Classic actors want to see
by erinstears | created - 20 Oct 2018 | updated - 1 month ago | Public
1. Alida Valli
Actress | The Third Man
Enigmatic, dark-haired foreign import Alida Valli was dubbed "The Next Garbo" but didn't live up to postwar expectations despite her cool, patrician beauty, remote allure and significant talent. Born in Pola, Italy (now Croatia), on May 3, 1921, the daughter of a Tridentine journalist and professor...
2. Joseph Cotten
Actor | The Third Man
Joseph Cheshire Cotten, Jr. was born in Petersburg, Virginia, into a well-to-do Southern family. He was the eldest of three sons born to Sally Whitworth (Willson) and Joseph Cheshire Cotten, Sr., an assistant postmaster.
Jo (as he was known) and his brothers Whit and Sam spent their summers at their...
3. Angus Scrimm
Actor | Phantasm
The evil screen villain Angus Scrimm, most famous as "The Tall Man" in Don Coscarelli's Phantasm (1979) and its sequels, grew up in Kansas City, but in his teens moved to California and studied drama at USC under William C. de Mille (brother of Cecil B. DeMille). His film debut came as another "...
4. Boris Karloff
Actor | Bride of Frankenstein
Along with fellow actors Lon Chaney, Bela Lugosi and Vincent Price, Boris Karloff is recognized as one of the true icons of horror cinema, and the actor most closely identified with the general public's perception of the "monster" from the classic Mary Shelley book, "Frankenstein". William Henry ...
5. Bela Lugosi
Actor | Dracula
Bela Lugosi was born Béla Ferenc Dezsö Blaskó on October 20, 1882, Lugos, Hungary, Austria-Hungary (now Lugoj, Romania), to Paula de Vojnich and István Blaskó, a banker. He was the youngest of four children. During WWI, he volunteered and was commissioned as an infantry lieutenant, and was wounded ...
6. Sara Berner
Actress | Rear Window
This accomplished voice actress with an ear for accents, first made her mark on Jack Benny's radio program in the dual role of wisecracking, gum-chewing telephone operator Mabel Flapsaddle and Jack's plumber girlfriend Gladys. Brunette Sara Berner's real name was Lillian Herdan and she was born in ...
7. Lillian Randolph
Actress | It's a Wonderful Life
Lillian Randolph was born on December 14, 1898 in Louisville, Kentucky, USA. She was an actress, known for It's a Wonderful Life (1946), Gildersleeve's Ghost (1944) and Magic (1978). She was married to Garcia Delano "Gossie" McKee and James Lott . She died on September 12, 1980 in Los Angeles, ...
8. Don Ameche
Actor | Cocoon
Don Ameche was a versatile and popular American film actor in the 1930s and '40s, usually as the dapper, mustached leading man. He was also popular as a radio master of ceremonies during this time. As his film popularity waned in the 1950s, he continued working in theater and some TV. His film ...
9. Quincy Jones
Producer | The Color Purple
Considered to be one of the greatest minds in music and television history, Quincy Delight Jones, Jr. was born on March 14, 1933 in Chicago, Illinois. He is the son of Sarah Frances (Wells), a bank executive, and Quincy Delight Jones, Sr., a carpenter.
Jones found his love for music while he was ...
10. Glenn Ford
Actor | Gilda
Legendary actor Glenn Ford was born Gwyllyn Samuel Newton Ford in Sainte-Christine-d'Auvergne, Quebec, Canada, to Hannah Wood (Mitchell) and Newton Ford, a railroad executive. His family moved to Santa Monica, California when he was eight years old. His acting career began with plays at high school...
11. Eleanor Powell
Soundtrack | Born to Dance
Eleanor Powell was born in 1912 in Springfield, Massachussetts, and got her professional start in Atlantic City clubs, from where she moved into in revue in New York at the Ritz Grill and Casino de Paris at the age of sixteen. She started her career on Broadway in 1929, where her machine-gun foot ...
12. Dita Parlo
Actress | La grande illusion
Dita Parlo was born on September 4, 1906 in Stettin, Pomerania, Germany [now Szczecin, Zachodniopomorskie, Poland]. She was an actress, known for The Grand Illusion (1937), L'Atalante (1934) and Melody of the Heart (1929). She was married to Frank Guetal. She died on December 12, 1971 in Courbevoie...
13. Russ Meyer
Director | Beneath the Valley of the Ultra-Vixens
Russell Albion Meyer was born in San Leandro, California, to Lydia Lucinda (Hauck), a nurse, and William Arthur Meyer, a police officer, who divorced during his childhood. His parents were both of German descent. Meyer began winning prizes at 15 with his amateur films. He spent World War II in ...
14. William Powell
Actor | The Thin Man
William Powell was on the New York stage by 1912, but it would be ten years before his film career would begin. In 1924 he went to Paramount Pictures, where he was employed for the next seven years. During that time, he played in a number of interesting films, but stardom was elusive. He did ...
15. Laurence Olivier
Actor | Sleuth
Laurence Olivier could speak William Shakespeare's lines as naturally as if he were "actually thinking them", said English playwright Charles Bennett, who met Olivier in 1927. Laurence Kerr Olivier was born in Dorking, Surrey, England, to Agnes Louise (Crookenden) and Gerard Kerr Olivier, a High ...
16. Jane Wyman
Actress | Falcon Crest
Jane Wyman was born Sarah Jane Mayfield on January 5, 1917, in St. Joseph, Missouri (she was also known later as Sarah Jane Fulks). When she was only eight years old, and after her parents filed for divorce, she lost her father prematurely. After graduating high school she attempted, with the help ...
17. Ray Walston
Actor | Popeye
Ray Walston started his acting career as a spear carrier with a local stock company. When the family moved to Houston, Texas, Walston's father wanted to teach him the oil business, but Walston instead joined a traveling repertory company (selling tickets as well as acting). He went on to associate ...
18. George C. Scott
Actor | Patton
George C. Scott was an immensely talented actor, a star of the big screen, stage and television. He was born on October 18, 1927 in Wise, Virginia, to Helena Agnes (Slemp) and George Dewey Scott. At the age of eight, his mother died, and his father, an executive at Buick, raised him. In 1945, he ...
19. Alice Joyce
Actress | Beau Geste
Having worked as a telephone operator at age 13 and a fashion model afterwards, Alice Joyce joined the Kalem film company at 20, making her debut in The Deacon's Daughter (1910), and achieved popularity as a charming, proper leading lady in many shorts. After Vitagraph bought out Kalem, Joyce began ...
20. Mary Pickford
Actress | Coquette
Mary Pickford was born Gladys Louise Smith in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, to Elsie Charlotte (Hennessy) and John Charles Smith. She was of English and Irish descent. Pickford began in the theater at age seven. Then known as "Baby Gladys Smith", she toured with her family in a number of theater ...
21. Asta
Actor | After the Thin Man
Asta was Hollywood's foremost canine scene-stealer, a charismatic dynamo of a wire-haired terrier (real name Skippy) born sometime during 1931. Universally adored by depression-era movie audiences after being cast as the four-legged sidekick of retired private detective Nick Charles and his wife ...
22. Walter Brennan
Actor | The Westerner
In many ways the most successful and familiar character actor of American sound films and the only actor to date to win three Oscars for Best Supporting Actor, Walter Brennan attended college in Cambridge, Massachusetts, studying engineering. While in school he became interested in acting and ...
23. Mary Doran
Actress | Movie Crazy
Mary Doran was a graduate of New York's Columbia University where she excelled in drama classes. Having abandoned initial aspirations of becoming a teacher, the wavy-haired, blonde then attended the respected Ned Wayburn Dancing Academy - like countless other hopeful actresses - to learn tap ...
24. Norma Shearer
Actress | The Divorcee
She won a beauty contest at age fourteen. In 1920 her mother, Edith Shearer, took Norma and her sister Athole Shearer (Mrs. Howard Hawks) to New York. Ziegfeld rejected her for his "Follies," but she got work as an extra in several movies. She spent much money on eye doctor's services trying to ...
25. Florence Eldridge
Actress | Inherit the Wind
Versatile character actress Florence Eldridge seemed often better served by the stage than by her roles in motion pictures. On the boards from the age of seventeen as a chorine in "Rock-a-Bye Baby" in 1918, she acted with touring companies and on Broadway and soon found herself playing leading ...
26. Helene Millard
Actress | The Thirteenth Chair
Her parents were Royal C. Millard (April 4, 1877 - March 13, 1927) and Iva E. Sargent (February 26, 1880 - December 18, 1950). After several years in leading roles for various stock companies, principally the Henry Duffy Players, Helene finally was noticed and made her first of thirty-nine movie ...
27. Robert Montgomery
Actor | Night Must Fall
Robert Montgomery was born Henry Montgomery Jr., the elder son of New York businessman Henry Montgomery and his wife, Mary Weed (Barney), a native of Brooklyn, Kings County, New York. Montgomery had a younger brother, Donald. He was not related to Belinda Montgomery.
As a child, he enjoyed a ...
28. Mona Barrie
Actress | Something to Sing About
Sometimes described as a poor man's Kay Francis, brunette, hazel-eyed Mona Barrie possessed neither quite the looks nor the personality required to become a major player in 1930's Hollywood. Nonetheless, the London-born and Australian-educated former childhood ballerina (born Mona Barlee, daughter ...
29. Hermione Gingold
Actress | Gigi
One of stage, screen, radio and TV's most inimitable, irrepressible entertainers, Hermione Ferdinanda Gingold was born in London on December 9, 1897, the daughter of an upscale Austrian-Jewish financier and English homemaker. The blue-eyed blonde loved to perform in school plays and made her ...
30. Cecil Kellaway
Actor | Guess Who's Coming to Dinner
Though a native of South Africa, Cecil Kellaway spent many years as an actor, author and director in Australian live theatre until he tried his luck in Hollywood in the 1930s. Finding he could get only gangster bit parts, he got discouraged and returned to Australia. Then William Wyler called and ...
31. Basil Rathbone
Actor | The Adventures of Robin Hood
Basil Rathbone was born in Johannesburg, South Africa, in 1892, but three years later his family was forced to flee the country because his father was accused by the Boers of being a British spy at a time when Dutch-British conflicts were leading to the Boer War. The Rathbones escaped to England, ...
32. William S. Hart
Actor | The Money Corral
A storybook hero, the original screen cowboy, ever forthright and honest, even when (as was often the case) he played a villain, William S. Hart lived for a while in the Dakota Territory, then worked as a postal clerk in New York City. In 1888 he began to study acting. In 1899 he created the role ...
33. Blanche Sweet
Actress | Anna Christie
Born into a family of show people, Blanche Sweet first appeared on the stage when she was 18 months old. She was a dancer by the time she was four and a talented actress by 1909 when she started work at the Biograph with D.W. Griffith. By 1910, aged 14, she was four years younger than Mary Pickford...
34. Warren Hymer
Actor | Bluebeard's Eighth Wife
Warren Hymer was born on February 25, 1906 in New York City, New York, USA. He was an actor, known for Bluebeard's Eighth Wife (1938), The Lady and the Mob (1939) and Up the River (1930). He was married to Beau Williams and Virginia Meyer. He died on March 25, 1948 in Los Angeles, California, USA.
35. Minna Gombell
Actress | The Thin Man
A doctor's daughter, the versatile actress Minna Gombell had a successful career on the stage from 1912 to the end of the 1920's, appearing often in comedic roles, almost always in leads. She had a reputation as a fast learner, capable of reading and comprehending a script in a matter of hours. This...
36. Hedy Lamarr
Actress | Samson and Delilah
Hedy Lamarr, the woman many critics and fans alike regard as the most beautiful ever to appear in films, was born Hedwig Eva Maria Kiesler in Vienna, Austria. She was the daughter of Gertrud (Lichtwitz), from Budapest, and Emil Kiesler, a banker from Lemberg (now known as Lviv). Her parents were ...
37. Natalie Moorhead
Actress | The Thin Man
A platinum blonde actress, Natalie Moorehead entered in films in 1929; by end of the following year, she had made dozens of credited movies. Moorehead was more effective with vampish roles, notably a role which she played a suspect in The Thin Man (1934). Moorhead also made a mark as a comic ...
38. Helen Mack
Actress | His Girl Friday
Helen Mack started her career in movies at the age of ten, and by the time she was 13 was performing in vaudeville. Her acting career didn't blossom until the 1930s, when she made a name for herself as one of the movie's best criers. She had many leading roles opposite such actors as Lee Tracy, ...
39. Ed Brady
Actor | The Son of Kong
Ed Brady was born on December 6, 1889 in New York City, New York, USA. He was an actor, known for Son of Kong (1933), Law of the West (1932) and Fires of Rebellion (1917). He was married to Lillian West. He died on March 31, 1942 in Los Angeles, California, USA.
40. Clyde Cook
Actor | The Brute
Diminutive Australian-born silent comic, the son of an engine driver. Clyde Cook earned his sobriquet, 'The Kangaroo Boy', because of his rubber-limbed elasticity. He had been on stage from the age of six, trained as an acrobatic dancer and performed on the Tivoli circuit in his native country, and...
41. Ronald Colman
Actor | A Double Life
British leading man of primarily American films, one of the great stars of the Golden Age. Raised in Ealing, the son of a successful silk merchant, he attended boarding school in Sussex, where he discovered amateur theatre. He intended to attend Cambridge and become an engineer, but his father's ...
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