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People: Famous People born in 1902

People in chronological context: 1902 (MCMII) was a common year starting on Wednesday of the Gregorian calendar and a common year starting on Tuesday of the Julian calendar, the 1902nd year of the Common Era (CE) and Anno Domini (AD) designations, the 902nd year of the 2nd millennium, the 2nd year of the 20th century, and the 3rd year of the 1900s decade. As of the start of 1902, the Gregorian calendar was 13 days ahead of the Julian calendar, which remained in localized use until 1923. ()

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1,182 people found (page 1/40):

Elsa Lanchester(† 84)

Actress | Lewisham, London, England (GB)

Elsa Sullivan Lanchester (28 October 1902 – 26 December 1986) was a British actress with a long career in theatre, film and television. Lanchester studied dance as a child and after the First World War began performing in theatre and cabaret, where she established her career over the following decade. She met the actor Charles Laughton in 1927, and they were married two years later. She began playing small roles in British films, including the role of Anne of Cleves with Laughton in The Private Life of Henry VIII (1933). Her success in American films resulted in the couple moving to Hollywood, where Lanchester played small film roles. Her role as the title character in Bride of Frankenstein (1935) brought her recognition. She played the lead in Passport to Destiny (1944) and supporting roles through the 1940s and 1950s. She was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for Come to the Stable (1949) and Witness for the Prosecution (1957), the last of twelve films in which she appeared with Laughton. Following Laughton's death in 1962, Lanchester resumed her career with appearances in such Disney films as Mary Poppins (1964), That Darn Cat! (1965) and Blackbeard's Ghost (1968). The horror film Willard (1971) was highly successful, and one of her last roles was in Murder by Death (1976).

* 10/28/1902

Leon Ames(† 91)

Actor | Portland, Indiana (US)

Leon Ames (born Harry Leon Wycoff; January 20, 1902 – October 12, 1993) was an American film and television actor. He is best remembered for playing father figures in such films as Meet Me in St. Louis (1944) with Lucille Bremer, Margaret O'Brien and Judy Garland as his daughters, Little Women (1949), On Moonlight Bay (1951) and By the Light of the Silvery Moon (1953). His best-known dramatic role may have been as District Attorney Kyle Sackett in the crime film The Postman Always Rings Twice (1946).

* 01/20/1902

Eduard Franz(† 80)

Actor | Milwaukee, Wisconsin (US)

Eduard Franz Schmidt (October 31, 1902 – February 10, 1983) was an American actor of theatre, film and television. Franz portrayed King Ahab in the 1953 biblical low-budget film Sins of Jezebel, Jethro in Cecil B. DeMille's The Ten Commandments (1956), and Jehoam in Henry Koster's The Story of Ruth (1960).

* 10/31/1902

Ralph Richardson(† 80)

Actor | Cheltenham (GB)

Sir Ralph David Richardson (19 December 1902 – 10 October 1983) was an English actor who, with John Gielgud and Laurence Olivier, was one of the trinity of male actors who dominated the British stage for much of the 20th century. He worked in films throughout most of his career, and played more than sixty cinema roles. From an artistic but not theatrical background, Richardson had no thought of a stage career until a production of Hamlet in Brighton inspired him to become an actor. He learned his craft in the 1920s with a touring company and later the Birmingham Repertory Theatre. In 1931 he joined the Old Vic, playing mostly Shakespearean roles. He led the company the following season, succeeding Gielgud, who had taught him much about stage technique. After he left the company, a series of leading roles took him to stardom in the West End and on Broadway. In the 1940s, together with Olivier and John Burrell, Richardson was the co-director of the Old Vic company. There, his most celebrated roles included Peer Gynt and Falstaff. He and Olivier led the company to Europe and Broadway in 1945 and 1946, before their success provoked resentment among the governing board of the Old Vic, leading to their dismissal from the company in 1947. In the 1950s, in the West End and occasionally on tour, Richardson played in modern and classic works including The Heiress, Home at Seven, and Three Sisters. He continued on stage and in films until shortly before his sudden death at the age of eighty. He was celebrated in later years for his work with Peter Hall's National Theatre and his frequent stage partnership with Gielgud. He was not known for his portrayal of the great tragic roles in the classics, preferring character parts in old and new plays. Richardson's film career began as an extra in 1931. He was soon cast in leading roles in British and American films including Things to Come (1936), The Fallen Idol (1948), Long Day's Journey into Night (1962) and Doctor Zhivago (1965). He received nominations and awards in the UK, Europe and the US for his stage and screen work from 1948 until his death. Richardson was twice nominated for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor, first for The Heiress (1949) and again (posthumously) for his final film, Greystoke: The Legend of Tarzan, Lord of the Apes (1984). Throughout his career, and increasingly in later years, Richardson was known for his eccentric behaviour on and off stage. He was often seen as detached from conventional ways of looking at the world, and his acting was regularly described as poetic or magical.

* 12/19/1902

Lloyd Nolan(† 83)

Actor | San Francisco, California (US)

Lloyd Benedict Nolan (August 11, 1902 – September 27, 1985) was an American stage, film and television actor who rose from a supporting player and B-movie lead early in his career to featured player status after creating the role of Captain Queeg in Herman Wouk's play The Caine Mutiny Court-Martial in the mid-1950s. Nolan won a Best Actor Emmy Award reprising the part in 1955 TV play based on Wouk's tale of military justice. Starting in the 1950s, Nolan worked extensively in television while appearing in major motion pictures as a character actor. As he got older, he often played doctors, including in the Oscar-nominated movie Peyton Place and in Julia, the first American TV series starring an African American woman. For playing Doctor Morton Chegley to Diahann Carroll's nurse Julia Baker, Nolan was nominated for a 1969 Emmy for Outstanding Continued Performance by an Actor in a Leading Role in a Comedy Series. His last role was in Woody Allen's Hannah and Her Sisters, which was released posthumously in 1986, the year after he died, bringing down the curtain on a career that spanned half a century. It is a measure of the respect in which he was held that his obituary in the Los Angeles Times was entitled "Lloyd Nolan, the Actor’s Actor, Dies."

* 08/11/1902

Addison Richards(† 61)

Actor | Zanesville, Ohio (US)

Addison Whittaker Richards, Jr. (October 20, 1902 – March 22, 1964) was an American actor of film and television. Richards appeared in more than three hundred films between 1933 and his death in 1964.

* 10/20/1902

Irene Ryan(† 70)

Actress | San Francisco, California (US)

Before becoming known to millions as Granny on The Beverly Hillbillies (1962), Irene Ryan was already an established vaudeville, radio and movie actress, though not as famous prior to her television stint. She accompanied Bob Hope on his famous military tours and she was known as "the gal who makes Bob Hope laugh." After being cast as Granny, she became famous overnight. When the Hillbillies ended, she co-starred in the Broadway musical 'Pippin' with Ben Vereen. Unfortunately, despite wonderful reviews from critics, Ryan took ill, was discovered to have an inoperable brain tumor and died soon after at the age of 70.

* 10/17/1902

Frances Bavier(† 86)

Actress | Manhattan, New York City (US)

Frances Elizabeth Bavier (December 14, 1902 – December 6, 1989) was an American stage and television actress. Originally from New York theatre, she worked in film and television from the 1950s until the 1970s. She is best known for her role as Aunt Bee on The Andy Griffith Show and Mayberry R.F.D. from 1960 to 1970. Aunt Bee logged more Mayberry years (ten) than any other character. She won an Emmy Award for Outstanding Supporting Comedy Actress for the role in 1967. Bavier was known for playing Amy Morgan on It's a Great Life (1954–1956).

* 12/14/1902

Ray Teal(† 74)

Actor | Grand Rapids, Michigan (US)

Ray Elgin Teal (January 12, 1902 – April 2, 1976) was an American actor. His most famous role was as Sheriff Roy Coffee on the television series Bonanza (1959–1972), which was only one of dozens of sheriffs on television and in movies that he played during his long and prolific career stretching from 1937 to 1970. He appeared in pictures such as Western Jamboree (1938) with Gene Autry, The Best Years of Our Lives (1946) with Fredric March and Myrna Loy, The Black Arrow (1948), Billy Wilder's Ace in the Hole (1951) and Judgment at Nuremberg (1961) with Spencer Tracy and Burt Lancaster.

* 01/12/1902

Victor Jory(† 79)

Actor | Dawson City, Yukon Territory (CA)

Victor Jory was a Canadian stage, film and television actor, best known for his role as Jonas Wilkerson, the brutal and opportunistic overseer, in "Gone with the Wind", and as Lamont Cranston, aka 'The Shadow', in the 1942 serial film "The Shadow".

* 11/23/1902

Trevor Bardette(† 75)

Actor | Nashville, Arkansas (US)

Trevor Bardette (born Terva Gaston Hubbard November 19, 1902 – November 28, 1977) was an American film and television actor. Among many other roles in his long and prolific career, Bardette appeared in several episodes of Adventures of Superman and as Newman Haynes Clanton, or Old Man Clanton, in 21 episodes of the ABC/Desilu western series, The Life and Legend of Wyatt Earp.

* 11/19/1902

Lillian Bronson(† 92)

Actress | Lockport, Niagara County, New York (US)

Lillian Rumsey Bronson (October 21, 1902 – August 2, 1995) was an American character actress. She performed in more than 80 films and 100 television productions.

* 10/21/1902
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Walter Slezak(† 80)

Actor | Vienna (AT)

Walter Slezak (3 May 1902 – 21 April 1983) was a portly Austrian character actor who appeared in numerous Hollywood films. Slezak often portrayed villains or thugs, most notably the German U-boat captain in Alfred Hitchcock's 1944 Lifeboat, but occasionally he got to play lighter roles, as in 1962's The Wonderful World of the Brothers Grimm. He also played a cheerfully corrupt and philosophical private detective in the 1947 film noir Born to Kill and appeared as Squire Trelawney in the 1972 version of Treasure Island.

* 05/03/1902

Margaret Hamilton(† 82)

Actress | Cleveland, Ohio (US)

Margaret Brainard Hamilton (December 9, 1902 – May 16, 1985) was an American actress and educator. She was best known for her portrayal of the Wicked Witch of the West and her Kansas counterpart Almira Gulch in the 1939 Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer film The Wizard of Oz. A former schoolteacher, she worked as a character actress in films for seven years before she was offered the role that defined her public image. In later years, Hamilton appeared in films and made frequent cameo appearances on television sitcoms and commercials. She also gained recognition for her work as an advocate of causes designed to benefit children and animals and retained a lifelong commitment to public education.

* 12/09/1902

Chill Wills(† 76)

Actor | Seagoville, Texas (US)

Theodore Childress "Chill" Wills (July 18, 1902 – December 15, 1978) was an American actor and a singer in the Avalon Boys quartet.

* 07/18/1902

Alberto Morin(† 86)

Actor | San Juan (PR)

Alberto Morin was born on December 26, 1902 in San Juan, Puerto Rico as Salvador R. López. He is known for his work onSierra torride(1970),Rio Grande(1950) andMilagro(1988). He died on April 7, 1989 in Burbank, California, USA.Was an OSS officer during World War II, and spoke seven languages fluently. He met directorJohn Fordduring that period--Ford was a naval officer who also worked with the OSS--and after the war, Ford put Morin in many of his films.

* 12/26/1902

William Wyler(† 79)

Crew | Mülhausen, Alsace, Germany [now Mulhouse, Haut-Rhin, France]

William Wyler (July 1, 1902 – July 27, 1981) was a German-born film director, producer, and screenwriter. Notable works include Ben-Hur (1959), The Best Years of Our Lives (1946), and Mrs. Miniver (1942), all which won Wyler Academy Awards for Best Director, and also won Best Picture. He earned his first Oscar nomination for directing Dodsworth in 1936, sparking a 20-year run of almost unbroken greatness.Film historian Ian Freer calls Wyler a "bona fide perfectionist," whose penchant for retakes and an attempt to hone every last nuance "became the stuff of legend." His ability to direct a string of classic literary adaptations into huge box office and critical successes made him one of Hollywood's most bankable moviemakers during the 1930s and 1940s.

* 07/01/1902

Will Geer(† 76)

Actor | Frankfort, Indiana (US)

Will Geer (born William Aughe Ghere; March 9, 1902 – April 22, 1978) was an American actor, musician, and social activist, who was active in labor organizing and other movements in New York and Southern California in the 1930s and 1940s. In California he befriended rising singer Woody Guthrie. They both lived in New York for a time in the 1940s. He was blacklisted in the 1950s by Hollywood after refusing, in testimony before Congress, to name persons who had joined the Communist Party. In his later years, Geer was best known for his role as Grandpa Zebulon "Zeb" Walton in the TV series The Waltons from 1972 until his death in 1978.

* 03/09/1902

John Houseman(† 86)

Actor | Bucharest (RO)

John Houseman (born Jacques Haussmann; September 22, 1902 – October 31, 1988) was a Romanian-born British-American actor and producer of theatre, film, and television. He became known for his highly publicized collaboration with director Orson Welles from their days in the Federal Theatre Project through to the production of Citizen Kane and his collaboration, as producer of The Blue Dahlia, with writer Raymond Chandler on the screenplay. He won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his portrayal of Professor Charles W. Kingsfield in the 1973 film The Paper Chase. He reprised the role of Kingsfield in the 1978 television series adaptation.

* 09/22/1902

Bob Okazaki(† 83)

Actor | Tokyo (JP)

- No description / details available yet. -

* 02/03/1902

Lyle Talbot(† 94)

Actor | Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania (US)

Lyle Florenz Talbot (born Lisle Henderson, also credited Lysle Talbot; February 8, 1902 – March 2, 1996) was an American stage, screen and television actor. His career in films spanned three decades, from 1931 to 1960, and he performed on a wide variety of television series from the early 1950s to the late 1980s. Among his notable roles on television was his portrayal of Ozzie Nelson's friend and neighbor Joe Randolph, a character he played for ten years on the ABC sitcom The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet. Talbot began his film career under contract with Warner Bros. during the early years of the sound era. Ultimately, he appeared in more than 175 productions with various studios, first as a young matinee idol, then as the star of many B movies, and later as a character actor. He was a founding member of the Screen Actors Guild and in 1933 served on that organization's first board of directors. His long career is recounted in the 2012 book The Entertainer: Movies, Magic and My Father's Twentieth Century by his youngest daughter Margaret Talbot, a staff writer for The New Yorker.

* 02/08/1902

Nydia Westman(† 68)

Actress | New York City, New York (US)

Nydia Eileen Westman (February 19, 1902 – May 23, 1970) was an American actress and singer of stage, screen, and television.

* 02/19/1902

Frank Jenks(† 59)

Actor | Des Moines (US)

Frank Jenks (November 4, 1902 – May 13, 1962) was an American actor and vaudevillian.

* 11/04/1902

Barton MacLane(† 66)

Actor | Columbia, South Carolina (US)

Barton MacLane graduated from Wesleyan University, where he displayed a notable aptitude for sports, in particular football and basketball. Not surprisingly, his physical prowess led to an early role in The Quarterback (1926) with Richard Dix. MacLane once commented that, as an actor, he needed to have the physical strength to tear the bad guys "from limb to limb", if necessary. Ironically, it was usually Barton himself who was destined to be at the end of a hiding (when not getting shot, instead), typically as snarling henchmen, outlaws and other assorted dubious or abrasive types throughout most of his 40-year acting career. In fact, Barton became so typecast that his name was for a time used proverbially, to generally describe a shouting, hard-nosed ruffian.After training at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts, MacLane joined a stock company in Brooklyn. In 1927 he had his first part on Broadway, a brief moment as an assistant district attorney, in the melodrama "The Trial of Mary Dugan". He then played a small featured role as a police officer in "Subway Express" (1929-30), a drama enacted in the interior of a subway car. In mid-1932 MacLane tried his hand at writing his own starring vehicle for the stage, entitled "Rendezvous". While the play closed after just 21 performances, it led to a contract with Warner Brothers.Barton had already appeared in bit roles for Paramount at their Astoria Studios, including The Marx Brothers' debut film The Cocoanuts (1929). He portrayed mobster Brad Collins in 'G' Men (1935) (with James Cagney), which set the tone for most of his future assignments. Brawny, with squinty eyes and a rasping voice, MacLane was the ideal surly tough guy, particularly suitable for westerns and the type of films noir Warner Brothers excelled at. He was often cast as cops, be they bent or honest. Some of his most representative performances include gangster Al Kruger in Bullets or Ballots (1936), which won him some of the best critical notices of his career; outlaw Jack Slade in Western Union (1941); crooked construction boss Pat McCormick, who gets beaten up by Humphrey Bogart and Tim Holt over past-due wages in The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948); hard-nosed cops Detective Dundy in The Maltese Falcon (1941) and Lt. Reece in Kiss Tomorrow Goodbye (1950). MacLane, on loan to Universal, also had a starring role in Prison Break (1938) as an innocent tuna fisherman who is framed for murder. He was prominent as a tough but sympathetic cop, foil to sleuthing girl reporter Glenda Farrell in the "Torchy Blaine" series of the mid- to late 1930s. In the 1960s Barton began to cultivate a good-guy image as Marshal Frank Caine in the NBC western series Outlaws (1960) as well as showing up in a small recurring role as Air Force Gen. Martin Peterson in I Dream of Jeannie (1965).Barton was married to the actress Charlotte Wynters, who appeared with him in six of his films. When not on the set, the couple spent time on their 2000-acre cattle ranch in Madera County, California.For his work in television, Barton has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

* 12/25/1902

Roy Barcroft(† 67)

Actor | Johnson County (US)

Roy Barcroft (born Howard Harold Ravenscroft; September 7, 1902 – November 28, 1969) was an American character actor famous for playing villains in B-Westerns and other genres. From 1937 to 1957, he appeared in more than 300 films for Republic Pictures. Film critic Leonard Maltin acclaimed Barcroft as "Republic Pictures' number one bad guy".

* 09/07/1902

Miriam Hopkins(† 69)

Actress | Savannah, Georgia (US)

Ellen Miriam Hopkins (October 18, 1902 – October 9, 1972) was an American actress known for her versatility. She signed with Paramount Pictures in 1930. She portrayed a pickpocket in Ernst Lubitsch's romantic comedy Trouble in Paradise, a bar singer Ivy in Rouben Mamoulian's Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, and the titular character in the controversial drama The Story of Temple Drake. She received a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Actress for the 1935 film Becky Sharp, becoming the first performer nominated for a color picture. She was nominated for a Golden Globe for The Heiress. She co-starred with Joel McCrea in five films. Her long-running feud with actress Bette Davis was publicized for effect. Hopkins later became a pioneer of TV drama. She was considered a distinguished hostess in Hollywood and moved in intellectual and creative circles.

* 10/18/1902

Reginald Le Borg(† 86)

Crew | Vienna (AT)

Reginald Le Borg (11 December 1902 – 25 March 1989) was an Austrian film director. He was born in Vienna, Austria with the surname Groebel and directed 68 films between 1936 and 1974. Le Borg made a series of low-budget horror films at Universal Studios in the 1940s. In 1944, he made his most expensive and also most successful film, San Diego, I Love You, featuring Buster Keaton in a supporting role. A banker in Vienna, he came to the United States as a visitor in 1928, 1929 and 1930, according to New York steamship passenger manifests. He was recorded as Harry Reginald Groebel. He emigrated permanently in 1931. In his naturalization petition in 1937, he changed his name legally from Harry Groebel to Reginald Le Borg Le Borg died in Los Angeles, California from a heart attack.

* 12/11/1902

Max Adrian(† 70)

Actor | Enniskillen (GB)

Max Adrian (born Guy Thornton Bor; 1 November 1903 – 19 January 1973) was an Irish stage, film and television actor and singer. He was a founding member of both the Royal Shakespeare Company and the National Theatre. In addition to his success as a character actor in classical drama, he was known for his work as a singer and comic actor in revue and musicals, and in one-man shows about George Bernard Shaw and Gilbert and Sullivan, and in cinema and television films, notably Ken Russell's Song of Summer as the ailing composer Delius.

* 11/01/1902

Hans Moebus(† 73)

Actor | Berlin (DE)

- No description / details available yet. -

* 09/23/1902

Anthony Eustrel(† 76)

Actor | London, England (GB)

- No description / details available yet. -

 
* 10/12/1902
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