FOUND A GRAVE

Judy Garland (1922 - 1969)

Born Frances Ethel Gumm in Grand Rapids, Minnesota, Garland was the youngest child of Ethel Marion (née Milne; November 17, 1893 – January 5, 1953) and Francis Avent “Frank” Gumm (March 20, 1886 – November 17, 1935). Her parents were vaudevillians who settled in Grand Rapids to run a movie theatre that featured vaudeville acts. […]

Judy Lewis (1935 - 2011)

Lewis was the biological daughter of actress Loretta Young and actor Clark Gable. She was conceived while her parents were working on the film The Call of the Wild. She was the only biological child that Gable had while he was still alive (his only son was born four months after his death), but he […]

Jules Dassin (1911 - 2008)

Dassin was born in Middletown, Connecticut, one of eight children of Berthe Vogel and Samuel Dassin, a barber. His family was Russian Jewish. Dassin grew up in Harlem and went to Morris High School in the Bronx. He joined the Communist Party USA in the 1930s and left it after the Hitler–Stalin Pact in 1939. […]

Jules Furthman (1888 - 1966)

Jules Furthman (March 5, 1888 – September 22, 1966) was a magazine and newspaper writer before working as a screenwriter. Born in Chicago, Illinois, he was the brother of writer Charles Furthman. During World War I Jules wrote under the name “Stephen Fox” as he thought Furthman sounded too German. He wrote screenplays for a number […]

Julia Gardiner Tyler (1820 - 1889)

Julia Gardiner Tyler was born in 1820 on Gardiner’s Island off the eastern tip of Long Island, New York, one of the largest privately owned islands in the United States. She was the daughter of David Gardiner, a prominent landowner and New York State Senator from 1824 to 1828, and his wife Juliana née McLachlan. […]

Julia Grant (1826 - 1902)

Julia Boggs Dent was born at White Haven plantation west of St. Louis, Missouri, the daughter of Colonel Frederick Dent, a slaveholding planter and merchant, and Ellen Wrenshall-Dent, Julia squinted through crossed eyes. In memoirs prepared late in life—unpublished until 1975—she pictured her girlhood as an idyll: “one long summer of sunshine, flowers, and smiles”. […]

Julian Bond (1940 - 2015)

Bond was born at Hubbard Hospital in Nashville, Tennessee, to parents Julia Agnes (Washington) and Horace Mann Bond. His father was an educator who went on to serve as the president of Lincoln University. His mother, Julia, was a former librarian at Clark Atlanta University. At the time, the family resided on campus at Fort […]

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 […]

Julie Ege (1943 - 2008)

Ege was born in Høyland, Sandnes as Julie Dzuli. At the age of 15 she began to work as a model. She was crowned Miss Norway at the age of 18, and subsequently participated in Miss Universe. She graduated from the University of Oslo where she studied History and English. In 1967 she moved to […]

Julie Harris (1925 - 2013)

Harris was born Julia Ann Harris in Grosse Pointe, Michigan, the daughter of Elsie L. (née Smith), a nurse, and William Pickett Harris, an investment banker. She graduated from Grosse Pointe Country Day School, which later merged with two others to form the University Liggett School. In New York City she attended The Hewitt School. […]

Julie London (1926 - 2000)

Julie London Popular Actress and Singer. She had roles in movies including “Jungle Woman” (1944), “The Red House” (1947), with Edward G. Robinson, Task Force” (1949) with Gary Cooper, “The Fat Man” (1950) and “A Question of Adultery’ (1958). London was married to Jack Webb from “Dragnet” for 5 years. She was then married to […]

Julie Wilson (1924 - 2015)

Wilson was born in Omaha, Nebraska, the daughter of Emily (née Bennett), a hairdresser, and Russell Wilson, a coal salesman. She first found a musical outlet with local musical group “Hank’s Hepcats” in her teenage years and briefly attended Omaha University. She won the title of Miss Nebraska and would have competed in the Miss […]

Juliet Anderson (1938 - 2010)

Juliet Anderson Judith Carr was born and grew up in Burbank, California, the daughter of a jazz trumpet player and an aspiring nurse. She was afflicted with both childhood arthritis and Crohn’s disease and spent a sizable portion of her youth in the hospital or on bedrest. Graduating from Burbank High School in 1956 (where […]

Juliet Prowse (1936 - 1996)

Prowse was born in Bombay, British India to South African parents and reared in South Africa. She began studying dance at the age of four. In her early twenties she was dancing at a club in Paris when she was spotted by a talent agent and eventually signed to play the part of “Claudine” in […]

Julius Carry (1952 - 2008)

Carry grew up in the Lake Meadows neighborhood of Chicago, Illinois. He attended Hales Franciscan High School, where, at age 15, he joined the Spartan Players, an acting group. He discovered a love of acting with the group, performing in plays such as Hamlet and West Side Story. After touring the country with the Spartan […]

Julius L. Chambers (1936 - 2013)

Chambers grew up during the Jim Crow era in rural Montgomery County, North Carolina. As a child, Chambers saw first hand the effects of discrimination when his father’s auto repair business became a target of racial injustice in 1948. A white customer refused to pay his father and his father could not afford a lawyer […]

June Allyson (1917 - 2006)

June Allyson Allyson was born Eleanor Geisman, nicknamed “Ella,” in the Bronx, New York City. She was the daughter of Clara (née Provost) and Robert Geisman. She had a brother, Henry, who was two years older. She said she had been raised as a Roman Catholic, but there is discrepancy relating to her early life, […]

June Carter Cash (1929 - 2003)

June Carter Cash June Carter Cash was born Valerie June Carter in Maces Spring, Virginia, to Maybelle Carter and Ezra Carter. She was born into country music and performed with the Carter Family from the age of ten, beginning in 1939. In March 1943, when the Carter Family trio stopped recording together at the end […]

June Collyer (1906 - 1968)

Born Dorothea Heermance in New York City, June Collyer chose to use her mother’s maiden name when she decided to pursue acting. A society girl chosen by Allan Dwan, she had her first starring role in 1927 when she starred in East Side, West Side. She did a total of eleven films during the silent […]

June Duprez (1918 - 1984)

The daughter of American vaudeville performer Fred Duprez and Australian Florence Isabelle Matthews, June Duprez was born in Teddington, Middlesex, England, during an air raid in the final months of World War I. June Duprez began acting in her teens with the Coventry repertory company after studying at the Froebel Institute, and was a film extra […]

June Fairchild (1946 - 2015)

June Fairchild was born June Edna Wilson on September 3, 1946, in Manhattan Beach, California. Her father was a musician who specialized in writing gospel songs and music. Fairchild was raised in Manhattan Beach and graduated from Aviation High School in Redondo Beach. She was hired as a member of the Gazzarri Dancers on the […]

June Havoc (1912 - 2010)

She was born as either “Ellen Evangeline Hovick” or “Ellen June Hovick” in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, in 1912. For many years her year of birth was given as 1916. She herself was reportedly uncertain of the year. Her mother forged various birth certificates for both her daughters to evade child labor laws. Her lifelong career […]

June Storey (1918 - 1991)

Mary June Storey was born on April 20, 1918 in Toronto, Canada. Her father was a forest ranger. Her family moved to Tyler Lake, Connecticut in the United States when she was five years old. In 1930, her family moved to Southern California, where she attended Laguna Beach High School. Pretty in her youth, she […]

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 […]

June Walker (1900 - 1966)

She appeared on Broadway in such plays as Green Grow the Lilacs, The Farmer Takes a Wife, and Twelfth Night. She was the first actress to portray the character of Lorelei Lee, in the 1926 Broadway production of Gentlemen Prefer Blondes. She played Linda Loman to Thomas Mitchell’s Willy in the 1949 touring company of […]

Junie Astor (1912 - 1967)

French actress. Born in Marseilles, her career spanned four decades and over 50 films from her 1933 film Etienne directed by Jean Tarride to her final film in 1967, L’Homme de L’Interpol directed by Maruice Boutel. Her performance in the 1937 film “Le Coupable,” was rewarded with the Prix Suzanne Bianchetti, a prize awarded annually […]

Junior Samples (1926 - 1983)

Junior Samples A sixth grade dropout, Samples was a stock car racing driver and carpenter by trade who went on the radio at the age of 40 and told a story about catching the largest fish ever seen in his hometown. The story was a humorous tall tale, and the recording of this radio story […]

Junior Seau (1969 - 2012)

Tiaina Baul Seau Jr. was born January 19, 1969, in San Diego, California, the fifth child of Tiaina Seau, Sr., and Luisa Mauga Seau of Aunu’u, American Samoa. Tiaina Sr.’s grandfather was a village chief in Pago Pago. Tiaina Sr. worked at a rubber factory and was a school custodian, and Luisa worked at the commissary of Camp Pendleton in Southern […]

Junkyard Dog (1952 - 1998)

Junkyard Dog Throughout the years, many men have made the transition from the football gridiron to the squared circle. Perhaps none, however, have ever done it with the panache of one Sylvester Ritter, a man better known to sports-entertainment fans as the Junkyard Dog. Before entering the ring, the near 300-pound Ritter was a standout […]

Justin Mentell (1982 - 2010)

Mentell was born in Austin, Texas. He made his stage debut at three years of age as an orphan in Miss Liberty, and went on to appear in local theater productions, among them the musical Peter Pan, in which he portrayed one of the Lost Boys. After the family moved to Waukegan, Illinois, Mentell joined […]