Brian Keith (1921 - 1997)

Brian Keith was born Robert Alba Keith in Bayonne, New Jersey, on November 14, 1921, to actor Robert Keith and stage actress Helena Shipman, a native of Aberdeen, Washington. Some sources also list his full name as Brian Robert Keith. He was raised Roman Catholic. His parents divorced, and he moved to Hollywood and started […]

Joan Leslie (1925 - 2015)

Joan Agnes Theresa Sadie Brodel was born on January 26, 1925 in Highland Park, Michigan, she was the youngest child of John and Agnes Brodel. John was a bank clerk and Agnes was a pianist. Leslie’s two older sisters, Betty and Mary Brodel, shared their mother’s musical interest and started to learn how to play instruments […]

Peter Yates (1929 - 2011)

The son of an army officer, Peter Yates attended Charterhouse School as a boy, graduated from the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art and worked for some years as an actor, director and stage manager. In the 1950s he started in the film industry as a dubbing assistant and later an assistant director for Tony Richardson […]

Allan Dwan (1885 - 1981)

Born Joseph Aloysius Dwan in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, Allan Dwan,who was the younger son of commercial traveller of woolen clothing Joseph Michael Dwan (1857-1917) and his wife Mary Jane Dwan, nee Hunt, moved with his family to the United States when he was seven years old, on December 4, 1892 by ferry from Windsor to […]

Leo Gordon (1922 - 2000)

Leo Gordon was born in Brooklyn in New York City on December 2, 1922. Reared by his father in dire poverty, Gordon grew up during the Great Depression. He left school in the eighth grade, went to work in construction and demolition, and then joined the New Deal agency, the Civilian Conservation Corps, in which […]

Brian Hutton (1935 - 2014)

Brian Hutton was born in New York City and studied at the Actors Studio. Brian Hutton had a brief acting career between 1954–62, including an appearance as an army deserter in the episode “Custer” in Gunsmoke (series 2, 1956), as well as two guest appearances on Perry Mason in 1957: he played Rod Gleason in […]

Diane Cilento (1933 - 2011)

Diane Cilento was born in Mooloolaba, Queensland, Australia. Her parents, Sir Raphael Cilento and Phyllis, Lady Cilento (née Phyllis Dorothy McGlew),[4] were both distinguished medical practitioners in Queensland. Her paternal great-grandfather was Italian. Her maternal grandfather was merchant and exporter Charles Thomas McGlew. At an early age she decided to follow a career as an actress […]

Eric Ambler (1909 - 1998)

Eric Ambler was born in London into a family of entertainers who ran a puppet show, with which he helped in his early years. Both parents also worked as music hall artists. Later he studied engineering at Northampton Polytechnic in Islington (now City University, London), and served a traineeship with an engineering company. However, his […]

Roy Ward Baker (1916 - 2010)

Born in London where his father was a Billingsgate fish merchant, Roy Ward Baker was educated at a Lycée in Rouen, France, and at the City of London School. From 1934 to 1939, he worked for Gainsborough Pictures, a British film production company based in the Islington district of London. His first jobs were menial, […]

Sidney Gilliat (1908 - 1994)

Sidney Gilliat (15 February 1908 – 31 May 1994) was a British film director, producer and writer. He was the son of George Gilliat, Editor of the Evening Standard, born in the district of Edgeley in Stockport, Cheshire. In the 1930s Sidney Gilliat worked as a scriptwriter, most notably with Frank Launder on The Lady Vanishes […]

Naunton Wayne (1901 - 1970)

Naunton Wayne (22 June 1901 – 17 November 1970), was a British character actor, born Henry Wayne Davies in Llanwonno, Glamorgan, Wales. He was educated at Clifton College. His first London stage roles were in Streamline at the Palace in 1934 and in 1066 and All That at the Strand in 1935 (where he provided comic […]

Ellie Lambeti (1926 - 1983)

Ellie Lambeti born in 1926 in the village of Vilia, Attiki, Greece. Her father owned a Greek tavern in Vilia. She had six siblings. Her maternal grandfather was a Captain Stamatis who fought together with Kolokotronis against the Turks in 1821, when the modern Greek democracy was created. In 1928, the family moved to Athens. In […]

Katina Paxinou (1900 - 1973)

Katina Paxinou was born Aikaterini Konstantopoulou (Αικατερίνη Κωνσταντοπούλου) in Piraeus, Greece, she trained as an opera singer at the Conservatoire de Musique de Genève and later in Berlin and Vienna. According to her biography in Playbill (1942), Paxinou was disowned by her family after she decided to seek a permanent stage career. Paxinou made her debut […]

Donald Crisp (1882 - 1974)

Donald Crisp was born in Bow, London at the family home on 27 July 1882. He was one of eight children (four boys and four girls) born to James and Elizabeth Crisp. He was educated at the University of Oxford after serving as a trooper in the 10th Hussars in the Boer War. Crisp claimed […]

Robert Wiene (1873 - 1938)

Robert Wiene was born in Breslau, as the elder son of the successful theatre actor Carl Wiene. His younger brother Conrad also became an actor, but Robert Wiene at first studied law at the University of Berlin. In 1908 he also started to act, at first in small parts on stage. His first involvement with […]

Joe May (1880 - 1954)

After studying in Berlin and a variety of odd jobs, Joe May began his career as a stage director of operettas in Hamburg. In 1902 he had married the actress Mia May (born Hermine Pfleger) and took his stage name from hers. As Joe May, he made ten films for Continental-Art Film GmbH in Berlin; the […]

Jean Gabin (1904 - 1976)

Gabin was born Jean-Alexis Moncorgé in Paris, the son of Madeleine Petit and Ferdinand Moncorgé, a cafe entertainer whose stage name was Gabin. He grew up in the village of Mériel in the Seine-et-Oise (now Val-d’Oise) département, about 22 mi (35 km) north of Paris. The son of cabaret entertainers, he attended the Lycée Janson […]

Dita Parlo (1906 - 1971)

Dita Parlo (4 September 1906 – 12 December 1971), born Gerda Olga Justina Kornstädt in Stettin (present-day Szczecin), was a German film actress. Parlo made her first film appearance in Homecoming (Heimkehr) in 1928 and quickly became a popular actress in Germany. During the 1930s she moved easily between German and French films, achieving success in […]

Eleanor Powell (1912 - 1982)

Powell was born in Springfield, Massachusetts. A dancer since childhood, she was discovered at the age of 11 by the head of the Vaudeville Kiddie revue, Gus Edwards. When she was 17, she brought her graceful, athletic style to Broadway, where she starred in various revues and musicals. During this time, she was dubbed “the […]

Una Merkel (1903 - 1986)

Una Merkel was born in Covington, Kentucky, and grew up in Philadelphia and New York City. Merkel, who bore a resemblance to actress Lillian Gish, began her career as a stand-in for Gish, most notably in the 1928 classic The Wind, a late silent film. Merkel appeared in a few films during the silent era, including […]

Marian Nixon (1904 - 1983)

Born Marian Nissinen in Superior, Wisconsin, Nixon began her career as a teen working as a chorus dancer on the vaudeville circuit. She began appearing in bit part in films in 1922 and landed her first substantial role in the 1923 film Cupid’s Fireman, opposite Buck Jones. The following year, she was named a WAMPAS […]

Virginia Bruce (1910 - 1982)

Born Helen Virginia Briggs in Minneapolis, Minnesota. When she was one month old, she moved to Fargo, North Dakota, with her parents, Earil and Margaret Briggs. According to the Fargo City Directory, the Briggs family lived at 421 14th Street South, Fargo. After she graduated from Fargo Central High School in 1928, she moved with […]

Frank Tuttle (1892 - 1963)

Frank Wright Tuttle (6 August 1892 – 6 January 1963) was a Hollywood film director and writer who directed films from 1922 (The Cradle Buster) to 1959 (Island of Lost Women). Frank Tuttle wrote “The Kentuckians” (1921) and directed “Roman Scandals” (1933), and “Charlie McCarthy, Detective” (1939). He was educated at Yale University, where he edited […]

Charlie Ruggles (1886 - 1970)

Charlie Ruggles was born in Los Angeles, California in 1886. Despite training to be a doctor, Ruggles soon found himself on the stage, appearing in a stock production of Nathan Hale in 1905. At Los Angeles’s Majestic Theatre, he played the romantic lead Private Jo Files in L. Frank Baum and Louis F. Gottschalk’s musical, […]

Marshall Neilan (1891 - 1958)

Born in San Bernardino, California, Marshall Neilan was known by most as “Mickey.” Following the death of his father, the eleven-year-old Mickey Neilan had to give up on school to work at whatever he could find in order to help support his mother. As a teenager, he began acting in bit parts in live theatre, […]

Jesse Lasky (1880 - 1958)

Born in San Francisco, California, Jesse Lasky worked at a variety of jobs but began his entertainment career as a vaudeville performer that led to the motion picture business. In 1911 Lasky was the producer of two Broadway musicals, Hello, Paris and A La Broadway. Presumably this is how Cecil B. DeMille knew him before […]

Chester Conklin (1886 - 1971)

Chester Conklin was one of three children who grew up in a violent household. When he was eight, his mother was found burned to death in the family garden. Although first judged a suicide, his father, a devoutly religious man who hoped his son would be a minister, was eventually charged with murder, but found […]

Jean Negulesco (1900 - 1993)

Born in Craiova, he attended Carol I High School. In 1915 Jean Negulesco moved to Vienna, and then went to Bucharest in 1919, where he worked as a painter before becoming a stage decorator in Paris. In 1927 he went to New York City for an exhibition of his paintings and settled there. He then […]

George Seaton (1911 - 1979)

Born George Stenius in South Bend, Indiana, of Swedish descent, baptized as Roman Catholic, and grew up in a Detroit Jewish neighborhood and described himself as a “Shabas goy”. So he went on to learn Hebrew in an Orthodox Jewish Yeshiva and was even bar mitzvahed. George Seaton moved to Detroit after graduating from college […]

Eugenie Leontovich (1900 - 1993)

Born in Podolsk, she studied at Moscow’s Imperial School of Dramatic Art, and then under Meyerhold at the Moscow Art Theatre, which she subsequently joined. As the daughter of an officer in the Russian Imperial Army, Eugenie Leontovich suffered greatly during the Revolution. Her three brothers (who were Army officers like their father) were murdered […]