FOUND A GRAVE

Wendy Hiller (1912 - 2003)

Born in Bramhall, Cheshire, the daughter of Frank Watkin Hiller, a Manchester cotton manufacturer, and Marie Stone, Hiller began her professional career as an actress in repertory at Manchester in the early 1930s. She first found success as slum dweller Sally Hardcastle in the stage version of Love on the Dole in 1934. The play […]

Wendy Richard (1943 - 2009)

Richard, an only child, was born in Middlesbrough in 1943. Her parents, Henry and Beatrice Reay (née Cutter) Emerton, were publicans and ran the Corporation Hotel in the town. Emerton and Cutter married in Paddington in 1939. While Richard was a baby, her family moved to Bournemouth. They later moved to the Isle of Wight […]

Wes Craven (1939 - 2015)

Craven was born in Cleveland, Ohio, the son of Caroline (née Miller) and Paul Eugene Craven. He was raised in a strict Baptist family. Craven earned an undergraduate degree in English and Psychology from Wheaton College in Illinois and a master’s degree in Philosophy and Writing from Johns Hopkins University. Craven briefly taught English at Westminster […]

West Arkeen (1960 - 1997)

Aaron West Arkeen was born in Neuilly-sur-Seine, France and grew up in San Diego. He was the grandson of Russian-Jewish immigrants to America and the son of a career U. S. Army Master Sergeant, Morris Arkeen. He was born in France while his father was serving overseas. He started playing guitar at the age of […]

Westley Allan Dodd (1961 - 1993)

Westley Allan Dodd was born in Toppenish, Washington, on July 3, 1961, the oldest of Jim and Carol Dodd’s three children.  Dodd claimed he was never abused or neglected as a child. He also reported that he grew up in a wealthy, happy family. However, The Seattle Times reported that Dodd described in a diary […]

Wheely Willy (1991 - 2009)

Willy was found abandoned in a cardboard box with spinal injuries and a cut throat. Taken in by a veterinary hospital and treated, Willy stayed there for a year unadopted. Learning that the dog would be euthanised if not adopted, pet groomer Deborah Turner decided to bring him home.  Initially, the two pound (one kilogram) […]

Whit Bissell (1909 - 1996)

Born in New York City, Bissell was the son of prominent surgeon Dr. J. Dougal Bissell. He trained with the Carolina Playmakers, a theatrical organization associated with the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He had a number of roles in Broadway theatre, including the Air Force show Winged Victory, when he was an […]

Whitman Mayo (1930 - 2001)

Whitman Blount Mayo was born in New York City, New York, and grew up in Harlem and Queens. At the age of seventeen he moved with his family to Southern California and from there entered the United States Army, serving from 1951 to 1953 during the Korean War. Upon release, he studied at Chaffey College, […]

Whitney Blake (1925 - 2002)

Blake was born in Eagle Rock, Los Angeles, California. She was the first child of Martha Mae Whitney (née Wilkerson) and Harry C. Whitney, a United States Secret Service agent who had guarded President Woodrow Wilson, his wife, and other political officials. Blake and her younger brother traveled around the country extensively, during which time […]

Whitney Houston (1963 - 2012)

Whitney Houston Whitney Elizabeth Houston (August 9, 1963 – February 11, 2012) was an American singer, actress, producer, and model. In 2009, Guinness World Records cited her as the most awarded female act of all time. Houston was one of the world’s best-selling music artists, having sold over 200 million records worldwide. She released six […]

Wilbur Hardee (1918 - 2008)

Wilbur Hardee Wilber Hardee, a farm boy turned grill cook who went on to open the first Hardee’s hamburger stand in 1960, starting a chain that now has nearly 2,000 restaurants in the United States and overseas, died Friday at his home in Greenville, N.C. He was 89.   Born in Martin County, N.C., on […]

Wilbur Olin Atwater (1844 - 1907)

Atwater was born in Johnsburg, New York and grew up in the New England area. He opted not to fight in the American Civil War and instead to pursue an undergraduate degree at Wesleyan University in Connecticut. In 1868, Atwater’s interest in civil engineering and agricultural chemistry led him to enroll in Yale University’s Sheffield […]

Wilfred Gordon Bigelow (1913 - 2005)

Wilfred Gordon “Bill” Bigelow, OC FRSC (June 18, 1913 – March 27, 2005) was a Canadian heart surgeon known for his role in developing the artificial pacemaker and the use of hypothermia in open heart surgery.  Born in Brandon, Manitoba, the son of Dr. Wilfred Abram Bigelow, founder of the first private medical clinic in […]

Wilfred Johnson (1935 - 1988)

Organized Crime Figure. He was an associate in the Gambino Organized Crime Family and close friend of mobster John Gotti. He was also a “Top Echelon” informant for the Federal Bureau of Investigations from 1966 until 1985. He provided the FBI information on John Gotti and other Gambino Family members (his code name was “Wahoo” […]

Wilfred Pickles (1904 - 1978)

Wilfred Pickles (13 October 1904 in Halifax – 27 March 1978 in Brighton) was an English actor and radio presenter. Born in Halifax in the West Riding of Yorkshire, he moved to Southport, Lancashire, with his family in 1929 and worked with his father as a builder. He joined an amateur dramatic society and in a […]

Willem Johan Kolff (1911 - 2009)

Born in Leiden, Netherlands, Kolff was the eldest of a family of 5 boys. Kolff studied medicine in his hometown at Leiden University, and continued as a resident in internal medicine at Groningen University. One of his first patients there was a 22-year old man who was slowly dying of renal failure. This prompted Kolff […]

William “Bill” Lynch (1941 - 2013)

Lynch was born on July 21, 1941, and grew up near the town of Mattituck in Suffolk County, Long Island, the son of William Lynch, Sr. His father worked as a potato farmer.   In the 1960s, Lynch and his wife Mary moved to Harlem, where he would become a major political figure. Lynch worked […]

William Alchesay (1853 - 1928)

He was born May 17, 1853 in a part of the Arizona Territory known as Limestone Canyon. He joined the Indian Scouts at Camp Verde December 2, 1872 and served under General George Crook in actions against an uprising of the Chiricahua Apache in the winter of 1872–1873, holding the rank of Sergeant. He was […]

William Asher (1921 - 2012)

William Asher was born in New York City to stage actress Lillian Bonner and producer Ephraim M. Asher (1887-1937), whose movie credits were mostly as an associate producer. His sister Betty Asher was an MGM publicist for Judy Garland. His father was Jewish, his mother Catholic. Asher’s family moved to Los Angeles when he was […]

William Bakewell (1908 - 1993)

Bakewell, educated at Los Angeles Harvard Military School, began his film career as an extra in the silent movie Fighting Blood (1924), and went on to appear in some 170 films and television shows. He had supporting roles at the end of the silent era and reached the peak of his career around 1930. He […]

William Bast (1931 - 2015)

Bast was born in Wauwatosa, Milwaukee County, Wisconsin, the son of Gilbert Bast and Bernice Fleischmann. He began his early education in Milwaukee, transferring to Kenosha when his family moved there. Moving back to Milwaukee, he subsequently graduated from Wauwatosa High school, then enrolled at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. When his family moved to Los […]

William Beaudine (1892 - 1970)

Born in New York City, William Beaudine began his career as an actor in 1909 with American Mutoscope and Biograph Company. He married Marguerite Fleischer in 1914, to whom he stayed married until his death and who died in 1970 (Marguerite’s sister was the mother of actor Bobby Anderson). He was the brother of director […]

William Bendix (1906 - 1964)

William Bendix William Bendix made a career out of playing lovable big lugs, although he also occasionally got to play sinister and tragic roles with equal success. He was born in New York City, in a cold-water flat at Third Avenue and 45th Street in 1906, the only son of Oscar Bendix and the former […]

William Blake (1757 - 1827)

William Blake (28 November 1757 – 12 August 1827) was an English painter, poet and printmaker. Largely unrecognised during his lifetime, Blake is now considered a seminal figure in the history of the poetry and visual arts of the Romantic Age. His prophetic poetry has been said to form “what is in proportion to its […]

William Bonin (1947 - 1996)

Bonin was born in Connecticut in January 1947, the second of three brothers. His father was a compulsive gambler and alcoholic, Bonin’s mother, Alice, was also an alcoholic, who frequently left Bonin and his brothers in the care of their grandfather, a convicted child molester. Bonin and his brothers were neglected as children, and were […]

William Boyd (1895 - 1972)

Boyd was born in Hendrysburg in Belmont County, located 26 miles east of Cambridge, Ohio. He was reared in Tulsa, Oklahoma, the son of day laborer Charles William Boyd and his wife, the former Lida Wilkens. Following his father’s death, he moved to California and worked as an orange picker, surveyor, tool dresser and auto […]

William Boyett (1927 - 2004)

Boyett was born in Akron, Ohio, and lived there until the 1940s, when he moved with his family to Los Angeles, California. He won a Shakespeare competition in high school which led to acting jobs in radio. He served in the Navy during World War II and afterward performed on the stage in both New […]

William Cameron Menzies (1896 - 1957)

William Cameron Menzies was born in New Haven, Connecticut to Scots immigrant parents, Charles A. and Helen originally from Aberfeldy, Scotland. He studied at Yale and the University of Edinburgh, and after serving in the US Army during World War I he attended the Art Students League of New York. Menzies joined Famous Players-Lasky, later to […]

William Campbell (1923 - 2011)

Campbell’s film career began in 1950, with a small part in the John Garfield film, The Breaking Point. After several years of similar supporting performances in a number of films, including as a co-pilot in William Wellman’s The High and the Mighty (1954), he won his first starring role in Cell 2455 Death Row (1955), […]

William Castle (1914 - 1977)

William Castle was born William Schloss, Jr. in New York City, the son of Saidie (Snellenberg) and William Schloss. His family was Jewish. (“Schloss” is German for “castle”, and Castle later translated his surname into English as his pseudonym.) His mother died when he was nine. When his father followed a year later, he was […]