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Ivan Dixon was a handsome, mustachioed African-American actor and director who carried a strong, serious nature about his solid frame. He initially earned attention in groundbreaking stage and film work with pronounced themes of social and racial relevance. He would become better known, however, for his ensemble playing in the nonsensical but popular WWII sitcom Hogan's Heroes (1965). His character was a POW radio technician with the last name of Kinchloe, and the role, while heightening his visibility, did little to satisfy his creative needs. Overshadowed by the flashier posturings of stars Bob Crane, Werner Klemperer and John Banner, Ivan eventually left the series after season five (of six), the only one of the original cast to do so. He was among the few African-American male actors in the 1960s, along with Bill Cosby and Greg Morris, to either star or co-star on a major TV series.

Born Ivan Nathaniel Dixon III on Monday, April 6, 1931, in New York's Harlem area, where his parents originally owned a grocery store, Ivan grew up in the South and as a youngster was headed towards a life of crime before he took a keen interest in acting. This helped him to get back on the straight and narrow, studying dramatics at Lincoln Academy, a black boarding school in Gaston County, North Carolina. He then graduated from North Carolina Central University (in Durham) with a degree in drama in 1954.

Ivan's Broadway debut occurred three years later in William Saroyan's "The Cave Dwellers", and in 1959 his career took a significant jump after earning the role of Joseph Asagai, the well-mannered Nigerian-born college student, in Lorraine Hansberry's landmark drama "A Raisin in the Sun". Starring Sidney Poitier, it was the first play written by a black woman that was produced on Broadway. He and Poitier became lifelong friends, and Ivan's early film career included providing stunt double assistance for Poitier in The Defiant Ones (1958).

Following minor film parts in the racially tinged Something of Value (1957) and Porgy and Bess (1959) (both of which starred Poitier), he and Poitier recreated their respective Broadway roles in the film version of A Raisin in the Sun (1961), which drew high marks all round. Ivan's most mesmerizing film role, however, came a few years later when he and renowned jazz singer Abbey Lincoln starred in the contemporary film drama Nothing But a Man (1964). Starring as a young, aimless railroad worker who gives up his job to marry a schoolteacher and minister's daughter (Lincoln), Ivan's character matures as he strives to build a noble, dignified life for the couple, who are living in the deeply prejudiced South. The film was hailed for its extraordinarily powerful portrayals of black characters and its stark, uncompromising script. The film, which was written by two white documentary filmmakers who spent time in the Deep South in the 1960s, was considered far ahead of its time. Dixon himself never found a comparable role in film again. During this time, he was cast in several TV dramas, with fine roles on "Perry Mason," "The Twilight Zone," "Laramie", "The Outer Limits" and several other series.

Following another strong but secondary showing as Poitier's brother in the film A Patch of Blue (1965), Dixon won the role of Kinchloe on Hogan's Heroes (1965). While shooting the series, he managed to squeeze in the title role in "The Final War of Olly Winter," a dramatic special that earned him his sole Emmy nomination in 1967. After he decided to leave Hogan's Heroes (1965) after five seasons, his acting work was limited. Active in the civil rights movement (he served as a president of Negro Actors for Action), he steadfastly refused to play roles that he felt were stereotypical. Instead, he segued into directing and was a noted success, helping hundreds of television productions during the '70s and '80s, including "Nichols," "The Waltons," "The Greatest American Hero," "The Rockford Files," "Magnum, P.I.," "Quincy" and "In the Heat of the Night."

Ivan also managed to direct films, including Trouble Man (1972) and the controversial crime drama The Spook Who Sat by the Door (1973), the story of the first black officer in the Central Intelligence Agency, who turns revolutionary. This blaxploitation-era movie did not do well upon initial release (the film's title being highly questionable) and was quickly pulled from theaters. It subsequently gained cult status.

Throughout his career, Ivan actively worked for better roles for himself and other black actors. Among the honors he received were four NAACP Image Awards, the National Black Theatre Award, and the Paul Robeson Pioneer Award from the Black American Cinema Society.

In his final years, Ivan battled kidney disease and died of a brain hemorrhage at age 76 in Charlotte, North Carolina. He was survived by his wife of 58 years, Berlie Ray, whom he met while both were college theater students. Two of their four children, Ivan Nathaniel IV and N'Gai Christopher, predeceased him. His surviving children are Doris Nomathande Dixon and Alan Kimara; Doris has been a documentary filmmaker and was a one-time production assistant on the film Boyz n the Hood (1991). The complete life span of Ivan Dixon--April 6th, 1931, to Sunday, March 16, 2008--totaled 28,097 days, or 4,013 weeks and 6 days.

Oscar Micheaux, the first African-American to produce a feature-length film (The Homesteader (1919)) and a sound feature-length film (The Exile (1931)), is not only a major figure in American film for these milestones, but because his oeuvre is a window into the American history and psyche regarding race and its deleterious effects on individuals and society. He also is a pioneer of independent cinema. Though the end products of his labors often were technically crude due to budgetary constraints, Micheaux the filmmaker is a symbol of the artist triumphing against great odds to bring his vision to the public while serving in the socially important role of critical spirit. "One of the greatest tasks of my life has been to teach that the colored man can be anything," Micheaux said. He used the new medium of the motion picture to communicate his ideas in order to rebut racism and to raise the consciousness of African-Americans in an age of segregation and overt, legal racism. As a filmmaker, Micheaux was "50 years ahead of his time", according to Kansas Humanities Council Board member Martin Keenan, the chairman of the Oscar Micheaux Film Festivals in Great Bend, Kansas, in 2001 and 2003. Oscar Micheaux was born in 1884, in Metropolis, Illinois, one of 13 children of former slaves. When he was 17 years old he left home for Chicago, where he got a job as a Pullman porter, one of the best jobs an African-American could get in the days of Jim Crow laws that separated the races and were an official bulwark of racism. Inspired by the self-help, assimilationist teachings of Booker T. Washington and the "Go West" pioneer philosophy of Horace Greeley, Micheaux acquired two 160-acre tracts of land in Gregory County, South Dakota, in 1905, despite no previous experience in farming. His experiences as a homesteader were the basis for his first novel, "The Conquest: The Story of a Negro Pioneer", which was published in 1913. He rewrote it into his most famous novel, "The Homesteader" (1917), which he self-published and distributed, selling it door-to-door to small businessmen and homesteaders in small towns, white people with whom he lived and did business with. "The Homesteader" not only elucidated Micheaux's understanding of societal cleavages but proselytized for assimilating black and white communities. He was firmly dedicated to the idea of art as a didactic medium. Micheaux lost his homestead in 1915 due to financial losses caused by a drought. He moved to Sioux City, Iowa, where he established the Western Book and Supply Co. He continued to write novels, selling them himself, door-to-door. Meanwhile, brothers George Johnson and Noble Johnson, African-American movie pioneers who ran the Lincoln Motion Picture Co. in Los Angeles, wanted to make "The Homesteader" into a film. They tried to buy the rights to the novel but would not meet Micheaux's demands that he direct it and that it be made with a large budget. After his demands were refused, Micheaux reorganized Western Book and Supply as the Micheaux Film and Book Co. in Chicago. He began to raise money for his own film version of "The Homesteader". Micheaux returned to the white businessmen and farmers around Sioux City, Iowa, where he still maintained an office, and sold them stock in his new company. In this way he was able to raise enough capital to begin filming his novel in Chicago, which was then a major film production center. The film came in at eight reels, making it the first feature-length film made by an African-American. "Race films"--as films made for black audiences were called until the advent of the modern civil rights movement in the 1950s--and even "mainstream" films had been mostly shorts up to that time. Even Charles Chaplin didn't make his first feature-length film until 1921, with The Kid (1921). The Homesteader (1919) premiered in Chicago on February 20, 1919. An ad for the movie placed in the "Chicago Defender", the premier newspaper for African-Americans, heralded the film as the "greatest of all Race productions" and claimed it was "destined to mark a new epoch in the achievements of the Darker Races . . . every Race man and woman should cast aside their skepticism regarding the Negro's ability as a motion picture star, and go and see, not only for the absorbing interest obtaining therein, but as an appreciation of those finer arts which no race can ignore and hope to obtain a higher plan of thought and action." His next film, Within Our Gates (1920), was his response to D.W. Griffith's The Birth of a Nation (1915), a film that had glorified the Ku Klux Klan and justified the violent oppression of African-Americans to prevent miscegenation. Though Griffith's flawed masterpiece was the most popular movie until the release of another Civil War potboiler called Gone with the Wind (1939) in 1939, it was loathed by African-Americans due to its crude and hateful racial stereotypes. "Within These Gates" was made to rebut Griffith and show that the reality of racism in the US was that African-Americans were more likely to be lynched and exploited by whites than the reverse. The movie showed African-American and white communities that the racism of the dominant society could be challenged. Micheaux's place in history was assured as he injected an African-American perspective, via the powerful medium of the motion picture, into the American consciousness. Working out of Chicago, he subsequently made more than 30 films over the next three decades, including musicals, comedies, westerns, romances and gangster films. Some of the popular themes in his work were African-Americans passing for white, intermarriage and legal injustice. He used actors from New York's Lafayette Players and always cast his actors on the basis of type, with light-skinned African-American actors typically playing the leads and darker-skinned blacks the heavies. That trait was part of the consciousness of the African-American community (and mirrored the very racism that he inveigled against) that persists to this day, and Micheaux was severely chastised for it by later critics. However, no critic could deny the importance of Micheaux's movies, as they were a radical departure from Hollywood's racist portrayals of blacks as lazy dolts, Uncle Toms, Mammies and dangerous bucks. As the most successful and prolific of black filmmakers, Micheaux was vital to African-American and overall American consciousness by providing a diverse portfolio of non-stereotyped black characters, as well as images and stories of African-American life. He married Alice B. Russell in March 1926, and the two remained married until his death in March 1951. He was buried at Great Bend Cemetery, Great Bend, Kansas.

Born to a barmaid, Daisy and her conjoined twin sister Violet Hilton were raised by the midwife who delivered them. This woman, Mary Hilton, saw her meal ticket in the curly-haired babies and trained them to perform. The girls were ill-treated and kept in a state of poverty until they arranged a private meeting with a lawyer at the age of 23. They then became their own managers and remained popular vaudeville performers until live shows were replaced by motion pictures. After performing in Freaks (1932) and Chained for Life (1952). Daisy and Violet fell into poverty and obscurity. They were found dead in their apartment when their employer, a grocer, reported that they hadn't shown up for work. They left no known survivors.

Born to a barmaid, Violet and her conjoined twin sister Daisy Hilton were raised by the midwife who delivered them. This woman, Mary Hilton, saw her meal ticket in the curly-haired babies and trained them to perform. The girls were ill-treated and kept in a state of poverty until they arranged a private meeting with a lawyer at the age of 23. They then became their own managers and remained popular vaudeville performers until live shows were replaced by motion pictures. After performing in Freaks (1932) and Chained for Life (1952), Violet and Daisy fell into poverty and obscurity. They were found dead in their apartment when their employer, a grocer, reported that they hadn't shown up for work. They left no known survivors.

Floyd "Chunk" Simmons served as a member of the 10th Mountain Division in World War II and was awarded the Purple Heart and Battle Stars. He is a two-time Olympic Bronze Medal Decathlete for the 1948 London Games and the 1952 Helsinki Games. The Gold Medalist both years was fellow American, Bob Mathias.

Handsome, dark-haired, athletic Floyd became a contract player at Universal-International where he appeared in a number of small roles in mid-1950's films, becoming friends with fellow contractee, Clint Eastwood. But his best-known role was as Commander William "Bill" Harbison in the 1958 20th-Century Fox musical, "South Pacific," in which he was tenth-billed. He so impressed producers that he was set to play opposite Elizabeth Taylor in "Cat On a Hot Tin Roof," but when the picture changed hands, the new director wanted Paul Newman. His final film appearance on the big screen was in United Artist's 1963 Nathaniel Hawthorne compilation, "Twice-Told Tales," as the ghost of Matthew Maulle.

He then switched careers and became an accomplished artist and commercial photographer, settling in his hometown of Charlotte, North Carolina. In February 2004, he was selected along with three other Charlotte natives (including the late Dale Earnhardt) as one of the first inductees in the Greater Charlotte Sports Hall of Fame.

Emmy Award-winner Fielder Cook was a top television director who got his start in the early days of television, when he went to work for Lux Video Theatre (1950) in 1950. Other live-TV omnibus series that he worked on included Studio One (1948) and The Kaiser Aluminum Hour (1956), for which he also did teleplays (and served as a producer on the latter series). He remained true to television, whereas other highly respected helmers from the live days of TV abandoned the medium for feature films. Commenting on the fact that he directed the last episode of both "The Ponds Theater (1953) and Playhouse 90 (1956), Cook said, "I was beginning to feel like the mortician of television." In all, Cook received nine Emmy Award nominations, seven as best director and two for best producer, winning three (two for directing, one for producing).

Born James Fielder Cook in Atlanta, Georgia, on March 9, 1923, he was raised in Tampa, Florida. He joined the Navy and served as an officer during World War II after graduating cum laude with an undergraduate degree in literature from Washington and Lee University. After the war he went to England to study Elizabethan drama at the University of Birmingham. When he returned to the US, he eschewed the theater for television, going to work in live TV. His first work as a TV director was with "The Lux Video Theatre."

In 1955 he established his critical reputation directing Patterns (1955) written by Rod Serling, one of the most successful productions of the live-TV era. After the broadcast CBS-TV owner William Paley called the control room for the first time ever and said, "Tell everyone, especially Rod Serling, that tonight we put television about ten years ahead." Serling won an Emmy for "Patterns," and the following year the teleplay was made into a movie (Patterns (1956)) from a script by Serling and directed by Cook. While Cook would occasionally direct feature films, television remained his main bailiwick.

After "Patterns" he could have the made the transition into feature film work like other directors who made their bones on live TV, such as Oscar-winners Franklin J. Schaffner and Sidney Lumet. However, he preferred directing for TV. "I went back to TV because I could do what I wanted to do", he told the "Los Angeles Times" in a 1966 interview. "You learn from your mistakes with nobody telling you what to do." He believed that the story was paramount. In the days of live TV, writers like Serling and Paddy Chayefsky accrued respect and wielded the kind of power denied movie screenwriters. They were more like playwrights in the theater, where the word was king. In a 1997 interview with UPI, Cook said, "As a director I tell a story, but it's not my story." As a director, he was committed to realizing the writer's visions, so the writer could say, "There it is. That's my work."

In addition to directing teleplays and TV movies, Cook also directed episodic television. His first two Emmy nominations came in 1961 for producing and directing Big Deal in Laredo (1962). Four years later he won his first two Emmy Awards for producing and directing the adaptation of the musical Brigadoon (1966). He won a second Emmy in 1971 for directing The Price (1971). That same year he had directed The Homecoming: A Christmas Story (1971), which spawned the TV series The Waltons (1972), which brought him another Emmy nod in 1972. In 1976 and 1977 he was nominated again for directing the pilot of the dramatic TV series Beacon Hill (1975) and the TV special Judge Horton and the Scottsboro Boys (1976), respectively.

Cook continued to direct regularly on TV and the occasional feature film until 1989. Most of his work was in the TV movie genre, including the adaptation of Maya Angelou's I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (1979), the Emmy Award-winning Gauguin the Savage (1980) and the Frances Farmer biopic Will There Really Be a Morning? (1983). He took an eight-year hiatus from directing following _"American Playwrights Theater: The One-Acts" (1989) {Third and Oak: The Pool Hall (#1.1)}, and his swan song as a director was The Member of the Wedding (1997).

Fielder Cook died on June 20, 2003, in Charlotte, North Carolina.

Berlie Dixon was born on 5 April 1930 in Badin, North Carolina, USA. She was married to Ivan Dixon. She died on 9 February 2019 in Charlotte, North Carolina, USA.

Mabel Rea was born on 11 January 1932 in Mecklenburg, North Carolina, USA. She was an actress, known for The Devil's Hairpin (1957), The Girl in Lovers Lane (1960) and Highway Patrol (1955). She died on 24 December 1968 in Charlotte, North Carolina, USA.

J.G. Patterson Jr. was born on 11 January 1930 in Salisbury, North Carolina, USA. He was an actor and producer, known for The Body Shop (1972), The Electric Chair (1976) and She-Devils on Wheels (1968). He was married to Juanita Shaw. He died on 30 June 1975 in Charlotte, North Carolina, USA.

George T. Odom was born on 21 August 1950. He was an actor, known for The Hurricane (1999), Malcolm X (1992) and Straight Out of Brooklyn (1991). He died on 21 September 2016 in Charlotte, North Carolina, USA.

Lit Connah was born on 15 March 1909. She was an actress, known for Mutant (1984), In the Heat of the Night (1988) and The Heavenly Kid (1985). She died on 5 July 2004 in Charlotte, North Carolina, USA.

Jean Pierre Bonnefoux was born on 9 April 1943 in Bourg-en-Bresse, Ain, France. He was an actor, known for Wild Fruit (1954), Les carottes sont cuites (1956) and L'âge heureux (1966). He was married to Patricia McBride. He died on 13 April 2025 in Charlotte, North Carolina, USA.

Eric's first theatrical performance was at the age of 7 in 1974 for the performance of "Wooden Soldiers". A classically trained musician on piano, he also doubles on sax, guitar, theremin, mandolin as well as classical guitar. Debut lead-role in film came in 1992 for the feature film "Whisper". Eric lives in the Appalachian mountain area of North Carolina.

Eric is the great-nephew of legendary actor Sterling Holloway of Georgia. Sterling Holloway has over 160 film credits including the voice of "Winnie The Pooh" and parts in "The Twilight Zone", "The Aristocrats", "Gilligan's Island", "The Jungle Book" and "Alice In Wonderland" to name a few.

Reid Flair was born on 26 February 1988 in Charlotte, North Carolina, USA. He was an actor, known for WCW Thunder (1998), Lucha Libre USA: Masked Warriors on YouTube (2011) and WCW Monday Nitro (1995). He died on 29 March 2013 in Charlotte, North Carolina, USA.

Junior Johnson was born on 28 June 1931 in Ronda, North Carolina, USA. He was an actor, known for Cars 3 (2017), The Last American Hero (1973) and CMT: True Grit (2006). He was married to Lisa Day and Flossie Clark. He died on 20 December 2019 in Charlotte, North Carolina, USA.

Carol Miller was born on 22 August 1938 in Charlotte, North Carolina, USA. She was an actress, known for Caged Heat (1974), Axe (1977) and Date with a Kidnapper (1976). She died on 19 November 2020 in Charlotte, North Carolina, USA.

Charles Elledge was born on 28 March 1908 in Fort Lupton, Colorado, USA. He was an actor, known for Tales of the Third Dimension (1984), Hot Summer in Barefoot County (1974) and Redneck Miller (1976). He died on 30 August 1986 in Charlotte, North Carolina, USA.

Jaah SLT was born on 21 July 2000 in Columbus, Ohio, USA. He was an actor, known for Jaah SLT: Rent Free (2022), Jaah SLT: Tuff (2019) and Jaah SLT: Toxic (2021). He died on 13 August 2022 in Charlotte, North Carolina, USA.

Carl Horn was born on 21 October 1921 in Rutherford, North Carolina, USA. He was married to Virginia Johnston. He died on 5 August 2000 in Charlotte, North Carolina, USA.

James McLendon was born on 7 March 1942 in Starke, Florida, USA. He was a writer, known for Eddie Macon's Run (1983). He died on 12 March 1982 in Charlotte, North Carolina, USA.

Mirjana Puhar was born on 27 July 1995 in Sremska Mitrovica, Serbia, Yugoslavia. She died on 24 February 2015 in Charlotte, North Carolina, USA.

Arthur Smith was born on 1 April 1921 in Clinton, South Carolina, USA. He was a composer, known for Deliverance (1972), The Marine (2006) and Big Fish (2003). He was married to Dorothy. He died on 3 April 2014 in Charlotte, North Carolina, USA.

Vicky Lyons was born on 3 September 1976 in Big Spring, Texas, USA. She died on 9 June 2011 in Charlotte, North Carolina, USA.

Edward Korry was born on 17 January 1922 in New York City, New York, USA. He died on 29 January 2003 in Charlotte, North Carolina, USA.

Benny Parsons was born on 12 July 1941 in North Wilkesboro, North Carolina, USA. He was an actor, known for Talladega Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby (2006), Herbie: Fully Loaded (2005) and Stroker Ace (1983). He was married to Teresa Kiel and Connie Parsons. He died on 16 January 2007 in Charlotte, North Carolina, USA.