Ferncliff Harstdale
The men and women interred at Ferncliff Cemetery and Mausoleum in Hartsdale, Westchester County, New York.
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- Actor
- Producer
- Soundtrack
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 Richard never returned to college. He appeared in a number of films before signing a contract with D.W. Griffith in 1919. Griffith put Richard into Broken Blossoms (1919) with Lillian Gish which made him a star. He had an uncanny ability to become the characters he played. The next year, he was again teamed with Lillian in Way Down East (1920). This film would become the standard for many movies in the future. Best remembered is the river scene in which Richard jumps over the ice floes in search of Lillian as she heads towards the falls. He formed Inspiration Pictures to make Tol'able David (1921) and gave one of his best performances as a lad who saves the U.S. mail from the outlaws. He remained popular throughout the twenties and became one of the biggest stars at First National Pictures. He received Academy Award nominations for The Patent Leather Kid (1927) and The Noose (1928). Sound was not a medium that would embrace Richard. He did make a number of talkies in the first few years of sound, but his acting technique was not well suited for sound and the parts began to get smaller. With his career over by the mid-30s, but he came back with a fine performance in Howard Hawks's Only Angels Have Wings (1939). Richard joined the Navy Reserve in 1942, and when the war ended he retired to Long Island and lived off his real estate investments.Plot: Ferncliff Mausoleum, Unit 8, Alcove BB, Column B, Memorial Niche 1- Music Department
- Composer
- Soundtrack
No American has written more first-rate songs than Arlen. He grew up in a musical family (his father was a cantor), and disappointed but didn't surprise his parents by dropping out of high school to become a musician. A stint as pianist and singer with a dance band, the Buffalodians, allowed him to escape Buffalo for New York City. Arlen stayed on after the band's demise; after some mostly unsuccessful attempts to conquer vaudeville or Broadway, Arlen stumbled onto a tune that, with lyrics by Ted Koehler, became "Get Happy", his first hit. With Koehler as lyricist, Arlen became the staff composer for Harlem's Cotton Club, a premiere showcase for African-American entertainers such as Cab Calloway and Ethel Waters. They wrote "I've Got the World on a String" and "Ill Wind", among dozens of others. Arlen's second important collaborator was E.Y. Harburg, with whom he composed the score for _Wizard of Oz, The (1939)_, celebrated specialty numbers for Bert Lahr and Groucho Marx, and two Broadway musicals. In the 1940s, Arlen reached the peak of his popularity with his third major partner, Johnny Mercer; most of their hits, such as "Blues in the Night", "My Shining Hour" and "One for My Baby (and One More for the Road)", were written for the movies, as Hollywood replaced the stage as the songwriters' most lucrative market. As he aged, Arlen grew increasingly frustrated with Hollywood's waste of material and Broadway's rigmarole; his personal life in this period was also unhappy. His best songs, though, in renditions by performers li ke Judy Garland and Frank Sinatra and later cabaret singers and jazz musicians, have continued to be seen as classics.Plot: Hickory, Grave 1666- Actress
- Soundtrack
Arleen Augér was born on 13 September 1939 in Long Beach, California, USA. She was an actress, known for Die Piraten (1968), Desire (1992) and Alcina (1990). She died on 10 June 1993 in Leusden, Utrecht, Netherlands.- Arthur 'Bugs' Baer was born on 9 January 1886 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA. He was a writer and editor, known for They Learned About Women (1930), Headin' Home (1920) and Battle Royal (1932). He was married to Louise Allcut Andrews and Marjorie Cassidy. He died on 17 May 1969 in New York City, New York, USA.Plot: Ferncliff Mausoleum, Unit 6, Private Alcove D, Niche 4
- Writer
- Producer
James Baldwin is known for Giants and The Face (1998).Plot: Hillcrest A, Grave 1203- Actor
- Soundtrack
Harry Archer was born on 21 February 1886 in Creston, Iowa, USA. He was an actor, known for The Hope Diamond Mystery (1921), The Trail of the Octopus (1919) and The Red Ace (1917). He was married to Ruth Gilette. He died on 23 April 1960 in New York City, New York, USA.Plot: Prospect, Grave 1015- Music Department
- Composer
- Writer
Born in Hungary in 1881, Bartok began his musical studies on the piano at age five. His mother was his first teacher; after his father died in 1888, the Bartok family moved to Nagyszolos, where Bela continued his piano studies and took up composition. At age eleven, he made his first public appearance, playing his own piano music. Bartok enrolled in the Royal Academy of Music in Budapest. he made several tours of Europe after his graduation in 1902. In 1940 Bartok moved to the United States to get away from the Nazi expansion, and was given a teaching position at Columbia University in New York City. With the exception of some noted musicians - conductor Serge Koussevitzky and violinist Yehudi Menuhin in particular - he was generally misunderstood and ignored by the musical establishment. He contracted leukemia in the early 1940s, and died in the fall of 1945, unaware of the monumental status he would achieve after death.Plot: St. Peter, Grave 470
Original Burial Site.- Mary Beard was born in 1876 in Indianapolis, Indiana, USA. She was married to Charles Beard. She died in 1956.Plot: St. Paul, Plot 309
- Sherman Billingsley was born on 10 March 1896 in Enid, Oklahoma, USA. He was married to Hazel Marguerite Donnelly and Iva Dee Risk. He died on 4 October 1966 in New York City, New York, USA.Plot: Ferncliff Mausoleum, Unit 8, Alcove Y, Crypt 74
- Music Department
- Actor
- Composer
Composer, songwriter ("When Love Has Gone"), conductor, pianist, author and arranger, he came to the USA during World War I. He was a pianist in New York Ballrooms, then organized his own orchestra and toured the US in vaudeville. He was a pianist on radio, then a music director and arranger for radio and for television networks. He joined ASCAP in 1939, and his chief musical collaborators included W. Edward Breuder and Paul Rusincky. His other song compositions include "You're Everything That's Lovely", "In the Same Old Way", "In My Little Red Book", "The Wide Open Spaces", "Sam the Vegetable Man", "Let's Make Up a Little Party", and "If You Were Mine".Plot: St Paul section, plot 184, Grave 2- Actress
- Soundtrack
Corsican Irène Bordoni was one of several Broadway stars who failed to translate their success to the screen. Born to Italian parents, she was an assured child actress in her native country before emigrating to the United States. There, she established herself on the Great White Way in musical revues and adaptations of spicy French farces. Beginning in 1913, she notched up a string of hits and accumulated fame and fortune over the next sixteen years. At this time, she was married to the composer and theatrical impresario E. Ray Goetz who promoted her as a successor to the late Anna Held. Often described as 'volatile', Irène made the most of her oo-la-la French appeal, her accent, flamboyant costumes, brunette bangs, pursed lips and rolling eyes becoming her trademark. In 1929, Irène arrived arrived in tinseltown 'quietly' with a carload of trunks and an entourage which included a chauffeur, a secretary, a chef and two maids. She established herself in Beverly Hills while maintaining a lavish home off Park Avenue in New York (her other real estate included a villa on the French Riviera and an apartment in Paris). Her movie debut was a First National picture co-produced by her husband, fittingly entitled Paris (1929). Based a Cole Porter musical, it gave Irène the chance to recreate her Broadway success opposite English star Jack Buchanan. The rather moderate response at the box office was likely because the original Cole Porter score had been unaccountably dropped (incidentally, Porter thought so highly of Irène that he wrote the line "You're the eyes of Irene Bordoni" in his lyrics for "You're the Top"). In the same year, Irène appeared in an all-star revue,Show of Shows (1929), but this did not ignite her film career either. Irène returned to Broadway but resurfaced a few more times on the silver screen, notably warbling the title number in the animated Dave Fleischer short Just a Gigolo (1932) and as Madame Bordelaise (according to New York Times critic Bosley Crowther, she wore "the tag most refinedly") in the supporting cast of Louisiana Purchase (1941), again reprising her stage role. When not appearing on stage, La Bordoni maintained a high profile in America's court rooms through a series of well publicised litigations.Plot: Ferncliff Mausoleum, Unit ? Tier AA-CC, Column A, Niche 12- Actress
- Soundtrack
Singer, songwriter, composer, arranger and actress, Connee Boswell studied with Otto Finck. With her sisters Vet Boswell and Martha Boswell she formed The Boswell Sisters, appearing on records, radio, in theaters and films, but later continuing her career as a single. In World War II she entertained the armed forces and appeared in the Broadway shows "Star Time," "Curtain Time," and "Show Time." Joining ASCAP in 1953, her song compositions include "Putting It On," "I Don't Mind," and "You Ain't Got Nothin'".Plot: Hillcrest J, Grave 227- Born in the Harlem section of New York City, joined the Navy, then studied drama at New York University; was an announcer for then joined the Negro Ensemble Co. in 1970 for such productions as "The River Niger", "Square Root of the Soul" and "The Brownsville Raid"; worked with repertory groups such as the Minnesota Theater Co., Inner City Repertory Co., and the American Shakespeare Co.; first appeared on the screen in 'Che! (1969), then returned to stage until the late 1970s when he did low-budget films The Hitter (1978), Fist of Fear, Touch of Death (1980)) before achieving his greatest success in A Soldier's Story (1984) (from the stage play for which he collected two awards), which earned him an Oscar nomination; appeared in The Color Purple (1985) and was working on Tough Guys (1986) with Burt Lancaster and Kirk Douglas when he collapsed on the set of a heart attack and died a short time later. He was only 52.Plot: Beechwood section, Grave 238
- King Calder was born on 21 April 1897 in Baltimore, Maryland, USA. He was an actor, known for Time Table (1956), The Best of Broadway (1954) and Martin Kane (1949). He was married to Ethel Wilson. He died on 28 June 1964 in Los Angeles, California, USA.Plot: Ferncliff Mausoleum, Unit 7, Alcove NNJJ, Column O, Niche 14
- Actor
- Music Department
- Director
Bandleader, songwriter ("Minnie the Moocher", "Are You Hep to That Jive?"), composer, singer, actor and author, educated at Crane College. While studying law, he sang with the band The Alabamians, and took over the group in 1928. He led The Missourians orchestra, then organized and led his own orchestra, playing at hotels, theaters and nightclubs throughout the US, and making many records. He joined the cast of the touring company of "Porgy and Bess", which performed across the USA and Europe between 1952 and 1954. When that ended, he founded a quartet. Joining ASCAP in 1942, he collaborated musically with Jack Palmer, Buck Ram, Andy Gibson, Clarence Gaskill, Irving Mills and Paul Mills . His other popular song compositions include "Lady With the Fan", "Zaz Zuh Zaz", "Chinese Rhythm", "Are You In Love With Me Again?", "That Man's Here Again", "Peck-A-Doodle-Doo", "I Like Music", "Rustle of Swing", "Three Swings and Out", "The Jumpin' Jive", "Boog It", "Come on with the Come-on", "Silly Old Moon", "Sunset", "Rhapsody in Rhumba", "Are You All Reet?", "Hi-De-Ho Man", "Levee Lullaby", "Let's Go, Joe", "Geechy Joe", and "Hot Air".Plot: Rosewood Mausoleum, 6A-BBB-C252 (third floor)- Actor
- Soundtrack
Northern Calloway was born on 22 January 1948 in New York City, New York, USA. He was an actor, known for Sesame Street (1969), Sesame Street: Put Down the Duckie (1988) and Christmas Eve on Sesame Street (1978). He was married to Terry Calloway. He died on 9 January 1990 in Ossining, New York, USA.Plot: Hickory 2, Grave 438- Costume Designer
- Costume and Wardrobe Department
Hattie Carnegie was born on 15 March 1886 in Vienna, Austria. She was a costume designer, known for Born to Be Bad (1950), The Secret Fury (1950) and Two Against the World (1932). She was married to John Zanft and Ferdinand Fleischman. She died on 23 February 1956 in New York City, New York, USA.Plot: Ferncliff Mausoleum, Unit 7, Alcove NN, Private Memorial Room 1, Crypt 2- Actress
- Soundtrack
Mady Christians was born in Vienna, Austria. Destined to be in films in both Germany and the US, she started out as a stage actress but soon found new challenges in the world of cinema. Her first film was at the age of 24 when she appeared in Audrey (1916). She remained in German films for the next 17years before coming to the US and starring in The Only Girl (1933). Mady left the film industry in 1948 after finishing All My Sons (1948).
She died on October 28, 1951, in Norwalk, CT, from a cerebral hemorrhage.Plot: Oakwood section, grave 1946- Actress
- Writer
- Producer
Joan Crawford was born Lucille Fay LeSueur on March 23, 1906, in San Antonio, Texas, to Anna Belle (Johnson) and Thomas E. LeSueur, a laundry laborer. By the time she was born, her parents had separated, and by the time she was a teenager, she'd had three stepfathers. It wasn't an easy life; Crawford worked a variety of menial jobs. She was a good dancer, though, and -- perhaps seeing dance as her ticket to a career in show business -- she entered several contests, one of which landed her a spot in a chorus line. Before long, she was dancing in big Midwestern and East Coast cities. After almost two years, she packed her bags and moved to Hollywood. Crawford was determined to succeed, and shortly after arriving she got her first bit part, as a showgirl in Pretty Ladies (1925).
Three films quickly followed; although the roles weren't much to speak of, she continued toiling. Throughout 1927 and early 1928, she was cast in small parts, but that ended with the role of Diana Medford in Our Dancing Daughters (1928), which elevated her to star status. Crawford had cleared the first big hurdle; now came the second, in the form of talkies. Many stars of the silents saw their careers evaporate, either because their voices weren't particularly pleasant or because their voices, pleasing enough, didn't match the public's expectations (for example, some fans felt that John Gilbert's tenor didn't quite match his very masculine persona). But Crawford wasn't felled by sound. Her first talkie, Untamed (1929), was a success. As the 1930s progressed, Crawford became one of the biggest stars at MGM. She was in top form in films such as Grand Hotel (1932), Sadie McKee (1934), No More Ladies (1935), and Love on the Run (1936); movie patrons were enthralled, and studio executives were satisfied.
By the early 1940s, MGM was no longer giving her plum roles; newcomers had arrived in Hollywood, and the public wanted to see them. Crawford left MGM for rival Warner Bros., and in 1945 she landed the role of a lifetime. Mildred Pierce (1945) gave her an opportunity to show her range as an actress, and her performance as a woman driven to give her daughter everything garnered Crawford her first, and only, Oscar for Best Actress. The following year she appeared with John Garfield in the well-received Humoresque (1946). In 1947, she appeared as Louise Graham in Possessed (1947); again she was nominated for a Best Actress from the Academy, but she lost to Loretta Young in The Farmer's Daughter (1947). Crawford continued to choose her roles carefully, and in 1952 she was nominated for a third time, for her depiction of Myra Hudson in Sudden Fear (1952). This time the coveted Oscar went to Shirley Booth, for Come Back, Little Sheba (1952). Crawford's career slowed after that; she appeared in minor roles until 1962, when she and Bette Davis co-starred in What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? (1962). Their longstanding rivalry may have helped fuel their phenomenally vitriolic and well-received performances. (Earlier in their careers, Davis said of Crawford, "She's slept with every male star at MGM except Lassie", and Crawford said of Davis, "I don't hate [her] even though the press wants me to. I resent her. I don't see how she built a career out of a set of mannerisms instead of real acting ability. Take away the pop eyes, the cigarette, and those funny clipped words, and what have you got? She's phony, but I guess the public really likes that.")
Crawford's final appearance on the silver screen was in the flop Trog (1970). Turning to vodka more and more, she was hardly seen afterward. On May 10, 1977, Joan died of a heart attack in New York City. She was 71 years old. She had disinherited her adopted daughter Christina and son Christopher; the former wrote a tell-all book called "Mommie Dearest", The Sixth Sense published in 1978. The book cast Crawford in a negative light and was cause for much debate, particularly among her friends and acquaintances, including Douglas Fairbanks Jr., Crawford's first husband. (In 1981, Faye Dunaway starred in Mommie Dearest (1981) which did well at the box office.) Crawford is interred in the same mausoleum as fellow MGM star Judy Garland, in Ferncliff Cemetery in Hartsdale, New York.Plot: Ferncliff Mausoleum, Unit 8, Alcove E, Crypt 42- Henrietta Crosman was born on 2 September 1861 in Wheeling, West Virginia, USA. She was an actress, known for Charlie Chan's Secret (1935), The Right to Live (1935) and The Royal Family of Broadway (1930). She was married to Maurice Campbell and Sedley Brown. She died on 31 October 1944 in Pelham Manor, New York, USA.
- Actress
- Writer
- Soundtrack
Myrtle Vail was born on 7 January 1888 in Joliet, Illinois, USA. She was an actress and writer, known for Myrt and Marge (1933), The Little Shop of Horrors (1960) and A Bucket of Blood (1959). She was married to George Damerel. She died on 18 September 1978 in Kansas City, Missouri, USA.Plot: Ferncliff Mausoleum, Unit 4, Columbarium 2, Arcade, Column L, Niche 5- The daughter of a Hungarian baroness and a military officer, Lya De Putti went on to perform classical ballet in Berlin, Germany, after a brief stint in Hungarian vaudeville. She later made several films at the German UFA studios, most notably Variety (1925), before going to Hollywood in 1926. While in America she starred in several movies, mostly in vamp roles.Plot: Ferncliff Mausoleum, Unit 1, Alcove D, Crypt 31
- Actor
- Stunts
- Additional Crew
O.L. Duke's acting career breakthrough occurred when he replaced Denzel Washington in Charles Fuller 's Pulitzer Prize-winning original production of "A Soldier's Play" (later made into the film A Soldier's Story (1984). He was a member of both the renowned Actors Studio and the Negro Ensemble Company (NEC). He appeared in numerous off-Broadway plays and on other well-known stages throughout the US and abroad, including The Kennedy Center and Ford Theater in Washington, D.C.; Connecticut's Hartford Stage and The Long Wharf Theater; The Geva in Rochester, New York; The Guthrie in Minnesota; The Cincinnati Playhouse in the Park, The ACT Theater in Seattle, Washington; and The Royal Lyceum Theater in Edinburgh, Scotland. Duke guest-starred and co-starred in award-winning television productions, such as Homicide: Life on the Street (1993), NYPD Blue (1993), Law & Order (1990), New York Undercover (1994), HBO's original series Oz (1997), and the PBS documentary _"This Far by Faith" (2003) (mini)_. Some of his theatrical film credits include Out of Time (2003), Antwone Fisher (2002), Piñero (2001), The Keeper (1995), Sugar Hill (1993), Malcolm X (1992) and The Five Heartbeats (1991).- Donna Michelle was born on 8 December 1945 in Los Angeles, California, USA. She was an actress, known for Beach Blanket Bingo (1965), One Spy Too Many (1966) and The Man from U.N.C.L.E. (1964). She was married to David M. Ronne. She died on 10 April 2004.Plot: Mausoleum Unit 4, Columbarium 2, Arcade, Column L, Niche 5
- Actor
- Soundtrack
Lew Fields was born on 1 January 1867 in New York City, New York, USA. He was an actor, known for The Story of Vernon and Irene Castle (1939), The Barker (1917) and Mike and Meyer Go Fishing (1915). He was married to Rose Harris. He died on 20 July 1941 in Beverly Hills, Los Angeles, California, USA.Plot: Ferncliff Mausoleum, Unit 4, Columbarium 2, Alcove D, Column E, Niche 5- Additional Crew
- Writer
- Soundtrack
Mikhail Fokin (Michel Fokine) was a Russian-American choreographer and dancer.
He was born Mikhail Mikhailovich Fokin on April 23, 1880 in St. Petersburg, Russia. He was the seventeenth of eighteen children, only 5 of whom grew to adulthood. His father, Mikhail Fokin, was a wealthy Russian merchant in St. Petersburg. His mother, Catherine, was a migrant from Germany. Fokin studied ballet from the age of 9 at the Ballet class of the Imperial Theatre School in St. Petersburg. Upon his graduation in 1898, Fokin was hired in the rank of soloist with the Imperial Russian Ballet at Mariinsky Theatre. He made his stage debut in 'Paquita' (1898), as a partner with the famous Anna Pavlova. He also resumed a teaching career at the girls junior class from 1902, becoming the youngest faculty member at the Imperial Ballet School.
Fokin became dissatisfied with the stagnant traditional choreography based on solo performances and dominated by hand gestures. A mere dancing to the background music was not for Fokin. His new ideas reformed the classic dance and expanded beyond the boundaries of traditional school. Fokin introduced changes to the dancer's movements, by upgrading the principles of mime, posture and gesture to "free movement" of the entire body of a dancer.
While his ideas were not accepted by the conservative management of the Imperial Mariinsky Theatre, Fokin and his partner, Anna Pavlova, won attention of the Russian group of art connoisseurs known as 'Mir Iskusstva' (aka World of art), such as Prince Volkonsky, Alexandre Benois, and Sergei Diaghilev. Among Fokin's early works were the choreography for 'Chopiniana' (1903), later revised as 'Les Sylphides', ballet 'Acis and Galatea' (1905), and 'The Dying Swan' (1907), performed as a solo dance by Anna Pavlova.
Fokin was the first great choreographer who worked with Sergei Diaghilev for his "Ballets Russes" in Paris during 1909-1914. There he fully implemented his ideas of an ensemble dance with the grater interplay between the dancers and music. Even before his work with Sergei Diaghilev, Fokin brought innovations to the genre of classical ballet by creating a new format of "one-act ballet." However, for the "Ballets Russes" productions he made revisions and updates to his earlier ideas, such as 'Les Sylphides', premiered in 1909 at Theatre du Chatelet in Paris.
His most significant works for Diaghilev's "Ballets Russes" were 'Firebird' (1909), starring his wife Vera Fokine, 'Carnival' (1909), starring Vaslav Nijinsky, and 'Petrushka' (1911) on the music of Igor Stravinsky. Fokin also choreographed 'Daphnis and Chloe' (1912) by Maurice Ravel, and 'Scheherazade' (1910) and 'Le coq d'or' (The Golden Cockerel, 1914) on the music of Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov.
Mikhail Fokin's mutually beneficial collaboration with Sergei Diaghilev came to an end in 1914. Fokin terminated their hectic relationship, because he was jealous of Diaghilev's close association with Vaslav Nijinsky. In 1914 Fokin returned to Russia and lived there until 1918. In 1919 he moved to New York and founded his own ballet school. During the 1930s, Fokin toured the world with the Covent Garden Russian Ballet, and created the ballet "Paganini" set to the music of Sergei Rachmaninoff.
Fokin staged more than 70 ballets in many countries all over the world. His choreography survived through the commercialization of dance. His best known works were 'Chopiniana' (also known in a revised version as 'Les Sylphides'), 'Le Carnival' and 'Le Pavillion d'Armide'. Fokin's work with Sergei Diaghilev prepared ground for the era of the powerful innovator George Balanchine. He died on August 22, 1942.
Fokin's wife Vera Fokine continued teaching in Fokin's studio in New York. Fokin's choreographic miniatures are still performed by many ballet troupes across the world.Plot: Shrine of Memories Mausoleum, Unit 1, Tier L, Crypt 12- Donald Foster was born on 31 July 1889 in Oil City, Pennsylvania, USA. He was an actor, known for Lord Love a Duck (1966), The Twilight Zone (1959) and Lights Out (1946). He was married to Alis Bushey Gray. He died on 23 December 1969 in Hollywood, California, USA.
- Actor
- Producer
- Soundtrack
Alan Freed was an American disc jockey, music writer, and early promoter of rock and roll. He initially gained notoriety in the late 1940's while working for radio stations in Ohio, eventually leading to work in New York City. He was instrumental in bringing African-American artists directly to White audiences (instead of playing White acts covering Black artists' music), and popularizing rock and roll as a phrase and as a genre. Throughout the late 1950's he also appeared as himself in "jukebox musical" films, which showcased a series of popular groups and singers, and as a presenter on TV. His career became embroiled in scandals by the early 1960's due to his acceptance of "payola" payments from record companies to play certain songs (essentially bribes; the practice was frowned upon and eventually outlawed in 1960), taking credit for co-writing songs that he did not write (and thereby receiving royalties when he and others played them on air), tax evasion, and alcoholism. He was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1986, 21 years after his death.Original Burial Site: Plot: Ferncliff Mausoleum, Unit 8, Alcove ST, Columb B, Niche 2- Actress
- Soundtrack
Elizabeth Mary Furness was born on January 3, 1916 in New York City. She was a teenage model with the Powers agency and appeared in secondary roles in more than 35 movies. She is best remembered as the highly paid television spokesperson for Westinghouse Electric Corporation. She later moved on to consumer affairs and appeared as the consumer affairs expert on NBC's Today (1952) for 16 years. Betty Furness died at age 78 of stomach cancer on April 2, 1994 in New York City.Plot: Hillcrest A, 5-C- Jane Gail was born Ethel Magee in Salem, New York in 1890. She first appeared on stage in 1905, then went on to silent drama and comedy films after beginning her film career as an extra in 1912 and becoming a leading lady the following year. She is best remembered for her role in 1913's 'Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde'; she gained worldwide fame as Dr. Jekyll's imperiled fiancee. In 1914 she traveled to England, where she starred in many drama films for the London Film Company, often under the direction of George Loan Tucker. She returned to America in 1916 to star on the Broadway stage. She was only 30 years old when she made her last film, 1920's 'Bitter Fruit.' She was married to writer Edwin C. Hill. She died in St. Petersburg, Florida in 1963 at 72.Plot: Ferncliff Mausoleum, Unit 7, Alcove KK, Crypt 11
- Actress
- Soundtrack
One of the brightest, most tragic movie stars of Hollywood's Golden Era, Judy Garland was a much-loved character whose warmth and spirit, along with her rich and exuberant voice, kept theatre-goers entertained with an array of delightful musicals.
She was born Frances Ethel Gumm on 10 June 1922 in Minnesota, the youngest daughter of vaudevillians Ethel Marian (Milne) and Francis Avent "Frank" Gumm. She was of English, along with some Scottish and Irish, descent. Her mother, an ambitious woman gifted in playing various musical instruments, saw the potential in her daughter at the tender age of just 2 years old when Baby Frances repeatedly sang "Jingle Bells" until she was dragged from the stage kicking and screaming during one of their Christmas shows and immediately drafted her into a dance act, entitled "The Gumm Sisters," along with her older sisters Mary Jane Gumm and Virginia Gumm. However, knowing that her youngest daughter would eventually become the biggest star, Ethel soon took Frances out of the act and together they traveled across America where she would perform in nightclubs, cabarets, hotels and theaters solo.
Her family life was not a happy one, largely because of her mother's drive for her to succeed as a performer and also her father's closeted homosexuality. The Gumm family would regularly be forced to leave town owing to her father's illicit affairs with other men, and from time to time they would be reduced to living out of their automobile. However, in September 1935 the Gumms', in particular Ethel's, prayers were answered when Frances was signed by Louis B. Mayer, mogul of leading film studio MGM, after hearing her sing. It was then that her name was changed from Frances Gumm to Judy Garland, after a popular '30s song "Judy" and film critic Robert Garland.
Tragedy soon followed, however, in the form of her father's death of meningitis in November 1935. Having been given no assignments with the exception of singing on radio, Judy faced the threat of losing her job following the arrival of Deanna Durbin. Knowing that they couldn't keep both of the teenage singers, MGM devised a short entitled Every Sunday (1936) which would be the girls' screen test. However, despite being the outright winner and being kept on by MGM, Judy's career did not officially kick off until she sang one of her most famous songs, "You Made Me Love You," at Clark Gable's birthday party in February 1937, during which Louis B. Mayer finally paid attention to the talented songstress.
Prior to this her film debut in Pigskin Parade (1936), in which she played a teenage hillbilly, had left her career hanging in the balance. However, following her rendition of "You Made Me Love You," MGM set to work preparing various musicals with which to keep Judy busy. All this had its toll on the young teenager, and she was given numerous pills by the studio doctors in order to combat her tiredness on set. Another problem was her weight fluctuation, but she was soon given amphetamines in order to give her the desired streamlined figure. This soon produced the downward spiral that resulted in her lifelong drug addiction.
In 1939, Judy shot immediately to stardom with The Wizard of Oz (1939), in which she portrayed Dorothy, an orphaned girl living on a farm in the dry plains of Kansas who gets whisked off into the magical world of Oz on the other end of the rainbow. Her poignant performance and sweet delivery of her signature song, 'Over The Rainbow,' earned Judy a special juvenile Oscar statuette on 29 February 1940 for Best Performance by a Juvenile Actor. Now growing up, Judy began to yearn for meatier adult roles instead of the virginal characters she had been playing since she was 14. She was now taking an interest in men, and after starring in her final juvenile performance in Ziegfeld Girl (1941) alongside glamorous beauties Lana Turner and Hedy Lamarr, Judy got engaged to bandleader David Rose in May 1941, just two months after his divorce from Martha Raye. Despite planning a big wedding, the couple eloped to Las Vegas and married during the early hours of the morning on July 28, 1941 with just her mother Ethel and her stepfather Will Gilmore present. However, their marriage went downhill as, after discovering that she was pregnant in November 1942, David and MGM persuaded her to abort the baby in order to keep her good-girl image up. She did so and, as a result, was haunted for the rest of her life by her 'inhumane actions.' The couple separated in January 1943.
By this time, Judy had starred in her first adult role as a vaudevillian during WWI in For Me and My Gal (1942). Within weeks of separation, Judy was soon having an affair with actor Tyrone Power, who was married to French actress Annabella. Their affair ended in May 1943, which was when her affair with producer Joseph L. Mankiewicz kicked off. He introduced her to psychoanalysis and she soon began to make decisions about her career on her own instead of being influenced by her domineering mother and MGM. Their affair ended in November 1943, and soon afterward Judy reluctantly began filming Meet Me in St. Louis (1944), which proved to be a big success. The director Vincente Minnelli highlighted Judy's beauty for the first time on screen, having made the period musical in color, her first color film since The Wizard of Oz (1939). He showed off her large brandy-brown eyes and her full, thick lips and after filming ended in April 1944, a love affair resulted between director and actress and they were soon living together.
Vincente began to mold Judy and her career, making her more beautiful and more popular with audiences worldwide. He directed her in The Clock (1945), and it was during the filming of this movie that the couple announced their engagement on set on January 9, 1945. Judy's divorce from David Rose had been finalized on June 8, 1944 after almost three years of marriage, and despite her brief fling with Orson Welles, who at the time was married to screen sex goddess Rita Hayworth, on June 15, 1945 Judy made Vincente her second husband, tying the knot with him that afternoon at her mother's home with her boss Louis B. Mayer giving her away and her best friend Betty Asher serving as bridesmaid. They spent three months on honeymoon in New York and afterwards Judy discovered that she was pregnant.
On March 12, 1946 in Los Angeles, California, Judy gave birth to their daughter, Liza Minnelli, via cesarean section. It was a joyous time for the couple, but Judy was out of commission for weeks due to the cesarean and her postnatal depression, so she spent much of her time recuperating in bed. She soon returned to work, but married life was never the same for Vincente and Judy after they filmed The Pirate (1948) together in 1947. Judy's mental health was fast deteriorating and she began hallucinating things and making false accusations toward people, especially her husband, making the filming a nightmare. She also began an affair with aspiring Russian actor Yul Brynner, but after the affair ended, Judy soon regained health and tried to salvage her failing marriage. She then teamed up with dancing legend Fred Astaire for the delightful musical Easter Parade (1948), which resulted in a successful comeback despite having Vincente fired from directing the musical. Afterwards, Judy's health deteriorated and she began the first of several suicide attempts. In May 1949, she was checked into a rehabilitation center, which caused her much distress.
She soon regained strength and was visited frequently by her lover Frank Sinatra, but never saw much of Vincente or Liza. On returning, Judy made In the Good Old Summertime (1949), which was also Liza's film debut, albeit via an uncredited cameo. She had already been suspended by MGM for her lack of cooperation on the set of The Barkleys of Broadway (1949), which also resulted in her getting replaced by Ginger Rogers. After being replaced by Betty Hutton on Annie Get Your Gun (1950), Judy was suspended yet again before making her final film for MGM, entitled Summer Stock (1950). At 28, Judy received her third suspension and was fired by MGM, and her second marriage was soon dissolved.
Having taken up with Sidney Luft, Judy traveled to London to star at the legendary Palladium. She was an instant success and after her divorce from Vincente Minnelli was finalized on March 29, 1951 after almost six years of marriage, Judy traveled with Sid to New York to make an appearance on Broadway. With her newfound fame on stage, Judy was stopped in her tracks in February 1952 when she became pregnant by her new lover, Sid. At the age of 30, she made him her third husband on June 8, 1952; the wedding was held at a friend's ranch in Pasadena. Her relationship with her mother had long since been dissolved by this point, and after the birth of her second daughter, Lorna Luft, on November 21, 1952, she refused to allow her mother to see her granddaughter. Ethel then died in January 1953 of a heart attack, leaving Judy devastated and feeling guilty about not reconciling with her mother before her untimely demise.
After the funeral, Judy signed a film contract with Warner Bros. to star in the musical remake of A Star Is Born (1937), which had starred Janet Gaynor, who had won the first-ever Academy Award for Best Actress in 1929. Filming soon began, resulting in an affair between Judy and her leading man, British star James Mason. She also picked up on her affair with Frank Sinatra, and after filming was complete Judy was yet again lauded as a great film star. She won a Golden Globe for her brilliant and truly outstanding performance as Esther Blodgett, nightclub singer turned movie star, but when it came to the Academy Awards, a distraught Judy lost out on the Best Actress Oscar to Grace Kelly for her portrayal of the wife of an alcoholic star in The Country Girl (1954). Many still argue that Judy should have won the Oscar over Grace Kelly. Continuing her work on stage, Judy gave birth to her beloved son, Joey Luft, on March 29, 1955. She soon began to lose her millions of dollars as a result of her husband's strong gambling addiction, and with hundreds of debts to pay, Judy and Sid began a volatile, on-off relationship resulting in numerous divorce filings.
In 1961, at the age of 39, Judy returned to her ailing film career, this time to star in Judgment at Nuremberg (1961), for which she received an Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actress, but this time she lost out to Rita Moreno for her performance in West Side Story (1961). Her battles with alcoholism and drugs led to Judy's making numerous headlines in newspapers, but she soldiered on, forming a close friendship with President John F. Kennedy. In 1963, Judy and Sid finally separated permanently, and on May 19, 1965 their divorce was finalized after almost 13 years of marriage. By this time, Judy, now 41, had made her final performance on film alongside Dirk Bogarde in I Could Go on Singing (1963). She married her fourth husband, Mark Herron, on November 14, 1965 in Las Vegas, but they separated in April 1966 after five months of marriage owing to his homosexuality. It was also that year that she began an affair with young journalist Tom Green. She then settled down in London after their affair ended, and she began dating disk jockey Mickey Deans in December 1968. They became engaged once her divorce from Mark Herron was finalized on January 9, 1969 after three years of marriage. She married Mickey, her fifth and final husband, in a register office in Chelsea, London, England on March 15, 1969.
She continued working on stage, appearing several times with her daughter Liza. It was during a concert in Chelsea, London, England that Judy stumbled into her bathroom late one night and died of an overdose of barbiturates, the drug that had dominated her much of her life, on June 22, 1969 at the age of 47. Her daughter Liza Minnelli paid for her funeral, and her former lover James Mason delivered her touching eulogy. She is still an icon to this day with her famous performances in The Wizard of Oz (1939), Meet Me in St. Louis (1944), Easter Parade (1948), and A Star Is Born (1954).Original burial Plot: Unit 9, alcove HH, crypt 31.
Her remains were relocated to Hollywood Forever in 2017.- Minnie Gentry was born on 2 December 1915 in Norfolk, Virginia, USA. She was an actress, known for Bad Lieutenant (1992), Black Caesar (1973) and Apprentice to Murder (1988). She was married to Lloyd Gentry. She died on 6 May 1993 in New York, USA.
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John Golden is known for Zeisters (1986) and Samantha (1991).Plot: Ferncliff Mausoleum, Unit 7, Private Alcove MM, Crypt 63- Writer
- Actor
John Gunther was born on 30 August 1901 in Chicago, Illinois, USA. He was a writer and actor, known for Lost Continent (1955), Death Be Not Proud (1975) and John Gunther's High Road (1959). He was married to Jane (Perry) Vandercook and Frances Powell Fineman. He died on 29 May 1970 in New York City, New York, USA.- Writer
- Music Department
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Oscar Hammerstein II was an American lyricist, librettist, theatrical producer, and musical theatre director from New York City. He won a total of 8 Tony Awards for his best known works, "South Pacific" (1949), "The King and I" (1951), and "The Sound of Music" (1959). He twice won the Academy Award for Best Original Song, for his songs "The Last Time I Saw Paris" (1940) and "It Might as Well Be Spring" (1945). Several of his songs became part of the standard repertoire for both singers and jazz musicians. During the 1940s and the 1950s, Hammerstein produced some of his best musicals in collaboration with the composer Richard Rodgers (1902-1979). They are credited with creating character-driven stories with dramatic moments, while American musicals were previously considered light-hearted entertainment.
In 1895, Hammerstein was born in New York City. His parents were the theatrical manager William Hammerstein (1875-1914) and his first wife Alice Nimmo (died in 1910). His father operated the Victoria Theatre in Times Square, considered for a while as the most successful theatre in New York City. Hammerstein's paternal ancestors were German Jews, while his maternal ancestors were British. Hammerstein's paternal grandfather was Oscar Hammerstein I (1846-1919), a theatrical impresario and composer who is credited with popularizing the opera genre in the United States.
In 1912, Hammerstein enrolled at Columbia University. He later studied at Columbia Law School. Following his father's death in 1914, Hammerstein participated in his first play: "On Your Way". It was performed in the Varsity Show (1894-), Columbia's regular arts presentation. During his university years, Hammerstein both wrote and performed for the Varsity Show.
In 1917, Hammerstein dropped out of law school to pursue a theatrical career. He found a mentor in the lyricist and librettist Otto Harbach (1873-1963). Harbach taught him that in musicals, the music, lyrics, and story should be closely connected. Hammerstein took this lesson to heart. Hammerstein wrote the book and the lyrics for the Broadway musical "Always You" (1920), the first musical of his career. In 1921, Hammerstein joined "The Lambs" (1874-), a New York City-based social club for theater professionals. It was named in honor of the English authors and salonists Charles Lamb (1775-1834) and Mary Lamb (1764-1847).
In 1927, Hammerstein had his first great success with the musical "Show Boat". It was an adaptation of a then-popular novel by Edna Ferber (1885-1968), and depicted life on a a Mississippi River show boat over a 40-years-period. It was considered revolutionary in musical storytelling in dealing with tragedy and serious issues, in a field previously dominated by light comedies and satirical operettas. The musical introduced the popular songs "Ol' Man River", "Make Believe", and "Can't Help Lovin' Dat Man". Hammerstein had partnered with the composer Jerome Kern (1885-1945) for this musical. The duo continued to work together for decades.
In the early 1940s, Hammerstein was asked by Richard Rodgers to work with him in a musical adaptation of the play "Green Grow the Lilacs" (1930) by Lynn Riggs (1899-1954). Rodgers had previously attempted to work on the adaptation with Lorenz Hart (1895-1943), but they had a falling out over Hart's declining mental state and his self-admitted lack of inspiration. The adaptation turned into the hit musical "Oklahoma!" (1943), about a love triangle in Indian Territory. It ran for an unprecedented 2,212 performances, and has often been revived. The musical's success convinced Hammerstein and Rodgers that they should collaborate further in subsequent works.
Hammerstein and Rodgers became the dominant creative force of the American musical theatre from 1943 to 1959. Their subsequent collaborations were the musicals "Carousel" (1945), "Allegro" (1947), "South Pacific" (1949), "The King and I" (1951), "Me and Juliet" (1953), "Pipe Dream" (1955), "Flower Drum Song" (1958), and "The Sound of Music" (1959). Most of them were well-received, and they never had a single flop in all these years. The duo also worked together for the music of the film "State Fair" (1945), and for the music-themed television special "Cinderella" (1957). Their works often provided social criticism, and dealt with issues such as discrimination (in various forms) and domestic abuse.
In 1943, Hammerstein wrote the book and lyrics for the musical "Carmen Jones". It was an adaptation of the opera "Carmen" by Georges Bizet, but featured African-American characters and had an all-black cast. It was considered groundbreaking for its era. The musical eventually received its own film adaptation, serving as a vehicle for Dorothy Dandridge (1922-1965).
Hammerstein was an advocate for writers' rights within the theater industry. In 1956, he was elected as the new president of the Dramatists Guild of America, a professional organization whose main goal was to negotiate better contracts for playwrights. His term lasted until 1960, when he was replaced by Alan Jay Lerner (1918 - 1986).
In August 1960, Hammerstein died at his home, Highland Farm in Doylestown, Pennsylvania. It was a 19th-century farmhouse which had served as his residence since 1940. The cause of death was stomach cancer, and he had been struggling with the disease for a while. He was 65-years-old at the time of his death. To honor his passing, the lights of Times Square were turned off for one minute, and London's West End lights were dimmed. His remains were cremated and his ashes were buried at the Ferncliff Cemetery in Hartsdale, New York. A memorial plaque for Hammerstein was placed at Southwark Cathedral in London.
Hammerstein was survived by his second wife Dorothy Hammerstein (1899-1987), a professional interior designer and decorator. They had been married since 1929. Hammerstein's son James Hammerstein (1931-1999) followed his father's footsteps as a theatre director and producer. Hammerstein's stepdaughter Susan Blanchard (1928-) worked as a lyricist and theatrical producer, though she is primarily known as a a socialite.- Music Department
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Annette Hanshaw was born on 18 October 1901 in Manhattan, New York City, New York, USA. She was a composer, known for Sita Sings the Blues (2008), Canopy (2013) and Ayn Rand & the Prophecy of Atlas Shrugged (2011). She died on 13 March 1985 in New York City, New York, USA.- Actress
- Soundtrack
Kitty Carlisle Hart wore a cloak of many professional and elegant colors. Actress, opera singer, Broadway performer, TV celebrity, game show panelist, patron of the arts, and, at age 95, this vital woman continued her six-decade musical odyssey with songs and reminisces in her one-woman show: "Kitty Carlisle Hart: An American Icon," which toured from her beloved New York to Los Angeles. She developed pneumonia soon after her tour folded toward the end of 2006 and passed away of congestive heart failure in April of 2007.
Kitty Carlisle Hart was born Catherine Conn (pronounced "Cohen") on September 3, 1910 in New Orleans, Louisiana, to a family of German Jewish ancestry. Her father, Dr. Joseph Conn, was a gynecologist who died when she was only ten. Her very ambitious mother, Hortense (Holzman), escorted Kitty to Europe in 1921 with the intentions of marrying her off, Grace Kelly-style, into European royalty. When that plan didn't pan out, they stayed in Europe where Kitty received her adult education in Switzerland, London, Paris and Rome. She finally zeroed in on her acting career after being accepted into London's Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, and also went on to train at the Theatre de l'Atelier in Paris.
She and her mother eventually returned to New York in 1932 wherein she first apprenticed with the Bucks County Playhouse in New Hope, Pennsylvania. She attracted notice quite early in her career. Billed as Kitty Carlisle, she found radio work and made her first appearance on the musical stage in the title role of "Rio Rita." The legitimately-trained singer went on to appear in a number of operettas, including 1933's "Champagne Sec" (as Prince Orlofsky), as well as the musical comedies "White Horse Inn" (1936) and "Three Waltzes" (1937).
Her early ingénue movie career included warbling in the musical mystery Murder at the Vanities (1934), and alongside Allan Jones amidst the zany goings-on of the Marx Brothers in the classic farce A Night at the Opera (1935). She also played a love interest to Bing Crosby's in two of his lesser known musical outings Here Is My Heart (1934) and She Loves Me Not (1934).
Films were not her strong suit, however, and she returned to her theatre roots. Appearing in her first dramatic productions "French Without Tears" and "The Night of January 16th" in 1938, she went on to grace a number of chic and stylish plays and musicals throughout the 40s, including "Walk with Music (1940), "The Merry Widow" (1943, "Design for Living (1943) and "There's Always Juliet" (1944). She subsequently performed in Benjamin Britten's 1948 American premiere of "The Rape of Lucretia." In 1946, she married Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Moss Hart and appeared in a number of his works including his classic "The Man Who Came to Dinner" (1949) and the witty Broadway comedy "Anniversary Waltz" (1954). The couple had two children. He died in 1961 and she never remarried, spending much of her existing time keeping his name alive to future generations.
It was the small screen that would make Kitty a welcome household commodity. The steadfast panelist of several quiz shows in the 1950s, it was the popular game show To Tell the Truth (1956) that anointed her game show doyenne and icon. A regular panelist for some 20 years, she appeared on each and every revamped format from its 1956 inception to its 2002 syndicated version. Known for her stately presence, infectious laugh, pouffy dark Prince Valiant hairstyle, and sweeping couture gowns on the show, audiences reveled at her effortless class to these simple parlor games. She also was a substitute panelist for other popular game shows such as "What's My Line?" and "I've Got a Secret."
In later years, she became an important society maven of New York City, an avid patron and zealous supporter of the performing arts. Appointed to various state-wide councils, she was chairman of the New York State Council of the Arts in 1976 and served in that capacity for 20 years, also serving on the boards of various New York City cultural institutions. A noted lecturer, the civic-minded Carlisle Hart was active in administrative capacities as well, notably as Chairman of Governor Rockefeller's Conference on Woman (1966) and as special consultant to the Governor on women's opportunities. At one time she wrote the column "Kitty's Calendar" for Women's Unit News.
Kitty never stopped entertaining. Making her Metropolitan debut on New Year's Eve 1966 as Prince Orlovsky in "Die Fledermaus," she joined the touring production the following year. She appeared in concert with the Philadelphia Orchestra and appeared with the Boston Opera Company at one point. She added stature to a number of summer stock plays including "Kiss Me Kate," "The Marriage-Go-Round" and her husband's "Light Up the Sky." Returning to Broadway as a replacement for Dina Merrill in the 1983 revival of "On Your Toes," she was later spotted in Woody Allen's Radio Days (1987) and Six Degrees of Separation (1993).
Carlisle penned her autobiography, Kitty, in 1988. In the millennium, she appeared in a number of documentary films and TV movies. She died on April 17, 2007, at age 96, in Manhattan.- Writer
- Additional Crew
- Soundtrack
Tony Award-winning American playwright/lyricist Moss Hart was born Oct. 24, 1904, in New York City to a poor Jewish family and raised in what he described as a "drab tenement" on 107th St. in the Bronx. He was educated in the city public school system. He showed a knack for writing at an early age--he wrote his first play at age 12--and would stage his plays at the local YMHA (Young Mens Hebrew Association). It wasn't long before he joined the Thalian Players, a little-theatre group, which won a citywide little-theatre competition sponsored by the Belasco theater organization. He worked for a clothing retailer, and he would write and direct the annual company shows. He began directing little-theater groups in the New York/New Jersey area, and found work as the social director at various summer camps in rural Pennsylvania and Vermont, writing and staging plays for the camps' clients.
His first "professional" play, "The Hold-Up Man", premiered in Chicago in the late 1920s, but was a failure. However, his play "Once in a Lifetime" (1930) was a major hit--it was made into a film, Once in a Lifetime (1932)--and was the start of a productive, and profitable, collaboration with writer George S. Kaufman (the royalties he received from the play made him a wealthy man at 26). Kaufman and Hart had a string of successful plays, ranging from wild farces to dark, serious dramas. In 1937 the team received a Pulitzer Prize for their comedy "You Can't Take It With You", which was made into a hugely successful film (You Can't Take It with You (1938)) the next year. Hart also worked by himself on occasion, and collaborated with Kurt Weill on "Lady in the Dark" (1941), which they wrote specifically for Gertrude Lawrence.
In addition to his work as a playwright on Broadway, he also directed several stage productions ("Camelot", "My Fair Lady", for which he won a Tony Award)) and wrote the screenplay for A Star Is Born (1954). His autobiography, "Act One", was made into a film (Act One (1963). He was married to actress Kitty Carlisle from 1946 to his death from a heart attack in Palm Springs, CA, in 1961.Plot: Ferncliff Mausoleum, Unit 8, Alcove EE-FF, Column D, Niche 4- Music Artist
- Actress
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Talented. Beautiful. Modest. These three words described R&B singer-turned-actress Aaliyah perfectly.
Aaliyah Dana Haughton was born in Brooklyn, New York, to Diane (Hankerson) and Michael Haughton. Her uncle was music manager Barry Hankerson and her brother is director Rashad Haughton. Aaliyah was raised in Detroit. She got her first major exposure appearing on the syndicated television series Star Search (1983), where she awed the audience with her amazing voice and talent, singing "My Funny Valentine", a song which her mother had sung years earlier. At age 11, she sang with Gladys Knight in a five-night stint in Las Vegas. Withdrawing from the celebrity scene for a few years, Aaliyah lived the life of a normal teenage girl, attending Detroit's Performing Arts High School, where she majored in dance. It was around this same time that Aaliyah met singer/composer R. Kelly. Kelly assisted Aaliyah with the production of her debut album "Age Ain't Nothing But A number", which scored several number hits, specifically "Back and Forth." The album's title was a brief reference to her short-lived marriage to R. Kelly (she was 15 years of age at the time, and he was in his 20s). Thir marriage was annulled due to her status as a minor.
During her senior year, Aaliyah went on to record "One In A Million", which featured the songwriting talents of major R&B producers/writers Missy Elliott and Timbaland. The album was a major success and sealed Aaliyah's fame forever.
Aaliyah recorded the single 'Journey to the past' for the Anastasia (1997) soundtrack. After seeing her at an awards show and in the video for her hit song "Are You that Somebody?" (from the Eddie Murphy film Doctor Dolittle (1998)), film producer Joel Silver (producer of The Matrix (1999) and other major actor films) asked Aaliyah to audition for a role in an romance/action film, Romeo Must Die (2000). With her determination and sex appeal, Aaliyah won Silver over and was cast in her first major film role. Romeo Must Die (2000) was a hit at the box office. This film led to her being cast as one of the stars of the film based on Anne Rice's Queen of the Damned (2002), and in the two sequels to the major box office hit, The Matrix (1999), The Matrix Reloaded (2003) and The Matrix Revolutions (2003).
During the busy schedule of her film career, Aaliyah took time to record her third album, the self-titled "Aaliyah". July 2001 was a busy time for Aaliyah. After the success of her song "Try Again", for which she was nominated for a Grammy Award and won several MTV Video Awards, Aaliyah finally released her "Aaliyah" album. Debuting at number two on the Billboard charts, "Aaliyah" was a sales success, despite some lackluster reviews.
In August 2001, Aaliyah took time off from her busy album promotional tour to fly to the Bahamas to film a video for the song "Rock the Boat". The video, filmed on Abaco Island, was directed by Hype Williams, a major music video director known for his style and wit.
On August 25, 2001, after filming the video, Aaliyah and about 9-11 of her entourage took off from Marsh Harbour airport at 6:50pm EDT in a small Cessna 404 en route to Opa-Locka, Florida. A few minutes after take-off, the plane crashed about 200 feet from the runaway, killing Aaliyah and many others instantly. Four passengers were pulled alive from the wreckage, and one later died at a hospital in Nassau. Aaliyah was only 22 years old. Her funeral was held on Friday August 31st in New York, and 22 white doves were flown to celebrate each year of her life. Soon after her death, the hit singles 'More Than a woman' and 'Rock The Boat' were released, from her third album. In 2002, the film Queen of the Damned (2002) was released, in which Aaliyah played Queen Akasha. She was nominated for best Villain at the MTV Movie Awards 2002.
Aaliyah's short-lived, but brilliant career, was a true success story for a young African-American woman who went against all odds to be herself in an industry where originality is scarce. Truly missed by her family, friends, and fans, her music and film contributions will live forever. It's no wonder that her name means 'Highest, most ex-halted one; the best' in Hebrew. She had achieved so much in her twenty-two years.Plot: Rosewood Mausoleum, Unit 4, Tier CC, Private Alcove, Crypt 3- B. Russell Herts was born on 27 May 1888 in New York City, New York, USA. B. Russell was a writer, known for Grand Slam (1933). B. Russell died on 5 November 1954 in Westchester County, New York, USA.
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- Actress
- Composer
Composer, songwriter ("Down Hearted Blues"), author and singer who was a singer on early recordings after high school, later appearing in the London production of 'Showboat' and at the Palladium and throughout Europe and Egypt. She had a radio program over NBC, and toured Europe and the Pacific entertaining troops during World War II, and later, Korea and Japan. On Broadway she appeared in the stage productions of 'Mamba's Daughters' and 'Mrs. Patterson'. She was also a practical nurse, working at New York's Goldwater Memorial Hospital. Joining ASCAP in 1952, her other popular-song compositions include "Down South Blues", "Chirping the Blues", "My Castle's Rocking", "I Want to Thank You, Lord", "You Got to Reap Just Reap What You Sow", "Will the Day Ever Come When I Can Rest", "Kind Treatment", and "What's the Matter, Baby?".Plot: Elmwood Section, Plot 1411- Kai-Shek Chiang was born on 31 October 1887 in Hsikow, Chekiang, China. He was married to Madame Chiang. He died on 5 April 1975 in Taipei, Taiwan.Plot: Ferncliff Mausoleum, Unit 11, Alcove JJJ, Private Room 5, Crypt 3
- Music Department
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- Writer
Jerome David Kern was born in 1885. He began his stage career grafting American songs (for which he wrote the music) into imported European operettas. His breakthrough came with the song "They Didn't Believe Me", written (with lyrics by Edward Laska) for a show called "The Girl from Utah". It established him as a major American composer in 1914. Married to a Englishwoman, Kern became an Anglophile, and teamed up with British writers Guy Bolton and P.G. Wodehouse to write the so-called "Princess Theatre musicals"--shows like "Very Good, Eddie" and "Leave It To Jane", which were unusual not so much for their silly storylines but for the fact that the characters were everyday people rather than the exotic characters of operetta, and also for the fact that these shows had few sets and small casts. He later wrote shows like "Sally" and "Sunny", both loaded with song hits, star casts and spectacular sets but silly plots. Finally, looking for an entirely different type of musical, Kern decided to adapt Edna Ferber's novel "Show Boat" to the musical stage. Although Oscar Hammerstein II agreed to do the adaptation and lyrics, nearly everyone (including Ferber) thought Kern and Hammerstein had lost their minds. "Show Boat"'s storyline featured interracial marriage, wife desertion, alcoholism and gambling, and the most realistic characters ever seen in a musical up to then, not to mention the song "Ol' Man River" and an opening chorus of black dockworkers singing about their work. Most of the songs were integrated so well into the story that they could not possibly have been sung in another show or taken out of "Show Boat" without damaging the plot. And "Show Boat" featured a song, "Mis'ry's Comin' Round", which was so utterly tragic that Florenz Ziegfeld Jr. ordered it cut--and it remained cut, existing only as background music, until the 1994 revival. In spite of all this, "Show Boat" became a huge hit and has remained one of the musical theater's greatest classics and most often revived shows--the only musical pre-1943 to be revived over and over. Kern, however, did not experiment any further--his other hit shows, "Music In The Air", "Roberta" and "The Cat and the Fiddle", contain classic songs that are still sung, but the shows are almost never revived. After a heart attack in 1939, Kern wrote songs exclusively for movie musicals. Two of his movie musicals, Swing Time (1936) with Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers, and Cover Girl (1944) with Rita Hayworth and Gene Kelly, have become famous for their songs and dances. Kern died of a stroke at the age of 60, in 1945.- Editor
- Production Designer
Kenneth Kling Jr. is known for Raiders of the Golden Triangle (1983) and And Then They Forgot God (1971).Plot: Ferncliff Mausoleum, Unit 2, Alcove CC, Crypt 25- Writer
- Music Department
- Producer
Playwright/lyricist Alan Jay Lerner was born into a wealthy New York City retailing family. His professional association with Frederick Loewe started in 1942 when they teamed up to write "Life of the Party". Their first Broadway success was the 1947 musical fantasy "Brigadoon." Lerner adapted work for the screen (Brigadoon (1954)) and earned two Oscars as the screenplay writer for An American in Paris (1951) and Gigi (1958), and a Grammy for On a Clear Day You Can See Forever (1970). Lerner and Loewe parted company in 1962 following the success of Camelot (1967). Lerner's last musical, "Dance a Little Closer", was written with Charles Strouse in 1983. It closed after one performance.Cremation Location: Plot: Ashes scattered- Actor
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Avon Long was a featured singer and dancer in the Cotton Club in New York in 1934. Lena Horne credits him with bringing her out of the chorus line to a featured spot. In the 1940's, he won critical acclaim as "Sportin' Life" in the Broadway production of "Porgy and Bess". He also appeared in featured roles on Broadway in "Bubbling Brown Sugar"- Actress
- Soundtrack
Forever embraced as the mumbling, bumbling Aunt Clara on the Bewitched (1964) television series, endearing character actress Marion Lorne had a five-decade-long career on the stage before ever becoming a familiar TV household name.
Born Marion Lorne MacDougall on August 12, 1883 (other sources list 1885 and 1888), she grew up in her native Pennsylvania, the daughter of Scottish and English immigrants. Trained at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts in New York, she appeared in stock shows, and was on the Broadway boards by 1905. She married English playwright Walter C. Hackett and performed in many of his plays throughout the 1920s and 1930s, including "Hyde Park Corner" and "The Gay Adventure". They at one point settled in England where they co-founded the Whitehall Theater. It was there that Marion began to sharpen and patent her fidgety comedy eccentrics in such plays as "Pansy's Arabian Knight," "Sorry You've Been Troubled," "Espionage" and "London After Dark". Upon Hackett's death in 1944, she returned to the States and again, after a brief retirement, became a hit in such tailor-made stage shows as "Harvey".
Marion made a definitive impression via her movie debut at age 60+ in Alfred Hitchcock's immortal suspenser Strangers on a Train (1951) as murderer Robert Walker's clueless, smothering mother. Surprisingly Hollywood used her only a couple more times on film after that auspicious beginning -- a grievously sad waste of a supremely talented comedienne. Marion wisely turned to TV instead and proved a dithery delight in such sitcoms as Mister Peepers (1952) and Sally (1957), gaining quirky status as well as part of the comedy ensemble on The Garry Moore Show (1958).
It was, however, her role as Elizabeth Montgomery's befuddled, muttering, doorknob-collecting witch-aunt on Bewitched (1964) -- whether bouncing into walls or conjuring up some unintended piece of witchcraft -- that put a lasting sheen on her long career. For that role she deservedly won an Emmy trophy for "Best Supporting Actress" -- albeit posthumously. Montgomery accepted her award. Sadly, Marion succumbed to a heart attack on May 9, 1968, just ten days before the actual ceremony. Elizabeth Montgomery gave a touching acceptance speech on her behalf.- Actress
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One the most successful entertainers of the Black vaudeville stage, also known as the Chitlin Circuit, was Jackie "Moms" Mabley, born Loretta Mary Aiken in 1894. At the apex of her long career, she was earning $10,000 a week at Harlem's Apollo Theatre. Mabley focused on conventional topics such as family and others not normally covered by comedians of the era, white or Black, such as infidelity, poverty, welfare, and inebriation.
Billed as the Funniest Woman in the World, she adopted her original stage name from a boyfriend, Jackie Mabley, and began her career at 14. A teenage runaway, she joined the Negro troupe of Henry Bowman and Tim Moore and, in a short time, became a success. Quick-witted and quick-tongued, Mabley's unorthodox, self-assured routines as an outspoken grandma while wearing bag-lady clothes--old-fashioned print dresses and floppy hats--was a favorite with Black female audiences, particularly when she was lampooning the psychology of men. Her career spanned five decades, although white audiences did not know of her until the early 1960s. Mabley played Carnegie Hall in 1962. Mainstream TV appearances in the 1960s included variety appearances on shows hosted by Flip Wilson, Mike Douglas, Merv Griffin, The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour (1967), and Rowan & Martin's Laugh-In (1967). She was an inspiration for irreverent female comics of that era, including Phyllis Diller and, in her final years, Mabley poked fun at the president and other government officials.Plot: Knollwood Gdn 1, Row 14, Grave 4- Marlowe was born Hugh Hipple in Philadelphia, and began his stage career in the 1930s at the Pasadena Playhouse in California. He performed extensively on radio, stage, television and film with credits including off-Broadway productions of "The Deer Park" in 1967 and "All My Sons" in 1974.Plot: Ferncliff Mausoleum, Unit 10, Alcove BB-CC, Niche 9A
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Elsa Maxwell was born on 24 May 1881 in Keokuk, Iowa, USA. She was an actress and writer, known for Hotel for Women (1939), Stage Door Canteen (1943) and Public Deb No. 1 (1940). She died on 1 November 1963 in New York City, New York, USA.Plot: Rosewood 2, Grave 1132- Actor
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Jam Master Jay was born on 21 January 1965 in Queens, New York City, New York, USA. He was an actor and composer, known for Die Hard (1988), The Bounty Hunter (2010) and Friday Night Lights (2004). He was married to Terri Corley. He died on 30 October 2002 in Queens, New York City, New York, USA.Plot: Hillcrest Garden C, Plot 1120
GPS coordinates: 41.0277481, -73.8323975 (hddd.dddd)- Music Department
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Thelonious Monk was born on 10 October 1917 in Rocky Mount, North Carolina, USA. He was a composer and actor, known for The Omega Man (1971), La La Land (2016) and Die Hard with a Vengeance (1995). He was married to Nellie Monk. He died on 17 February 1982 in Englewood, New Jersey, USA.Plot: Hillcrest I, grave 405- Controversial Nation of Islam activist who stirred controversy with his racial views. Was expelled from that organization after he promoted violence against whites in South Africa, and insulted both the Pope and Jews. After his expulsion, he formed the new Black Panther movement.Plot: Hickory Terrace, Grave 6317
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Ona Munson was born Owena Elizabeth Wolcott on June 16, 1903 in Portland, Oregon. She took singing and dancing lessons when she was a child. At the age of fourteen, Ona moved to New York City with her mother. She began her career performing in vaudeville. In 1919 she made her Broadway debut in George White's Scandals. She appeared in several hit Broadway shows including No, No, Nanette and Hold Everything. Ona married stage actor Edward Buzzell in 1926. She went to Hollywood in 1930 to make the comedy Going Wild (1930). Soon after, she divorced her husband and started dating director Ernst Lubitsch. She starred in The Hot Heiress (1931) with Ben Lyon and in Broadminded (1931) with Joe E. Brown. Ona returned to Broadway in 1933 for a production of Hold Your Horses. While appearing in the show Ghosts she had a brief romance with actress Alla Nazimova. She also had relationships with Greta Garbo, Tallulah Bankhead, and director Dorothy Arzner. In 1939 she was cast as Belle Watling, a Southern madam, in Gone with the Wind (1939). The movie was a huge success but Ona ended up being typecast in similar roles. She got rave reviews playing a madam again in the film The Shanghai Gesture (1941).
Ona had a passionate love affair with playwright Mercedes de Acosta. She said they shared "the deepest spiritual moment that life brings". Worried about being outed as a lesbian she ended the romance and married Stewart McDonald, a loan administrator, in 1941. Their marriage was an arrangement since Stewart was also gay. During World War 2 she was chosen to be "Hollywood's official hostess" and acted as a godmother to hundreds of soldiers. She made some movies at Warner Brothers but her career stalled. Her final film was the thriller The Red House (1947). Ona divorced Stewart and married French painter Eugene Berman in 1950. This was another lavender marriage to a gay man. The couple moved to an apartment in The Belnord on Manhattan's Upper West Side. During the early 1950s Ona appeared in a few television shows. Unfortunately she was plagued by health problems and became very depressed. On February 1955 she committed suicide by taking an overdose of sleeping pills. She was fifty-one years old. Ona left a note that said "This is the only way I know to be free again ... Please don't follow me." She is buried at Ferncliff Cemetery in Hartsdale, New York.Plot: Ferncliff Mausoleum, Unit 8, Tier Y, Column G, Niche 5- Music Department
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Dwight Arrington Myers (May 24, 1967 - November 8, 2011), known professionally as Heavy D, was a Jamaican-born American rapper, record producer, and actor. Myers was the leader of Heavy D & the Boyz, a group which included dancers/hype men G-Whiz (Glen Parrish), "Trouble" T. Roy (Troy Dixon), and DJ and producer Eddie F (Edward Ferrell). The group maintained a sizable audience in the United States through most of the 1990s. The five albums the group released were produced by Teddy Riley, Marley Marl, DJ Premier, his cousin Pete Rock, and Eddie F. Myers also released four solo albums and discovered Soul for Real and Monifah.- Actor
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African-American Frederick O'Neal was an actor and director of distinction, known for his exemplary work on stage and TV, but is hailed (and, arguably, better remembered) for his work behind the scenes as a revolutionary unionist and certifiable mover-and-shaker, earning major applause for his equally inspiring work and steadfast dedication to black actors everywhere by opening doors where no doors were before. Born in Brooksville, Mississippi in 1905, the gentlemanly performer was so named in honor of the esteemed abolitionist and statesman Frederick Douglass. On the acting front, O'Neal made his New York debut in 1936 with the Civic Repertory Theatre. In 1944, he won the Clarence Derwent award for his Broadway performance as the greedy brother-in-law in "Anna Lucasta." He also earned acclaim for his stage portrayal of Lem Scott in "Take a Giant Step" in 1953. Both of these roles he transferred to the screen. In the late 50s and early 60s he was a dignified presence on TV, primarily in dramatic Kraft Suspense and Hallmark Hall of Fame productions. His first film was a small part in the pioneer racial drama Pinky (1949). Parts that followed were alternately stereotypical, such Tarzan's Peril (1951), and prodigious, such as Anna Lucasta (1959), Take a Giant Step (1959), and the lead in Free, White and 21 (1962). Off-stage and off-camera, O'Neal also became a force to be reckoned with. He was a major administrative figure in raising the scope of black theatre both in New York and London, co-founding many theater companies and cultural organizations. Notable among these is Harlem's American Negro Theatre (ANT) in 1940, which ignited the legendary careers of Harry Belafonte, Ruby Dee, Sidney Poitier, and others. The all-black cast of "Anna Lucasta" was ANT's first major success on Broadway. ANT also became the first black theatre company to produce a black radio series. The company stopped production in the 50s but not before it had achieved its purpose of widening awareness of black theatre. O'Neal also co-founded the British Negro Theatre. In 1964 he became president Emeritus of the Actor's Equity Association and Associated Actors and Artistes of America. He also held the honor of becoming the first Black American to be elected president of Equity (1964-1973). In 1992, the 86-year-old actor died following a lengthy illness and was survived by his wife.- Actress
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Josephine Premice was born on 21 July 1926 in Brooklyn, New York City, New York, USA. She was an actress, known for The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman (1974), The Next Step Beyond (1978) and Carnival in April (1953). She was married to Capt. Timothy Fales. She died on 13 April 2001 in Manhattan, New York City, New York, USA.- Animation Department
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Connie Rasinski was born on 28 January 1907 in Torrington, Connecticut, USA. Connie was a director and writer, known for House of Hashimoto (1960), Fuss and Feathers (1952) and Flying Cups and Saucers (1949). Connie died on 13 October 1965 in Larchmont, New York, USA.- Actor
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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, where Basil and his two younger siblings, Beatrice and John, were raised. Their mother, Anna Barbara (George), was a violinist, who was born in Grahamstown, South Africa, of British parents, and their father, Edgar Philip Rathbone, was a mining engineer born in Liverpool. From 1906 to 1910 Rathbone attended Repton School, where he was more interested in sports--especially fencing, at which he excelled--than studies, but where he also discovered his interest in the theater. After graduation he planned to pursue acting as a profession, but his father disapproved and suggested that his son try working in business for a year, hoping he would forget about acting. Rathbone accepted his father's suggestion and worked as a clerk for an insurance company--for exactly one year. Then he contacted his cousin Frank Benson, an actor managing a Shakespearean troupe in Stratford-on-Avon.
Rathbone was hired as an actor on the condition that he work his way through the ranks, which he did quite rapidly. Starting in bit parts in 1911, he was playing juvenile leads within two years. In 1915 his career was interrupted by the First World War. During his military service, as a second lieutenant in the Liverpool Scottish 2nd Battalion, he worked in intelligence and received the Military Cross for bravery. In 1919, released from military service, he returned to Stratford-on-Avon and continued with Shakespeare but after a year moved onto the London stage. The year after that he made his first appearance on Broadway and his film debut in the silent Innocent (1921).
For the remainder of the decade Rathbone alternated between the London and New York stages and occasional appearances in films. In 1929 he co-wrote and starred as the title character in a short-running Broadway play called "Judas". Soon afterwards he abandoned his first love, the theater, for a film career. During the 1920s his roles had evolved from the romantic lead to the suave lady-killer to the sinister villain (usually wielding a sword), and Hollywood put him to good use during the 1930s in numerous costume romps, including Captain Blood (1935), David Copperfield (1935), A Tale of Two Cities (1935), Anna Karenina (1935), The Last Days of Pompeii (1935), The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938), Tower of London (1939), The Mark of Zorro (1940) and others. Rathbone earned two Oscar nominations for Best Supporting Actor as Tybalt in Romeo and Juliet (1936) and as King Louis XI in If I Were King (1938).
However, it was in 1939 that Rathbone played his best-known and most popular character, Sherlock Holmes, with Nigel Bruce as Dr. Watson, first in The Hound of the Baskervilles (1939) and then in The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (1939), which were followed by 12 more films and numerous radio broadcasts over the next seven years.
Feeling that his identification with the character was killing his film career, Rathbone went back to New York and the stage in 1946. The next year he won a Tony Award for his portrayal of Dr. Sloper in the Broadway play "The Heiress," but afterwards found little rewarding stage work. Nevertheless, during the last two decades of his life, Rathbone was a very busy actor, appearing on numerous television shows, primarily drama, variety and game shows; in occasional films, such as Casanova's Big Night (1954), The Court Jester (1955), Tales of Terror (1962) and The Comedy of Terrors (1963); and in his own one-man show, "An Evening with Basil Rathbone", with which he toured the U.S.Plot: Shrine of Memories, unit 1, tier K, crypt 117- Actress
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Sharon Redd was born on 19 October 1945 in Norfolk, Virginia, USA. She was an actress, known for Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band (1978), Fear City (1984) and Sharon Redd: Never Give You Up (1982). She died on 1 May 1992 in Westchester County, New York, USA.- Actor
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This handsome, eloquent and highly charismatic actor became one of the foremost interpreters of Eugene O'Neill's plays and one of the most treasured names in song during the first half of the twentieth century. He also courted disdain and public controversy for most of his career as a staunch Cold War-era advocate for human rights, as well as his very vocal support for Joseph Stalin and the Soviet invasion of Hungary in 1956. While the backlash of his civil rights activities and left-wing ideology left him embittered and practically ruined his career, he remains today a durable symbol of racial pride and consciousness.
Born in Princeton, New Jersey, on April 9, 1898, Paul LeRoy Bustill Robeson and his four siblings (William, Benjamin, Reeve, Marian) lost their mother, a schoolteacher, in a fire while quite young (Paul was only six). Paul's father, a humble Presbyterian minister and former slave, raised the family singlehandedly and the young, impressionable boy grew up singing spirituals in his father's church. Paul was a natural athlete and the tall (6'3"), strapping high school fullback had no trouble earning a scholarship to prestigious Rutgers University in 1915 at age 17 -- becoming only the third member of his race to be admitted at the time. He excelled in football, baseball, basketball, and track and field, graduating as a four-letter man. He was also the holder of a Phi Beta Kappa key in his junior year and was a selected member of their honorary society, Cap and Skull. Moreover, he was the class valedictorian and in his speech was already preaching idealism.
Paul subsequently played professional football to earn money while attending Columbia University's law school, and also took part in amateur dramatics. During this time he met and married Eslanda Cardozo Goode in 1921. She eventually became his personal assistant. Despite the fact that he was admitted to the New York bar, Paul's future as an actor was destined and he never did practice law. His wife persuaded him to play a role in "Simon the Cyrenian" at the Harlem YMCA in 1921. This was followed by his Broadway debut the following year in the short-lived play "Taboo", a drama set in Africa, which also went to London. As a result, he was asked to join the Provincetown Players, a Greenwich Village theater group that included in its membership playwright Eugene O'Neill. O'Neill personally asked Paul to star in his plays "All God's Chillun Got Wings" and "The Emperor Jones" in 1924. The reaction from both critics and audiences alike was electrifying...an actor was born.
In 1925 Paul delivered his first singing recital and also made his film debut starring in Body and Soul (1925), a rather murky melodrama that nevertheless was ahead of its time in its depictions of black characters. Although Robeson played a scurrilous, corrupt clergyman who takes advantage of his own people, his dynamic personality managed to shine through. Radio and recordings helped spread his name across foreign waters. His resonant bass was a major highlight in the London production of "Show Boat" particularly with his powerful rendition of "Ol' Man River." He remained in London to play the role of Shakespeare's "Othello" in 1930 (at the time no U.S. company would hire him), and was again significant in a highly controversial production. Paul caused a slight stir by co-starring opposite a white actress, Peggy Ashcroft, who played Desdemona. Around this time Paul starred in the landmark British film Borderline (1930), a silent film that dealt strongly with racial themes, and then returned to the stage in the O'Neill play "The Hairy Ape" in 1931. The following year he appeared in a Broadway revival of "Show Boat" again as Joe. In the same production, the noted chanteuse Helen Morgan repeated her original 1927 performance as the half-caste role of Julie, but the white actress Tess Gardella played the role of Queenie in her customary blackface opposite Robeson.
Robeson spent most of his time singing and performing in England throughout the 1930s. He also was given the opportunity to recapture two of his greatest stage successes on film: The Emperor Jones (1933) and Show Boat (1936). In Britain he continued to film sporadically with Sanders of the River (1935), Song of Freedom (1936), King Solomon's Mines (1937), Dark Sands (1937) and The Tunnel (1940) in important roles that resisted demeaning stereotypes.
During the 1930s he also gravitated strongly towards economics and politics with a burgeoning interest in social activism. In 1934 he made the first of several trips to the Soviet Union and outwardly extolled the Soviet way of life and his belief that it lacked racial bias, despite the Holodomor and the later Rootless Cosmopolitan Campaign. He was a popular figure in Wales where he became personally involved in their civil rights affairs, notably the Welsh miners. Developing a marked leftist ideology, he continued to criticize the blatant discrimination he found so prevalent in America.
The 1940s was a mixture of performance triumphs and poignant, political upheavals. While his title run in the musical drama "John Henry" (1940), was short-lived, he earned widespread acclaim for his Broadway "Othello" in 1943 opposite José Ferrer as Iago and Uta Hagen as Desdemona. By this time, however, Robeson was being reviled by much of white America for his outspoken civil rights speeches against segregation and lynchings, particularly in the South. A founder of the Progressive Party, an independent political party, his outdoor concerts sometimes ignited violence and he was now a full-blown target for "Red Menace" agitators. In 1946 he denied under oath being a member of the Communist Party, but steadfastly refused to refute the accusations under subsequent probes. As a result, his passport was withdrawn and he became engaged in legal battles for nearly a decade in order to retrieve it. Adding fuel to the fire was his only son's (Paul Jr.) marriage to a white woman in 1949 and his being awarded the Stalin Peace Prize in 1952 (he was unable to receive it until 1958 when his passport was returned to him).
Essentially blacklisted, tainted press statements continued to hound him. He began performing less and less in America. Despite his growing scorn towards America, he never gave up his American citizenship although the anguish of it all led to a couple of suicide attempts, nervous breakdowns and a dependency on drugs. Europe was a different story. The people continued to hold him in high regard as an artist/concertist above reproach. He had a command of about 20 languages and wound up giving his last acting performance in "Othello" on foreign shores -- at Stratford-on-Avon in 1959.
While still performing in the 1960s, his health suddenly took a turn for the worse and he finally returned to the United States in 1963. His poet/wife Eslanda Robeson died of cancer two years later. Paul remained in poor health for pretty much the rest of his life. His last years were spent in Harlem in near-total isolation, denying all interviews and public correspondence, although he was honored for speaking out against apartheid in South Africa in 1978.
Paul died at age 77 of complications from a stroke. Among his many honors: he was inducted into the College Football Hall of Fame in 1995; he received a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award in 1998; was honored with a postage stamp during the "Black Heritage" series; and both a Cultural Center at Penn State University and a high school in Brooklyn bear his name. In 1995 his autobiography "Here I Stand" was published in England in 1958; his son, Paul Robeson Jr., also chronicled a book about his father, "Undiscovered Paul Robeson: An Artist's Journey" in 2001.Plot: Hillcrest A, Grave 1511- Music Department
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Sigmund Romberg was born on 29 July 1887 in Nagykanizsa, Austria-Hungary [now Hungary]. He was a writer and composer, known for Money Talks (1997), U-571 (2000) and Aloha (2015). He was married to Lillian Harris. He died on 9 November 1951 in New York City, New York, USA.Plot: Ferncliff Mausoleum, Unit 1, Private Section BC 1, Crypt 5- Diana Sands was born on 22 August 1934 in New York City, New York, USA. She was an actress, known for The Landlord (1970), A Raisin in the Sun (1961) and East Side/West Side (1963). She was married to Lucien Jean Happersberger. She died on 21 September 1973 in New York City, New York, USA.Plot: Ashwood, Grave 545
- Malik Sealy was born on 1 February 1970 in The Bronx, New York, USA. He was an actor, known for Eddie (1996), Diagnosis Murder (1993) and The Sentinel (1996). He was married to Lisa Sealy. He died on 20 May 2000 in St. Louis Park, Minnesota, USA.Plot: Hickory Terrace, Grave 5521
GPS coordinates: 41.0266609, -73.8323822 (hddd.dddd) - Actress
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Betty Shabazz was born on 28 May 1936 in Detroit, Michigan, USA. She was an actress, known for Malcolm X (1992), Unfaithfully Yours (1984) and Nationtime (1972). She was married to Malcolm X. She died on 23 June 1997 in New York City, New York, USA.Plot: Pinewood B, Grave 150- Toots Shor was born on 6 May 1903 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA. He was an actor, known for The Colgate Comedy Hour (1950), The Red Skelton Hour (1951) and Gillette Cavalcade of Sports (1944). He died on 23 January 1977 in New York City, New York, USA.Plot: Hillcrest A, grave 1204
- Oscar E. Soglow was born on 23 December 1900 in New York City, New York, USA. He was a writer and director, known for The ABC Saturday Superstar Movie (1972), Darkest Africa (1930) and Jolly Good Felons (1934). He died on 3 April 1975 in New York City, New York, USA.Plot: St Luke section, grave 1773
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Preston Sturges' own life is as unlikely as some of the plots of his best work. He was born into a wealthy family. As a boy he helped out on stage productions for his mother's friend, Isadora Duncan (the scarf that strangled her was made by his mother's company, Maison Desti). He served in the U.S. Army Signal Corps during WWI. Upon his return to Maison Desti, he invented a kissproof lipstick, Red-Red Rouge, in 1920. Shortly after his first marriage, his mother demanded that he return control of the company to her. Kicked out of Maison Desti, he turned to inventing. A tickertape machine, an intaglio photo-etching process, an automobile and an airplane were among his some of his commercially unsuccessful inventions. He began writing stories and, while recovering from an appendectomy in 1929, wrote his first play, "The Guinea Pig". In financial trouble over producing his plays, he moved to Hollywood in 1932 to make money. It wasn't long before he became frustrated by the lack of control he had over his work and wanted to direct the scripts he wrote. Paramount gave him this chance as part of a deal for selling his script for The Great McGinty (1940), at a cheap price. The film's success launched his career as writer/director and he had several hits over the next four years. That success emboldened him to become an independent filmmaker, but that did not last long--he had a string of commercial failures and acquired a reputation as an expensive perfectionist. He moved to France to make what turned out to be his last movie, The French, They Are a Funny Race (1955). He died at the Algonquin Hotel, New York City, in 1959.Plot: Maplewood 4 garden, grave 74- Producer
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The beloved Impresario of TV variety from 1948 to 1971, Ed Sullivan originally made his name as a newspaper sportswriter, radio broadcaster and theater columnist for the New York Daily News. His column focused primarily on Broadway shows and juicy items about its stars. On the new medium of TV, however, he became a pioneer master of ceremonies and entertainment showman.
Edward Vincent Sullivan and his twin brother, Daniel (who died at age 2), were born to a modest Irish-Catholic family on September 28, 1901, in Harlem. A major athlete at Port Chester High School, he lettered in track, football, basketball and baseball. His first professional experience was his local The Port Chester Daily Item, a local newspaper for which he had written sports news while in high school. He joined the paper full-time after graduation. He would land subsequent jobs as a sports reporter, and then various news-related jobs with such papers as The Associated Press, The Philadelphia Bulletin and The New York Bulletin. A sport writer and (later) editor for The Evening Graphic in 1927, Sullivan took over the Broadway column for The News after Walter Winchell left. That position would last 42 years.
Hired in 1932 by the CBS network as a rival of radio commentator Walter Winchell, future radio stars introduced on Sullivan's program included Jack Benny. Sullivan made his film debut as himself in Mr. Broadway (1933), which he also wrote. His subsequent screenplay and story involvements included the screwy comedy There Goes My Heart (1938) and the Universal musical Ma! He's Making Eyes at Me (1940).
So successful was he as Masters of Ceremony at the Harvest Moon Ball at Madison Square Garden, CBS hired him to do The Ed Sullivan Show (1948) ("Toast of the Town") just as TV sets were becoming a home staple. The show, which balanced amazing novelty acts with singing and comedy talents, both legendary and up-and-coming, was broadcast from CBS Studio 50 on Broadway in New York City. In 1967 the studio was aptly renamed the Ed Sullivan Theater. Although Sullivan himself had zilch stage or camera presence and had a frustrating habit of forgetting performers' names as he was about to present them, audiences were completely taken by his charming idiosyncrasies and mellow, guy-next-door approach. He and the show became a resounding success for a staggering 23 years.
Sullivan had a knack for identifying talent and his Sunday night variety platform became a springboard for a number of top stars and groups, including comics Dean Martin & Jerry Lewis and singers Elvis Presley and The Beatles. He also was color blind when it came to talent, generously promoting a number of black crossover acts, such as The Supremes and other Motown artists, when few other TV shows would. Sullivan appeared as himself in such films as Bye Bye Birdie (1963), The Patsy (1964) and The Singing Nun (1966), among others. The irrepressibly stiff, hunch-shouldered emcee was unmercifully parodied by a parade of impressionists over the decades, including Will Jordan, John Byner and David Frye.
Following his cancellation in 1971, Sullivan was seen infrequently hosting variety specials. He died in his beloved New York of esophageal cancer in 1974, three years after the cancellation of his series. The father of one daughter, Betty, Sullivan's wife Sylvia (Weinstein) Sullivan, whom he married in 1930, died the year before.Plot: Ferncliff Mausoleum, Unit 8, Alcove G, Crypt 122- Ernst Toller was a German Jewish playwright, the son of wealthy parents in the Polish-speaking area of Prussia, and was considered one of the most promising of the German Expressionist dramatic movement. After enlisting in the German army in 1914, the horrors of trench warfare (including a personal spell in hospital) encouraged him to reconsider his political stance. Toller became involved in a general strike in Munich in 1918 before being elected President of the Central Revolutionary Committee of the short-lived Bavarian Soviet Republic of March 1919.
After being deposed by the Freikorps, Toller headed the Red Army which was defeated by reactionary troops. He escaped death but was sentenced to five years in prison, when he wrote his best play, "Die Masse-Mensch". However, Toller's politics made him unpopular with the Right, and his Expressionistic writing and pacifism did not endear to the hard Left.
Demonised by the Nazis, Toller left Germany soon after the ascension of Hitler and moved to London, where his autobiography, "I Was a German", was published. Toller later moved to New York and committed suicide in 1939. Pastor Hall (1940), was the only one of his plays to be filmed. - Diana Trilling was born on 21 July 1905 in New York City, New York, USA. She was a writer, known for Town Bloody Hall (1979) and Firing Line (1966). She was married to Lionel Trilling. She died on 23 October 1996 in New York City, New York, USA.Plot: St. James, Plot 653, Grave 1
- Lionel Trilling was born on 4 July 1905 in Queens, New York, USA. He was a writer, known for Alcoa Premiere (1961). He was married to Diana Trilling. He died on 5 November 1975 in New York City, New York, USA.Plot: St. James, Plot 653, Grave 2
- Her father was a trumpeter with bands such as Paul Whiteman and Benny Goodman, and her mother was a former Ziegfeld Follies dancer. Judy studied ballet, music, and acting, won a "Miss Stardust" beauty contest in 1949, danced with the Copacabana chorus line. and was making bit appearances on television while still in high school. At age 17, she landed the part of Princess Summerfall Winterspring on the The Howdy Doody Show (1947) children's TV show, where she stayed for two years before resigning. She returned to stage work and was "rediscovered" in a play in 1956, "Pipe Dream", which landed her on the cover of "Life" magazine. She made two films, the last as Elvis Presley's co-star, Jailhouse Rock (1957). Three days after shooting completed, she and her second husband were driving home from Los Angeles to New York when he swerved to avoid hitting a truck and collided with another vehicle; she was dead at the scene, and he died the following morning of the injuries he sustained. Buried in Hartsdale, New York. No children by either marriage.Plot: Ferncliff Mausoleum, Unit 8, Private Memorial Room B1
- Lenore Ulric was born in New Ulm, Minnesota, on July 21, 1892. She was largely a character actress who appeared in only thirteen films in a career that spanned from 1915 to 1947. Lenore was 23 years old when she acted her first production, The Better Woman (1915). After The Road to Love (1916), Lenore didn't appear in any motion pictures for seven years, returning in 1923 to play the title role in Tiger Rose (1923), after which, she was again away until Frozen Justice (1929) and South Sea Rose (1929). A long absence followed until Camille (1936). Nine more years followed when she appeared in two productions in the 1940s, Temptation (1946) and Two Smart People (1946). After filming Northwest Outpost (1947) the following year, Lenore left movies for good at the age of 55. On December 30, 1970, Lenore died of heart failure in Orangeburg, New York. She was 78 years old.Cremation location
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Conrad Veidt attended the Sophiengymnasium (secondary school) in the Schoeneberg district of Berlin, and graduated without a diploma in 1912, last in his class of 13. Conrad liked animals, theater, cinema, fast cars, pastries, thunderstorms, gardening, swimming and golfing. He disliked heights, flying, the number 17, wearing ties, pudding and interviews. A star of early German cinema, he became a sensation in 1920 with his role as the murderous somnambulist Cesare in Robert Wiene's masterpiece The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920). Other prominent roles in German silent films included Different from the Others (1919) and Waxworks (1924). His third wife, Ilona (nicknamed Lily), was Jewish, although he himself wasn't. However, whenever he had to state his ethnic background on forms to get a job, he wrote: "Jude" (Jew). He and Lily fled Germany in 1933 after the rise to power of Adolf Hitler, and he became a British citizen in 1939. Universal Pictures head Carl Laemmle personally chose Veidt to play Dracula in a film to be directed by Paul Leni based on a successful New York stage play: "Dracula". Ultimately, Bela Lugosi got the role, and Tod Browning directed the film, Dracula (1931). In his last German film, F.P.1 Doesn't Answer (1932), Veidt sang a song called "Where the Lighthouse Shines Across the Bay." Although the record was considered a flop in 1933, the song became a hit almost 50 years later, when, in 1980, DJ Terry Wogan played it as a request on the Radio 2 breakfast show. That single playing generated numerous phone calls, and shortly thereafter the song appeared on a British compilation album called "Movie Star Memories" - a collection of songs from 1930s-era films compiled from EMI archives. The album was released by World Records Ltd., and is now out of print but can still be ordered online ("Where the Lighthouse Shines Across the Bay" is track 4 on side 2). Veidt appeared in Germany's first talking picture, Bride 68 (1929), and made only one color picture, The Thief of Bagdad (1940), filmed in England and Hollywood. His most famous role was as Gestapo Maj. Strasser in the classic Casablanca (1942); although he was not the star of the picture, he was the highest paid actor. He died while playing golf, and on the death certificate his name is misspelled as "Hanz Walter Conrad Veidt". Because he had been blacklisted in Nazi Germany, there was no official announcement there of his death. His ex-wife, Felicitas, and daughter Viola, in Switzerland, heard about it on the radio.- Actor
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Billy Vine was born on 23 December 1914. He was an actor, known for The Vagabond King (1956), The Lucky Stiff (1949) and Vine Women and Song (1946). He died on 10 February 1958 in New York City, New York, USA.Plot: Shrine of Memories, unit 1, tier a, crypt 12- Actor
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Stalwart character Raymond Walburn is one of those actors whose name may have slipped through the memory cracks over time, but whose valued contribution to 30s and 40s comedy films certainly warrants a reminder. Somewhat reminiscent of the "Mr. Monopoly" character, Walburn was the archetypal bombastic bumbler or supercilious stuffed shirt with the trademark bulgy eyes, snub nose, arched brows and trimmed mustache. He provided his patented brand of cheeky humor in nearly 100 "A" and "B" films during his career span. Walburn was born in Plymouth, Indiana on September 9, 1887, then moved to Oakland, California following high school with his actress mother. There he was placed in an acting school associated with the Liberty Theatre, the principal stock company in Oakland, and made his professional stage debut at age 18 playing the Second Witch in "MacBeth." Following extensive touring in stock shows, he took his first Broadway bow with the opening of "The Greyhound" in 1912.
After a long period of struggle and a number of theater misfires, his career was interrupted by military service. This was shortly after his being cast as a replacement in the juvenile lead role in "Come Out of the Kitchen" starring Ruth Chatterton. Following his discharge from the artillery corps where he served in France, he resumed his Broadway and stock show career and grew in stature throughout the 1920s. In 1924 he made his London debut as Aubrey Piper in "The Show-Off," a role that keenly established his pompous image and brash, phony-baloney facade on stage and in later film. Over the decades Walburn's plus-sized comic vanity would become a repetitive scene-stealing tactic.
Outside of a couple of nondescript roles in silent films, Walburn did not take a serious stab at films until 1929, when he was cast supporting a Ruth Chatterton vehicle (again), this time playing her unfaithful husband in The Laughing Lady (1929). He did not return to films again, however, until five years later following a stage success in "The Pursuit of Happiness" (1933). From 1934 on he continued to be seen in film and was a main character staple for Columbia. For Frank Capra his highlights included Colonel Pettigrew, the race track tout, in Broadway Bill (1934); Gary Cooper's ostentatious valet in Mr. Deeds Goes to Town (1936); and the opportunistic Judge Alexander in the Spencer Tracy/Katharine Hepburn starrer State of the Union (1948). He also performed in Capra's pallid musical remake of Broadway Bill entitled Riding High (1950) with Bing Crosby, in which he recreated his Colonel Pettigrew shyster. As a Preston Sturges favorite, Walburn shined as the sarcastic and pompous Dr. Maxford in Christmas in July (1940); the windbag Mayor Noble in the classic Hail the Conquering Hero (1944); and as the boss who fires Harold Lloyd in The Sin of Harold Diddlebock (1947) [aka Mad Wednesday].
In post-war years, the by-now chunky-framed Walburn was given a great chance to show off by headlining his own "Henry" series of light comedy films. Playing patriarch Henry Latham in its debut Henry, the Rainmaker (1949), he was able to bounce off the droll antics of Walter Catlett's Mayor Colton character. Barbara Brown as his wife and young Gary Gray as son David were around for the entire series. He cavorted in five features ending with Father Takes the Air (1951). Walburn's last film was the rather uneventful western The Spoilers (1955). Following the death of his first wife Gertrude (affectionately known as Trudy), he more or less retired, but found happiness again when he married a family friend, Jane Davis.
In 1962, at the age of 74, he came out of his self-imposed retirement at the urging of Harold Prince to join Zero Mostel and company in the burlesque musical farce "A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum" playing a senile Roman citizen. He played the show for 18 months, then went on to appear with Ruth Gordon in "A Very Rich Woman" in 1965. Walburn died in New York City at the age of 81 in 1969 following an extended illness.Cremation location- Producer
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David W. Warfield is known for Ocean Park (2002), Rows (2015) and Kill Me Again (1989). He was previously married to Callie Khouri.- Prolific mystery writer Cornell Woolrich was born in New York City, but his parents separated when he was young and he spent much of his childhood in Latin America with his father. Then he was sent back to New York to live with his rich, domineering mother, Claire. He attended Columbia University where he wrote his first novel, a Jazz Age piece published in 1926 titled "Cover Charge". Another book, "Children of the Ritz", followed in 1927. Hollywood beckoned but his time there as an (uncredited) screenwriter proved to be unhappy. A disastrous marriage to a producer's daughter failed quickly and he headed back to New York -- and Claire. He found his niche writing suspense stories for magazines such as "Argosy", "Black Mask" and "Thrilling Mystery". Sales were made to Hollywood, his reputation grew, and his bank account increased. Some called him "the Poe of the 20th century". Then his mother sank into a lengthy illness and his output fell as he devoted more and more of his time to her care. By the time she died in 1957, he was "burned out". From then until his death in 1968, he lived a lonely life marked by alcoholism and poor health (he delayed visiting a doctor when his leg started bothering him; he eventually lost it to gangrene). When he died his funeral went unattended.
He bequeathed money to Columbia to set up a creative writing course which was not named after him but after who else?-Claire.Plot: Shrine of Memories Mausoleum, Unit 1, Tier G, Crypt 102 - Writer
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Malcolm X was born Malcolm Little on May 19, 1925, in Omaha, Nebraska, one of seven children. His father, Earl Little, was a Baptist preacher who supported Marcus Garvey's Back to Africa movement. When Malcolm was four, the family moved to Lansing, Michigan, where Earl attempted opening a store while continuing his preaching. But a group of white supremacists calling themselves the Black Legion (a sub-branch of the Ku Klux Klan) became irate to him.
Two years later, Earl Little was found dead on the trolley tracks in town after a streetcar ran over him. Despite the police report that Earl's death was an accident, Malcolm strongly believed that his father was murdered by the Black Legion who placed his father's body on the tracks to make it look like an accident. Following Earl's death, Malcolm's mother, Louise Little, tried to support her eight children on her own. Malcolm started stealing food and candy from neighborhood stores to support his brothers and sisters. After being caught a few too many times, a local court ruled that Louise was unable to control Malcolm and had him removed from her care and placed in a friendly white couple's home who knew Louise. Two years later, on account of severe stress in raising her children, Louise suffered a nervous breakdown and was committed to the state mental hospital where she remained for the remaining 26 years of her life.
After finishing eighth grade, Malcolm dropped out of school and traveled to Boston where his older sister, Ella, resided. After several years, Malcolm moved to New York City where, to support himself, he became a numbers runner, a drug dealer, even a pimp. He wore zoot suits and dyed his hair red, which earned him the nickname "Detroit Red". He relocated to Boston again where he organized a robbery ring that was uncovered by the police in 1946, and he was sentenced to eight to 10 years in prison. Malcolm used the time behind bars to educate himself in the prison library where he learned the fundamentals of grammar and increased his vocabulary. It was here that a few inmates introduced Malcolm to a new religion and movement, The Nation of Islam. Malcolm's younger brother, Reginald, already a member, visited him and told him about Islam and about Allah. Much of what Reginald said confused Malcolm, but two phrases took root in his head, "The white man is the devil" and "The black man is the brainwashed". Malcolm learned that if he wanted to join, he would have to accept its theology and submit completely to its founder and leader, Elijah Muhammad.
Inspired by the new direction his life was taking, Malcolm wrote Elijah Muhammad a heartfelt letter about himself and why he wanted to join. Elijah wrote back welcoming Malcolm to the faith. He instructed Malcolm to drop his last name, which his ancestors inherited from a slave owner and replace it with the letter X which symbolized that his true African name had been lost. In 1952, Malcolm was finally paroled from prison. Rather than returning to the life of crime, Malcolm committed himself to learning more about his new religion. In 1958, Malcolm married Betty Shabazz, a Muslim nurse and together they had four daughters (plus two more born after his death). Over the next several years, Malcolm became the spokesperson for the Nation of Islam and became one of its most powerful speakers attracting thousands of African-Americans into the fold with his charismatic speeches and rich and powerful words. Malcolm's charismatic personalty also attracted the attention of the white media. But unlike Dr. Martin Luther King who believed in non-violent tactics to archive equal rights for blacks, Malcolm favored the use of arms and proposed a revolutionary program that would create a separate society for blacks in America. Malcolm's relationship with the media displeased Elijah Muhammad for he felt that the Nation of Islam's messages where being overshadowed by Malcolm's newfound celebrity.
In the early 1960s, Malcolm learned of paternity suits filed by two women of the Nation of Islam who worked for Elijah Muhammad as his secretaries. Determined to get to the bottom of the rumors about Elijah Muhammad, Malcolm met with the two women and later privately with Elijah Muhammad who did not deny the accusations against him as he did publicly but justified his actions by comparing his with other Biblical figures as David and Noah who suffered from "moral lapses". Elijah's response left Malcolm dissatisfied and contributed to his growing disenchantment with the Nation of Islam.
In November 1963, Malcolm's candidness with reporters provided Elijah Muhammad with an excuse to sideline him. When asked about the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, Malcolm called the murder a case of "the chickens coming home to roost". The public, both black and white, was outraged by Malcolm's comment after which Elijah suspended him from his duties as spokesperson for 90 days. Feeling betrayed by the Nation of Islam, Malcolm announced in March 1964 that he was not going to return, but he was going to form his own movement called Muslim Mosque, Inc. and invited blacks everywhere to join his new crusade. In response to Malcolm's announcement, Elijah Muhammad wrote in the Nation of Islam's biweekly newspaper that "only those who wish to be led to hell or to their doom will follow Malcolm. No one ever leaves the Nation of Islam."
Over the next several months, several attempts where made against Malcolm's life. Apparently, this did not surprise him for he said, "This thing with me will only be resolved by death and violence." In April 1964, Malcolm made a pilgrimage to Mecca, the Islamic holy city in Saudi Arabia. The trip had a profound affect on him when he was greeted warmly by Musilms of many nationalities. Malcolm then realized that if Muslims of all races can live together in peace, why not people of all religions? Malcolm then remarked, "My true brotherhood includes people of all races, coming together as one. It has proved to me that there is the power of one God."
Upon his return to the United States, death threats continued leading to his house in Queens, New York, being fire-bombed in February 1965, to his assassination a week later at the Audubon Ballroom in Harlem, New York City, where he held weekly meetings. Although the Nation of Islam was suspected of being behind Malcolm's murder, his three killers, who were convicted of the murder, denied being part of the Nation of Islam or knowing each other despite the fact that they were Black Musilms and later revealed to be members. When questioned about Malcolm X's murder, Elijah Muhammad maintained (as he did with a great deal of other things) that neither he nor his organization had anything to do with Malcolm X's assassination.Plot: Pinewood B, Grave 150- Writer
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Joe Young was born on 4 July 1889 in New York City, New York, USA. He was a writer, known for King Kong (2005), Flyboys (2006) and Big Fish (2003). He was married to Ruth ?. He died on 21 April 1939 in New York City, New York, USA.Plot: Ferncliff Mausoleum, Unit 1, Alcove J-I- Whitney Young was born on 31 July 1921 in Lincoln Ridge, Kentucky, USA. He was married to Margaret Buckner. He died on 11 March 1971 in Lagos, Nigeria.Plot: Knollwood Garden 2, Plot C, Grave 5
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Jim Henson never thought that he would make a name of himself in puppetry; it was merely a way of getting himself on television. The vehicle that achieved it was Sam and Friends (1955), a late-night puppet show that was on after the 11:00 news in Washington DC. It proved to be very popular and inspired Jim to continue using puppets for his work. He made many commercials, developing the signature humor that Henson Productions is known for. A key reason for the success of his puppets is that Jim realized he didn't need to hide puppeteers behind a structure when they were in front of a camera. All he had to do was instruct the camera operators to focus on the puppets and keep the puppeteers out of the frame. This allowed the puppets to dominate the image and make them more lifelike. This work on puppets and television would lead to separate projects that had different goals. The first one was his work on the The Jimmy Dean Show (1963) with the character Rowlf the Dog, the oldest clearly identified character that Henson Productions still uses. This show provided an income that allowed Jim to work on a pet project. That project was Time Piece (1965), a surrealistic short about time which was nominated for best live-action short Oscar. Henson shot to prominence when he was approached to use his muppets for the revolutionary educational show Sesame Street (1969). The show was a smash hit and his characters have become staples on public television. Unforetunately, this also led to Henson being typecast as only an entertainer for children. He sought to disprove that by being part of the initial crew of Saturday Night Live (1975), but his style and that of the creative staff simply didn't jibe. It was this circumstance that encouraged him to develop a variety show format that had the kind of sophisticated humor that "Sesame Street (1969)" didn't work with. No American broadcaster was interested, but British producer Lew Grade was. This led to The Muppet Show (1976). It initially struggled both in the ratings and in the search for guest stars, but in the second season it became a smash hit and would eventually become the most widely watched series in television history. Hungry for a new challenge, Henson made The Muppet Movie (1979), defying the popular industry opinion that his characters would never work in a movie. The film became a hit and spawned a series of features which included the moody fantasy The Dark Crystal (1982), which was a drastic and bold departure from the amiable tone of his previous work. The most successful TV work in the 1980s was Fraggle Rock (1983), a fantasy series specifically designed to appeal to as many cultural groups as possible. During this time he also established the Creature Shop, a puppet studio that became renowned for being as brilliant with puppetry as ILM was at special effects. When he died all too soon in 1990, he was indisputably one of the geniuses of puppetry. More importantly, he was a man who achieved his phenomenal success while still retaining his social conscience and artistic integrity as his work in promoting environmentalism and his brilliant The Storyteller (1987) series respectively attest to.Cremation location- Walter C. Hackett was born on 10 November 1876 in Oakland, California, USA. He was a writer, known for Their Big Moment (1934), The White Sister (1933) and The White Sister (1923). He was married to Marion Lorne. He died on 20 January 1944 in New York City, New York, USA.
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Robert Evans was born in New York City, to Florence (Krasne) and Archie Shapera, a dentist with a thriving practice in Harlem. His family was of Russian Jewish descent. He was raised on Manhattan's Upper West Side. He began his show-business career as a teenage radio actor. After flopping in his first attempt at movie acting, he took a job promoting sales of ladies' slacks for Evan-Picone, the clothing company founded and run by his brother. Some years later, Norma Shearer spotted him hanging around the pool at the Beverly Hills Hotel; she successfully touted him for the role of Irving Thalberg in Man of a Thousand Faces (1957). In a New York nightclub, Evans also caught the eye of Darryl F. Zanuck, who cast him as a bullfighter in The Sun Also Rises (1957). By the end of the fifties, Evans writes, "I was sure of one thing: I was a half-assed actor." He determined to recast himself as a producer.Before launching his first picture, though, he was hired by Charlie Bluhdorn, head of the Gulf + Western conglomerate, as part of a shakeup of Paramount Pictures.
Within months Evans was head of production. In the late 1960s and early '70s, he became the quintessential "new Hollywood" executive, with: slickly packaged productions like Rosemary's Baby (1968), Love Story (1970) and The Godfather (1972) revived Paramount. (The latter film and Chinatown (1974) are the artistic highlights of Evans' Paramount career, though the amount of credit he deserves for them has been debated for decades.) Eased out of Paramount, he saw The Cotton Club (1984) turn from a musical "Godfather" into a fiasco of front-page proportions. Evans righted his career with a new Paramount deal in the 1990s, with his last producing credit having been on the blockbuster romantic comedy How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days (2003).
He died on October 26, 2019.- Nelson Rockefeller, the son and grandson of billionaires and a billionaire in his own right when there fewer than a baker's dozen of such creatures, was a major force in national politics for three decades. Rocky bestrode the State of New York like a colossus in the 1960s, serving four terms as governor of the Empire State between 1959 and 1973. Under his helmsman-ship, the size and scope of the state government was vastly expanded, as was the state debt.
Born in Bar Harbor, Maine four days after the Fourth of July in 1908, Nelson Aldrich Rockefeller was the third child and the second son of John D. Rockefeller Jr. and Abby Aldrich Rockefeller. He was named after his maternal grandfather, Rhode Island Senator Nelson W. Aldrich, a political power-broker as the head of the Senate's Finance Committee. Aldrich battled his fellow patrician, President Theodore Roosevelt, over T.R's political reforms. Ironically, Aldrich's grandson would inherit T.R.'s mantle as head of the progressive wing of the Grand Old Party and would be the last progressive Republican to make a serious bid for the G.O.P.'s presidential nomination.
After graduating from Dartmouth College, the young Rockefeller dabbled in his family's oil business, but it was public service and the arts that were his passion. Working for a Venezuelan subsidiary of his family's Standard Oil of New Jersey Co. piqued his interest in Latin America, and he learned Spanish. President Franklin D. Roosevelt, T.R.'s fourth cousin and another member of the New York-American patricianate, created the position of Coordinator of Inter-American Affairs in the Office of Inter-American Affairs for young Rocky after he told the president of his concern over Nazi influence in Latin America.
Roosevelt named Rockefeller the Assistant Secretary of State for American Republic Affairs, a new position in the State Department, in 1944. He served as a member of the U.S. delegation to the United Nations Conference on International Organization at San Francisco in 1945 at which the UN was founded. Rockefeller was instrumental in persuading the UN to establish its headquarters in New York City, and his father subsequently donated the land on which the UN building was built.
In late 1945, he resigned from the State Department and went back to private business. Five years later, he was tapped by President Harry S. Truman to serve as chairman of the International Development Advisory Board, which was tasked with developing a plan provide technical assistance to foreign governments. President-elect Dwight D. Eisenhower gave Rockefeller the job of studying governmental reorganization, then in 1953, Ike appointed Rocky to serve as Under Secretary of Health, Education and Welfare, a new Cabinet-level department. Under Ike, he oversaw the expansion of Social Security, a program that would be targeted by right-wing Republicans after Eisenhower left the White House. In 1955, he was appointed Special Assistant to the President for Foreign Affairs.
In 1958, Rocky was elected governor of New York State and proved immensely popular, creating a presidential buzz. The Republican Rockefeller had his hat in the ring for the GOP Presidential nomination in 1960 (when he bowed out early as the political position of Vice President Richard Nixon proved too impregnable), 1964 and 1968 (when once again, Nixon bested him). His best showing was in 1964, when he lost the nod to Barry Goldwater in a bitter contest.
A proponent of Big Government, Rocky was the head of the progressive wing of the Republican Party, when such a thing still existed, and was despised by hard-core right-wingers like Goldwater. After losing the nomination to him and being booed by Goldwater supporters for 16 straight minutes when he took the stage to deliver a speech at the GOP Convention in San Francisco, Rocky refused to campaign for Goldwater in his match-up with President Lyndon B. Johnson, a Big Government liberal in the Rocky mold. Rocky was not alone: many moderate and liberal Republicans, including Michigan Governor George Romney, the father of Mitt Romney, eschewed Goldwater, whom the felt was a dangerous reactionary.
Early on, Rocky supported George Romney, the fair haired boy of the GOP circa 1966, for the 1968 Republican presidential nomination. Subsequently, Romney stumbled badly before the New Hampshire primary and withdrew from the race before the first votes were cast (New Hampshire was won by Richard Nixon) when Rockefeller made it known that he was open to being drafted. Norman Mailer reported in '68 that Rockefeller would have been elected President of the United States as he was well-liked by the common people who, at the time, voted Democratic but were angry with the Democratic Party and Lyndon Johnson due to the Vietnam War, inflation, and race riots.
Rocky's own polls showed that he was more likely to beat Vice President Hubert H. Humphrey, the Democratic Party's presumptive nominee, than was Nixon or Ronald Reagan, then making his first bid for the presidency as the Great White Hope of the Goldwater wing of the G.O.P. However, he was unable to secure his party's nomination, which was roiled then (as it is now) by a hard-core reactionary right. (The Goldwater wing of the party would come back to haunt him eight years later.)
Nixon, who had carefully cultivated G.O.P politicians and the Republican rank-and-file who served as delegates to the convention, won the nomination on the first ballot and eked out a victory over Humphrey that November. Rocky went back to governing New York State and won a fourth term in 1970.
In 1973, Rockefeller resigned as governor of New York three years into his fourth term, but the following year, Gerald Ford tapped him to serve as his Vice President when he assumed the Presidency after the resignation of Richard Nixon. Rockefeller remains only the second man to become vice president without first being elected (Ford being the other), raised to the office by the machinations of the 25th Amendment to the Constitution.
Ford's nomination of Rockefeller as his Veep was not a popular choice among right-wing Republicans or among liberal Democrats, as his reputation as a progressive had been tarnished by his support of the military-industrial complex and the Vietnam War and by his failure to bring a peaceful conclusion to the 1971 prisoner riot and take-over of Attica State Prison. In the post-Watergate environment, Rockefeller's role as a power broker (Henry Kissinger had been one of his aides) was looked on with suspicion. Rocky along with his brothers, most notably Chase Manhattan Bank CEO David Rockefeller, had long funded think tanks and other organizations that had been instrumental in the creation of the post-WWII, government-academia establishment that had defined the parameters of he Cold War state, including how wars of national liberation were to be resisted and how the welfare state was to be shored up. Some critics accused Rocky of being one of the main architects of a "secret government" that really ruled the United States.
Rockefeller failed to get his finger in the Big Brass Ring of American politics, the presidency, but his nomination was confirmed by the U.S. Senate, and on December 19, 1974, he became Vice President of the United States. He would serve two years, one month and one day in the post as his nemesis Barry Goldwater and Ford's nemesis Ronald Reagan vetoed Rocky as Ford's running mate at the 1976 Republican convention, where Reagan nearly upset Ford. For the presidential match-up in November, Ford had Kansas Senator Bob Dole, then considered a rock-rib Republican conservative, foisted upon him, which likely cost him the election. He narrowly lost New York State (and its 41 Electoral College votes) to former Georgia Governor Jimmy Carter, which gave Carter the presidency.
Ford later admitted it was a mistake to allow Reagan to bully him into kicking Rocky, the avatar of progressive Republicans (now a dead species but once a vibrant part of the Grand Old Party since its founding), off of the ticket. With Rocky on the ticket, the Empire State would likely have swung his way and he would have won a term as president in his own right. Ford remains the only unelected president in U.S. history.
The Rockefeller family's billions had once helped finance the Republican Party and the advancement of the interests of African Americans by endowing the N.A.A.C.P. and institutions of higher learning serving black folk. The Party of Lincoln had been the natural home of African Americans until the Great Depression and F.D.R. started to peel them away from the G.O.P.
L.B.J. and the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voters Right Act of 1965 sparked a major realignment of the political parties in America. African Americans in the 1960s were now solidly Democratic and the Solid South, which had once been solidly Democratic, began moving towards the new Republican Party procreated by Goldwater, Reagan and ex-Democrats from the former Confederacy like Strom Thurmond.
The first Republicans voted to Congress since Reconstruction from the Deep South started to appear in the 1960s, starting with John Tower in 1961, who was was elected to the U.S. Senate seat once held by then-Vice President Lyndon Johnson in a special election in 1961. Connecticut transplant George Bush, whose father Prescott Bush was a moderate Republican who represented the Nutmeg State in the U.S. Senate, was elected to the House of Representatives from Texas in 1964, reaping political hay from the backlash against civil rights.
The Republican in the South to make the biggest splash in the 1960s was U.S. Senator Strom Thurmond of South Carolina, who as the Palmetto State's governor in 1948 broke with Harry Truman over the inclusion of a civil rights plank in the Democratic Party platform (crafted by Hubert H. Humphrey) and ran for president as the head of the "Dixiecrat Party". Thurmond won four Southern states good for 39 votes in the Electoral College. In 1964, he quit the Democratic Party and resigned from the Senate to protest the passage of the Civil Rights Act, which a filibuster by Southern Senators, Democrats all (including Senator Strom, a racist who had fathered a mixed race child with his African American mistress) failed to derail. He subsequently was elected in a special election to his old seat as a Republican.
Goldwater had voted against the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and Reagan's political career had been bolstered by his support of Goldwater and his opposition to Fair Housing Laws in the state of California. Reagan rode the backlash against civil rights to the governor's mansion in Sacramento and later to the White House. Under Reagan, who had launched his 1980 presidential campaign in Philadelphia, Mississippi, the site of the lynching of three civil rights workers in 1964, the spirit of the hated Abraham Lincoln was exorcised from the G.O.P. he helped create, enabling Southerners to embrace the Grand Old Party they previously had despised as a symbol of the Union's defeat of the Confederacy and is championing of equal rights for black folk during the hated Reconstruction period.
Shorn of Lincoln and a commitment to civil rights (in 1990, Republican President George H.W. Bush would become the first president in history to veto a civil rights act), the realignment of the Deep South with the Republican Party that had started in the 1960s quickened. The process that had begun with a Democrat from the South (L.B.J.) in the White House was completed by the mid-1990s, ironically, under another Democratic President from a former Confederate state, Bill Clinton. (The next Democrat in the White House would be an African American, Barack Obama.)
By 1976, the Grand Old Party that the Rockefeller family had financed was dying. Rockefeller's party had supported African American suffrage (Ike pushed the Civil Rights Acts of 1958 and 1960 to increase the number of black voters in the Deep South and L.B.J. as Senate Majority Leader got them passed) and had had an equal rights for women plank in the party platform since 1940. (An echo of Teddy Roosevelt's support for women's suffrage in his renegade 1912 Progressive Party presidential bid, the equal rights plank would be torn out of the party platform by Ronald Reagan in 1980.) In the Bicentennial Year of '76, Rockefeller's G.O.P was waning, and a new party more aligned with Strom Thurmond's Dixiecrat Party of 1948 was arising, Phoenix-like from the ashes of Lincoln's G.O.P. In 1976, Nelson Rockefeller was no longer welcome, and by 1980, progressive "Rockefeller Republicans" like U.S. Senator Jacob Javits of New York would begin to fall by he wayside, defeated by the likes of conservative 'Alfonse D'Amato'. By the 1980s, the only Rockefeller in elected office, Jay Rockefeller of West Virginia (the son or Rocky's brother John D. Rockefeller III), would be a Democrat.
After a long career in public service, Rocky retired to private life after President Jimmy Carter and Vice President Walter Mondale were sworn into office. He was a noted art collector and a patron of the arts and served as a trustee of New York City's the Museum of Modern Art, which was founded by his mother, from 1932 to 1979.
Nelson Rockefeller died of a heart attack in New York City on January 26, 1979. He was 70 years old.Per his wishes, his body was cremated at Ferncliff Cemetery in Hartsdale, New York. His ashes were scattered at the Rockefeller Estate in nearby Tarrytown, New York. He is the only former U.S. Vice President not to have a final resting place in a cemetery. - Actress
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Ruby Dee was an American actress, poet, playwright, screenwriter, journalist and civil rights activist. She is best known for originating the role of "Ruth Younger" in the stage and film versions of A Raisin in the Sun (1961).
She also starred in The Jackie Robinson Story (1950), Cat People (1982), Do the Right Thing (1989), and American Gangster (2007).
Her film debut was That Man of Mine (1946).
For her performance as Mahalee Lucas in American Gangster (2007), she was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress. As of 2019, she stands as the second oldest nominee for Best Supporting Actress, behind Gloria Stuart who was 87 when nominated for her role in Titanic for the 70th Academy Awards, 1998.
Dee died on June 11, 2014, at her home in New Rochelle, New York, from natural causes at the age of 91.Cremated and sharing an urn with husband- Actor
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Ossie Davis was born on 18 December 1917 in Cogdell, Georgia, USA. He was an actor and writer, known for Do the Right Thing (1989), Bubba Ho-Tep (2002) and Grumpy Old Men (1993). He was married to Ruby Dee. He died on 4 February 2005 in Miami Beach, Florida, USA.Cremated and sharing an urn with wife.- Seymour Topping was born on 11 December 1921 in Manhattan, New York City, New York, USA. He was married to Audrey Ronning. He died on 8 November 2020 in White Plains, New York, USA.
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He did his pre college training at George School, Newtown, Bucks County, Pennsylvania, then was in a class of 50 at Williams College majoring in music as an undergraduate distinguishing himself by writing a book, lyrics and music for two college shows based on the adaption of 'Beggar on Horseback'. He won the Hutchinson prize to study music composition for 2 years. His first professional writing was in 1953 when he co authored the script for the television series'Topper'. A year later he wrote all the music and lyrics for'Saturday night' . In 1955 he started work on 'West Side Story' and also found time to writ scripts for 'The Last Word' for Columbia Broadcasting and the background music for' The Party Girls of Summer' For the film of 'West Side Story' he created new and powerful lyrics for the 'America' sequence, which is the only major alteration from the Broadway production.- Actress
- Producer
- Additional Crew
Dana Reeve was born on 17 March 1961 in Teaneck, New Jersey, USA. She was an actress and producer, known for Everyone's Hero (2006), Loving (1983) and Above Suspicion (1995). She was married to Christopher Reeve. She died on 6 March 2006 in Manhattan, New York City, New York, USA.- Actor
- Producer
- Additional Crew
Christopher D'Olier Reeve was born September 25, 1952, in New York City, to journalist Barbara Johnson (née Barbara Pitney Lamb) and writer/professor F.D. Reeve (Franklin D'Olier Reeve). He came from an upper-class family; his paternal grandfather was CEO of Prudential Financial, and one of his maternal great-grandfathers was Supreme Court Associate Justice Mahlon Pitney.
When Reeve was four, his parents divorced. His mother moved him and his brother Benjamin to Princeton, New Jersey, and married an investment banker a few years later. After graduating from high school, Reeve studied at Cornell University while at the same time working as a professional actor. In his final year at Cornell, he was one of two students selected (Robin Williams was the other) to study at New York's famous Juilliard School, under the renowned John Houseman. Although Christopher is best known for his role as Superman (1978), a role which he played with both charisma and grace, his acting career spans a much larger ground. Paralyzed after a horse riding accident, he died suddenly at age 52 after several years of living and working with his severe disability.Cremation location- Music Artist
- Actor
- Producer
Harold George Belafonte was born on March 1, 1927 in New York City. He was educated at the New York Dramatic Workshop. He grew up in Jamaica, British West Indies, and did folk-singing in nightclubs and theaters, and on television and records. His debut was at the Village Vanguard in New York. Also, he appeared in the Broadway revues "John Murray Anderson's Almanac" and "Three for Tonight". He owns his own music publishing firm and film production company. He won a Tony Award in 1953, a Donaldson Award in 1953-1954, a Show Business Award in 1954, a Diners' Club Award in 1955-1956, and an Emmy Award for "Tonight with Belafonte". He has made many records. Joining the ASCAP in 1960, his popular-music compositions include "Turn Around", "Shake That Little Foot" and "Glory Manger".