Trending
Popular people
Harvey Walden IV
Biography
Harvey Walden IV (born December 21, 1966) is a former United States Marine drill instructor, author, actor and television host.
He is best-known in the U.K. and U.S. for scaring the living daylights out of over-weight celebrities and contestants in ITV's and VH1's Celebrity Fit Club as the no-nonsense expert fitness instructor. He joined the U.S. Marines aged 17 and completed his Basic Military Marine training (also referred to as `Boot Camp') at MCRD San Diego, CA. He was a Drill Instructor at MCRD Parris Island, SC. He is a weapons expert and has black belts for various types of martial arts.
Read more
Daryn Tufts
Biography
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
Daryn Tufts (born April 1, 1973 in Arcadia, California) is a writer, director, producer, and actor. Best known for his acting in LDS cinema, Tufts’ writing, producing and directing credits include national feature films, documentaries, and television commercials. Tufts has also performed and taught sketch comedy and improvisational comedy with several professional comedy troupes.
Description above from the Wikipedia article Daryn Tufts, licensed under CC-BY-SA, full list of contributors on Wikipedia.
Read more
Clyde Kusatsu
Biography
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Clyde Kusatsu (born September 13, 1948) is a U.S. actor.
Kusatsu was born and raised in Honolulu, Hawaii, where he attended ʻIolani School. Kusatsu began acting in Honolulu summer stock, and after studying theatre at Northwestern University, started to make his mark on the small screen in the mid-1970s. Usually mustachioed, with a dapper, professional air, he has most often played doctors, but his repertoire has included a generous sampling of teachers (usually college professors), businessmen, detectives, church ministers and other intelligent, middle-class types. With his quiet, wry line delivery, Kusatsu made a memorably clever and hilarious sparring partner for Archie Bunker (Carroll O'Connor) on several episodes of All in the Family as the Reverend Chong, refusing to baptize Archie's grandson without the permission of the boy's parents. During this period Kusatsu also worked with the Asian American theatre group East West Players in Los Angeles.
Kusatsu was subsequently a regular on several series, but neither the adventure Bring 'Em Back Alive (1982–83) nor the Hawaiian-set medical drama Island Son (1989–90) (in which he played one of Richard Chamberlain's colleagues) lasted very long. His many television movies have included the film adaptation of Farewell to Manzanar (1976), about Japanese American internment during World War II. Other M.O.W.s and mini-series have been "And The Sea Will Tell", and "American Tragedy" playing Judge Lance Ito. He had a memorable role in the "Baa Baa Black Sheep" episode "Prisoners of War" as a downed Japanese fighter pilot in the Pacific (1976). (Kusatsu also guest-starred on an episode of Lou Grant on Japanese internment in the U.S.); Golden Land (1988), a Hollywood-set drama based on a William Faulkner story; and the AIDS drama And the Band Played On (1993). He appeared in four M*A*S*H episodes and later starred in the short-lived A.B.C. series All American Girl (1994–1995), the first East Asian familiar sitcom in the U.S.
Feature roles, beginning with Midway (1976), have generally been small, but in the 1990s Kusatsu had roles in Dragon: The Bruce Lee Story (1993, as a history teacher) and In the Line of Fire (1993, as a Secret Service agent). He appeared as a high school English teacher in American Pie (1999). Other recent films have been "ShopGirl" as Mr. Agasa, and in Sydney Pollack's The Interpreter (2005) as Lee Wu, head of security for the United Nations Headquarters. He currently plays the recurring role of Dr. Dennis Okamura on the CBS soap opera The Young and the Restless. Kusatsu starred in Harold & Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay (2008) as Mr. Lee.
Kusatsu is married to Gayle Kusatsu; they have two sons, Kevin and Andrew.
Description above from the Wikipedia article Clyde Kusatsu, licensed under CC-BY-SA, full list of contributors on Wikipedia.
Read more
Sean Connery
Biography
Sir Thomas Sean Connery (August 25, 1930 – October 31, 2020) was a Scottish actor and producer who won an Academy Award, two BAFTA Awards (one being a BAFTA Academy Fellowship Award), and three Golden Globes, including the Cecil B. DeMille Award and a Henrietta Award.
Connery was the first actor to portray the character James Bond in film, starring in seven Bond films (every film from Dr. No to You Only Live Twice, plus Diamonds Are Forever and Never Say Never Again), between 1962 and 1983. In 1988, Connery won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his role in The Untouchables. His films also include Marnie (1964), Murder on the Orient Express (1974), The Man Who Would Be King (1975), A Bridge Too Far (1977), Highlander (1986), Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1989), The Hunt for Red October (1990), Dragonheart (1996), The Rock (1996), and Finding Forrester (2000).
Connery was polled in a 2004 The Sunday Herald as "The Greatest Living Scot" and in a 2011 EuroMillions survey as "Scotland's Greatest Living National Treasure". He was voted by People magazine as both the “Sexiest Man Alive" in 1989 and the "Sexiest Man of the Century” in 1999. He received a lifetime achievement award in the United States with a Kennedy Center Honor in 1999. Connery was knighted in the 2000 New Year Honours for services to film drama.
On 31 October 2020, it was announced that Connery had died at the age of 90.
Description above from the Wikipedia article Sean Connery, licensed under CC-BY-SA, full list of contributors on Wikipedia
Read more
Édith Piaf
Biography
Édith Piaf (born Édith Giovanna Gassion, 19 December 1915 – 10 October 1963) was a French singer, lyricist and actress. Noted as France's national chanteuse, she was one of the country's most widely known international stars.
Piaf's music was often autobiographical, and she specialized in chanson réaliste and torch ballads about love, loss and sorrow. Her most widely known songs include "La Vie en rose" (1946), "Non, je ne regrette rien" (1960), "Hymne à l'amour" (1949), "Milord" (1959), "La Foule" (1957), "L'Accordéoniste" (1940), and "Padam, padam..." (1951).
Since her death in 1963, several biographies and films have studied her life, including 2007's La Vie en rose. Piaf has become one of the most celebrated performers of the 20th century.
Despite numerous biographies, much of Piaf's life is unknown. She was born Édith Giovanna Gassion in Belleville, Paris. Legend has it that she was born on the pavement of Rue de Belleville 72, but her birth certificate says that she was born on 19 December 1915 at the Hôpital Tenon, a hospital located in the 20th arrondissement.
She was named Édith after the World War I British nurse Edith Cavell, who was executed 2 months before Édith's birth for helping French soldiers escape from German captivity. Piaf – slang for "sparrow" – was a nickname she received 20 years later.
Louis Alphonse Gassion (1881–1944), Édith's father, was a street performer of acrobatics from Normandy with a past in the theatre. He was the son of Victor Alphonse Gassion (1850–1928) and Léontine Louise Descamps (1860–1937), known as Maman Tine, a "madam" who ran a brothel in Bernay in Normandy.
Her mother, Annetta Giovanna Maillard, better known professionally as Line Marsa (1895–1945), was a singer and circus performer born in Italy of French descent on her father's side and of Italian and Kabyle on her mother's. Her parents were Auguste Eugène Maillard (1866–1912) and Emma (Aïcha) Saïd Ben Mohammed (1876–1930), daughter of Said ben Mohammed (1827–1890), an acrobat born in Mogador and Marguerite Bracco (1830–1898), born in Murazzano in Italy.
Annetta and Louis-Alphonse divorced on 4 June 1929.
Piaf's mother abandoned her at birth, and she lived for a short time with her maternal grandmother, Emma (Aïcha). When her father enlisted with the French Army in 1916 to fight in World War I, he took her to his mother, who ran a brothel in Bernay, Normandy. There, prostitutes helped look after Piaf. The bordello had two floors and seven rooms, and the prostitutes were not very numerous – "about ten poor girls", as she later described. In fact, five or six were permanent while a dozen others would join the brothel during market days and other busy days. The sub-mistress of the brothel was called "Madam Gaby" and Piaf considered her almost like family, since she became godmother of Denise Gassion, Piaf's half-sister born in 1931. Edith believed her weakness for men came from mixing with prostitutes in her grandmother's brothel. ...
Source: Article "Édith Piaf" from Wikipedia in English, licensed under CC-BY-SA 3.0.
Read more
Scot Armstrong
Biography
Scot Armstrong is an American screenwriter, director, and producer. He is credited with writing or co-writing numerous comedy films, including Old School, The Hangover: Part II, Semi-Pro, Road Trip, and many others. He is also the writer and director of the 2015 film, Search Party. The film was released in the US in May 2016. Also in 2016, his TV series, Dice, premiered on Showtime.
Description above from the Wikipedia article Scot Armstrong, licensed under CC-BY-SA, full list of contributors on Wikipedia.
Read more
Jean Rogers
Biography
Jean Rogers, born Eleanor Dorothy Lovegren, was an American actress who starred in serial films in the 1930s and low–budget feature films in the 1940s as a leading lady. She is best remembered for playing Dale Arden in the science fiction serials Flash Gordon and Flash Gordon's Trip to Mars.
She graduated from Belmont High School, and had hoped to study art, but in 1933, she won a beauty contest sponsored by Paramount Pictures that led to her career in Hollywood. Rogers starred in several serials for Universal between 1935 and 1938, including Ace Drummond and Flash Gordon. Rogers was one of seven women chosen out of 2,700 passengers on excursion boats and ferries who were interviewed for roles in Eight Girls in a Boat. The group began work in Hollywood on September 3, 1933. By 1937, Rogers was the only one of the seven featured as an actress.
Rogers was assigned the role of Dale Arden in the first two Flash Gordon serials. Buster Crabbe and Rogers were cast as the hero and heroine in the first serial, Flash Gordon, and Rogers' beauty, long blonde hair, and revealing costumes endeared her to moviegoers. The evil ruler Ming the Merciless lusted after her, and Gordon was forced to rescue her from one situation after another. While filming the series in 1937, her costume caught fire and she suffered burns on her hands. Co-star Crabbe smothered the fire by wrapping a blanket on her.
In the first serial, Arden competed with Princess Aura for Gordon's attention. Rogers' character was fragile, small-chested, diminutive, and totally dependent on Gordon for her survival; Lawson's Princess Aura was domineering, independent, voluptuous, conniving, sly, ambitious, and determined to make Gordon her own. The competition for Gordon's attention is one of the highlights of the film. In Flash Gordon's Trip to Mars, the second serial, Rogers sported a totally different look. She had dark hair and wore the same modest costume in each episode. Rogers matured after the first serial, and no sexual overtones are seen in Trip to Mars. Rogers told writer Richard Lamparski that she was not eager to do the second serial and asked her studio to excuse her from the third.
Despite starring in serial films, Rogers felt she was not going to improve her career unless she could participate in feature films. She discovered that it was more tedious working in feature films. She played John Wayne's leading lady in the 1936 full-length motion picture Conflict and co-starred with Boris Karloff in the horror film Night Key the following year. During the 1940s, Rogers appeared solely in feature films, including The Man Who Wouldn't Talk with Lloyd Nolan, Viva Cisco Kid with Cesar Romero as the Cisco Kid, Design for Scandal with Rosalind Russell and Walter Pidgeon, Whistling in Brooklyn with Red Skelton, A Stranger in Town with Frank Morgan, Backlash, and Speed to Spare with Richard Arlen. Still, she was unhappy with the studios, possibly because she was relegated to B-movie productions on a lower salary. She decided to freelance with companies such as 20th Century Fox and MGM. Her last appearance was in a supporting role in the suspense film The Second Woman, made in 1950 by United Artists.
She died in Sherman Oaks in 1991 at the age of 74 following surgery. She was later cremated and her ashes returned to her family.
Read more
Don Mattingly
Biography
Donald Arthur Mattingly (born April 20, 1961)[1] is an American former professional baseball first baseman, coach, and current manager for the Miami Marlins of Major League Baseball (MLB). Nicknamed "The Hit Man" and "Donnie Baseball", he spent his entire 14-year career playing with the New York Yankees and later managed the Los Angeles Dodgers for five years.
Mattingly graduated from Reitz Memorial High School in Evansville, Indiana, and was selected by the Yankees in the 1979 amateur draft. Debuting with the Yankees in 1982 after four seasons in Minor League Baseball, he emerged as the Yankees' starting first baseman after a successful rookie season in 1983. Mattingly was named to the American League (AL) All-Star team six times. He won nine Gold Glove Awards (an AL record for a first baseman), three Silver Slugger Awards, the 1984 AL batting title, and was the 1985 AL Most Valuable Player. He served as captain of the Yankees from 1991 through 1995, when he retired as a player. The Yankees later retired Mattingly's uniform number (23), making him the only Yankee to have his number retired without having won a World Series with the team.
Returning to the Yankees as a coach in 2004 for manager Joe Torre, he followed Torre to the Dodgers in 2008, and succeeded him as the Dodgers' manager in 2011. The Dodgers and Mattingly mutually parted ways after the 2015 season, and he became manager of the Miami Marlins in 2016.
Read more
Leo 'Bud' Welch
Biography
Leo 'Bud' Welch was an American gospel/ blues singer and guitarist. By 1947 at age 15, Bud Welch could play guitar and sing well enough to perform in front of an audience. He received praise and blessings of many elder guitar players. And he was offered an audition by BB King - but could not afford the trip to Memphis. Bud stayed with the blues till 1975 when he mostly converted to gospel.
His international music career started in 2014, with the release of the album "Sabougla Voices" by Big Legal Mess Records. His subsequent studio album, "I Don't Prefer No Blues", also recorded for Big Legal Mess, was released in 2015.
Read more
Rebecca Morris
Biography
Rebecca T. Morris is a New York Times bestselling author and veteran journalist who worked in radio and television news in New York City; Portland, Oregon; and Seattle, Washington. She was a free-lance writer for The Seattle Times, The Oregonian, People, Entertainment Weekly, The New York Daily News, The New York Post, and many other publications.
She attended Oregon State University, received a B.A. in Journalism from Seattle University, and has an M.F.A. in Playwriting from Brown University. She speaks about her work at libraries, schools, and writers’ conferences. She has taught writing, journalism, and playwriting at colleges and universities across the country.
She appears frequently on network and cable television as a crime expert.
Read more
