FOUND A GRAVE

Heather Sears (1935 - 1994)

Although not from an acting family (her father was a distinguished London doctor), she was already performing in plays at the age of 5 and even writing them at the age of 8. Sears had a long association with France and French culture which began in her childhood when she spent summers in Brittany with […]

Hector Camacho (1962 - 2012)

Hector Camacho was a Puerto Rican professional boxer and singer. Known for his quickness in the ring and flamboyant style, he held major championships in the super featherweight (WBC, 1983), lightweight (WBC, 1985), and junior welterweight (WBO, 1989 and 1991) divisions. After earning minor titles in four additional weight classes, Camacho became the first boxer […]

Hedda Hopper (1885 - 1966)

Hedda Hopper was born Elda Furry in Hollidaysburg, Pennsylvania, the daughter of Margaret (née Miller 1856-1941) and David Furry, a butcher, both members of the German Baptist Brethren. Her siblings included Dora, Sherman, Cameron, Edgar, Frank and Margaret. Her family was of Pennsylvania Dutch (German) descent. The family moved to Altoona when Elda was three. She […]

Hedy Lamarr (1914 - 2000)

Lamarr was born Hedwig Eva Maria Kiesler in 1914 in Vienna, Austria-Hungary, the only child of Gertrud “Trude” Kiesler (née Lichtwitz; 3 February 1894 – 27 February 1977) and Emil Kiesler (27 December 1880 – 14 February 1935). Her father was born in Lemberg and was a successful bank director. He died before the Holocaust, […]

Heinrich Eberbach (1895 - 1992)

During late 1914 Eberbach fought in France as a corporal, and by February 1915 he was promoted to Lieutenant. During 1915 he was wounded twice in France, lost his nose due to a French bullet (a rubber replacement was made) and was captured by the French. In December 1916 he was exchanged for a French […]

Heinz Erhardt (1909 - 1979)

Heinz Erhardt was born in Riga, the son of Baltic German Kapellmeister Gustl Erhardt. He lived most of his childhood at his grandparents in Riga, where his grandfather, Paul Nelder, owned a music house. His grandfather also taught him how to play the piano. After World War I, his father emigrated to Germany. Erhardt lived with […]

Helen Carter (1927 - 1998)

Helen Carter Country Musician. Born Helen Myrl Carter, she was a member of the country singing group ” Mother Maybelle and the Carter Sisters”. She performed with her mother Maybelle, sisters Anita and June, later wife to Johhny Cash. She had a professional career in music that spanned 60 years and recorded for such labels […]

Helen Gurley Brown (1922 - 2012)

Brown was born Helen Marie Gurley in Green Forest, Arkansas, the daughter of Cleo Fred (Sisco) and Ira Marvin Gurley. Her mother was born in Alpena, Arkansas, and died in 1980. Her father was once appointed Commissioner of the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission. The family moved to Little Rock, Arkansas after Ira won election […]

Helen Hayes (1900 - 1993)

Helen Hayes was born in Washington D.C. on October 10, 1900. Her mother, Catherine Estelle (née Hayes), or Essie, was an aspiring actress who worked in touring companies. Her father, Francis van Arnum Brown, worked at a number of jobs, including as a clerk at the Washington Patent Office and as a manager and salesman […]

Helen Keller (1880 - 1968)

Helen Adams Keller was born on June 27, 1880, in Tuscumbia, Alabama. Her family lived on a homestead, Ivy Green, that Helen’s grandfather had built decades earlier. She had two younger siblings, Mildred Campbell and Phillip Brooks Keller, two older half-brothers from her father’s prior marriage, James and William Simpson Keller.  Her father, Arthur H. […]

Helen Kleeb (1907 - 2003)

Helen Kleeb (January 6, 1907 – December 28, 2003) was an American film and television actress. In a career covering nearly fifty years, she may be best known for her role from 1972 to 1981 as “Miss Mamie Baldwin” on CBS’s family drama, The Waltons. In 1956–1957, Kleeb guest-starred on CBS’s Hey, Jeannie!, starring Jeannie Carson. […]

Helen Mack (1913 - 1986)

Helen Mack, born Helen McDougall was the daughter of William George McDougall, a barber, and Regina (née Lenzer) McDougall, who had a repressed desire to become an actress. She obtained her education (1921–29) as a youth at the Professional Children’s School of New York City. Vera Gordon was a friend who helped her along as […]

Helen Taft (1861 - 1943)

Born in Cincinnati, Ohio, the fourth child of Judge John Williamson Herron (1827–1912), a law partner of Rutherford B. Hayes, and Harriet Collins (1833–1902), Nellie graduated from the Cincinnati College of Music and taught school briefly before her marriage. With her parents, she attended the twenty-fifth wedding anniversary celebration of President and Mrs. Rutherford B. […]

Helen Wagner (1918 - 2010)

Wagner played the soap opera’s matriarch, Nancy Hughes, from its debut on April 2, 1956, until her death. She is acknowledged by the Guinness Book of Records for having the longest run in a single role on television. In fact, Wagner spoke the show’s very first line, “good morning, dear,” and would go on to […]

Helena Rubinstein (1872 - 1965)

Rubinstein was the eldest of eight daughters born to a Jewish couple, Augusta – Gitte (Gitel) Shaindel Rubinstein née Silberfeld and Horace – Naftoli Hertz Rubinstein; who was a shopkeeper in Kraków.  Rubinstein emigrated from Poland to Australia in 1902, with no money and little English. Her stylish clothes and milky complexion did not pass […]

Helene Stanley (1929 - 1929)

Dolores Diane Freymouth (July 17, 1929 – December 27, 1990), better known by the stage name of Helene Stanley, was an American actress and a live model for Cinderella and other Disney characters. Stanley was born in Gary, Indiana. Her parents were Michael Freymouth, who was an acrobat who worked in Europe, and Gerty Freymouth. Around 1953 […]

Helene Whitney (1914 - 1990)

Helene Whitney (July 4, 1914 – March 28, 1990) was an American actress who appeared in films in the late 1930s and 1940s. She was known as Helene Reynolds after her marriage. Whitney was born Kenyon Fortescue in 1914, but was known as Helene. Through her mother, Grace Fortescue (1883–1979), she was a grandniece (and cousin […]

Helga Anders (1948 - 1986)

Actress. She was a leading performer of Austrian and German television for a number of years. Born Helga Scherk, she was raised in Ruhpolding and Bielfield after her parents’ break-up and made her professional stage debut at age eight. To the end of her life she was involved in Munich theatrical projects though she was […]

Helmut Newton (1920 - 2004)

Newton was born in Berlin, the son of Klara “Claire” (née Marquis) and Max Neustädter, a button factory owner. His family was Jewish. Newton attended the Heinrich-von-Treitschke-Realgymnasium and the American School in Berlin. Interested in photography from the age of 12 when he purchased his first camera, he worked for the German photographer Yva (de) […]

Henny Backus (1911 - 2004)

Henrietta Kaye was born in Brooklyn March 21, 1911. She studied sculpture at Cooper Union, but she preferred working in the theatre and appeared in Broadway musicals during the 1930s. Working as Henriette Kaye, she was a member of the Federal Theatre Project. Described by The New York Times as “a leggy redhead with a […]

Henny Youngman (1906 - 1998)

Youngman was born to a Jewish family in London, England. His family moved to Brooklyn, New York, when he was a child. He grew up in New York City, and began as a comedian after he had worked for years at a print shop, where he wrote “comedy cards” containing one-line gags. The comedy cards […]

Henri Dutilleux (1916 - 2013)

Henri Dutilleux was born on 22 January 1916 in Angers, Maine-et-Loire. He was the great-grandson of the painter Constant Dutilleux and of the composer Julien Koszul. He was also a cousin of the mathematician Jean-Louis Koszul. As a young man he studied harmony, counterpoint and piano with Victor Gallois at the Douai Conservatory before leaving […]

Henry Armstrong (1912 - 1988)

Henry Armstrong Born Henry Jackson, Jr., on December 12, 1912, in Columbus, Mississippi, Armstrong was the eleventh of the family’s 15 children. His father, Henry Jackson, Sr., was a sharecropper and a butcher. His mother, America Jackson was an Iroquois Indian. When Armstrong was four years old, his father moved the family to St. Louis, […]

Henry Austin (1804 - 1891)

Henry Austin (December 4, 1804 – December 17, 1891) was a prominent and prolific American architect based in New Haven, Connecticut. He practiced for more than fifty years and designed many public buildings and homes primarily in the New Haven area. His most significant years of production seem to be the 1840s and 1850s.  The […]

Henry Baldwin (1780 - 1844)

Descended from an aristocratic British family dating back to the seventeenth century, Baldwin was born in New Haven, Connecticut, the son of Michael Baldwin and Theodora Walcott. He is the half-brother of Abraham Baldwin. He attended Hopkins School, and received a B.A at age 17 from Yale College in 1797, he attended Litchfield Law School […]

Henry Bessemer (1813 - 1898)

The invention from which Henry Bessemer made his first fortune was a series of six steam-powered machines for making bronze powder, used in the manufacture of gold paint. As he relates in his autobiography, he examined the bronze powder made in Nuremberg which was the only place where it was made at the time. He […]

Henry Billings Brown (1836 - 1913)

Brown was born in South Lee, Massachusetts, and grew up in Massachusetts and Connecticut. His was a New England merchant family. Brown entered Yale College at 16, where he was a member of Alpha Delta Phi fraternity. He earned a Bachelor of Arts degree there in 1856. Among his undergraduate classmates were Chauncey Depew, later […]

Henry Corden (1920 - 2005)

Corden was born in Montreal, Quebec, Canada as Henry Cohen to Max and Emma Cohen. His father was a meat curer who had been born in Romania; his mother was originally from Russia. The family moved to the Bronx, New York when Corden was a child and he arrived in Hollywood in the 1940s. A […]

Henry Cowell (1897 - 1965)

Born in rural Menlo Park, California, to two bohemian writers—his father was an Irish immigrant and his mother, a former schoolteacher, had relocated from Iowa—Cowell demonstrated precocious musical talent and began playing the violin at the age of five. After his parents’ divorce in 1903, he was raised by his mother, Clarissa Dixon, author of […]

Henry Fonda (1905 - 1982)

The Fonda surname originated with immigrants from Genoa, Italy, to the Netherlands, in the 15th century. In 1642, a branch of the Fonda family immigrated to the Dutch colony of New Netherland, on the East Coast of North America. They were among the first Dutch population to settle in what is now upstate New York, […]