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Hermione Ferdinanda Gingold (9 December 1897 – 24 May 1987) was an English actress known for her sharp-tongued, eccentric character. Her signature drawling, deep voice was a result of nodules on her vocal cords she developed in the 1920s and early 1930s. After success as a child actress, she established a stage career spanning comedy, drama, experimental theatre, and radio broadcasting. Finding her milieu in revue, she played from the 1930s to the 1950s, co-starring several times with the English actress Hermione Baddeley. Later she played formidable elders in the film and stage musicals Gigi (1958), Bell, Book and Candle (1958), The Music Man (1962), and A Little Night Music (1977). From the early 1950s, Gingold lived and made her career mostly in the U.S. Her American stage work ranged from John Murray Anderson's Almanac (1953) to Oh Dad, Poor Dad, Mamma's Hung You in the Closet and I'm Feelin' So Sad (1963), the latter of which she played in London. She became a well-known guest on television talk shows. She made appearances in revues and toured in plays and musicals until an accident ended her performing career in 1977.
Fredric March (born Ernest Frederick McIntyre Bickel; August 31, 1897 – April 14, 1975) was an American actor, regarded as one of Hollywood's most celebrated stars of the 1930s and 1940s. As a performer he was known for his versatility. He received numerous accolades including two Academy Awards, a Golden Globe Award, and two Tony Awards as well as nominations for three BAFTA Awards and three Emmy Awards. March began his career in 1920, by working as an extra in movies filmed in New York City. He made his stage debut on Broadway in 1926 at the age of 29, and by the end of the decade, he signed a film contract with Paramount Pictures. He made seven pictures in 1929. He went on to receivetwo Academy Awards, for his performances in Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1931) and The Best Years of Our Lives (1947). His other Oscar-nominated performances were in the films The Royal Family of Broadway (1930), A Star is Born (1937), and Death of a Salesman (1951). March gained popularity after establishing himself with leading man roles in films such as Honor Among Lovers (1931), Merrily We Go to Hell (1932), Design for Living (1933), Death Takes a Holiday, The Barretts of Wimpole Street (both 1934), Les Misérables, Anna Karenina, The Dark Angel (all 1935), Nothing Sacred (1937), and I Married a Witch (1942). His later film roles include Executive Suite, The Bridges at Toko-Ri (both 1954), The Desperate Hours (1955), Inherit the Wind (1960), and Seven Days in May (1964). He made his final film appearance in The Iceman Cometh (1973). March was also known for his stage roles; he made his Broadway debut in the play The Melody Man (1926), and during his stage career he twice won the Tony Award for Best Actor in a Play, for his performances in the Ruth Gordon play Years Ago (1947) and in Eugene O'Neill's Long Day's Journey into Night (1956). He and Helen Hayes are the only actors to have won both the Academy Award and the Tony Award twice.
Dame Judith Anderson was born Frances Margaret Anderson on February 10, 1897 in Adelaide, South Australia. She began her acting career in Australia before moving to New York in 1918. There she established herself as one of the greatest theatrical actresses and was a major star on Broadway throughout the 1930s, 1940s and 1950s. Her notable stage works included the role of Lady Macbeth, which she played first in the 1920s, and gave an Emmy Award-winning television performance in Macbeth (1960). Anderson's long association with Euripides's "Medea" began with her acclaimed Tony Award-winning 1948 stage performance in the title role. She appeared in the television version of Medea (1983) in the supporting character of the Nurse.Anderson made her Hollywood film debut under director Rowland Brown in a supporting role in Blood Money (1933). Her striking, not conventionally attractive features were complemented with her powerful presence, mastery of timing and an effortless style. Anderson made a film career as a supporting character actress in several significant films including Alfred Hitchcock's Rebecca (1940), for which she was Oscar nominated for Best Supporting Actress. She worked with director Otto Preminger in Laura (1944), then with René Clair in And Then There Were None (1945). Her remarkable performance in a supporting role in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1958) fit in a stellar acting ensemble under director Richard Brooks.Anderson was awarded Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire in the 1960 Queen's New Year's Honours List for her services to the performing arts. Living in Santa Barbara in her later years, she also had a successful stint on the soap opera Santa Barbara (1984) and was nominated for a Daytime Emmy Award in 1984. In the same year, at age 87, she appeared in Star Trek III: The Search for Spock (1984) as the High Priestess, and was nominated for a Saturn Award for that role. She was awarded Companion of the Order of Australia in the 1991 Queen's Birthday Honours List for her services to the performing arts. Anderson died at age 94 of pneumonia on January 3, 1992 in Santa Barbara, California.
Walter Davis Pidgeon (September 23, 1897 – September 25, 1984) was a Canadian actor who lived most of his adult life in the United States. He starred in many motion pictures, including Mrs. Miniver, The Bad and the Beautiful, Forbidden Planet, Advise and Consent and Funny Girl.
John Joseph Haley Jr. (August 10, 1897 – June 6, 1979) was an American actor, comedian, dancer, radio host, singer, drummer and vaudevillian. He was best known for his portrayal of the Tin Man and his farmhand counterpart Hickory in the 1939 Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer film The Wizard of Oz.
Jerome Palmer Cowan (October 6, 1897 – January 24, 1972) was an American stage, film, and television actor.
Douglas Sirk (born Hans Detlef Sierck; April 26, 1897 – January 14, 1987) was a German film director best known for his work in Hollywood melodramas in the 1950s.
Rhys Williams (31 December 1897 – 28 May 1969) was a Welsh character actor in films and television, whose career spanned several decades.
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Cecil Parker (born Cecil Schwabe; 3 September 1897 – 20 April 1971) was an English actor with a distinctively husky voice, who usually played supporting roles, often characters with a supercilious demeanour, in his 91 films made between 1928 and 1969.
Paul William Gallico (July 26, 1897 – July 15, 1976) was an American novelist and short story and sports writer. Many of his works were adapted for motion pictures. He is perhaps best remembered for The Snow Goose, his most critically successful book, for the novel The Poseidon Adventure, primarily through the 1972 film adaptation, and for four novels about the beloved character of Mrs. Harris.
Frank Russell Capra (May 18, 1897 – September 3, 1991) was a Sicilian-born American film director and a creative force behind a number of films of the 1930s and 1940s, including It Happened One Night (1934), Mr. Deeds Goes to Town (1936), You Can't Take It With You (1938), Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939), Meet John Doe (1941), Arsenic and Old Lace (1944) and It's a Wonderful Life (1946). His films often deal with rags-to-riches stories wich has led film historians such as Ian Freer to consider him the "American Dream personified".
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Celia Lovsky (born Cäcilia Josefina Lvovsky, February 21, 1897 – October 12, 1979) was an Austrian-American actress. She was born in Vienna, daughter of Břetislav Lvovsky (1857–1910), a minor Czech opera composer. She studied theater, dance, and languages at the Austrian Royal Academy of Arts and Music.: 32 She is best known to fans of Star Trek as the High Priestess T'Pau, and to fans of The Twilight Zone as the aged daughter of an eternally youthful Hollywood actress.
John Laurie was a noted Scottish stage, screen, and television actor.
Russell Collins (born Russell Henry Collins; October 11, 1897 – November 14, 1965) was an American actor whose 43-year career included hundreds of performances on stage, in feature films, and on television.
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Legendary for his preening, prancing, delightfully playful villain Captain Hook on the award-winning stage (as well as TV) opposite America's musical treasure Mary Martin, beloved musical star Cyril Ritchard had a vast career that would last six decades, but "Peter Pan" would become his prime legacy. Born in Australia just before the turn of the century, he was educated at St. Aloysius College and Sydney University wherein he slyly sidestepped a parental-guided career in medicine for entertainment, participating in numerous college productions that quickly got him "hooked." He began professionally in the chorus line of The Royal Comic Opera Company and quickly progressed to juvenile leads. A subsequent pairing with the already-established theatre actress Madge Elliott in 1918 proved successful, and the musical twosome eventually married in 1935. Together they would go on to become known as "The Musical Lunts" by their acting peers performing in scores of plays and revues together. Ritchard specialized in playing slick, dandified villains in musical comedy and developed a potent reputation of being a man of many talents. Not only directing and staging Broadway's finest, he became a renown performer of various operas and led many productions as such. Shortly before his wife's death of bone cancer in 1955, Ritchard ventured into TV infamy by repeating his Tony and Donaldson award-winning portrayal of Hook in Peter Pan (1955). He continued to earn acclaim and/or honors with such classic stage productions as "Visit to a Small Planet" (Tony-nominated), "The Pleasure of His Company" (Drama League award, Tony-nominated), "The Roar of the Greasepaint...the Smell of the Crowd" (Tony-nominated), "A Midsummer Night's Dream" and "Sugar," the musical version of the classic Billy Wilder film Some Like It Hot (1959) in which Ritchard played the Joe E. Brown role. Lesser regarded when it comes to film, he performed in the early Hitchcock classic Blackmail (1929) and made his last movie with the musical Half a Sixpence (1967) with Tommy Steele. While performing as the Narrator in a stage production of "Side by Side by Sondheim" in November 1977, Ritchard suffered a heart attack and died one month later. A one-of-a-kind talent, his nefarious, narcissistic humor was a career trademark that culminated in the role of a lifetime -- one that will certainly be enjoyed by children young and old for eons to come.
Thomas Foster "Jack" Raine (18 May 1897 – 30 May 1979) was an English stage, television and film actor.
Betty Compson (March 19, 1897 – April 18, 1974) was an American actress and film producer. Most famous in silent films and early talkies, she is best known in her performances in The Docks of New York and The Barker, the latter earning a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Actress.
Thornton Niven Wilder (April 17, 1897 – December 7, 1975) was an American playwright and novelist. He won three Pulitzer Prizes for the novel The Bridge of San Luis Rey and for the plays Our Town and The Skin of Our Teeth, and a U.S. National Book Award for the novel The Eighth Day.
Dennis King (born Dennis Pratt, 2 November 1897 – 21 May 1971) was an English actor and singer.
Nils Anton Alfhild Asther (17 January 1897 – 19 October 1981) was a Swedish actor active in Hollywood from 1926 to the mid-1950s, known as "the male Greta Garbo". Between 1916 and 1963 he appeared in over seventy feature films, sixteen of which were produced in the silent era. He is mainly remembered today for two silent films – The Single Standard and Wild Orchids – he made with fellow Swede Greta Garbo, and his portrayal of the title character in the controversial pre-Code Frank Capra film The Bitter Tea of General Yen.
Charles Seel (April 29, 1897 – April 19, 1980) was an American actor. He acted in over 30 films from 1938 to 1974 and appeared in over one hundred titles for television from 1952 to 1974. He was also credited as Charles Seal and Charles F. Seel.
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Marjorie Rhodes, born Millicent Wise in Hull, Yorkshire was a British actress.
Vivienne Sonia Segal (April 19, 1897 – December 29, 1992) was an American actress and singer.
Sally Benson (née Sara Smith; September 3, 1897 – July 19, 1972) was an American writer of short stories and screenwriter. She is best known for her humorous tales of modern youth collected in Junior Miss and her semi-autobiographical stories collected in Meet Me in St. Louis.
Hope Emerson (October 29, 1897 – April 24, 1960;) was an American actress, vaudevillian, nightclub performer, and strongwoman. An imposing person physically, she weighed between 190 and 230 pounds (86 and 104 kilograms) and stood 6 feet 2 inches (188 cm) tall in her prime.
Paula Trueman (April 25, 1897 – March 23, 1994) was an American film, stage and television actress.
Walter Winchell (April 7, 1897 – February 20, 1972) was a syndicated American newspaper gossip columnist and radio news commentator. Originally a vaudeville performer, Winchell began his newspaper career as a Broadway reporter, critic and columnist for New York tabloids. He rose to national celebrity in the 1930s with Hearst newspaper chain syndication and a popular radio program. He was known for an innovative style of gossipy staccato news briefs, jokes, and Jazz Age slang. Biographer Neal Gabler claimed that his popularity and influence "turned journalism into a form of entertainment". He uncovered both hard news and embarrassing stories about famous people by exploiting his exceptionally wide circle of contacts, first in the entertainment world and the Prohibition era underworld, then in law enforcement and politics. He was known for trading gossip, sometimes in return for his silence. His outspoken style made him both feared and admired. Novels and movies were based on his wisecracking gossip columnist persona, as early as the play and film Blessed Event in 1932. As World War II approached in the 1930s, he attacked the appeasers of Nazism, then in the 1950s he aligned with Joseph McCarthy in his campaign against communists. He damaged the reputation of Josephine Baker as well as other individuals who had earned his enmity. He returned to television in 1959 as the narrator of the 1930s-set crime drama series The Untouchables. Over the years he appeared in more than two dozen films and television productions as an actor, sometimes playing himself.
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