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Akim Tamiroff
Akim Tamiroff (1899 - 1972)
Akim Tamiroff was born in Tiflis, Russian Empire (now Tbilisi, Georgia), of Armenian ancestry. He trained at the Moscow Art Theatre drama school. He arrived in the U.S. in 1923 on a tour with a troupe of actors and decided to stay. Tamiroff managed to develop a career in Hollywood despite his thick Russian accent. Tamiroff’s […]
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Al Alberts
Al Alberts (1922 - 2009)
Born Al Albertini in Chester, Pennsylvania, he went to South Philadelphia High School. As a teenager, he appeared on the Horn and Hardart Children’s Hour, a radio program. After graduating from South Philadelphia High, he went to Temple University and the United States Navy, where he met Dave Mahoney. They went on to found The […]
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Al Capone
Al Capone (1899 - 1947)
Al Capone Organized Crime Figure, Chicago Gangster. Probably the best known of the 1920s gangsters, he controlled Chicago until brought down by FBI Agent Elliott Ness. Ness later wrote a book “The Untouchables” which detailed his efforts to jail Capone. Capone was the largest of the racketeers, and captured the American public’s imagination as few […]
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Al Downing
Al Downing (1940 - 2005)
Al Downing was an entertainer, singer, songwriter, and pianist. He received the Billboard’s New Artist of the Year and the Single of the Year Award in 1979. He was inducted into the Rockabilly Hall of Fame and was a frequent performer at the Grand Ole Opry. Downing was nominated as Best New Artist by the […]
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Al Hirschfeld
Al Hirschfeld (1903 - 2003)
Born in St. Louis, Missouri, he moved with his family to New York City, where he received his art training at the Art Students League of New York. In 1943, he married Dolly Haas (1910–1994); they had one child, a daughter, Nina (b. 1945). In 1996, he married Louise Kerz, a theatre historian. In 1924, Hirschfeld traveled to Paris […]
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Al Jolson
Al Jolson (1886 - 1950)
Al Jolson Legendary singer, actor, entertainer. Al Jolson was one of the greatest entertainers of the first half of the 20th century, referred to as the World’s Greatest Entertainer in his time. A singer and dancer of boundless energy and expressive face, Jolson’s greatest claim to fame was starring in the first talking motion picture, […]
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Al Neuharth
Al Neuharth (1924 - 2013)
Al Neuharth was born into a German-speaking family in rural South Dakota. Neuharth’s parents were Daniel J. and Christina, who married on January 11, 1922. Daniel died when Al was two. Al needed to help his family survive the Great Depression. He worked on his grandfather’s farm. As a youngster, he also delivered the Minneapolis […]
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Alain Cuny
Alain Cuny (1908 - 1994)
Alain Cuny (12 July 1908 – 16 May 1994) was a French actor. He was born René Xavier Marie in Saint-Malo, Brittany, and studied medicine for a while before entering the film industry as a costume and set designer. Cuny started acting in the 1930s. Among his most notable films are Les Visiteurs du soir (1942), […]
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Alaina Reed Hall
Alaina Reed Hall (1946 - 2009)
Hall was born Bernice Ruth Reed in Springfield, Ohio on November 10, 1946. In the mid-1960s she attended Kent State University, Kent, Ohio, where she was active in many productions at KSU’s E. Turner Stump Theater. These included “The Streets of New York”, “It’s a Bird, It’s a Plane, It’s Superman!”, and “The Tragedy of Tragedies […]
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Alan “Fluff” Freeman
Alan “Fluff” Freeman (1927 - 2006)
Born and educated in New South Wales, Australia, Freeman worked as an assistant paymaster/accountant for one of Australia’s largest timber companies after leaving school. Freeman originally wanted to be an opera singer, but decided his voice was not strong enough. In 1952 he was invited to audition as a radio announcer and commenced working for […]
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Alan A. Armer
Alan A. Armer (1922 - 2010)
Alan A. Armer (7 July 1922 – 5 December 2010) was an American television writer, producer, and director. Born in Los Angeles, Armer received a bachelor’s degree in speech and drama from Stanford University, a master’s in theatre arts from UCLA and an honorary doctor’s degree from California State University, Northridge. After college, Armer started […]
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Alan Bates
Alan Bates (1934 - 2003)
Bates was born at the Queen Mary Nursing Home, Darley Abbey, Derby, England, on 17 February 1934, the eldest of three sons of Florence Mary (née Wheatcroft), a housewife and a pianist, and Harold Arthur Bates, an insurance broker and a cellist, who lived in Allestree, Derby, at the time. The family briefly moved to […]
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Alan Hale Jr.
Alan Hale Jr. (1921 - 1990)
Actor. He is best remembered for his role of “The Skipper” in the classic television comedy series, “Gilligan’s Island” (1964 to 1967). Born Alan Hale Mackahan in Los Angeles, California, he was the son of film actor Rufus Edward Mackahan (1892-1950), who used the stage name of Alan Hale. Young Alan adopted his father’s stage […]
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Alan J. Pakula
Alan J. Pakula (1928 - 1998)
Alan J. Pakula started his Hollywood career as an assistant in the cartoon department at Warner Brothers. In 1957, he undertook his first production role for Paramount Pictures. In 1962, he produced To Kill a Mockingbird, for which he was nominated for a Best Picture Academy Award. Alan J. Pakula had a successful professional relationship […]
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Alan Jay Lerner
Alan Jay Lerner (1918 - 1986)
Born in New York City, he was the son of Edith Adelson Lerner and Joseph Jay Lerner, whose brother, Samuel Alexander Lerner, was founder and owner of the Lerner Stores, a chain of dress shops. One of Lerner’s cousins was the radio comedian/television game show panelist Henry Morgan. Lerner was educated at Bedales School in […]
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Alan King
Alan King (1927 - 2004)
The youngest of several children, King was born in New York City, New York, the son of Polish-Russian-Jewish immigrants Minnie (née Solomon) and Bernard Kinberg, a handbag cutter. He spent his first years on the Lower East Side of Manhattan. Later, King’s family moved to Brooklyn. King used humor to survive in the tough neighborhoods. […]
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Alan Ladd
Alan Ladd (1913 - 1964)
Alan Ladd Actor. He is best remembered for his 1953 role of ‘Shane’ in the western movie of the same name. Although short (five feet, five inches), with a laconic manner and a face that never seemed to change expression, he quickly became a star. Born in Hot Springs, Arkansas to an accountant father and […]
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Alan Matheney
Alan Matheney (1950 - 2005)
Alan Lehman Matheney (6 November 1950 – 28 September 2005) was an American convicted of beating to death his ex-wife, Lisa Bianco, with a .410 bore shotgun, while on an eight-hour release from prison on 4 March 1989. At the time he was serving a sentence at Pendleton Correctional Facility for battery and confinement of […]
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Alan Napier
Alan Napier (1903 - 1988)
Napier was the son of Claude Gerald Napier-Clavering (1869–1938) and Mary Millicent Kenrick (1871–1932), sister of Wilfred Byng Kenrick, and a first cousin once removed of Neville Chamberlain,[2] Britain’s prime minister from 1937 to 1940. After graduating from Clifton College, he studied at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art. He was engaged by the Oxford Players, […]
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Alan Reed
Alan Reed (1907 - 1977)
Born Herbert Theodore Bergman in New York City, he majored in journalism at Columbia University, and then began his acting career in the city, eventually working on Broadway. He was Jewish. For a time, he continued to list himself either as Bergman or Alan Reed, depending on the role he was playing (Reed for more comedic […]
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Alan Rickman
Alan Rickman (1946 - 2016)
Alan Rickman…Born February 21, 1946, in West London, England. Alan Rickman showed an early penchant for the performing arts. He cut his teeth as an actor in 1978, when he joined the Royal Shakespeare Company. He earned a Tony Award nomination as the star of 1988’s Les Liaisons Dangereuses, then came to American consciousness […]
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Albert Anastasia
Albert Anastasia (1902 - 1957)
Albert Anastasia As Umberto Anastasio became known as a Brooklyn gangster, he adjusted his name to Albert Anastasia. The adjustment to his surname was reportedly to save his Anastasio relatives from embarrassment. (One of his brothers entered the U.S. legally and became a parish priest in New York.) Anastasia became an accomplished underworld enforcer, earning […]
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Albert Anselmi
Albert Anselmi (1883 - 1929)
Albert Anselmi Organized Crime Figure. Born in Marsala, Sicily in 1884, Albert Anselmi became involved with the Mafia early in his life. Escaping the relatives of one of his murder victims, he fled to America around 1912 and entered the country illegally through the Gulf Coast, eventually settling on “The Hill”, the Italian community of […]
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Albert DeSalvo
Albert DeSalvo (1931 - 1973)
DeSalvo was born in Chelsea, Massachusetts, to Frank and Charlotte DeSalvo. His father was a violent alcoholic, who at one point knocked out all of his wife’s teeth and bent her fingers back until they broke. DeSalvo tortured animals as a child, and began shoplifting and stealing in early adolescence, frequently crossing paths with the […]
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Albert Ebossé Bodjongo
Albert Ebossé Bodjongo (1989 - 2014)
Bodjongo played with his hometown club Douala Athletic Club, a club in MTN Elite Two, Cameroon’s National Second Division. He also played for Coton Sport FC and Unisport Bafang in Cameroon. He was signed by Malaysian club Perak FA on 15 April 2012 as a replacement for outgoing striker Lazar Popović. He made his league […]
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Albert Einstein
Albert Einstein (1879 - 1955)
Albert Einstein (14 March 1879 – 18 April 1955) was a German-born theoretical physicist and philosopher of science. He developed the general theory of relativity, one of the two pillars of modern physics (alongside quantum mechanics). He is best known in popular culture for his mass–energy equivalence formula E = mc2 (which has been dubbed […]
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Albert Fish
Albert Fish (1870 - 1936)
Fish was born in Washington, D.C., on May 19, 1870, to Randall (1795 – October 16, 1875) and Ellen (née Howell; 1838–c. 1903) Fish. His father was American, of English ancestry, and his mother was Scots-Irish American. Fish said that he was named after statesman and politician Hamilton Fish, a distant relative. His father was […]
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Albert Hadley
Albert Hadley (1920 - 2012)
Hadley was born in Springfield, Tennessee, in 1920. He attended Peabody College in Nashville, and was a graduate of and teacher at Parsons School of Design, in New York City and Paris. He trained with the South’s best-known decorator, A. Herbert Rodgers. After serving overseas in World War II, Hadley studied and taught at Parsons […]
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Albert Julius “Lefty” Aber
Albert Julius “Lefty” Aber (1927 - 1993)
Albert Julius Aber (July 31, 1927 – May 20, 1993), nicknamed Lefty, was a left-handed Major League Baseball pitcher who played six years in the Major Leagues with the Cleveland Indians (1950, 1953), Detroit Tigers (1953–1957), and Kansas City Athletics (1957). Born in Cleveland, Ohio, Aber was signed as an amateur free agent by the […]
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Albert Kachellek
Albert Kachellek (1890 - 1929)
Organized Crime Figure. Also known as James “Jim” Clark, he was a gangster working for Bugs Moran that fell victim to the infamous St. Valentine’s Day Massacre in Chicago, Illinois (the other victims were Reinhardt Schwimmer, Frank Gusenberg and his brother Peter Gusenberg, Adam Heyer (aka Adam Meyer), John May and Albert Weinshank aka Albert […]