Jack Albertson (1907 - 1981)

Albertson was born in Malden, Massachusetts, the son of Russian-born Jewish immigrants Flora (née Craft) and Leopold Albertson. His sister was actress Mabel Albertson. Albertson’s mother, a stock actress, supported the family by working in a shoe factory. Albertson dropped out of high school and traveled to New York City in an attempt to make […]

Hans Albers (1891 - 1960)

Hans Albers was born in Hamburg, the son of a butcher, and grew up in the district of St. Georg. He was seriously interested in acting by his late teens and took acting classes without the knowledge of his parents. In 1915 Albers was drafted to serve in the German Army in World War I, […]

Iris Adrian (1912 - 1994)

Iris Adrian Hostetter was an only child, born to Adrian Earl Hostetter and Florence (née Van Every), who wed in 1909 in Los Angeles, California. She was raised by her single mother in Los Angeles. Iris won a beauty pageant and worked with the Ziegfeld Follies before she entered films at the end of the […]

Cecily Adams (1958 - 2004)

Adams was born in Jamaica, Queens, New York, the daughter of comic actor Don Adams and singer Adelaide Efantis. She attended Beverly Hills High School and the University of California at Irvine. She acted in high school and college and in 1983 joined the Hollywood theatre company Theatre West.  Adams is well known to fans […]

Paul Newman (1925 - 2008)

Newman was born in Shaker Heights (a suburb of Cleveland). He was the son of Theresa (née Fetzer or Fetsko; Slovak: Terézia Fecková) and Arthur Sigmund Newman, who ran a profitable sporting goods store. His father was Jewish (Paul’s paternal grandparents, Simon Newman and Hannah Cohn, were immigrants from Hungary and Poland). His mother, who […]

Dennis Hopper (1936 - 2010)

Hopper was born Dennis Lee Hopper in Dodge City, Kansas on May 17, 1936, the son of Marjorie Mae (née Davis, July 12, 1917 – January 12, 2007) and James Millard Hopper (June 23, 1916 – August 7, 1982). He had Scottish ancestors. Hopper had two brothers, Marvin and David. After World War II, the […]

Eddie Acuff (1903 - 1956)

Eddie Acuff is one of those wonderful supporting actors who peopled the fascinating world of Hollywood’s A, B or Z movies. In a career spanning eighteen years he appeared in the amazing number of 251 movies and 1 TV episode! His appearances could be invisible (when deleted), hardly visible (he portrayed an endless series of […]

Dorothy Abbott (1920 - 1968)

Born in Kansas City, Missouri, Abbott appeared in many films between the 1940s and 1960s as an extra. In Las Vegas she was a showgirl at the Flamingo Hotel and was known as “the girl with the golden arm”. She also appeared in guest roles on The Ford Television Theatre, Leave It to Beaver, and […]

Angela Aames (1956 - 1988)

Angela Aames Angela Aames was born in Pierre, South Dakota. She acted in high school and attended the University of South Dakota before moving to Hollywood in 1978. She trained at the Lee Strasberg Theatre Institute and Harvey Lembeck‘s Comedy Workshop. Angela Aames’s first film role was as Little Bo Peep in the adult film Fairy Tales (1979). The same year, she played Linda “Boom-Boom” […]

Annabella (1907 - 1996)

Born Suzanne Georgette Charpentier in La Varenne Saint Hilaire, Val-de-Marne, France. Annabella’s chance to enter films came when her father entertained a film producer who gave her a small part in Napoléon in 1927. It was not until she starred in Le Million that she was acclaimed and over the following decade established herself as one of France’s most popular cinema actresses. […]

Betty Ford (1918 - 2011)

Betty Ford She was born Elizabeth Ann Bloomer in 1918 in Chicago, Illinois, the third child and only daughter of Hortense (née Neahr; July 11, 1884 – November 20, 1948) and William Stephenson Bloomer, Sr. (July 19, 1874 – July 18, 1934), who was a traveling salesman for Royal Rubber Co. She was called Betty as a child. Hortense and William married […]

Jim Henson (1936 - 1990)

Henson was born in Greenville, Mississippi, the younger of two boys. His parents were Betty Marcella (née Brown) and Paul Ransom Henson, an agronomist for the U.S. Department of Agriculture. He was raised as a Christian Scientist and spent his early childhood in Leland, Mississippi, before moving with his family to Hyattsville, Maryland, near Washington, D.C., in the late 1940s. He later remembered […]

Jane Henson (1934 - 2013)

Jane Nebel Henson Jane Nebel Henson met Jim Henson in a puppetry class at the University of Maryland and soon after became an integral creative and business partner in what would become the world famous Muppets. As a fine arts education major studying at the University of Maryland in 1954, Jane Nebel shared with Jim […]

Joe Simon (1913 - 2011)

Joe Simon was born in 1913 as Hymie Simon and raised in Rochester, New York, the son of Harry Simon, who had emigrated from Leeds, England, in 1905, and Rose, whom Harry met in the United States. Harry Simon moved to Rochester, then a clothing-manufacturing center where his younger brother, Isaac, lived and the couple had a daughter, Beatrice, in 1912. A […]

Chris Farley (1964 - 1997)

Farley was born in Madison, Wisconsin. His father, Thomas “Tom” Farley, Sr., owned an oil company, and his mother was Mary Anne (née Crosby), a housewife. He had four siblings: Tom Jr., Kevin, John, and Barbara. His cousin, Jim, is a vice president at Ford Motor Company. Farley’s family is traditionally Roman Catholic, and Farley attended numerous Catholic schools in his hometown, […]

Aaliyah (1979 - 2001)

Aaliyah Dana Haughton was born on January 16, 1979, in Brooklyn, New York. Born of African American descent, with Oneida heritage from her grandmother, she was the second and youngest child of Diane and Michael Haughton. At a young age, Aaliyah was enrolled in voice lessons by her mother. She started performing at weddings, church […]

Michael Clarke Duncan (1957 - 2012)

Duncan was born in Chicago, Illinois, and grew up in a single-parent household with his sister, Judy, and mother, Jean Duncan (a house cleaner), after his father left. He always wanted to act, but had to drop out of the Communications program at Alcorn State University to support his family when his mother became ill. Duncan’s large frame—6 feet […]

Brittany Murphy (1977 - 2009)

Brittany Anne Bertolotti was born in Atlanta, Georgia to Sharon Kathleen Murphy and Angelo Joseph Bertolotti, who divorced when she was two years old, and Murphy was raised by her mother in Edison, New Jersey. Bertolotti was so estranged from the family that he was not named as the father on the first death certificate. Prior to her enrolling at Edison High […]

Pauline Boty (1938 - 1966)

Boty was born in suburban south London in 1938 into a middle-class, Catholic family. The youngest of four children, she had three older brothers and a stern father who made her keenly aware of her position as a girl. In 1954 she won a scholarship to the Wimbledon School of Art which she attended despite her father’s disapproval (Boty’s mother, […]

Jack Kirby (1917 - 1994)

Jack Kirby was born Jacob Kurtzberg on August 28, 1917, on the Lower East Side of Manhattan in New York City, where he was raised. His parents, Rose and Benjamin Kurtzberg, were Austrian Jewish immigrants, and his father earned a living as a garment factory worker. In his youth, Kirby desired to escape his neighborhood. He liked to draw, and sought out places he could learn more about art. Essentially […]

Bill Melendez (1916 - 2008)

A native of the Mexican city of Hermosillo, Sonora, Melendez was educated in U.S. public schools in Douglas, Arizona. He was a very good student, and later attended the Chouinard Art Institute in Los Angeles (which would later become California Institute of the Arts). Following the 1941 Disney strike, Bill was hired by Leon Schlesinger to animate in Bob Clampett’s unit. After Clampett’s departure, […]

E. C. Segar (1894 - 1938)

E. C. Segar E.C. Segar was born on 8 December 1894, and raised in Chester, Illinois, a small town near the Mississippi River. The son of a handyman, his earliest work experiences included assisting his father in house painting and paper hanging. Skilled at playing drums, he also provided musical accompaniment to films and vaudeville acts in the local theater, where he was eventually given the job […]

Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn (1606 - 1669)

Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn was born on 15 July 1606 in Leiden, in the Dutch Republic, now the Netherlands. He was the ninth child born to Harmen Gerritszoon van Rijn and Neeltgen Willemsdochter van Zuytbrouck. His family was quite well-to-do; his father was a miller and his mother was a baker’s daughter. Religion is a central theme in Rembrandt’s paintings and the religiously fraught […]

Paul Cezanne (1839 - 1906)

The Cézannes lived in the town of Cesana now in West Piedmont, and the surname may be of Italian origin. Paul Cézanne was born on 19 January 1839 in Aix-en-Provence, in Provence in the South of France. On 22 February, Paul was baptized in the Église de la Madeleine, with his grandmother and uncle Louis as godparents. His father, Louis-Auguste Cézanne (28 […]

King George III (1738 - 1820)

George was born in London at Norfolk House. He was the grandson of King George II, and the son of Frederick, Prince of Wales, and Augusta of Saxe-Gotha. As Prince George was born two months premature and was thought unlikely to survive, he was baptised the same day by Thomas Secker, who was both Rector of St James’s and the Bishop of Oxford.  […]

Andrew Johnson (1808 - 1875)

Andrew Johnson With the Assassination of Lincoln, the Presidency fell upon an old-fashioned southern Jacksonian Democrat of pronounced states’ rights views. Although an honest and honorable man, Andrew Johnson was one of the most unfortunate of Presidents. Arrayed against him were the Radical Republicans in Congress, brilliantly led and ruthless in their tactics. Johnson was […]

Todd Christensen (1956 - 2013)

Christensen was born in Bellefonte, Pennsylvania, on August 3, 1956, to Ned Jay and June Christensen. His father was working on a doctorate degree at Pennsylvania State University at that time. After teaching in West Virginia, his father was offered a professorship in Eugene, Oregon, when Todd was 5 and the family relocated. Athletically, Christensen’s early desire was to continue […]

Junior Seau (1969 - 2012)

Tiaina Baul Seau Jr. was born January 19, 1969, in San Diego, California, the fifth child of Tiaina Seau, Sr., and Luisa Mauga Seau of Aunu’u, American Samoa. Tiaina Sr.’s grandfather was a village chief in Pago Pago. Tiaina Sr. worked at a rubber factory and was a school custodian, and Luisa worked at the commissary of Camp Pendleton in Southern […]

Reggie White (1961 - 2004)

White was born in Chattanooga, Tennessee. He played high school football at Howard High School under Coach Robert Pulliam, a former defensive lineman at Tennessee. During his senior year, White recorded 140 tackles (88 solo) and 10 sacks, and received All-American honors. He was rated the number one recruit in Tennessee by the Knoxville News Sentinel. White played college football […]

Walter Payton (1954 - 1999)

Payton was one of three children born to Peter and Alyne Payton in Columbia, Mississippi. His father was a factory worker who had played semi-professional baseball. Payton was an active member of the Boy Scouts, Little League, and his local church. At John J. Jefferson High School, Payton played drums in the marching band, participated in the track team and sang in the […]