FOUND A GRAVE

Ethel Waters (1896 - 1977)

Ethel Waters was born in Chester, Pennsylvania, on October 31, 1896, as a result of the rape of her teenaged mother, Louise Anderson (believed to have been 13 years old at the time, although some sources indicate she may have been slightly older), by John Waters, a pianist and family acquaintance from a mixed-race middle-class […]

Linda Watkins (1908 - 1976)

At the age of sixteen Linda Watkins’ parents sent her to study at the Theatre Guild. After six months she began to appear with the guild’s summer repertory program in Scarborough, New York. Instead of finishing her studies at the guild, she pursued a job at the office of Charles Hopkins. When he asked Watkins […]

Alberta Watson (1955 - 2015)

Alberta Watson was born in Toronto, Ontario in 1955. She grew up in Toronto with her mother Grace, a factory worker, and her brother. She began performing with a local Toronto theater group, T.H.O.G. (Theater House of God), of the Bathurst Street United Church at age 15. Watson took a workshop for the Hair musical. While […]

Barbara La Marr (1896 - 1926)

La Marr was born in 1896 as Reatha Dale Watson to William Wallace and Rosana “Rose” Watson in Yakima, Washington (La Marr later claimed she was born in Richmond, Virginia). Her father was an editor for a newspaper, and her mother had a son, Henry, born in 1878, and a daughter, Violet, born in February […]

Richard Wattis (1912 - 1975)

Richard Wattis was born in Wednesbury, Staffordshire. He attended King Edward’s School and Bromsgrove School, after which he worked for the electrical engineering firm William Sanders & Co (Wednesbury) Ltd. His uncle, William Preston (1874–1941), was the managing director and was the Conservative MP for Walsall from 1924 to 1929. After leaving the family business, Wattis […]

Kellie Waymire (1967 - 2003)

Suzanne Kellie Waymire was born in Columbus, Ohio, and was a descendant of Revolutionary War patriot John Rudolph Waymire. She attended Southern Methodist University (where she won the Greer Garson Award), graduating with a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Theater, and later earned a Master’s degree in Fine Arts from the University of California, San […]

Mr Gerald Allen Wear (1968 - 2010)

Gerald Allen Wear (1968 - 2010)

Earl Weaver (1930 - 2013)

He was the son of Earl Milton Weaver, a dry cleaner who cleaned the uniforms of the St. Louis Cardinals and Browns, and Ethel Genieve Wakefield. After playing for Beaumont High School in his hometown, St. Louis, Missouri, the 17-year-old Weaver was signed by the St. Louis Cardinals in 1948 as a second baseman. A […]

Sylvester Weaver (1908 - 2002)

Weaver was born Sylvester Laflin Weaver, Jr. in Los Angeles, California, the son of Eleanor Isabel (née Dixon) and Sylvester Laflin Weaver. He was of Scottish descent (possibly Clan MacFarlane), as well as of Ulster Scots and early New England ancestry. He was a great-great-grandson of Charles Laflin, a gunpowder manufacturer, who came to America […]

Marjorie Weaver (1913 - 1994)

Born in Crossville, Tennessee to John Thomas Weaver and his wife, Ellen (née Martin), she attended the University of Kentucky, and later the Indiana University, with interests in music. Weaver began her acting career as a stage actress in the early 1930s, and also worked as a model during that period, as well as a […]

Johnny Weaver (1935 - 2008)

Johnny Weaver Funerals are never fun to attend. But there was something uplifting about what took place at Johnny Weaver’s funeral. That was due largely to the honest and moving words delivered by two who eulogized him, and the grace of a grieving daughter still wounded by the sudden and unexpected loss of her father. […]

Alex Webster (1931 - 2012)

As the son of recent Scottish immigrants James and Alexandrina Webster, Alex Webster grew up in Kearny, New Jersey, where he attended and played high school football at Kearny High School. Webster played a key role on Kearny High School’s football team which won the 1948 New Jersey High School State Championship. In spite of […]

Bella Darvi (1928 - 1971)

Bella Darvi was born Bajla Węgier to Jewish parents Chajm Węgier, a baker, and his wife, Chaja (née Zygelbaum). She had three brothers, Robert, Jacques, and Jean-Isidore, and a sister, Sura. Robert died in a concentration camp. Jailed by the Nazis during World War II, she was released in 1943. She married a businessman, Alban Cavalcade, […]

Jesse White (1917 - 1997)

White was born as Jonah Marcus Weidenfeld in Buffalo, New York, and was reared in Akron, Ohio. He was called “Jesse” as a nickname. He made his first amateur appearance in local stage productions at the age of fifteen. Though aspiring to be an actor, he worked at many different jobs during the 1930s, including […]

Joe Weider (1920 - 2013)

Weider was born in Montreal, Quebec, Canada, to Louis and Anna, Jewish immigrants from Poland. He published the first issue of Your Physique magazine in 1936 when he was 17 years old, and built a set of barbells out of car wheels and axles the same year out of the family garage on Coloniale street […]

Jack Weil (1901 - 2008)

Jack Arnold Weil (March 28, 1901 – August 13, 2008) was the founder and CEO of the Denver-based Western clothing manufacturer Rockmount Ranch Wear and was believed to be the oldest working CEO in the United States. Weil was born in Evansville, Indiana in 1901. In 1926, Weil (also known as Papa or “Papa Jack”) […]

Michael Weiner (1961 - 2013)

Michael S. Weiner (December 21, 1961 – November 21, 2013) was an executive director of the Major League Baseball Players Association. He assumed the role on June 22, 2009, replacing Donald Fehr, becoming only the fifth executive director of the union. Weiner joined the organization in September 1988 and had been general counsel since 2004. […]

Jerry Weintraub (1937 - 2015)

Jerry Weintraub Weintraub’s career as a promoter took a giant step in 1970 when after a lengthy courtship he persuaded Elvis Presley’s manager, Col. Tom Parker, to let him promote Presley concerts. It was at a time when Presley was beginning to do live shows after years of concentrating on movies. The relationship began with […]

Harry Houdini (1874 - 1926)

Harry Houdini Harry Houdini died of peritonitis, secondary to a ruptured appendix at 1:26 p.m. on October 31, 1926 in Room 401 at Detroit’s Grace Hospital, aged 52. In his final days, he optimistically held to a strong belief that he would recover, but his last words before dying were reportedly, “I’m tired of fighting.” Eyewitnesses […]

Bob Welch (1945 - 2012)

Bob Welch was a key member of the pop group Fleetwood Mac in the early 1970s before scoring several minor hits as a solo performer, died June 7 at his home in Nashville. He was 65. According to police, he died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound. He left a suicide note. Mr. Welch was a […]

Julie Bishop (1914 - 2001)

Bishop was born Jacqueline Wells and used her birth name professionally through 1941. She also appeared on stage (and in one film) as Diane Duval. She was a child actress, beginning her career in 1923. Early on, she appeared in several Laurel and Hardy films (Any Old Port! and The Bohemian Girl), and she settled […]

Linda Christian (1923 - 2011)

Christian was born as Blanca Rosa Welter in Tampico, Tamaulipas, Mexico, a daughter of Dutch engineer and Royal Dutch Shell executive, Gerardus Jacob Welter (1904–1981), and his Mexican-born wife, the former Blanca Rosa Vorhauer (1901-1992), who was of Spanish, German and French descent. The Welter family moved a great deal during Christian’s youth, living everywhere […]

Claire Trevor (1910 - 2000)

Trevor was born in the Bensonhurst area of Brooklyn, New York, the only child of Noel Wemlinger, a Fifth Avenue merchant tailor, and his wife, Benjamina (“Betty”). She grew up in Larchmont, New York. For many years, her year of birth was misreported as 1909, a rare instance of an actress actually being younger than […]

Dick Wesson (1922 - 1996)

Richard Lewis “Dick” Wesson (November 19, 1922 – April 25, 1996) was a prolific character actor, comedian, comedy writer, and producer. The dark haired man with a flat top haircut was frequently confused with announcer Dick Wesson. Wesson was born Richard Lewis Wesson on November 19, 1922 in Boston, Massachusetts. A comedian, impressionist and singer, Wesson […]

Franz West (1947 - 2012)

West was born on 16 February 1947. His father was a coal dealer, his mother a dentist who took her son with her on art-viewing trips to Italy. West did not begin to study art seriously until he was 26, when, between 1977 and 1983, he studied at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna with […]

Mae West (1893 - 1980)

Mae West Legendary Entertainer, Actress. She made her theatrical debut at age 7 for an Elks-sponsored amateur talent contest on the stage of a local vaudeville theater; the award she received for her effort, a gold medal, set the tone for a lifetime of winning appearances. Soon she would achieve professional status performing roles as […]

Buster West (1901 - 1966)

Buster West American dancer and actor who was a featured performer in vaudeville, the Broadway stage, motion pictures and television. West was one of those performers who was “born in a suitcase”, as his father John West and mother were both vaudeville performers and he performed with them as a child. Buster West achieved success […]

Floyd Westerman (1936 - 2007)

Westerman was born Floyd Westerman (Kanghi Duta) on the Lake Traverse Indian Reservation, home of the Sisseton Wahpeton Oyate, a federally recognized tribe. It is one of the tribes of the Eastern Dakota subgroup of the Great Sioux Nation, living within the U.S. state of South Dakota. Kanghi Duta means “Red Crow” in Dakota (one […]

Dona Drake (1914 - 1989)

Dona Drake was born Eunice Westmoreland in Miami, Florida, in 1914 to Joseph Andrew Westmoreland of Arkansas and his wife, Novella Smith of Alabama. She was one of their five children. Entering show business in the 1930s, she used the names Una Velon, Rita Rio and Rita Shaw. She settled on the stage name Dona Drake […]