Ray Chapman was born in Beaver Dam, Kentucky in 1891. Ten months later and 150 miles away the man who would kill him was born. Ray was an above-average shortstop playing with the Cleveland Indians in the early twentieth century. He led the league in several hitting and fielding categories. He batted .300 in three seasons …
James Whale didn’t care what people in Hollywood thought of him. Whale was openly gay in 1930s Hollywood, at time when gay actors and actresses had to hide their sexual orientation at a risk of jeopardizing their careers. He was an innovative director. Universal Pictures owed its stellar success in the 1930s much in part …
Irene Gibbons was an Oscar-nominated costume designer in Hollywood for thirty years. She took over from Adrian at MGM, and went on to establish her own company, Irene, Inc. She was known only as “Irene” in her screen credits. Doris Day wrote in her 1975 autobiography that she got to know Irene quite well. One …
No doubt Nikola Tesla was a brilliant man. He was one of the world’s greatest electrical engineers. Aside from his work on electromagnetism and electromechanical engineering, Tesla contributed to the establishment of robotics, remote control, radar and computer science, and to the expansion of ballistics, nuclear physics, and theoretical physics. In 1943, the Supreme Court …
Herve Villechaize was born in 1943 in Paris. A malfunction in his endocrine system would leave Herve at a full-grown height of just under 4 feet tall. Herve eventually studied painting and photography at the famed Beaux-Arts Museum in Paris. At the age of 18 he became the youngest artist to ever have his work …
Mary Bickford Dunn was born in 1898 in Ontario, Canada. After her father died, she moved to Los Angeles with her mother and sister. While working as a secretary, the attractive Marie applied for and landed an acting job at the Hollywood studio owned by Mack Sennett. Sennett dubbed her “the exotic French girl,” and …
Willie Stargell was unquestionably the guiding force behind the success of the Pittsburgh Pirates in the late ’70s. He played his entire career — 21 seasons — with The Pirates. He was the league MVP at age 39. Besides being the team’s best player, he kept the clubhouse loose. He even instituted the equivalent of …
Roscoe “Fatty” Arbuckle appeared in several Keystone Kops shorts in 1913. In 1914 Paramount Pictures offered the then-unknown Arbuckle $1,000 a day, 25% of all profits and complete artistic control of movies he made for them. The movies were so lucrative and popular that in 1918 they offered Arbuckle a 3-year, $3 million contract. In …
In the 1930s, Hollywood placed many actresses on the “goddess” pedestal. There was Barbara Stanwyck, Carole Lombard, Betty Grable, Jean Harlow, Lana Turner and many others. There were other actresses, appearing in hundreds of movies, who never achieved “goddess” status. Clara Blandick falls into this category. Clara was born in 1876 on a ship, captained …
I always hated Lucille Ball. I hated “The Lucy Show.” I hated “Here’s Lucy.” And I especially hated “I Love Lucy”. Except I loved William Frawley. I have always been fascinated by William Frawley. Well, maybe not fascinated, but intrigued. Look at him. How did this guy become an actor? And not only was he …
