Faith Domergue (1924 - 1999)

Born in New Orleans, Faith Domergue was adopted by Adabelle Wemet when she was six weeks old. When Faith was 18 months old (in 1926), Adabelle married Leo Domergue. The family moved to California in 1928 where Domergue attended Beverly Hills Catholic School and St. Monica’s Convent School. While still at University High School, she […]

Claire Dodd (1911 - 1973)

Born Dorothy Arlene Dodd on December 29, 1911 in Baxter, Iowa to Walter Willard Dodd, a farmer whose family were early Jasper County pioneers, and his wife, Ethel Viola (née Cool) Dodd, daughter of Baxter Postmaster Peter J. Cool. As Dorothy Dodd, she attended school in Baxter. When her parents later separated in Montana, she […]

Selma Diamond (1920 - 1985)

Selma Diamond was born in London, Ontario in 1920 to a tailor and his wife, but moved at a young age to Brooklyn, New York. She was graduated from New York University and published cartoons and humour essays in The New Yorker before moving to the West Coast, hiring an agent, and finding work in […]

Joan Diener (1930 - 2006)

Joan Diener (February 24, 1930 – May 13, 2006) was an American theatre actress and singer with a three-and-a-half-octave range. Born in Columbus, Ohio, Joan Diener majored in psychology at Sarah Lawrence College and moonlighted as an actress while still a student. She made her Broadway debut in the 1948 revue Small Wonder, choreographed by Gower […]

Laura Devon (1931 - 2007)

Laura Devon was born May 23, 1931 in Chicago. Her birth name has been given as either Mary Lou Briley or Mary Laura Briley. Her father was identified in the press as Merrill Devon, an automotive engineer, and her mother as Velma Prather. She attended school in Chicago and Grosse Pointe. She entered Wayne State University, […]

Tamara Desni (1913 - 2008)

Tamara Desni (22 October 1913 – 7 February 2008) was a German-born British actress. Born as Tamara Brodsky, the daughter of actress Xenia Desni, Tamara Desni was born in Berlin. Her mother was born in Keiv, then in the Russian Empire, but emigrated to Germany sometime before the Russian Revolution. She became a star of German […]

Dorothy Dene (1859 - 1899)

Dorothy Dene was born in New Cross, London, in 1859; he birth name was Ada Alice Pullen.  She came from a large family of girls, a number of whom earned their living from acting on stage. She lived with her four sisters in an apartment in South Kensington, London. She lived with her four sisters in […]

Myrna Dell (1924 - 2011)

Myrna Dell (March 5, 1924 – February 11, 2011) was an American actress, model, and writer who appeared in several television programs and motion pictures for over four decades. Born under the name Marilyn Adele Dunlap she changed her name to Myrna Dell upon entering show business as a dancer making her debut in A Night […]

Olive Deering (1918 - 1986)

Olive Deering (born Olive Corn; October 11, 1918 – March 22, 1986) was an American actress of film, television, and the stage, active from the late 1940s to the mid-1960s. She was a life member of The Actors Studio, as was her elder brother, Alfred Ryder. Olive Deering was the daughter of Zelda “Sadie” (née Baruchin; […]

Marceline Day (1908 - 2000)

Born Marceline Newlin in Colorado Springs, Colorado and raised in Salt Lake City, Utah, she was the younger sister of film actress Alice Day. Marceline Day began her film career after her sister, Alice Day, became a featured actress as one of the Sennett Bathing Beauties in one and two-reel comedies for Keystone Studios. Day made […]

Virginia Davis (1918 - 2009)

Virginia Davis began working for Walt Disney’s Kansas City company, Laugh-O-Gram Studio, in the summer of 1924. She was hired to act in a film called Alice’s Wonderland, which combined live action with animation. When Laugh-O-Gram failed and Disney moved to Los Angeles, on the basis of Alice’s Wonderland Winkler Pictures signed Disney for a […]

Joan Davis (1907 - 1961)

Joan Davis’ first film was a short subject for Educational Pictures called Way Up Thar (1935), featuring a then-unknown Roy Rogers. Educational’s distribution company, Twentieth Century-Fox, signed Davis for feature films. Tall and lanky, with a comically flat speaking voice, she became known as one of the few female physical clowns of her time. Perhaps […]

Brian Bedford (1935 - 2016)

Brian Bedford was born in Morley, West Yorkshire, the son of Ellen (née O’Donnell) and Arthur Bedford, a postman. He attended the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in London from 1952-55. Primarily a stage actor, he was known for his English-speaking interpretations of the French playwright Molière, including Tony Award nominated performances in Tartuffe, The Molière […]

Pat Harrington (1929 - 2016)

Pat Harrington Pat Harrington was born in the New York City borough of Manhattan on August 13, 1929. His father was a song and dance man who worked in vaudeville and performed on the Broadway stage. Harrington attended a Catholic military school, then graduated from Fordham University in 1950 with a Bachelor of Arts and subsequently […]

Abe Vigoda (1921 - 2016)

Abe Vigoda was born in Brooklyn, New York, the son of Lena (née Moses) and Samuel Vigoda, Jewish immigrants from Russia. His father was a tailor who had two other sons: Hy and Bill. The latter was a comic book artist who drew for the Archie comics franchise and others in the 1940s. Abe Vigoda began […]

Paul Kantner (1941 - 2016)

Paul Kantner was born on March 17, 1941 in San Francisco, California, the son of Cora Lee (Fortier) and Paul Schell Kantner. Kantner had a half-brother and a half-sister by his father’s first marriage, both much older than he. His father was of German descent, and his mother was of French and German ancestry. His […]

Jacques Rivette (1928 - 2016)

Jacques Rivette (French: [ʒak ʁivɛt]; 1 March 1928 – 29 January 2016) was a French film director and film critic most commonly associated with the French New Wave and Cahiers du Cinéma. He has made twenty-eight films, including Le Coup de Berger, Paris Belongs to Us, L’amour fou, Out 1, Celine and Julie Go Boating, […]

Gail Davis (1925 - 1997)

The daughter of a small town physician, Gail Davis was born as Betty Jeanne Grayson in a Little Rock, Arkansas hospital, but was raised in McGehee until her family moved to Little Rock. She had been singing and dancing since childhood. After graduating from Little Rock High School, she studied at the Harcum Junior College for […]

Dorothy Davenport (1895 - 1977)

Dorothy Davenport’s family was well known in the theater. Her grandfather Edward Loomis Davenport was a famous 19th century character actor and the patriarch of the family; his daughter and Dorothy’s aunt, Fanny Davenport, was considered one of the great actresses of the time. Her father, Harry Davenport, was a Broadway star. With her background […]

Jane Darwell (1879 - 1967)

Born Patti Woodard to William Robert Woodard, president of the Louisville Southern Railroad, and Ellen Booth in Palmyra in Marion County in northeastern Missouri, she originally intended to become a circus rider, then later an opera singer. Her father objected, however, and she compromised by becoming an actress but changed her name to Jane Darwell […]

Bella Darvi (1928 - 1971)

Bella Darvi was born Bajla Węgier to Jewish parents Chajm Węgier, a baker, and his wife, Chaja (née Zygelbaum). She had three brothers, Robert, Jacques, and Jean-Isidore, and a sister, Sura. Robert died in a concentration camp. Jailed by the Nazis during World War II, she was released in 1943. She married a businessman, Alban Cavalcade, […]

Denise Darcel (1924 - 2011)

Born as Denise Billecard in Paris, she was one of five daughters of a French baker, and she was college educated, studying at the University of Dijon. According to a friend, whom she met in Paris during World War II, she was a passenger in an L-5 Stinson light observation aircraft on VJ Day to […]

Patricia Dane (1919 - 1995)

Patricia Dane (August 4, 1919 – June 5, 1995) was an American film actress of the 1940s. Born Thelma Pearl Pippins and sometimes known as Thelma Byrnes after her stepfather in Jacksonville, Florida, Patricia Dane began her career designing clothes for a New York City dress firm. She was signed to an MGM contract in 1941 […]

June Collyer (1906 - 1968)

Born Dorothea Heermance in New York City, June Collyer chose to use her mother’s maiden name when she decided to pursue acting. A society girl chosen by Allan Dwan, she had her first starring role in 1927 when she starred in East Side, West Side. She did a total of eleven films during the silent […]

Constance Collier (1878 - 1955)

Born Laura Constance Hardie, in Windsor, Berkshire to Cheetham Agaste Hardie and Eliza Collier, Constance Collier made her stage debut at the age of 3, when she played Fairy Peasblossom in A Midsummer’s Night Dream. In 1893, at the age of 15, she joined the Gaiety Girls, the famous dance troupe based at the Gaiety […]

Nancy Coleman (1912 - 2000)

Nancy Coleman (December 30, 1912 – January 18, 2000) was an American film, television and radio actress. After working on radio and appearing on the Broadway stage, Nancy Coleman was brought to Hollywood to work for Warner Bros. studios. She attended the University of Washington where she was a member of the Alpha Lambda chapter […]

Ruth Clifford (1900 - 1998)

Ruth Clifford (February 17, 1900 – November 30, 1998) was an American actress of leading roles in silent films, whose career lasted from silent days into the television era. A native of Pawtucket, Rhode Island, she attended St. Mary’s Seminary in Narragansett, Rhode Island, then, following her mother’s death in 1911, came to Los Angeles as […]

Betty Ross Clarke (1892 - 1970)

Betty Ross Clarke was born May Clarke on May 1, 1892, in Langdon, North Dakota, the daughter of Charles Willard Clarke and Cora Ross. Her maternal grandfather was Leonard F. Ross, a brigadier general in the American Civil War, and her maternal great-grandfather was Ossian M. Ross, a prominent pioneer settler in Illinois who founded […]

Ina Claire (1893 - 1985)

Born Ina Fagan in 1893 in Washington, D.C., Ina Claire began her career appearing in vaudeville. In 1909, she appeared in a vaudeville act entitled “Dainty Mimic,” which include an imitation of actor Harry Lauder. A booking agent described this act as “one of the best single Acts” he had seen that season and remarked […]

Gregory La Cava (1892 - 1952)

Gregory La Cava was born in Towanda, Pennsylvania and studied at the Art Institute of Chicago and the Art Students’ League. Towards the end of 1915, William Randolph Hearst decided to create an animation studio to promote the comic strips printed in his newspapers. He called the new company International Film Service, and he hired La […]