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John Dioguardi
John Dioguardi (1914 - 1979)
Organized Crime Figure. Known as “Johnny Dio”, he was a Captain in the Luchese Organized Crime Family. A powerful labor racketeer and union boss, he was indicted for hiring a small-time criminal named Abe Telvi to throw acid in the face of labor columnist Victor Riesel in 1956, who was blinded in the attack. The […]
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John Donne
John Donne (1572 - 1631)
Donne was born in London, into a recusant Roman Catholic family when practice of that religion was illegal in England. Donne was the third of six children. His father, also named John Donne, was of Welsh descent and a warden of the Ironmongers Company in the City of London. Donne’s father was a respected Roman […]
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John Doucette
John Doucette (1921 - 1994)
John Doucette (January 21, 1921 in Brockton, Massachusetts – August 16, 1994 in Banning, California) was a film character actor. He was a balding, husky man remembered for playing mob muscle and western bad guys in movies. According to the Internet Movie Data Base, between 1943 and 1987, Doucette appeared in some 260 movies and […]
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John Drew Barrymore
John Drew Barrymore (1932 - 2004)
Barrymore was born in Los Angeles, California to John Barrymore and Dolores Costello. His parents separated when he was 18 months old, and he rarely saw his father afterward. Educated at private schools, he made his film debut at 18, billed as John Barrymore Jr. In 1958, he changed his middle name to Drew, although he […]
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John F Kennedy
John F Kennedy (1917 - 1963)
John F Kennedy John Fitzgerald Kennedy (May 29, 1917 – November 22, 1963), commonly known as Jack Kennedy or by his initials JFK, was an American politician who served as the 35th President of the United States from January 1961 until his assassination in November 1963. Notable events that occurred during his presidency included the […]
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John Forsythe
John Forsythe (1918 - 2010)
The eldest of three children, Forsythe was born as Jacob Lincoln Freund on January 29, 1918, in Penns Grove, New Jersey, to Blanche Materson (née Blohm) and Samuel Jeremiah Freund. Blanche was born in Pennsylvania, to David Hyat Blohm, a Russian Jewish immigrant, and to Mary S. Materson, who was born in Maryland, to Jewish […]
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John Fred
John Fred (1941 - 2005)
John Fred During the psychedelic era, John Fred and the Playboy Band climbed to No 3 on the UK charts with “Judy in Disguise (With Glasses)” but no one was sure whether this oddball record was an example of psychedelia or a satiric comment. In truth, the lead singer and songwriter, John Fred Gourrier, loved […]
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John Gotti
John Gotti (1940 - 2002)
John Gotti Gotti was born in the Bronx. He was the fifth of the thirteen children of John Joseph Gotti, Sr. and his wife Philomena. John was one of five brothers who would become made men in the Gambino crime family; Gene Gotti was initiated before John due to the latter’s incarceration. Peter Gotti was […]
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John Gregson
John Gregson (1919 - 1975)
Gregson was born of Irish descent, and grew up in Wavertree, Liverpool, Lancashire, where he was educated at Greenbank Road Primary School and later at St. Francis Xavier’s College. He left school at 16, working first for a telephone company, then for Liverpool Corporation, as the city council was then known, before the Second World […]
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John H. Balsley
John H. Balsley (1823 - 1895)
John H. Balsley (May 29, 1823 – March 12, 1895) was a master carpenter and inventor, inventing a practical folding wooden stepladder and receiving the first U.S. patent issued for a safety stepladder. He was born in Connellsville, Fayette County, Pennsylvania to George H. and Sarah (Shallenberger) Balsley. His father was also a carpenter. An […]
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John Hart
John Hart (1917 - 2009)
Hart began his screen career in 1937 with a bit part in Daughter of Shanghai. He continued in a variety of B pictures such as Prison Farm and King of Alcatraz before appearing in two of Cecil B. DeMille’s films The Buccaneer (1938) and North West Mounted Police (1940). His acting career was interrupted when he […]
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John Hartman
John Hartman (1937 - 2001)
John Hartman John Hartford won Grammy awards in three different decades, recorded a catalog of more than 30 albums, and wrote one of the most popular songs of all time, Gentle On My Mind. He was a regular guest and contributor on the Glen Campbell Good Time Hour and the Smothers Brothers Show. He added […]
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John Hessin Clarke
John Hessin Clarke (1857 - 1945)
Born in New Lisbon, Ohio, Clarke was the third child and only son of John Clarke, a lawyer and judge, and his wife Melissa Hessin. He attended New Lisbon High School and Western Reserve College, where he became a member of Delta Kappa Epsilon Fraternity. He graduated Phi Beta Kappa in 1877. Clarke did not […]
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John Hodiak
John Hodiak (1914 - 1955)
John Hodiak was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, the son of Walter Hodiak (October 25, 1888 – August 21, 1962) and Anna Pogorzelec (February 28, 1888 – October 17, 1971). He was of Ukrainian and Polish descent. Hodiak grew up in Hamtramck, Michigan. Hodiak had his first theatrical experience at age 11, acting in Ukrainian and Russian […]
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John Houseman
John Houseman (1902 - 1988)
Houseman produced numerous Broadway productions, including Heartbreak House, Three Sisters, The Beggar’s Opera and several Shakespearean plays, including a famous “Blackshirt” Julius Caesar directed by Orson Welles in 1937. He also directed Lute Song, The Country Girl and Don Juan in Hell, among others. Houseman himself worked as a speculator in the international grain markets, […]
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John Huston
John Huston (1906 - 1987)
John Huston John Huston, the legendary director and scenarist who made such classic films as ”The Maltese Falcon,” ”The Treasure of the Sierra Madre,” ”The Asphalt Jungle” and ”The African Queen,” died yesterday in Middletown, R.I., at the age of 81. Associates said he had died in his sleep of complications from emphysema. The film […]
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John Joseph Abercrombie
John Joseph Abercrombie (1798 - 1877)
Abercrombie was born and baptized in Baltimore, Maryland, although some accounts suggest he was a native of Tennessee. The son of John Joseph Abercrombie, Sr. and Sarah DeNormandie, their family was living in Nashville, Tennessee when the younger John entered the United States Military Academy in 1818. Graduating 37th of 40 from the United States […]
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John Joseph O’Connor
John Joseph O’Connor (1920 - 2000)
O’Connor was born in Philadelphia, the fourth of five children of Thomas J. and Dorothy Magdalene (née Gomple) O’Connor (1886–1971), daughter of Gustave Gumpel, a kosher butcher and Jewish rabbi. In 2014, his sister Mary O’Connor Ward discovered through genealogical research that their mother was born Jewish and was baptized as a Roman Catholic at […]
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John Keats
John Keats (1795 - 1821)
John Keats John Keats (31 October 1795 – 23 February 1821) was an English Romantic poet. He was one of the main figures of the second generation of Romantic poets along with Lord Byron and Percy Bysshe Shelley despite his work having been in publication for only four years before his death. Although his poems […]
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John Keegan
John Keegan (1934 - 2012)
Keegan was born in Clapham, London, on 15 May 1934, to a family of Irish Catholic extraction. His father saw active service in the First World War. At the age of 13 Keegan contracted orthopaedic tuberculosis, which subsequently affected his gait. The long-term effects of his tuberculosis rendered him unfit for military service, and the […]
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John Lennon
John Lennon (1940 - 1980)
John Ono Lennon, MBE, born John Winston Lennon; (9 October 1940 – 8 December 1980), was an English musician, singer and songwriter who rose to worldwide fame as a founder member of the rock band the Beatles, the most commercially successful band in the history of popular music. With Paul McCartney, he formed a songwriting partnership that is one of the most […]
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John Litel
John Litel (1892 - 1972)
John Litel (December 30, 1892 – February 3, 1972) was an American film and television actor. During World War I, Litel enlisted in the French Army and was twice decorated for bravery. Back in the U.S. after the war, Litel enrolled in the American Academy of Dramatic Arts and began his stage career. In 1929, he started […]
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John Logie Baird
John Logie Baird (1888 - 1946)
Baird was born at 8am on 14 August 1888 in Helensburgh, Argyll and Bute (then Dunbartonshire), and was the youngest of four children of the Reverend John Baird, the Church of Scotland’s minister for the local St Bride’s church and Jessie Morrison Inglis, the orphaned niece of a wealthy family of shipbuilders from Glasgow. He […]
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John Lund
John Lund (1911 - 1992)
John Lund’s father was a Norwegian immigrant and glassblower in Rochester, New York. Lund did not finish high school, and he tried several businesses before settling on advertising in the 1930s. His jobs included being “a soda-jerk, carpenter and timekeeper.” While working for an advertising agency, he was asked by a friend to appear in […]
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John M Keynes
John M Keynes (1883 - 1946)
John Maynard Keynes, 1st Baron Keynes, CB, FBA (/ˈkeɪnz/ kaynz; 5 June 1883 – 21 April 1946), was a British economist whose ideas have fundamentally affected the theory and practice of modern macroeconomics and informed the economic policies of governments. He built on and greatly refined earlier work on the causes of business cycles, and […]
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John May
John May (1894 - 1929)
Gangster. A member of Bugs Moran crime gang, he was a victim of the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre in Chicago, Illinois. The other victims were Reinhardt Schwimmer, Frank Gusenberg and his brother Peter Gusenberg, Adam Meyer, Albert Weinshenker and Albert Kachellek. On January 19, 1929, Al Capone gangster Patsy Lolordo and his wife, Aleina, were […]
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John McGiver
John McGiver (1913 - 1975)
McGiver was born in New York City, the son of Irish immigrants. He graduated from the Jesuit-run Regis High School in Manhattan in 1932. He received a B.A. in English from Fordham University in 1938 and master’s degrees from Columbia University and Catholic University. He became an English teacher and worked as an actor and […]
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John Merivale
John Merivale (1917 - 1990)
John Herman Merivale (1 December 1917 – 6 February 1990), also known as Jack Merivale, was a Canadian-born British theatre actor, and occasional supporting player in British films. Born in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, John Merivale was the son of English actor Philip Merivale. His stepmother was the renowned English actress Gladys Cooper. Merivale was educated in […]
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John Mills
John Mills (1908 - 2005)
Mills was born Lewis Ernest Watts Mills in Felixstowe, Suffolk, the son of Edith (Baker), a theatre box office manager, and Lewis Mills, a mathematics teacher. He lived in a modest house in Gainsborough Road Felixstowe until 1929. His older sister was Annette Mills, remembered as presenter of BBC Television’s Muffin the Mule (1946–55). He was educated […]
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John Mitchum
John Mitchum (1919 - 2001)
He initially appeared in only unbilled and extra roles before gradually receiving bigger character parts in middle age. Mitchum supported his more famous brother on several occasions, and was most famous in his own right as the friendly and food-loving Inspector Frank DiGiorgio in the first three Dirty Harry films. Mitchum was one of only […]