Ronald Reagan (1911–2004) was the 40th President of the United States (1981–1989), the 33rd Governor of California (1967–1975) and prior to that an actor.
Upon his college graduation, Reagan first moved to Iowa to work as a radio broadcaster and then in 1937 to Los Angeles, California. He began a career as an actor appearing in over fifty movie productions. Some of his most notable roles are in Knute Rockne, All American and Kings Row.
Reagan served as president of the Screen Actors Guild, and later spokesman for General Electric. His start in politics occurred during his work for General Electric.
Originally a member of the Democratic Party, he switched to the Republican Party in 1962. After supporting of Barry Goldwater's presidential candidacy in 1964, he was persuaded to seek the California governorship, winning two years later and again in 1970. He was defeated in his run for the Republican presidential nomination in 1968 as well as 1976, but defeated incumbent Jimmy Carter in 1980 presidential election.
Reagan left office in 1989. In 1994, the former president disclosed that he had been diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease earlier in the year. He died ten years later at the age of 93.
Henry O'Neill (1891–1961) was an American film actor known for playing gray-haired fathers, lawyers, and similarly roles during the 1930s and 1940s.
O'Neill began his acting career on the stage, after dropping out of college to join a traveling theatre company. He served in the military in World War I, then returned to the stage.
In the early 1930s he began appearing in films, including The Big Shakedown, Santa Fe Trail, Anchors Aweigh, The Green Years, and The Reckless Moment. His last film was The Wings of Eagles.
Henry O'Neill died in 1961 at the age of 69.
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Elisabeth Risdon (born Daisy Cartwright Risdon; 26 April 1887 – 20 December 1958) was an English film actress. She appeared in over 140 films between 1913 and 1952. A beauty in her youth, she usually played in society parts. In later years in films she switched to playing character parts.
Born in London, England, Risdon graduated from the Royal Academy of Arts in 1918 with high honours. She attracted the attention of George Bernard Shaw and was cast as the lead in his biggest plays. Besides her performances for Shaw, she was leading lady for actors including George Arliss, Otis Skinner, and William Faversham. She was also under contract to the Theatre Guild for many years.
In later years, she taught drama to patients at a veterans administration hospital near her Brentwood home. She was married to the prolific silent film director George Loane Tucker who left her a widow in 1921. She later married actor Brandon Evans, who died in April 1958. She was the great-aunt of actress Wendy Barrie-Wilson.
Risdon died in December 1958 in St Johns Hospital in Santa Monica, California from a cerebral haemorrhage. Her body was donated to medical science.
Sig Ruman was a German-American actor known for his portrayals of pompous and often stereotypical Teutonic officials or villains. Ruman made his film debut in Lucky Boy (1929).
He became a favorite of the Marx Brothers, appearing in A Night at the Opera, A Day at the Races, and A Night in Casablanca. His German accent and large stature kept him busy during World War II, playing sinister Nazi characters in a series of wartime thrillers.
During this period, he also appeared in several films by director Ernst Lubitsch including Ninotchka and To Be or Not to Be. Ruman continued playing over-the-top German characters later in his career for Billy Wilder in The Emperor Waltz, Stalag 17, and The Fortune Cookie.
Susan Hayward (June 30, 1917 – March 14, 1975) was an American actress.
After working as a fashion model in New York, Hayward travelled to Hollywood in 1937 when open auditions were held for the leading role in Gone With the Wind (1939). Although she was not selected, she secured a film contract, and played several small supporting roles over the next few years. By the late 1940s the quality of her film roles had improved, and she achieved recognition for her dramatic abilities with the first of five Academy Award nominations for Best Actress for her performance as an alcoholic in Smash-Up, the Story of a Woman (1947). Her career continued successfully through the 1950s and she won the Academy Award for Best Actress for her portrayal of death row inmate Barbara Graham in I Want to Live! (1958).
By this time, Hayward was married and living in Georgia and her film appearances became infrequent, although she continued acting in film and television until 1972. She died in 1975 following a long battle with brain cancer.
Description above from the Wikipedia article Susan Hayward, licensed under CC-BY-SA, full list of contributors on Wikipedia.
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Joseph Crehan (July 15, 1883 – April 15, 1966) was an American film actor. He appeared in more than 300 films between 1916 and 1965, and notably played Ulysses S. Grant nine times between 1939 and 1958, most memorably in Union Pacific and They Died With Their Boots On. He was born in Baltimore, Maryland and died in Hollywood, California from a stroke.
Crehan often played alongside Charles C. Wilson with whom he is sometimes confused.
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Wade Boteler (October 3, 1888 – May 7, 1943) was an American film actor. He appeared in more than 430 films between 1919 and 1943. He was born in Santa Ana, California, and died in Hollywood, California from a heart attack.
On Broadway, Boteler appeared in the play The Silent Voice (1914).
Nat Carr (born Natan Krechevsky; August 12, 1886 – July 6, 1944) was an American character actor of the silent and early talking picture eras. During his eighteen-year career, Carr appeared in over 100 films, most of the features.
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Glen Cavender (September 19, 1883 – February 9, 1962) was an American film actor. He appeared in 259 films between 1914 and 1949.
The Spanish–American War soldier was born in Tucson, Arizona, and died in Hollywood, California. He started his acting career in vaudeville shows. Cavender belonged to the original Keystone Cops and was a regular in numerous Mack Sennett comedies. He also worked as a director for three Mack Sennett films between 1914 and 1916. During the 1920s, Cavender worked for the film studios Educational and Christie and appeared in Buster Keaton's film classic The General (1926) as the antagonistic Union Captain Anderson. The advance of sound film in the late 1920s damaged his career and, formerly a well-known actor, Cavender only played minor roles until his retirement in 1949.
Lane Chandler (1899–1972) was an American actor specializing in Westerns.
In the early 1920s he moved to Los Angeles, California, and started working as an auto mechanic. His real-life experiences growing up on a horse ranch landed him bit parts in westerns from 1925, for Paramount Pictures. Studio executives suggested changing his name to Lane Chandler, and as such he began achieving leading roles, the first being The Legion of the Condemned.
As a silent film star Chandler performed well, but when talkies arrived he was cast more in supporting roles, as in The Great Mike of 1944. He starred in a few low-budget westerns in the 1930s, but was more often cast as the leading man's partner, or saddle pal, or a sheriff or army officer. With the advent of television Chandler began making appearance on numerous series, often in Westerns such as The Lone Ranger, The Adventures of Wild Bill Hickok, Lawman, Have Gun – Will Travel, Rawhide, Maverick, Cheyenne, and Gunsmoke. He continued acting on TV and in films through 1966.
He died in Los Angeles of heart disease in 1972, aged 73.
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Esther Dale (November 10, 1885 – July 23, 1961) was an American actress, best known perhaps for her role as Aunt Genevieve in the 1935 Shirley Temple vehicle, Curly Top.
On the stage, Dale starred in Carrie Nation on Broadway in 1933. Her other Broadway credits include Harvest of Years (1947), And Be My Love (1944), and Another Language (1932).
Dale's first film was Crime Without Passion (1934) in an uncredited role. She was a familiar face in films of the 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s, frequently playing stern, authoritarian characters such as prison matrons and head nurses, although she was equally adept at playing grande dames and ladies of the aristocracy.
Dale played many roles in television over the years. In the 1958-1959 season of The Donna Reed Show, Dale played a job-seeking housekeeper who is frightened from the Stone home by Jeff Stone's pet mouse, and she appeared in the 1957 Maverick episode "According to Hoyle" opposite James Garner.
Sol Gorss was born on March 22, 1908 in Cincinnati, Ohio, USA. He is known for his work on "Climax! (1954)", "Flowing Gold (1940)" and "China Girl (1942)". He died on September 10, 1966 in Los Angeles, California, USA.
John Rummel Hamilton was an American actor, who played in many movies and television programs. He is probably best remembered for his role as the blustery newspaper editor Perry White for the 1950s television program “Adventures of Superman.”
Stuart Holmes (born Joseph Liebchen; March 10, 1884 – December 29, 1971) was an American actor and sculptor whose career spanned seven decades. He appeared in almost 450 films between 1909 and 1964, sometimes credited as Stewart Holmes.
Holmes's film career began in 1911 and ended with The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962).
As a sculptor, Holmes created work for at least three California United States post offices — in Oceanside (1936), Claremont (1937), and Bell (1937).
For 20 years, Holmes performed in vaudeville and on stage, with the latter often being in Shakespeare's plays. His work in the theater included a stint in Germany.
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Clara Horton (July 29, 1904 – December 4, 1976) was an
American actress of the silent era. She appeared in 88 films between 1912 and
1942. She is buried in Rose Hills Memorial Park.
American actor who achieved some success as a child and as a young adult, especially in B-Westerns and in television. The son of a Texas newspaper editor, Jones was a prodigious horseman from infancy, billed at the age of four as the World's Youngest Trick Rider and Trick Roper. At the age of six, he was hired to perform riding and lariat tricks in the rodeo owned by western star Hoot Gibson. Gibson convinced young Jones and his parents that there was a place for him in Hollywood, and the boy and his mother went west. Gibson arranged for some small parts for the boy, whose good looks, energy, and pleasant voice quickly landed him more and bigger parts, both in low-budget Westerns and in more substantial productions. In 1940, he had one of his most prominent (although invisible) roles, as the voice of Pinocchio (1940) in Walt Disney's animated film of the same name. Jones attended Hollywood High School and, at 15, took over the role of Henry Aldrich on the hit radio show "The Aldrich Family." He learned carpentry and augmented his income with jobs in that field. He served in the Army in Alaska during the final months of World War II. Gene Autry, who before the war had cast Jones in several Westerns, put him back to work in films and particularly in television, on programs produced by Autry's company. Now billed as Dick Jones, the handsome young man starred as Dick West, sidekick to the Western hero known as The Range Rider (1951), in a TV series that ran for 76 episodes in 1951 (and for decades in syndication). Then Autry gave Jones his own series, Buffalo Bill, Jr. (1955), which ran for 40 episodes. Jones continued working in films throughout the 1950s, then retired and entered the business world.
Date of Death: 7 July 2014, Northridge, Los Angeles, California
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Edward Keane (May 28, 1884 – October 12, 1959) was an American film actor. He appeared in more than 300 films between 1921 and 1955.
Carole Landis (born Frances Lillian Mary Ridste; January 1, 1919 – July 5, 1948) was an American actress and singer. She worked as a contract player for Twentieth Century-Fox in the 1940s. Her breakout role was as the female lead in the 1940 film One Million B.C. from United Artists. She was known as "The Ping Girl" and "The Chest" because of her curvy figure.
Landis was reportedly crushed when actor Rex Harrison refused to divorce his wife for her. Unable to cope any longer, on July 5, 1948, she died by suicide in her Pacific Palisades home by taking an overdose of Seconal.
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Vera Lewis (June 10, 1873 – February 8, 1956) was an American film and stage actress, beginning in the silent film era. She appeared in 183 films between 1915 and 1947. She was married to actor Ralph Lewis.
She was born in Manhattan, where she began acting in stage productions. Her film career started in 1915 with the film Hypocrites, which starred Myrtle Stedman and Courtenay Foote. From 1915 to 1929 she appeared in 63 silent films, including the film classic Intolerance (1916) where she played the "old maid" Miss Jenkins.
Unlike many silent film stars, she made a smooth transition to "talking films", starting with her 1930 appearance in Wide Open, starring Patsy Ruth Miller and Edward Everett Horton. Though never what is referred to as a "premier star", she appeared in 58 films during the 1930s, and another 60 during the 1940s. She retired after 1947, and resided at the Motion Picture Country House in Woodland Hills, California at the time of her death on February 8, 1956.
Jack Mower (born Benjamin Allen Mower) was an American screen and television actor. He appeared in hundreds of films between 1914 and 1964. Mower also, during the mid 1920s, produced seven silent films.
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Emory Parnell (December 29, 1892 – June 22, 1979) was an American vaudeville performer and actor who appeared in over 250 films in his 36-year career. He was nicknamed "The Big Swede" and was sometimes credited as "Emery" or "Parnel".
Seeking better opportunities in Hollywood, Parnell and his wife moved to Los Angeles, California, where, helped by his red-faced Irish look of frustration, he immediately began to appear in films in a variety of role, such as policemen, doormen, landlords, and small town businessmen. One of his first films was Doctor Rhythm (1938).
Although his appearances were often in "B" films, such as the Ma and Pa Kettle series, he also made credible showings in "A" films as well. One notable part was as a Paramount studio executive who sang about avoiding libel suits to open 1941's Louisiana Purchase. Parnell was also part of writer-director Preston Sturges' unofficial "stock company" of character actors in the 1940s, appearing in five of Sturges' films, including The Miracle of Morgan's Creek, where he played the crooked banker, "Mr. Tuerck", the chief antagonist of William Demarest's "Constable Kockenlocker". He also made a memorable appearance as grumpy socialite Ajax Bullion in the Three Stooges short subject All the World's a Stooge.
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Ralph Sanford (May 21, 1899 – June 20, 1963) was an American film actor. He appeared in over 200 films between 1930 and 1960, mostly bit parts or supporting roles. Sanford frequently appeared in Westerns and often portrayed "tough guys". He was born in Springfield, Massachusetts, and died in Los Angeles, California.
Cliff Saum was born on December 18, 1882 in Columbus, Ohio, USA. He was an actor and assistant director, known for A Bum Mistake (1914), The Volunteer Fireman (1915) and The $5,000,000 Counterfeiting Plot (1914). He died on March 5, 1943 in Glendale, California, USA.
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Pierre Frank Watkin (December 29, 1889 – February 3, 1960) was an American character actor in many films, serials, and television series from the 1930s through the 1950s, especially westerns. He is perhaps best remembered for being the father of Eleanor Twitchell, the lady who captures Lou Gehrig's heart in Pride of the Yankees (1942)
Watkin was born in Sioux City, Iowa. In the 1920s, he had his own theatrical troupe, the Pierre Watkin Players. In 1927, the group moved its headquarters from Sioux Falls to Lincoln, Nebraska.
Watkin portrayed Perry White in both of the Superman serials of the late 1940s, which starred Kirk Alyn as the title character and Noel Neill as Lois Lane.
Watkin played a few different characters in the television series Adventures of Superman, in which John Hamilton played Perry White. He was set to reprise his role as the editor of The Daily Planet in a revival of the series in 1959, as Hamilton had died in the interim since the cancellation of the original series. However, series star George Reeves also died in the summer of 1959, and those plans ended. Watkin himself died six months later.
He also cast in 1955 in the episode "Joey and the Gypsies" of the NBC children's western series Fury. Watkin guest starred in the CBS western series Brave Eagle. He was cast twice each on the ABC/Warner Brothers series, Cheyenne (as Harvey Sinclair in "The Law Man") and Annie Oakley (as the Reverend Mills in the 1956 episode "The Reckless Press"). In 1958, Watkin portrayed Dr. Breen of Samaritan Hospital in the episode "San Francisco Story" of Rex Allen's syndicated western series, Frontier Doctor.
During the first season of CBS's Perry Mason from 1957 to 1958, Watkin appeared in three episodes as Judge Keetley. He was also cast during the 1950s on The Range Rider, Tales of the Texas Rangers, in three episodes of the western aviation adventure series Sky King, and five times on The Jack Benny Program.
Watkin played the part of Colonel Duncan in the 1958 episode "Decoy" of the ABC/Warner Brothers western series Colt .45.