Category: Oscar Profile

Born September 20, 1934 in Rome, Italy, Sophia Scicolone and her younger sister, Maria, were raised by their maternal grandmother in the slums of Pozzuoli, their construction engineer father having refused to divorce his wife and marry the girls’ piano teacher mother. Encouraged to enter a beauty contest at 14, the young would-be actress was…

With lame cable TV channels now cornering the market on Christmas movies, it’s again worth examining what a treasure occasional big screen movies have been. It’s nice to remember that there once was a time when not every Christmas movie was filmed in Canada in the summer with fake snow and was about the same…

Born March 31, 1948 in Morristown, New Jersey, Edward (Ed) Lachman is the son of Rosabel and Edward Lachman, a movie theatre distributer and owner. He attended Harvard University and studied in France at the University of Tours before pursuing a BFA in painting at Ohio University. Mentored in cinematography by such masters as Robby…

Born December 18, 1908, Celia “Betty” Johnson was the second child of John Robert and Ethel Collins, who made her first public appearance at the age of 8 in a charity performance of King Cophetua and the Beggar Maid to raise funds for returning World War I soldiers. The young actress attended St. Paul’s Girl…

If this seems familiar, it’s because it’s basically a reprint of last year’s Thanksgiving article. Holidays have been celebrated in films since their inception. There have been films about virtually all of them. 1942’s Holiday Inn with Bing Crosby and Fred Astaire is in fact a celebration of all of the U.S. holidays. We have…

Born December 26, 1914 in Sunrise Township, Minnesota, growing up mostly in Illinois but moving frequently due to his father’s job as a traveling salesman. He attended Lake Forest College where he originally studied law but switched to acting after starring a school production of Counsellor-at-Law which he taught after graduating with a degree in…

Born April 10, 1988 in Los Angeles, California, Haley Joel Osment is the son of teacher Theresa and actor Eugene Osment. He was signed with a talent agent at the age of four. At an audition, he was asked to describe the biggest thing he had ever seen; his description of an IMAX theater screen…

Born January 27, 1940 in Los Angeles, CA and raised in Manhattan, New York, James Cromwell is the son of actress Kay Johnson (Madam Satan) and actor-director John Cromwell (Since You Went Away). His parents divorced in 1946 the year the senior Cromwell married actress Ruth Nelson (Wilson). The younger Cromwell studied acting at Carnegie-Mellon…

Born January 29, 1924 in Chicago, Illinois, Mary Dorothy Maloney was one of five children born to an AT&T auditor and his wife. When she was six months old, the family moved to Dallas, Texas where she grew up, her two older sisters dying of complications from polio. Intent on becoming a nurse, Maloney minored…

Born June 20, 1931 in Lowell, Massachusetts, Olympia Dukakis is the daughter of Greek immigrants. She is a first cousin of 1988 Presidential candidate Michael Dukakis (born 1933). Dukakis majored in physical therapy at Boston University, graduating with a BA. She practiced as a therapist during the polio epidemic, later returning to Boston University where…

Born July 13, 1941 in Rochester, New York, Robert Forster was the son of an animal trainer for the Ringling Brothers Barnum & Bailey Circus, wo later became an executive for a banking supply company, and his wife. His parents divorced in 1949. Forster first became interested in acting while performing in school plays in…

Born January 16, 1907 in Ontario, Canada to a Presbyterian minister and his wife, Alexander Knox was educated at the University of Western Ontario where he studied English literature and also dabbled in acting, his first stage role being in the title role of a university production of Hamlet. Upon graduation in 1929, he moved…

Born March 22, 1896 in Vienna, Austria, Joseph Schildkraut was the son of famed stage actor Rudolph Schildkraut and his wife. On stage in Hamburg and later, Berlin with his father from the age of 6, he studied the piano and violin, graduating from Berlin’s Royal Academy of Music in 1911. The family moved to…

The first Academy Awards for the fiscal year 1927/28 were held in May 1929. Films under consideration were supposed to be limited to films that opened in Los Angeles between August 1, 1927 and July 31, 1928 but the Academy’s reminder list included films that although they were still in theatres on August 1, 1927,…

Born February 11, 1908, Philip Ives Dunne was the son of syndicated columnist and humorist Finley Peter Dunne and champion golfer Margaret Ives Abbott Dunne who had been the first ever female gold medalist at the 1900 Olympics when golf was an Olympic sport. Her mother was novelist Mary Ives Abbott. Both Dunne and his…