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James Baldwin
James Baldwin (1924 - 1987)
One of the 20th century’s greatest writers, Baldwin broke new literary ground with the exploration of racial and social issues in his many works. He was especially well known for his essays on the black experience in America. Baldwin was born to a young single mother, Emma Jones, at Harlem Hospital. She reportedly never told […]
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James Best
James Best (1926 - 2015)
James Best Actor James Best, who played the often confused Sheriff Rosco P. Coltrane on “The Dukes of Hazzard,” died on Monday evening after a brief illness and battle with pneumonia, according to his rep. He was 88. Best got his start as an actor during World War II when he joined the military theatrical […]
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James Booth
James Booth (1927 - 2005)
He was born in Croydon, Surrey, on 19 December 1927, the son of a probation officer. He was educated at Southend Grammar School, which he left aged 17 to join the army. He rose to the rank of Captain. He spent several years working for an international trading company. However, his interest in acting soon […]
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James Brady
James Brady (1940 - 2014)
James Brady Former White House Press Secretary, Gun Control Advocate. On March 30, 1981, Brady suffered a serious head wound when he was among four people shot during an assassination attempt on then President Ronald Reagan by John Hinckley. Although he survived, the wound left him with slurred speech and partial paralysis that required the […]
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James Brown
James Brown (1933 - 2006)
James Brown Brown’s personal life was marred by several brushes with the law. At the age of 16, he was convicted of theft and served three years in juvenile prison. On July 16, 1978, after performing at the Apollo, Brown was arrested for reportedly failing to turn in records from one of his radio stations […]
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James Buchanan
James Buchanan (1791 - 1868)
James Buchanan Buchanan was born in a log cabin in Cove Gap, Pennsylvania (now Buchanan’s Birthplace State Park), in Franklin County, on April 23, 1791, to James Buchanan, Sr. (1761–1821), a businessman, merchant, and farmer, and Elizabeth Speer, an educated woman (1767–1833). His parents were both of Ulster Scots descent, the father having emigrated from Donegal, Ireland in 1783. Buchanan had six sisters and four […]
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James Burke
James Burke (1931 - 1996)
Organized Crime Figure. Known as “Jimmy the Gent”, he was immortalized in the Martin Scorcese gangster film “Goodfellas”. He was one of New York City’s most successful and revered organized criminals who went down in the annals of crime as the architect of the notorious 1978 Lufthansa heist, which looted New York’s JFK airport of […]
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James C. Donnell
James C. Donnell (1854 - 1927)
James C Donnell was born on April 20, 1854, in County Armagh, Ireland, to James Donnell and Elizabeth Doyle. At the age of two, Donnell and his family moved to the United States and settled in Waterford, Pennsylvania. At the age of eighteen, he began his career in the oil industry by hauling crude oil […]
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James Callahan
James Callahan (1930 - 0200)
James Thomas Callahan (October 4, 1930 – August 3, 2007) was an American film and television actor who appeared in more than 120 films and television programs between 1959 and 2007. He is perhaps best known for his portrayal from 1987 to 1990 of Walter Powell on the syndicated sitcom Charles in Charge, starring Scott […]
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James Coburn
James Coburn (1928 - 2002)
Coburn was born on August 31, 1928 in Laurel, Nebraska, the son of James Coburn, Jr. and Milet Johanson; his father was of Scots-Irish ancestry and his mother was an immigrant from Sweden. The elder Coburn had a garage business that was destroyed by the Great Depression. Coburn himself was raised in Compton, California, where […]
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James Cossins
James Cossins (1933 - 1997)
James Cossins (4 December 1933 – 12 February 1997) was an English character actor. Born in Beckenham, Kent, he became widely recognised as the abrupt, bewildered Mr Walt in the Fawlty Towers episode “The Hotel Inspectors” and as Mr Watson the frustrated Public Relations training course instructor in an episode of Some Mothers Do ‘Ave […]
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James Daly
James Daly (1918 - 1978)
James Daly was born in Wisconsin Rapids in Wood County in central Wisconsin, to a working-class family: his mother, Dorothy Ethelbert (Hogan) Mullen, later worked for the Central Intelligence Agency, and his father, Percifer Charles Daly, was a fuel merchant. During the 1930s, James Daly studied drama and acted in shows before he worked for […]
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James Dean
James Dean (1931 - 1955)
James Dean James Byron Dean (February 8, 1931 – September 30, 1955) was an American actor. He is a cultural icon of teenage disillusionment, as expressed in the title of his most celebrated film, Rebel Without a Cause (1955), in which he starred as troubled teenager Jim Stark. The other two roles that defined his stardom were loner Cal Trask in East of […]
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James Donald
James Donald (1917 - 1993)
James Donald (18 May 1917 – 3 August 1993) was a Scottish actor. Tall and thin, he specialised in playing authority figures. Donald was born in Aberdeen, and made his first professional stage appearance in the late-1930s, having been educated at Rossall School on Lancashire’s Fylde coast. During World War II he had minor roles […]
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James Farentino
James Farentino (1938 - 2012)
James Farentino Born in Brooklyn, New York, Farentino attended local schools followed later by studying drama and acting in Catholic school. In the 1950s/60s, he went on to stage and a few TV roles. Among his many television appearances, he guest-starred in 1964 with Efrem Zimbalist, Jr., in the episode “Super-Star” of the CBS drama […]
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James Francis Byrnes
James Francis Byrnes (1882 - 1972)
James Francis “Jimmy” Byrnes was born at 538 King St. in Charleston, South Carolina and reared in Charleston, South Carolina. Byrnes’s father died shortly after Byrnes was born. His mother, Elizabeth McSweeney Byrnes, was an Irish-American dressmaker. At the age of fourteen, he left St. Patrick’s Catholic School to work in a law office, and […]
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James Franciscus
James Franciscus (1934 - 1991)
Franciscus was born in Clayton, Missouri, to Lorraine (née Grover) and John Allen Franciscus, who was killed in action during World War II. In 1957, Franciscus received a Bachelor of Arts degree in English and theatre arts from Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut, from which he graduated magna cum laude. He was a classmate […]
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James Gandolfini
James Gandolfini (1961 - 2013)
James Gandolfini Gandolfini was born in Westwood, New Jersey. His mother, Santa (née Penna), a high school lunch lady of Italian ancestry, was born in the United States and raised in Naples, Italy. His father, James Joseph Gandolfini, Sr., a native of Borgo Val di Taro, Italy, was a bricklayer and cement mason and later […]
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James Garfield
James Garfield (0183 - 1881)
James Garfield American Civil War Major General, US Congressman, and US President. A member of the Republican Party, he served as the 20th US President for only 200 days, from March until September 1881. He was the 3rd US President to die in office and the 2nd one who was assassinated, following Abraham Lincoln. Born […]
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James Garner
James Garner (1928 - 2014)
James Garner Garner, who had a long and storied career that spanned almost 60 years, first found success playing Bret Maverick in the ABC western ‘Maverick’ from 1957 to 1960. Born James Scott Bumgarner, he moved to Los Angeles as a teenager with his family, and joined the Merchant Marines, later joining the National Guard. […]
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James Gregory
James Gregory (1911 - 2002)
James Gregory (December 23, 1911 – September 16, 2002) was an American character actor noted for his deep, gravelly voice and playing brash roles such as the McCarthy-like Senator John Iselin in The Manchurian Candidate (1962), the audacious General Ursus in Beneath the Planet of the Apes, and loudmouthed Inspector Frank Luger in Barney Miller […]
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James Griffith
James Griffith (1916 - 1993)
James Griffith Born in Los Angeles, Griffith aspired to be a musician rather than an actor. Instead, he managed to find work in little theatres around Los Angeles, where the budding musician eased into a dual career of acting. He found success in the production They Can’t Get You Down in 1939, but put his […]
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James Hilton
James Hilton (1900 - 1954)
James Hilton was born in Leigh, Lancashire, England, James Hilton was the son of John Hilton, the headmaster of Chapel End School in Walthamstow. He was educated at The Leys School, Cambridge and then at Christ’s College, Cambridge, where he wrote his first novel, and was also awarded an honours degree in English literature. He wrote […]
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James Hines
James Hines (1876 - 1957)
Jimmy Hines was a powerful Tammany Hall political boss in New York City during the 1920’s and 1930’s. His close association with such organized crime bosses as Lucky Luciano and Dutch Schultz caused New York District attorney Thomas E. Dewey to prosecute Hines on corruption charges in the mid-1930’s. He was convicted in 1939 of […]
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James Homer Elledge
James Homer Elledge (1942 - 2001)
In 1965, Elledge robbed a Western Union office in Albuquerque, New Mexico. During this robbery, he also kidnapped a female attendant. He was sentenced to prison in Santa Fe, New Mexico and, after his parole, he wound up in Seattle, Washington, where he killed motel manager Bertha Lush in 1974 by beating her to death […]
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James Horner
James Horner (1953 - 2015)
Horner was born in Los Angeles, California, in 1953 to Jewish immigrants. His father, Harry Horner, was born in Holíč, then a part of Austria-Hungary; he emigrated to the United States in 1935 and worked as a set designer and occasional art director. James’s mother, Joan Ruth (Frankel), was born into a prominent Canadian family. […]
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James Howard Marshall
James Howard Marshall (1905 - 1995)
Born in Germantown, Pennsylvania, J. Howard Marshall II attended George School, a private high school in Newtown, Pennsylvania, and then studied liberal arts at Haverford College, both Quaker institutions, graduating in 1926. While at George School and Haverford he edited the school newspapers, captained the debate teams and was an All American soccer player and […]
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James Hunt
James Hunt (1947 - 1993)
James Hunt James Simon Wallis Hunt (29 August 1947 – 15 June 1993) was a British racing driver who won the Formula One World Championship in 1976. After retiring from racing in 1979, Hunt became a media commentator and businessman. Beginning his racing career in touring car racing, Hunt progressed into Formula Three where he […]
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James Lee Clark
James Lee Clark (1968 - 2007)
Clark was born in Caddo Parish, Louisiana. Court documents revealed that his father disappeared the day he found out Clark’s mother was pregnant. Testimony from a psychologist at his appeals hearing stated that Clark told him he had his first drink when he was seven years old and was commonly drunk by the age of […]
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James Madison
James Madison (1751 - 1836)
James Madison When Madison left office in 1817, he retired to Montpelier, his tobacco plantation in Orange County, Virginia, not far from Jefferson’s Monticello. He was 65 years old. Dolley, who thought they would finally have a chance to travel to Paris, was 49. As with both Washington and Jefferson, Madison left the presidency a […]