FOUND A GRAVE

Charles Winninger (1884 - 1969)

He began as a vaudeville actor. His most famous stage role was as Cap’n Andy Hawks in the original production of the Jerome Kern/Oscar Hammerstein II musical classic Show Boat in 1927, a role that he reprised – to great acclaim – in the 1932 stage revival and the 1936 film version of the show. […]

Paula Winslowe (1910 - 1996)

Paula Winslowe (March 23, 1910 – March 6, 1996), sometimes credited as Paula Winslow, was a radio and television actress and is known for her role as Bambi’s mother in the 1942 movie Bambi. Winslowe was born in Grafton, North Dakota in 1910. On radio, she was heard in many shows, including the role of Peg Riley […]

Johnny Winter (1944 - 2014)

Johnny Winter American Musician and Producer. Winter released nearly 20 albums and earned seven Grammy nominations in his career as an iconic blues musician. When he was ten years old, he and his younger brother Edgar, who were both born with albinism, appeared on a local children’s show, playing ukulele and singing Everly Brothers songs. […]

Edward Winter (1937 - 2001)

Winter was born in Ventura, California, and began his career on Broadway. Winter was twice nominated for Tony Awards as Best Supporting or Featured Actor (Musical). The first was in 1967, as Herr Ludwig in Cabaret, then in 1969, as J.D. Sheldrake in Promises, Promises. He moved on to television, appearing on the daytime serials The […]

Shelley Winters (1920 - 2006)

Winters was born Shirley Schrift in St. Louis, Missouri, the daughter of Rose (née Winter), a singer with The Muny, and Jonas Schrift, a designer of men’s clothing. Her parents were Jewish; her father emigrated from Austria, and her mother had been born in St. Louis to Austrian immigrants. Her parents were third cousins. Her […]

Hastings Arthur Wise (1954 - 2005)

Hastings Wise was an ex-convict who had served prison time for bank robbery and receipt of stolen goods before obtaining a technical degree and, eventually, finding employment at R.E. Phelon. He had no criminal convictions for the approximately fifteen years between his release from prison and the murders of 1997. According to his pastor, in […]

Johnny Valentine (1928 - 2001)

Johnny Valentine Wisniski was originally from Maple Valley, Washington. He was a devout Christian for many years. He was married to a woman named Sharon, who plans to write a book titled A Never Ending Love Story of a Wrestler and His Wife about their life together. He also had a son, Greg Valentine, who […]

Googie Withers (1917 - 2011)

Withers was born in Karachi, Pakistan then part of British India, to Edgar Withers, a captain in the Royal Navy, and a Dutch-German mother, Zitette. She acquired the name “Googie” (Little Pigeon) at a young age from her ayah (nanny). As a child, she learned Urdu. Her father left the Royal Navy to manage a […]

Dane Witherspoon (1957 - 2014)

Dane Witherspoon Dane Witherspoon (December 27, 1957 – March 29, 2014) was an American actor who has appeared in such daytime TV soap operas as Santa Barbara as Joe Perkins in 1984, and Capitol as Tyler McCandless from 1985 to 1986. Early life and career Witherspoon was born in Denton, Texas. At age 19, he […]

Harris Wittels (1984 - 2015)

Harris Wittels was born in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, the son of Dr. Ellison Wittels and Maureen (née Davidson) Wittels, and raised in Houston, Texas. Wittels described his father as “the funniest dude alive”. He had one older sister, voiceover actress Stephanie Wittels. He was Jewish, and had his bar mitzvah at Temple Emanu-El, across the […]

Fran Warren (1926 - 2013)

Fran Warren Frances Wolfe (March 4, 1926 – March 4, 2013), known by her stage name, Fran Warren, was an American popular singer. Life and career She was born into a Jewish family in the New York City borough of the Bronx. After some time on a chorus line at New York’s Roxy Theater, she […]

Marjorie Lord (1918 - 2015)

In 1935, at the age of 16, Marjorie Lord made her Broadway debut in The Old Maid with Judith Anderson. Her other Broadway appearances came in Signature (1945), Little Brown Jug (1946), and The Girl in the Freudian Slip (1967). Although most of Lord’s success came in television, she said in 1963: “I am primarily a […]

Mary Wollstonecraft (1759 - 1797)

Wollstonecraft was born on 27 April 1759 in Spitalfields, London. She was the second of the seven children of Edward John Wollstonecraft and Elizabeth Dixon. Although her family had a comfortable income when she was a child, her father gradually squandered it on speculative projects. Consequently, the family became financially unstable and they were frequently […]

Jerry Wolman (1927 - 2013)

Wolman was born to an Orthodox Jewish family in Shenandoah, Pennsylvania, the son of a grocer. He worked in the family business into his high school years, when his father had a stroke. Not graduating, Wolman joined the Merchant Marines, returned home, and moved to Washington, D.C. In the 1950s, he began his own construction […]

Bobby Womack (1944 - 2014)

Bobby Womack Singer, Songwriter, Musician. He was born Robert Dwayne Womack. He began his career as lead singer with his family musical group The Valentinos (Friendly Womack, Jr., Curtis Womack, Harry Womack and Cecil Womack). In the 1960’s the group was discovered by Sam Cooke, who later signed the group to his SAR label, they […]

John Wood (1930 - 2011)

John Wood was born 5 July 1930 in Derbyshire, England, and was educated at Bedford School. He did his national service as a lieutenant with the Royal Artillery, where he was invalided out after being accidentally shot in the back and later almost killed in a jeep accident. He read law at Jesus College, Oxford. He […]

Peggy Wood (1892 - 1978)

Peggy Wood was born Mary Margaret Wood in Brooklyn, New York, the daughter of Eugene Wood, a journalist, and Mary Gardner, a telegraph operator. She was a direct descendant of Daniel Boone. Wood spent nearly fifty years on the stage, beginning in the chorus and becoming known as a Broadway singer and star. She made […]

Jane Darwell (1879 - 1967)

Born Patti Woodard to William Robert Woodard, president of the Louisville Southern Railroad, and Ellen Booth in Palmyra in Marion County in northeastern Missouri, she originally intended to become a circus rider, then later an opera singer. Her father objected, however, and she compromised by becoming an actress but changed her name to Jane Darwell […]

Ron Woodroof (1950 - 1992)

Woodroof was born in Dallas, Texas, on February 3, 1950, to Garland Odell Woodroof (March 17, 1917, in Texas – December 3, 1983, in Dallas) and Willie Mae Hughes (November 25, 1917, in Oklahoma – November 19, 1996, in Dallas).  His first marriage was to Mary Etta Pybus on June 28, 1969, in Dallas; and […]

Edwina Booth (1904 - 1991)

Born Josephine Constance Woodruff, the daughter of a doctor, in Provo, Utah, Edwina Booth’s brief film career began in 1928 with the Dorothy Arzner-directed Manhattan Cocktail. She was on vacation following a 1927 stage appearance when film director E. Mason Hopper saw her and offered her a part in a Marie Prevost picture. Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM) […]

Bobby Woods (1965 - 2009)

A seventh-grade dropout, Woods was so illiterate that he had to refer to a spelling list just to write simple notes to his family. He had IQ scores of 80 and 78 during elementary school. His IQ score right before his murder trial was 70, and another in 2002 returned 68. Woods also worked as […]

Sylvia Woods (1926 - 2012)

Sylvia Woods (February 2, 1926 – July 19, 2012) was an American restaurateur who co-founded the landmark restaurant Sylvia’s in Harlem on Lenox Avenue, New York City with her husband, Herbert Woods, in 1962. The soul food eatery is a popular gathering place for Harlem residents and tourists not far from the Apollo Theater. Sylvia […]

Abbey Lincoln (1930 - 2010)

Lincoln was one of many singers influenced by Billie Holiday. She often visited the Blue Note jazz club in New York City. Her debut album, Abbey Lincoln’s Affair – A Story of a Girl in Love, was followed by a series of albums for Riverside Records. In 1960 she sang on Max Roach’s landmark civil […]

Sheb Wooley (1921 - 2003)

Sheb Wooley Wooley was born in Erick, Oklahoma, and was raised on a farm. He learned to ride horses at an early age and was a working cowboy and rodeo rider. He also played in a country-western band. Wooley tried to enlist during World War II, but was turned down for military service because of […]

Hank Worden (1901 - 1992)

Worden was raised on a cattle ranch near Glendive, Montana and was educated at Stanford University and the University of Nevada as an engineer. He enlisted in the U.S. Army hoping to become an Army pilot, but washed out of flight school. An expert horseman, he toured the country in rodeos as a saddle bronc […]

William Wordsworth (1770 - 1850)

The second of five children born to John Wordsworth and Ann Cookson, William Wordsworth was born on 7 April 1770 in Wordsworth House in Cockermouth, Cumberland, part of the scenic region in northwestern England known as the Lake District. His sister, the poet and diarist Dorothy Wordsworth, to whom he was close all his life, […]

Philip Workman (1953 - 2007)

Born on June 1, 1953 at Fort Campbell, Kentucky, Workman grew up with his parents on various Army bases. He later joined the Army. Shortly after his 1973 discharge, Workman was sentenced to 5 years in prison in Georgia for burglary and drug possession. He served 25 months.  In 1981, at 28 years old, Workman […]

Nicholas Worth (1937 - 2007)

Nicholas Worth (September 4, 1937 – May 7, 2007) was an American character actor who portrayed General Marzaq and Premier Romanov in Westwood Studios’ Command & Conquer series of games, Emperor: Battle for Dune, and also voice-acted as Colonel Bulba/Mr. Jones in Freedom Fighters. He also took up several smaller roles in sci-fi programs like […]

Esther Ralston (1902 - 1994)

Ralston was born Esther Worth in Bar Harbor, Maine. She was the older sister of Howard Ralston who also appeared in silent pictures but never achieved the stardom of his sister. She began her career as a child actress in a family vaudeville act which was billed as “The Ralston Family with Baby Esther, America’s […]

Zao Wou-Ki (1920 - 2013)

Zao was born in Beijing with family roots in Dantu, Zhenjiang, Jiangsu province. In his childhood he was brought back to his hometown Dantu where he studied calligraphy. From 1935 to 1941, he studied painting at the China Academy of Art in Hangzhou, Zhejiang province. In 1948, he went with his wife Lan-lan, a composer, […]