Category: Oscar Profile

Born May 16, 1905, Henry Fonda was a shy child who nevertheless excelled as a Boy Scout. When he was 14, his father took him to observe the lynching of a young black man accused of rape. The occurrence so enraged him that the keen social awareness of prejudice he developed from the incident never…

Born Maria Magdalene Dietrich on December 27, 1901, the actress/singer who would re-invent herself many times in the course of her 90 year lifespan was only 11 when she changed her name, combining her first and middle names to form the then novel name of “Marlene”. She began in German films in bit parts in…

Born on February 29, 1896 in Brookline, Massachusetts, William A. Wellman was a descendant of Francis Lewis of New York, who was one of the signers of the Declaration of Independence. The leap year baby was known as “Wild Bill” in his aviator days during World War I. The name persisted throughout his Hollywood career…

Born April 3, 1924 in Omaha, Nebraska, Marlon Brando was the middle of three children born to a pesticide manufacturer and a local stage actress who mentored Henry Fonda among others. He had a troubled childhood with his stern father and alcoholic mother whom he often had to bail out of jail. Following older sister…

Born August 29, 1915 in Stockholm, Sweden to a Swedish father and German mother, Ingrid Bergman was named after Sweden’s Princess Ingrid. Her mother died when she was three, her father when she was thirteen. She then went to live with her father’s sister who died six months later and then an aunt and uncle…

Born June 4, 1907, the middle of seven children to a successful Connecticut lawyer and his wife, Rosalind Russell was named after the S.S. Rosalind, a ship on which her parents had a memorable cruise and not the Shakespeare character as is commonly thought. She studied at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts in Manhattan,…

Born May 10, 1899, Frederick Austerlitz became Fred Astaire when he and his older (by 18 months) sister, Adele, became vaudeville tap stars when he was just five years old. As their skills improved, they became bigger stars and broke into Broadway in 1917 with a show called Over the Top. Smash hits including Lady…

Born July 7, 1899 to Hungarian Jewish parents on New York’s Lower East Side, George Cukor’s father was a lawyer who expected him to follow in his footsteps. Instead young Cukor fell in love with the theatre and shortly after brief military service toward the end of World War I, had his first job in…

Born October 16, 1925, the daughter of actress Moyna MacGill and British Communist Party member, Edgar Lansbury, and grand-daughter of 1930s Labor Party leader, George Lansbury, aspiring actress Angela Lansbury was greatly influenced by the careers of Hollywood stars Deana Durbin and Irene Dunne, as well as her own mother. After her father’s death, her…

Born March 5, 1936 to actors Harry Stockwell and his wife, Nina Olivette, Dean Stockwell was one of the most successful child actors of all time and one of the very few to have a major lifelong career. His father is probably best known today for voicing Prince Charming in Disney’s Snow White and the…

Born May 10, 1890 in Clinton, Massachusetts, Clarence Brown was a used car salesman before starting out in films as an assistant director to Maurice Tourneur in 1915. After a stint as a fighter pilot during World War I, he returned to Hollywood. By 1920 he was receiving co-directing credit with Tournear for The Great…

Born June 14, 1918 in Omaha, Nebraska, Dorothy McGuire was one of three actresses who came to prominence in the original Broadway production of Thornton Wilder’s Our Town. Both she and Teresa Wright had been original star Martha Scott’s understudy, with McGuire eventually replacing Scott when she went to Hollywood. Several Broadway roles later, she…

Born February 5, 1918, Charles John Holt III, the son of Jack Holt, one of the founding members of AMPAS, young Tim, like his father, became a workaholic actor most famous for his roles in westerns. He had the quickest trigger draw of any actor in films which clocked in at about 1/6 of a…

Born August 5, 1906 in Nevada, Missouri, a small town that legend has it was won by his grandfather in a poker game, his father was the extraordinary actor and vaudevillian, Walter Huston. Young John had his first professional gig as part of Walter’s vaudeville act when he was just three years old. A frail…

Born January 31, 1929 in London, her father was a British Olympic gymnastics champion. Discovered in dancing school at the age of 14, she was promptly signed for a co-starring role in her first film, 1944’s Give Us the Moon. It was her seventh film in three years, David Lean’s 1946 production of Great Expectations,…