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People: Famous People born in 1904

People in chronological context: 1904 (MCMIV) was a leap year starting on Friday of the Gregorian calendar and a leap year starting on Thursday of the Julian calendar, the 1904th year of the Common Era (CE) and Anno Domini (AD) designations, the 904th year of the 2nd millennium, the 4th year of the 20th century, and the 5th year of the 1900s decade. As of the start of 1904, the Gregorian calendar was 13 days ahead of the Julian calendar, which remained in localized use until 1923. ()

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1,317 people found (page 1/44):

Johnny Weissmüller(† 79)

Actor | Freidorf, Austria-Hungary [now Timisoara, Timis County, Romania]

Johnny Weissmuller (born Johann Peter Weißmüller [ˈʋaɪ̯smʏlɐ]; June 2, 1904 – January 20, 1984) was an American Olympic swimmer, water polo player and actor. He was known for having one of the best competitive swimming records of the 20th century. He set world records alongside winning five gold medals in the Olympics. He won the 100m freestyle and the 4 × 200 m relay team event in the 1924 Summer Olympics in Paris and the 1928 Summer Olympics in Amsterdam. Weissmuller also won gold in the 400m freestyle, as well as a bronze medal in the water polo competition in Paris. Following his retirement from swimming, Weissmuller played Edgar Rice Burroughs' Tarzan in twelve feature films from 1932 to 1948; six were produced by MGM, and six additional films by RKO. Weissmuller went on to star in sixteen Jungle Jim movies over an eight year period, then filmed 26 additional half-hour episodes of the Jungle Jim TV series.

* 06/02/1904

Peter Lorre(† 59)

Actor | Rózsahegy (now Ružomberok), Austria-Hungary (now Slovakia)

Peter Lorre (German: [ˈpeːtɐ ˈlɔʁə]; born László Löwenstein, Hungarian: [ˈlaːsloː ˈløːvɛ(n)ʃtɒjn]; June 26, 1904 – March 23, 1964) was a Hungarian and American actor, active first in Europe and later in the United States. He began his stage career in Vienna, in the Austro-Hungarian Empire, before moving to Germany where he worked first on the stage, then in film in Berlin in the late 1920s and early 1930s. Lorre caused an international sensation in the Weimar Republic–era film M (1931), directed by Fritz Lang, in which he portrayed a serial killer who preys on little girls. Known for his timidly devious characters, his appearance, and his accented voice, Lorre was frequently caricaturized during and after his lifetime and the cultural legacy of his persona remains in media today. Lorre, of Jewish descent, left Germany after Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party came to power. His second English-language film, following the multiple-language version of M (1931), was Alfred Hitchcock's The Man Who Knew Too Much (1934), made in the United Kingdom. Eventually settling in Hollywood, he later became a featured player in many Hollywood crime and mystery films. In his initial American films, Mad Love and Crime and Punishment (both 1935), he continued to play murderers. He was later cast playing Mr. Moto, the Japanese detective, in a series of B-pictures. From 1941 to 1946, he mainly worked for Warner Bros. His first film at Warner was The Maltese Falcon (1941), the first of many films in which he appeared alongside actors Humphrey Bogart and Sydney Greenstreet. This was followed by Casablanca (1942), the second of the nine films in which Lorre and Greenstreet appeared together. Lorre's other films include Frank Capra's Arsenic and Old Lace (1944) and Disney's 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea (1954). Frequently typecast as a sinister foreigner, his later career was erratic. Lorre was the first actor to play a James Bond villain as Le Chiffre in a TV version of Casino Royale (1954). Some of his last roles were in horror films directed by Roger Corman. In 2017, The Daily Telegraph named him one of the best actors never to have received an Academy Award nomination.

* 06/26/1904

Milburn Stone(† 75)

Actor | Burrton, Kansas (US)

Hugh Milburn Stone (July 5, 1904 – June 12, 1980) was an American actor, best known for his role as "Doc" (Dr. Galen Adams) on the Western series Gunsmoke.

* 07/05/1904

Dick Powell(† 58)

Actor | Mountain View, Arkansas (US)

Richard Ewing "Dick" Powell (November 14, 1904 – January 2, 1963) was an American singer, actor, producer, director and studio boss.Born in Mountain View, the seat of Stone County in northern Arkansas, Powell attended the former Little Rock College in the state capital, before he started his entertainment career as a singer with the Charlie Davis Orchestra, based in the midwest. He recorded a number of records with Davis and on his own, for the Vocalion label in the late 1920s.Powell moved to Pittsburgh, where he found great local success as the Master of Ceremonies at the Enright Theater and the Stanley Theater. In April 1930, Warner Bros. bought up Brunswick Records which at that time owned Vocalion. Warner Bros. was sufficiently impressed by Powell's singing and stage presence to offer him a film contract in 1932. He made his film debut as a singing bandleader in Blessed Event. He went on to star as a boyish crooner in movie musicals such as 42nd Street, Footlight Parade, Gold Diggers of 1933, Dames, Flirtation Walk, and On the Avenue, often appearing opposite Ruby Keeler and Joan Blondell.Powell desperately wanted to expand his range but Warner Bros. wouldn't allow him to do so, although they did (mis)cast him in A Midsummer Night's Dream (1935) as Lysander. This was to be Powell's only Shakespearean role and one he did not want to play, feeling that he was completely wrong for the part. Finally, reaching his forties and knowing that his young romantic leading man days were behind him he lobbied to play the lead in Double Indemnity. He lost out to Fred MacMurray, another Hollywood nice guy. MacMurray’s success, however, fueled Powell’s resolve to pursue projects with greater range and in 1944, he was cast in the first of a series of films noir, as private detective Philip Marlowe in Murder, My Sweet, directed by Edward Dmytryk. The film was a big hit and Powell had successfully reinvented himself as a dramatic actor.The following year Dmytryk and Powell re-teamed to make Cornered, a gripping, post-WWII thriller that helped define the film noir style. He became a popular "tough guy" lead appearing in movies such as Johnny O'Clock and Cry Danger. But 1948 saw him step out of the brutish type when he starred in Pitfall, a film noir that sees a bored insurance company worker fall for an innocent but dangerous femme fatale, played by Lizabeth Scott. Even when he appeared in lighter fare such as The Reformer and the Redhead and Susan Slept Here (1954) he never sang in his later roles. The latter, his final onscreen appearance in a feature film, did include a dance number with costar Debbie Reynolds.From 1949-1953, Powell played the lead role in the National Broadcasting Company radio theater production Richard Diamond, Private Detective. His character in the 30-minute weekly was a likable private detective with a quick wit. When Richard Diamond came to television in 1957, the lead role was portrayed by David Janssen.

* 11/14/1904

Greer Garson(† 91)

Actress | London, England (GB)

Eileen Evelyn Greer Garson (29 September 1904 – 6 April 1996) was a British-American actress and singer. She was a major star at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer who became popular during the Second World War for her portrayal of strong women on the homefront; listed by the Motion Picture Herald as one of America's top-10 box office draws from 1942 to 1946. The fourth most-nominated woman for the Best Actress Oscar, Garson received seven Academy Award nominations, including a record-tying (with Bette Davis) five consecutive nominations (1941–1945) in the actress category, winning for her performance in the title role of the 1942 film Mrs. Miniver.

* 09/29/1904

Bramwell Fletcher(† 84)

Actor | Bradford, Yorkshire, England (GB)

Bramwell Fletcher was born on February 20, 1904 in Bradford, Yorkshire, England. He was an actor, known for The Mummy (1932), Random Harvest (1942) and The Scarlet Pimpernel (1934). He was married to Lael Tucker Wertenbaker, Susan Robinson, Diana Barrymore and Helen Chandler. He died on June 22, 1988 in Westmoreland, New Hampshire, USA.

* 02/20/1904

Milton Krims(† 84)

Crew

Milton Krims (1904–1988) was an American screenwriter, journalist, short-story writer, and novelist. Early in his career, Krims was a journalist with magazines in addition to writing novels and short stories. He became involved with films when Paramount bought the rights to one of his novels in the early 1930s and he went to that studio to work as a screenwriter. He went to work for Warner Bros. in the mid-1930s. While he was at Warner Bros., his contract allowed him to take leave to write for Collier's magazine, and in that way he reported on the Battle of Britain, the conference at Munich, and the Spanish Civil War. He returned to working for magazines in the 1970s, when he was film editor for Holiday and The Saturday Evening Post. Krims's first film scenario was for The Life of Stephen Foster. His first project as a TV producer was Hotel de Paree. Krims was a member of the Army Air Corps during World War II. Krims was first married to actress Jayne Meadows. In the late 1950s he married actress Shirley O'Hara. The Academia Mondiale Degli Artisti Proffessionisti in Italy awarded him an honorary doctor of literature degree. On July 11, 1988, Krims died of pneumonia at the Motion Picture Country Home and Hospital in Woodland Hills, California, at age 84.

* 02/07/1904

Fred Aldrich(† 74)

Actor | New York City, New York (US)

Fred Aldrich (December 23, 1904 – January 25, 1979) was an American character actor of both film and television. Born in New York. He would break into the film industry in 1939, appearing in two films that year in small roles: My Son Is Guilty, and the notable, Confessions of a Nazi Spy, which starred Edward G. Robinson and George Sanders. In the course of his thirty-year career he would appear in over 170 films, in small and bit roles. With the advent of television, Aldrich would work in that medium as well, making his first small screen appearance on I Love Lucy, on which he would appear multiple times over the life of the series. Over the course of his film career he would appear in such notable films as: Kitty Foyle (1940), starring Ginger Rogers and Dennis Morgan; 1945's The Picture of Dorian Gray, starring George Sanders; Tycoon (1947), starring John Wayne and Laraine Day; A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court, with Bing Crosby and Rhonda Fleming; Young Man with a Horn, starring Kirk Douglas, Lauren Bacall, and Doris Day; the Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn vehicle, Pat and Mike (1952); again with Paul Newman in 1956's Somebody Up There Likes Me; The Last Angry Man, starring Paul Muni; with Rock Hudson and Doris Day in Lover Come Back (1961); the spy spoof, Our Man Flint (1966), starring James Coburn; and 1967's A Big Hand for the Little Lady, starring Henry Fonda, Joanne Woodward, and Jason Robards. Aldrich made an appearance to the 1956 film The Conqueror, which starred John Wayne and Susan Hayward. His television credits include appearances on such shows as The Rifleman, Have Gun - Will Travel, Bat Masterson, The Untouchables, Gunsmoke, Rawhide, and Perry Mason. Aldrich died on January 25, 1979, in Los Angeles, California, at the age of 74.

* 12/23/1904

Anthony Bushell(† 92)

Actor | Westerham, Kent, England (GB)

Anthony Arnatt Bushell was an English film actor and director, who appeared in 56 films between 1929 and 1961. He played Colonel Breen in the BBC serial Quatermass and the Pit (1958–59), and also appeared in and directed various British TV series such as Danger Man.

* 05/19/1904

Ralph Bellamy(† 87)

Actor | Chicago, Illinois (US)

Ralph Rexford Bellamy (June 17, 1904 – November 29, 1991) was an American actor whose career spanned 65 years on stage, film, and television. During his career, he played leading roles as well as supporting roles, garnering acclaim and awards, including a Tony Award for Best Actor in a Play for Sunrise at Campobello as well as Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor nomination for The Awful Truth (1937). He gained notoriety for his roles in Boy Meets Girl (1938), His Girl Friday (1940), Flight Angels (1940), The Wolf Man (1941), and Sunrise at Campobello (1960). He is also known for his later roles in Rosemary's Baby (1968), Oh, God! (1977), Trading Places (1983), and Pretty Woman (1990).

* 06/17/1904

Jay Novello(† 78)

Actor | Chicago, Illinois (US)

Jay Novello (born Michael Romano, August 22, 1904 – September 2, 1982) was an American radio, film, and television character actor.

* 08/22/1904

Rodd Redwing(† 66)

Actor | New York City / NYC (US)

Roderic Redwing (born Webb Richardson; August 24, 1904 – May 29, 1971) was an American trickshooter, stunt performer, and actor known for his work in Western films. He was known as a top gun, knife, tomahawk, whip, and drill instructor in the Golden Age of Hollywood. Though he presented himself as Chickasaw Native American, he was actually African American without any known Indigenous ancestry, a fact not widely revealed until after his death.

* 08/24/1904
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Ballard Berkeley(† 83)

Actor | Margate, Kent, England (GB)

Ballard Berkeley made his professional stage debut in 1928, and performed for many years in London's West End and in New York theatres. He is best remembered as Major Gowen in the British television series "Fawlty Towers" (1975).

* 08/06/1904

Robert Livingston(† 83)

Actor | Quincy, Illinois (US)

Robert Edward Randall (December 9, 1904 – March 7, 1988) was an American film actor known under his stage name, Robert Livingston. He appeared in 136 films between 1921 and 1975. He was one of the original Three Mesquiteers. He also played The Lone Ranger and Zorro.

* 12/09/1904

Jonathan Hole(† 93)

Actor | Eldora (US)

Jonathan Hole (August 13, 1904 – February 11, 1998) was an American actor whose entertainment career covered five genres over 65 years. From his early days on the vaudeville stage and in legitimate theater, through radio, television and feature-length films that took his career up to the 1990s, Hole created a variety of characters in hundreds of roles.

* 08/13/1904

Glenda Farrell(† 66)

Actress | Enid, Oklahoma (US)

Glenda Farrell (June 30, 1904 – May 1, 1971) was an American actress. Farrell personified the smart and sassy, wisecracking blonde of the Classic Hollywood films. Farrell's career spanned more than 50 years, appearing in numerous Broadway plays, films and television series. She won an Emmy Award in 1963 for Outstanding Supporting Actress for her performance as Martha Morrison in the medical drama television series Ben Casey. Farrell began acting on stage as a child and continued with various theatre companies and on Broadway before signing with Warner Bros. A signature 1930s Warner Bros. star, Farrell appeared in films such as Little Caesar (1931), I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang (1932), Mystery of the Wax Museum (1933) and Lady for a Day (1933). Starting with Smart Blonde (1937), Farrell played Torchy Blane, a daring female reporter, in a series of popular films which later was credited by comic book writer Jerry Siegel as the inspiration for the DC Comics reporter Lois Lane. After leaving Warner Bros. in 1939, Farrell remained active in film, television and theatre throughout the rest of her career.

* 06/30/1904

Knox Manning(† 76)

Actor | Worcester, Massachusetts (US)

Charles Knox Manning (January 17, 1904 – August 26, 1980) was an American film actor. He was born in Worcester, Massachusetts and died in Woodland Hills, Los Angeles, California. He and Annette North Manning are interred at Ivy Lawn Cemetery in Ventura, California.

* 01/17/1904

Marian Nixon(† 78)

Actress | Superior, Wisconsin (US)

Marian Nixon (born Marja Nissinen; October 20, 1904 – February 13, 1983) was an American film actress. Sometimes credited as Marion Nixon, she appeared in more than 70 films.

* 10/20/1904

John Gielgud(† 96)

Actor | South Kensington, London, England (GB)

Sir Arthur John Gielgud, (14 April 1904 – 21 May 2000) was an English actor and theatre director whose career spanned eight decades. With Ralph Richardson and Laurence Olivier, he was one of the trinity of actors who dominated the British stage for much of the 20th century. A member of the Terry family theatrical dynasty, he gained his first paid acting work as a junior member of his cousin Phyllis Neilson-Terry's company in 1922. After studying at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (RADA), he worked in repertory theatre and in the West End before establishing himself at the Old Vic as an exponent of Shakespeare in 1929–31. During the 1930s Gielgud was a stage star in the West End and on Broadway, appearing in new works and classics. He began a parallel career as a director, and set up his own company at the Queen's Theatre, London. He was regarded by many as the finest Hamlet of his era, and was also known for high comedy roles such as John Worthing in The Importance of Being Earnest. In the 1950s Gielgud feared that his career was threatened when he was convicted and fined for a homosexual offence, but his colleagues and the public supported him loyally. When avant-garde plays began to supersede traditional West End productions in the later 1950s he found no new suitable stage roles, and for several years he was best known in the theatre for his one-man Shakespeare show The Ages of Man. From the late 1960s he found new plays that suited him, by authors including Alan Bennett, David Storey and Harold Pinter. During the first half of his career Gielgud did not take the cinema seriously. Though he made his first film in 1924, and had successes with The Good Companions (1933) and Julius Caesar (1953), he did not begin a regular film career until his sixties. He appeared in more than sixty films between Becket (1964), for which he received his first Academy Award nomination for playing Louis VII of France, and Elizabeth (1998). As the acid-tongued Hobson in Arthur (1981) he won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor. His film work further earned him a Golden Globe Award and two BAFTAs. Although largely indifferent to awards, Gielgud had the rare distinction of winning an Oscar, an Emmy, a Grammy, and a Tony. He was famous from the start of his career for his voice and his mastery of Shakespearean verse. He broadcast more than a hundred radio and television dramas between 1929 and 1994, and made commercial recordings of many plays, including ten of Shakespeare's. Among his honours, he was knighted in 1953 and the Gielgud Theatre was named after him in 1994. From 1977 to 1989, he was president of the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art.

* 04/14/1904

Sid Marcus(† 81)

Crew | Salt Lake City (US)

- No description / details available yet. -

* 07/13/1904

Ken Terrell(† 61)

Actor | Georgia (US)

Kenneth Jones Terrell (April 29, 1904 – March 8, 1966) was an American western and action film actor and stuntman best known for playing Joe Marcelli in the 1956 film Indestructible Man and Jess in the 1958 film Attack of the 50 Foot Woman.

* 04/29/1904

Martin Kosleck(† 89)

Actor | Barkotzen, Province of Pomerania, German Empire (now Barkocin, Pomeranian Voivodeship, Poland)

Martin Kosleck (born Nicolaie Yoshkin, March 24, 1904 – January 15, 1994) was a German film actor. Like many other German actors, he fled when the Nazis came to power. Inspired by his deep hatred of Adolf Hitler and the Nazis, Kosleck made a career in Hollywood playing villainous Nazis in films. While in the United States, he appeared in more than 80 films and television shows in a 46-year span. His icy demeanor and piercing stare on screen made him a popular choice to play Nazi villains. He portrayed Joseph Goebbels, Adolf Hitler's propaganda minister, five times, and also appeared as an SS trooper and a concentration camp officer.

* 03/24/1904

Herschel Graham(† 60)

Actor | Bixby, Oklahoma (US)

- No description / details available yet. -

 
* 02/05/1904

Léo Joannon(† 64)

Crew | Aix-en-Provence, Bouches-du-Rhône, Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur (FR)

Léo Joannon (21 August 1904 – 28 March 1969) was a French writer and film director. Born in Aix-en-Provence, Joannon was originally a law student who became a novelist and journalist before entering the film industry in the 1920s as a cameraman.

* 08/21/1904

Rita Webb(† 77)

Actress | Willesden, Londen, England (GB)

Olive Rita Webb (25 February 1904 – 30 August 1981), later known as Olive Rita Thompson, was an English character actress, mainly in comedy roles. She was the eldest child of Henry Augustus Webb (1880–1926) and Rose Jeannette Keysor. She had a younger brother, Henry Richard Webb, also an actor, and two elder identical twin half-brothers, Leslie and Gordon Durlacher, from her mother's first marriage to Samuel Durlacher. She was the niece of Leonard Keysor, the first Jewish serviceman to win the Victoria Cross in the First World War. A half-brother was the actor George Webb.

* 02/25/1904

Peter Madden(† 71)

Actor | Ipoh (MY)

Peter Madden (9 August 1904 – 24 February 1976) was a British actor who was born in Ipoh in the Federated Malay States (now Malaysia).

* 08/09/1904

Ed Haskett(† 83)

Actor | Delaware (US)

Was in many movies and TV shows and was never credited for any of them on screen.

* 12/29/1904

Jean Gabin(† 72)

Actor | Paris (FR)

Jean Gabin (17 May 1904 – 15 November 1976) was a major French actor and war hero.

* 05/17/1904

Dewey 'Pigmeat' Markham(† 77)

Actor | Durham (US)

Dewey "Pigmeat" Markham (April 18, 1904 – December 13, 1981) was an African American entertainer. Though best known as a comedian, Markham was also a singer, dancer, and actor. His nickname came from a stage routine, in which he declared himself to be "Sweet Poppa Pigmeat". He was sometimes credited in films as Pigmeat "Alamo" Markham. He is also known for his 1968 single "Here Comes the Judge", which is often considered to be the earliest hip hop record.

* 04/18/1904

J. Pat O'Malley(† 80)

Actor | Burnley, Lancashire, England (GB)

James Rudolph O'Malley (15 March 1904 – 27 February 1985) was an English singer and character actor who appeared in many American films and television programmes from the 1940s to 1982, using the stage name J. Pat O'Malley. He also appeared on the Broadway stage in Ten Little Indians (1944) and Dial M for Murder (1954).

* 03/15/1904
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