Prince Valiant (1954) Premiere
by germanior | created - 16 Nov 2020 | updated - 16 Nov 2020 | Public
1. June Allyson
Actress | Executive Suite
American leading lady whose sweet smile and sunny disposition made her the prototypical girl-next-door of American movies of the 1940s. Raised in semi-poverty in Bronx neighborhoods by her divorced mother, Allyson (nee Ella Geisman) was injured in a fall at age eight and spent four years confined ...
2. Gower Champion
Director | An Evening with Julie Andrews and Harry Belafonte
Gower Champion was born on June 22, 1921 in Geneva, Illinois, USA. He was an actor and director, known for An Evening with Julie Andrews and Harry Belafonte (1969), Lovely to Look At (1952) and Hello, Dolly! (1969). He was married to Karla Most and Marge Champion. He died on August 25, 1980 in New ...
3. Marge Champion
Actress | The Party
One of the great dancer and choreographers in both movies and stage, Marge Champion was best known as the former wife of Gower Champion, when they worked together as a highly successfully dancing team in the MGM musical years. After retiring from movies, Champion worked as a dance teacher and as a ...
4. Jeanne Crain
Actress | Pinky
Jeanne Crain was born in Barstow, California, on May 25, 1925. The daughter of a high school English teacher and his wife, Jeanne was moved to Los Angeles not long after her birth after her father got another teaching position in that city. While in junior high school, Jeanne played the lead in a ...
5. Jeff Chandler
Actor | Broken Arrow
Jeff was born in Brooklyn and attended Erasmus High School. After high school, he took a drama course and worked in stock companies for two years. His next role was that of an officer in World War II. After he was discharged from the service, he became busy acting in radio dramas and comedies until...
6. 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 ...
7. Bella Darvi
Actress | Hell and High Water
Bella Darvi became a 50s symbol for one of the many movie "Cinderellas" whose bright and beautiful Hollywood fairy tale would come crashing down, ending in bitterness and tragedy. A self-destructive brunette beauty, her life was full of misfortune. Of Polish/French descent, she miraculously ...
8. Nancy Reagan
Actress | Hellcats of the Navy
Nancy Reagan was born on July 6, 1921 in New York City, New York, USA. She was an actress, known for Hellcats of the Navy (1957), Night Into Morning (1951) and Donovan's Brain (1953). She was married to Ronald Reagan. She died on March 6, 2016 in Los Angeles, California, USA.
9. Mitzi Gaynor
Actress | South Pacific
It is perhaps ironic that the film for which this performer is best remembered was also her musical swansong and one of her very last motion picture appearances. That was, of course, South Pacific (1958), with Mitzi Gaynor famously cast as feisty Ensign Nellie Forbush, warbling "I'm Gonna Wash That...
10. Sterling Hayden
Actor | Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb
Born to George & Frances Simonson Walter, and named Sterling Relyea Walter. Father died in 1925. Adopted by stepfather 'James Hayden' renamed Sterling Walter Hayden. Grew up in New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, Washington D.C., and Maine. Though very poor, attended prep school at ...
11. Gene Kelly
Soundtrack | Singin' in the Rain
Eugene Curran Kelly was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, the third son of Harriet Catherine (Curran) and James Patrick Joseph Kelly, a phonograph salesman. His father was of Irish descent and his mother was of Irish and German ancestry.
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer was the largest and most powerful studio in...
12. William Holden
Actor | Stalag 17
Billy Wilder proclaimed William Holden to be "the ideal motion picture actor". For almost four decades, the handsome, affable 'Golden Holden' was among Hollywood's most durable and engaging stars. He was born William Franklin Beedle Jr., one of three sons to a high school English teacher, Mary ...
13. Janet Leigh
Actress | Psycho
Janet Leigh was the only child of a couple who often moved from town to town. Living in apartments, Janet was a bright child who skipped several grades and finished high school when she was 15. A lonely child, she would spend much of her time at movie theaters. She was a student, studying music and...
14. Brenda Marshall
Actress | The Sea Hawk
This alluring hazel-eyed 1940s leading lady was born Ardis Ankerson on the Philippine island of Negros, one of two siblings. Her father was Otto Peter Ankerson who held an important position as overseer of a large sugar plantation. Following the premature death of her mother in 1925, Ardis and her ...
15. James Mason
Actor | Lolita
James Mason was born in Huddersfield and had a film career spanning over 50 years during which he appeared in over 100 films in England and America but never won an Oscar. Whatever role he played, from the wounded Belfast gunman in Odd Man Out to Rommel in The Desert Fox, his creamy velvet voice ...
16. 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 ...
17. 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 ...
18. Cameron Mitchell
Actor | The High Chaparral
Cameron Mitchell was the son of a minister, but chose a different path from his father. Prior to World War II, in which he served as an Air Force bombardier, Mitchell appeared on Broadway, and, in 1940, an experimental television broadcast, "The Passing of the Third Floor Back". He made his film ...
19. Dick Powell
Actor | Murder, My Sweet
Few actors ever managed a complete image transition as thoroughly as did Dick Powell: in his case, from the boyish, wavy-haired crooner in musicals to rugged crime fighters in film noirs. Powell grew up in the town of Little Rock, Arkansas, one of three brothers (one of them, Howard, ended up as ...
20. Gene Nelson
Actor | Oklahoma!
Gene Nelson was barely a teen when he saw the Fred Astaire movie Flying Down to Rio (1933), which would change his life. It was then that he decided he would be a dancer. After graduating from high school, Nelson joined the Sonja Henie Ice Show and toured for 3 years before joining the Army in ...
21. 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 ...
22. Debra Paget
Actress | The Ten Commandments
An acting career was always in the cards for Debra Paget (nee Debralee Griffin) and her siblings, coming from a show biz family and being the offspring of a "stage mother" anxious to get her kids into the movies. Paget's sister Teala Loring got her movie breaks in the 1940s, Lisa Gaye was a film ...
23. Jean Peters
Actress | Pickup on South Street
Green-eyed beauty Jean Elizabeth Peters flashed across the screen as a bright star during her relatively brief tenure in Hollywood. After just seven years under contract to 20th Century-Fox (1947-54), she joined in the reclusive lifestyle of her eccentric billionaire husband, Howard Hughes, and all...
24. Pilar Wayne
Actress | Sabotear en la selva
Pilar Wayne was born on September 3, 1928 in Peru. She is an actress, known for Sabotear en la selva (1953), Hollywood Greats (1977) and Live! On City Line (1987). She was previously married to Jesse L. Upchurch, Stephan Steward, John Wayne and Richard Weldy.
25. Vincent Price
Actor | The Abominable Dr. Phibes
Actor, raconteur, art collector and connoisseur of haute cuisine are just some of the attributes associated with Vincent Price. He was born Vincent Leonard Price, Jr. in St. Louis, Missouri, to Marguerite Cobb "Daisy" (Wilcox) and Vincent Leonard Price, who was President of the National Candy ...
26. Edmund Purdom
Actor | Mil gritos tiene la noche
Gifted with aristocratic good-looks and a rich speaking voice, English-born thespian Edmund Purdom graced dozens of European genre films in a career that spanned over 50 years.
Born in Hertfordshire and educated in Stratton-on-the-Fosse, Purdom made his professional stage debut at age 21 and worked ...
27. Michael Rennie
Actor | The Day the Earth Stood Still
The British actor Michael Rennie worked as a car salesman and factory manager before he turned to acting. A meeting with a Gaumont-British Studios casting director led to Rennie's first acting job - that of stand-in for Robert Young in Secret Agent (1936) directed by Alfred Hitchcock. He put his ...
28. Ronald Reagan
Actor | Kings Row
Ronald Reagan had quite a prolific career, having catapulted from a Warner Bros. contract player and television star, into serving as president of the Screen Actors Guild, the governorship of California (1967-1975), and lastly, two terms as President of the United States (1981-1989).
Ronald Wilson ...
29. Debbie Reynolds
Actress | Singin' in the Rain
Debbie Reynolds was born Mary Frances Reynolds in El Paso, Texas, the second child of Maxine N. (Harmon) and Raymond Francis Reynolds, a carpenter for the Southern Pacific Railroad. Her film career began at MGM after she won a beauty contest at age 16 impersonating Betty Hutton. Reynolds wasn't a ...
30. Jane Russell
Actress | Gentlemen Prefer Blondes
Ernestine Jane Geraldine Russell was born on June 21, 1921, in Bemidji, Minnesota. Her father was a United States Army lieutenant and her mother had been a student of drama and an actress with a traveling troupe. Once Mr. Russell was mustered out of the service, the family took up residence in ...
31. Gene Tierney
Actress | Laura
With prominent cheekbones, luminous skin and the most crystalline green eyes of her day, Gene Tierney's striking good looks helped propel her to stardom. Her best known role is the enigmatic murder victim in Laura (1944). She was also Oscar-nominated for Leave Her to Heaven (1945). Her acting ...
32. Ursula Thiess
Actress | Bengal Brigade
Gorgeous was too tame a word for this foreigner stunner. Glamorous brunette beauty Ursula Thiess was born Ursula Schmidt in Hamburg, Germany on May 15, 1924, the daughter of Hans Schmidt, who managed a printing company, and Wilhelmine Lange, her turbulent childhood including working as compulsory ...
33. Robert Wagner
Actor | The Towering Inferno
R.J. Wagner was born 1930 in Detroit, the son of a steel executive. His family moved to L.A. when he was six. Always wanting to be an actor, he held a variety of jobs (including one as a golf caddy for Clark Gable) while pursuing his goal, but it was while dining with his parents at a Beverly Hills...
34. John Wayne
Actor | True Grit
John Wayne was born Marion Robert Morrison in Iowa, to Mary Alberta (Brown) and Clyde Leonard Morrison, a pharmacist. He was of English, Scottish, Ulster-Scots, and Irish ancestry.
Clyde developed a lung condition that required him to move his family from Iowa to the warmer climate of southern ...
35. Clifton Webb
Actor | Laura
Already trained in dance and theater, he quit school at age 13 to study music and painting. By 19 he was a professional ballroom dancer in New York, and by his mid-twenties he was performing in musicals, dramas on Broadway and in London, and in silent movies. His first real success in film came in ...
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