Betty Garrett (1919 - 2011)

Betty Garrett was born in Saint Joseph, Missouri, the daughter of Elizabeth Octavia (née Stone) and Curtis Garrett. Shortly after her birth, her parents relocated to Seattle, Washington, where her mother managed the sheet music department in Sherman Clay, while her father worked as a traveling salesman. His alcoholism and inability to handle finances eventually […]

Pauline Garon (1900 - 1965)

Born in Montreal, Quebec as Marie Pauline Garon, the daughter of Pierre and Victoria Garon, she was of French and Irish descent. Her father first worked for the Canadian postal department, then worked at an insurance agency, where he managed to gain enough money to send his youngest child (out of eleven children) to the […]

Peggy Ann Garner (1932 - 1984)

Born in Canton, Ohio, Peggy Ann Garner was pushed by her mother into the limelight and entered in talent quests while still a child. By 1938 she had made her first film appearance, and over the next few years appeared in several more films, including Jane Eyre (1943) and The Keys of the Kingdom (1944). […]

Tess Gardella (1894 - 1950)

Therese “Tess” Gardella (December 19, 1894 – January 3, 1950) was an Italian American performer on the stage and screen whose stage persona was “Aunt Jemima.” She performed on both stage and screen, usually in blackface. A native of Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, Gardella came to New York City in 1918, singing in dances and nightclubs and […]

Betty Furness (1916 - 1994)

Elizabeth Mary “Betty” Furness was born in New York City, the daughter of wealthy business executive George Choate Furness and his wife Florence. Betty Furness made her stage debut in the school holidays in the title role of Alice in Wonderland. She also posed for commercial advertising. She began her professional career as a model […]

Mary Fuller (1888 - 1973)

Mary Fuller was born in Washington, D.C., to Nora Swing and attorney Miles Fuller, she spent her childhood on a farm. As a child, she was interested in music, writing and art. Her father died in 1902, and by 1906, she was working in the theater under the name Claire Fuller. She worked briefly with […]

Dolores Fuller (1923 - 2011)

Her first screen appearance was at the age of 10, when she appeared briefly in Frank Capra’s It Happened One Night. According to Fuller[citation needed], the female lead in Bride of the Monster was written for her but Wood gave it to Loretta King instead. In August 1954, Fuller was cast in Wood’s The Vampire’s Tomb, […]

Mona Freeman (1926 - 2014)

Mona Freeman was a model while in high school, and after becoming the first “Miss Subways” of the New York City transit system, eventually signed a movie contract with Howard Hughes. Her contract was later sold to Paramount Pictures. Her first film appearance was in the 1944 film Till We Meet Again. She became a […]

Kathleen Freeman (1919 - 2001)

Kathleen Freeman was born in Chicago, Illinois. She began her career as a child, dancing in her parents’ vaudeville act. After a stint studying music at University of California, Los Angeles, she went into acting full-time, working on the stage, and finally entering films in 1948. She was a founding member, in 1946, of the […]

Moyra Fraser (1923 - 2009)

Moyra Fraser was born in Sydney, Australia, on 3 December 1923 and with her family emigrated to the United Kingdom in June 1924. Her father was a director of Mappin & Webb. She left school at 14 to take up a scholarship with Sadler’s Wells Ballet, where she was befriended by Robert Helpmann. Moyra Fraser joined […]

Mary Frann (1943 - 1998)

Born Mary Frances Luecke in St. Louis, Missouri, Mary Frann was a child model and appeared in commercials for a local television station while she attended Nerinx Hall High School. At the age of 18, she was voted Missouri’s “Junior Miss.” She went on to win the 1961 national title of America’s Junior Miss and […]

Arlene Francis (1907 - 2001)

Arlene Francis was born on October 20, 1907, in Boston, Massachusetts, the daughter of Leah (née Davis) and Aram Kazanjian. Her Armenian father was studying art in Paris at the age of 16 when he learned that both his parents had died in one of the Hamidian massacres perpetrated by the Ottoman Empire in Anatolia […]

Susanna Foster (1924 - 2009)

Susanna Foster was born in Chicago, Illinois, and raised in Minneapolis, Minnesota. She was taken to Hollywood at the age of twelve by MGM, who sent her to school and groomed her for an acting and singing career. Two of her classmates at this school were Mickey Rooney and Judy Garland. She claimed the high […]

Wenche Foss (1917 - 2011)

Wenche Foss was born to engineer Christian August Steenfeldt-Foss (1878–1960) and Alfhild Røren. Foss grew up with an Atheist mother and a devout Christian father; she inherited both views but has stated: “I could not fall asleep without the prayer”. Her first marriage was to engineer and film producer Alf Scott-Hansen (1903–1961), a son of port […]

Victoria Forde (1896 - 1964)

Victoria Forde (April 21, 1896 – July 24, 1964) was an American silent film actress. Born in New York City, Victoria Forde was the daughter of Broadway actress Eugenie Forde who got her into films with Biograph at age 14. In 1912, at age 16, Victoria Forde signed with Nestor Studios to make comedy films under […]

Constance Ford (1923 - 1993)

Constance Ford (July 1, 1923 – February 26, 1993) was an American actress and model. She is best known for her long-running role as Ada Hobson on the daytime soap opera Another World. Born in The Bronx, Ford initially worked as a model, and her face became famous in the Elizabeth Arden 1941 advertising campaign for […]

Edna Flugrath (1892 - 1966)

Edna Flugrath was the first born of Emil and Mary (née Dubois) Flugrath. Her father, a printer by trade, was the son of Polish-German immigrants and had at one time been considered a talented amateur athlete. Mary Dubois was born in New York. Some years later when their daughters were working on films, the Flugraths […]

Bess Flowers (1898 - 1984)

Bess Flowers (November 23, 1898 – July 28, 1984) was an American actress. By some counts considered the most prolific actress in the history of Hollywood, she was known as “The Queen of the Hollywood Extras,” appearing in over 700 movies in her 41 year career. Born in Sherman, Texas, Flowers’s film debut came in 1923, […]

Lola Flores (1923 - 1995)

Lola Flores, a native of Jerez de la Frontera, Cádiz (Andalucía, Spain) was an icon of traditional Andalusian folklore, recognized throughout Spain as well as internationally. She became a famous dancer and singer of Andalusian folklore at a very young age, performing flamenco, copla, and chotis and appearing in films from 1939 to 1987. She […]

Suzanne Flon (1918 - 2005)

Suzanne Flon (28 January 1918 – 15 June 2005) was a French film actress. Her father was a railway worker and her mother crafted jewelry. Prior to becoming an actress, Suzanne Flon worked as an English translator at the Paris department store Au Printemps and then as personal secretary to Édith Piaf. Suzanne Flon’s stage credits included plays […]

Gail Fisher (1935 - 2000)

The youngest of five children, Gail Fisher was born in Orange, New Jersey. Her father died when she was two years old and she was raised by her mother, Ona Fisher, who raised her family with a home operated hair styling business while living in the Potter’s Crossing neighborhood of Edison, New Jersey. She graduated […]

Flora Finch (1867 - 1940)

Flora Finch was born into a music hall and travelling theatrical family in London and was taken to the United States as a young child. She kept up the family tradition and worked in theatre and the vaudeville circuit right up until her 30s. She had her first film roles at the American Mutoscope and Biograph […]

Virginia Field (1917 - 1992)

Virginia Field (4 November 1917 – 2 January 1992) was a British-born film actress. She was born Margaret Cynthia Field in London. Her father was the judge of Leicester County Court Circuit. Her mother was a cousin of Confederate General Robert E. Lee and her aunt was British stage actress and director Auriol Lee. She was […]

Sylvia Field (1901 - 1998)

Born Harriet Louisa Johnson in Allston, Massachusetts, she attended Arlington High School in Arlington, Massachusetts. Field began her acting career on the stage. She made her Broadway debut at age 17 in 1918 in The Betrothal (1918). After appearing in various stage productions, Field made her film debut in the 1928 drama The Home Girl. Sylvia […]

Mary Fickett (1928 - 2011)

Mary Fickett was born in Buffalo, New York and raised in Bronxville, a suburb of New York City. She attended Wheaton College in Massachusetts, and made her theatrical debut in 1946 on Cape Cod. In 1949, she made her Broadway debut appearing in I Know My Love, a comedy starring Alfred Lunt and Lynn Fontanne. […]

Helen Ferguson (1901 - 1977)

Helen Ferguson (July 23, 1901 – March 14, 1977) was an American actress later turned publicist. Born in Decatur, Illinois in 1901, she graduated from Nicholas High School of Chicago and the Academy of Fine Arts. Helen Ferguson was a newspaper reporter before entering the motion picture field. It is thought she made her debut in films […]

Elsie Ferguson (1883 - 1961)

Born in New York City, Elsie Ferguson was the only child of Hiram and Amelia Ferguson, her father was a successful attorney. Raised and educated in Manhattan, she became interested in the theater at a young age and made her stage debut at seventeen as a chorus girl in a musical comedy. She quickly became […]

Verna Felton (1890 - 1966)

Verna Felton was born in Salinas, California. Her father, a doctor, died when she was seven years old. When going over his accounts after his death, Felton’s mother discovered that though her husband had a large medical practice in San Jose, there were no records of his patients’ payments for treatment and no cash in […]

Edith Fellows (1923 - 2011)

Edith Marilyn Fellows was born on May 20, 1923 in Boston, Massachusetts, the only child of Willis and Harriet Fellows. Her mother abandoned her a few months after her birth. At the age of two, she moved to Charlotte, North Carolina with her father and paternal grandmother, Elizabeth Fellows. As a toddler, she took dancing lessons […]

Maude Fealy (1883 - 1971)

Born Maude Mary Hawk in 1883 in Memphis, Tennessee, the daughter of actress and acting coach, Margaret Fealy. Her mother remarried to Rafaello Cavallo, the first conductor of the Pueblo, Colorado Symphony Orchestra, and Maude Fealy lived in Colorado off and on for most of her life. At the age of three, she performed on […]