All-Time Legends

1. Leonardo Da Vinci

Writer | The Year of Living Locked Up

The archetypal "Renaissance Man," Leonardo da Vinci was one of the greatest scientific minds as well as one of the greatest visual artists the human race has ever produced. The illegitimate son of a wealthy Florentine notary, Piero da Vinci, and a peasant woman named Caterina, Leonardo was born in ...

2. Raphael

Art_department | Parajanov: The Last Spring

Raphael was born on April 6, 1483 in Urbino, Duchy of Urbino [now Marche, Italy]. He is known for Parajanov: The Last Spring (1992), Night Descends on Treasure Island (1940) and Sister Wendy at the Norton Simon Museum (2002). He died on April 6, 1520 in Rome, Papal State [now Lazio, Italy].

3. Henry VIII

Soundtrack | Hawaiian Eye

Henry VIII (28 June 1491 - 28 January 1547) was King of England from 22 April 1509 until his death in 1547. Henry is best known for his six marriages, and for his efforts to have his first marriage (to Catherine of Aragon) annulled. His disagreement with Pope Clement VII about such an annulment led...

4. William Shakespeare

Writer | The Tragedy of Macbeth

William Shakespeare's birthdate is assumed from his baptism on April 25. His father John was the son of a farmer who became a successful tradesman; his mother Mary Arden was gentry. He studied Latin works at Stratford Grammar School, leaving at about age 15. About this time his father suffered an ...

5. George Frideric Handel

Soundtrack | Children of Men

Born February 23 1685 in Halle, Germany, he was christened "Georg Friederich Händel" but always signed his name "Georg Friedrich Händel". His father intended for him to go into law, but Händel studied music clandestinely and was eventually allowed to study under an organist. He achieved some ...

6. Johann Sebastian Bach

Soundtrack | Minority Report

Johann Sebastian Bach was born on March 21, 1685, in Eisenach, Thuringia, Germany, into a large and distinguished family of professional musicians. His father, named Johann Ambrosius Bach, was a violinist and trumpeter, employed by the city of Eisenach. His uncles were church organists, court ...

7. George Washington

Writer | In the Words of the Framers: The Creation of the Constitution

George Washington was an American military officer, statesman, and Founding Father who served as the first president of the United States from 1789 to 1797. Appointed by the Continental Congress as commander of the Continental Army, Washington led the Patriot forces to victory in the American ...

8. John Adams

Writer | Biography

John Adams was born on October 30, 1735 in Braintree, Massachusetts, USA. He was a writer, known for Biography (1987). He was married to Abigail Smith. He died on July 4, 1826 in Quincy, Massachusetts, USA.

9. Marquis de Sade

Writer | Sinfonía erótica

Born a rich nobleman, Marquis being his title rather than his birth name, De Sade gradually became a decadent libertine among the French society of Louis XVI. A liberally educated iconoclast, he wrote prose and verse, and specialized in testing the limits of decency, breaking tabboos and shocking ...

10. Thomas Jefferson

Writer | Hamilton/Jefferson

Thomas Jefferson was an American statesman, diplomat, lawyer, architect, philosopher, and Founding Father who served as the third president of the United States from 1801 to 1809. He was previously the second vice president of the United States under John Adams and the first United States secretary...

11. James Madison

Writer | 1787 the American Constitution

He enjoyed a humanistic school education. Madison completed his studies in 1771 with a Bachelor of Arts. He showed particular interest in the new ideas of the time, the Enlightenment, with which he dealt intensively. He became politically active at an early age. In 1776 he was elected to the ...

12. William Bligh

Writer | Biography

Captain (later Vice Admiral) William Bligh will be remembered as the infamous captain of the HMS Bounty. He went to sea at the age of 15 as sailing master to the famous explorer Captain James Cook on his 2nd voyage round the world (1772-4) aboard the HMS Resolution. It was he who discovered ...

13. Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

Soundtrack | Amadeus

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart grew up in Salzburg under the regulation of his strict father Leopold who also was a famous composer of his time. His abilities in music were obvious even when Mozart was still young so that in 1762 at the age of six, his father took him with his elder sister on a concert ...

14. William Blake

Soundtrack | La grande bellezza

William Blake (28 November 1757 - 12 August 1827) was an English poet, painter, and print-maker. Largely unrecognized during his life, Blake is now considered a seminal figure in the history of the poetry and visual art of the Romantic Age. What he called his "prophetic works" were said by ...

15. James Monroe

James Monroe was born on April 28, 1758 in Westmoreland County, Virginia, USA. He was a writer. He was married to Elizabeth Kortright. He died on July 4, 1831 in New York City, New York, USA.

16. Andrew Jackson

Writer | Biography

Andrew Jackson was an American lawyer, general, and statesman who served as the seventh president of the United States from 1829 to 1837. Before being elected to the presidency, Jackson gained fame as a general in the United States Army and served in both houses of the U.S. Congress. An ...

17. Napoléon Bonaparte

Writer | Le mémorial de Sainte-Hélène

Napoleon, also Napoleon Bonaparte and later known by his name Napoleon I, was a French military and political leader who rose to prominence during the French Revolution and led several successful campaigns during the Revolutionary Wars. He was the DE factor leader of the French Republic as First ...

18. Ludwig van Beethoven

Soundtrack | Elysium

Beethoven was the child of a Flamian musician family and became a member of the electoral orchestra of Bonn in 1783. In 1787 he studied at Mozart's in Vienna and in 1792 he moved all to Vienna becoming a student of Joseph Haydn. The Vienna High Society loved him as a piano player as well as as ...

19. Jane Austen

Writer | Sense and Sensibility

Jane Austen was born on December 16th, 1775, to the local rector, Rev. George Austen (1731-1805), and Cassandra Leigh (1739-1827). She was the seventh of eight children. She had one older sister, Cassandra. In 1783 she went to Southampton to be taught by a relative, Mrs. Cawley, but was brought ...

20. Lord Byron

Writer | Don Juan DeMarco

Lord Byron seemed destined from birth to tragedy. His father was the handsome but feckless Captain John "Mad Jack" Byron and his mother the Scottish heiress Catherine Gordon, the only child of the Laird of Gight.

Captain Byron abandoned his wife and child leaving Catherine to bring up young Byron on...

21. Franz Schubert

Soundtrack | Minority Report

Schubert was musically educated at the "Hofkapelle" in Vienna where he sang as a boy but then had to quit in order to help his father at school. Four years later, he became an independent composer and was destined to live in poverty from then onwards. Having an introverted personality, Schubert ...

22. Mary Shelley

Writer | Young Frankenstein

Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley (née Godwin; 30 August 1797 - 1 February 1851) was an English novelist, short story writer, dramatist, essayist, biographer, and travel writer, best known for her Gothic novel "Frankenstein: or, The Modern Prometheus" (1818). She also edited and promoted the works of her...

23. Victor Hugo

Writer | Les Misérables

Although Hugo was fascinated by poems from childhood on, he spent some time at the polytechnic university of Paris until he dedicated all his work to literature. He was one of the few authors who were allowed to reach popularity during his own lifetime and one of the leaders of French romance.

After...

24. Hans Christian Andersen

Writer | Frozen

Andersen experienced an unhappy childhood marked by deep poverty. When he was 14 years old, he left his parents' home and fled alone to Copenhagen. Here the director of the Royal Theater, Jonas Collin, took care of the child and gave him shelter and work. With his help, the young Hans Christian ...

25. Abraham Lincoln

Writer | Lincoln's Gettysburg Address

Abraham Lincoln was an American politician from Kentucky. He was the second presidential candidate of the then-new Republican Party, following John Charles Frémont (1813 - 1890). He served as President of the United States from 1861 to 1865, during the American Civil War. He was assassinated in ...

26. Frédéric Chopin

Soundtrack | The Avengers

Frédéric François Chopin was born Fryderyk Franciszek Chopin, on March 1, 1810, in Zelazowa Wola, Masovia region, Duchy of Warsaw, Poland. His father, named Mikolaj (Nicolas) Chopin, was a Frenchman who came to Poland from Lorraine, and eventually became professor at Warsaw Lyceum. His mother, ...

27. Charles Dickens

Writer | Great Expectations

Charles Dickens' father was a clerk at the Naval Pay Office, and because of this the family had to move from place to place: Plymouth, London, Chatham. It was a large family and despite hard work, his father couldn't earn enough money. In 1823 he was arrested for debt and Charles had to start ...

28. Charlotte Brontë

Writer | Jane Eyre

Charlotte was born 1816, the third of the six children of Patrick Brontë, an Anglican clergyman, and his wife Maria Branwell Brontë. After their mother's death in 1821, Charlotte and her sisters, Maria and Elizabeth, were sent to Cowan Bridge Clergy Daughters' School, which Charlotte would later ...

29. Fyodor Dostoevsky

Writer | The Double

Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky was born on November 11, 1821, in Moscow, Russia. He was the second of seven children of Mikhail Andreevich and Maria Dostoevsky. His father, a doctor, was a member of the Russian nobility, owned serfs and had a considerable estate near Moscow where he lived with his ...

30. Johann Strauss

Soundtrack | 2001: A Space Odyssey

Johann Strauss (or Johann Strauss son), one of Austrian music's most famous names who studied music secretly against his father's will, later became the leader of his father's band and the indisputable "waltz king"; his waltz 'On the Beautiful Blue Danube', is the main theme in Stanley Kubrick's ...

31. Lev Tolstoy

Writer | Anna Karenina

Count Lev Nikolaevich Tolstoy was born on September 9, 1828, in his ancestral estate Yasnaya Polyana, South of Moscow, Russia. He was the fourth of five children in a wealthy family of Russian landed Gentry. His parents died when he was a child, and he was brought up by his elder brothers and ...

32. Lewis Carroll

Writer | Alice in Wonderland

Lewis Carroll was the pen name of Charles L. Dodgson, author of the children's classics "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland" and "Through the Looking-Glass."

Born on January 27, 1832 in Daresbury, Cheshire, England, Charles Dodgson wrote and created games as a child. At age 20 he received a ...

33. Johannes Brahms

Soundtrack | Grosse Pointe Blank

German Romantic composer Johannes Brahms was born in Hamburg in 1833 and died in Vienna, Austria in 1897. A perfectionist, he often compared himself unfavorably to composers such as Beethoven and ended up destroying many compositions without their ever being heard. While basically conservative, he ...

34. Mark Twain

Writer | Big River

Mark Twain, born Samuel Langhorne Clemens in Florida, Missouri in 1835, grew up in Hannibal. He was a steamboat pilot on the Mississippi River. Throughout his career, Twain served as a writer, lecturer, reporter, editor, printer, and prospector. Twain took his pen name from an alert cry used on his...

35. Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky

Soundtrack | Smurfs

Pyotr (Peter) Ilyich Tchaikovsky was born on May 7, 1840, in Votkinsk, Vyatka region, Russia. He was the second of six children (five brothers and one sister). His father, named Ilya Chaikovsky, was a mining business executive in Votkinsk. His father's ancestors were from Ukraine and Poland. His ...

36. Antonín Dvorák

Soundtrack | Ginga Eiyuu Densetsu

Antonin Dvorak was a son of butcher, but he did not follow his father's trade. While assisting his father part-time, he studied music, and graduated from the Prague Organ School in 1859. He also was an accomplished violinist and violist, and joined the Bohemian Theatre Orchestra, which was under ...

37. Edvard Grieg

Soundtrack | Smurfs

Edvard Hagerup Grieg (Greig) was born on on June 15, 1843, in Bergen, Norway. His father, named Alexander Greig (originally McGregor), was English consul of Scottish origin. His mother, named Gesine Hagerup, was an educated pianist. Grieg grew up among three sisters and an elder brother. He began ...

38. Thomas A. Edison

Director | The Trick Cyclist

Thomas A. Edison was born on February 11, 1847 in Milan, Ohio, USA as Thomas Alva Edison. He was a producer and director, known for silent movies such as, The Trick Cyclist (1901), The Patchwork Girl of Oz (1914) and Bicycle Trick Riding, No. 2 (1899). He also produced the first American film ...

39. Bram Stoker

Writer | Dracula

Bram Stoker was born in Dublin, Ireland, in 1847, and gained fame for his novel "Dracula" about an aristocratic vampire in Transylvania. The sequel, "Dracula's Guest," was not published for 17 years after the publication of "Dracula," two years after Stoker's death. Stoker also wrote "The Mystery ...

40. Robert Louis Stevenson

Writer | Muppet Treasure Island

Robert Louis Stevenson was a Scottish novelist, poet, and travel writer from Edinburgh. His most popular works include the pirate-themed adventure novel "Treasure Island" (1883), the poetry collection "A Child's Garden of Verses" (1885), the Gothic horror novella "Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr ...

41. Oscar Wilde

Writer | The Picture of Dorian Gray

A gifted poet, playwright and wit, Oscar Wilde was a phenomenon in 19th-century England. He was illustrious for preaching the importance of style in life and art, and of attacking Victorian narrow-mindedness.

Wilde was born in Dublin, Ireland, in 1854. He studied at Trinity College in Dublin before ...

42. L. Frank Baum

Writer | The Wizard of Oz

L. Frank Baum became a success with his 1883 production of "The Maid of Arran" in 1882. He was a dreamer, had a printing press and an amateur newspaper, "The Rose Lawn Home Journal" and published a coin and stamp collecting guide. He failed at almost everything through poor business sense. He had ...

43. George Bernard Shaw

Writer | My Fair Lady

The Anglo-Irish playwright George Bernard Shaw (1856-1950), winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1925, acquired a reputation as the greatest dramatist in the English language during the first half of the 20th Century for the plays he had written at the height of his creativity from "Mrs. ...

44. Theodore Roosevelt

Writer | Simple Gifts

Theodore Roosevelt Jr. (October 27, 1858 - January 6, 1919), often referred to as Teddy or his initials T. R., was an American politician, statesman, conservationist, naturalist, historian, and writer who served as the 26th president of the United States from 1901 to 1909. He previously served as ...

45. Giacomo Puccini

Soundtrack | The Island

Italian composer, one of the greatest exponents of operatic realism, who virtually brought the history of Italian opera to an end. His mature operas include "La Bohème" (1896), "Tosca" (1900), "Madama Butterfly" (1904), and "Turandot" left incomplete.

46. Arthur Conan Doyle

Writer | Sherlock Holmes

Arthur Conan Doyle was a British writer of Irish descent, considered a major figure in crime fiction. His most famous series of works consisted of the "Sherlock Holmes" stories (1887-1927), consisting of four novels and 56 short stories. His other notable series were the "Professor Challenger" ...

47. Anton Chekhov

Writer | Kis Uykusu

Anton Pavlovich Chekhov was born in 1860, the third of six children to a family of a grocer, in Taganrog, Russia, a southern seaport and resort on the Azov Sea. His father, a 3rd-rank Member of the Merchant's Guild, was a religious fanatic and a tyrant who used his children as slaves. Young Chekhov...

48. William Randolph Hearst

Zander the Great

William Randolph Hearst was the greatest newspaper baron in the history of the United States and is the person whom Citizen Kane (1941), widely regarded as the greatest film ever made, is primarily based on. While there are many similarities between Charles Foster Kane, as limned by the great Orson...

49. Rudyard Kipling

Writer | The Man Who Would Be King

Rudyard Kipling was born in Bombay, Maharashtra, India, the son of John Lockwood Kipling, a museum director and author and illustrator. This was at the height of the "British Raj", so he was brought up by Indian nurses ("ayahs"), who taught him something of the beliefs and tongues of India. He was ...

50. H.G. Wells

Writer | The War of the Worlds

Writer, born in Bromley, Kent. He was apprenticed to a draper, tried teaching, studied biology in London, then made his mark in journalism and literature. He played a vital part in disseminating the progressive ideas which characterized the first part of the 20th-c. He achieved fame with scientific...

51. Henry Travers

Actor | It's a Wonderful Life

British-born Henry Travers was a veteran of the English stage before emigrating to the U.S. in 1917. He gained more stage experience there on Broadway working with the Theatre Guild, and began his long film career with Reunion in Vienna (1933). Travers' kindly, grandfatherly demeanor became ...

52. Harry Houdini

Actor | The Man from Beyond

The great American escape artist and magician Houdini (immortalized by a memorable performance by Tony Curtis in the eponymous 1953 film) was born Erich Weiss on March 24, 1874 in Budapest, Hungary, though he often gave his birthplace as Appleton, Wisconsin, where he was raised. One of five ...

53. Robert Frost

Writer | Telefon

Robert Lee Frost, arguably the greatest American poet of the 20th century, was born in San Francisco, California, on March 26, 1874. His father, William Prescott Frost Jr., was from a Lawrence, Massachusetts, family of Republicans, and his mother, Isabelle Moodie Frost, was an immigrant from ...

54. Winston Churchill

Writer | Matinee Theater

Born in Blenheim Palace, the residence of his grandfather, the 7th Duke of Marlborough. His father was the Duke's third son, Lord Randolph Churchill. His mother, Jennie Jerome, was the daughter of an American financier.

After passing through famous English public schools such as Harrow, he went on ...

55. D.W. Griffith

Director | The Birth of a Nation

David Wark Griffith was born in rural Kentucky to Jacob "Roaring Jake" Griffith, a former Confederate Army colonel and Civil War veteran. Young Griffith grew up with his father's romantic war stories and melodramatic nineteenth-century literature that were to eventually shape his movies. In 1897 ...

56. Charles Coburn

Actor | The More the Merrier

A cigar-smoking, monocled, swag-bellied character actor known for his Old South manners and charm. In 1918 he and his first wife formed the Coburn Players and appeared on Broadway in many plays. With her death in 1937, he accepted a Hollywood contract and began making films at the age of sixty.

57. Edmund Gwenn

Actor | Miracle on 34th Street

There are very few character actors from the 1930s, '40s or '50s who rose to the rank of stardom. Only a rare man or woman reached the level of renown and admiration, and had enough audience appeal, to be the first name in a cast's billing, a name that got marquee posting. Charles Coburn comes to ...

58. Lionel Barrymore

Actor | You Can't Take It with You

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

59. George M. Cohan

Soundtrack | The Phantom President

American composer, librettist, actor, dancer, author, director, and producer on the stage. Started his career in his family vaudeville shows, came to Broadway at the beginning of the 20th century. Was the composer of the American battle hymn of World War 1, 'Over There' Received the Congressional ...

60. Joseph Stalin

Self | One Inch from Victory

Joseph Stalin (a code name meaning "Man of Steel") was born Iosif (Joseph) Vissarionovich Dzhugashvili in 1878 in Gori, Georgia, the Transcaucasian part of the Russian Empire. His father was a cobbler named Vissarion Dzhugashvili, a drunkard who beat him badly and frequently and left the family ...

61. E.M. Forster

Writer | Howards End

E.M. Forster was born on January 1, 1879 in London, England, UK. He was a writer, known for Howards End (1992), A Room with a View (1985) and The Machine Stops (2009). He died on June 7, 1970 in Coventry, Warwickshire, England, UK.

62. Albert Einstein

Writer | Schooling the World

Albert Einstein was born in Ulm, Kingdom of Württemberg, to a German Jewish family. He was the son of Pauline (Koch) and Hermann Einstein, a featherbed salesman. Albert began reading and studying science at a young age, and he graduated from a Swiss high school when he was 17. He then attended a ...

63. Ethel Barrymore

Actress | The Spiral Staircase

Ethel Barrymore was the second of three children seemingly destined for the actor's life of their parents Maurice and Georgiana. Maurice Barrymore had emigrated from England in 1875, and after graduating from Cambridge in law had shocked his family by becoming an actor. Georgiana Drew of ...

64. Samuel Goldwyn

Producer | The Best Years of Our Lives

Famed for his relentless ambition, bad temper and genius for publicity, Samuel Goldwyn became Hollywood's leading "independent" producer -- largely because none of his partners could tolerate him for long. Born Shmuel (or Schmuel) Gelbfisz, probably in 1879, in the Jewish section of Warsaw, he was ...

65. Max Schreck

Actor | Nosferatu, eine Symphonie des Grauens

Max Schreck was born in Berlin. He worked in an apprenticeship until his father's death before enrolling into a school for acting. He toured the country with his peers and was a member of several theaters until he became a part of Max Reinhardt's group of innovative German actors. He played mostly ...

66. Jane Darwell

Actress | The Grapes of Wrath

Missouri-born Jane Darwell was born Patti Woodard, the daughter of William Robert Woodard, president of the Louisville Southern Railroad, and Ellen (Booth) Woodard, in Palmyra, Missouri, where she grew up on a ranch . She nursed ambitions to be an opera singer, but put it off because of her ...

67. Sydney Greenstreet

Actor | The Maltese Falcon

Sydney Greenstreet's father was a leather merchant with eight children. Sydney left home at age 18 to make his fortune as a Ceylon tea planter, but drought forced him out of business and back to England. He managed a brewery and, to escape boredom, took acting lessons. His stage debut was as a ...

68. Mack Sennett

Producer | A Small Town Idol

Mack Sennett was born Michael Sinnott on January 17, 1880 in Danville, Quebec, Canada, to Irish immigrant farmers. When he was 17, his parents moved the family to East Berlin, Connecticut, and he became a laborer at American Iron Works, a job he continued when they moved to Northampton, ...

69. W.C. Fields

Actor | It's a Gift

William Claude Dukenfield was the eldest of five children born to Cockney immigrant James Dukenfield and Philadelphia native Kate Felton. He went to school for four years, then quit to work with his father selling vegetables from a horse cart. At eleven, after many fights with his alcoholic father ...

70. Helen Keller

Writer | Whirlpool

Helen Keller contracted a virulent childhood disease which resulted in complete loss of sight and hearing at nineteen months. Her parents futilely sought help for her, as did family friend Alexander Graham Bell. Finally, when Keller was seven, Annie Sullivan, a young teacher, was hired by the ...

71. Tod Browning

Director | Dracula

Belonging to a well-situated family, Charles Browning fell in love at the age of 16 with a dancer of a circus. Following her began his itinerary of being clown, jockey and director of a variety theater which ended when he met D.W. Griffith and became an actor. He made his debut in Intolerance (1916)...

72. Cecil B. DeMille

Producer | The Ten Commandments

His parents Henry C. DeMille and Beatrice DeMille were playwrights. His father died when he was 12, and his mother supported the family by opening a school for girls and a theatrical company. Too young to enlist in the Spanish-American War, Cecil followed his brother William C. de Mille to the New ...

73. Pablo Picasso

Art_department | Something's Gotta Give

Pablo Picasso, one of the most recognized figures of 20th century art, who co-created such styles as Cubism and Surrealism, was also among most innovative, influential, and prolific artists of all time.

He was born Pablo Ruiz Picasso on October 6, 1881, in Malaga, Spain. He was the first child of ...

74. Franklin D. Roosevelt

Writer | The President's Mystery

Franklin Delano Roosevelt was born on January 30, 1882, in Hyde Park, New York, to James and Sara Roosevelt. His father was 54 at the time of FDR's birth and already had a grown son, nicknamed "Rosy". Sarah was only 27 when FDR was born. Growing up, FDR had a happy but sheltered childhood. His ...

75. John Barrymore

Actor | Twentieth Century

John Barrymore was born John Sidney Blyth on February 15, 1882 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. An American stage and screen actor whose rise to superstardom and subsequent decline is one of the legendary tragedies of Hollywood. A member of the most famous generation of the most famous theatrical ...

76. Leopold Stokowski

Soundtrack | Fantasia

Flamboyant, latterly white-maned, U.S. conductor known best for his popularization of classical music. (He is also known for teaching 'Mickey Mouse' a few things about music in Walt Disney's Fantasia (1940), in which Stokowski was featured with the Philadelphia Orchestra). He was a pioneer in the ...

77. James Gleason

Actor | The Night of the Hunter

James Gleason was born in New York City to William Gleason and Mina Crolius, who were both in the theatre. He was married to Lucile Gleason (born Lucile Webster), and had a son, Russell Gleason. As a young man James fought in the Spanish-American War. After the war he joined the stock company at ...

78. Donald Crisp

Actor | How Green Was My Valley

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

79. Bela Lugosi

Actor | Dracula

Bela Lugosi was born Béla Ferenc Dezsö Blaskó on October 20, 1882, Lugos, Hungary, Austria-Hungary (now Lugoj, Romania), to Paula de Vojnich and István Blaskó, a banker. He was the youngest of four children. During WWI, he volunteered and was commissioned as an infantry lieutenant, and was wounded ...

80. Estelle Winwood

Actress | The Producers

When Estelle saw the girl on a white horse at the circus, she then decided that she wanted to be an actress. And she was from the age of 5, to the disapproval of her father. Her mother had her train with the Liverpool Repertory Company, and Estelle performed in many plays and many roles in the West...

81. Lon Chaney

Actor | He Who Gets Slapped

Although his parents were deaf, Leonidas Chaney became an actor and also owner of a theatre company (together with his brother John). He made his debut at the movies in 1912, and his filmography is vast. Lon Chaney was especially famous for his horror parts in movies like e.g. Quasimodo in The ...

82. Walter Huston

Actor | The Treasure of the Sierra Madre

For many years Walter Huston had two passions: his career as an engineer and his vocation for the stage. In 1909 he dedicated himself to the theatre, and made his debut on Broadway in 1924. In 1929 he journeyed to Hollywood, where his talent and ability made him one of the most respected actors in ...

83. Douglas Fairbanks

Actor | The Thief of Bagdad

Douglas Fairbanks was born Douglas Elton Thomas Ullman in Denver, Colorado, to Ella Adelaide (nee Marsh) and Hezekiah Charles Ullman, an attorney and native of Pennsylvania, who was a captain for the Union forces during the Civil War. Fairbanks' paternal grandparents were German Jewish immigrants, ...

84. Franz Kafka

Writer | Le procès

Franz Kafka was born into a German-speaking Jewish family in Prague, Austrian Empire, in 1883. His father, Hermann Kafka, was a business owner and a domestic tyrant, frequently abusing his son. Kafka later admitted to his father, "My writing was all about you...". He believed that his father broke ...

85. Marion Lorne

Actress | Strangers on a Train

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 ...

86. Burt Mustin

Actor | The Twilight Zone

Burt Mustin was a salesman most of his life, but got his first taste of show business as the host of a weekly radio variety show on KDKA Pittsburgh in 1921. He appeared onstage in "Detective Story" at Sombrero Playhouse in Phoenix Arizona, and played the janitor in the movie version, (Detective ...

87. Harry Langdon

Actor | His First Flame

Langdon first performed when he ran away from home at the age of 12-13 to join a travelling medicine show. In 1903 he scored a lasting success in vaudeville with an act called "Johnny's New Car" which he performed for twenty years. In 1923, he signed with Principal Pictures as a series star, but ...

88. Emil Jannings

Actor | The Last Command

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

89. Billie Burke

Actress | The Wizard of Oz

Billie Burke was born Mary William Ethelbert Appleton Burke on August 7, 1885 in Washington, D.C. Her father was a circus clown, and as a child she toured the United States and Europe with the circus (before motion pictures and after the stage, circuses were the biggest form of entertainment in the...

90. Lionel Atwill

Actor | To Be or Not to Be

Lionel Atwill was born into a wealthy family and was educated at London's prestigious Mercer School to become an architect, but his interest turned to the stage. He worked his way progressively into the craft and debuted at age 20 at the Garrick Theatre in London. He acted and improved regularly ...

91. Hedda Hopper

Actress | Sunset Blvd.

Her father was a butcher. In 1913 she met and married matinée idol DeWolf Hopper Sr. and in 1915 they moved to Hollywood, where both began active film careers. He became a star with Triangle Company, she began in vamp parts and turned to supporting roles. After her divorce she appeared in dozens of...

92. Erich von Stroheim

Actor | Sunset Blvd.

Erich von Stroheim was born Erich Oswald Stroheim in 1885, in Vienna, Austria, to Johanna (Bondy), from Prague, and Benno Stroheim, a hatter from Gleiwitz, Germany (now Gliwice, Poland). His family was Jewish.

After spending some time working in his father's hat factory, he emigrated to America ...

93. George S. Patton

Self | Nazi Concentration Camps

George S. Patton III was a highly successful and highly controversial general who held Corps- and Army-level commands during World War II. Because of his great competence as a battlefield commander, Patton might have led the American troops during the invasion of Normandy; however, his impolitic ...

94. Charles Ruggles

Actor | The Parent Trap

Charles Ruggles had one of the longest careers in Hollywood, lasting more than 50 years and encompassing more than 100 films. He made his film debut in 1914 in The Patchwork Girl of Oz (1914) and worked steadily after that. He was memorably paired with Mary Boland in a series of comedies in the ...

95. Al Jolson

Actor | The Jazz Singer

Al Jolson was known in the industry as "The World's Greatest Entertainer," for well over 40 years. After his death his influence continued unabated with such performers as Sammy Davis Jr., Elvis Presley, Mick Jagger, David Bowie, Jackie Wilson and Jerry Lee Lewis all mentioning him as an ...

96. Leo G. Carroll

Actor | North by Northwest

One of the most indispensable of character actors, Leo G. Carroll was already involved in the business of acting as a schoolboy in Gilbert & Sullivan productions. Aged 16, he portrayed an old man in 'Liberty Hall'. In spite of the fact, that he came from a military family, and , perhaps, because of...

97. Ed Wynn

Actor | Alice in Wonderland

An old-fashioned comedian, who, by recommendation by his son Keenan Wynn, became one of the world's most beloved clowns, and one of the best actors of his time. He was born on November 9, 1886. He performed in the Ziegfeld Follies, and later had a son Keenan in 1916. He later wrote his own shows, ...

98. Victor McLaglen

Actor | The Quiet Man

Rambunctious British leading man (contrary to popular belief, he was of Scottish ancestry, not Irish) and later character actor primarily in American films, Victor McLaglen was a vital presence in a number of great motion pictures, especially those of director John Ford. McLaglen (pronounced ...

99. Michael Curtiz

Director | Casablanca

Curtiz began acting in and then directing films in his native Hungary in 1912. After WWI, he continued his filmmaking career in Austria and Germany and into the early 1920s when he directed films in other countries in Europe. Moving to the US in 1926, he started making films in Hollywood for Warner...

100. Jeane Dixon

Actress | The Golden Girls

Jeane Dixon was, arguably, the most famous American astrologer and psychic in the pop culture of the post-World War II period due to her syndicated newspaper column, television talk-show appearances, and a best-selling biography. Dixon proved more of a celebrity and entertainer than a serious ...