Screen Actors Guild Awards Memoriam 2004:
by mattrcampbell | created - 24 Aug 2019 | updated - 02 Oct 2021 | Public1. Ronald Reagan
Actor | Kings Row
Ronald Reagan had quite a prolific career, having catapulted from a Warner Bros. contract player and television star, into serving as president of the Screen Actors Guild, the governorship of California (1967-1975), and lastly, two terms as President of the United States (1981-1989).
Ronald Wilson ...
2. Alan King
Actor | Cat's Eye
Alan King was born on December 26, 1927 in New York City, New York, USA. He was a producer and actor, known for Cat's Eye (1985), Casino (1995) and Rush Hour 2 (2001). He was married to Jeanette Sprung. He died on May 9, 2004 in Manhattan, New York City, New York, USA.
3. Carrie Snodgress
Actress | Diary of a Mad Housewife
A student of Northern Illinois University, Carrie switched to drama at Chicago's Goodman Theatre School where she won the Sarah Siddons Award as outstanding graduate. After graduating, Carrie worked in TV and also appeared in TV movies. She made her big screen debut in Rabbit, Run (1970), working ...
4. John Randolph
Actor | You've Got Mail
Veteran performer John Randolph was a Tony Award-winning character actor whose union and social activism in the '40s and '50s caused him to be blacklisted during the McCarthy era. The balding performer may not have been a household name, but he was a regular face in movies and TV for over four ...
5. Julius Harris
Actor | Live and Let Die
Prior to breaking into films, Philadelphia native Julius Harris worked as a bouncer in New York City. It was due to his many associations with struggling actors, that on a dare, Harris auditioned for his first role, in the well-received picture Nothing But a Man (1964), in which he played a father ...
6. Fay Wray
Actress | King Kong
Canadian-born Fay Wray was brought up in Los Angeles and entered films at an early age. She was barely in her teens when she started working as an extra. She began her career as a heroine in westerns at Universal during the silent era. In 1926 the Western Association of Motion Picture Advertisers ...
7. John Drew Barrymore
Actor | The Big Night
American actor with a sporadic career, the son of stage and screen legend John Barrymore. His father and mother, actress Dolores Costello divorced in his infancy and he claimed to remember seeing his father only once. His mother attempted to keep him from the acting life, sending him to St. John's ...
8. Virginia Mayo
Actress | White Heat
Virginia Clara Jones was born on November 30, 1920 in St. Louis, Missouri, the daughter of a newspaper reporter and his wife. The family had a rich heritage in the St. Louis area: her great-great-great-grandfather served in the American Revolution and later founded the city of East Saint Louis, ...
9. Rodney Dangerfield
Actor | Back to School
Rodney Dangerfield was born Jacob Cohen on November 22, 1921 in Deer Park, Suffolk County, Long Island, New York. He was the son of Dorothy "Dotty" (Teitelbaum) and Phillip Cohen, who performed in vaudeville under the name Phil Roy. His father was born in New York, to Russian Jewish parents, and ...
10. Warren J. Kemmerling
Actor | Close Encounters of the Third Kind
After graduating from St. Louis University in 1947 and serving a hitch in the Marines, Warren Kemmerling began his professional acting career. He debuted on Broadway in 1953 in a new musical by Rodgers & Hammerstein, "Me and Juliet". After several years of performing in Broadway plays and musicals,...
11. Virginia Capers
Actress | Howard the Duck
With plenty of heart and soul, singer/actress Virginia Capers served up loads of music in an entertainment career that spanned several decades. The benevolent, plus-sized talent was born Eliza Virginia Capers on September 22, 1925, in South Carolina and attended Howard University in Washington, D.C...
12. Frank Maxwell
Actor | The Wild Angels
A ubiquitous presence during television's golden age, New York native Frank Maxwell stood out as a solid purveyor of quiet authority. Upon graduating from the University of Michigan, a prospective legal career had been on the cards. But those plans came to naught in the wake of a successful ...
13. Robert Pastorelli
Actor | Dances with Wolves
Beefy, roughhewn actor Robert Pastorelli was a former boxer and an admitted drug addict before he cleaned up his act and pursued theater work in New York in such 1970s productions as "Rebel Without a Cause," "The Rainmaker," and "Death of a Salesman," he headed west and turned to film and TV in ...
14. Ossie Davis
Actor | Do the Right Thing
Ossie Davis was born on December 18, 1917 in Cogdell, Georgia, USA. He was an actor and writer, known for Do the Right Thing (1989), Bubba Ho-Tep (2002) and Grumpy Old Men (1993). He was married to Ruby Dee. He died on February 4, 2005 in Miami Beach, Florida, USA.
15. Ron O'Neal
Actor | Red Dawn
Tall, lean, handsome veteran stage and classically trained actor, best known for his iconic role as Youngblood Priest - the long haired, stylishly dressed cocaine dealer who wants to make one last big score so he can retire from the cocaine business, in the seminal 1972 crime drama Super Fly. Son ...
16. Ruth Warrick
Actress | Citizen Kane
Reedy and regal actress Ruth Warrick will be remembered for two names and two names alone. In films, she will indelibly be referred to as the castoff first "Mrs. Citizen Kane," and on TV she will forever be synonymous with her character of Phoebe Tyler Wallingford, the obnoxiously wealthy, ...
17. Iggie Wolfington
Actor | 1941
Iggie Wolfington was born on October 14, 1919 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA. He was an actor, known for 1941 (1979), The Rockford Files (1974) and Kraft Theatre (1947). He was married to Lynn Wood. He died on September 30, 2004 in Studio City, California, USA.
18. Richard Biggs
Actor | Babylon 5
Richard Biggs had a somewhat unsettled childhood as he travelled between Air Force bases where his father was stationed. Because of his itinerant lifestyle he made few friends and changed schools often. When he was seventeen, and living at a missile base in North Dakota, he decided to change his ...
19. Eugene Roche
Actor | Soap
Adept at both comedy and drama, character player Eugene Roche (sometimes billed as Gene Roche) had an extensive four-decade career. Born in Depression-era Boston on September 22, 1928, he was the son of a Navy man.
Roche started on radio at age 15, displaying a knack for character voices, both men ...
20. Virginia Grey
Actress | Airport
Born into a show-business family--her father was a director and her mother was a film cutter--Virginia Grey made her film debut at age 10 as Eva in Uncle Tom's Cabin (1927). After a few more films as a child actress, she left the business to finish her schooling. Returning to films as an adult in ...
21. Paul Winfield
Actor | Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan
Signifying intelligence, eloquence, versatility and quiet intensity, one of the more important, critically acclaimed black actors to gain a Hollywood foothold in the 1970s was Paul Winfield. He was born in 1939 in Dallas, Texas, where he lived in his early years before moving with his family to Los...
22. Mercedes McCambridge
Actress | Giant
Mercedes McCambridge was a highly talented radio performer who won a best supporting Actress Oscar for her film debut.
Mercedes McCambridge was born in Joliet, Illinois, to Marie (Mahaffry) and John Patrick McCambridge, a farmer. She was of mostly Irish (with a small amount of English and German) ...
23. Joe Viterelli
Actor | Bullets Over Broadway
Joe Viterelli was born on March 10, 1937 in The Bronx, New York, USA. He was an actor, known for Bullets Over Broadway (1994), Analyze This (1999) and Eraser (1996). He was married to Catherine Brennan. He died on January 28, 2004 in Las Vegas, Nevada, USA.
24. Isabel Sanford
Actress | The Jeffersons
Isabel Sanford was a Broadway actress for over thirty years before moving to Hollywood. She made numerous guest appearances on TV, including a stint as a supporting cast member on The Carol Burnett Show (1967). Until her passing, Isabel continued to act frequently, most recently in a series of ...
25. Tony Randall
Actor | The Odd Couple
Tony Randall was born on February 26, 1920 in Tulsa, Oklahoma as Aryeh Leonard Rosenberg. He attended Tulsa Central High School and later Northwestern University and New York City's Neighborhood Playhouse School of the Theatre. After graduating, he starred in two plays: George Bernard Shaw's '...
26. Jerry Orbach
Actor | Law & Order
Jerry Orbach was born in the Bronx, New York, the only child of Leon Orbach, a former vaudevillian actor, was a German Jewish immigrant, who was born in Hamburg, Germany, and Emily (nee Olexy), a radio singer, was born in Pennsylvania to immigrant Polish-Lithuanian Roman Catholic parents, Alexander...
27. Peter Ustinov
Actor | Spartacus
Peter Ustinov was a two-time Academy Award-winning film actor, director, writer, journalist and raconteur. He wrote and directed many acclaimed stage plays and led numerous international theatrical productions.
He was born Peter Alexander Freiherr von Ustinow on April 16, 1921 in Swiss Cottage, ...
28. Jan Sterling
Actress | Ace in the Hole
One of Hollywood's more talented and watchable stars on screen was sullen and thin 50s actress Jan Sterling who didn't quite reach the top echelon of stardom but certainly ensured audiences of a real good time with her sexy pout and flashy style in soaps, film noir and saucy comedy.
Jan was born ...
29. Howard Keel
Actor | Seven Brides for Seven Brothers
Howard Keel was the Errol Flynn and Clark Gable of "golden age" movie musicals back in the 1950s. With a barrel-chested swagger and cocky, confident air, the 6'4" brawny baritone Keel had MGM's loveliest songbirds swooning helplessly for over a decade in what were some of the finest musical films ...
30. Janet Leigh
Actress | Psycho
Janet Leigh was the only child of a couple who often moved from town to town. Living in apartments, Janet was a bright child who skipped several grades and finished high school when she was 15. A lonely child, she would spend much of her time at movie theaters. She was a student, studying music and...
31. Ray Charles
Actor | The Blues Brothers
A tragic fate may have given this visionary a heightened sensitivity, perception, awareness, even expansion to his obvious musical gifts that he may have never touched upon had he not suffered from his physical affliction. Whatever it was, Ray Charles revolutionized American music and was ...
32. Marlon Brando
Actor | Apocalypse Now
Marlon Brando is widely considered the greatest movie actor of all time, rivaled only by the more theatrically oriented Laurence Olivier in terms of esteem. Unlike Olivier, who preferred the stage to the screen, Brando concentrated his talents on movies after bidding the Broadway stage adieu in ...
33. Christopher Reeve
Actor | Superman
Christopher D'Olier Reeve was born September 25, 1952, in New York City, to journalist Barbara Johnson (née Barbara Pitney Lamb) and writer/professor F.D. Reeve (Franklin D'Olier Reeve). He came from an upper-class family; his paternal grandfather was CEO of Prudential Financial, and one of his ...
34. Johnny Carson
Soundtrack | The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson
Johnny Carson, the legendary "King of Late Night TV" who dominated the medium's nether hours for three decades, was born in Corning, Iowa, but moved with his family to nearby Norfolk, Nebraska when he was eight years old. He was the son of Ruth E. (Hook) and Homer Lloyd "Kit" Carson, a manager of ...
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