Category: Profiles

Born July 1, 1934 in Lafayette, Indiana, Sydney Pollack was the son of a former boxer turned pharmacist and his wife, an alcoholic who died when he was 16. Pollack moved to New York after graduating from high school in 1952   From 1952-1954 he studied acting at The Neighborhood Playhouse. He then served two years…

Born Edythe Marrener, the daughter of a transportation worker, in the Flatbush section of Brooklyn, N.Y. on June 30, 1917, the future Susan Hayward went to the movies a lot as a child to escape the boredom of her poor surroundings. A stunning beauty even as a child, she became a photographer’s model as a…

Born April 5, 1916 in La Jolla, California, (Eldred) Gregory Peck was raised by his grandmother after his parents divorced when he was five. Sent to a Catholic military school by his father, after the death of his grandmother, he later enrolled as a pre-med student at U.C.-Berkeley but caught the acting bug. After graduation…

Born July 7, 1901 in Lazio, Italy, Vittorio De Sica grew up in Sicily where his first job was as an office clerk in support of his poor family. Drawn to acting, he made his film debut as the title character as a boy in The Clemenceau Affair in 1917. He did not make another film for…

Born Mikhail Igor Peschkowsky November 6, 1931 to wealthy Russian-Jewish parents in Berlin, Germany, the future Mike Nichols lost his hair at the age of four due to a bad reaction to an allergic reaction to a Whooping Cough inoculation and wore wigs and false eyebrows in adulthood to hide his baldness.  At the age…

James Whale was born in Dudley, England, a poor mining town, in 1889. He learned to direct as a prisoner of war in a German prison camp during World War I. That experience led him to the London stage, Broadway and eventually a Hollywood contract with Universal, where he made most of his films. Although…

Born November 10, 1925 in Pontrhydyfen, Wales to Welsh speaking parents, Richard Walker Jenkins, Jr. was the twelfth of thirteen children. His mother died shortly after giving birth to his younger brother when Richard was just two years old. His father, a coal miner, soon abandoned the family and he was raised by his older…

Born October 1, 1935 in Walton-on-Thames, Surrey, England as Julia Elizabeth Wells, the internationally acclaimed superstar known professionally as Julie Andrews took the last name of her stepfather (Ted Andrews) when her mother remarried in 1944. Andrews began performing at early age with her mother and stepfather who were both music hall performers. Just after…

Born August 25, 1908 in Haverstraw, New York, Ray(mond) John Heindorf worked as a pianist in a silent movie house in Mechanicville in his early teens.  In 1928, he moved to New York City, where he landed a job as a musical arranger before moving to Hollywood in February 1929. Heindorf’s first job in Hollywood was as an orchestrator…

Born October 3, 1896, (Thomas) Leo McCarey began in films as Assistant Director to horror legend Tod Browning in 1920, but soon found his niche as a comedy writer for Hal Roach’s Our Gang comedies. He later brought Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy together and guided their early joint career. By 1929 he was VP in charge…

Born March 18, 1905 in Manchester, England, Robert Donat‘s carefully honed speaking voice was a result of the elocution lessons he took as a boy to overcome a terrible stammer. Unfortunately, he never outgrew his other childhood affliction, an asthmatic condition that caused him to turn down more film roles than he accepted. On stage…