Judy Lewis (1935 - 2011)

Lewis was the biological daughter of actress Loretta Young and actor Clark Gable. She was conceived while her parents were working on the film The Call of the Wild. She was the only biological child that Gable had while he was still alive (his only son was born four months after his death), but he […]

Jewel Carmen (1897 - 1984)

Born Florence Lavina Quick in Danville, Kentucky, Carmen made her film debut in the 1912 film The Will of Destiny. She went on to appear in Daphne and the Pirate (1916), opposite Lillian Gish and D. W. Griffith’s Intolerance (1916).  In 1917, Carmen contracted with Fox Film Corporation, but finding the deal unsatisfactory opened a […]

Thelma Todd (1905 - 1935)

Todd was born in Lawrence, Massachusetts to John and Alice Todd, and was a bright student who achieved good academic results. She intended to become a school teacher. However, in her late teens, she began entering beauty pageants, winning the title of Miss Massachusetts in 1925. While representing her home state, she was spotted by […]

Maria Montez (1912 - 1951)

Montez was born María Antonia García Vidal de Santo Silas (some sources cite María África Gracia Vidal or María África Antonia García Vidal de Santo Silas as her birth name) in Barahona, Dominican Republic. She was one of ten children born to Ysidoro García, who worked as the Spanish consul in Dominican Republic, and his […]

Barbara Stanwyck (1907 - 1990)

Barbara Stanwyck was born Ruby Catherine Stevens on July 16, 1907, in Brooklyn, New York. She was the fifth and youngest child of Catherine Ann (née McPhee) and Byron E. Stevens. Her parents were working class. Her father was a native of Massachusetts and her mother was an immigrant from Nova Scotia. Ruby was of […]

Bugsy Siegel (1906 - 1947)

Bugsy Siegel Has Bugsy Siegel’s killer finally been identified? According to an article in October’s Los Angeles Magazine, the killer behind the grisly 1947 murder of the feared gangster, who was instrumental in the creation of the Las Vegas Strip, wasn’t a mobster hit man. Rather, the man who reportedly pulled the trigger on Benjamin […]

Johnny Torrio (1882 - 1957)

Johnny Torrio Born in a village near Naples, Torrio was brought to New York City by his widowed mother when he was two. He became a brothel-saloonkeeper and leader of the James Street Boys, allying them with the Five Points Gang (1904–08). He then rose to become a rackets boss (i.e., engaged in activities involving […]

Cab Calloway (1907 - 1994)

Cab Calloway After graduating from high school, Calloway briefly attended a law school in Chicago but quickly turned to performing in nightclubs as a singer. He began directing his own bands in 1928 and in the following year went to New York City. There he appeared in an all-black musical, Fats Waller’s Connie’s Hot Chocolates, […]

Jack Stapp (1912 - 1980)

Jack Stapp Jack Smiley Stapp was born in Nashville in 1912, but in 1923 he moved with his family to Atlanta. There, while still in his teens, he broke into radio at the Winecoff Hotel, programming a station that was piped into the hotel’s rooms. While studying at Georgia Tech University, he became involved with […]

Jerry Weintraub (1937 - 2015)

Jerry Weintraub Weintraub’s career as a promoter took a giant step in 1970 when after a lengthy courtship he persuaded Elvis Presley’s manager, Col. Tom Parker, to let him promote Presley concerts. It was at a time when Presley was beginning to do live shows after years of concentrating on movies. The relationship began with […]

Ken Stabler (1945 - 2015)

Ken Stabler Stabler first showed his professional chops in a 1972 playoff game best known for the Immaculate Reception. Mostly forgotten was that Stabler replaced starter Daryle Lamonica and led the Raiders to what seemed to be the winning touchdown in the fourth quarter — until Franco Harris’ spectacular catch and run won the game […]

Carole Landis (1919 - 1948)

Landis was born Frances Lillian Mary Ridste in Fairchild, Wisconsin. She was the youngest of five children (two of whom died in childhood) born to Clara (née Stentek), a Polish farmer’s daughter, and Norwegian-American Alfred Ridste, a “drifting railroad mechanic” who abandoned the family after Landis’ birth.  According to Landis’ biographer E.J. Felming, circumstantial evidence […]

Colette Marchand (1925 - 2015)

Colette Marchand Marchand was born in Paris, France, the daughter of Alice (née Lioret) and Roger Marchand. She began her career at the Paris Opera Ballet   She married Jacques Bazire, the musical director for the Roland Petit Ballet. She died on June 5, 2015, aged 90, and was survived by her sister, Yvonne (Marchand) Le […]

Laura Antonelli (1941 - 2015)

Laura Antonelli was born Laura Antonaz in Pola, Italy (present-day Pula, Croatia), former capital of Istria. She moved with her family first to Genoa and then to Venice, before they all eventually settled in Naples. She had a childhood interest in education, and as a teenager she became proficient at gymnastics. In an interview for […]

Diana Douglas (1923 - 2015)

Douglas was born Diana Love Dill in Devonshire, Bermuda on January 22, 1923. Her father Lieutenant Colonel Thomas Melville Dill (also the name of her great-grandfather, a mariner) was a former Member of the Colonial Parliament (MCP) (representing the Parish of Devonshire in the Parliament of Bermuda), Attorney General of Bermuda, and former Commanding Officer […]

Rod Taylor (1930 - 2015)

Taylor was born on 11 January 1930 in Lidcombe, a suburb of Sydney, the only child of William Sturt Taylor, a steel construction contractor and commercial artist, and Mona Taylor (née Thompson), a writer of more than a hundred short stories and children’s books. His middle name comes from his great-great grand uncle, Captain Charles […]

Julie Wilson (1924 - 2015)

Wilson was born in Omaha, Nebraska, the daughter of Emily (née Bennett), a hairdresser, and Russell Wilson, a coal salesman. She first found a musical outlet with local musical group “Hank’s Hepcats” in her teenage years and briefly attended Omaha University. She won the title of Miss Nebraska and would have competed in the Miss […]

Karel Soucek (1947 - 1985)

Karel Soucek (born April 19, 1947 in Czechoslovakia, died January 20, 1985 in Houston, Texas) was a Canadian professional stuntman who went over Niagara Falls in a barrel in 1984. He lived in Hamilton, Ontario.  Soucek prepared for his 1984 Niagara Falls stunt by researching previous attempts, by sending unmanned barrels over the falls to […]

Jim Fixx (1932 - 1984)

Born in New York City, Fixx was a graduate of Trinity School in New York and Oberlin College in Ohio. His father, Calvin Fixx, was an editor at Time who worked with Whittaker Chambers.  Fixx was a member of the high-IQ club, Mensa, and published three collections of puzzles: Games for the Super-Intelligent, More Games […]

James C. Donnell (1854 - 1927)

James C Donnell was born on April 20, 1854, in County Armagh, Ireland, to James Donnell and Elizabeth Doyle. At the age of two, Donnell and his family moved to the United States and settled in Waterford, Pennsylvania. At the age of eighteen, he began his career in the oil industry by hauling crude oil […]

J. R. D. Tata (1904 - 1993)

J. R. D. Tata was born on 29 July 1904 in Paris, France, the second child of Ratanji Dadabhoy Tata and his French wife, Suzanne “Sooni” Brière. His father was a first cousin of Jamsetji Tata, a pioneer industrialist in India. He had one elder sister Sylla, a younger sister Rodabeh and two younger brothers […]

John Beggs (1847 - 1925)

John Irvin Beggs was born in Philadelphia on September 17, 1847, the son of James and Mary Irvin Beggs. Both of his parents were of Scottish descent but had emigrated to the United States from Northern Ireland.  His early life was spent around Philadelphia. After his father died when he was seven years old, Beggs […]

Leon Hess (1914 - 1999)

Hess was born on March 14, 1914 to a Jewish family in Asbury Park, New Jersey. His parents were Ethel and Mores Hess, who was a kosher butcher who emigrated from Lithuania and – after arriving in the United States – worked as an oil delivery man in Asbury Park, New Jersey. Hess worked as […]

Lawrence Dale Bell (1894 - 1956)

Lawrence Dale “Larry” Bell (April 5, 1894 – October 20, 1956) was an American industrialist and founder of Bell Aircraft Corporation.  Bell was born in Mentone, Indiana and lived there until 1907, when his family moved to Santa Monica, California. He joined his older brother Grover and stunt pilot Lincoln Beachey as a mechanic in […]

Marcel Dassault (1892 - 1986)

Marcel Dassault was born was Marcel Bloch on January 22, 1892 in Paris. Both his parents were Jewish.  He was educated at the Lycée Condorcet in Paris. He graduated from the Breguet School and Supaéro.  Dassault invented a type of aircraft propeller used by the French army during World War I and founded the Société […]

Bob Rhoads (1879 - 1967)

Bob Rhoads In the midst of the 1908 pennant race, Sporting Life declared that “Robert S. Rhoades of Cleveland is one of the most dependable of modern pitchers. … His habits are good, his conduct exemplary, and in all ways is he a credit to his club and profession.”1 Embodied in this passage are two […]

Dusty Springfield (1939 - 1999)

Dusty Springfield Call me a crazy old physiognomist, but my theory is that you can always spot a lesbian by her big thrusting chin. Celebrity Eskimo Sandi Toksvig, Ellen DeGeneres, Jodie Foster, Clare Balding, Vita Sackville-West, God love them: there’s a touch of Desperate Dan in the jaw-bone area, no doubt the better to go […]

Kirk Kerkorian (1917 - 2015)

Kirk Kerkorian Billionaire Kirk Kerkorian, an eighth-grade dropout who built Las Vegas’ biggest hotels, tried to take over Chrysler and bought and sold MGM at a profit three times, has died. He was 98. He died Monday night in Beverly Hills. The reserved, unpretentious Kerkorian spent much of his life trying to stay out of […]

Dick Van Patten (1928 - 2015)

Dick Van Patten The round-faced actor who found lasting fame as the patriarch on TV’s “Eight is Enough,” has died. Van Patten’s rep confirmed the news of his death to FOX411. The actor died Tuesday in Santa Monica, California, of complications from diabetes. He was 86. Born in New York, the veteran entertainer began his […]

Chris Squire (1948 - 2015)

Chris Squire The co-founder and longtime bassist of prog rock icons Yes and the only member of the group to feature on every studio album, has passed away just over a month after revealing that he was suffering from a rare form of leukemia. Squire was 67. Current Yes keyboardist Geoff Downes first tweeted the news, “Utterly […]