Golden Age Actors and Actresses

1. Lionel Barrymore

Famed actor, composer, artist, author and director. His talents extended to the authoring of the novel "Mr. Cartonwine: A Moral Tale" as well as his autobiography. In 1944, he joined ASCAP, and composed "Russian Dances", "Partita", "Ballet Viennois", "The Woodman and the Elves", "Behind the Horizon...

2. Jean Harlow

Actress | China Seas

Harlean Carpenter, who later became Jean Harlow, was born in Kansas City, Missouri, on March 3, 1911. She was the daughter of a successful dentist and his wife. In 1927, at the age of 16, she ran away from home to marry a young businessman named Charles McGrew, who was 23. The couple pulled up ...

3. Marie Dressler

Actress | Dinner at Eight

Once you saw her, you would not forget her. Despite her age and weight, she became one of the top box office draws of the sound era. She was 14 when she joined a theater group and she went on to work on stage and in light opera. By 1892, she was on Broadway and she later became a star comedienne on...

4. 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 ...

5. Irene Dunne

Actress | The Awful Truth

Irene Marie Dunne was born on December 20, 1898, in Louisville, Kentucky. She was the daughter of Joseph Dunne, who inspected steamships, and Adelaide Henry, a musician who prompted Irene in the arts. Her first production was in Louisville when she appeared in "A Midsummer Night's Dream" at the age...

6. James Edwards

Actor | The Killing

Pioneering actor who was among Hollywood's first - years ahead of Sidney Poitier - to crush the Stepin Fetchit stereotype of black males as shiftless illiterates. Although in some pictures Edwards would portray subservient characters (e.g. "General" George C. Scott's valet in Patton (1970)), he ...

7. Janet Leigh

Actress | Psycho

Janet Leigh was the only child of a couple who often moved from town to town. Living in apartments, Janet was a bright child who skipped several grades and finished high school when she was 15. A lonely child, she would spend much of her time at movie theaters. She was a student, studying music and...

8. Robert Donat

Actor | The 39 Steps

Robert Donat's pleasant voice and somewhat neutral English accent were carefully honed as a boy because he had a stammer and took elocution lessons starting at age 11 to overcome the impediment. It was not too surprising that freedom from such a vocal embarrassment was encouragement to act. His ...

9. Greer Garson

Actress | Pride and Prejudice

Eileen Evelyn Greer Garson was born on September 29, 1904 in London, England, to Nancy Sophia (Greer) and George Garson, a commercial clerk. Of Scottish and Ulster-Scots descent, Garson displayed no early interest in becoming an actress. Educated at the University of London intending to become a ...

10. Paul Muni

Actor | Scarface

Paul Muni was born Sept. 22, 1895, in Lemberg, Austro-Hungarian Empire, to Salli and Phillip Weisenfreund, who were both professionals. His family was Jewish, and spoke Yiddish. Paul was educated in New York and Cleveland public schools. He was described as 5 feet 10 inches, with black hair and ...

11. Cary Grant

Actor | North by Northwest

Once told by an interviewer, "Everybody would like to be Cary Grant", Grant is said to have replied, "So would I."

Cary Grant was born Archibald Alec Leach on January 18, 1904 in Horfield, Bristol, England, to Elsie Maria (Kingdon) and Elias James Leach, who worked in a factory. His early years in ...

12. Eva Marie Saint

Actress | On the Waterfront

Actress and producer Eva Marie Saint was born on July 4, 1924 on Newark, New Jersey. She is known for starring in Elia Kazan's On the Waterfront (1954), for which she won an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress, and Alfred Hitchcock's North by Northwest (1959). Her film career also includes ...

13. Madge Evans

Actress | Dinner at Eight

Lovely Madge Evans was the perennial nice girl in films of the 1930s. By then, she had been in front of the camera for many years, starting with Fairy Soap commercials at the age of two (she sat on a bar of soap holding a bunch of violets with the tag line reading "have you a little fairy in your ...

14. Bert Lahr

Actor | The Wizard of Oz

Fittingly known to be a "Leo" for his horoscope, Bert Lahr is always remembered as the Cowardly Lion in (and the farmer "Zeke") The Wizard of Oz (1939). But during his acting career, he has been known for being in burlesque, vaudeville, and Broadway.

Dropped out of high school at the age of fifteen ...

15. Charlotte Greenwood

Actress | Oklahoma!

Charlotte Greenwood was born Frances Charlotte Greenwood on June 25, 1890, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. She was a sickly child and her father left the family when she was very young. Charlotte grew into a healthy, six foot tall woman. She started her career dancing in vaudeville where she became ...

16. Pat O'Brien

Actor | Some Like It Hot

Although he came to be called "Hollywood's Irishman in Residence"--and, along with good friends James Cagney, Allen Jenkins, Frank McHugh and a few others were called "The Irish Mafia"--and he often played Irish immigrants, Pat O'Brien was US-born and -bred. As a young boy the devoutly Roman ...

17. Kathryn Crawford

Actress | Flying High

Kathryn Crawford was born on October 5, 1908 in Wellsboro, Pennsylvania, USA. She was an actress, known for Flying High (1931), The Kid's Clever (1929) and City of Missing Girls (1941). She was married to Ralph M. Parsons and James Edgar Jr.. She died on December 7, 1980 in Pasadena, California, ...

18. Alexis Smith

Actress | The Age of Innocence

Statuesque, smart Canadian-born Alexis Smith, with her blue/green eyes and a seductively husky voice, lent a touch of class to her leading ladies of the 1940s and 1950s.

After her family moved to California, Alexis grew into a precocious talent and performed ballet in public by the age of thirteen -...

19. Mary Astor

Actress | The Maltese Falcon

Mary Astor was born Lucile Vasconcellos Langhanke on May 3, 1906 in Quincy, Illinois to Helen Marie Vasconcellos, an American of Portuguese and Irish ancestry from Illinois, and Otto Ludwig Langhanke, a German immigrant. Mary's parents were very ambitious for her and wanted something better for her...

20. Donald Crisp

Actor | How Green Was My Valley

White-haired London-born character actor, a familiar face in Hollywood for more than five decades. He was born George William Crisp, the youngest of ten siblings, to working class parents James Crisp and his wife Elizabeth (nee Christy). Despite his humble beginnings, Donald was educated at Oxford ...

21. Joanne Woodward

Actress | Rachel, Rachel

Joanne Gignilliat Trimmier Woodward was born on February 27, 1930, in Thomasville, Georgia, to Wade Woodward and Elinor Gignilliat Trimmier Woodward in a modest household. Her one older brother, Wade Jr., who was the favorite of her father, eventually became an architect. Elinor Woodward was a ...

22. Thelma Ritter

Actress | Rear Window

Thelma Ritter appeared in high school plays and was trained at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts. In the 1940s she worked in radio. Her movie career was started with a bit part in the 1946 Miracle on 34th Street (1947). In the movie she played a weary Xmas shopper. Her performance in the short ...

23. Charles Boyer

Actor | Gaslight

Charles Boyer studied philosophy before he went to the theater where he gave his debut in 1920. Although he had at first no intentions to pursue a career at the movies (his first movie was Man of the Sea (1920) by Marcel L'Herbier) he used his chance in Hollywood after several filming stations all ...

24. Paulette Goddard

Actress | The Ghost Breakers

Paulette Goddard was a child model who debuted in "The Ziegfeld Follies" at the age of 13. She gained fame with the show as the girl on the crescent moon, and was married to a wealthy man, Edgar James, by the time she was 17. After her divorce she went to Hollywood in 1931, where she appeared in ...

25. Karen Morley

Actress | Scarface

Born Mildred Linton in Ottumwa, Iowa on December 12, 1909, Karen Morley was adopted by a well-to-do family who moved to Los Angeles in the mid-1920s. She enrolled at Hollywood High School and studied for a career in medicine at UCLA, but a class in theater changed her career ambitions.

After ...

26. Alan Hale

Actor | The Adventures of Robin Hood

Alan Hale decided on a film career after his attempt at becoming an opera singer didn't pan out. He quickly became much in demand as a supporting actor, starred in several films for Cecil B. DeMille and directed others for him. With the advent of sound, Hale played leads in a few films but soon ...

27. Peter Lorre

Actor | M - Eine Stadt sucht einen Mörder

Peter Lorre was born László Löwenstein in Rózsahegy in the Slovak area of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, the son of Hungarian Jewish parents. He learned both Hungarian and German languages from birth, and was educated in elementary and secondary schools in the Austria-Hungary capitol Vienna, but did ...

28. Lewis Stone

Actor | The Mask of Fu Manchu

By the time that he was 20, Lewis Stone had turned prematurely grey. He enlisted to fight in the Spanish American War and when he returned, he returned to be a writer. This turned to acting and he began to appear in films during the middle teens. His career was again interrupted by war as he served...

29. Emil Jannings

Actor | The Last Command

His real name was Theodor Friedrich Emil Janenz, and in the early 1900s, he was already working in the theater under Max Reinhardt's company. Important movies where he defined himself as a convincing actor were Passion (1919) and Quo Vadis? (1924), followed by The Last Laugh (1924) (aka The Last ...

30. 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 ...

31. Ava Gardner

Actress | The Night of the Iguana

Ava Lavina Gardner was born on December 24, 1922 in Grabtown, North Carolina, to Mary Elizabeth (née Baker) and Jonas Bailey Gardner. Born on a tobacco farm, where she got her lifelong love of earthy language and going barefoot, Ava grew up in the rural South. At age 18, her picture in the window ...

32. Montgomery Clift

Actor | From Here to Eternity

Edward Montgomery Clift (nicknamed 'Monty' his entire life) was born on October 17, 1920 in Omaha, Nebraska, just after his twin sister Roberta (1920-2014) and eighteen months after his brother Brooks Clift. He was the son of Ethel "Sunny" Anderson (Fogg; 1888-1988) and William Brooks Clift (1886-...

33. Brad Dexter

Actor | The Magnificent Seven

American supporting player specializing in tough guys. Of Serbian extraction, he was born in Nevada in 1917. As a young man, he boxed in amateur bouts and had early training in theatre at the Pasadena Playhouse. He joined the Air Corps during World War II and was assigned to the troupe performing ...

34. Sterling Hayden

Actor | Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb

Born to George & Frances Simonson Walter, and named Sterling Relyea Walter. Father died in 1925. Adopted by stepfather 'James Hayden' renamed Sterling Walter Hayden. Grew up in New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, Washington D.C., and Maine. Though very poor, attended prep school at ...

35. Ian Hunter

Actor | The Adventures of Robin Hood

Ian Hunter was born in the Kenilworth area of Cape Town, South Africa where he spent his childhood. In his teen years he and his parents returned to the family origins in England to live. Sometime between that arrival and the early years of World War I, Hunter began exploring acting, then in 1917 -...

36. Edward Ashley

Actor | Pride and Prejudice

Edward Ashley was born on August 12, 1904 in Sydney, New South Wales, Australia. He was an actor, known for Pride and Prejudice (1940), Dick Tracy Meets Gruesome (1947) and The Court Jester (1955). He was married to Renée Torres Alegría, Nora Swinburne and Nina Joyce Osborne Throsby. He died on May...

37. Donald Meek

Actor | You Can't Take It with You

One Hollywood stalwart whose screen incarnations more than lived up to his name was bald-domed character actor Donald Meek, forever typecast as mousy, timorous or browbeaten Casper Milquetoasts. He stood at 5 ft. 6 in. in his boots and weighed a mere 81 pounds. However, the little Glaswegian's ...

38. Adeline De Walt Reynolds

Actress | The Human Comedy

She survived the death of her husband in 1905, the San Francisco earthquake in 1906 and raising four children with no money. In 1926, when she was 64 she became one of the most mature freshman ever to enter the University of California. She graduated 6 years later with her B.A. degree. In 1940 she ...

39. Walter Connolly

Actor | It Happened One Night

The name may have been forgotten, especially today (seven decades later), but the portly, apoplectic, exasperated figure on the 1930s screen wasn't. While his film career, save a couple of silents, lasted a paltry seven years (1932-1939), character actor Walter Connolly certainly ran the distance. ...

40. Olin Howland

Actor | Them!

Olin Howland had a career in movies which stretched from the 20s, up through the time he passed away, in the late 50s. After a few attempts at films in the silent era, Olin began to appear regularly in the sound pictures of the 1930s. His roles were usually in mysteries and dramas, and he became a ...

41. Maxie Rosenbloom

Actor | Each Dawn I Die

Max Rosenbloom was 5'11" and weighed 165-170 lb. during the peak of his professional boxing years (which included 289 fights). In later years the larger-than-life "Slapsie Maxie" would parlay his sports fame into a Hollywood career playing a series of Runyonesque-type thugs and pugs.

Born Max ...

42. Jean Arthur

Actress | You Can't Take It with You

This marvelous screen comedienne's best asset was only muffled during her seven years' stint in silent films. That asset? It was, of course, her squeaky, frog-like voice, which silent-era cinema audiences had simply no way of perceiving, much less appreciating. Jean Arthur, born Gladys Georgianna ...

43. Noah Beery Jr.

Actor | The Rockford Files

Familiar and well-liked character actor of very different persona than either his father, Noah Beery, or his uncle, Wallace Beery. He attended Harvard Military Academy but managed to make a number of appearances on film and on stage with his father before adulthood. At age 19, he began playing ...

44. Thomas Mitchell

Actor | Stagecoach

Thomas Mitchell was one of the great American character actors, whose credits read like a list of the greatest American films of the 20th century: Lost Horizon (1937); Stagecoach (1939); The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1939); Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939); Gone with the Wind (1939); It's a ...

45. Richard Barthelmess

Actor | Only Angels Have Wings

Richard Barthelmess was born into a theatrical family in which his mother was an actress. While attending Trinity College in Connecticut, he began appearing in stage productions. While on vacation in 1916, a friend of his mother, actress Alla Nazimova, offered him a part in War Brides (1916), and ...

46. Don 'Red' Barry

Actor | Jesse James' Women

Donald Barry went from the stage to the screen. After four years of playing villains and henchmen at various studios, Barry got the role that changed his image: Red Ryder in the Republic Pictures serial Adventures of Red Ryder (1940). Although he had appeared in westerns for two years or so, this ...

47. Gene Tierney

Actress | Laura

With prominent cheekbones, luminous skin and the most crystalline green eyes of her day, Gene Tierney's striking good looks helped propel her to stardom. Her best known role is the enigmatic murder victim in Laura (1944). She was also Oscar-nominated for Leave Her to Heaven (1945). Her acting ...

48. 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 ...

49. Jack Holt

Actor | Cat People

Staunch, granite-jawed American leading man of silent and early talkie films, much associated with Westerns. A native of New York City, Holt often claimed to have been born in Winchester, Virginia, where he grew up. The son of an Episcopal minister, he attended Trinity School in Manhattan, then the...

50. Ward Bond

Actor | The Maltese Falcon

Gruff, burly American character actor. Born in 1903 in Benkelman, Nebraska (confirmed by Social Security records; sources stating 1905 or Denver, Colorado are in error.) Bond grew up in Denver, the son of a lumberyard worker. He attended the University of Southern California, where he got work as ...

51. Marshall Thompson

Actor | It! The Terror from Beyond Space

Although he geared himself up for major film stardom throughout the 1950s, it took a leading role on a 1960s TV series opposite a lion and chimpanzee to make Marshall Thompson a genuine household name.

Born on November 27, 1925, and named James Marshall Thompson after an ancestor, a famed Supreme ...

52. Paul Langton

Actor | The Twilight Zone

Although established in show business for many years, it wasn't until 1964 with the debut of the TV series, "Peyton Place" that he became truly famous as the hapless and scheming, Leslie Harrington. His tenure there lasted several years and he added considerable style and finesse with his presence ...

53. Jack Pennick

Actor | They Were Expendable

Jack Pennick was an American film actor, a familiar face, primarily in the movies of John Ford. He was born in Portland, Oregon, the son of gold miner Albert R. and Bessie (Murray) Pennick. After himself working as a gold miner, Pennick joined the U.S. Marine Corps and served, with the Pekin ...

54. Russell Simpson

Actor | The Grapes of Wrath

His grim, beady-eyed, sharp-nosed, weatherbeaten face was always familiar despite the small roles he appeared in. Every once in a while character actor Russell Simpson would stand out in a small scene, but his main purpose seemed to be adding rustic authenticity to his westerns or small-town dramas...

55. Leon Ames

Actor | Peggy Sue Got Married

Leon Ames was born Harry Wycoff in Portland, Indiana, to Cora Alice (DeMoss) and Charles Elmer Wycoff. He had always wanted to be an actor and he did it the hard way, serving a long apprenticeship in touring amateur theatre companies -- even selling shoes for a while on 42nd Street in the 1920s. It...

56. Harry Tenbrook

Actor | They Were Expendable

Harry Tenbrook was born on October 9, 1887 in Oslo, Norway. He was an actor, known for They Were Expendable (1945), A Slight Case of Murder (1938) and The Land of Might (1912). He died on September 14, 1960 in Woodland Hills, Los Angeles, California, USA.

57. Louis Jean Heydt

Actor | The Big Sleep

An American character actor who specialized in "average joes", often timid or down-on-their-luck, Louis Jean Heydt was born in Montclair, New Jersey, and educated at Worcester Academy and Dartmouth College. He intended a career in journalism and worked as a reporter for the old New York World, but ...

58. Ralph Richardson

Actor | Doctor Zhivago

Sir Ralph Richardson was one of the greatest actors of the 20th Century English-language theater, ascending to the height of his profession in the mid-1930s when he became a star in London's West End. He became the first actor of his generation to be knighted. He became Sir Ralph in 1947, and was ...

59. Don Taylor

Actor | Stalag 17

Born in Freeport, Pennsylvania, Don Taylor studied law, then speech and drama at Penn State University, where as a freshman he began taking part in college stage productions. Hitchhiking to Hollywood in 1942, the youthful Taylor screen-tested at Warner Brothers but was rejected because of his draft...

60. Gil Stratton

Actor | Stalag 17

Gil Stratton was originally billed as Gil Stratton, Jr. He had a young, wholesome juvenile look when, at the age of 19, he debuted on Broadway creating the role of Bud Hooper in the 1941 Broadway musical "Best Foot Forward", in which he sang and danced.

Stratton continued working in New York on ...

61. Jeanne Crain

Actress | Pinky

Jeanne Crain was born in Barstow, California, on May 25, 1925. The daughter of a high school English teacher and his wife, Jeanne was moved to Los Angeles not long after her birth after her father got another teaching position in that city. While in junior high school, Jeanne played the lead in a ...

62. George Reed

Actor | Huckleberry Finn

George Reed was born on November 27, 1866 in Macon, Georgia, USA. He was an actor, known for Huckleberry Finn (1920), The River of Romance (1929) and Going Places (1938). He was married to Julia Ridley. He died on November 6, 1952 in Woodland Hills, Los Angeles, California, USA.

63. Tom Dugan

Actor | To Be or Not to Be

Prolific Irish character actor Thomas J. Dugan was born in Dublin on New Year's Day 1889. At a young age, his family moved to Philadelphia, where Dugan attended high school. He had a good tenor voice so, after leaving school, he decided to pursue a career in show business. Before appearing on stage...

64. John Williams

Actor | Dial M for Murder

John Williams was a tall, urbane Anglo-American actor best known for his role as Chief Inspector Hubbard in Dial M for Murder (1954), a role he played on Broadway, in Alfred Hitchcock's classic 1954 film, and on television in 1958. Playing Hubbard on the Great White Way brought him the 1953 Tony ...

65. 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, ...

66. Jack Warden

Actor | 12 Angry Men

Jack Warden was born John Warden Lebzelter, Jr. on September 18, 1920 in Newark, New Jersey, to Laura M. (Costello) and John Warden Lebzelter. His father was of German and Irish descent, and his mother was of Irish ancestry. Raised in Louisville, Kentucky, at the age of seventeen, young Jack ...

67. Ben Blue

Actor | It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World

Ben Blue was a movie and TV comedian born on September 12, 1901, in Montréal, Québec, Canada. Emigrating to the US, he became a dance instructor and dance school owner, as well as a nightclub proprietor. He began his film career in short subjects for Warner Brothers in 1926, and later worked at the...

68. Henry Darrow

Actor | The Hitcher

In the late 1960s, Henry Darrow was THE ultimate Latin heartthrob on television. With a smooth, ingratiating style and a killer smile that brightened up the small screen, he also hit a cultural acting landmark as the first Hispanic actor to portray Zorro on television.

He was born Enrique Tomás ...

69. Charles McGraw

Actor | Spartacus

Stony-faced, grizzled-looking tough guy Charles McGraw (real name Charles Butters) notched up dozens of TV and film credits, usually portraying law enforcement figures or military officers, plus the odd shifty gangster. While at high school he worked as a theatre usher and was nicknamed "Chick" by ...

70. Zasu Pitts

Actress | Greed

Classic comedienne Zasu Pitts, of the timid, forlorn blue eyes and trademark woebegone vocal pattern and fidgety hands, was born to Rulandus and Nellie (Shay) Pitts, the third of four children on January 3, 1894. Her aged New York-native father, who lost a leg back in the Civil War era, had settled...

71. Olivia de Havilland

Actress | Gone with the Wind

Olivia Mary de Havilland was born on July 1, 1916 in Tokyo, Japan to British parents, Lilian Augusta (Ruse), a former actress, and Walter Augustus de Havilland, an English professor and patent attorney. Her sister Joan, later to become famous as Joan Fontaine, was born the following year. Her ...

72. Joan Fontaine

Actress | Suspicion

Born Joan de Beauvoir de Havilland on October 22, 1917, in Tokyo, Japan, in what was known as the International Settlement, to British parents, Lilian Augusta (Ruse), a former actress, and Walter Augustus de Havilland, an English professor and patent attorney. Her paternal grandfather's family was ...

73. Constance Cummings

Actress | Blithe Spirit

Coming from a musical family - her mother was a concert soprano - Constance Cummings made her show business debut in 1926 in regional stock theater, and by 1928 had appeared in her first Broadway play. Her success in the theater resulted in an invitation to Hollywood, where she went 1931. Although ...

74. Florence Bates

Actress | Rebecca

The American character actress, Florence Rabe, was the daughter of an antique store owner. She gained a degree in Mathematics from the University of Texas in 1906 and went on to a career in teaching and social work. She changed course after being persuaded by a friend to study law, and, passing her...

75. Fay Bainter

Actress | Jezebel

Fay Bainter's career began as a child performer in 1898. For some time, she was a member of the traveling cast of the Morosco Stock Company in Los Angeles. In 1912, she made her Broadway debut in 'The Rose of Panama', but this and her subsequent play 'The Bridal Path' (1913), were conspicuous ...

76. Ann Rutherford

Actress | Gone with the Wind

Ann Rutherford was born in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.

The daughter of a former Metropolitan Opera singer, John Rutherford, and her actress mother, Lillian Mansfield, was destined for show business.

Not long after her birth, her family moved to California, where she made her stage debut in ...

77. Thurston Hall

Actor | Carson City

Movies, especially comedies, have always needed big, blustery, booming authoritarian types for the lead to play off of (or against), and one of the best was Thurston Hall, most famous for his role of Mr. Schuyler in the Topper (1953) series of the early 1950s. Hall was a tall, distinguished, ...

78. Gordon Jones

Actor | Flying Tigers

Gordon Jones was born on April 5, 1911 in Alden, Iowa, USA. He was an actor, known for Flying Tigers (1942), The Green Hornet (1940) and My Sister Eileen (1942). He was married to Lucile Van Winkle. He died on June 20, 1963 in Tarzana, Los Angeles, California, USA.

79. Bill Shirley

Actor | Sleeping Beauty

Bill Shirley was born on July 6, 1921 in Indianapolis, Indiana, USA. He was an actor, known for Sleeping Beauty (1959), I Dream of Jeanie (1952) and Flying Tigers (1942). He died on August 27, 1989 in Los Angeles, California, USA.

80. Doris Lloyd

Actress | The Time Machine

Doris Lloyd was an English actress with a lengthy film career. She appeared in over 150 films between 1920 and 1960. She spent most of her life abroad in the United States.

In 1891, Lloyd was born in Walton, Liverpool. Her parents were Edward Franklin Lloyd and Hessy Jane McCappin. One of her ...

81. Constance Talmadge

Actress | Intolerance: Love's Struggle Throughout the Ages

Constance was blonde; star sister Norma Talmadge was brunette. She was buoyant and a comedienne; Norma was introspective and a tragedienne. Nicknamed "Dutch" by her stage mother Peg as she looked like a cherubic Little Dutch Boy, silver screen star Constance Talmadge was one of silent pictures' ...

82. Marjorie Main

Actress | The Egg and I

Her father was a minister, and when she joined a local stock company as a youngster she changed her name to avoid embarrassing her family. She worked in vaudeville and debuted on Broadway in 1916. Her film debut was in A House Divided (1931). She repeated her stage role in Dead End (1937) as Baby ...

83. Douglas Dick

Actor | Rope

Douglas Dick was born on November 20, 1920 in Charleston, West Virginia, USA. He was an actor and writer, known for Rope (1948), The Second Hundred Years (1967) and Bewitched (1964). He was married to Peggy Chantler Dick and Rhoda (Ronnie) Marion Noyer. He died on December 19, 2015 in Los Angeles, ...

84. Dan Seymour

Actor | To Have and Have Not

Daniel Seymour Katz (Dan Seymour's original name) attended Senn High School in Chicago and graduated from the University of Chicago with a B.S. in Fine Arts. While in college, he worked in many school plays and also worked at night as an emcee at various Chicago nightclubs becoming quite successful...

85. Eleanor Parker

Actress | The Sound of Music

Eleanor Jean Parker was born on June 26, 1922, in Cedarville, Ohio, the last of three children born to a mathematics teacher and his wife. Eleanor caught the acting bug early and began performing in school plays. She was was so serious about becoming an actor, that she attended the Rice Summer ...

86. Doro Merande

Actress | The Man with the Golden Arm

Plain-looking, angular-framed Doro Merande of both stage and film was one of those delightful character actresses you couldn't take your eyes off of, no matter how minuscule the part. Her careworn features were ideal for playing small-town folk and working class toilers, and she excelled at playing...

87. John Hodiak

Actor | Lifeboat

Pittsburgh-born John Hodiak was one of several up-and-coming male talents who managed to take advantage of the dearth of WWII-era superstars (MGM's Clark Gable, Van Johnson, Robert Taylor and James Stewart, among others) who were off serving their country. John's early death at age 41, however, ...

88. Kim Novak

Actress | Vertigo

Kim Novak was born in Chicago, Illinois on February 13, 1933 with the birth name of Marilyn Pauline Novak. She was the daughter of a former teacher turned transit clerk and his wife, also a former teacher. Throughout elementary and high school, Kim did not get along well with teachers. She even ...

89. Will Wright

Actor | The Blue Dahlia

One of those familiar character actors who seems to have been born old, Will Wright specialized in playing crusty old codgers, rich skinflints,crooked small-town politicians and the like. A former newspaper reporter in San Francisco, he switched careers and entered vaudeville, then took to the ...

90. Melville Cooper

Actor | The Adventures of Robin Hood

Born George Melville Cooper on October 15, 1896, in Birmingham England, he was the son of non-professionals W.C.J. and Frances (Brennan) Cooper, and attended various English public schools, including King Edward's School in Birmingham. Attracted to the stage as a teenager, he made his debut at ...

91. Patric Knowles

Actor | The Adventures of Robin Hood

Fourteen-year-old Reginald Lawrence Knowles was being readied to take his place with other relatives in the family bookbinding business (in Leeds) when he ran off to become an actor. He was inevitably brought back home, but he made good his second escape a few years later - his willful Knowles ...

92. Eugene Pallette

Actor | The Adventures of Robin Hood

This eminently recognizable, bulbous, beetle-browed character actor left Culver Military Academy and began acting in repertory companies before becoming a Hollywood extra and stunt man. Eugene's father had also been a thespian at one time but eventually ended his career as an insurance salesman. In...

93. Claude Rains

Actor | Casablanca

William Claude Rains, born in the Clapham area of London, was the son of the British stage actor Frederick Rains. The younger Rains followed, making his stage debut at the age of eleven in "Nell of Old Drury." Growing up in the world of theater, he saw not only acting up close but the down-to-earth...

94. James Cagney

Actor | Angels with Dirty Faces

One of Hollywood's preeminent male stars of all time, James Cagney was also an accomplished dancer and easily played light comedy. James Francis Cagney was born on the Lower East Side of Manhattan in New York City, to Carolyn (Nelson) and James Francis Cagney, Sr., who was a bartender and amateur ...

95. Humphrey Bogart

Actor | Casablanca

Humphrey DeForest Bogart was born in New York City, New York, to Maud Humphrey, a famed magazine illustrator and suffragette, and Belmont DeForest Bogart, a moderately wealthy surgeon (who was secretly addicted to opium). Bogart was educated at Trinity School, NYC, and was sent to Phillips Academy ...

96. Ann Sheridan

Actress | Kings Row

Ann Sheridan won the "Search for Beauty" contest which carried with it a Paramount screen test. Signed to a contract at 18, she was put into a number of small roles under her real name of Clara Lou Sheridan. As she got better, her name was changed to Ann. In 1936, after two dozen films, she went to...

97. Una O'Connor

Actress | Bride of Frankenstein

Delightful character actress who held her own against such acting heavyweights as Charles Laughton, Boris Karloff, Tyrone Power, Barbara Stanwyck, and Sydney Greenstreet. Often cast by studio heads as comic relief thanks to her thick Irish accent and rubber-faced expressions, most notably in ...

98. Woody Strode

Actor | Spartacus

An athlete turned actor, Strode was a top-notch decathlete and a football star at UCLA. He became part of Hollywood lore after meeting director John Ford and becoming a part of the Ford "family," appearing in four Ford motion pictures. Strode also played the powerful gladiator who does battle with ...

99. Barbara Rush

Actress | It Came from Outer Space

The epitome of poise, charm, style and grace, beautiful brunette Barbara Rush was born in Denver, Colorado in 1927 and enrolled at the University of California before working with the University Players and taking acting classes at the Pasadena Playhouse. It didn't take long for talent scouts to ...

100. Jeffrey Hunter

Actor | The Searchers

Jeffrey Hunter was born Henry Herman McKinnies Jr. on November 25, 1926 in New Orleans, Louisiana, an only child. His parents met at the University of Arkansas, and when he was almost four his family moved to Milwaukee, Wisconsin. In his teens, he acted in productions of the North Shore Children's ...