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Alda, Robert
Born Alfonso D'Abruzzo to a New York City Italian family in 1914, Alda began singing to supplement his income while studying architecture at New York University. This part-time work led to a career in radio, stage, film, and television that spanned over sixty years. Alda had two sons, Alan and Antony, who followed their father into acting. Robert Alda died in 1986.
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Astor, Mary, 1906-1987
Born in Illinois in 1906 as Lucile Langhanke, Mary Astor began her career at thirteen, after entering a Hollywood movie magazine contest. After her father moved the family to New York, she signed a brief contract with Famous Players-Lasky and took the stage name of Mary Astor. In 1922, she performed in her first feature-length film and, after a contract extension, the family moved to Hollywood in 1923. Over the course of her forty-five year career, Astor would act in 155 films, winning numerous awards, and write five novels. She died in 1987.
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Biggs, Douglas
Walter Douglass Biggs was born in Missouri in 1903, the eldest child of Walter and Lucile Biggs. By 1924, the family was living in Los Angeles, where Douglas found work as a film editor, working with director Lewis Milestone. In 1927, Biggs was credited as editor on his first film, Two Arabian Knights, and continued to serve as editor or editorial advisor for Howard Hughes and the Caddo Company through 1932. He later worked for the MGM and RKO studios, editing twenty-two films before his death in 1968.
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Cormack, Bartlett, 1898-1942
Born in 1898, Edward Bartlett Cormack wrote his first play as a nineteen year-old college student before taking a job as a newspaper reporter. In 1927, he wrote The Racket as a stage play; a year later he created the silent screen version of the story for Howard Hughes. The film was nominated for a best picture award in 1929. Bartlett would go on to write twenty-five plays and screenplays before his death in 1944.
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Bradley, Leslie, 1907-1974
Leslie Bradley was a British character actor, born in Aldershot, England in 1907. Best known for his strong supporting roles in films of the 1950s, including The Crimson Pirate (1952) and The Conqueror (1956), Bradley moved to television in the 1960s. He died in California in 1974.
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Brands, X, 1927-2000
American actor of European descent. Most widely known for playing a Native American character on the CBS television show Yancy Derringer. He was generally well-received by the Pawnee Nation of Oklahoma at the time; they believed that he made a sincere effort to accurately represent their culture and language. He died in 2000.
Source:
Rowan, Terry M. Who's Who In Hollywood! N.p.: Lulu.com, 2015, pg. 391.
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