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Lee Marshall
Lee Marshall (1949 - 2014)
Lee Marshall (born Marshall Aaron Mayer; November 28, 1949 – April 26, 2014) was a professional wrestling announcer formerly of the American Wrestling Association (AWA), World Championship Wrestling (WCW) and Women of Wrestling (WOW!). Marshall joined the broadcast team when the AWA Championship Wrestling show was on ESPN. A big deal was made by Rod Trongard about Marshall being from Los Angeles. During his AWA stint […]
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Lee Marvin
Lee Marvin (1924 - 1987)
Lee Marvin was born in New York City. He was the son of Lamont Waltman Marvin, an advertising executive and the head of the New York and New England Apple Institute, and his wife Courtenay Washington (née Davidge), a fashion writer and beauty consultant. As with his older brother, Robert, he was named in honor […]
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Lee Remick
Lee Remick (1935 - 1991)
Remick was born in Quincy, Massachusetts, the daughter of Gertrude Margaret (née Waldo), an actress, and Francis Edwin “Frank” Remick, who owned a department store. Her maternal great-grandmother, Eliza Duffield, was an English-born preacher and her paternal grandfather was of Irish ancestry. Remick attended the Swaboda School of Dance, The Hewitt School and studied acting […]
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Lee Young
Lee Young (1984 - 2013)
Young was born in Columbia, South Carolina, the son of Velma (née Love) and Tommy Scott Young. He was in the second grade when his parents’ marriage ended, and he went to live with his mother. At age ten, he portrayed Martin Luther King in a play called A Night of Stars and Dreams by […]
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Lefty Frizzell
Lefty Frizzell (1928 - 1975)
Lefty Frizzell Country Singer. With one of the most distinctive voices in country music, his relaxed style was a major influence on musicians such as Merle Haggard, Willie Nelson, Roy Orbison and Randy Travis. Between 1950 and 1953 he had thirteen hit records, writing and performing songs that have become standards in country music. His […]
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Leila Hyams
Leila Hyams (1905 - 1977)
Leila Hyams was born in New York City to vaudeville comedy performers John Hyams, (1869-1940) and Leila (née McIntyre) Hyams (1882-1953). Both parents appeared in films and mother Leila Senior was also a noted stage performer, her parents can later be seen together in several Hollywood films such as in 1939’s The Housekeeper’s Daughter. Hyams […]
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Lemmy Kilmister
Lemmy Kilmister (1945 - 2015)
Lemmy Kilmister Heavy Metal Musician. Born Ian Fraser Kilmister, he was a founding member and frontman of the heavy metal rock group “Motörhead”. Inspired to become a musician after seeing the Beatles perform in concert, he spent his early years playing in a variety of bands, as well as working on the road crew for […]
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Len Lesser
Len Lesser (1922 - 2011)
Lesser was born in The Bronx in 1922. His father, a grocer, was a Jewish immigrant from Poland. Lesser received his bachelor’s degree from the City College of New York in 1942 at the age of 19. Lesser enlisted in the United States Army the day after the attack on Pearl Harbor, and served in […]
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Lena Baker
Lena Baker (1900 - 1945)
Baker was born June 8, 1900, to a poor black family of sharecroppers and raised near Cuthbert, Georgia. Her family moved to the county seat when she was a child. As a youth, she worked for a farmer named J.A. Cox, chopping cotton. By the 1940s, Baker was the mother of three children and worked […]
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Lenita Lane
Lenita Lane (1901 - 1995)
Actress. She appeared in films for three decades, from the 1930s to the 1950s, usually in uncredited roles. In 1924 she began her career on Broadway, in the play “Flame of Love” and appeared on stage in “Kept” (1926), “Congratulations” (1929), “Penny Arcade” (1930, and “Border-Land” (1932). Her most notable film role was in the […]
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Lennie Aleshire
Lennie Aleshire (1890 - 1987)
Lennie Aleshire was born April 27, 1890 in Christian County, Missouri, just south of Springfield. He was playing the fiddle by age six and learned the guitar, banjo and other instruments by ear. At 15, he lived with the Creek Indians near Broken Arrow, Oklahoma, though his mother was half Cherokee. After his parents died, […]
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Leo Baekeland
Leo Baekeland (1863 - 1944)
Leo Baekeland was born in Ghent, Belgium, Baekeland was the son of a cobbler and a house maid. He told The Literary Digest: “The name is a Dutch word meaning ‘Land of Beacons.’” He graduated with honours from the Ghent Municipal Technical School and was awarded a scholarship by the City of Ghent to study […]
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Leo Carroll
Leo Carroll (1886 - 1972)
Leo Carroll was born in Weedon Bec, Northamptonshire, to William and Catherine Carroll. His Roman Catholic parents named him after then-Pope Leo XIII. In 1897, his family lived in York, where his Irish-born father was a foreman in an ordnance store. In the 1901 Census for West Ham, London, his occupation is listed as “wine […]
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Leo Genn
Leo Genn (1905 - 1978)
Genn was born at 144 Kyverdale Road, Stamford Hill, Hackney, London, the son of Woolfe (William) Genn, a jewellery salesman, and Rachel Genn née Asserson. His parents were both Jewish. Genn attended the City of London School and studied law at St Catharine’s College, Cambridge, qualifying as a barrister in 1928. He ceased practising as a […]
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Leo Gordon
Leo Gordon (1922 - 2000)
Leo Gordon was born in Brooklyn in New York City on December 2, 1922. Reared by his father in dire poverty, Gordon grew up during the Great Depression. He left school in the eighth grade, went to work in construction and demolition, and then joined the New Deal agency, the Civilian Conservation Corps, in which […]
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Leo McCarey
Leo McCarey (1898 - 1969)
Born in Los Angeles, California, Leo McCarey attended St. Joseph’s Catholic school and Los Angeles High School. His father was Thomas J. McCarey, whom the Los Angeles Times called “the greatest fight promoter in the world”. Leo McCarey would later make a boxing comedy with Harold Lloyd called The Milky Way (1936). Leo McCarey graduated from […]
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Leo McKern
Leo McKern (1920 - 2002)
McKern was born in Sydney, New South Wales, the son of Vera (née Martin) and Norman Walton McKern. He attended Sydney Technical High School. After an accident at the age of 15, he lost his left eye. He first worked as an engineering apprentice, then as an artist, followed by service in the Australian Army […]
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Leo Tolstoy
Leo Tolstoy (1828 - 1910)
Count Lev Nikolayevich Tolstoy (9 September 1828 – 20 November 1910), also known as Leo Tolstoy, was a Russian novelist, short story writer, philosopher and playwright who primarily wrote novels and short stories. Tolstoy was a master of realistic fiction and is widely considered one of the greatest novelists of all time. He is best […]
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Leon Ames
Leon Ames (1902 - 1993)
Leon Ames was born Harry Wycoff in Portland, Indiana, to Cora Alice (DeMoss) and Charles Elmer Wycoff. He had always wanted to be an actor and he did it the hard way, serving a long apprenticeship in touring amateur theatre companies, even selling shoes for a while on 42nd Street in the 1920’s. It took […]
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Leon Ames
Leon Ames (1902 - 1993)
Leon Ames was born Harry Wycoff on January 20, 1902 in Portland, Indiana, son of Charles Elmer Wycoff and his wife Cora A. De Moss.. Some sources list his original last name as “Wykoff” or “Waycoff,” and in his early films he acted under the name Leon Waycoff. Ames made his film debut in Quick […]
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Leon Hess
Leon Hess (1914 - 1999)
Hess was born on March 14, 1914 to a Jewish family in Asbury Park, New Jersey. His parents were Ethel and Mores Hess, who was a kosher butcher who emigrated from Lithuania and – after arriving in the United States – worked as an oil delivery man in Asbury Park, New Jersey. Hess worked as […]
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Leonard Alvarado
Leonard Alvarado (1947 - 1969)
Alvarado was born in Bakersfield, California on Feb. 13, 1947, and enlisted in the U. S. Army on July 25, 1968, serving in the Vietnam War. He was killed in action, leaving behind his wife and a young daughter. Alvarado distinguished himself on Aug. 12, 1969, while serving as a rifleman during a mission to […]
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Leonard Garment
Leonard Garment (1924 - 2013)
Garment was born in Brooklyn, New York. He was a graduate of Brooklyn Law School (1949) and that same year he joined the law firm of Mudge, Stern, Baldwin, and Todd. He became the head of litigation and a partner in the late fifties. (Later the firm would be called Nixon, Mudge, Rose, Guthrie & […]
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Leonard Herzenberg
Leonard Herzenberg (1931 - 2013)
Herzenberg was born in New York City, U.S.A.. He received his bachelor’s degree in 1952 from Brooklyn College in biology and chemistry. In 1955, he received his Ph.D. from California Institute of Technology in biochemistry with a specialization in immunology for studies on cytochrome in Neurospora. After school he was a postdoctoral fellow at the […]
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Leonard Nimoy
Leonard Nimoy (1931 - 2015)
Leonard Simon Nimoy was born on March 26, 1931 in the West End of Boston, Massachusetts, the son of Yiddish-speaking Orthodox Jewish immigrants from Iziaslav, Soviet Union (now Ukraine). His parents left Iziaslav separately—his father first walking over the border into Poland—and reunited in the United States. His mother, Dora (née Spinner), was a homemaker, […]
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Leonardo da Vinci
Leonardo da Vinci (1452 - 1519)
Leonardo di ser Piero da Vinci (15 April 1452 – 2 May 1519) was an Italian polymath, painter, sculptor, architect, musician, mathematician, engineer, inventor, anatomist, geologist, cartographer, botanist, and writer. He is widely considered to be one of the greatest painters of all time and perhaps the most diversely talented person ever to have lived. […]
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Leonid Stadnyk
Leonid Stadnyk (1970 - 2014)
Leonid Stadnyk was formerly listed as the world’s tallest living man according to Guinness World Records. On August 20, 2008, editor-in-chief of Guinness World Records, Craig Glenday, announced that the title of world’s tallest man had been returned to China’s Bao Xishun after Stadnyk refused to be measured under the Guinness standard guidelines requiring several […]
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LeRoy Neiman
LeRoy Neiman (1921 - 2012)
Neiman was born in Saint Paul, Minnesota, the son of Lydia Sophia (née Serline) of Braham, Minnesota and Charles Julius Runquist, who were married in 1918, and living at Grasston, Minnesota (Kanabec County) in 1921. He was of Swedish descent. His father deserted his family, and when his mother married his stepfather, John L. Niman (Neiman) in 1926, LeRoy changed to the new […]
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Les Tremayne
Les Tremayne (1913 - 2003)
In 1974, Tremayne commented, “I’ve been in more than 30 motion pictures, but it’s from radio … that most people remember me.” His radio career began in 1931, and during the 1930s and 1940s, Tremayne was heard in as many as 45 shows a week. Replacing Don Ameche, he starred in The First Nighter Program from […]
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Lesley Gore
Lesley Gore (1946 - 2015)
Lesley Gore Lesley Gore, whose No. 1 hit “It’s My Party” kicked off a successful singing career while she was still in high school, has died. She was 68. Her death was confirmed by family friend Blake Morgan, who produced her 2005 album, “Ever Since.” “We loved her and we are very sad. She was […]