Category: Profiles

Born May 27, 1898 in Peoria, Illinois, Lee Garmes came to Hollywood in 1916. His first job was as a painter’s assistant in the paint department at the old Thomas H. Ince Studios. Garmes and future director Henry Hathaway were property boys together at “Inceville” where Sunset Blvd, met the Pacific Ocean.  The New York…

Born December 14, 1915 in New York, New York, Daniel James Dailey, Jr.’s father ran a hotel for show people on Long Island.  The star struck kid made his first appearance in show business as a performer in a minstrel show in 1921 when he was just five years old.  He then moved on to…

Born November 23, 1934 in Los Angeles, California, Robert Bertram Schwartz, known professionally as Robert Towne, was the older of two sons of a clothing store owner and property developer. Raised in the L.A. suburb of San Pedro, he graduated from Pomona College in Claremont.  Seeking employment as an actor, he took acting classes from…

Born October 28, 1897 in San Bernadino, California, Edith Claire Posener became Edith Head when she married her first husband, Charles Head in 1923. The future costume designer received a Bachelor of Arts degree in letters and science with honors in French from the University of California, Berkeley (1919), and a Master of Arts degree…

Born May 2, 1960 in Dorset, England, Stephen Daldry is the son of a singer mother and bank manager father.  The family moved to Taunton, Somerset where his father died of cancer when Daldry was 14. Daldry joined a youth theatre group in Taunton where he performed for the local amateur society.  At 18, he…

Born November 22, 1967 in Kinosha, Wisconsin to a construction painter father and hairstylist mother, Mark Ruffalo was raised in Virginia Beach, Virginia, with his family which included two sisters and a brother, moving to San Diego and then Los Angeles after he finished high school. Ruffalo studied acting at the Stella Adler Conservatory and…

Born May 9, 1946 in Los Angeles, California to former Powers model Frances and ventriloquist-comedian-actor Edgar Beregn, Candice Bergen began performing on her father’s radio program at an early age and at 11 appeared with her father as a guest on Groucho Marx’s TV show, You Bet Your Life. Not a serious student, Bergen was…

Born February 11, 1936 in Lansing, Michigan, Burt Reynolds claimed that he was really born in Waycross, Georgia, that Lansing was where his parents lived when his father was drafted into the U.S. Army.  The family  moved around quite a bit after that.  After the end of World War II, they moved to Rivera, Florida…

Born April 6, 1895 in Wapakoneta, Ohio, Dudley Nichols was educated at the University of Michigan.  A star reporter and feature writer for the New York World in 1928, the year he married wife Esther Varez, he moved to Hollywood in 1929. He was under contract to Fox from 1929-1935 and RKO from 1935-1938 and…

Some longtime great actors and actresses go out in a blaze of glory with an Oscar nomination or even a win for their last great performance. Two-time Oscar winner Spencer Tracy gave four unforgettable last hurrah performances beginning with one in a film called The Last Hurrah in 1958, followed by Inherit the Wind in…