Sandy Dennis (1937 - 1992)

Dennis was born in Hastings, Nebraska, the daughter of Yvonne (née Hudson), a secretary, and Jack Dennis, a postal clerk. She had a brother, Frank. Dennis grew up in Kenesaw, Nebraska and Lincoln, Nebraska, graduating from Lincoln High School (Lincoln, Nebraska) in 1955. She attended Nebraska Wesleyan University and the University of Nebraska, appearing in […]

Dana Andrews (1909 - 1992)

He was born Carver Dana Andrews on a farmstead outside Collins, Covington County, Mississippi, the third of thirteen children of Charles Forrest Andrews, a Baptist minister, and his wife Annis (née Speed). The family subsequently moved to Huntsville, Texas, where his younger siblings (including the late actor Steve Forrest) were born.  He attended college at […]

Denholm Elliott (1922 - 1992)

Elliott was born in London, the son of Nina (née Mitchell) and Myles Laymen Farr Elliott, a barrister. He attended Malvern College and trained at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in London. He was asked to leave RADA after one term. As Elliott later recalled: “They wrote to my mother and said, ‘Much as […]

Cleavon Little (1939 - 1992)

Little was born in Chickasha, Oklahoma. He was the brother of singer DeEtta Little, best known for her performance of “Gonna Fly Now”, the main theme to Rocky. He was raised in California, graduating in 1957 from Kearny High School and initially attended San Diego City College, and then at San Diego State University, where […]

Chuck Connors (1921 - 1992)

Connors was born Kevin Joseph Connors in Brooklyn, New York to Allan, a longshoreman, and Marcella Connors, immigrants from the Dominion of Newfoundland (now part of Canada). Connors was raised Roman Catholic and served as an altar boy at the Basilica of Our Lady of Perpetual Help in Brooklyn. Connors had one sibling, a sister, […]

Sterling Holloway (1905 - 1992)

Born in Cedartown, Georgia, Holloway was named after his father, Sterling Price Holloway, who himself was named after a prominent Confederate general, Sterling “Pap” Price. His mother was Rebecca DeHaven (some sources say her last name was Boothby). He had a younger brother named Boothby. The family owned a grocery store in Cedartown, where his […]

Don Beddoe (1903 - 1991)

Born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, Beddoe made his Broadway acting debut in 1929, receiving top billing (over a young Spencer Tracy) in Nigger Rich.  After a decade of stage work and bit parts in films, Beddoe began more prominent film roles in the late 1930s. He was usually cast as fast-talking reporters and the like. His […]

Donald Houston (1923 - 1991)

Donald Daniel Houston (6 November 1923 – 13 October 1991) was a Welsh actor whose first two films – The Blue Lagoon (1949) with Jean Simmons, and A Run for Your Money (1949) with Sir Alec Guinness – were highly successful. Later in his career he was cast in military roles and in comedies such […]

David Arkin (1941 - 1991)

Arkin had an “introducing” credit in I Love You, Alice B. Toklas (1968) and brief appearances in Valley of the Dolls (1967), All the President’s Men (1976), and Cannonball (1976).  His television credits include Hawaii Five-O, Whitney and the Robot, and a season-long appearance as the character Gabriel Kaye in the CBS television series Storefront […]

George Gobel (1919 - 1991)

He was born George Leslie Goebel in Chicago, Illinois, His father, Hermann Goebel, was a butcher and grocer who had emigrated to the United States with his parents in the 1890s from the Austrian Empire. His mother, Lillian (MacDonald) Goebel, was born in Illinois to immigrant parents from Scotland. He was an only child.  Gobel […]

Tom Tryon (1926 - 1991)

Thomas Tryon was born on January 14, 1926, in Hartford, Connecticut, as the son of Arthur Lane Tryon, a clothier and owner of Stackpole, Moore & Tryon. (He is often erroneously identified as the son of silent screen actor Glenn Tryon.)  He served in the U.S. Navy in the Pacific from 1943–1946 during and after […]

James Franciscus (1934 - 1991)

Franciscus was born in Clayton, Missouri, to Lorraine (née Grover) and John Allen Franciscus, who was killed in action during World War II. In 1957, Franciscus received a Bachelor of Arts degree in English and theatre arts from Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut, from which he graduated magna cum laude. He was a classmate […]

Yves Montand (1921 - 1991)

Montand was born Ivo Livi in Monsummano Terme, Italy, to Giuseppina (née Simoni) and Giovanni Livi, a broommaker. Giuseppina was a devout Catholic, while Giovanni held strong Communist beliefs. Montand’s family left for France in 1923 because of Italy’s Fascist regime. He grew up in Marseille, where, as a young man, he worked in his […]

Don Siegel (1912 - 1991)

Born in Chicago, with Jewish origins, he attended schools in New York and later graduated from Jesus College, Cambridge in England. For a short time he studied at Beaux Arts in Paris, France, but left at age 20 and later made his way to Los Angeles.  Siegel found work in the Warner Bros. film library […]

Dean Jagger (1903 - 1991)

Born in Columbus Grove or Lima, Ohio, he dropped out of school several times before finally attending Wabash College. While at Wabash, he was a member of Lambda Chi Alpha fraternity and played football. He dropped out in his sophomore year, realizing he was not suited for an academic life. For a few semesters, he […]

Aldo Ray (1926 - 1991)

Ray was born in Pen Argyl in Northampton County in eastern Pennsylvania, to an Italian family of five brothers and one sister. His brother, Mario DaRe (1933-2010), lettered in football at USC in the years 1952 to 1954, and on May 12, 1955 appeared as a contestant on the NBC quiz show You Bet Your […]

Bert Convy (1933 - 1991)

Convy was born in St. Louis, Missouri, the son of Monica (née Whalen) and Bernard Fleming Convy. Convy’s family moved to Los Angeles when he was seven years old. He later attended North Hollywood High School where he was an all-around athlete. He was signed by the Philadelphia Phillies when he was just 17, playing […]

Redd Foxx (1922 - 1991)

Foxx was born in St. Louis, Missouri and raised on Chicago’s South Side. His father, Fred Sanford,[citation needed] an electrician and auto mechanic from Hickman, Kentucky, left his family when Foxx was four years old. He was raised by his half-Seminole Indian mother, Mary Hughes from Ellisville, Mississippi, his grandmother and his minister. He attended […]

Keye Luke (1904 - 1991)

Luke was born in Canton, China, to a father who owned an art shop, but grew up in Seattle. He was part of the Luke family, a relative of Wing Luke, for whom Seattle’s Wing Luke Asian Museum was named. He had four siblings who all emigrated from China to California during the Depression. His […]

Daron Norwood (1965 - 2015)

Daron Norwood The country music world was saddened by the death of 1990s performer Daron Norwood on Wednesday at the age of 49. The singer, who was found unresponsive in his Hereford, Texas, apartment, signed with Giant Records in the early 1990s amid the boom in the format led by artists such as Garth Brooks […]

Colleen Dewhurst (1924 - 1991)

Dewhurst was born in Montreal, Quebec, the only child of Ferdinand Augustus “Fred” Dewhurst, owner of a chain of confectionery stores, and his wife, Frances Marie (née Woods) Dewhurst, a homemaker, whose father had been a “well-known athlete in Canada, where he had played football with the Ottawa Rough Riders”. The family naturalized as U.S. […]

David Lean (1908 - 1991)

Lean was born in Croydon, Surrey (now part of Greater London), to Francis William le Blount Lean and the former Helena Tangye (niece of Sir Richard Trevithick Tangye). His parents were Quakers and he was a pupil at the Quaker-founded Leighton Park School in Reading. His younger brother, Edward Tangye Lean (1911–1974), founded the original […]

John Russell (1921 - 1991)

John Russell Born in Los Angeles, California, he fit the Hollywood image of tall, dark, and handsome. He attended the University of California as a student athlete. Following the outbreak of World War II, he joined the United States Marines, though he was initially rejected because of his height (6 ft 3 in (1.91 m)). […]

Brad Davis (1949 - 1991)

He was born Robert Creel Davis in Tallahassee, Florida to Eugene Davis (a dentist whose career declined due to alcoholism) and his wife, Anne (née Creel) Davis. His brother Gene is also an actor. According to an article in The New York Times published in 1987, Davis suffered physical abuse and sexual abuse at the […]

Klaus Kinski (1926 - 1991)

Klaus Kinski was born to German nationals in Zoppot in what was, under League of Nations supervision, the Free City of Danzig from 1920-1939. (It is now Sopot, Poland). His father, Bruno Nakszynski, a German of Polish descent, was a failed opera singer turned pharmacist; his mother, Susanne (née Lutze), was a nurse and the […]

Danny Thomas (1912 - 1991)

One of 10 children, Danny Thomas was born on January 6, 1912, in Deerfield, Michigan, to Charles Yakhoob Kairouz and his wife Margaret Taouk. His parents were Maronite Catholic immigrants from Lebanon. Thomas was raised in Toledo, Ohio, attending St. Francis de Sales Church (Roman Catholic), Woodward High School, and finally the University of Toledo, […]

Ralph Bellamy (1904 - 1991)

Ralph Rexford Bellamy was born in Chicago, Illinois. He was the son of Lilla Louise (née Smith), a native of Canada, and Charles Rexford Bellamy. He ran away from home when he was 15 and managed to get into a road show. He toured with road shows before finally landing in New York. He began […]

Eleanor Audley (1905 - 1991)

Eleanor Audley Beginning as a radio actress, she worked extensively in the 1940s and 50s in Hollywood on such shows as Escape, Suspense and the radio versions of My Favorite Husband (as mother-in-law Mrs. Cooper), The Story of Dr. Kildare (as receptionist Molly Byrd), and Father Knows Best (as one of the Anderson family’s neighbors). […]

Ken Curtis (1916 - 1991)

Though born Curtis Wain Gates in Lamar in Prowers County in southeastern Colorado, Curtis was reared west of there in Las Animas, the seat of Bent County. His father, Dan Gates, was the Bent County sheriff. The family lived above the jail and his mother, Nellie Sneed Gates, cooked for the prisoners. The jail is […]

Natalie Schafer (1900 - 1991)

Schafer was born in Red Bank, New Jersey, the eldest child of Jennie Elizabeth (née Tim) and Charles Emanual Schafer. Her family was German Jewish. She began her career as an actress on Broadway before moving to Los Angeles in 1941 to work in films.  Schafer appeared on Broadway in seventeen plays between 1927 and […]