Hollywood's Military Veterans

1. Audie Murphy

Audie Murphy became a national hero during World War II as the most decorated combat soldier of the war. Among his 33 awards was the Medal of Honor, the highest award for bravery that a soldier can receive. In addition, he was also decorated for bravery by the governments of France and Belgium, and...

2. Kirk Douglas

Actor | The Final Countdown

Cleft-chinned, steely-eyed and virile star of international cinema who rose from being "the ragman's son" (the name of his best-selling 1988 autobiography) to become a bona fide superstar, Kirk Douglas, also known as Issur Danielovitch Demsky, was born on December 9, 1916 in Amsterdam, New York. ...

3. Tony Curtis

Actor | Some Like It Hot

Tony Curtis was born Bernard Schwartz, the eldest of three children of Helen (Klein) and Emanuel Schwartz, Jewish immigrants from Hungary. Curtis himself admits that while he had almost no formal education, he was a student of the "school of hard knocks" and learned from a young age that the only ...

4. Ernest Borgnine

Actor | Marty

Ernest Borgnine was born Ermes Effron Borgnino on January 24, 1917 in Hamden, Connecticut. His parents were Anna (Boselli), who had emigrated from Carpi (MO), Italy, and Camillo Borgnino, who had emigrated from Ottiglio (AL), Italy. As an only child, Ernest enjoyed most sports, especially boxing, ...

5. Neville Brand

Actor | Stalag 17

Neville Brand joined the Illinois National Guard in 1939, bent on a career in the military. His National Guard unit was activated into federal service shortly after the attack on Pearl Harbor on 7 December 1941. It was while he was in the army that he made his acting debut, in Army training films, ...

6. Robert Duvall

Actor | The Apostle

Veteran actor and director Robert Selden Duvall was born on January 5, 1931, in San Diego, CA, to Mildred Virginia (Hart), an amateur actress, and William Howard Duvall, a career military officer who later became an admiral. Duvall majored in drama at Principia College (Elsah, IL), then served a ...

7. Clint Eastwood

Actor | Million Dollar Baby

Clinton Eastwood Jr. was born May 31, 1930 in San Francisco, to Clinton Eastwood Sr., a bond salesman and later manufacturing executive for Georgia-Pacific Corporation, and Ruth Wood (née Margaret Ruth Runner), a housewife turned IBM clerk. He grew up in nearby Piedmont. At school Clint took ...

8. Oliver Stone

Director | JFK

Oliver Stone has become known as a master of controversial subjects and a legendary film maker. His films are filled with a variety of film angles and styles, he pushes his actors to give Oscar-worthy performances, and despite his failures, has always returned to success.

William Oliver Stone was ...

9. Elvis Presley

Soundtrack | Girls! Girls! Girls!

Elvis Aaron Presley was born on January 8, 1935 in East Tupelo, Mississippi, to Gladys Presley (née Gladys Love Smith) and Vernon Presley (Vernon Elvis Presley). He had a twin brother who was stillborn. In 1948, Elvis and his parents moved to Memphis, Tennessee where he attended Humes High School. ...

10. Humphrey Bogart

Actor | Casablanca

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

11. Walter Brennan

Actor | The Westerner

In many ways the most successful and familiar character actor of American sound films and the only actor to date to win three Oscars for Best Supporting Actor, Walter Brennan attended college in Cambridge, Massachusetts, studying engineering. While in school he became interested in acting and ...

12. Johnny Cash

Soundtrack | The Johnny Cash Show

Johnny Cash was born February 26, 1932, in Kingsland, Arkansas, to Carrie Cash (Rivers) and Raymond Cash. He made his first single, "Hey Porter", for Sun Records in 1955. In 1958 he moved to Columbia Records. He had long periods of drug abuse during the 1960s, but later that decade he successfully ...

13. Steve McQueen

Actor | The Great Escape

He was the ultra-cool male film star of the 1960s, and rose from a troubled youth spent in reform schools to being the world's most popular actor. Over 40 years after his untimely death from mesothelioma in 1980, Steve McQueen is still considered hip and cool, and he endures as an icon of popular ...

14. Dennis Franz

Actor | NYPD Blue

Dennis Franz was born Dennis Franz Schlacta in Maywood, Illinois, a suburb of Chicago, and is the son of Eleanor (Mueller) and Franz Ferdinand Schlachta, who were postal workers. He has two sisters, Marlene (born 1938) and Heidi (born 1935). He graduated from Southern Illinois University and was ...

15. Robert Loggia

Actor | Big

Born and raised in New York City, Robert Loggia studied journalism at the University of Missouri before moving back to New York to pursue acting. He trained at the Actors Studio while doing stage work. From the late 1950s he was a familiar face on TV, usually as authoritative figures. Loggia also ...

16. Mel Brooks

Actor | Spaceballs

Mel Brooks was born Melvin Kaminsky on June 28, 1926 in Brooklyn, New York. He served in WWII, and afterwards got a job playing the drums at nightclubs in the Catskills. Brooks eventually started a comedy act and also worked in radio and as Master Entertainer at Grossinger's Resort before going to ...

17. Paul Newman

Actor | The Hustler

Screen legend, superstar, and the man with the most famous blue eyes in movie history, Paul Leonard Newman was born on January 26, 1925, in Cleveland, Ohio, the second son of Arthur Sigmund Newman (died 1950) and Theresa Fetsko (died 1982). His elder brother was Arthur S. Newman Jr., named for ...

18. Sidney Poitier

Actor | In the Heat of the Night

Sidney Poitier was a native of Cat Island, Bahamas, although born, two months prematurely, in Miami during a visit by his parents, Evelyn (Outten) and Reginald James Poitier. He grew up in poverty as the son of farmers, with his father also driving a cab in Nassau. Sidney had little formal ...

19. Charles Durning

Actor | Dog Day Afternoon

WWII veteran, dance instructor and diversely talented stage & screen actor were all inclusions on the resume of this perpetually busy US actor who didn't get in front of the cameras until around the time of his fortieth birthday. The stockily built Charles Durning was one of Hollywood's most ...

20. Chuck Norris

Actor | Walker, Texas Ranger

Chuck Norris is familiar to fans worldwide as the star of action films such as The Hitman (1991), The Delta Force (1986) and Delta Force 2: The Colombian Connection (1990). He also starred in Missing in Action (1984) and its sequels, Firewalker (1986) and Sidekicks (1992). He was an executive ...

21. Fred Durst

Director | The Fanatic

Fred was born and raised in Gastonia, North Carolina. He moved to Jacksonville in his late teens and served time in the US Navy. Fred later married at age 20 and had a daughter name Adriana Durst. The marriage was turbulent - after one altercation, Durst spent a month behind bars.

22. Drew Carey

Producer | The Drew Carey Show

Drew Carey was born on May 23, 1958 in Cleveland, Ohio, USA. He is a producer and actor, known for The Drew Carey Show (1995), Robots (2005) and Jack and Jill (2011).

23. Ice-T

Actor | New Jack City

The legendary gangsta hip-hop emcee Ice-T was born Tracy Marrow on February 16, 1958, in Newark, New Jersey. He moved to Los Angeles, California, to live with his paternal aunt after the death of his father while he was in the sixth grade; his mother had died earlier when he was in the third grade....

24. James Stewart

Actor | Vertigo

James Maitland Stewart was born on May 20, 1908, in Indiana, Pennsylvania, to Elizabeth Ruth (Johnson) and Alexander Maitland Stewart, who owned a hardware store. He was of Scottish, Ulster-Scots, and some English descent. Stewart was educated at a local prep school, Mercersburg Academy, where he ...

25. Rock Hudson

Actor | Giant

Rock Hudson was born Roy Harold Scherer, Jr. in Winnetka, Illinois, to Katherine (Wood), a telephone operator, and Roy Harold Scherer, an auto mechanic. He was of German, Swiss-German, English, and Irish descent. His parents divorced when he was eight years old. He failed to obtain parts in school ...

26. Bea Arthur

Actress | The Golden Girls

Actress-comedienne Bea Arthur was born Bernice Frankel on May 13, 1922 in New York City to a Jewish family. She grew up in Maryland, where her parents ran a dress shop. At 12 years old, she was the tallest girl in her school at 5'9".

She earned the title of "Wittiest Girl" in her school, and her ...

27. Johnny Carson

Soundtrack | The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson

Johnny Carson, the legendary "King of Late Night TV" who dominated the medium's nether hours for three decades, was born in Corning, Iowa, but moved with his family to nearby Norfolk, Nebraska when he was eight years old. He was the son of Ruth E. (Hook) and Homer Lloyd "Kit" Carson, a manager of ...

28. Pat Sajak

Producer | Wheel of Fortune

Pat Sajak was born on October 26, 1946 in Chicago, Illinois, USA. He is a producer and actor, known for Wheel of Fortune (1983), Airplane II: The Sequel (1982) and The A-Team (1983). He has been married to Lesly Brown since December 31, 1989. They have two children. He was previously married to ...

29. Tom Selleck

Actor | Blue Bloods

Thomas William Selleck is an American actor and film producer, best known for his starring role as Hawaii-based private investigator "Thomas Magnum" on the 1980s television series, Magnum, P.I. (1980).

Selleck was born in Detroit, Michigan, to Martha (Jagger), a homemaker, and Robert Dean Selleck, a...

30. BJ Davis

Stunts | Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country

BJ Davis is a Member of the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences, formerly with the Producers Guild of America, Directors Guild of America and Screen Actors Guild. BJ produced the controversial award-winning documentary feature film Top Priority: The Terror Within (2012), which premiered at the ...

31. Alan Alda

Actor | M*A*S*H

Alan Alda (born under the name Alphonso Joseph D'Abruzzo) is an American actor, comedian, film director, and screenwriter from New York City. His father was the Italian-American actor Robert Alda. Alda's best known role was playing chief surgeon Benjamin Franklin "Hawkeye" Pierce in the ...

32. Jamie Farr

Actor | M*A*S*H

One of the most prolific character actors of his time starting with his role of Santini in the Blackboard Jungle (1955). Since then has appeared in iconic shows as the Twilight Zone, the Red Skelton Hour, the Dick Van Dyke Show, the Danny Kaye Show, Hazel, My Three Sons, Ben Casey, The Lucy Show, I...

33. Mike Farrell

Actor | M*A*S*H

Mike is one of four children. His father, Joe, who died in 1956, was a carpenter at Hollywood studios. Mike attended grammar school with Natalie Wood and Ricky Nelson. He entered the Marines in the 1950s for two years. Later, he attended the University of California at Los Angeles and studied ...

34. Hugh Hefner

Actor | Miss March

Hugh Hefner was born on April 9, 1926 in Chicago, Illinois, USA. He was a producer and actor, known for Miss March (2009), Hop (2011) and Beverly Hills Cop II (1987). He was married to Crystal Hefner, Kimberley Conrad and Mildred Williams. He died on September 27, 2017 in Holmby Hills, Los Angeles,...

35. Morgan Freeman

Actor | Driving Miss Daisy

With an authoritative voice and calm demeanor, this ever popular American actor has grown into one of the most respected figures in modern US cinema. Morgan was born on June 1, 1937 in Memphis, Tennessee, to Mayme Edna (Revere), a teacher, and Morgan Porterfield Freeman, a barber. The young Freeman...

36. Dan Blocker

Actor | Bonanza

Dan Blocker is one of the true television immortals, having played Hoss Cartwright -- the heart and soul of Bonanza (1959) -- for 13 seasons, before his untimely death in 1972 at the age of 43. "Bonanza" was the most popular TV series of the 1960s, ranked #1 for three straight seasons (1964-65 ...

37. Buck Taylor

Actor | Cowboys & Aliens

National Cowboy & Western Heritage Museum "Hall of Great Western Performers" Inductee, and Multi-Western Heritage Award Winner, most recently for roles in the critically acclaimed movie Hell or High Water (2016) (Outstanding Theatrical, 2017), The Road to Valhalla (2013) (Outstanding Documentary, ...

38. James Arness

Actor | Gunsmoke

American leading man famed as the star of one of the longest-running shows in U.S. television history, Gunsmoke (1955). Born of Norwegian heritage (the family name, Aurness, had formerly been Aursness) in Minneapolis, Minnesota, to Rolf and Ruth Duesler Aurness. His father was a traveling salesman ...

39. Montel Williams

Producer | The Montel Williams Show

Montel Williams was born on July 3, 1956 in Baltimore, Maryland, USA. He is a producer and actor, known for The Montel Williams Show (1991), JAG (1995) and All My Children (1970). He has been married to Tara Fowler since October 6, 2007. He was previously married to Grace Morley and Rochele See.

40. Jack Klugman

Actor | 12 Angry Men

As a film character actor, Klugman was the epitome of the everyman. He was one of the pioneers of television acting in the 1950s, and is best remembered for his 1970s TV work as Oscar Madison on The Odd Couple (1970) and as the medical examiner on Quincy M.E. (1976).

41. James Garner

Actor | The Notebook

Amiable and handsome James Garner had obtained success in both films and television, often playing variations of the charming anti-hero/con-man persona he first developed in Maverick, the offbeat western TV series that shot him to stardom in the late 1950s.

James Garner was born James Scott ...

42. Richard Kline

Actor | Three's Company

Richard Kline was born on April 29, 1944 in New York City, New York, USA. He is an actor and director, known for Three's Company (1976), Jack and Jill (2011) and Beverly Hills Ninja (1997). He has been married to Beverley Osgoode since 2002. He was previously married to Sandy Molloy and Kathleen ...

43. Chuck Connors

Actor | Tourist Trap

Chuck Connors was born Kevin Joseph Connors in Brooklyn, New York, to Marcella (nee Lundrigan; died 1971) and Alban Francis "Allan" Connors (died 1966), Roman Catholic immigrants of Irish descent from the Dominion of Newfoundland (now part of Canada). Chuck and his two-years-younger sister, Gloria,...

44. Marvin Gaye

Soundtrack | High Fidelity

Marvin Pentz Gay Jr. (known professionally as Marvin Gaye; April 2, 1939 - April 1, 1984) was an American singer and songwriter. He helped to shape the sound of Motown in the 1960s, first as an in-house session player and later as a solo artist with a string of successes, earning him the nicknames ...

45. Bill Cosby

Actor | The Cosby Show

Bill Cosby is one of the world's most well-known entertainers and comedians. William Henry Cosby, Jr. was born on July 12, 1937, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, to Anna Pearl (Hite), a maid and William Henry Cosby, Sr., a U.S. Navy sailor. After 10th grade, Cosby joined the Navy and completed high ...

46. John Coltrane

Soundtrack | Adrift

John Coltrane was born on September 23, 1926 in Hamlet, North Carolina, USA. He was a music artist and composer, known for Adrift (2018), Vanilla Sky (2001) and Zodiac (2007). He was married to Alice Macleod and Juanita Grubbs. He died on July 17, 1967 in Huntington, Long Island, New York, USA.

47. Mr. T

Actor | Rocky III

Mr. T was born Laurence Tureaud on 21 May 1952, in the rough south side ghetto of Chicago. He is the second to youngest of twelve children (he has four sisters and seven brothers) and grew up in the housing projects. His father, Nathaniel Tureaud, left when Laurence was 5, and his mother raised the...

48. Brian Dennehy

Actor | First Blood

Imposing, barrel-chested and often silver-haired Brian Dennehy was a prolific US actor, well respected on both screen and stage over many decades. He was born in July 1938 in Bridgeport, CT, and attended Columbia University in New York City on a football scholarship. Brian majored in history, ...

49. Hal Linden

Actor | Barney Miller

A familiar name thanks to his handsome, brush-mustachioed titular cop on a popular 70's TV show, Bronx-born actor/singer/musician Hal Linden (né Harold Lipschitz, March 20, 1931) was the son of Lithuanian immigrant Charles Lipshitz and his wife Frances Rosen. He had one older brother, Bernard, who ...

50. Harvey Korman

Actor | Blazing Saddles

Harvey Korman was a lanky, popular TV comedy veteran with a flair for broad comic characterizations, who shone for a decade as leading man and second banana par excellence on The Carol Burnett Show (1967).

Harvey Herschel Korman was born in Chicago, Illinois, to Ellen (Blecher) and Cyril Raymond ...

51. Bob Barker

Producer | The New Price Is Right

For 35 years, Bob Barker had been the host of The Price is Right (1972) game show. Not only is it the highest-rated daytime program, it is also the longest-running game show in TV history, surpassing the prime-time hit What's My Line? (1950), which ran for 18 years. He also served as the executive ...

52. Sammy Davis Jr.

Actor | The Cannonball Run

Sammy Davis Jr. was often billed as the "greatest living entertainer in the world".

He was born in Harlem, Manhattan, the son of dancer Elvera Davis (née Sanchez) and vaudeville star Sammy Davis Sr.. His father was African-American and his mother was of Cuban and African-American ancestry. Davis Jr....

53. M.C. Hammer

Soundtrack | The Addams Family

Stanley Kirk Burrell (born March 30, 1962), better known by his stage name MC Hammer (or simply Hammer), is an American hip hop recording artist, dancer, record producer and entrepreneur. He had his greatest commercial success and popularity from the late 1980s, until the early 1990s. Remembered ...

54. Ernest Hemingway

Writer | To Have and Have Not

Ernest Hemingway was an American writer who won the Pulitzer Prize (1953) and the Nobel Prize in Literature (1954) for his novel The Old Man and the Sea, which was made into a 1958 film The Old Man and the Sea (1958).

He was born into the hands of his physician father. He was the second of six ...

55. Richard Pryor

Actor | Superman III

Highly influential, and always controversial, African-American actor/comedian who was equally well known for his colorful language during his live comedy shows, as for his fast paced life, multiple marriages and battles with drug addiction. He has been acknowledged by many modern comic artist's as ...

56. Vincent Pastore

Actor | The Sopranos

Pastore was born to an Italian-American family in the Bronx, New York City, and grew up in New Rochelle, New York. Following his graduation from high school, he enlisted as a sailor in the United States Navy and then attended Pace University for three years, before eventually going into the acting ...

57. Danny Aiello

Actor | Do the Right Thing

Danny Aiello was an American actor of Italian descent, and enjoyed a lengthy career in film. He was once nominated for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor, for his role as Salvatore "Sal" Frangione in the comedy-drama film "Do the Right Thing" (1989).

Aiello was born in Manhattan, New York ...

58. James Earl Jones

Actor | Rogue One

Widely regarded as the one of greatest stage and screen actors both in his native USA and internationally, James Earl Jones was born on January 17, 1931 in Arkabutla, Mississippi. At an early age, he started to take dramatic lessons to calm himself down. It appeared to work as he has since starred ...

59. Mickey Rooney

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

Mickey Rooney was born Joe Yule Jr. on September 23, 1920 in Brooklyn, New York. He first took the stage as a toddler in his parents vaudeville act at 17 months old. He made his first film appearance in 1926. The following year, he played the lead character in the first Mickey McGuire short film. ...

60. William Sanderson

Actor | Blade Runner

Prolific and versatile character actor William Sanderson was born on January 10, 1944, in Memphis, Tennessee. His mother was an elementary school teacher and his father was a landscape designer. William served two years in the US Army. Following his military service he attended Southern Methodist ...

61. Don Rickles

Actor | Kelly's Heroes

Donald Jay Rickles was born May 8, 1926 in New York. Following the Golden Era of Hollywood, he remained active until early 2017. He got his start in night clubs, toiling for over 20 years, until 1958, when he made his film debut in Run Silent Run Deep (1958). The movie was a big hit. Afterward, ...

62. Bob Newhart

Actor | Elf

Bob Newhart is an American actor and stand-up comedian. His comedic style involves deadpan delivery of dialogue, a slight stammer when talking, and comedic monologues. He has cited earlier comedians George Gobel (1919-1991), Ray Goulding (1922-1990), and Bob Elliott (1923-2016) as his main ...

63. Charlton Heston

Actor | Ben-Hur

With features chiseled in stone, and renowned for playing a long list of historical figures, particularly in Biblical epics, the tall, well-built and ruggedly handsome Charlton Heston was one of Hollywood's top leading men of his prime and remained active in front of movie cameras for over sixty ...

64. Henry Fonda

Actor | 12 Angry Men

This remarkable, soft-spoken American began in films as a diffident juvenile. With passing years, he matured into a star character actor who exemplified not only integrity and strength, but an ideal of the common man fighting against social injustice and oppression. He was born in Grand Island, ...

65. Gene Hackman

Actor | The French Connection

Eugene Allen Hackman was born in San Bernardino, California, the son of Anna Lyda Elizabeth (Gray) and Eugene Ezra Hackman, who operated a newspaper printing press. He is of Pennsylvania Dutch (German), English, and Scottish ancestry, partly by way of Canada, where his mother was born. After ...

66. Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

Actor | Back to School

Kurt Vonnegut Jr. was born on November 11, 1922 in Indianapolis, Indiana, USA. He was a writer and actor, known for Back to School (1986), Slaughterhouse-Five (1972) and General Electric Theater (1953). He was married to Jill Krementz and Jane Marie Cox. He died on April 11, 2007 in New York City, ...

67. Harry Belafonte

Actor | Bobby

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,...

68. Kris Kristofferson

Actor | Blade

Kris Kristofferson was born in Brownsville, Texas, to Mary Ann (Ashbrook) and Lars Henry Kristofferson. His paternal grandparents were Swedish, and his father was a United States Air Force general who pushed his son to a military career. Kris was a Golden Gloves boxer and went to Pomona College in ...

69. Roy Scheider

Actor | Jaws

Lean, angular-faced and authoritatively spoken lead / supporting actor Roy Scheider obviously never heard the old actor's axiom about "never appearing with kids or animals" lest they overshadow your performance. Breaking that rule did him no harm, though, as he achieved pop cult status by finding, ...

70. Leonard Nimoy

Actor | Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home

Leonard Simon Nimoy was born in Boston, Massachusetts, to Dora (Spinner) and Max Nimoy, who owned a barbershop. His parents were Ukrainian Jewish immigrants. Raised in a tenement and acting in community theaters since age eight, Nimoy did not make his Hollywood debut until he was 20, with a bit ...

71. Carl Reiner

Writer | The Dick Van Dyke Show

Carl Reiner is a legend of American comedy, who achieved great success as a comic actor, a director, producer and recording artist. He won nine Emmy Awards, three as an actor, four as a writer and two as a producer. He also won a Grammy Award for his album "The 2,000 Year Old Man", based on his ...

72. Don Knotts

Actor | The Andy Griffith Show

Don Knotts, the legendary television character actor, was born Jesse Donald Knotts on July 21, 1924 in Morgantown, West Virginia, to William Jesse Knotts and the former Elsie Luzetta Moore. He was the youngest of four sons in a family that had been in America since the 17th century.

His first stint ...

73. Jerry Garcia

Soundtrack | The Box

One of the most prolific and iconic guitarists of the second half of the 20th Century, Jerome John Garcia was born in San Francisco, California, USA on August 1st 1942. Garcia, whose mother was a registered nurse and whose father, Jose, was a small time jazz musician, had a troubled childhood. At ...

74. Fred Willard

Actor | Best in Show

Fred Willard radiated a unique charm that established him as one of the industry's most gifted comic actors, first coming to prominence as ambitious but dimwitted sidekick Jerry Hubbard to Martin Mull's smarmy talk-show host Barth Gimble in the devastating satirical series Fernwood Tonight (1977). ...

75. Bob Feller

Actor | It's My Turn

He made his first major league start in August, striking out 15 St. Louis Browns. A month later, he set an American League rookie record fanning 17 Philadelphia Athletics in a game. Upon completion of his rookie campaign, Feller returned home to Iowa to finish his senior year of high school - his ...

76. Gene Wilder

Actor | Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory

When he was 11, he wanted to be a comedian like Sid Caesar. Then, when he was 15 and saw Lee J. Cobb in 'Death of a Salesman,' he decided he would be a comedy actor and found that Mel Brooks was a great influence on his screen writing. He combined both talents with directing in The World's Greatest...

77. Art Carney

Actor | Harry and Tonto

Art Carney was an American actor with a lengthy career but is primarily remembered for two roles. In television, Carney played municipal sewer worker Ed Norton in the influential sitcom "The Honeymooners" (1955-1956). In film, Carney played senior citizen Harry Coombes in the road movie "Harry and ...

78. Tony Bennett

Actor | Muppets Most Wanted

Tony Bennett, one of the legends of jazz and popular music who served during the Second World War and then developed a career spanning over half a century, is now giving another concert tour across the United States and Europe.

He was born Anthony (Antonio) Dominick Benedetto on August 3, 1926, in ...

79. Sherman Hemsley

Actor | The Jeffersons

Sherman Hemsley played characters known to be wise-cracking, "Weezy" loving, boisterous fools which America and the entire world laughed with kindheartedly. Sherman Alexander Hemsley, Air Force veteran and actor, was born on Feb. 1, 1938 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. His father, William Hemsley, ...

80. Jack Palance

Actor | City Slickers

Jack Palance quite often exemplified evil incarnate on film, portraying some of the most intensely feral villains witnessed in 1950s westerns and melodrama. Enhanced by his tall, powerful build, icy voice, and piercing eyes, he earned two "Best Supporting Actor" nominations early in his career. It ...

81. Berry Gordy

Soundtrack | Guardians of the Galaxy

Berry Gordy was born on November 28, 1929 in Detroit, Michigan, USA. He is a composer and producer, known for Guardians of the Galaxy (2014), Charlie's Angels (2000) and Wild Card (2015). He was previously married to Grace Easton, Raynoma Singleton and Thelma Louise Coleman.

82. Bob Hope

Actor | The Ghost Breakers

Comedian Bob Hope was born Leslie Townes Hope in Eltham, London, England, the fifth of seven sons of Avis (Townes), light opera singer, and William Henry Hope, a stonemason from Weston-super-Mare, Somerset. His maternal grandmother was Welsh. Hope moved to Bristol before emigrating with his parents...

83. Buster Keaton

Actor | The General

Joseph Frank Keaton was born on October 4, 1895 in Piqua, Kansas, to Joe Keaton and Myra Keaton. Joe and Myra were Vaudevillian comedians with a popular, ever-changing variety act, giving Keaton an eclectic and interesting upbringing. In the earliest days on stage, they traveled with a medicine ...

84. Maynard James Keenan

Soundtrack | Resident Evil: Afterlife

Maynard James Keenan was born on April 17, 1964 in Akron, Ohio, USA. He is an actor and composer, known for Resident Evil: Afterlife (2010), End of Watch (2012) and Escape from L.A. (1996).

85. Peter Boyle

Actor | Everybody Loves Raymond

A bold, blunt instrument of hatred and violence at the onset of his film career, Peter Boyle recoiled from that repugnant, politically incorrect "working class" image to eventually play gruff, gentler bears and even comedy monsters in a career that lasted four decades.

He was born on October 18, ...

86. William Daniels

Actor | St. Elsewhere

William Daniels is an American actor, born in Brooklyn, New York City. He was born in 1927, to bricklayer David Daniels and his wife Irene.

Daniels was a member of the singing Daniels family in Brooklyn. He made his television debut in 1943 at the age of 16, as part of a variety act. That same year,...

87. Cesar Romero

Actor | Batman: The Movie

Tall, suave and sophisticated Cesar Romero actually had two claims to fame in Hollywood. To one generation, he was the distinguished Latin lover of numerous musicals and romantic comedies, and the rogue bandit The Cisco Kid in a string of low-budget westerns. However, to a younger generation weaned...

88. Robert Mitchum

Actor | Out of the Past

Robert Mitchum was an underrated American leading man of enormous ability, who sublimated his talents beneath an air of disinterest. He was born in Bridgeport, Connecticut, to Ann Harriet (Gunderson), a Norwegian immigrant, and James Thomas Mitchum, a shipyard/railroad worker. His father died in a ...

89. Charles Bronson

Actor | Death Wish

The archetypal screen tough guy with weatherbeaten features--one film critic described his rugged looks as "a Clark Gable who had been left out in the sun too long"--Charles Bronson was born Charles Buchinsky, one of 15 children of struggling parents in Pennsylvania. His mother, Mary (Valinsky), ...

90. Robert Stack

Actor | Written on the Wind

"Straight Shooting" -- whether skeet shooting, or portraying Eliot Ness -- Robert Stack always told it like it was, and shot straight. Born in Los Angeles, California, the younger son of James Langford Stack (1860-1928), the owner of an advertising agency, and Mary Elizabeth Modini Wood (1891-1975)...

91. Sid Caesar

Actor | Grease

Comedian, saxophonist, composer, actor and musician, he performed within the orchestras of Charlie Spivak, Shep Fields and Claude Thornhill as saxophonist. Later, as super-hip jazz musician "Cool Cees" in television skits, he played tenor saxophone, and sang with the satirical trio "The Hair Cuts" ...

92. Victor Mature

Actor | The Robe

American leading man Victor John Mature was born in Louisville, Kentucky, to Clara P. (Ackley) and Marcellus George Mature, a cutler and knife sharpener. His father, born Marcello Gelindo Maturi in Pinzolo, Trentino, was Italian, and his mother was of Swiss-German and German descent. Mature worked ...

93. James Woods

Actor | Vampires

James Howard Woods was born on April 18, 1947 in Vernal, Utah, the son of Martha A. (Smith) and Gail Peyton Woods, a U.S. Army intelligence officer who died during Woods' childhood. James is of Irish, English, and German descent. He grew up in Warwick, Rhode Island, with his mother and stepfather ...

94. Paul Dooley

Actor | Breaking Away

Dooley was a keen cartoonist as a youth and drew a strip for a local paper in Parkersburg, West Virginia. He joined the Navy before discovering acting while at college. Moving to New York, he soon found success as a regular on the stage. Also having an interest in comedy, Dooley was a stand-up ...

95. Ed McMahon

Soundtrack | The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson

Ed McMahon's first appearance before a microphone was as a 15-year-old "caller" at a bingo game in Maine. After that, he spent the next three years touring the state fair and carnival circuit. A Marine fighter pilot during World War II, McMahon sold vegetable slicers on Atlantic City's boardwalk to...

96. Robert Keeshan

Actor | Captain Kangaroo

Television producer and host Robert James Keeshan was born in Lynbrook, Long Island, New York. As a young man he served in the US Marine Corps Reserve. Starting as a page at the National Broadcasting Company, Keeshan later began his on-air career as the original "Clarabell, the Clown" for the NBC ...

97. Buddy Hackett

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

Brooklyn-born Buddy Hackett was known mainly as a nightclub comic, especially in Las Vegas, where he first performed in 1952 and wound up being one of the biggest headliners in that city's history. Hackett always referred to himself as a "saloon comic" and preferred the intimacy of his stage act--...

98. Rod Serling

Writer | The Twilight Zone

A former boxer, paratrooper and general all-around angry young man, Rod Serling was one of the radical new voices that made the "Golden Age" of television. Long before The Twilight Zone (1959), he was known for writing such high-quality scripts as "Patterns" and "Requiem for a Heavyweight," both ...

99. Eddie Albert

Actor | Roman Holiday

A graduate of the University of Minnesota, Eddie Albert was a circus trapeze flier before becoming a stage and radio actor. He made his film debut in 1938 and has worked steadily since, often cast as the friendly, good-natured buddy of the hero but occasionally being cast as a villain; one of his ...

100. Clark Gable

Actor | It Happened One Night

William Clark Gable was born on February 1, 1901 in Cadiz, Ohio, to Adeline (Hershelman) and William Henry Gable, an oil-well driller. He was of German, Irish, and Swiss-German descent. When he was seven months old, his mother died, and his father sent him to live with his maternal aunt and uncle ...