Janet Munro (1934 - 1972)

Janet Munro (28 September 1934 – 6 December 1972) was an English actress. Janet Munro starred in three Disney film releases, Darby O’Gill and the Little People (1959), Third Man on the Mountain (1959) and Swiss Family Robinson (1960), as well as The Horsemasters (1961), which aired on Disney’s weekly television series. Other film credits include […]

Isabel Jewell (1907 - 1972)

Born in Shoshoni, Fremont County, Wyoming, Isabel Jewell was educated at St. Mary’s Academy in Minnesota and at Hamilton College in Kentucky. After years in theater stock companies, including an 87-week stint in Lincoln, Nebraska, she hit the big time after getting a part on Broadway in “Up Pops the Devil” (1930). She received glowing critical […]

Joi Lansing (1928 - 1972)

Joi Lansing was born Joy Brown in Salt Lake City, Utah, in 1928 to Jack Glenn Brown, a shoe salesman, and Virginia Grace (née Shupe) Brown, a housewife. She would later be known as Joyce Wassmansdorff, which was the surname of her stepfather. The family moved to Los Angeles in 1940. She began modeling in […]

Reginald Owen (1887 - 1972)

The son of Joseph and Frances Owen, Reginald Owen studied at Sir Herbert Tree’s Royal Academy of Dramatic Art and made his professional debut in 1905. In 1911 he starred in the original production of Where the Rainbow Ends as Saint George which opened to very good reviews on 21 December 1911. Reginald Owen had […]

Leo Carroll (1886 - 1972)

Leo Carroll was born in Weedon Bec, Northamptonshire, to William and Catherine Carroll. His Roman Catholic parents named him after then-Pope Leo XIII. In 1897, his family lived in York, where his Irish-born father was a foreman in an ordnance store. In the 1901 Census for West Ham, London, his occupation is listed as “wine […]

Jerome Cowan (1897 - 1972)

Jerome Palmer Cowan (October 6, 1897 – January 24, 1972) was an American stage, film, and television actor. At eighteen he joined a travelling stock company, shortly afterwards enlisting in the United States Navy during World War I. After the war he returned to the stage and became a vaudeville headliner, then gained success on […]

Akim Tamiroff (1899 - 1972)

Akim Tamiroff was born in Tiflis, Russian Empire (now Tbilisi, Georgia), of Armenian ancestry. He trained at the Moscow Art Theatre drama school. He arrived in the U.S. in 1923 on a tour with a troupe of actors and decided to stay. Tamiroff managed to develop a career in Hollywood despite his thick Russian accent. Tamiroff’s […]

Gia Scala (1934 - 1972)

Gia Scala was born Josephine Grace Johanna Scoglio in Liverpool, Lancashire, to a Sicilian father, Pietro Scoglio, and an Irish mother, Eileen O’Sullivan. She had one sister, Tina Scala, also an actress. Gia was raised in Messina, and Mili San Marco, Sicily, the latter was upon her grandfather—Natale Scoglio’s estate. He was the largest agriculturist […]

Rosemarie Frankland (1943 - 2000)

Born in Rhosllannerchrugog, Denbighshire, in north-east Wales in 1943, Rosemarie Frankland moved to Lancashire, England, as a child. She took part in many beauty pageants and won the title of Miss Wales and, later in 1961 in London, she became (as Miss United Kingdom) the first British woman and the seventh European (Sweden won the […]

Marilyn Maxwell (1921 - 1972)

Marilyn Maxwell was a native of Clarinda, Iowa. She started her professional entertaining career as a radio singer while still a teenager before signing with Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer in 1942 as a contract player. Among the programs in which she appeared were Beat the Band and The Abbott and Costello Show. The head of MGM, Louis B. Mayer, […]

Dorothy Wellman (1913 - 2009)

Wellman was born Dorothy Coonan in Minneapolis, Minnesota. She moved to Los Angeles, California with her family as a child. Her career as a dancer began at the age of 14 with Warner Brothers Studios. Her early film credits as an on-screen dancer and actress included small, uncredited parts in such early talkies as The Broadway […]

Rochelle Hudson (1916 - 1972)

The Oklahoma City-born actress, Rochelle Hudson, may be best remembered today for costarring in Wild Boys of the Road (1933), playing Cosette in Les Misérables (1935), playing Mary Blair, the older sister of Shirley Temple’s character in Curly Top, and for playing Natalie Wood’s mother in Rebel Without a Cause (1955). During her peak years in […]

Meena Kumari (1932 - 1972)

Meena Kumari was the third daughter of Ali Baksh and Iqbal Begum. Khursheed and Madhu were her two elder sisters. At the time of her birth, her parents were unable to pay the fees of the doctor who had delivered her, so her father left her at a Muslim orphanage. However, he picked her up […]

Tom Neal (1914 - 1972)

Born in Evanston, Illinois, Tom Neal was one of three children born to banker Thomas, Sr. and Mayme Neal (née Martin). He had two older sisters, Mary Elizabeth and Dorothy Helen. His great uncle was John Drew. Neal and his sisters were raised in a spacious ten-room home in Chicago. He attended Lake Forest Academy […]

Lane Chandler (1899 - 1972)

Lane Chandler was born as Robert Chandler Oakes on a ranch near Culbertson, Montana, the son of a horse rancher. At an early age, the family relocated to Helena, Montana, where he graduated from high school. He briefly attended Montana Wesleyan College (which later merged and became part of Rocky Mountain College), but quit to […]

Marie Wilson (1916 - 1972)

Born in Anaheim, California, Marie Wilson began her career in New York City as a dancer on the Broadway stage. She gained national prominence with My Friend Irma on radio, film and later, television. The show made her a star but typecast her almost interminably as the quintessential dumb blonde, which she played in numerous […]

John Litel (1892 - 1972)

John Litel (December 30, 1892 – February 3, 1972) was an American film and television actor. During World War I, Litel enlisted in the French Army and was twice decorated for bravery. Back in the U.S. after the war, Litel enrolled in the American Academy of Dramatic Arts and began his stage career. In 1929, he started […]

Esma Cannon (1905 - 1972)

Her film début was an uncredited part in The Man Behind the Mask (1936); she was first credited as Polly Shepherd in The Last Adventurers (1937), and she appeared in 64 films over the next 26 years. She had small parts in three early Powell and Pressburger films: The Spy in Black (1939), Contraband (1940) […]

Lane Bradford (1922 - 1973)

Lane Bradford (August 29, 1922 – June 7, 1973) was an American actor. Bradford was born in Yonkers, New York, the son of actor John Merton (1901-1959). Lane Bradford was the brother of actor Robert Lavarre. Bradford appeared in many television series and “B” western movies. On stage, he co-starred in Desperadoes’ Outpost (1952), The Great Sioux […]

Arlene Martel (1936 - 2014)

In 1962, Arlene Martel made her first of two appearances on Perry Mason, as Fiona Cregan in “The Case of the Absent Artist”. Later, she guest starred as Sandra Dunkel in “The Case of the Dead Ringer” (1966) when Raymond Burr played a dual role, that of Mason and as the actual murderer, Grimes. Martel […]

Steven Geray (1904 - 1973)

He was born in Ungvár, Austria-Hungary (now called Uzhgorod, Ukraine) and educated at the University of Budapest. He made his first stage appearance at the Hungarian National Theater under his real name and after nearly four years he made his London Stage debut (as Steven Geray) in 1934, appearing in Happy Week-End! and began appearing […]

Dennis Price (1915 - 1973)

Price was born in Twyford in Berkshire, the son of Brigadier-General Thomas Rose Caradoc Price CMG DSO and his wife Dorothy, née Verey, daughter of Sir Henry Verey, Official Referee of the Supreme Court of Judicature. He attended Copthorne Prep School, Radley College and Worcester College, Oxford. He studied acting at the Embassy Theatre School […]

Douglas Kennedy (1915 - 1973)

Douglas Kennedy was a character player and occasional leading man in Hollywood. He attended Deerfield Academy in Deerfield, Massachusetts, and afterwards graduated from Amherst College in Amherst, Massachusetts. Making his debut in 1935, he played a significant number of supporting roles and was able to secure contract-player status, first at Paramount Pictures and later at […]

Tim Holt (1919 - 1973)

Tim Holt was born Charles John Holt III on born February 5, 1919, in Beverly Hills, California, the son of actor Jack Holt and Margaret Woods. During his early years, he accompanied his father on location, even appearing in an early silent film. Holt was educated at Culver Military Academy in Culver, Indiana, graduating in […]

Cecil Kellaway (1890 - 1973)

Cecil Kellaway was born on 22 August 1890 in Cape Town, South Africa, where he gained an early interest in theatre acting, much to the displeasure of his parents. He was educated in South Africa and England, before becoming a touring stock company actor. By the early 1920s, he had settled in Australia, becoming a […]

Betty Field (1913 - 1973)

Born in Boston, Massachusetts, to George and Katharine (née Lynch) Field, Betty Field began her acting career on the London stage in Howard Lindsay’s farce, She Loves Me Not. Following its run she returned to the United States and appeared in several stage successes, before making her film debut in 1939. Her role as Mae, […]

Sidney Blackmer (1895 - 1973)

Sidney Blackmer was born and raised in Salisbury, North Carolina, the son of Clara Deroulhac (née Alderman) and Walter Steele Blackmer. He started off in an insurance and financial business but gave up on it. While working as a builder’s laborer on a new building, he saw a Pearl White serial being filmed and immediately […]

Peggie Castle (1927 - 1973)

Peggie Castle was born Peggy Blair in Appalachia in Wise County in far southwestern Virginia. She changed her last name from Blair “because there was another actress named Blair at the first studio in which she worked.” Her father, Doyle H. Blair, was at one point “an industrial relations director for a large corporation” and later […]

Allan Lane (1909 - 1973)

Allan Lane was born as Harry Leonard Albershardt in Indiana to Linnie Anne and William H. Albershardt. He grew up in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Lane had been a photographer, model and stage actor by age 20. He was spotted by Fox Film Corporation (later 20th Century Fox) talent scouts and was signed to a contract. […]

Melville Cooper (1896 - 1973)

George Melville Cooper was born on 15 October 1896 in Aston, Birmingham, Warwickshire to W.C.J. and Frances (née Brennan) Cooper. He was brought up in Britain and attended public schools, including King Edward’s School in Birmingham. He began to develop an interest in acting as a teenager. At the age of eighteen, he made his […]