Suzanne Kaaren (1912 - 2004)

Suzanne Kaaren attended Erasmus Hall High School and Hunter College before being signed by 20th Century Fox in September 1933. In 1931, she won a high-jumping contest in a New York City school contest. Her parents refused to let her compete in the Olympic Games. She collected butterflies as a hobby and had several books […]

Arline Judge (1912 - 1974)

Arline Judge (February 21, 1912 – February 7, 1974) was an American actress who worked mostly in low-budget B movies, but gained some fame for marrying and divorcing seven times. Born in Bridgeport, Connecticut, Judge was educated in a Catholic convent. Arline Judge “got her theatrical start in Broadway musicals and revues such as The Second Little […]

Sonny James (1928 - 2016)

Sonny James Sonny James, the Southern Gentleman, used the popular Nashville sound of the ’60s to countrify pop hits of the past into a form accessible to many, broadening country music’s appeal across the nation. James even moved over to the pop charts for a time in the late ’50s but found the secret of […]

Leatrice Joy (1893 - 1985)

Leatrice Johanna Zeidler was born in New Orleans, Louisiana to dentist Edward Joseph Zeidler, who was of Austrian and French descent, and Mary Joy Crimens Zeidler, who was of German and Irish descent. She had a brother, Billy, who later worked at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. Leatrice Joy attended New Orleans Convent of the Sacred Heart but left when […]

Dorothy Jordan (1906 - 1988)

Born in Clarksville, Tennessee, Dorothy Jordan studied at Southwestern University and the American Academy of Dramatic Arts. She performed in Broadway musicals, including Garrick Gaieties. Jordan made her screen debut in the 1929 film The Taming of the Shrew[2] and went on to make twenty-two more films in the next four years, including Min and Bill […]

Kathryn Joosten (1939 - 2012)

Kathryn Joosten was born Kathryn Rausch in Chicago, Illinois to Dutch-German parents. Her first career was as a psychiatric nurse at Michael Reese Hospital in Chicago, living in nearby Lake Forest, Illinois, where she married a psychiatrist and raised two sons. Following her 1980 divorce, she began acting in community theater in 1982, at age […]

Justine Johnstone (1895 - 1895)

Justine Johnstone (January 31, 1895 – September 4, 1982) was an American stage and silent screen actress. She was later a pathologist and expert on syphilis. Working under her married name, Justine Wanger, she was part of the team that developed the modern intravenous drip technique. She attended Emma Willard School in Troy, New York. An […]

Rita Johnson (1913 - 1965)

Rita Johnson was born Rita Ann Johnson in Worcester, Massachusetts, the daughter of Lillian Johnson. She worked as a waitress in her mother’s lunchroom and sold hot dogs on the Boston-Worcester turnpike. She attended the New England Conservatory of Music. Early in her career, Johnson was busy in radio. “By 1936 she … was appearing in ten […]

Celia Johnson (1908 - 1982)

Celia Johnson was born in Richmond, Surrey, and nicknamed “Betty”, Johnson was the second daughter of Robert and Ethel (née Griffiths) Johnson. Her first public performance was in 1916, when she played a role in a charity performance of King Cophetua and the Beggar Maid to raise funds for returned First World War soldiers. She attended […]

Margaret John (1926 - 2011)

Margaret John was born in Swansea, as a child she wanted to be a nurse or vet, but she could not stand the sight of blood. She occasionally acted at school with her sister Mair. Spotted while acting in a chapel pagent competition, after an audition John trained at the London Academy of Music and […]

Adele Jergens (1917 - 2002)

Born in Brooklyn, New York, Adele Jergens’ birth date is sometimes listed as 1922. Jergens first rose to prominence in the late 1930s, when she was named “Miss World’s Fairest” at the 1939 New York World’s Fair. In the early 1940s, she worked as a Rockette, and was named the Number One Showgirl in New […]

Joyce Ingalls (1950 - 2015)

Joyce Ingalls was born on January 14, 1950, in Charleston, South Carolina, to Frederick G. Ingalls, a U.S. Navy Commander, and Elaine Wright Ingalls, a relative of the Wright Brothers. Ingalls had five sisters and three brothers. Ingalls’ mother died in 1959. Her father remarried JoAnn DiSandro, who raised Joyce Ingalls and her four siblings, as […]

Martha Hyer (1924 - 2014)

Martha Hyer was born in Fort Worth, Texas into a wealthy family, the daughter of Julien Capers Hyer (1894–1974), an attorney and judge, and Agnes Rebecca (née Barnhart; 1892–1969). She was the middle of three sisters, with Agnes Ann (1920–2014) and Jeanne (b. 1928). The Hyers were active in the Methodist church where her father […]

June Hutton (1920 - 1973)

June Hutton’s parents were Marvel Svea Williams and Odie Daniel Cowan. June and her older sister, Ina Ray Hutton, both grew up to be entertainers and performers during the Big Band era. Growing up in Chicago, Hutton attended Hyde Park High School, as did her older sister, Ina. While attending high school, she worked in the […]

Juliette Huot (1912 - 2001)

Juliette Huot debuted in theater and radio in the late 1930s. In particular, plays the role of young Bertine, daughter of Alexis in the soap opera A man and his sin of Claude-Henri Grignon . From 1939 to 1946 , she passes the professional theater playing in the shows of Fridolinades and, subsequently, the play Tit-Coq […]

Martita Hunt (1900 - 1969)

Martita Hunt was born in Buenos Aires, Argentina on 30 January 1900 to English parents Alfred and Marta (née Burnett) Hunt. She spent the first 20 years of her life in Argentina before she returned with her parents to England to attend Queenwood Ladies’ College, in Eastbourne, and then to train as an actress. Martita Hunt […]

Josephine Hull (1877 - 1957)

Josephine Hull was born January 3, 1877 as Mary Josephine Sherwood in Newtonville, Massachusetts, one of four children born to William H. Sherwood and Mary Elizabeth (“Minnie”) Tewkesbury; but would later shave years off her true age. She attended the New England Conservatory of Music and Radcliffe College, both in the Boston area. Josephine Hull made […]

Gladys Hulette (1896 - 1991)

Gladys Hulette was among the principal players in Sappho and Phaon which had its first performance in Providence, Rhode Island on October 4, 1907. She helped support Bertha Kalich in the Percy MacKaye production. As a child she also appeared in Romeo and Juliet (1908) and The Smoke Fairy (1909). On stage, in Blue Bird, […]

Mary Howard (1918 - 2009)

Mary Howard de Liagre, née Rogers (18 May 1913 – 6 June 2009) was an American actress usually credited as Mary Howard. Mary was born in Independence, Kansas, the daughter of William Penn Adair Rogers (Will Rogers) and Betty Blake. Her father, Will Rogers, and the actor Fred Stone were great friends. Will named his third […]

Kathleen Howard (1884 - 1956)

Kathleen Howard (July 27, 1884 – April 15, 1956) was a Canadian-born American opera singer magazine editor and character actress from the mid-1930s through the 1940s. She spent her childhood in Buffalo, New York and is buried in Forest Lawn Cemetery there.  After early vocal training in Buffalo, New York, she studied in Berlin, then […]

Jean Howard (1910 - 2000)

Jean Howard (born Ernestine Mahoney; October 13, 1910 – March 20, 2000) was an American actress and photographer. She was born in Longview, Texas and died in Beverly Hills, California. A former Ziegfeld Girl and a Goldwyn Girl, Jean Howard studied photography at the Los Angeles Art Center. Howard appeared on Broadway in three productions: The […]

Esther Howard (1892 - 1965)

Esther Howard was born in Helena, Montana in 1892 and made her Broadway debut in 1917 in a play called Eve’s Daughter, which was not a success. She continued to appear regularly on Broadway for the next twelve years, performing in comedies and musicals, including the hit shows Wildflower (1923) and The New Moon (1929), […]

Marianne Hoppe (1909 - 2002)

Born in Rostock, Marianne Hoppe became a leading lady of stage and films in Germany. She was born into a wealthy landowning family and was initially privately educated on her father’s private estate. Later she attended school in Berlin and in Weimar, where she began to attend theatre. Hoppe first performed at 17 as a member […]

Miriam Hopkins (1902 - 1972)

Miriam Hopkins was born in Savannah, Georgia, and raised in Bainbridge, near the Alabama border. In 1909 she briefly lived in Mexico. After her parents separated, she moved as a teen with her mother to Syracuse, New York, to be near her uncle, Thomas Cramer Hopkins, head of the Geology Department at Syracuse University. She attended […]

Helen Holmes (1892 - 1950)

Helen Holmes was born on June 19, 1892 in Illinois While there is uncertainty about her place of birth, Holmes stated in an interview that she was born on a farm in South Bend, Indiana,[3] but grew up in Chicago, Illinois. A 1917 article indicates Holmes was born on her father’s private railroad car, “Estevan”. Holmes […]

Libby Holman (1904 - 1971)

Elizabeth Lloyd Holzman was born May 23, 1904, in Cincinnati, Ohio to a Jewish lawyer and stockbroker, Alfred Holzman (August 20, 1867 – June 14, 1947) and his wife, Rachel Florence Workum Holzman (October 17, 1873 – April 22, 1966). Their other children were daughter Marion H. Holzman (January 25, 1901 – December 13, 1963) […]

Alice Hollister (1886 - 1973)

Alice Hollister (September 28, 1886 – February 24, 1973) was an American silent film actress who appeared in 85 films between 1911 and 1925. Born in Worcester, Massachusetts, she is believed to have been the daughter of French-Canadian immigrants. In 1903, at age seventeen, she married George K. Hollister who a few years later became a […]

Judy Holliday (1921 - 1965)

Judy Holliday was born Judith Tuvim (Hebrew: tovim means good, Yiddish: yomtoyvim means holidays, lit. “good days”) in New York City, she was the only child of Abe Tuvim and Helen (née Gollomb) Tuvim, who were both of Russian Jewish descent. Her father was the Executive Director of the Foundation for the Jewish National Fund […]

Diane Holland (1930 - 2009)

Diane Holland (28 February 1930[3] – 24 January 2009) was a British actress best known for playing Yvonne Stuart-Hargreaves in Hi-de-Hi! from 1980 to 1988. She was unmarried and trained as a dancer before being given the part of Yvonne Stewart-Hargreaves in Hi-de-Hi! (1980) by her brother-in-law, Jimmy Perry. Jimmy, who co-wrote Hi-de-hi!, married Diane’s sister […]

Portland Hoffa (1905 - 1990)

Portland Hoffa (January 25, 1905, Portland, Oregon – December 25, 1990, Los Angeles, California) was an American comedienne, actress, and dancer. As with most of her siblings, including sister Lebanon and brother Harlem, she was named for the city where she was born. She is remembered best as the stage and radio partner of her […]