Horton Foote (1916 - 2009)

Foote began as an actor after studying at the Pasadena Playhouse in 1931–32. After getting better reviews for plays he had written than his acting, he focused on writing in the 1940s and became one of the leading writers for television during the 1950s, beginning with an episode of The Gabby Hayes Show. The Trip […]

Lorne Greene (1915 - 1987)

Lorne Greene He is most remembered for his role as ‘Ben Cartwright’ on the 1960s television western series “Bonanza,” and as ‘Commander Adama’ in the 1970s television science fiction series “Battlestar Galactica.” Born in Ottawa, Canada, he began his career while attending Canada’s Queen’s University, and after his graduation, started work in radio broadcasting. His […]

Paul Harvey (1918 - 2009)

Harvey was born in Tulsa, Oklahoma. The son of a policeman killed in 1921, Harvey made radio receivers as a young boy. He attended Tulsa Central High School where a teacher, Isabelle Ronan, was “impressed by his voice.” On her recommendation, he started working at KVOO in Tulsa in 1933, when he was 14. His […]

Willem Johan Kolff (1911 - 2009)

Born in Leiden, Netherlands, Kolff was the eldest of a family of 5 boys. Kolff studied medicine in his hometown at Leiden University, and continued as a resident in internal medicine at Groningen University. One of his first patients there was a 22-year old man who was slowly dying of renal failure. This prompted Kolff […]

James Whitmore (1921 - 2009)

Born in White Plains, New York to Florence Belle (née Crane) and James Allen Whitmore, Sr., a park commission official, Whitmore attended Amherst Central High School in Snyder, New York for three years, before transferring to the Choate School in Wallingford, Connecticut, on a football scholarship. He went on to study at Yale University, also […]

Betty Grable (1916 - 1973)

Betty Grable During her lifetime, she would become one of the most prolific singing actresses of her time, starring in over one hundred films, including ‘Pin Up Girl’ and ‘How To Marry A Millionaire’. In 1929, the Grable family went on holiday to California, and Lilian, Betty’s Mother, decided that she and her daughter should […]

Ron Goldman (1968 - 1994)

Ron Goldman Murder Victim. He and a casual friend, Nicole Brown Simpson, were found murdered at her Brentwood condominium, just outside her front door. Ronald Goldman, a waiter at a nearby restaurant, was returning eyeglasses that she had accidentally left there at dinner that night. He is considered an accidental victim of the murder, either […]

John Updike (1932 - 2009)

Updike’s most famous work is his “Rabbit” series (the novels Rabbit, Run; Rabbit Redux; Rabbit Is Rich; Rabbit At Rest; and the novella “Rabbit Remembered”), which chronicles the life of the middle-class everyman Harry “Rabbit” Angstrom over the course of several decades, from young adulthood to death. Both Rabbit Is Rich (1982) and Rabbit At […]

Patrick McGoohan (1928 - 2009)

McGoohan was born in Astoria, Queens, New York City to Thomas McGoohan and Rose Fitzpatrick, who were living in the United States after emigrating from Ireland to seek work. He was brought up as a Roman Catholic. Shortly after he was born, McGoohan’s parents moved back to Mullaghmore, County Leitrim, Ireland, and seven years later, […]

Pat Hingle (1924 - 2009)

Hingle was born Martin Patterson Hingle in Miami, Florida (some sources say Denver, Colorado), the son of Marvin Louise (née Patterson), a schoolteacher and musician, and Clarence Martin Hingle, a building contractor. Hingle enlisted in the U.S. Navy in December 1941, dropping out of the University of Texas. He served on the destroyer USS Marshall […]

Joseph L. Trueblood (1956 - 2003)

Joseph L. Trueblood (December 26, 1956 – June 13, 2003), a 46-year-old white male, was executed by lethal injection at the Indiana State Prison in Michigan City, Indiana on June 13, 2003. Trueblood was found guilty of the 1988 murder of Susan Bowsher, a 23-year-old white female, Ashlyn Bowsher, a 2½-year-old white female, and William […]

Carlos DeLuna (1962 - 1989)

DeLuna was charged with killing a gas station attendant, 24-year-old Wanda Lopez, on the evening of February 4, 1983, in Corpus Christi, Texas. The young woman died from multiple stab wounds, apparently from a buck knife. Lopez was killed while on the phone with the police, having just called 911 to report a suspicious person […]

Charles Brooks Jr. (1942 - 1982)

Brooks was raised in a wealthy family in Fort Worth, Texas. He attended I.M. Terrell High School (named after its first principal Isaiah Milligan Terrell), where he played football.  He had a prior criminal history, having served time at the United States Penitentiary, Leavenworth for illegal possession of firearms.  On December 14, 1976, Brooks went […]

Fanny Brice (1891 - 1951)

Fanny Brice She was really Fannie Borach, daughter of a saloon-keeper on Forsythe Street in the crowded Lower East Side, where she was born in 1892. Her first appearance on any stage took place when she was 13 at Keeney’s Theatre in Brooklyn, where she won an amateur night contest singing, “When You Know You’re […]

Walter Brennan (1894 - 1974)

Walter Brennan In many ways the most successful and familiar character actor of American sound films and the only actor to date to win three Oscars for Best Supporting Actor, Walter Brennan attended college in Cambridge, Massachusetts, studying engineering. While in school he became interested in acting and performed in school plays. He worked some […]

Charles Boyer (1899 - 1978)

Charles Boyer Born in Figeac, France, he was a distinguished performer who appeared in more than 80 films between 1920 and 1976. He began his career in the theater and made his big screen debut in was “L’homme du large” (1920). Relocating to America, he became a US citizen in 1942 and performed on Broadway, […]

Stephen Boyd (1931 - 1977)

Stephen Boyd Stephen Boyd was born William Millar on July 4, 1931, at Glengormley, Northern Ireland, one of nine children of Martha Boyd and Canadian truck driver James Alexander Millar, who worked for Fleming’s on Tomb Street in Belfast. He attended Glengormley & Ballyrobert primary school and then moved on to Ballyclare High School and […]

Ernest Borgnine (1917 - 2012)

Ernest Borgnine Film and television actor Ernest Borgnine, who won an Academy Award for his portrayal of a lovelorn butcher in 1955’s “Marty,” has died at age 95, his manager said Sunday. The thick-set, gap-toothed Borgnine built a reputation for playing heavies in early films like “From Here to Eternity” and “Bad Day at Black […]

Richard Boone (1917 - 1981)

Richard Boone  Richard Boone, the actor best known for his role as the hired gun Paladin in the ”Have Gun Will Travel” television series, is dead at the age of 63. A spokesman at Craig Funeral Home in St. Augustine said today that Mr. Boone’s body was to be cremated and a private service held. […]

Ray Bolger (1904 - 1987)

Ray Bolger Ray Bolger, the loose-limbed song-and-dance man who became known to millions as the Scarecrow in ”The Wizard of Oz,” died yesterday of cancer in Los Angeles. He had his 83d birthday last Saturday and lived in Beverly Hills. Among his many roles on stage, screen and television in a career than spanned six […]

Mel Blanc (1908 - 1989)

Mel Blanc Mel Blanc, the voice of Porky Pig, Bugs Bunny, Barney Rubble, Daffy Duck and countless other animated vertebrates, died Monday afternoon at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center. He was 81 and had been hospitalized since May 19 suffering from heart disease and related medical problems, said hospital spokesman Ron Wise. With Blanc when he died […]

Bill Bixby (1934 - 1993)

Bill Bixby whose long career in television included starring roles in three popular series, died on Sunday at his home in Century City. He was 59. The cause was prostate cancer, said Pamela Golum, a spokeswoman for the NBC-TV show “Blossom.” Mr. Bixby, the show’s director, was on the job until last week. In the […]

Joey Bishop (1918 - 2007)

Joey Bishop Bishop was the least flamboyant of the Rat Pack and no match for the others — Dean Martin, Peter Lawford, Sammy Davis Jr. and Sinatra himself — in their dedication to hell raising. But he shared in their phenomenal success in the early 1960s, when they headlined music and comedy shows at the […]

Fred Berry (1951 - 2003)

Fred Berry The African-American actor Fred Berry, who has died aged 52, found fame as the high school student Rerun Stubbs in the popular, 1970s US television show, What’s Happening!! He was well into his 20s when he joined the sitcom, and continued to play the role well into his 30s. The show began in […]

Milton Berle (1908 - 2002)

Milton Berle Comedy legend Milton Berle was born as Milton Berlinger in New York City on July 12, 1908. He started his career by impersonating Charlie Chaplin at as a young boy. After winning a Chaplin look-alike contest at the age of 5, he began landing film roles. Berle appeared in numerous silent films, including […]

Edgar Bergen (1903 - 1978)

Edgar Bergen American ventriloquist and radio comedian whose career in vaudeville, radio, and motion pictures spanned almost 60 years. Bergen was best known as the foil of his ventriloquist’s dummy Charlie McCarthy. The Edgar Bergen-Charlie McCarthy Show was a permanent fixture on American network radio from 1937 until 1957. Other characters created by Bergen, such […]

Jack Benny (1894 - 1974)

Jack Benny Actor, Producer, Comedian. He is best remembered for his comically inept violin playing (he was actually a very good violin player), his carefully constructed image as a penny-pincher, and for never being older than 39. His most famous joke was as a man confronted by a robber who demands “Your money or your […]

William Bendix (1906 - 1964)

William Bendix William Bendix made a career out of playing lovable big lugs, although he also occasionally got to play sinister and tragic roles with equal success. He was born in New York City, in a cold-water flat at Third Avenue and 45th Street in 1906, the only son of Oscar Bendix and the former […]

Wallace Beery (1885 - 1949)

Wallace Beery In 1902, 16-year-old Wallace Beery joined the Ringling Brothers Circus as an assistant to the elephant trainer. He left two years later after a leopard clawed his arm. Beery next went to New York, where he found work in musical variety shows. He became a leading man in musicals and appeared on Broadway […]

Frank Baum (1856 - 1919)

Frank Baum Born in New York in 1856, Frank Baum had his first best-selling children’s book with 1899’s Father Goose, His Book. The following year, Baum scored an even bigger hit with The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, and went on to write 13 more Oz books before his death in 1919. His stories have formed […]