Category: Oscar Profile

Born February 12, 1903 in New York, New York, Joseph Francis (Joe) Biroc started his career in 1918 at the age of 15 as a lab assistant at Paragon Studios in Fort Lee, New Jersey, then America’s film capital. Later a camera assistant at Paramount Studios in Long Island, he moved to Hollywood in the…

Born October 20, 1895 in New York City, Morris (Morrie) Ryskind was the son of Russian Jewish immigrants. He attended Columbia University but was suspended shortly before he was due to graduate after he called university president Nicholas Murray Butler “Czar Nicholas” in the humor magazine Jester in 1917. Ryskind was criticizing Butler for refusing…

Born February 4, 1918 in London, England, Ida Lupino was the daughter of actors Stanley Lupino and Connie Emerald and the niece of actor Lupino Lane. Her theatrical ancestry goes back centuries to Bologna, Italy. Accompanying her mother to an audition, she was given the role her mother, the lead in the 1932 British film,…

Born May 14, 1969 in Ivanhoe, Australia, a suburb of Melbourne, Catherine Elise (Cate) Blanchett was the middle child of a property director/teacher Australian mother and an advertising executive Texas-born father. Her father died when she ten, leaving her mother to raise the family with the help of her grandmother. Blanchett graduated from Australia’s National…

Born April 29, 1917 in New York, New York, Celeste Holm was an only child whose father was an insurance adjustor for Lloyd’s of London and her mother a portrait artist. Because of her parents’ occupations, she traveled extensively with them as a child, later studying drama while attending the University of Chicago. She became…

Born March 2, 1892 in East Prussia, Germany, which is now part of Russia, Felix Bressart made his stage debut in 1914 and his film debut in 1928. The Jewish character actor was forced to leave his home country in 1933 but continued to make German language films in Austria until he emigrated to the…

Born Isobel Fredricka Hochdorf on May 8, 1915 in Brooklyn, New York, Isobel Lennart took her professional name from her mother, Victoria Lennart Livingston who died when Isobel was five years old, her dentist father later marrying his cousin. Afflicted as a girl with polio, and in leg braces, Isobel became an avid reader especially…

Born August 17, 1888 in New York, N.Y. to wealthy parents, Edgar Montillion (Monty) Woolley grew up in the highest social circles, his father having owned several Manhattan hotels. He received a Bachelor’s degree at Yale, where he was intimate friends with Cole Porter whom he later introduced to New York society. After obtaining Masters…

Born on June 5, 1928 in Yorkshire, England, Cecil Antonio “Tony” Richardson had the unprecedented distinction of being president of both The Oxford University Dramatic Society and the Experimental Theatre Club, as well as being the theatre critic for the university student magazine at the same time. He graduated in 1952 and immediately became a…

Born Frances Margaret Anderson on February 10, 1897 in Adelaide, South Australia, the acclaimed future actress was educated in her native country. Billed as Francee Anderson, she made her stage debut in Sydney in 1915. At the urging of some traveling American actors, she moved unsuccessfully to Hollywood and then to New York in 1918…

Born April 28, 1941 in Valsjöbyn, Jämtland County, Sweden, Ann-Margret (Olsson) was the daughter of an employee of an electrical company. Her father got work in the U.S. in 1942, but did not send for his wife and daughter until 1946. Ann-Margret became a naturalized U.S. citizen in 1949. She wanted to be a dancer…

Born July 18, 1891 in London, Ontario, Canada to concert singer John Coates Lockhart and his wife, Ellen Mary Lockhart, Edwin Eugene (Gene) Lockhart was singing and dancing professionally from the age of 7. Later a concert singer in touring productions with Beatrice Lillie, he went to New York with his mother’s encouragement and made…

Born February 1, 1901 in Cadiz, Ohio, (William) Clark Gable lost his mother when he was seven months old. He was cared for by his maternal aunt and uncle until he was two when his oil-well driller father took him back. At 16 he left high-school to work in a tire factory in Akron, Ohio.…

Born April 5, 1883 in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, Walter Huston was educated in that city’s public schools. As a young man he worked construction jobs and in his spare time attended The Shaw School of Acting. He made his acting debut in 1902, touring in a succession of plays. In 1904 he married Rhea Gore,…

Born October 8, 1970 in Boston, Mass. to a stockbroker father and college professor mother, Matthew Paige (Matt) Damon and his older brother were raised by his divorced mother beginning when he was just two years old. Ben Affleck was a childhood friend. Damon performed in theater productions while in high school and attended Harvard…