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Ray Manzarek (1939 - 2013)

Manzarek was of Polish descent, born and raised on the South Side of Chicago, Illinois, as were his parents, Helena and Raymond Manzarek, Sr. Growing up, he took private piano lessons from Bruno Michelotti and others. He originally wanted to play basketball, but he only wanted to play power forward or center. When he was […]

Ray Price (1926 - 2013)

Ray Price was born on a farm near the small, now gone, community of Peach, Near Perryville in Wood County, Texas. He was the son of Walter Clifton Price and Clara Mae Bradley Cimini. His Grandfather James MM Price was an early settler of the area.  Price was three years old when his parents divorced and his mother […]

Raymond Bailey (1904 - 1980)

He was born in San Francisco, California, the son of William and Alice (née O’Brien) Bailey. When he was a teenager he went to Hollywood to become a movie star. He found it was harder than he had thought, however, and took a variety of short-term jobs. He worked for a time as a day […]

Raymond Burr (1917 - 1993)

Raymond William Stacey Burr was born in New Westminster, British Columbia, Canada, to William Johnston Burr (1889–1985), a hardware salesman, and his wife, Minerva Annette (née Smith, 1892–1974), a concert pianist and music teacher. His mother was born in Chicago, Illinois; Burr’s ancestry included Irish, English, Scottish, and German. After his parents divorced, Burr, then […]

Raymond Huntley (1904 - 1990)

Born in Birmingham in 1904, Raymond Huntley made his stage debut at the Birmingham Repertory Theatre on 1 April 1922, in A Woman Killed with Kindness. His London debut followed at the Court Theatre on 22 February 1924, in As Far as Thought can Reach. He subsequently inherited the role of Count Dracula from Edmund Blake […]

Raymond Patriarca (1908 - 1984)

Organized Crime Figure. He was born on Shrewsbury Street to Italian immigrant parents. When he was 3, his father, Eleuterio, moved the family to Atwells Avenue in the Federal Hill section of Providence RI where he operated a package store. Raymond left school after the 8th grade and worked at the Biltmore Hotel, in Providence, […]

Rebecca Schaeffer (1967 - 1989)

Schaeffer was born in Eugene, Oregon, the only child of Danna (née Wilner), a writer and instructor at Portland Community College, and Dr. Benson Schaeffer, a child psychologist. She was raised in Portland where she attended Lincoln High School. She initially had aspirations to become a rabbi but began modeling during her junior year in […]

Red Borom (1915 - 2011)

Red Borom Was a Major League Baseball player who played two seasons and won a World Series ring with the Detroit Tigers in 1945. Born in Spartanburg, South Carolina, Borom was 28 years old before he made it to the big leagues. He only played one full season in the major leagues, and that season […]

Red Buttons (1919 - 2006)

Red Buttons was born Aaron Chwatt on February 5, 1919, in New York City, to Jewish immigrants Sophie (née Baker) and Michael Chwatt. At sixteen years old, Chwatt got a job as an entertaining bellhop at Ryan’s Tavern in City Island, Bronx. The combination of his red hair and the large, shiny buttons on the […]

Red Foley (1910 - 1968)

Red Foley Red Foley was one of the biggest stars in country during the post-war era, a silky-voiced singer who sold some 25 million records between 1944 and 1965 and whose popularity went far in making country music a viable mainstream commodity. Born Clyde Julian Foley on June 17, 1910, in Blue Lick, KY, he […]

Red Grange (1903 - 1991)

“Red” Grange was born on June 13, 1903 in Forksville, a village of about 200 people in an area of Pennsylvania lumber camps. His father was the foreman of three lumber camps. For a number of years, the Grange family lived with relatives until they could finally afford a home of their own in Wheaton, […]

Red Lane (1939 - 2015)

Red Lane Nashville’s Tennessean newspaper reports that Lane died on Wednesday night (July 1) near Music City. Born Hollis Rudolph DeLaughter on Feb. 9, 1939, in Louisiana, Lane was the son of sharecroppers who moved around frequently. He began to play music as a child, learning on a guitar his father got by trading a […]

Red Sovine (1918 - 1980)

Red Sovine In 1965 Sovine found his niche when he recorded “Giddyup Go“, which, like most of his other trucker hits, he co-wrote with Tommy Hill. It is spoken, rather than sung, as the words of an older long-distance truck driver who rediscovers his long-lost son driving another truck on the same highway. Minnie Pearl […]

Redd Foxx (1922 - 1991)

Foxx was born in St. Louis, Missouri and raised on Chicago’s South Side. His father, Fred Sanford,[citation needed] an electrician and auto mechanic from Hickman, Kentucky, left his family when Foxx was four years old. He was raised by his half-Seminole Indian mother, Mary Hughes from Ellisville, Mississippi, his grandmother and his minister. He attended […]

Reg Varney (1916 - 2008)

Varney was born in Canning Town, Essex, now part of Greater London. His father worked in a rubber factory in Silvertown and he was one of five children who grew up in Addington Road, Canning Town. Varney was educated at the nearby Star Lane Primary School in West Ham and after leaving school at 14, […]

Reggie White (1961 - 2004)

White was born in Chattanooga, Tennessee. He played high school football at Howard High School under Coach Robert Pulliam, a former defensive lineman at Tennessee. During his senior year, White recorded 140 tackles (88 solo) and 10 sacks, and received All-American honors. He was rated the number one recruit in Tennessee by the Knoxville News Sentinel. White played college football […]

Reginald Owen (1887 - 1972)

The son of Joseph and Frances Owen, Reginald Owen studied at Sir Herbert Tree’s Royal Academy of Dramatic Art and made his professional debut in 1905. In 1911 he starred in the original production of Where the Rainbow Ends as Saint George which opened to very good reviews on 21 December 1911. Reginald Owen had […]

Reinaldo Arenas (1943 - 1990)

Arenas was born in the countryside, in the northern part of the Province of Oriente, Cuba, and later moved to the city of Holguín. In 1963, he moved to Havana to enroll in the School of Planification and, later, in the Faculty of Letters at the Universidad de La Habana, where he studied philosophy and […]

Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn (1606 - 1669)

Rembrandt Harmenszoon van Rijn was born on 15 July 1606 in Leiden, in the Dutch Republic, now the Netherlands. He was the ninth child born to Harmen Gerritszoon van Rijn and Neeltgen Willemsdochter van Zuytbrouck. His family was quite well-to-do; his father was a miller and his mother was a baker’s daughter. Religion is a central theme in Rembrandt’s paintings and the religiously fraught […]

René Clair (1898 - 1981)

René Clair was born and grew up in Paris in the district of Les Halles, whose lively and picturesque character made a lasting impression on him. His father was a soap merchant; he had an elder brother, Henri Chomette (born 1896). He attended the Lycée Montaigne and the Lycée Louis-le-Grand. In 1914 he was studying […]

Renée Vivien (1877 - 1909)

Vivien was born in London, England to a wealthy British father and an American mother from Jackson, Michigan. She grew up in Paris and London. Upon inheriting her father’s fortune at 21, she emigrated permanently to France.  In Paris, Vivien’s dress and lifestyle were as notorious among the bohemian set as was her verse. She […]

Rex Elvie Allen (1920 - 1999)

Allen was born to Horace E. Allen and Luella Faye Clark on a ranch in Mud Springs Canyon, 40 miles from Willcox, Arizona. As a boy he played guitar and sang at local functions with his fiddle-playing father until high school graduation when he toured the Southwest as a rodeo rider. He got his start […]

Rex Harrison (1908 - 1990)

Harrison was born at Derry House in Huyton, Merseyside, the son of Edith Mary (née Carey) and William Reginald Harrison, a cotton broker. He was educated at Liverpool College. After a bout of childhood measles, Harrison lost most of the sight in his left eye, which on one occasion caused some on-stage difficulty. He first […]

Rex Humbard (1919 - 2007)

Born in Little Rock, Arkansas, to Pentecostal evangelists, Rex Humbard was the first evangelist to have a weekly nationwide television program in the United States, running from 1952 to 1983, although his first television broadcast was in 1949. Humbard’s $4 million Cathedral of Tomorrow church in Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio, a suburb of nearby Akron, was […]

Rhodes Reason (1930 - 2014)

Rhodes Reason was born in Glendale, California, the son of Jean (Robinson) and Rex G. Reason. The younger brother of actor Rex Reason, Reason made his acting start at the age of eighteen in a production of Romeo and Juliet directed by Charles Laughton. Among his starring roles were parts in King Kong Escapes (1967) and […]

Ricardo Cortez (1900 - 1977)

Born to a Jewish family in New York City (Vienna has been incorrectly cited as his birthplace), Ricardo Cortez was an amateur boxer and worked on Wall Street prior to entering the film business. Hollywood executives changed his name from Krantz to Cortez in order to capitalize on the popularity of the era’s “Latin lovers” […]

Rich Vogler (1950 - 1990)

Vogler was the National Alliance of Midget Auto Racing (NAMAR) midget champion in 1973. He won the midget car track championships at the Indianapolis Speedrome in 1984 and 1985. He won the Fireman Nationals midget car race at Angell Park Speedway in 1985. Vogler became the first driver to win the USAC Sprint Car and […]

Richard Abbott (1899 - 1986)

Actor. He was in the original casts of the plays “The Power of Darkness”, “Polly”, and “The Last Mile”. He had many uncredited film roles from the 1930s to 1970s, such as “Love Laughs at Andy Hardy”(1947) and “Green Dolphin Street”(1947) His last role was as ‘Billings’ in “The Last Escape” (1970).

Richard Angas (1942 - 2013)

The Angas family were keen amateur musicians, and Richard, who was born in Esher in Greater London, became a chorister at the Royal School of Church Music as well as joining a local choral group. From 1960 until 1964 he studied at the Royal Academy of Music in London, and in 1965 won both the […]

Richard Arkwright (1732 - 1792)

Richard Arkwright, the youngest of 13 children, was born in Preston, Lancashire, England on 23 December 1732. His father, Thomas, was a tailor and a Preston Guild burgess. The family is recorded in the Preston Guild Rolls now held by Lancashire Record Office. Richard’s parents, Sarah and Thomas, could not afford to send him to […]