Category: Oscar Profile

Born February 23, 1989 in La Canada, California, Victor Fleming entered the film business as a stunt man in 1910. He had a side job repairing cars. It was in this capacity that he was discovered by director Allan Dwan while working on one of his his cars in 1913. Dwan gave him a job…

Born Wong Tung Jim in Canton, China on August 28, 1899, master cinematographer James Wong Howe emigrated to America at the age of five to join his father who had emigrated to the state of Washington the year of young Jimmie’s birth. He purchased his first camera from a drugstore at the age of 12.…

Born December 31, 1937 in Margam, Port Talbot, Wales to Muriel and Richard Hopkins, a baker, (Philip) Anthony Hopkins was encouraged to become an actor by Richard Burton, who was also born in Port Talbot and whom Hopkins met at the age of 15. Hopkins made his professional stage debut in 1960 at the Palace…

Born August 31, 1997 in Racine, Wisconsin to John and Cora Bickel née Marcher, the future Fredric March was a rising banker with First National City (now Citibank) when an emergency appendectomy caused him to re-evaluate his life. An extra on screen from 1921, the year of his first marriage, he was on Broadway from…

Born September 10, 1915 in the New York City borough of the Bronx, Edmond O’Brien got his love of performing from friend and neighbor Harry Houdini who taught him the art of magic. A Shakespearean actor in his twenties, he had roles on Broadway in John Gielgud’s Hamlet in 1936; Orson Welles’ Julius Caesar in…

Born October 27, 1918, (Muriel) Teresa Wright became interested in acting after seeing Helen Hayes in Broadway’s Victoria Regina in 1936. Following her high school graduation in 1938 she was on Broadway herself as understudy to Martha Scott and Dorothy McGuire in Our Town. She took over the lead when Scott went to Hollywood to…

Born March 17, 1901 in New Haven, Connecticut, Alfred Newman was the eldest of ten children in a poor family. A child prodigy, he began studying music at the age of five, walking five miles each way every day to practice on a neighbor’s piano. He was able to supplement his family’s income by traveling…

Born February 28, 1903 in Chicago Illinois to musical director Vincent Minnelli and his wife, Lester Anthony Minnelli developed his craft as a costume designer and set decorator. Changing his first name to Vincente, a Latinized version of his father’s name, Minnelli made his Brodway debut as costume designer for 1930’s Earl Carroll’s Vanities on…

Born February 8, 1921 in Wallace, Idaho, Julia Jean “Lana” Turner was the daughter of teenage parents John (1903-1930) and Mildred (1904-1982) Turner. Her father, originally a coal miner from Montgomery, Alabama had by the time of his death at 27 become a con man who was murdered on the streets of San Francisco where…

Born June 2, 1946 in Stockholm, Sweden to a dentist father and a famous writer mother, Lars Sven (Lasse) Hallstrom’s maternal grandfather was Sweden’s finance minister from 1926-28 and again from 1930-33. Having studied music in Stockholm, the future award-winning film director learned his craft making music videos for ABBA in the 1970s. His first…

Born February 25, 1937 in East Yorkshire, England to a ship painter and his wife, Thomas Daniel (Tom) Courtenay overcame his humble beginnings to become one of England’s most promising actors of the 1960s along with contemporaries Albert Finney and Alan Bates. While Finney and Bates continued to excel on film, Courtenay spent most of…

Born April 23, 1955 in Perth, Australia, Judy Davis had a strict Catholic upbringing – she was educated at Loreto Convent; the Western Australian Institute of Technology and the National Institute of Dramatic Arts. Forbidden to watch television as a child, she has certainly made up for it by starring in numerous landmark television productions…

Born July 16, 1901 in New York, N.Y., Leon Tolstoy Shamroy was the son of a Russian immigrant father and an American mother. Educated at Columbia University, Shamroy worked as a draftsman and engineer. Dissatisfied with the lack of money in his chosen field, he migrated to California and went to work at Fox labs.…

Born July 15, 1889 in San Francisco, California, Marjorie Rambeau was a precocious child who moved with her mother to Nome, Alaska after her parents separated. Put on stage by her mother to entertain the locals singing and playing the banjo in saloons and music halls, she was forced to dress as a boy to…