FOUND A GRAVE

John R. Silber (1926 - 2012)

Silber was born in San Antonio, Texas, the second son of Paul George Silber, an immigrant architect from Germany, and Jewell (née Joslin) Silber, a Texas-born elementary school teacher. Both of his parents were Presbyterians. As an adult, he learned that his father’s side of the family was Jewish and that his aunt had been […]

Ron Silver (1946 - 2009)

Silver was born in New York City, the son of May (née Zimelman), a substitute teacher, and Irving Roy Silver, a clothing sales executive. Silver was raised Jewish on the Lower East Side of Manhattan and attended Stuyvesant High School.  Silver went on to graduate from SUNY at Buffalo, with a Bachelor of Arts in […]

Phil Silvers (1911 - 1985)

Phil Silvers Silvers became a household name in 1955 when he starred as Sergeant Ernest G. Bilko in You’ll Never Get Rich, later retitled The Phil Silvers Show. The military comedy became a television hit, with the opportunistic Bilko fast-talking his way through one obstacle after another. In 1958 CBS switched the show to be […]

Jean Simmons (1929 - 2010)

Simmons was born in Lower Holloway, London, to Charles Simmons, a gymnast, and his wife, Winifred (née Loveland) Simmons. Jean was the youngest of four children with siblings Edna, Harold and Lorna. She began acting at the age of 14. During the Second World War, the Simmons family was evacuated to Winscombe, Somerset. Her father, […]

Joe Simon (1913 - 2011)

Joe Simon was born in 1913 as Hymie Simon and raised in Rochester, New York, the son of Harry Simon, who had emigrated from Leeds, England, in 1905, and Rose, whom Harry met in the United States. Harry Simon moved to Rochester, then a clothing-manufacturing center where his younger brother Isaac lived, and the couple […]

Michel Simon (1895 - 1975)

Michel Simon used to say about himself that he was born in 1895 and, “as misfortune never comes singly, cinema was born the same year”. Son of a Protestant sausage maker, Simon soon left his family and town to go to Paris, where he first lived at the Hotel Renaissance, Saint-Martin Street, then in Montmartre. He […]

Simone Simon (1910 - 2005)

Born in Béthune, Pas-de-Calais (some sources say Marseille), France, she was the daughter of Henri Louis Firmin Champmoynat, a French Jewish engineer, airplane pilot in World War II, who died in a concentration camp, and Erma Maria Domenica Giorcelli, an Italian housewife. Before settling and growing up in Marseille, Simon lived in Madagascar, Budapest, Turin […]

Joe Simon (1913 - 2011)

Joe Simon was born in 1913 as Hymie Simon and raised in Rochester, New York, the son of Harry Simon, who had emigrated from Leeds, England, in 1905, and Rose, whom Harry met in the United States. Harry Simon moved to Rochester, then a clothing-manufacturing center where his younger brother, Isaac, lived and the couple had a daughter, Beatrice, in 1912. A […]

Joan Sims (1930 - 2001)

Sims was born in 1930, the daughter of John Henry Simms (1888-1964), station master of Laindon railway station in Laindon, Essex, and his wife Gladys Marie Sims, née Ladbrook (1896-1981). Sims’ early interest in being an actress came from living at the railway station. She would often put on performances for waiting passengers. She decided […]

Dorothy Shay (1921 - 1978)

Shay was born Dorothy Sims in Jacksonville, Florida. When she began her career as a ‘straight’ singer, she took vocal lessons to lose her Southern accent. She sang for the USO during World War II. Dorothy changed her name to “Shay” in order to not be confused with Ginny Simms, another performer of the day, […]

Frank Sinatra (1915 - 1998)

Frank Sinatra Baritone Frank Sinatra was indisputably the 20th century’s greatest singer of popular song. Though influenced by Bing Crosby’s crooning, and by learning from trombonist Tommy Dorsey’s breath control and blues singer Billie Holiday’s rhythmic swing, Frank Sinatra mainstreamed the concept of singing colloquially, treating lyrics as personal statements and handling melodies with the […]

Cornelia Otis Skinner (1899 - 1979)

Cornelia Otis Skinner (May 30, 1899 – July 9, 1979) was an American author and actress. Skinner was the daughter of the actor Otis Skinner and his wife, Maud Durbin. After attending the all-girls’ Baldwin School and Bryn Mawr College (1918–1919) and studying theatre at the Sorbonne in Paris, she began her career on the stage […]

Marie Curie (1867 - 1934)

Maria Skłodowska was born in Warsaw, in the Russian partition of Poland, on 7 November 1867, as the fifth and youngest child of well-known teachers Bronisława, née Boguska, and Władysław Skłodowski. Maria’s older siblings were Zofia (born 1862), Józef (1863), Bronisława (1865) and Helena (1866).  On both the paternal and maternal sides, the family had […]

Bill Skowron (1930 - 2012)

Skowron was born in Chicago, Illinois, and was of Polish descent. His father was a garbage collector. After his grandfather gave the seven-year-old Skowron a haircut that looked like the dictator’s and his friends jokingly called him “Mussolini”, his family shortened the nickname to “Moose.” The name stuck throughout his career.  Skowron attended Weber High […]

Josef Škvorecký (1924 - 2012)

Born the son of a bank clerk in Náchod, Czechoslovakia, Škvorecký graduated in 1943 from the Reálné gymnasium in his native Náchod. For two years during the Second World War he was a slave labourer in a German aircraft factory.  After the war, he began to study at the Faculty of Medicine of Charles University […]

Chief Dan George (1899 - 1981)

Born as Geswanouth Slahoot in North Vancouver, his English name was originally Dan Slaholt. The surname was changed to George when he entered a residential school at age 5. He worked at a number of different jobs, including as a longshoreman, construction worker, and school bus driver, and was band chief of the Tsleil-Waututh Nation […]

Dorothy Lamour (1914 - 1996)

Born Mary Leta Dorothy Slaton in New Orleans, the daughter of Carmen Louise (née LaPorte) and John Watson Slaton, both of whom were waiters. Lamour was of French Louisianan, Spanish, and Irish descent. Her parents’ marriage lasted only a few years. Her mother married for the second time to Clarence Lambour, whose surname Dorothy later […]

Candy Darling (1944 - 1974)

Candy Darling was born James Lawrence Slattery in Forest Hills, Queens, the child of Theresa (née Phelan 1911–2014), a bookkeeper at Manhattan’s Jockey Club, and James “Jim” Slattery, who was described as a violent alcoholic. There is controversy surrounding the year of birth. According to former Warhol associate, Bob Colacello, Darling was born in 1946, while […]

Vernon Dalhart (1883 - 1948)

Vernon Dalhart Vernon Dalhart came to country music from outside the tradition, becoming a national star in the years just before more indigenous kinds of country music found their place in the machinery of the music industry. A 1924 recording by Dalhart became country music’s first million-selling record; pairing a train song (“Wreck of the […]

Donald Kent “Deke” Slayton (1970 - 1970)

American Astronaut. One of the “Original Seven” Mercury astronauts, he was grounded in 1962 due to a minor heart fibrillation. He was later named Director of Flight Crew Operations (otherwise known as “Chief Astronaut”), selecting all astronauts for crews until 1973, when he was restored to flight status. He flew 1 mission, the 1975 Apollo-Soyuz […]

Percy Sledge (1940 - 2015)

Percy Sledge The singer sky-rocketed to the top of both the Hot 100 and R&B charts with his dramatic, heartrending ballad “When a Man Loves a Woman” – his debut single and one of Rolling Stone’s Greatest Songs of All Time – in 1966. It spent 13 weeks on the Billboard pop chart, and was […]

Martha Sleeper (1910 - 1983)

Martha Sleeper reputedly spent her first years on a sheep ranch in Wyoming. Her father, William B. Sleeper, was an official of the Keith-Albee-Orpheum vaudeville circuit in New York City. Her mother was Minnie Akass. He retired to Los Angeles, California in 1923 because of ill health. She was under contract to Hal Roach studios […]

Walter Slezak (1902 - 1983)

Born in Vienna, Austria, the son of opera tenor Leo Slezak and Elsa Wertheim, he studied medicine for a time and later worked as a bank teller. He was talked into taking his first role, in the 1922 Austrian film Sodom und Gomorrah, by his friend and the film’s director, Michael Curtiz. In his early […]

Roy Rogers (1911 - 1998)

Roy Rogers In 1944, Rogers appeared in his first film with actress Dale Evans. The Cowboy and the Señorita sparked an irresistible on-screen chemistry between the two, and Evans quickly gained the nickname “Queen of the Cowgirls,” to match the moniker of her on-and-off-screen sweetheart. Between the years of 1944 and 1951, they appeared in nearly 30 […]

Dale Evans (1912 - 2001)

Dale Evans The world knew her as “the Queen of the West.” High Desert neighbors knew her as a neighbor, a friend and a matriarch. Friends and fans everywhere are mourning the death of Dale Evans, who died Wednesday of congestive heart failure at her home in Apple Valley with her children by her side. […]

Wolfman Jack (1938 - 1995)

Wolfman Jack Wolfman Jack, the rock-and-roll disk jockey whose unmistakable raspy voice and on-the-air howls brought him something of a cult following as one of America’s best-known radio personalities, died yesterday at his home in Belvidere, N.C. He was 57. The cause was a heart attack, said his daughter, Joy Renee Smith. He was a […]

Queenie Smith (1898 - 1978)

Queenie Smith (September 8, 1898 – August 5, 1978) was an American stage, television, and film actress. Smith was born in New York City, New York. She got an early start, being trained in ballet and dance and spent her teen years performing as a dancer with the Metropolitan Opera Company in operas such as Aida, […]

June Vincent (1920 - 2008)

June Vincent (July 17, 1920 – November 20, 2008) was an American actress. June Vincent was born Dorothy June Smith in Harrod, Ohio, the daughter of Sybil Irwin and the Rev. Willis E. Smith. She began her career in film in the early 1940s. She later became a successful television actress appearing in many programs throughout […]

Donna Douglas (1932 - 2015)

Donna Douglas American Actress. Douglas, who grew up in Baton Rouge, will best be remembered for her role as Elly May Clampett in the 1960s CBS television series, ‘The Beverly Hillbillies’. Born Doris Smith, she attended a Catholic High School where she was active in sports. In 1957, she was named “Miss Baton Rouge” and […]

Carl Smith (1927 - 2010)

Carl Smith Country Musician. He was raised listening to music of the Grand Ole Opry, influenced by Roy Acuff (also a native of Maynardville, Tennessee) and Bill Monroe. While a teenager, he gained recognition as a guitarist, bass player and singer at WROL Radio in Knoxville before graduation from high school. Following a stint in […]