Adams, Don (13 April 1923–25 September 2005), comedian and actor, was born Donald James Yarmy in New York City, the second of the three children of William Yarmy, a restaurant manager, and Consuelo Morgan. Adams, who grew up on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, liked to read and draw but had an aversion to New York public schools. Much of his youth was spent frequenting the movie theaters on 42nd Street, where he believed he received a better education. At parties he and his neighborhood friends, a number of whom also forged careers in show business, tried to top each other performing comic bits. Adams's forte became impersonations of the Hollywood stars of the day....
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Adams, Don (1923-2005), comedian and actor
Richard H. Gentile
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Adams, Don (1923-2005)
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Don Adams. With Barbara Feldon, on the set of the spoof spy showGet Smart, 10 September 1965. Courtesy of AP Images.
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Bourdain, Anthony (25 June 1956–8 June 2018)
Pete Souza
In
President Barack Obama with Anthony Bourdain at Bún cha Huong Lien Restaurant in Hanoi, Vietnam, 2016, by Pete Souza
President (2009–2017 : Obama). Office of Management and Administration. Office of White House Personnel. Photography Office. (ca. 2010 – 1/20/2017)
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Bourdain, Anthony (25 June 1956–8 June 2018), chef, author, and television personality
Alan Deutschman
Bourdain, Anthony (25 June 1956–8 June 2018), chef, author, and television personality, was born in New York City, the eldest of two sons of Pierre Bourdain, whose father had immigrated from France, and Gladys Bourdain (née Sacksman), who grew up in a middle-class Jewish American family in the Bronx. Pierre managed a record store before working as an executive for the London and Columbia classical music labels. Gladys was a copyeditor at the ...
Article
Caesar, Sid (8 September 1922–12 February 2014), television comedy star
Bruce J. Evensen
Caesar, Sid (8 September 1922–12 February 2014), television comedy star, was born Isaac Sidney Caesar in Yonkers, New York, the youngest of three surviving sons of Max Ziser, a Jew who emigrated from Austria, and his Russian-born wife, Ida Raphael Ziser. As a young boy Sid amused factory workers in his father’s greasy spoon, the St. Claire Buffet and Luncheonette, with Italian, Russian, Polish, Hungarian, and Lithuanian double talk. At eleven, Sid learned to play the saxophone, and he made six dollars a week playing in Mike Cifficello’s Swingtime Six while a student at Yonkers High School....
Article
Clark, Dick (30 November 1929–18 April 2012)
Ann T. Keene
Clark, Dick (30 November 1929–18 April 2012), television host, was born Richard Wagstaff Clark in Bronxville, New York, the second of three children, to Richard A. Clark and Julia Barnard. During Dick’s childhood the family lived in Mt. Vernon, a suburb of New York City, and his father commuted to Manhattan daily for his job as a sales manager for a cosmetics company. The death of his older brother in World War II was a devastating loss for the family, particularly for young Dick, who idolized him....
Article
Fawcett, Farrah (2 February 1947–26 June 2009), model and actress
Bruce J. Evensen
Fawcett, Farrah (2 February 1947–26 June 2009), model and actress, was born Mary Ferrah Leni Fawcett, the second daughter of oil industry pipefitter James William Fawcett and Pauline Alice Evans Fawcett in Corpus Christi, Texas.
Fawcett attended Christ the King, the parish school of St. Patrick’s Catholic Church in Corpus Christi. She had a French, English, and Choctaw Native American ancestry, and when she graduated W. B. Ray High School in ...
Article
Griffith, Andy (7 June 1926–3 July 2012), Broadway, film, and television star
Bruce J. Evensen
Griffith, Andy (7 June 1926–3 July 2012), Broadway, film, and television star, was born Andy Samuel Griffith, the only child of Carl Lee Griffith, a carpenter, and Geneva Nann (Nunn) Griffith in Mount Airy, North Carolina. His parents moved to Ohio, looking for work, and their toddler was raised by his maternal grandmother until he was three. In ...
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Harmon, Tom (1919-1990), football player and sportscaster
Douglas A. Noverr
Harmon, Tom (28 September 1919–15 March 1990), football player and sportscaster, was born Thomas Dudley Harmon in Rensselaer, Indiana, the son of Louis A. Harmon, a steel mill policeman, and Rose Marie Guinn. Harmon grew up in Gary, Indiana, where, under the coaching of Doug Kerr at Horace Mann High School, he earned fourteen varsity letters in four sports, started three years for the football team, was the leading national interscholastic football scorer with 150 points in a season, and won state track and field championships. Coach Kerr steered Harmon toward the University of Michigan, where Kerr had played, and where he took the high school’s backfield each spring for a clinic....
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Keeshan, Robert “Bob” James (27 June 1927–23 January 2004), actor
Ann T. Keene
Keeshan, Robert “Bob” James (27 June 1927–23 January 2004), actor, was born in Lynbrook, Long Island, a suburb of New York City, to Joseph Keeshan, a grocery chain manager, and Margaret Conroy Keeshan. Both parents were émigrés from Ireland. Robert, known as Bob, and his three siblings attended local schools and enjoyed a comfortable upbringing until their father lost his well-paying job in the early 1930s, during the Great Depression. Resettled in the suburb of Forest Hills, the family struggled to make ends meet, and their situation became worse with the sudden death of Margaret Keeshan in ...
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Kupcinet, Irv (1912-2003), sportswriter, columnist, and television host
Bruce J. Evensen
Kupcinet, Irv (31 July 1912–10 November 2003), sportswriter, columnist, and television host, was born in Chicago, the son of Max and Olga Paswell Kupcinet, grocers who had immigrated from Russia. The couple raised their family in a small apartment above a grocery store in Lawndale, a Jewish neighborhood on Chicago's West Side. Some of Irving's earliest memories were of sitting beside his father making deliveries on a horse-drawn bakery truck....
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Messner, Tammy Faye (07 March 1942–20 July 2007), evangelical personality and television performer who rose to fame as Tammy Faye Bakker
Jonathan Root
Messner, Tammy Faye (07 March 1942–20 July 2007), evangelical personality and television performer who rose to fame as Tammy Faye Bakker, was born Tamara Faye LaValley in International Falls, Minnesota, to Rachel and Carl LaValley as the oldest of eight children, two born before her parents’ divorce when she was three and six born after her mother remarried. Life was difficult for Tammy in the gritty working-class town. After her mother’s divorce, the family were outcasts in their strict Pentecostal church where divorce and remarriage were sins equal to adultery. Despite the open hostility often directed their way, the church remained the focal point of their lives. The family was poor. Their house, which friends remembered as “squalid,” did not have indoor plumbing and only had three bedrooms for the entire family with four kids often sharing one bed. When Tammy was ten, she experienced the baptism in the Holy Spirit and spoke in tongues at her mother’s church. She was also popular at church and school. She won queen of Bible camp two summers in a row and participated in theater productions at school. It was while playing a part in ...
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Myerson, Bess (16 July 1924–14 Dec. 2014), politician and television personality
Mandy E. McMichael
Myerson, Bess (16 July 1924–14 Dec. 2014), politician and television personality best remembered as Miss America 1945, was born in Bronx, New York, to Louis Myerson and Bella Podell Myerson, both Jewish immigrants from Russia. She was listed as Bessie on her birth certificate but was known as Bess from an early age. Her father worked as a housepainter and her mother at a number of part-time jobs. Bess had two sisters, one older and one younger, as well as one brother who died before she was born. The family lived in a one-room apartment in the Sholem Aleichem Cooperative Houses. Though the family was not affluent, an emphasis was placed on education, including music education, as Bess’s mother believed it important that a woman be able to support herself financially. Bess studied piano and flute, graduating from the High School of Music and Art in ...
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Owens, Buck (12 Aug. 1929–25 Mar. 2006), country musician, singer, songwriter, bandleader, and television personality
Corey J. Murray
Owens, Buck (12 Aug. 1929–25 Mar. 2006), country musician, singer, songwriter, bandleader, and television personality, was born Alvis Edgar Owens, Jr. in Sherman, Texas, the son of Alvis Edgar Owens and Maicie Azel Ellington, tenant farmers. The Owens family lived a hardscrabble existence, moving frequently in search of work. The younger Alvis was four when he christened himself with his lifelong nickname, calling himself Buck, after a farm mule....
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Perkins, Marlin (1905-1986), zoo director and television personality
Richard Harmond
Perkins, Marlin (28 March 1905–14 June 1986), zoo director and television personality, was born Richard Marlin Perkins in Carthage, Missouri, the son of Joseph Dudley Perkins, a lawyer and judge, and Mynta Mae Miller. Perkins developed his fascination with animals as a child, progressing from a pet dog to the various creatures found on the family farm. “Not just snakes, I also kept possums, raccoons, turtles, frogs, baby coyotes, anything I could find,” he recalled ( ...
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Rolle, Esther (8 Nov. 1920–17 Nov. 1998), film, television and stage actress
Ashley S. Young
Rolle, Esther (8 Nov. 1920–17 Nov. 1998), film, television and stage actress, was born in Pompano Beach, Florida, the ninth child (sometimes reported as the tenth) out of eighteen of Jonathan and Elizabeth Dames Rolle. Her parents both emigrated from the Bahamas to live on a ten-acre vegetable farm, where Jonathan Rolle worked as a sharecropper. As a child Rolle was surrounded by performers, as her older siblings formed a dramatic musical group, The Family Circle, and performed skits and songs for family, friends, and at churches and other similar venues. Unfortunately, by the time she was old enough to join the group, they had disbanded. After graduating from Booker T. Washington High School in Miami in the late 1930s, she moved to New York to live with her older sister and continue her education....
Article
Smith, Anna Nicole (28 November 1967–6 February 2007), model, television personality, and celebrity
Brian Donovan
Smith, Anna Nicole (28 November 1967–6 February 2007), model, television personality, and celebrity, was born Vickie Lynn Hogan in Houston, Texas, to Donald Hogan and Virgie Mae Hogan. By many accounts, her childhood was difficult. She grew up in Mexia, Texas, with her aunt under impoverished conditions; once she allegedly stole toilet paper from a restaurant because her aunt could not afford any. As a teenager, Hogan dropped out of high school, took a job at a fried chicken restaurant, and, in ...
Article
Susskind, David (1920-1987), television producer and talk show host
Mary C. Kalfatovic
Susskind, David (19 December 1920–22 February 1987), television producer and talk show host, was born David Howard Susskind in New York City, the son of Benjamin Susskind, an insurance agent, and Frances Lear. When Susskind was a baby he moved with his family to Brookline, Massachusetts, a comfortable suburb of Boston. After graduating from Brookline High School in 1938, he spent two years at the University of Wisconsin, where he met and in 1939 married classmate Phyllis Briskin, with whom he had three children. He transferred to Harvard University in 1940 and received a bachelor’s degree in politics and government in 1942. Susskind then served in the U.S. Navy for four years. Bored by the long periods of inactivity encountered in the military, energetic Susskind abandoned plans to become a college professor and set his sights on a career in show business, which he called “the most dynamic and interesting field I could get into.”...
Article
Swayze, John Cameron (1906–15 August 1995), television news anchor and product spokesman
Stacey Hamilton
Swayze, John Cameron (1906–15 August 1995), television news anchor and product spokesman, was born in Wichita, Kansas, and grew up in nearby Atchison. After high school, Swayze, whose childhood dream was to become an actor, took a job with the Kansas City Journal-Post...
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Swayze, John Cameron (1906–15 August 1995)
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John Cameron Swayze. On NBC's News Caravan, 1955. Courtesy of the Library of Congress.
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