Jonathan Hole (1904 - 1998)

His career began in vaudeville in the 1920s. Hole was also a radio performer active in his native Iowa as well as New York City, Detroit, Chicago, and Los Angeles, California. While working as an announcer on WBBN in Chicago, his last name was temporarily changed to Cole by the station. In 1942 in Chicago, […]

James Villiers (1933 - 1998)

James Michael Hyde Villiers (29 September 1933 – 18 January 1998) was an English character actor and a familiar face on British television. He was particularly memorable for his plummy voice and ripe articulation. Born in London and educated at Wellington College, Berkshire and the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, ‘Gentleman Jim’ Villiers (pronounced Villers) was […]

Henny Youngman (1906 - 1998)

Youngman was born to a Jewish family in London, England. His family moved to Brooklyn, New York, when he was a child. He grew up in New York City, and began as a comedian after he had worked for years at a print shop, where he wrote “comedy cards” containing one-line gags. The comedy cards […]

Dane Clark (1912 - 1998)

Clark was born Bernard Zanville in Brooklyn, New York, the son of Jewish immigrants, Samuel, a sporting goods store owner, and his wife, Rose. The date of birth is a matter of dispute, amongst different sources. He graduated from Cornell University and earned a law degree at St. John’s University School of Law in Queens, […]

Walt Barnes (1918 - 1998)

Barnes earned his nickname of “Piggy” from catching a piglet when a boy. Playing football at Parkersburg High School, he was on the unbeaten 1938 team and played in the 1939 North-South Game. Following military service in the United States Army in World War II as a Army Sergeant he enrolled in Louisiana State University […]

Mary Castle (1931 - 1998)

Castle was born as Mary Ann Noblett to Erby G. Noblett, Sr. and Myrtle A. Noblett (née Brown) in Pampa, Texas. Her mother was one-sixteenth Quapaw Indian. The Nobletts moved to Fort Worth, Texas, then Phillips, subsequently a ghost town in Hutchinson County, Texas, prior to relocating to Long Beach, California. At the age of […]

David Manners (1900 - 1998)

Manners was born Rauff de Ryther Duan Acklom in Halifax, Nova Scotia, the son of British parents, Lilian (Manners) and writer George Moreby Acklom, and the nephew of military figure Cecil Ryther Acklom. Manners originally studied forestry at the University of Toronto, but he found it boring. Over his father’s objections, he pursued a stage […]

Jean Marais (1913 - 1998)

A native of Cherbourg, France, Marais was a son of Alfred Emmanuel Victor Paul Villain-Marais and his wife, the former Aline Marie Louise Vassord. Marais starred in several movies directed by Jean Cocteau, for a time his lover and a lifelong friend, most famously Beauty and the Beast (1946) and Orphée (1949). Marais played over 100 […]

Maidie Norman (1912 - 1998)

Norman was born Maidie Ruth Gamble on a plantation in Villa Rica, Georgia to Louis and Lila Graham Gamble. She was raised in Lima, Ohio, and began studying drama and performing in Shakespeare plays as a child. She graduated from Central High School in Lima in 1930, and attended Bennett College, where she earned a […]

Patricia Hayes (1909 - 1998)

Patricia Lawlor “Pat” Hayes, OBE (22 December 1909 – 19 September 1998) was an English character actress. Hayes was born in Streatham, London. As a child Hayes attended the Sacred Heart School in Wandsworth. She was featured in many radio and television comedy shows between 1940 and 1996, including Hancock’s Half Hour, Ray’s a Laugh, The Arthur […]

Sue Lloyd (1939 - 2011)

The daughter of a GP, Susan Margery Jeaffreson Lloyd was born in Aldeburgh, Suffolk. She attended Edgbaston High School in Birmingham and studied dance as a child, attending Sadler’s Wells Ballet School. As her height (5 feet 8 inches (1.73 m)) increased, her possibilities for a career as a dancer diminished, and she became a […]

Trevor Bannister (1934 - 2011)

In 1960 Bannister appeared on stage at the Cambridge Theatre in London in Billy Liar, which starred Albert Finney. He starred as Darkie Pilbeam, a wartime spiv, in the 1968 television series The War of Darkie Pilbeam, and from 1969 to 1970 he appeared as “Heavy Breathing” in Jack Rosenthal’s sitcom, The Dustbinmen. Shortly afterwards, […]

Gordon Tootoosis (1941 - 2011)

His first acting role was in the film Alien Thunder (1974), with Chief Dan George and Donald Sutherland. He portrayed Albert Golo in 52 episodes of North of 60 in the 1990s. He is best known to British audiences for playing the Native American Joe Saugus, who negotiates the purchase of the Middlesbrough Transporter Bridge […]

Susan Gordon (1949 - 2011)

Susan Lynn Gordon (July 27, 1949 — December 11, 2011) was an American child actress who appeared in films and numerous episodes of television programs such as The Twilight Zone, My Three Sons, and The Donna Reed Show. Gordon was born in Saint Paul, Minnesota, the daughter of film director Bert I. Gordon and his wife […]

Barbara Stuart (1930 - 2011)

Stuart portrayed “Miss Bunny”, the girlfriend of Sergeant Vincent Carter, played by Frank Sutton, on three seasons of CBS’s Gomer Pyle, U.S.M.C. In 1969, Stuart was cast as “Wilma Winslow” on CBS’s The Queen and I. In 1985, she was cast as Marianne Danzig, the wife of a Mafia godfather in the ABC’s crime drama Our […]

Jill Haworth (1945 - 2011)

Haworth was born in Hove, Sussex, to a textile magnate father and a mother who trained as a ballet dancer. She was named Valerie Jill in honour of the day she was born, Victory over Japan Day or V.J. Day. She took ballet lessons at the prestigious Sadler’s Wells Ballet School to escape from an […]

David Hess (1936 - 2011)

Hess was born David Alexander Hess on September 19, 1936 in New York City. His mother, Marjory, was an opera singer. In 1956, Hess recorded the original version of the Otis Blackwell composition “All Shook Up” under the stage name David Hill. The next year the song became a #1 hit single for Elvis Presley. He began […]

George Baker (1931 - 1970)

Baker was born in Varna, Bulgaria. His father was an English businessman and honorary vice consul and his mother a Red Cross nurse who moved to Bulgaria to help fight cholera. He attended Lancing College, Sussex; he then appeared as an actor in repertory theatre and at the Old Vic. Baker’s third wife, Louie Ramsay, […]

Bill Hunter (1940 - 2011)

Hunter was born in Ballarat, a son of William and Francie Hunter. He had a brother, John, and a sister, Marie Ann. During his teens, Hunter was a champion swimmer, and briefly held a world record for the 100 yards freestyle until his record was broken by John Devitt in the very next heat ten minutes […]

Christopher Mayer (1954 - 2011)

Christopher “Chip” Mayer (February 21, 1954 – July 23, 2011), born George Charles Mayer III in Manhattan, New York City, was an American film and TV actor who was best known for portraying Vance Duke on the popular show The Dukes of Hazzard for 19 episodes. Mayer played the role of Vance Duke in the 1982–1983 […]

Linda Christian (1923 - 2011)

Christian was born as Blanca Rosa Welter in Tampico, Tamaulipas, Mexico, a daughter of Dutch engineer and Royal Dutch Shell executive, Gerardus Jacob Welter (1904–1981), and his Mexican-born wife, the former Blanca Rosa Vorhauer (1901-1992), who was of Spanish, German and French descent. The Welter family moved a great deal during Christian’s youth, living everywhere […]

Len Lesser (1922 - 2011)

Lesser was born in The Bronx in 1922. His father, a grocer, was a Jewish immigrant from Poland. Lesser received his bachelor’s degree from the City College of New York in 1942 at the age of 19. Lesser enlisted in the United States Army the day after the attack on Pearl Harbor, and served in […]

Googie Withers (1917 - 2011)

Withers was born in Karachi, Pakistan then part of British India, to Edgar Withers, a captain in the Royal Navy, and a Dutch-German mother, Zitette. She acquired the name “Googie” (Little Pigeon) at a young age from her ayah (nanny). As a child, she learned Urdu. Her father left the Royal Navy to manage a […]

Robert Easton (1930 - 2011)

Beginning in 1945, he was heard on radio’s Quiz Kids. He portrayed Magnus Proudfoot on radio’s Gunsmoke and also appeared in other radio programs, including Fibber McGee and Molly, The Fred Allen Show, The Halls of Ivy, Our Miss Brooks, Suspense, William Shakespeare—A Portrait in Sound and The Zero Hour. On film, one of his earliest […]

Tura Satana (1938 - 2011)

Satana was born Tura Luna Pascual Yamaguchi in Hokkaidō, Japan. Her father was a silent movie actor of Japanese and Filipino descent, and her mother was a circus performer of American Indian (Cheyenne) and Scots-Irish background. After the end of World War II and a stint in the Manzanar internment camp in Lone Pine, California, […]

John Neville (1925 - 2011)

Neville was born in Willesden, London, the son of Mabel Lillian (née Fry) and Reginald Daniel Neville, a lorry driver. He was educated at Willesden and Chiswick County Schools for Boys, and after World War II service in the Royal Navy trained as an actor at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, before starting his […]

Paul Picerni (1922 - 2011)

Born in New York City, Picerni was an Eagle Scout. He joined the United States Army Air Forces during World War II and served as a B-24 Liberator bombardier in the China-Burma-India Theater. He flew twenty-five combat missions with the 493rd Bomb Squadron of the 7th Bomb Group and received the Distinguished Flying Cross. He […]

Michael Sarrazin (1940 - 2011)

He was born Jacques Michel André Sarrazin in Quebec City, Quebec, and moved to Montreal, Quebec, as a child. After acting in school plays he landed his first professional role at age 17. Sarrazin worked on television productions in Toronto, Ontario, and then gained a contract with Universal Studios. His early appearances include The Virginian (1965), […]

Bill McKinney (1931 - 2011)

William Denison McKinney was born in Chattanooga, Tennessee. He had an unsettled life as a child, moving 12 times. Once, when his family moved from Tennessee to Georgia, he was beaten by a gang and thrown into a creek. At the age of 19, he joined the Navy during the Korean War. He served two […]

Anna Massey (1937 - 2011)

Massey was born in Thakeham, Sussex, England, the daughter of British actress Adrianne Allen and Canadian-born Hollywood actor Raymond Massey. Her brother, Daniel Massey, was also an actor. She was the niece of Vincent Massey, a Governor General of Canada, and her godfather was film director John Ford. Although she had no formal training at either […]