In Memoriam 2003 (Notable Celebs)
by raisleygordon | created - 20 Jun 2011 | updated - 20 Jun 2011 | Public
1. Jonathan Brandis
Actor | The Neverending Story II: The Next Chapter
Born in Danbury, Connecticut, USA, to Greg and Mary, Jonathan Brandis began his career at age 5, acting in several television commercials. He also appeared in small parts in several films and TV shows before his first starring role in the 1990 film The NeverEnding Story II: The Next Chapter (1990). ...
2. David Brinkley
Writer | FDR
Brinkley hosted This Week with David Brinkley from 1982 until his retirement in 1997. In 1992, he won a Peabody Award for his report on the 50th anniversary of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. As a news analyst, Brinkley was known for his terse, biting comments and his dry wit.
3. 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), ...
4. 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 ...
5. Nell Carter
Actress | Gimme a Break!
Her trademark sass complemented by a distinctively adenoidal voice that could out-snarl Eartha Kitt and Fran Drescher put together, short (4'11"), round, and robust Nell Carter was one indomitable, in-your-face firecracker...and it made her a star. She was born Nell Ruth Hardy in 1948 in Birmingham...
6. 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 ...
7. Richard Crenna
Actor | Rambo III
Richard Donald Crenna was born in Los Angeles, California, into a modest-income family, the only child of Edith J. (Pollette) and Domenick Anthony Crenna, a pharmacist. His parents were both of Italian descent. His mother managed a small hotel in downtown Los Angeles, where Richard and his family ...
8. Buddy Ebsen
Actor | The Beverly Hillbillies
Buddy Ebsen began his career as a dancer in the late 1920s in a Broadway chorus. He later formed a vaudeville act with his sister Vilma Ebsen, which also appeared on Broadway. In 1935 he and his sister went to Hollywood, where they were signed for the first of MGM's Eleanor Powell movies, Broadway ...
9. 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--...
10. 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...
11. Katharine Hepburn
Actress | The Lion in Winter
Katharine Houghton Hepburn was born on May 12, 1907 in Hartford, Connecticut to a suffragist, Katharine Martha (Houghton), and a doctor, Thomas Norval Hepburn, who both always encouraged her to speak her mind, develop it fully, and exercise her body to its full potential. An athletic tomboy as a ...
12. Gregory Hines
Actor | History of the World: Part I
Gregory Hines was born on February 14, 1946 in New York City, New York, USA. He was an actor and director, known for History of the World: Part I (1981), Running Scared (1986) and Renaissance Man (1994). He was married to Pamela Koslow and Patricia Panella. He died on August 9, 2003 in Los Angeles,...
13. Graham Jarvis
Actor | What's Up, Doc?
Born in Toronto, Canadian-American actor Graham Jarvis attended Williams College, before moving to New York to pursue a career in theatre. He studied acting at the American Theatre Wing and was an original member of the Lincoln Center Repertory Theater. He appeared in film and television for ...
14. Michael Jeter
Actor | Open Range
Michael Jeter was an American actor from Tennessee. His best known roles were that of math teacher and assistant football coach Herman Stiles in the sitcom "Evening Shade" (1990-1994) and "Mr. Noodle's brother, Mister Noodle" in "Sesame Street", a role he played from 2000 to 2003. He specialized in...
15. Gordon Jump
Actor | WKRP in Cincinnati
The burly character actor Gordon Jump will probably be best remembered for the role of the radio station manager Arthur Carlson in the TV sitcom WKRP in Cincinnati (1978). This is coincidental since, in the first part of his working life, he was found either behind a microphone or camera in stints ...
16. Hope Lange
Actress | Death Wish
One of the most natural beauties of the 1960s with a gentle voice and personality to match, blonde Hope Lange was born in Redding Ridge, Connecticut, and performed on stage from the age of nine. She studied both drama and dance under Martha Graham, did some modeling and then worked in stock ...
17. Donald O'Connor
Actor | Singin' in the Rain
Born into a vaudeville family, O'Connor was the youthful figure cutting a rug in several Universal musicals of the 1940s. His best-known musical work is probably Singin' in the Rain (1952), in which he did an impressive dance that culminated in a series of backflips off the wall. O'Connor was also ...
18. Gregory Peck
Actor | To Kill a Mockingbird
Eldred Gregory Peck was born on April 5, 1916 in La Jolla, California, to Bernice Mae (Ayres) and Gregory Pearl Peck, a chemist and druggist in San Diego. He had Irish (from his paternal grandmother), English, and some German, ancestry. His parents divorced when he was five years old. An only child...
19. John Ritter
Actor | Sling Blade
Jonathan Southworth Ritter was born in Burbank, California, on September 17, 1948. He was the son of legendary country singer/actor Tex Ritter (born Woodward Maurice Ritter) and his wife, actress Dorothy Fay (née Dorothy Fay Southworth). The couple married in 1941 and had their first child, Tom ...
20. Fred Rogers
Actor | Mister Rogers' Neighborhood
Fred Rogers was the host of the popular long-running public television children's show Mister Rogers' Neighborhood. The show debuted in Pittsburgh in 1967 and was picked up by PBS the next year, becoming a staple of public TV stations around the United States. Rogers' mild manner, cardigan sweaters...
21. 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)...
22. Florence Stanley
Actress | Atlantis: The Lost Empire
Florence Stanley was born Florence Schwartz on July 1, 1924 in Chicago. She enjoyed a prolific career in the theatre before achieving fame on television as Abe Vigoda's long-suffering, neglected wife, Bernice, on Barney Miller (1975), and later, as Bernice Fish in the short-lived spinoff Fish (1977)...
23. Lynne Thigpen
Actress | The Warriors
Multi-talented actress Lynne Thigpen was born Cherlynne Thigpen in Joliet, Illinois, on December 22, 1948. She performed in community theater and university theater productions while attending the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Following graduation, she taught high-school English for a...
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