Terry Ramsaye (1885 - 1954)

Terry Ramsaye (2 November 1885, Tonganoxie, Kansas – 19 August 1954, Norwalk, Connecticut) was a film historian and author of A Million and One Nights: A History of the Motion Picture [Through 1925] (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1926). Terry Ramsaye started his professional career as an engineer but switched to journalism when he joined the […]

Mary Akeley (1878 - 1966)

Mary Akeley was born to Richard Watson and Sarah Jane Pittis Jobe on 29 January 1878. She grew up on her parents’ farm in Tappan, Ohio and graduated from Scio College, Ohio. After graduation she taught at a public school until 1901 when she joined Bryn Mawr College. She later transferred to Columbia University, New […]

Delia Akeley (1869 - 1970)

Delia Akeley was born in 1869, although over the years, whether due to Delia’s own misrepresentation or that of others, her birth date has been given as 1875. Mickie ran away from home in her late teens and made her way to Milwaukee, where she married Arthur Reiss, a barber, in 1889. She was just […]

Carl Akeley (1864 - 1926)

Carl Akeley was born in Clarendon, New York, and grew up on a farm, attending school for only three years. He learned taxidermy from David Bruce in Brockport, New York, and then entered an apprenticeship in taxidermy at Ward’s Natural Science Establishment in Rochester, New York. While at Ward’s Carl Akeley also helped mount P.T. […]

Eddie Adams (1933 - 2004)

Eddie Adams joined the United States Marine Corps in 1951 during the Korean War as a combat photographer. One of his assignments was to photograph the entire Demilitarized Zone from end to end immediately following the war. This took him over a month to complete. It was while covering the Vietnam War for the Associated Press […]

Sara Montiel (1928 - 2013)

Sara Montiel started in movies at 15 in her native Spain where she filmed her first movie playing an Islamic princess in the 1948 film Locura de Amor, released in the US as The Mad Queen. Later worked in Mexico, starring in a dozen films in less than five years. Hollywood came calling afterwards, and […]

Jorge Negrete (1911 - 1953)

Jorge Negrete was born and raised in the City of Guanajuato and had one brother and three sisters; Negrete also lived in San Luis Potosí. From an early age, Negrete demonstrated a great brilliance and rapidly became a prominent student in the eyes of his teachers. He spoke six languages: Spanish, German, English, French, Italian, […]

Paola Mori (1928 - 1986)

Paola Mori was born in 1928 to an Italian aristocratic family. By 1953, she had begun carving out a career for herself as a film actress, playing supporting roles in several Italian films. In 1953 Mori met Orson Welles, and soon began a romance. The following year he cast her in the female lead of his […]

Addison Richards (1902 - 1964)

A native of Zanesville, Ohio, Addison Richards was the son of Mr. and Mrs. Addison Richards. His grandfather was a mayor of Zanesville. Following his father’s death in 1942, the family moved to California. Richards was cast in many television series, including the syndicated 1950s crime drama, Sheriff of Cochise, starring John Bromfield. From 1955 to […]

Richard Martin (1917 - 1994)

Though born in Spokane, Washington, Richard Martin’s family moved to a Mexican neighbourhood in West Hollywood, California, where he learned to imitate his friends. He began in films by working as a receptionist for MGM. When a friend made a bet with his agent that the agent couldn’t get Martin an actor’s contract, Martin’s agent […]

Robert Barrat (1889 - 1970)

Robert Harriot Barrat (July 10, 1889 – January 7, 1970) was an American stage, motion picture, and television character actor. Born in New York City, Robert Barrat made his theatrical debut in a stock company in Springfield, Massachusetts. He later acted on Broadway and went into films, acting in some one-hundred and fifty films in a […]

James Seay (1914 - 1992)

James Seay (9 September 1914 in Pasadena, California – 10 October 1992 in Capistrano Beach, California) was an American character actor who often played minor supporting roles as government officials. Although it was a minor part not credited on-screen, his role in the film Miracle on 34th Street is one of his most visible because the […]

Clyde Tolson (1900 - 1975)

Clyde Tolson was born in Laredo, Missouri. He graduated from Laredo High School in 1915 and attended Cedar Rapids Business College from which he graduated in 1918. From 1919 to 1928, he was confidential secretary for three Secretaries of War: Newton D. Baker, John W. Weeks, and Dwight F. Davis. Tolson completed a Bachelor of […]

Gordie Howe (1928 - 2016)

Gordie Howe Gordie Howe, the rough-and-tumble Canadian farm boy whose blend of boundless talent and toughness made him the NHL’s quintessential star during a career that lasted into his 50s, has died. The man forever known as Mr. Hockey was 88. Son Murray Howe confirmed the death Friday, texting to The Associated Press: “Mr Hockey […]

Melvin Purvis (1903 - 1960)

Melvin Purvis was born in Timmonsville, South Carolina, to Melvin Horace Purvis, Sr. (1869–1938), a tobacco farmer and businessman, and Janie Elizabeth (née Mims, 1874–1927) as the fifth of eight siblings. Purvis was a well-educated man, and known to be a crack shot.[4] He received his law degree from the University of South Carolina School of […]

Frank James (1843 - 1915)

Frank James was born Alexander Franklin James in Kearney, Missouri, to Baptist minister Reverend Robert Sallee James and his wife Zerelda (Cole) James, who had moved from Kentucky. He was the oldest of three children. His father died in 1851 and his mother remarried Benjamin Simms in 1852. After his death she married a third […]

William Parker (1905 - 1966)

William Parker was born in Lead, South Dakota, and raised in Deadwood. His grandfather William H. Parker (1847-1908), was an American Civil War veteran who later served in Congress. The Parker family migrated to Los Angeles, California, in 1922, for better opportunities, when the city was advertised as the “white spot of America” during that […]

Kimbo Slice (1974 - 2016)

Kimbo Slice Popular mixed martial arts fighter Kevin “Kimbo Slice” Ferguson has died. He was 42. Slice was stricken at his South Florida home and taken Monday afternoon to the Northwest Medical Center in Fort Lauderdale, a spokeswoman for the Coral Springs, Fla., Police told Yahoo Sports on Monday. He later died. Sgt. Carla Kmiotek […]

Constance Motley (1921 - 2005)

Constance Motley was born on September 14, 1921, in New Haven, Connecticut, the ninth of twelve children. Her parents, Rachel Huggins and McCullough Alva Baker, were immigrants from Nevis, in the Caribbean. Her mother was a domestic worker, and her father worked as a chef for different Yale University student societies, including the secret society […]

Roy Bean (1825 - 1903)

During the Civil War, the Confederate Army invaded New Mexico. At the Battle of Glorieta Pass in March 1862, however, the Confederates lost their supply wagons and were forced to retreat to San Antonio. After taking money from his brother’s safe, Roy Bean joined the retreating army. For the remainder of the war, he ran […]

Tommy Ford (1962 - 2016)

Tommy Ford was born in Yonkers, New York, and raised in Long Beach, California. His parents worked as a school secretary and a pipe-fitter. As a child, Ford wanted to be a preacher. When he took drama lessons and started acting in high school plays, he decided to go into acting instead. After earning Associate of […]

Johnny Ringo (1850 - 1882)

Johnny Ringo There has been much false information disseminated concerning Johnny Ringo. Much of the mis-information came from writers such as Stuart Lake (Wyatt Earp: Frontier Marshal), Walter Noble Burns ( Tombstone), and William M. “Billy” Breakenridge ( Helldorado). These authors make claims of killings and of deadly accuracy with a pistol. Claims were also […]

Esther Phillips (1935 - 1984)

Esther Phillips was born Esther Mae Jones in Galveston, Texas. Her parents divorced when she was an adolescent, and she divided her time between her father, in Houston, and her mother, in the Watts section of Los Angeles. She was brought up singing in church and was reluctant to enter a talent contest at a […]

Dinah Washington (1924 - 1963)

Dinah Washington (born Ruth Lee Jones; August 29, 1924 – December 14, 1963) was an American singer and pianist, who has been cited as “the most popular black female recording artist of the ’50s”. Primarily a jazz vocalist, she performed and recorded in a wide variety of styles including blues, R&B, and traditional pop music, […]

Larry Keating (1899 - 1963)

Larry Keating was born in St. Paul, Minnesota. In the late 1930s, Keating created Professor Puzzlewit, a quiz program on KMJ radio in Fresno, California. He also was the program’s quizmaster. Keating was an announcer for NBC in the 1940s, an announcer for ABC radio’s This Is Your FBI from 1945 to 1953, and a regular on […]

Elsie Frost (1951 - 1965)

Elsie Frost had spent the afternoon at Snapethorpe School’s sailing club on Horbury Lagoon, a lake next to the Calder and Hebble canal. When Elsie and her friends left between 3:50 pm and 4:00 pm, she took a different route to the others, avoiding the canal towpath to prevent her new shoes getting muddy. She […]

Leanne Tiernan (1984 - 2000)

The murder of Leanne Tiernan was a high-profile English child abduction and murder involving a schoolgirl who was abducted less than one mile from her home on 26 November 2000 while returning from a Christmas shopping trip in Leeds, West Yorkshire, and subsequently murdered. The missing persons inquiry which followed was one of the largest […]

Anthony Walker (1987 - 2005)

Anthony Walker (21 February 1987 – 30 July 2005) was a black British student of African descent from Huyton, Merseyside, England, who was murdered with an ice axe by Michael Barton and his cousin Paul Taylor, in an unprovoked racially motivated attack. Walker was eighteen years old and was in his second year of A-levels. […]

Paul Crouch (1934 - 2014)

Paul Crouch In the mid-1970s, a vision came to Paul Crouch, but it wasn’t what a man of the cloth might have expected. A map of North America appeared on his ceiling, glowing with pencil-thin beams of light that shot in every direction. “Lord,” asked Mr. Crouch, a Pentecostal minister, “what does this mean?” God, […]

Alan Young (1919 - 2016)

Alan Young Alan Young — who answered to the name “Willburrrrrrrrrrrrr” on Mister Ed, the wacky 1960s sitcom that revolved around a talking horse — has died. He was 96. Young — who for six seasons played straight man to a golden palomino, a gelding who was named Bamboo Harvester — died Thursday of natural causes at the Motion Picture & Television Home […]