Jules Furthman (1888 - 1966)

Jules Furthman (March 5, 1888 – September 22, 1966) was a magazine and newspaper writer before working as a screenwriter. Born in Chicago, Illinois, he was the brother of writer Charles Furthman. During World War I Jules wrote under the name “Stephen Fox” as he thought Furthman sounded too German. He wrote screenplays for a number […]

Ronald Colman (1891 - 1958)

He was born in Richmond, Surrey, England, as Ronald Charles Colman, the second son and fourth child of Charles Colman and his wife Marjory Read Fraser. His siblings included Eric, Edith and Marjorie. He was educated at boarding school in Littlehampton, where he discovered that he enjoyed acting, despite his shyness. He intended to study […]

William Farnum (1876 - 1953)

One of three brothers, William Farnum grew up in a family of actors. He made his acting debut at the age of ten in Richmond, Virginia in a production of Julius Caesar, with Edwin Booth playing the title character. His first major success was as the title character of Ben-Hur in 1900 though replacing the original […]

Herbert Mundin (1898 - 1939)

Herbert Mundin was born as Herbert Thomas Mundin in St Helens, then in Lancashire (now part of Merseyside). His father was a nomadic, Primitive Methodist home missionary. His family moved within a short time of his birth to St Albans in Hertfordshire (the 1901 census data reveal that the family lived at St Helens Villa, […]

Frank Lloyd (1886 - 1960)

Frank William George Lloyd (2 February 1886 – 10 August 1960) was a Scottish-American film director, scriptwriter and producer. He was among the founders of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, and was its president from 1934-35. Frank Lloyd was born in Glasgow, Scotland. His mother Jane was Scottish and his father Edmund was […]

Delmer Daves (1904 - 1977)

Born in San Francisco, Delmer Daves first pursued a career as a lawyer. While attending Stanford University, he became interested in the burgeoning film industry, first working as a prop boy on the Western The Covered Wagon (1923) and serving as a technical advisor on a number of films. After finishing his education in law, […]

Movita Castaneda (1916 - 2015)

Movita Castaneda, a Mexican American, was born in Nogales, Arizona, on a train travelling between Mexico and Arizona. Movita began her acting career singing the Carioca to Ginger Rogers and Fred Astaire’s first dance number in the first film in which the famous duo appeared together, Flying Down to Rio (1933). She continued playing exotic […]

Anna Kashfi (1934 - 2015)

Anna Kashfi was born as Joan O’Callaghan in Darjeeling, India, to William Patrick O’Callaghan, a traffic superintendent on the Indian State railways, who was from London but of Irish descent, and his wife, Phoebe. She was raised in Calcutta until she was 13, when the family relocated to Cardiff, Wales. Upon her family’s relocation to Wales, […]

Chief Dan George (1899 - 1981)

Born as Geswanouth Slahoot in North Vancouver, his English name was originally Dan Slaholt. The surname was changed to George when he entered a residential school at age 5. He worked at a number of different jobs, including as a longshoreman, construction worker, and school bus driver, and was band chief of the Tsleil-Waututh Nation […]

William Gibson (1914 - 2008)

William Gibson (November 13, 1914 – November 25, 2008) was an American playwright and novelist. He graduated from the City College of New York in 1938, and was of Irish, French, German, Dutch and Russian ancestry. William Gibson’s most famous play is The Miracle Worker (1959), the story of Helen Keller’s childhood education, which won him […]

Arthur Penn (1922 - 2010)

Arthur Penn was born to a Russian Jewish family in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, the son of Sonia (Greenberg), a nurse, and Harry Penn, a watchmaker. He was the younger brother of Irving Penn, the successful fashion photographer. During the 1920s, he moved in with his mother after she divorced Penn’s father. Some time after, he came […]

Fred Coe (1914 - 1979)

Fred Coe (December 13, 1914 – April 29, 1979), nicknamed Pappy, was a television producer and director most famous for The Goodyear Television Playhouse/The Philco Television Playhouse in 1948-1955 and Playhouse 90 from 1957 to 1959. Among the live TV dramas he produced were Marty and The Trip to Bountiful for ‘Goodyear/Philco’, Peter Pan for […]

Spencer Tracy (1900 - 1967)

Spencer Bonaventure Tracy (April 5, 1900 – June 10, 1967) was an American actor, noted for his natural style and versatility. One of the major stars of Hollywood’s Golden Age, Spencer Tracy was nominated for nine Academy Awards for Best Actor and won two, sharing the record for nominations in that category with Laurence Olivier. Tracy […]

Stanley Kramer (1913 - 2001)

Stanley Earl Kramer (September 29, 1913 – February 19, 2001) was an American film director and producer, responsible for making many of Hollywood’s most famous “message films”. As an independent producer and director, he brought attention to topical social issues that most studios avoided. Among the subjects covered in his films were racism (in The […]

Yip Harburg (1896 - 1981)

Yip Harburg, the youngest of four surviving children (out of ten), was born Isidore Hochberg on the Lower East Side of New York City on April 8, 1896. His parents, Lewis Hochberg and Mary Ricing, were Yiddish-speaking Orthodox Jews who had emigrated from Russia. Isidore later adopted the name Edgar Harburg, and came to be best […]

Charley Grapewin (1869 - 1956)

Born in Xenia, Ohio, Charles Ellsworth Grapewin ran away from home to be a circus acrobat which led him to work as an aerialist and trapeze artist in a traveling circus before turning to acting. He traveled all over the world with the famous P. T. Barnum circus. Interestingly, Charley Grapewin also appeared in the […]

Clara Blandick (1876 - 1962)

She was born Clara Dickey, the daughter of Isaac B. and Hattie (née Mudgett) Dickey, aboard the Willard Mudgett – an American ship captained by her father (named after one of her maternal relatives), and docked in Victoria Harbour, Hong Kong. She was delivered by Captain William H. Blanchard, whose ship, “Wealthy Pendleton,” was anchored […]

Fred MacMurray (1908 - 1991)

Fred MacMurray was born in Kankakee, Illinois, the son of Maleta (Martin) and Frederick MacMurray, both natives of Wisconsin. His aunt was vaudeville performer and actress Fay Holderness. When MacMurray was two years old the family moved to Madison, Wisconsin, and later settled in Beaver Dam, Wisconsin, where his mother had been born in 1880. […]

Marjorie Main (1890 - 1975)

Born Mary Tomlinson in Acton, Indiana, Main attended Franklin College in Franklin, Indiana, and adopted a stage name to avoid embarrassing her father, Samuel J. Tomlinson (married to Jennie L. McGaughey), who was a church minister. She worked in vaudeville on the Chautauqua and Orpheum Circuits, and debuted on Broadway in 1916. Her first film was […]

Phyllis Love (1925 - 2011)

Following her graduation in 1948 from Pittsburgh’s Carnegie Institute of Technology (which later would merge with Mellon Institute of Industrial Research to form Carnegie Mellon University), Phyllis Love made her way to New York, where, in short order, Phyllis Love  would gain entry into the recently formed Actors Studio. Her small screen debut would come […]

Louis Jourdan (1921 - 2015)

Louis Jourdan was born Louis Robert Gendre in Marseille, France, in 1921, one of three sons of Yvonne (née Jourdan) and Henry Gendre, a hotel owner. He was educated in France, Turkey, and the UK, and studied acting at the École Dramatique. While there, he began acting on the professional stage, where he was brought […]

Cecil Day-Lewis (1904 - 1972)

Day-Lewis was born in Ballintubbert, Athy/Stradbally border, Queen’s County (now known as County Laois), Ireland. He was the son of the Reverend Frank Cecil Day-Lewis (died 29 July 1937) and Kathleen Blake (née Squires; died 1906). Some of his family was from England (Hertfordshire and Canterbury). His father took on the surname “Day-Lewis” as a […]

Jill Balcon (1925 - 2009)

Jill Angela Henriette Balcon (3 January 1925 – 18 July 2009) was an English film and radio actress. Jill Balcon made her film debut in Nicholas Nickleby (1947), though she was best known for her stage, television, and radio work. Balcon was born in Westminster, London, the daughter of Aileen Freda Leatherman (1904–1988) and Michael Balcon. […]

Michael Balcon (1896 - 1977)

Born in Birmingham, Michael Balcon was the youngest son and fourth of five children of Louis Balcon (c. 1858–1946) and his wife, Laura (née Greenberg; c. 1863–1934), Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe who had met in Britain. Growing up in a respectable but impoverished setting, in 1907 Balcon won a scholarship to Birmingham’s George Dixon […]

Alberto Cavalcanti (1897 - 1982)

Alberto Cavalcanti was born in Rio de Janeiro, the son of a prominent mathematician. He was a precociously intelligent child, and by the age of 15 was studying law at university. Following an argument with a professor he was expelled. His father sent him to Geneva, Switzerland on condition that he did not study law […]

Chips Rafferty (1909 - 1971)

Chips Rafferty was born John William Pilbean Goffage in Broken Hill, New South Wales to John Goffage, an English-born stock agent, and Australian-born Violet Maude Joyce. Gaining the nickname “Chips” as a school boy, Rafferty studied at Parramatta Commercial High School before working in a variety of jobs, including opal miner, sheep shearer, drover, airman […]

Vincente Minnelli (1903 - 1986)

Vincente Minnelli born and baptized as Lester Anthony Minnelli in Chicago, he was the youngest of four known sons, only two of whom survived to adulthood, born to Marie Émilie Odile Lebeau (stage name: Mina Gennell) and Vincent Charles Minnelli. His father was musical conductor of Minnelli Brothers’ Tent Theater. His Chicago-born mother was of […]

Rachel Roberts (1927 - 1980)

Rachel Roberts was born in Llanelli, Carmarthenshire, Wales. After a Baptist upbringing (against which she rebelled), followed by study at the University of Wales and the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, she began working with a repertory company in Swansea in 1950. She made her film debut in the Welsh-set comedy Valley of Song (1953), […]

Kay Kendall (1927 - 1959)

She was born Justine Kay Kendall McCarthy, at Stanley House, Hull Road, in Withernsea, a coastal resort in the East Riding of Yorkshire, England. Kendall’s father was Terrence “Terry” McCarthy (aka Terry Kendall), the vaudevillian son of music hall star Marie Kendall. Kay’s mother was the former Gladys Drewery. She had two elder siblings, Terrence Justin […]

Rouben Mamoulian (1897 - 1987)

Mamoulian was born in Tbilisi, Georgia (ruled at that time by imperial Russia), to an Armenian family. His mother Virginia (née Kalantarian) was a director of the Armenian theater, and his father, Zachary Mamoulian, was a bank president. Mamoulian relocated to England and started directing plays in London in 1922. He was brought to America […]