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People: Famous People born in 1889

People in chronological context: 1889 (MDCCCLXXXIX) was a common year starting on Tuesday of the Gregorian calendar and a common year starting on Sunday of the Julian calendar, the 1889th year of the Common Era (CE) and Anno Domini (AD) designations, the 889th year of the 2nd millennium, the 89th year of the 19th century, and the 10th and last year of the 1880s decade. As of the start of 1889, the Gregorian calendar was 12 days ahead of the Julian calendar, which remained in localized use until 1923. ()

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752 people found (page 1/26):

Charlie Chaplin(† 88)

Crew | Walworth, London, England (GB)

Charles “Charlie” Chaplin (16 April 1889 – 25 December 1977) was an English comic actor, film director and composer best-known for his work during the silent film era. He used mime, slapstick and other visual comedy routines, and continued well into the era of the talkies, though his films decreased in frequency by the end of the 1920s. His most famous role was that of The Tramp, which he first played in Kid Auto Races (1914). From 1914 onwards he was writing and directing most of his films, by 1916 he was producing them, and by 1918 he was also composing the music for them. In 1919 he co-founded United Artists. In 1999, the American Film Institute ranked Chaplin the 10th greatest male screen legend of all time.

Known for: The Great Dictator, Modern Times, Limelight, City Lights
* 04/16/1889

Ray Collins(† 75)

Actor | Sacramento, California (US)

Ray Bidwell Collins (December 10, 1889 – July 11, 1965) was an American character actor in stock and Broadway theatre, radio, films, and television. With 900 stage roles to his credit, he became one of the most successful actors in the developing field of radio drama. A friend and associate of Orson Welles for many years, Collins went to Hollywood with the Mercury Theatre company and made his feature-film debut in Citizen Kane (1941), as Kane's political rival. Collins appeared in more than 75 films and had one of his best-remembered roles on television, as Los Angeles homicide detective Lieutenant Arthur Tragg in the CBS-TV series Perry Mason.

Known for: Citizen Kane, Touch of Evil, The Magnificent Ambersons, The Heiress
* 12/10/1889

Arthur Rosenberg(† 53)

Actor | Berlin (DE)

Arthur Rosenberg (19 December 1889 – 7 February 1943) was a German Marxist historian and writer.

Known for: Footloose, Being There, Cujo, Crash Landing: The Rescue of Flight 232
* 12/19/1889

Beulah Bondi(† 91)

Actress | Valparaiso, Indiana (US)

Beulah Bondi (born Beulah Bondy; May 3, 1889 - January 11, 1981) was an American stage, screen, and television actress. She was twice nominated for a Best Supporting Actress Academy Award. For a guest appearance on the television series The Waltons she won an Emmy Award.

Known for: It's a Wonderful Life, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, Make Way for Tomorrow, Penny Serenade
* 05/03/1889

Eduardo Ciannelli(† 80)

Actor | Ischia (IT)

Eduardo Ciannelli (30 August 1888 – 8 October 1969) was an Italian baritone and character actor with a long career in American films, mostly playing gangsters and criminals. He was sometimes credited as Edward Ciannelli.

Known for: Gunga Din, Foreign Correspondent, Mysterious Doctor Satan, The Spy in the Green Hat
* 08/30/1889

Claude Rains(† 77)

Actor | Clapham, London, England (GB)

Claude Rains (10 November 1889 – 30 May 1967) was an English stage and film actor whose career spanned 47 years; he later held American citizenship. He was known for many roles in Hollywood films, among them the title role in The Invisible Man (1933), a corrupt senator in Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939), and, perhaps his most famous performance, Captain Renault in Casablanca (1942).Rains was born William Claude Rains in Camberwell, London on November 10, 1889. He grew up, according to his daughter, with "a very serious cockney accent and a speech impediment". His father was British stage actor Frederick Rains, and the young Rains made his stage debut at 11 in Nell of Old Drury.His acting talents were recognised by Sir Herbert Beerbohm Tree, founder of The Royal Academy of Dramatic Art. Tree paid for the elocution lessons Rains needed in order to succeed as an actor. Later, Rains taught at the institution, teaching John Gielgud and Laurence Olivier, among others.Rains served in the First World War in the London Scottish Regiment, with fellow actors Basil Rathbone, Ronald Colman and Herbert Marshall. Rains was involved in a gas attack that left him nearly blind in one eye for the rest of his life. However, the war did aid his social advancement and, by its end, he had risen from the rank of Private to Captain.Rains began his career in the London theatre, having a success in the title role of John Drinkwater's play Ulysses S. Grant, the follow-up to the playwright's major hit Abraham Lincoln, and traveled to Broadway in the late 1920s to act in leading roles in such plays as Shaw's The Apple Cart and in the dramatizations of The Constant Nymph, and Pearl S. Buck's novel The Good Earth, as a Chinese farmer.Rains came relatively late to film acting and his first screen test was a failure, but his distinctive voice won him the title role in James Whale's The Invisible Man (1933) when someone accidentally overheard his screen test being played in the next room. Rains later credited director Michael Curtiz with teaching him the more understated requirements of film acting, or "what not to do in front of a camera".

Known for: Casablanca, The Invisible Man, Notorious, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington
* 11/10/1889

Ernest Truex(† 83)

Actor | Kansas City, Missouri (US)

Ernest Truex (September 19, 1889 – June 26, 1973) was an American actor of stage, film, and television.

Known for: His Girl Friday, Whistling in the Dark, The Twilight Zone
* 09/19/1889

Vladimir Sokoloff(† 72)

Actor | Moscow, Russian Empire [now Russia]

Vladimir Aleksandrovich Sokoloff (Russian: Влади́мир Алекса́ндрович Соколо́в; December 26, 1889 – February 15, 1962) was a Russian actor of stage and screen. After studying theatre in Moscow, he began his professional film career in Germany and France during the Silent era, before emigrating to the United States in the 1930s. He appeared in over 100 films and television series, often playing supporting characters of various nationalities and ethnicities.

Known for: The Magnificent Seven, For Whom the Bell Tolls, The Life of Emile Zola, Macao
* 12/26/1889

Felix Aylmer(† 90)

Actor | Corsham, Wiltshire, England (GB)

Sir Felix Edward Aylmer Jones, OBE (21 February 1889 – 2 September 1979) was an English stage actor who also appeared in the cinema and on television. Aylmer made appearances in films with comedians such as Will Hay and George Formby.

Known for: Hamlet, The Mummy, Knights of the Round Table, Ivanhoe
* 02/21/1889

Pierre Watkin(† 70)

Actor | Sioux City, Iowa (US)

Pierre Frank Watkin (December 29, 1887 – February 3, 1960) was an American character actor best known for playing distinguished authority figures throughout the Golden Age of Hollywood. He is best remembered for his roles of Mr. Skinner the bank president in The Bank Dick (1940); Lou Gehrig's father-in-law Mr. Twitchell in Pride of the Yankees (1942); and the first actor to portray Perry White in the Superman serials Superman (1948) and Atom Man vs. Superman (1950).

Known for: Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, Superman, Bill Cracks Down, The Story of Seabiscuit
* 12/29/1889

Clifton Webb(† 76)

Actor | Indianapolis, Indiana (US)

Webb Parmelee Hollenbeck (November 19, 1889 – October 13, 1966), known professionally as Clifton Webb, was an American actor, singer, and dancer. He worked extensively and was known for his stage appearances in the plays of Noël Coward, including Blithe Spirit, as well as appearances on Broadway in a number of successful musical revues. As a film actor, he was nominated for three Academy Awards - Best Supporting Actor for Laura (1944) and The Razor's Edge (1946), and Best Actor in a Leading Role for Sitting Pretty (1948).

Known for: Laura, The Razor's Edge, Cheaper by the Dozen, Titanic
* 11/19/1889

Harry 'Snub' Pollard(† 72)

Actor | Melbourne, Victoria (AU)

Snub Pollard (9 November 1889 – 19 January 1962) was an Australian-born vaudevillian, who became a silent film comedian in Hollywood, popular in the 1920s.Born Harold Fraser, in Melbourne, Australia on 9 November 1889, he began performing with Pollard's Lilliputian Opera Company at a young age. Like many of the actors in the popular juvenile company, he adopted Pollard as his stage name. The company ran several highly successful professional children's troupes that traveled Australia and New Zealand in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century.In 1908, Harry Pollard joined the company tour to North America. After the completion of the tour, he returned to the US. By 1915 he was regularly appearing in uncredited roles in movies, for example Charles Epting notes that Pollard can clearly be seen in Chaplin's 1915 short By the Sea. In later years, Pollard claimed Hal Roach had discovered him while he was performing on stage in Los Angeles.Pollard played supporting roles in the early films of Harold Lloyd and Bebe Daniels. The long-faced Pollard sported a Kaiser Wilhelm mustache turned upside-down; this became his trademark. Lloyd's producer, Hal Roach, gave Pollard his own starring series of one- and two-reel shorts. The most famous is 1923's It's a Gift, in which he plays an inventor of many Rube Goldberg-like contraptions, including a car that runs by magnet power.In early 1923, shortly after his second marriage, Pollard returned with his wife Elizabeth to see his relations in Australia. His visit attracted considerable attention, and he appeared again in several theatres to speak about the motion picture business. On his return to the US, he left Roach and joined the low-budget Weiss Brothers studio in 1926. There he co-starred with Marvin Loback as a poor man's version of Laurel and Hardy, copying that team's plots and gags.In later years, Pollard claimed the Great Depression wiped out his investments, and he had been unable to "adjust to the talkies." However, in the 1930s, he played small parts in talking comedies, and was featured as comic relief in "B" westerns. Pollard's silent-comedy credentials guaranteed him work in slapstick revivals. He appeared with other film veterans in Hollywood Cavalcade (1939), The Perils of Pauline (1947), and Man of a Thousand Faces (1957). He also appeared regularly as a supporting player in Columbia Pictures' two-reel comedies of the mid-1940s.Forsaking his familiar mustache in his later years, he landed much steadier work in films as a mostly uncredited bit player. He played incidental roles in scores of Hollywood features and shorts, almost always as a mousy, nondescript fellow, usually with no dialogue.Snub Pollard died of cancer on 19 January 1962, aged 72, after nearly 50 years in the movie business. His interment was at Forest Lawn Memorial Park (Hollywood Hills).For his contributions to motion pictures, Pollard has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 6415½ Hollywood Boulevard.

Known for: Rollin' Plains, Lure of the Wasteland, Utah Trail, Starlight Over Texas
* 11/09/1889
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Nicholas Soussanin(† 86)

Actor | Yalta, Taurida Governorate, Russian Empire

Nikolai Ilyich "Nicholas" Soussanin (Russian: Никола́й Ильи́ч Суса́нин; born 16 January 1889, Yalta, Taurida Governorate, Russian Empire – died 27 April 1975, New York City, New York, USA) was an actor from the Russian Empire who settled and worked in the United States. He was married to film star Olga Baclanova from 1929–1939. He had at least two children (a son born from a previous relationship before his marriage to Olga Baclanova), and a son, Nicholas Soussanin Jr., born with Baclanova in 1930. He was also the grandfather of actress Lanna Saunders.

Known for: Betrayal, The Last Command, Daughter of the Dragon, Those High Grey Walls
* 01/16/1889

Helen Wallace(† 81)

Actress | Van Nuys, California (US)

Helen Wallace was born on October 23, 1889 in Van Nuys, California, USA. She was an actress, known for Matinee Theatre (1955), The Twilight Zone (1959) and The Midnight Story (1957). She died on December 17, 1970 in New York City, New York, USA.

Known for: The Midnight Story, The Glass Web, Matinee Theater, The Twilight Zone
* 10/23/1889

Donald Foster(† 80)

Actor | Oil City (US)

Henri Donald Foster (July 31, 1889 – December 23, 1969) was an American actor who appeared in a number of television series during the 1950s and 1960s, including Perry Mason, The Addams Family, Bewitched and The Monkees. He played recurring character Herbert Johnson, the Baxters' dotty neighbor in the 1960s sitcom, Hazel. He also had bit parts in a few Hollywood films. Foster's first acting experience was on a showboat on the Mississippi River. His Broadway debut came in The Country Cousin (1917). His final Broadway performance was in The Ponder Heart (1956). On December 23, 1969, Foster died at his home in Hollywood, California. He was 80 years old.

Known for: Lord Love a Duck, The Twilight Zone, Lights Out, One Step Beyond
* 07/31/1889

Victor Fleming(† 59)

Crew | La Cañada, California (US)

Victor Fleming was an American film director, cinematographer, and producer. His most popular films were The Wizard of Oz (1939), and Gone with the Wind (1939), for which he won an Academy Award for Best Director.

Known for: Gone with the Wind, The Wizard of Oz, Captains Courageous, A Guy Named Joe
* 02/23/1889

Carl Theodor Dreyer(† 79)

Crew | Copenhagen (DK)

Carl Theodor Dreyer (Danish: [ˈkʰɑˀl ˈtsʰe̝ːotɒ ˈtʁɑjˀɐ]; 3 February 1889 – 20 March 1968), commonly known as Carl Th. Dreyer, was a Danish film director and screenwriter. Widely considered one of the greatest filmmakers of all time, his movies are noted for emotional austerity and slow, stately pacing, frequent themes of social intolerance, the inseparability of fate and death, and the power of evil in earthly life. His 1928 movie The Passion of Joan of Arc is considered to be one of the great movies of all time, renowned for its cinematography and use of close-ups. It frequently appears on Sight & Sound's lists of the great films ever made, and in 2012's poll, it was voted the ninth-best film by film critics and 37th by film directors. His other well-known films include Michael (1924), Vampyr (1932), Day of Wrath (1943), Ordet (The Word) (1955), and Gertrud (1964).

Known for: Gertrud, Vampyr, Ordet, The Passion of Joan of Arc
* 02/03/1889

Harold Vermilyea(† 68)

Actor | New York City, New York (US)

Harold Vermilyea (October 10, 1889 – January 7, 1958) was an American actor who had a long and prolific career on Broadway, performing in 32 plays over the course of his career. He made notable appearances in several films of the post-war era, particularly film noirs, and ended his career moving into television.

Known for: The Emperor Waltz, The Big Clock, Sorry, Wrong Number, I Spy
* 10/10/1889

Eddy Waller(† 88)

Actor | Chippewa Falls, Wisconsin (US)

Edward Waller (June 14, 1889 – August 20, 1977) was an American stage, film and television actor.

Known for: The Grapes of Wrath, Code of the Silver Sage, Foxfire, El Paso Stampede, Casey Jones
* 06/14/1889

Sessue Hayakawa(† 84)

Actor | Nanaura, Chiba (JP)

Kintarō Hayakawa (Japanese: 早川 金太郎, Hepburn: Hayakawa Kintarō, June 10, 1886 – November 23, 1973), known professionally as Sessue Hayakawa (早川 雪洲, Hayakawa Sesshū), was a Japanese actor and a matinée idol. He was a popular star in Hollywood during the silent film era of the 1910s and early 1920s. Hayakawa was the first actor of Asian descent to achieve stardom as a leading man in the United States and Europe. His "broodingly handsome" good looks and typecasting as a sexually dominant villain made him a heartthrob among American women during a time of racial discrimination, and he became one of the first male sex symbols of Hollywood. After withdrawing from the Japanese naval academy and attempting suicide at 18, Hayakawa attended the University of Chicago, where he studied political economics in accordance with his wealthy parents' wish that he become a banker. Upon graduating, he traveled to Los Angeles in order to board a scheduled ship back to Japan, but decided to try out acting in Little Tokyo. There, Hayakawa impressed Hollywood figures and was signed on to star in The Typhoon (1914). He made his breakthrough in The Cheat (1915), and thereafter became famous for his roles as a forbidden lover. Hayakawa was one of the highest paid stars of his time, earning $5,000 per week in 1915, and $2 million per year through his own production company from 1918 to 1921. Because of rising anti-Japanese sentiment and business difficulties, Hayakawa left Hollywood in 1922 and performed on Broadway and in Japan and Europe for many years before making his Hollywood comeback in Daughter of the Dragon (1931). Of his talkies, Hayakawa is probably best known for his role as Kuala, the pirate captain in Swiss Family Robinson (1960) and Colonel Saito in The Bridge on the River Kwai (1957), for which he earned a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor. Hayakawa starred in over 80 feature films, and three of his films (The Cheat, The Dragon Painter, and The Bridge on the River Kwai) stand in the United States National Film Registry.

Known for: The Bridge on the River Kwai, The Cheat, The Dragon Painter
* 06/10/1889

Frank M. Thomas(† 100)

Actor | Saint Joseph, Missouri (US)

Frank Marion Thomas (July 13, 1889 – November 25, 1989) was an American character actor of stage, screen and television. He and his wife, actress Mona Bruns, both lived to 100 years old. He died the day before her 90th birthday; she died 11 years later. Their son was Frankie Thomas.

Known for: Behind The Headlines, Criminal Lawyer, The Philco Television Playhouse
* 07/13/1889

W.S. Van Dyke(† 53)

Crew | San Diego, California (US)

Woodbridge Strong Van Dyke II (March 21, 1889 – February 5, 1943) was an American film director who made several successful early sound films, including Tarzan the Ape Man in 1932, The Thin Man in 1934, San Francisco in 1936, and six popular musicals with Nelson Eddy and Jeanette MacDonald. He received two Academy Award nominations for Best Director for The Thin Man and San Francisco, and directed four actors to Oscar nominations: William Powell, Spencer Tracy, Norma Shearer, and Robert Morley. Known as a reliable craftsman who made his films on schedule and under budget, he earned the name "One Take Woody" for his quick and efficient style of filming.

Known for: The Thin Man, Marie Antoinette, The Adventures of Daredevil Jack
* 03/21/1889

Erle Stanley Gardner(† 80)

Crew | Malden, Massachusetts (US)

A writer was born in the city of Malden, Massachusetts, graduated from the Palo Alto High School in 1909 and entered the Valparaiso University School of Law in Indiana; passed the examination of the state commission for the title of lawyer in 1911. In 1917 Gardner opens an attorney's office in Merced, California. A few years later, he moved to work in a sales agency, and five years later, in 1921, he opened a law firm, Sheridan, Orr, Drapo and Gardner, in Ventura, California. Gardner is gaining popularity with vivid presentations at court trials until 1933, but after the release of his first detective novel "The Case of Velvet Claws," it is decided to devote himself to the literature entirely. Gardner in 1946 founded and until the 1960s was one of the members of the committee "The Court of Last Hope," a human rights organization to review the death sentences. For a documentary about this organization, he was awarded the Edgar Poe Award of the American Association of Detective Writers in 1962 in the Grand Master nomination. Gardner also deserves to attract public attention (by publishing an article in the magazine "Life" in 1962) to the rock carvings of Lower California, some of which were later listed as UNESCO World Heritage Sites. In addition, in 1968, together with Charles Hapgood, Gardner participated in the research of the so-called Akambaro figurines later unequivocally recognized as counterfeits of the 20th century. In 1968, Gardner married his longtime secretary Agnes Bethel (1902-2002), who became the prototype of Della Street, the secretary of the main literary hero Gardner, the lawyer of Perry Mason.

Known for: The Case of the Howling Dog, Granny Get Your Gun, Perry Mason, The Court of Last Resort
* 07/17/1889

Harry Hines(† 78)

Actor

- No description / details available yet. -

Known for: One Too Many, Highway Patrol, Alfred Hitchcock Presents, Schlitz Playhouse of Stars
* 04/28/1889

Forrest Stanley(† 80)

Actor | New York City, New York (US)

Forrest Stanley (August 21, 1889 – August 27, 1969) was an American actor and screenplay writer best known for his work in silent film. He is particularly known for his role as Charles Brandon in the historical film When Knighthood Was in Flower (1922) by Robert G. Vignola and Charles Wilder in the murder mystery film The Cat and the Canary (1927) directed by Paul Leni. He also appeared in the 1912 play The Seven Sisters, opposite Laurette Taylor, directed by Oliver Morosco.

Known for: Beauty's Worth, When Knighthood Was in Flower, The Cat and the Canary, Arizona
* 08/21/1889

Clarence Muse(† 89)

Actor | Baltimore, Maryland (US)

Clarence Muse (October 14, 1889 – October 13, 1979) was an American actor, screenwriter, director, singer, and composer. He was the first African American to appear in a starring role in a film, 1929's Hearts in Dixie. He acted for 50 years, and appeared in more than 150 films. He was inducted into the Black Filmmakers Hall of Fame in 1973.

Known for: Shadow of a Doubt, Casino, The Black Stallion, Broken Strings
* 10/14/1889

Arnold Fanck(† 85)

Crew | Frankenthal (DE)

Arnold Fanck (6 March 1889 – 28 September 1974) was a German film director and pioneer of the mountain film genre. He is best known for the extraordinary alpine footage he captured in such films as The Holy Mountain (1926), The White Hell of Pitz Palu (1929), Storm over Mont Blanc (1930), The White Ecstasy (1931), and S.O.S. Eisberg (1933). Fanck was also instrumental in launching the careers of several filmmakers during the Weimar years in Germany, including Leni Riefenstahl, Luis Trenker, and cinematographers Sepp Allgeier, Richard Angst, Hans Schneeberger, and Walter Riml.

Known for: White Hell of Pitz Palu, Mountain of Destiny, The Daughter of the Samurai, Pömperly's Kampf mit dem Schneeschuh
* 03/06/1889

Robert Barrat(† 80)

Actor | New York City, New York (US)

Robert Harriot Barrat (July 10, 1889 – January 7, 1970) was an American stage, motion picture, and television character actor.

Known for: The Last of the Mohicans, Strangler of the Swamp, Go West, Captain Blood
* 07/10/1889

Martha Wentworth(† 84)

Actress | New York City, New York (US)

Verna Martha Wentworth (June 2, 1889 - March 8, 1974) was an American actress. Originally a radio actress, she became a film actress in the 1940s, starring in several Red Ryder Western films. She went on to do voice work for Walt Disney Studios in One Hundred and One Dalmatians and The Sword in the Stone, her final credited film appearance.

Known for: One Hundred and One Dalmatians, The Sword in the Stone, The Stranger, Marshal of Cripple Creek
* 06/02/1889

Franklin Pangborn(† 69)

Actor | Newark, New Jersey (US)

Franklin Pangborn (January 23, 1889 – July 20, 1958) was an American comedic character actor famous for playing small but memorable roles with comic flair. He appeared in many Preston Sturges movies as well as the W. C. Fields films International House, The Bank Dick, and Never Give a Sucker an Even Break. For his contributions to motion pictures, he received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 1500 Vine Street posthumously on February 8, 1960.

Known for: Hail the Conquering Hero, The Bank Dick, What's Cookin'?, Sullivan's Travels
* 01/23/1889
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