Category: Profiles

Born June 4, 1907, the middle of seven children to a successful Connecticut lawyer and his wife, Rosalind Russell was named after the S.S. Rosalind, a ship on which her parents had a memorable cruise and not the Shakespeare character as is commonly thought. She studied at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts in Manhattan,…

Born August 17, 1943 in New York, New York, Robert De Niro Jr. is the only child of painters Virginia and Robert De Niro, Sr.  Although he has an Italian name and is, along with Al Pacino, the screen’s most prolific of actors playing Italian-American men, De Niro is only 25% Italian, his father having…

Born February 10, 1961in Omaha, Nebraska, Alexander Constantine Papadopoulos, known professionally as Alexander Payne, is the son of the owners of Omaha’s legendary Virginia Café, a popular restaurant founded by his paternal grandfather.  He is the youngest of three brothers. Payne was educated at the prestigious Brownell-Talbot Elementary School, Lewis and Clark Junior High, Creighton…

Born July 21, 1926 in Toronto, Canada, to convenience store and post office manager Percy Jewison and his wife, Dorothy, Norman Jewison displayed an aptitude for performing at an early age. After serving in the Canadian Navy during World War II, Jewison travelled to the American South where he encountered segregation, an experience that would…

Born September 28, 1950 in Schenectady, New York to Mary and Donald Sayles, a teacher and school administrator respectively, John Sayles attended Williams College with future collaborators, Gordon Clapp, Donald Strathairn, and Maggie Renzi, his longtime partner. After graduating in 1972, he moved to Boston where he worked at several blue-collar jobs while writing short…

Born August 1, 1910 in New York, New York to Yiddish comedy star, Bessie Zwerling, Walter Scharf was as much a show business baby as George M. Cohan. He started playing music at an early age, helping his uncle play the piano in theaters for silent films.  At 17, he became one of the orchestrators…

Born February 5, 1948 in Leeds, West Yorkshire, England, Tom Wilkinson was the son of urban farmers, Marjorie and Thomas Wilkinson. Economic hardships forced the family to move to Canada for five years when Wilkinson was 11.  Upon their return to England, he attended the University of Kent, graduating with a degree in English and…

Born March 23, 1914 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, Nedrick Young was an Oscar winning writer and actor who began his acting career in film and on the New York stage in 1942.  He served overseas with the U.S. Army during World War II. Young made his film debut in 1942’s Bombs Over Burma.  Other pre-1949 films…

Born January 5, 1975 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania to a mother of Italian descent and a father of Irish descent, Bradly Cooper’s mother worked for the local NBC TV station, his father was a stockbroker.  He moved to New York after graduating with top honors from Georgetown University in 1997.  Studying drama at the Actors Studio,…

With a plethora of lame Christmas movies available on TV at this time of year, it’s rare to find one that compares favorably to the classics that were produced by Hollywood of old, most of which are still available on DVD and Blu-ray. While no film with Christmas as its main theme has ever won…