family loved to go on outdoor picnics where the featured activity was group singing. This family environment helped Irene to develop a keen interest in singing at a very […]

Anna Manahan (1924 - 2009)

Anna Manahan was born in County Waterford in what was then the Irish Free State (now the Republic of Ireland). Her career began when, as a young woman, she was recruited by the legendary Irish impresarios and theatrical directors Micheál MacLiammóir and Hilton Edwards. She later married stage director Colm O’Kelly, who died not long […]

Nancy Reagan (1921 - 2016)

Nancy Davis Reagan (born Anne Frances Robbins; July 6, 1921 – March 6, 2016) was an American actress and the wife of the 40th President of the United States, Ronald Reagan. She was the First Lady of the United States during her husband’s 2 presidential terms from 1981-1985 and 1985-1989. Nancy Reagan was born in New […]

Anna Magnani (1908 - 1973)

Anna Magnani (Italian pronunciation: [ˈanna maɲˈɲaːni]; 7 March 1908 – 26 September 1973) was an Italian stage and film actress. She won the Academy Award for Best Actress, along with four other international awards, for her portrayal of a Sicilian widow in The Rose Tattoo. Born in Rome, she worked her way through Rome’s Academy of […]

Cleo Madison (1883 - 1964)

Cleo Madison began her acting career on stage with the Santa Barbara Stock Company. She made her first professional appearances on the stages of the Burbank Theatre and the Belasco in 1911. She played the role of the mother in Captain Swift. In March 1912 she debuted as the leading female player in Ernest Shipman’s […]

Dorothy Mackaill (1903 - 1990)

By 1920, Dorothy Mackaill had begun making the transition from “Follies Girl” to film actress. That same year she appeared in her first film, the Wilfred Noy-directed mystery, The Face at the Window. Mackaill also appeared in several comedies of 1920 opposite actor Johnny Hines. In 1921 she appeared opposite Anna May Wong, Noah Beery, […]

Marion Mack (1902 - 1989)

Marion Mack was born Joey Marion McCreery in Mammoth, Utah. After graduating from high school, she sent a letter and a photograph to director Mack Sennett expressing her desire to be an actress. Sennett’s manager wrote back informing Mack that they would give her an interview if she ever came to Hollywood. Mack, her father […]

Cynthia Lynn (1936 - 2014)

Cynthia Lynn (born Zinta Valda Ziemelis; April 2, 1936 – March 10, 2014) was a Latvian-born American actress. Cynthia Lynn was born in Latvia as Zinta Valda Ziemelis. She and her mother fled in 1944, eventually arriving in the United States in 1950. Cynthia Lynn is best known as “Fraulein Helga” in Hogan’s Heroes during the first […]

Laurette Luez (1928 - 1999)

Laurette Luez was the second of three children born in Honolulu, Hawaii to Frank and Francesca Luiz, vaudeville singers and dancers who performed traditional Hawaiian and Spanish music. Luez’s father was Hawaiian with some Portuguese ancestry. Her mother was Australian, the daughter of an actor. Luez first showed up on stage doing a hula dance […]

Barbara Luddy (1908 - 1979)

Barbara Luddy (May 25, 1908 — April 1, 1979) was an American actress from Great Falls, Montana. Her film career began with silent pictures in the 1920s, during which time she was also a prolific radio performer. One of her better known performances on radio was on the The First Nighter Program from 1936 until […]

Judith Lowry (1890 - 1976)

Judith Lowry made her stage debut in 1913 in a stock company in Washington, D.C. Later in 1921 when she became pregnant with her first child she would retire from acting to raise her family. She resumed her acting career in 1952 after her youngest of 9 children, Martha, turned 18. She made several stage […]

Olga Lowe (1919 - 2013)

Olga Lowe (14 September 1919 – 2 September 2013) was a South African-born British film, stage and television actress. She made her film debut in an uncredited role in the 1949 film Trottie True. Her many credits included EastEnders, Where Eagles Dare, Carry On Abroad, Steptoe and Son Ride Again and The Riddle of the […]

Bessie Love (1898 - 1986)

On actor Tom Mix’s recommendation that she “get into pictures”, BessieLove’s mother sent her to Biograph Studios, where she met pioneering film director D.W. Griffith. Griffith, who introduced Bessie Love to films, also gave the actress her screen name. He gave her a small role in his film Intolerance (1916). Love dropped out of Los […]

Dorothy Loudon (1925 - 2003)

Dorothy Loudon’s performance as the evil orphanage administrator Miss Hannigan in Annie won her the Tony Award and the Drama Desk Award for Outstanding Featured Actress in a Musical in 1977. In the show she introduced the seminal showtunes “Little Girls” and “Easy Street.” Of her portrayal, Clive Barnes wrote, “As the wicked Miss Hannigan, […]

Louise Lorraine (1904 - 1981)

Louise Lorraine (October 1, 1904 – February 2, 1981) was an American film actress. She was born Louise Escovar on October 1, 1904 in San Francisco, California. One day, a photography salesman knocked on the door of the Los Angeles home where Louise Lorraine lived with her widowed mother and five siblings. The door was answered […]

Lillian Lorraine (1892 - 1955)

Born in San Francisco, California, Lillian Lorraine began her career on stage in 1906 at the age of 14. An entertainer of limited talent but charismatic stage presence and beauty, in 1907 she was 15 years old and a minor performer in a Shubert production, The Tourists, when she was discovered by Florenz Ziegfeld. He […]

Marion Lorne (1883 - 1968)

Marion Lorne was born Marion Lorne MacDougall in West Pittston, Pennsylvania, a small mining town halfway between Wilkes-Barre and Scranton. She was the daughter of Dr. William Lorne MacDougall, MD, and his wife, Jane Louise (née Oliver), known as “Jennie”. She was born in 1883 (although by the 1920s she had shaved five years off […]

Teala Loring (1922 - 2007)

Teala Loring (October 6, 1922 – January 28, 2007) was an American actress who appeared in over thirty films during the 1940s.  A pretty brunette, she is remembered from numerous cinematic features of the 1940s. Born Marcia Eloise Griffin in Denver, Colorado, she was the sister of actors Debra Paget, Lisa Gaye, and Reull Shayne. […]

Denise Lor (1929 - 2015)

Denise Lor (May 3, 1929 – September 27, 2015) was an American popular singer and actress. She was a featured artist on The Garry Moore Show. In 1951, she appeared in the short-lived variety show Seven at Eleven. Of French parentage and born Denise Jeanne Briault, in Los Angeles, Denise Lor moved with her mother to […]