Category: Oscar Profile

Born August 2, 1894, Hal Mohr was one of Hollywood’s most distinguished pioneering cinematographers. Fascinated with photography from an early age, Mohr built his own camera as a teenager, took and printed photographs which he sent to the New York Herald Tribune, which published many of them. Producer-exhibiter Sol Lesser took notice and hired him…

Born November 22, 1924 in Kirksville, MO to an osteopathic physician and a homemaker, Geraldine Page initially intended to become a concert pianist but when her family couldn’t afford the cost of her training she turned to acting. On stage from the age of 17, she did not make a real impression until her role…

Born June 7, 1909 in London, England to a headmistress and a traveling salesman, Jessie Alice “Jessica” Tandy made her debut on the London stage in 1927 at the age of 18. Among her stage hits were Hamlet opposite John Gielgud; Henry V opposite Laurence Olivier and Autumn Crocus opposite Jack Hawkins whom she married…

Born February 17, 1914 in Worcester, Massachusetts to Helen and J.T. Kennedy, a dentist, John Arthur Kennedy studied acting at Carnegie Institute of Technology and made his Broadway debut in 1938 as part of Maurice Evans’ Shakespearean company, the same year he married his wife, Mary. Moving to Los Angeles later that year, he was…

Born June 1, 1926, Norma Jeane Mortenson’s father abandoned her mother before she was born. Her mentally ill mother abandoned her to foster care resulting in her almost being smothered to death at two; nearly raped at six and put to work at nine for which she was paid a nickel a month for kitchen…

Born November 11, 1909 in Chicago, Illinois, Robert Ryan graduated Dartmouth College in 1932, having held the school’s heavyweight boxing championship all four years of his attendance. After graduation he found work as a sandhog, seaman, sewer builder, salesman, miner, cowboy, bodyguard-chauffeur to a mobster, photographer’s model, W.P.A. laborer and paving supervisor before turning to…

Born November 17, 1899 in Westmount, Quebec, Canada to a prominent family, young Douglas stayed with his father when his parents divorced and his mother moved to New York with his two younger sisters, Athole and Norma. The women eventually made their way to Hollywood where they worked as actresses in the early 1920s. While…

Born August 2, 1932 in Connemara, County Galway, Ireland and raised in Leeds, England, Peter O’Toole was the son of a Scottish nurse and an Irish bookie. Originally intent on becoming a journalist, his interest turned to acting and by 17 he was already on stage. He made his screen debut in a minor role…

Born Ruby Stevens in Brooklyn, N.Y. on July 16, 1907, she was the fifth and youngest child of a working class couple. When she was four, Ruby’s mother was pushed off a moving streetcar by a drunken stranger and died. Two weeks later her father joined a crew digging the Panama Canal and was never…

Born May 29, 1904 in Charleston, Illinois, the only child of Frank and Jennie Toland, Gregg Toland would grow up to become the first cinematographer whose name was well known by the public. Both John Ford (with The Long Voyage Home) and Orson Welles (with Citizen Kane) would insist that he be given credit on…

Born August 2, 1905 in Radersburg, Montana, Myrna Williams’ (later Loy’s) father was a rancher, banker, real estate developer and the youngest man ever elected to the Montana state legislature. When she was 7 her mother nearly died of pneumonia and she and her mother were sent to live in Southern California until she recovered.…

Born September 2, 1929 in Ogden, Utah, William Hal Ashby was the fourth child of a Mormon dairy farmer who committed suicide when the future director was 12. His troubled early life, including finding his father’s body, led to five marriages, two of them before he was 21. By his own account, Ashby had fifty…

Born October 17, 1900 in Plattsburgh, New York, Gladys Georgianna Greene quit school at 15 to become a model. With modeling jobs tough to come by, she worked as a stenographer in Lower Manhattan during World War I. Back in modeling in the 1920s, she was discovered by a Fox Film executive and changed her…

Born William Franklin Beedle, Jr. on April 17, 1918 in O’Fallon, Illinois, the future William Holden moved to Pasadena, California with his family when he was three. He was discovered by a Paramount film scout while appearing in a school play at Pasadena Junior College and given a contract by the studio. After two minor…

Born February 9, 1891 in Richmond, Surrey, England, Ronald Colman made his professional acting debut in 1914. An ankle injury in World War I left him with a slight limp which he tried to hide for the rest of his life. In America from 1920 on, “the longer he stayed”, opined Douglas Fairbanks, Jr., “the…