Dennis Hoey (1893 - 1960)

Dennis Hoey was born Samuel David Hyams in London to Russian parents (another source says Irish and Russian parents.) who owned a bed and breakfast in Brighton. He was educated at Brighton College, and he originally planned to be a teacher. He served in the British Army during World War I. After a career as a […]

Valerie Hobson (1917 - 1998)

In 1935, still in her teens, Valerie Hobson appeared as Baroness Frankenstein in Bride of Frankenstein with Boris Karloff and Colin Clive. She played opposite Henry Hull that same year in Werewolf of London, the first Hollywood werewolf film. The latter half of the 1940s saw Valerie Hobson in perhaps her two most memorable roles: […]

Rose Hobart (1906 - 2000)

Rose Hobart’s father, Paul Kefer, was a cellist in the New York Symphony and her mother, Marguerite was an opera singer. Rose had one sister, Polly. When she was 15, she was cast in Ferenc Molnár’s Liliom, which opened in Atlantic City, New Jersey. Hobart’s Broadway stage debut was on September 17, 1923 at the […]

Jacqueline Hill (1929 - 1993)

Jacqueline Hill was orphaned as a toddler and raised by her grandparents. She was taken out of school at the age of 14 to enable her younger brother to continue. She then worked at Cadbury’s, which had an amateur dramatics society. She was encouraged to apply for, and was awarded, a scholarship at the Royal […]

Dana Hill (1964 - 1996)

Dana Lynne Goetz was born in 1964 in Encino, Los Angeles, California, to Sandy Hill and Theodore Arthur “Ted” Goetz, a director of commercials. A diagnosis of Type I diabetes at an early age ended a promising athletic future. A 1982 article in People magazine reported that at age 10 Dana Hill had placed third […]

Joan Hickson (1906 - 1998)

Born in Kingsthorpe, Northampton, Joan Hickson was a daughter of shoe manufacturer Alfred Harold Hickson and his wife, Edith Mary Bogle. She made her stage debut in 1927, and for several years worked throughout the United Kingdom and achieved success playing comedic, often eccentric characters in London’s West End, including the role of the cockney […]

Ruth Hiatt (1906 - 1994)

Ruth Hiatt was born in Cripple Creek, Colorado. Hiatt made her film debut at the age of nine with the Western Lubin Company in San Diego, California. She made two two-reel comedies The Inner Chamber (1915) and The Vigilantes (1918). Afterward she reuturned to high school which she completed around 1922. As teenager she was discovered […]

Wilna Hervey (1894 - 1979)

Known to friends and family as “Willie,” Wilna Hervey was the only child of the marriage of William Russell Hervey and Anna Van Horn Traphagen. She grew up in affluent circumstances at Beach Ninth Street, Far Rockaway. During her youth in late 1910s, Hervey studied at the Art Students League in New York City, Winold Reiss’ […]

Eileen Herlie (1918 - 2008)

Eileen Herlie was born Eileen Isobel Herlihy to a Catholic father and a Protestant mother in Glasgow, Scotland, and was one of five children. Herlie was trained as a theatre actress. Among her West End London theatre successes were The Eagle Has Two Heads by Jean Cocteau. She was married and divorced from Witold Kuncewicz […]

Emmaline Henry (1928 - 1979)

Creator Sheldon Leonard mentioned in an interview that Henry was a good actress who was easy to work with. A casting director brought her in to audition and to meet him. Sheldon tested her and based on the screen test she got the part of Mrs. Bellows. She was first cast on the show January […]

Brigitte Helm (1906 - 1996)

Brigitte Helm (17 March 1906 – 11 June 1996) was a German actress, best remembered for her dual role as Maria and her double, the Maschinenmensch, in Fritz Lang’s 1927 silent film Metropolis. Born Brigitte Eva Gisela Schittenhelm in Berlin, Helm’s first role was that of Maria in Metropolis which she began work on while only […]

Johanne Heiberg (1812 - 1890)

Johanne Heiberg was the daughter of a stallholder and innkeeper and his Jewish wife. She showed artistic gifts very early and entered ballet school in 1820. With the help of patrons she was promoted to the rank of an actress and made a successful debut in 1827. From then on she was considered the best […]

Susan Hayward (1917 - 1975)

Susan Hayward was born Edythe Marrenner in Brooklyn, New York City, the youngest of three children born to Ellen (née Pearson) and Walter Marrenner. Her paternal grandmother was an actress, Kate Harrigan, from County Cork, Ireland. Her mother was of Swedish descent. She had an older sister Florence (born May 1910) and an older brother […]

Julie Haydon (1910 - 1994)

Born Donella Donaldson in Oak Park, Illinois, Haydon began her acting career when she was 19, touring with Minnie Maddern Fiske in Mrs. Bumstead Leigh. Within two years, she played Ophelia in a production of Hamlet at the Hollywood Playhouse. Shortly after, she began appearing in films, in 1931. Her first film, in which she was […]

Wanda Hawley (1895 - 1963)

Wanda Hawley (July 30, 1895 – March 18, 1963) was a veteran American actress of the silent screen films era. She entered the theatrical profession with an amateur group in Seattle, and later toured the U.S. and Canada as a singer. She co-starred with Rudolph Valentino in the 1922 The Young Rajah, and rose to […]

Phyllis Haver (1899 - 1960)

She was born Phyllis Haver in Douglass, Kansas. When she was young, her family moved to Los Angeles, California, then a city of less than half a million people. Haver attended Los Angeles Polytechnic High. After graduating, she played piano to accompany the new silent films in local theaters. Phyllis Haver auditioned for comedy producer Mack […]

June Haver (1926 - 2005)

Born June Stovenour, June Haver was born in Rock Island, Illinois. She later took the last name of her stepfather Bert Haver. After the family moved to Ohio, seven-year-old Haver entered and won a contest of the Cincinnati Conservatory of Music. At age 10, she moved back to Rock Island, where she began performing for […]

Lilian Harvey (1906 - 1968)

Helene Lilian Muriel Pape was born in 1906, in Hornsey, North London. Her mother, Ethel Marion (Laughton), was English, and her father, Walter Bruno Pape, was a German businessman. At the beginning of World War I the family found itself in Magdeburg, and as they were unwilling and unable to return to England, Lilian Harvey […]

Dorothy Hart (1922 - 2004)

Born in Cleveland, Ohio, Dorothy Hart became a model in her late-teens, and was signed by Columbia in 1946. Her contract stipulated “A-movies only”. Although considered one of the top supporting actresses of her day, she was frequently cast in B movies. Dorothy was attractive, standing 5 ft 6 in, with green eyes and auburn […]

Theresa Harris (1906 - 1985)

Theresa Harris was born on New Year’s Eve 1906 (some sources indicate 1909) in Houston, Texas to Isaiah (1879–1956) and Mable (1883–1964) Harris, both of whom were former sharecroppers from Louisiana. Harris’ family relocated to Southern California when she was 11 years old. After graduating Jefferson High School, she studied at the UCLA Conservatory of Music […]

Doris Hare (1905 - 2000)

Doris Hare was born in Bargoed, Glamorgan. Her parents had a portable theatre in South Wales and it seemed inevitable that she would become a part of it, making her debut at the age of three in Current Cash and appearing in juvenile troupes all over Britain as a child, before going solo as ‘Little […]

Patricia Hardy (1931 - 2011)

Patricia Hardy (December 23, 1931 – August 20, 2011) was an American television and film actress whose career was most active during the 1950s. She was the wife of actor Richard Egan. Hardy, who was originally from Brooklyn, New York, was of Irish descent. She won several beauty pageants during her early years, including Miss Brooklyn, […]

Juanita Hansen (1895 - 1961)

Juanita Hansen was born in Des Moines, Iowa. Her family moved to California when she was a girl and Juanita graduated from Los Angeles High School. There she secured her first acting job with L. Frank Baum’s “Oz Film Manufacturing Company”. She appeared in the The Patchwork Girl of Oz, a film based on Baum’s […]

Irene Handl (1901 - 1987)

Irene Handl (27 December 1901 – 29 November 1987) was an English character actress who appeared in over a hundred British films.  Irene Handl was born in Maida Vale, London, the daughter of an Austrian banker father, Frederick, and German mother, Maria (as per the 1911 census). She took to acting at the relatively advanced […]

Hope Hampton (1897 - 1982)

Texas-born, Philadelphia-bred beauty-contest winner Hope Hampton, was discovered by U.S. silent cinema pioneer Jules Brulatour while working as an extra for director Maurice Tourneur. She made her screen debut in 1920’s A Modern Salome, and went on to feature prominently in several Brulatour-financed films. Her last starring role was in The Road to Reno (1938), […]

Lois Hamilton (1952 - 1999)

Lois Hamilton was born Lois Aurino in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. She studied at Temple University in her native Philadelphia before going on to the University of Florence in Florence, Italy, where she received degrees in Psychology and Fine Arts. Her looks brought an opportunity with the Ford Modeling Agency where she became one of its top models […]

Evelyn Hamann (1942 - 2007)

After an acting course at Hamburg University of Music and the Performing Arts, where she was taught by Eduard Marks, among others, Evelyn Hamann started a career on the stage. She took on small roles at the Thalia Theater, and from 1968 her stage career took her to Göttingen, Heidelberg and Bremen, where she played […]

Juanita Hall (1901 - 1968)

Born in Keyport, New Jersey, Juanita Hall received classical training at the Juilliard School. In the early 1930s, she was a special soloist and assistant director for the Hall Johnson Choir. A leading black Broadway performer in her day, she was personally chosen by Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II to perform the roles she […]

Grayson Hall (1922 - 1985)

Grayson Hall was born Shirley H. Grossman in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania in 1922, the only child of Eleanor and Joseph Grossman. Her father was from Latvia and her mother, who had acted in the Yiddish theatre, was from South Africa. Both were from Jewish immigrant families. When Hall was eight, her parents separated but never divorced. Hall […]

Sara Haden (1899 - 1981)

Sara Haden was born Katherine W. Haden on November 17, 1899 in Galveston, Texas. Haden was the daughter of Dr. John Brannum Haden (1871-1931) and character actress, Charlotte Walker, one of the great stage beauties at the turn of the century, who was later active in silent films and early talkies. An attractive woman, Haden however […]