Celebrities on the Hollywood Walk of Fame

Long acknowledged as one of the best "straight men" in the business, Bud Abbott was born William Alexander Abbott in Reading, Pennsylvania to Rae (Fisher) and Harry Abbott, who had both worked for the Barnum and Bailey Circus. When Bud was three his family moved to Asbury Park, New Jersey, which he later, erroneously, listed as his place of birth. He himself worked in carnivals while still a child and dropped out of school in 1909. He worked as assistant treasurer for the Casino Theater in Brooklyn, then as treasurer and/or manager of various theaters around the country. He worked as the straight man to such vaudeville and burlesque comics as Harry Steepe and Harry Evanson while managing the National Theater in Detroit. In 1931 while cashiering at the Brooklyn theater, he substituted for comic Lou Costello's ill straight-man. The two clicked almost immediately and formed their famous comedy team. Throughout the 1930s they worked burlesque, minstrel shows, vaudeville and movie houses. In 1938 they got national exposure through the Kate Smith radio show "The Kate Smith Hour", and signed with Universal Pictures the next year. They made their film debut in One Night in the Tropics (1940), and, while the team wasn't the film's stars, it made money for Universal and they got good enough notices to convince Universal to give them their own picture. Their first starring film, Buck Privates (1941), with The Andrews Sisters, grossed what was then a company-record $10 million (on a $180,000 budget) and they were on their way to stardom and a long run as the most popular comedy team in America. In 1942 they topped a poll of Hollywood stars. They had their own radio show (ABC, 1941-6, NBC, 1946-9) and TV show (The Abbott and Costello Show (1952)). After the war their careers stalled and the box-office takes for their films started slipping. However, they made a big comeback in Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein (1948), which raked in huge profits and even got the team good notices from critics who normally wouldn't even review their films. The movie's success convinced Universal to embark on a series of films in which the team met various monsters or found themselves in exotic locations. Their film career eventually petered out and the team split up in 1957. Costello embarked on a series of TV appearances and even made a film, without Abbott, called The 30 Foot Bride of Candy Rock (1959), but it was a flop. He received good notices after a dramatic performance in an episode of Wagon Train (1957) and was in discussion to star in a biography of famed New York City mayor Fiorello LaGuardia, a project Costello had been trying to get off the ground for years, when he died. Both Abbott and Costello had major tax problems with the Internal Revenue Service and wound up virtually broke. Abbott started over with a new partner, Candy Candido, in the 1960s and set off on a national tour, including Las Vegas, but the act failed. In 1966 he voiced his character in a cartoon version of their television show. His health deteriorated badly in the late 1960s, he had always suffered from epilepsy, and he died in 1974.

Paula Abdul grew up in the San Fernando Valley, California. She began taking dance lessons when she was eight. She attended Van Nuys High School, where she was senior class president and head cheerleader. After graduating in 1980, she started college at Cal State-Northridge, majoring in TV and radio. After joining the L.A. Lakers cheerleaders, she became head cheerleader/choreographer after only a few months, eventually dropping out of college to dance and choreograph full-time. She was recruited by The Jacksons to choreograph their 1984 "Torture" video, the first in a long list of videos and movies she would choreograph. She branched out into singing with her first CD, "Forever Your Girl", which had lackluster sales until the single "Straight Up" exploded onto the charts in December 1988 and she has been a popular singer/dancer ever since, enhanced by her stint as a judge on the hit series American Idol (2002).

Harry Ackerman was born on 17 November 1912 in Albany, New York, USA. He was a producer and writer, known for The Flying Nun (1967), Love on a Rooftop (1966) and CBS Schoolbreak Special (1984). He was married to Elinor Donahue and Mary Shipp. He died on 3 February 1991 in Burbank, California, USA.

Art Acord was born on 17 April 1890 in Stillwater, Oklahoma, USA. He was an actor, known for Set Free (1927), The Set-Up (1926) and Winners of the West (1921). He was married to Edna Nores, Edythe Sterling and Louise Lorraine. He died on 4 January 1931 in Chihuahua, Chihuahua, Mexico.

Roy Acuff was born on 15 September 1903 in Maynardville, Tennessee, USA. He was an actor, known for Night Train to Memphis (1946), Home in San Antone (1949) and Surf's Up (2007). He was married to Mildred Louise Douglas. He died on 23 November 1992 in Nashville, Tennessee, USA.

Amy Lou Adams was born in Vicenza, Veneto, Italy, to American parents, Kathryn (Hicken) and Richard Kent Adams, a U.S. serviceman who was stationed at Caserma Ederle in Italy at the time. She was raised in a Mormon family of seven children in Castle Rock, Colorado, and has English, as well as smaller amounts of Danish, Swiss-German, and Norwegian, ancestry.

Adams sang in the school choir at Douglas County High School and was an apprentice dancer at a local dance company, with the ambition of becoming a ballerina. However, she worked as a greeter at The Gap and as a Hooters hostess to support herself before finding work as a dancer at Boulder's Dinner Theatre and Country Dinner Playhouse in such productions as "Brigadoon" and "A Chorus Line". It was there that she was spotted by a Minneapolis dinner-theater director who asked her to move to Chanhassen, Minnesota for more regional dinner theatre work.

Nursing a pulled muscle that kept her from dancing, she was free to audition for a part in Drop Dead Gorgeous (1999), which was filming nearby in Minnesota. During the filming, Kirstie Alley encouraged her to move to Los Angeles, where she soon won a part in the Fox television version of the film, Cruel Intentions (1999), in the part played in the film by Sarah Michelle Gellar, "Kathryn Merteuil". Although three episodes were filmed, the troubled series never aired. Instead, parts of the episodes were cobbled together and released as the direct-to-video Cruel Intentions 2 (2000). After more failed television spots, she landed a major role in Catch Me If You Can (2002), playing opposite Leonardo DiCaprio. But this did not provide the break-through she might have hoped for, with no work being offered for about a year. She eventually returned to television, and joined the short-lived series, Dr. Vegas (2004).

Her role in the low-budget independent film Junebug (2005) (which was shot in 21 days) got her real attention, including an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actress as well as other awards. The following year, her ability to look like a wide-eyed Disney animated heroine helped her to be chosen from about 300 actresses auditioning for the role of "Giselle" in the animated/live-action feature film, Enchanted (2007), which would prove to be her major break-through role. Her vivacious yet innocent portrayal allowed her to use her singing and dancing talents. Her performance garnered a Golden Globe Award nomination for Best Actress in a Motion Picture Musical or Comedy.

Adams next appeared in the major production, Charlie Wilson's War (2007), and went on to act in the independent film, Sunshine Cleaning (2008), which premiered at the 2008 Sundance Film Festival. Her role as "Sister James" in Doubt (2008) brought her a second Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actress, as well as nominations for a Golden Globe, a Screen Actors Guild award, and a British Academy Film award. She appeared as Amelia Earhart in Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian (2009) and as a post-9/11 hot line counselor, aspiring writer, amateur cook and blogger in Julie & Julia (2009). In the early 2010s, she starred with Jason Segel in The Muppets (2011), with Philip Seymour Hoffman in Paul Thomas Anderson's The Master (2012), and alongside Clint Eastwood and Justin Timberlake in Trouble with the Curve (2012). She played reporter Lois Lane in Man of Steel (2013) and con artist Sydney Prosser in American Hustle (2013), before portraying real-life artist Margaret Keane in Tim Burton's biopic Big Eyes (2014).

In 2016, she reprised her role as Lane in Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice (2016), and headlined Denis Villeneuve's science fiction drama Arrival (2016) and Tom Ford's dark thriller Nocturnal Animals (2016). In 2018, she received another Oscar nomination, her sixth, for starring as Lynne Cheney in the biographical drama Vice (2018), opposite Christian Bale as Dick Cheney.

Canadian singer-songwriter Bryan Adams rose to fame with the release of his third album, "Cuts Like a Knife" (1983). The album made him popular throughout the United States. However, it was his fourth album "Reckless" (1984), which is referred to as one of the best albums of the decade that made him an international superstar and gave him his first Grammy nomination. The album also sold four million copies at the time. In 1987, he released his fifth album "Into the Fire", a more social conscious album. The album yielded a top ten single "Heat of the Night", another Grammy nomination and another platinum album to his name.

However, he released the album "Waking Up the Neighbours" (1991) which included the single "(Everything I Do) I Do It for You". The song sold more than three million copies in the United States, becoming the second best selling single, second only to "We Are the World". The song was also Adams' first Academy Award nomination and Golden Globe nomination as the song was written for the movie Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves (1991). "Waking Up the Neighbours" sold four million albums in the United States and garnered him six Grammy nominations (a record for a Canadian). He won one for best song written specifically for a motion picture or television ("(Everything I Do) I Do It for You").

In 1993, Adams released a greatest hits album, titled "So Far So Good", which spawned a #1 single, "Please Forgive Me". That same year, he sang the single "All for Love" with Rod Stewart and Sting from the movie The Three Musketeers (1993), which became a #1 single reaching across Europe and North America. He released the single "Have You Ever Really Loved a Woman?" from the movie Don Juan DeMarco (1994), which became his fourth #1 single and his second Academy Award nomination. He became one of two non-American singers to have four number one hits and the most successful Canadian singer ever.

In 1996, Adams released the album "18 Til I Die", which has garnered him another two Grammy nominations. Later that year, he wrote and sang the single "I Finally Found Someone", a duet with Barbra Streisand for her movie, The Mirror Has Two Faces (1996). "I Finally Found Someone" became a top ten single and won Adams his third Academy Award nomination. He released three more albums since then, "MTV Unplugged" (1997), "On a Day Like Today" (1998) and most recently the songs for the DreamWorks animated movie Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron (2002) in which Adams earned his second Golden Globe nomination for "Best Song".

Bryan Adams was awarded the Order of Canada and the Order of British Columbia for his contributions to popular music and philanthropic work through his own foundation, which helps improve education for people around the world.

Lou Adler was born on 13 December 1933 in Chicago, Illinois, USA. He is a producer, known for Up in Smoke (1978), The Rocky Horror Picture Show (1975) and Witness (1985). He has been married to Page Hannah since 28 March 1992. They have four children. He was previously married to Shelley Fabares.

Stella Adler was born on February 10, 1901, in New York, the youngest daughter of the Yiddish theater actors, Jacob P. Adler and Sarah Adler, who founded an acting dynasty. In addition to her parents, Stella's family included her siblings Charles Adler, Jay Adler, Julia and Luther Adler, all of whom appeared on Broadway. Stella made her debut at the age of four in the family-owned theater in the play "Broken Hearts". At the age of 18, she made her London debut as "Naomi" in "Elisa Ben Avia", in which she appeared for a year before returning to New York. Stella then spent the next 10 years treading the boards in vaudeville and Yiddish language theaters throughout North and South America and Europe. In all, she appeared in 100 plays.

Adler was widely acclaimed in the Yiddish theater, but she wanted to break out of that theatrical ghetto and play a wider variety of roles on the legitimate stage and in Hollywood. What was constant in Adler's 83-year-long career was her intense dedication to broadening the level of artistry in the theater.

She made her Broadway debut as a replacement in Carl Kapek's "The World We Live In". (Her official debut as a member of the original company was in "The Straw Hat" on Oct 14, 1926). After its run played out, she joined the acting school run by Richard Boleslawski and Maria Ouspenskaya, the American Laboratory. Both Boleslavsky and Maria Ouspenskaya were former members of the famous Moscow Art Theatre.

While married to Horace Eleaschreff, Adler met Harold Clurman, who would become her second husband and one of the co-founders of The Group Theatre, in 1924 (They would marry 19 years later). In this period, she met another future Group Theatre co-founder, Lee Strasberg, at the Actor's Laboratory when she participated in classes there in 1928. Along with Cheryl Crawford, Clurman and Strasberg founded the Group Theatre in 1931. It became arguably the most influential theater group in 20th century America, at least in terms of its influence on acting by introducing the teaching of Konstantin Stanislavski's System to the American stage. Its aim was the championing of realism and it is credited with bringing naturalism into the American theater. Clurman and Strasberg invited Adler to become a founding member of the Group Theatre. The Utopian political ideals that were central to the idea of the Group Theatre did not appeal to Adler, nor did the cooperative focus of the company, but she did join after being promised leading roles and because she supported Clurman's vision of the theater as an art form. It was with the Group Theatre that Stella played some of her more acclaimed roles, including "Sarah Glassman" in "Success Story", "Bessie Berger" in "Awake and Sing" and "Clara" in "Paradise Lost".

In 1934, she took a leave of absence from the Group Theatre and traveled to Russia to study for five weeks in Moscow Art Theatre, and in private sessions with the great man himself, Konstantin Stanislavski, whose motto was "Think of your own experiences and use them truthfully." Adler was among few American actors, such as Michael Chekhov and Richard Boleslawski to study privately with Stanislavsky. In August 1934, she returned from Russia, and made a presentation of what she learned from Stanislavski, then she began teaching acting classes to members of The Group Theatre troupe, including the actors Elia Kazan, Sanford Meisner and Robert Lewis. Meisner and Lewis would go on to be the most influential acting teachers in America after Adler herself and Strasberg. Kazan, who would go on to become the greatest theatrical director in 20th century American theater, also had a huge impact on American acting by championing what became known in the vernacular as "The Method", which was closely related to Adler's teaching. Kazan's exposure to Konstantin Stanislavski's System via Adler was highly influential in his work.

Stella Adler, being the most experienced of the Group Theatre actors, had not accepted Lee Strasberg's idiosyncratic version of Stanislavski's System, which Strasberg interpreted as "method" and shifted its goals to memory exercises. "The (memory) emphasis was the sick one" in Strasberg's "method", said Stella Adler, as it made acting under Strasberg increasingly painful for her. Feeling uncomfortable with the Group Theatre members, many of whom were also Communist Party members, Adler left the company in 1937 to conquer Hollywood. According to her later student and friend, Marlon Brando, she had a bad nose job to camouflage her looks, so hell-bent was she on conquering the movies as she had the stage. She was not to succeed.Adler spent six years as an associate producer at the Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer studio, at which she acted in movies under the name "Stella Ardler."

She did not achieve the quality of roles or the acclaim that she had in the theater, and she eventually returned to the stage in the early 1940s, acting and directing on Broadway and in London. Adler also began to teach at German émigré Erwin Piscator's acting workshop at the New School for Social Research, where she mentored the young Marlon Brando. She married Clurman in 1943. At its core, the theatrical experience is rooted in the willing suspension of disbelief, with an audience willingly ignoring the fact that it is watching a synthetic entertainment in a highly unrealistic venue. Such is the power of good theater to draw the audience into the world created upon the stage that this suspension of disbelief not only occurs, but that it, as an art form, provides an immediacy that other more "realistic" forms such as movies or television cannot provide. Adler believed that "the theater exists 99% in the imagination" and it was this belief that was the foundation of her philosophy and instruction.

Drawing on Stanislavski's System, Adler made it the bedrock of her technique that an actor's primary concern was with the emotional origins of the script. An actor (and acting student) must search between the lines of the script for the playwright's important, but unspoken, messages. To tap into this vein and bring forth the real meaning in a character, an actor needed both imagination and the ability to open oneself up emotionally. Essentially, Adler's method emphasized that authenticity in acting is achieved by drawing on inner reality to expose deep emotional experience. Konstantin Stanislavski taught her that "the source of acting is imagination and the key to its problems is truth, truth in the circumstances of the play."

It was a fortuitous occasion when Brando enrolled in Erwin Piscator's Dramatic Workshop at New York's New School and came into Stella Adler's orbit. The results of this meeting between an actor and the teacher preparing him for a life in the theater would mark a watershed in American acting and culture as it was through Brando that "The Method" was introduced into the American theater and movies. It would dominate American acting for more than half-a-century and is still the dominant paradigm now, over sixty years since Adler tutored Brando.

"The Method" as taught by Adler and other Group Theater alumni was a more naturalistic style of performing, as it engendered a close identification of the actor with the character's emotions. The extraordinarily sensitive and intelligent Brando was the ideal student due to the prodigious talent he could yoke to the harness of technique that was "The Method". Adler took pride of place among Brando's acting teachers, and socially she helped turn him from a fairly ignorant Midwestern farm boy into a knowledgeable and cosmopolitan artist who one day would socialize with presidents.

Aside from acting, Adler directed two plays on Broadway, "Manhattan Nocturne" during the 1943-44 season, and "Sunday Breakfast" in 1952. Her last appearance as an actress on the Broadway stage was in the revival of "He Who Gets Slapped" in 1946.

Stella Adler left the faculty of the New School in 1949 to establish her own acting school, the Stella Adler Theatre Studio (which would be renamed the Stella Adler Conservatory of Acting before taking its final name, the Stella Adler Studio of Acting). She developed a curriculum from her wide knowledge and experience, combining her understanding of Konstantin Stanislavski's System with the techniques and traditions of the Yiddish theater, The Group Theatre, Broadway and Hollywood. In addition to acting technique, the school offered workshops in play analysis, character, and scene preparation; the students gleaned on-stage experience by performing scenes and plays before invited audiences. Among the alumni of her school were Marlon Brando (chairman of the board of the school until his death), Warren Beatty (who has taken over the position), Robert De Niro and Harvey Keitel.

Adler taught script analysis at Yale for a year and half. Courses for advanced students and professionals were added to the curriculum of her own school, including rehearsal technique and script analysis. Due to her reputation and connections, the school was able to attract distinguished lecturers, including Sir John Gielgud and Arthur Laurents.

Stella Adler was a major inspiration to her students. Her mantra was, "You act with your soul. That's why you all want to be actors - because your souls are not used up by life". Adler is still, more than a decade after her death, viewed as one of the foremost influences on contemporary acting.

Adler divorced Clurman in 1960, after 17 years of marriage. Subsequently, she married Mitchell Wilson, whom she remained married to until his death in 1973. She did not remarry.

Stella Adler died on December 21, 1992 in Los Angeles, California. She was 91 years old.

Renee Adoree was born Jeanne de la Fontein in Lille in Nord-Pas-de-Calais, France, on September 30, 1898. She had what one could call a normal childhood. Her background is, perhaps, one of the most difficult of all actresses to research. What we do know is that her interest in acting surfaced during her teen years with minor stage productions in France. By 1920 she had attracted the attention of American producers and she came to New York. Her first film before US audiences was The Strongest (1920) that same year. That was to be it until 1921, when she appeared in Made in Heaven (1921). The lack of roles led Renee to wonder if she had made the right move by going into motion pictures. Finally MGM saw fit to put her in more films in 1922. Movies such as West of Chicago (1922), Day Dreams (1922), Mixed Faces (1922) and Monte Cristo (1922) saw her with meatier roles than she had had previously. Renee was, finally, hitting her stride. Better roles to be sure, but still she was not yet of first-class caliber.

All that changed in 1925 when she starred as Melisande with John Gilbert in The Big Parade (1925). The picture made stars out of Renee, Gilbert and Karl Dane. Based on the film's success, Renee was put in another production, Excuse Me (1925). The movie lacked the drama of the previous picture but it was well-received. In a plot written by Elinor Glyn, Renee starred as Suzette in Man and Maid (1925). This was Renee's most provocative role yet and she was fast becoming one of the sexiest actresses on the screen. In 1927 Renee starred as Nang Ping in Mr. Wu (1927), along with her sister Mira Adoree. The film, with co-stars Ralph Forbes and Lon Chaney, was a hit, but it was Renee's character that carried the film. After several more pictures, her career was slowing down. Although, she had a bit part in Show People (1928) later that year. The following year she had another bit role in His Glorious Night (1929), this time uncredited. MGM then released her from contract, but she was re-discovered by First National Pictures for whom she appeared in The Spieler (1928), playing a struggling carnival manager trying to overcome the dishonesty that went on in her organization.

Ill with tuberculosis, she retired in 1930. Less than a week after her 35th birthday, on Oct. 5, 1933, Renee Adoree died in Tujunga, CA.

Born in Villanueva, Zacatecas, to Jesús Aguilar y Aguilar and Ángela Márquez Barraza Valle, Antonio Aguilar is one of the most iconic actor-singers of Mexican cinema. He began his singing career in the 1940's and then debuted in national Mexican cinema in 1952, during its Golden era. Later in his acting career, Aguilar was noted for his brilliant portrayals of revolutionary and folk-song heroes in historical films. He won the "Premio ACE" Award for Best Actor for his performance in Zapata (1970). Aguilar married frequent co-star Flor Silvestre in 1959.

Born in San Antonio, Texas on August 7 1968 during a tour of his legendary parents Antonio Aguilar and Flor Silvestre. Singer, songwriter with global sales of over 12 million albums, Pepe Aguilar is today's the most recognizable voice in Latin music.

Considered by critics of all major newspapers and magazines in the United States as " a real star of Latin music," Pepe has garnered an impressive amount of awards: six Grammy Awards and three Latin Grammy awards, thirteen Lo Nuestro Awards - including the coveted "Excellence Award" along several Latin Billboard awards, including a special recognition for his musical legacy. Fifteen of his recordings have reached the top of the Billboard charts, expanding the boundaries of the genre and seducing radio stations that never before had opened the door to this kind of music .

To paraphrase the legendary Rubén Fuentes: "Pepe Aguilar is a before and after in Mexican music."

Christina Maria Aguilera was born on December 18, 1980 in Staten Island, New York City, New York to musician Shelly Loraine Fidler Kearns and U.S. Army sergeant Fausto Wagner Xavier Aguilera Monge. Her father is Ecuadorian and her mother, who is American-born, has Welsh, Dutch and German ancestry. Her parents divorced when she was young and she lived with her mother, although they moved around a lot. Her goal almost since birth was to be a singer, and at age 12 she was invited to audition for The All New Mickey Mouse Club (1989). She won the part and stayed until the show ended. In 1999 she had her breakthrough hit, "Genie in a Bottle." Since then she's made millions of fans, sold millions of records, and won many awards, including a Grammy for Best New Female Artist. She has even made a Latin album and released a Christmas album.

Aguilera is a bilingual singer. She has received many honors including Grammy Nominations and a win for Best New Artist. 2 MTV Video Music Awards, a Radio Music Awards, 2 VH1 Awards, and a Teen Choice Award with 'Lil' Kim', Mya and P!nk and the smash hit "Lady Maramalade". She was on The All New Mickey Mouse Club (1989) with *NSYNC's Justin Timberlake and JC Chasez, Britney Spears, Ryan Gosling, and Keri Russell. Her musical influences include Mariah Carey, Whitney Houston, and Janet Jackson.

Brian Aherne was an Oscar-nominated Anglo-American stage and screen actor who was one of the top cinema character actors in the 1930s, 1940s and 1950s. Born on May 2, 1902, in Kings Norton, Worcestershire, England, Aherne performed as an actor as a child. At age 18, he made his debut as an adult with the company that would evolve into the world-famous Birmingham Repertory Theatre. Three years later, he made his debut in London's West End, the English equivalent of Broadway. After his experience in Birmingham, Aherne studied architecture, but a life as an actor was too strong to resist, so he returned to the theater in 1923. For the next eight years, he toured the provinces and appeared in the West End in various productions. In 1931, he made his Broadway debut playing Robert Browning in "The Barretts of Wimpole Street." He alternated between the New York and London stage in the early 1930s. Aherne made his movie debut in 1924, and in the mid-1930s, he moved to Hollywood. In 1940, he was nominated for an Academy Award as Best Supporting Actor for Juarez (1939) for playing the Emperor Maximilian. Brian Aherne published his autobiography in 1969, and 10 years later, he published a biography of his friend George Sanders, entitled "A Dreadful Man." He died at age 83 of heart failure on February 10, 1986, in Venice, Florida.

Korean-American character actor Philip Ahn played hundreds of Chinese and Japanese characters during a long career. He was born in Los Angeles in 1905 (though 1911 is the year usually given, U.S. government records confirm that Ahn was born in 1905), the son of a Korean diplomat. He attended the University of Southern California at Los Angeles. Ahn got his first film acting job in 1935 and quickly made a place for himself playing Asians of many ethnicities. Although his kindly demeanor made him perfect for sympathetic roles, he could excel in the occasional villainous "Yellow Peril"-type role. Condemned, like most Asian actors of the period, to stereotypical roles, Ahn nevertheless brought a dignity to even the most subservient of characters. In his later years he achieved his greatest fame as the wise Master Kan on the television series Kung Fu (1972). Ahn was also a successful Los Angeles restaurateur. He died in 1978. Not to be confused with his brother, actor Philson Ahn.

Alabama is known for Road House (1989), Fire Down Below (1997) and Alabama: Dixieland Delight (1983).

Licia Albanese was born on 23 July 1909 in Bari, Apulia, Italy. She was an actress, known for Otello (1948), Serenade (1956) and Great Performances (1971). She was married to Joseph A. Gimma. She died on 15 August 2014 in Manhattan, New York City, New York, USA.

A graduate of the University of Minnesota, Eddie Albert was a circus trapeze flier before becoming a stage and radio actor. He made his film debut in 1938 and has worked steadily since, often cast as the friendly, good-natured buddy of the hero but occasionally being cast as a villain; one of his most memorable roles was as the cowardly, glory-seeking army officer in Robert Aldrich's World War 2 film, Attack (1956).

Frank Albertson entered the film industry in 1922 as a prop boy, but soon graduated into acting. He was a prolific and reliable character actor who occasionally played the lead in a "B" picture, but was used mainly as a supporting actor in scores of films, often cast as a wisecracking cab driver, a cop or a reporter.

A former song-and-dance man and veteran of vaudeville, burlesque and Broadway, Jack Albertson is best known to audiences as "The Man" in the TV series Chico and the Man (1974), for which he won an Emmy. In 1968 Albertson, the brother of actress Mabel Albertson, won the Oscar for Best Supporting Actor in The Subject Was Roses (1968), a part which also won him the Tony award during its Broadway run.

Buzz Aldrin (born Edwin Eugene Aldrin Jr.; January 20, 1930) is an American former astronaut, engineer and fighter pilot. He made three spacewalks as pilot of the 1966 Gemini 12 mission, and, as Lunar Module Eagle pilot on the 1969 Apollo 11 mission, he and mission commander Neil Armstrong were the first two people to land on the Moon.

Starting out as a child actor in 1915, Ben Alexander's first roles were in the films of such directors as Cecil B. DeMille and D.W. Griffith. He later graduated to juvenile leads and supporting parts in sound films, most notably in All Quiet on the Western Front (1930). When his acting career slowed down in the mid-'30s, he found a new career as a successful radio announcer. Alexander was more or less retired when producer Jack Webb picked him for the part of his detective partner in the TV series Dragnet (1951). Alexander later played another detective on Howard Duff's TV series The Felony Squad (1966).

Muhammad Ali beat more champions and top contenders than any heavyweight champion in history. He defeated heavyweight kings Sonny Liston (twice), Floyd Patterson (twice), Ernie Terrell, Jimmy Ellis, Ken Norton (twice), Joe Frazier (twice), George Foreman and Leon Spinks. He defeated light-heavyweight champs Archie Moore and Bob Foster. Ali defeated European heavyweight champions Henry Cooper, Karl Mildenberger, Jürgen Blin, Joe Bugner, Richard Dunn, Jean-Pierre Coopman and Alfredo Evangelista. He defeated British and Commonwealth king Brian London. All of Ali's defeats were by heavyweight champions: Frazier, Norton, Spinks, Larry Holmes and Trevor Berbick. Ali also beat undefeated fighters Sonny Banks (12-0), Billy Daniels (16-0), 'Rudi Lubbers' (21-0) and George Foreman (40-0).

Deborah Kaye Allen was born in Houston, Texas, to African-American parents, Vivian Elizabeth (Ayers), a poet and art director, and Andrew Arthur Allen, an orthodontist. As a child, Debbie, her older brother, Andrew (called Tex), and her older sister, actress Phylicia Rashad, lived in Mexico to escape US racism. Their mother decided to live there to give the Allen children a brief experience of not having to endure the chronic racism and segregation that was typical of Texas during the 1950s. Debbie and Phylicia are fluent in Spanish.

Debbie graduated from Jack Yates Senior High School in Houston, TX in 1967. She graduated cum laude from Howard University in 1971 with a BFA in Classical Greek Literature, Speech, and Theater from Howard University. She used her experiences from attending Historically Black College Howard to inform her production and direction of the TV show A Different World (1987).

Although her parents divorced, Debbie remained extremely close to her father until his death. With Phylicia she has production company "D.A.D." which stood for "Doctor Allen's Daughters". Her Pulitzer-nominated poet mother Vivian is, the artistic and free spirit that has influenced and encouraged the remarkable creativity that so marks Allen as a performer.

Fred Allen, the well-known comedian who went on to star in radio, television, and film, was born John Florence Sullivan in Cambridge, Massachusetts in 1894 and educated at Boston University. His Broadway shows include "The Passing Show of 1922" and "The Greenwich Village Follies".

He produced, wrote,and starred in a network radio show entitled at various times "Linit Bath Club Revue", Town Hall Tonight", Texaco Star Theater" and finally "The Fred Allen Show" from 1932 to 1949. He was also a semi-regular on the network radio program "The Big Show" from 1950 to 1952. He was a frequent guest on "The Jack Benny Program". Jack and Fred, good friends in real life, had an accidental on air feud that begin in 1936 and lasted off and on until Fred Allen's passing.

On television, he was one of the regular rotating hosts of the Colgate Comedy Hour (1950), but did not renew his initial contract due to health reasons. He also starred on television's "Judge for Yourself" from 1953 to 1954 and was a regular panelist on What's My Line" from 1954 until his death.

He appeared in such films as "Thanks a Million", "Love Thy Neighbor", "Sally, Irene, and Mary", and "It's in the Bag".

He wrote two autobiographies. The first,about his days in radio, published in 1954, entitled "Treadmill to Oblivion". The second, about his days in vaudeville, was published after his death by his wife Portland Hoffa, entitled "Much Ado About Me." (1956). Fred was in the process of completing the final chapter at the time of his death. Also always known as an avid letter writer, a collection of these entitled "Fred Allen's Letters" was published in 1966.