John Cromwell

Elwood Dager Cromwell, known as John Cromwell, was an American film actor, director and producer.

Born in Toledo, Ohio, Cromwell made his New York City stage debut in Marian De Forest’s adaptation of Little Women on Broadway. It was a hit and ran for 184 performances. He then directed the play The Painted Woman, which failed. Next, he acted in and co-directed with Frank Craven the hit show Too Many Cooks, which ran for 223 performances.

Cromwell played Charles Lomax in the original Broadway production of George Bernard Shaw’s play Major Barbara, about a woman of The Salvation Army, and he played the role as Capt. Kearney in the revival of Shaw’s Captain Brassbound’s Conversion. Among others, he also had a role in The Racket, which ran for 119 performances. The following year while the Broadway company was playing The Racket in Los Angeles, Cromwell was signed to a Paramount Pictures contract as an actor and student director.

He made his motion picture debut playing Walter Babbing in the comedy The Dummy, a talkie starring Ruth Chatterton and Fredric March, with Jack Oakie, and Zasu Pitts. His work as co-director with Edward Sutherland on the musical/romance Close Harmony starring Buddy Rogers, Nancy Carroll, Harry Green, and Jack Oakie, and the musical/drama The Dance of Life, was so skillful he was allowed to begin directing without collaboration, beginning with The Mighty that same year starring George Bancroft, in which he also played the part of Mr. Jamieson.

John Daly

John Charles Patrick Croghan Daly,(generally known by John Charles Daly or simply John Daly was a journalist, game show host, and radio personality, probably best known for hosting the panel show What’s My Line?. He was the vice president of ABC during the 1950s. On December 22, 1960, he became the son-in-law of Chief Justice Earl Warren, by marrying Virginia Warren.

The second of two brothers, Daly was born in Johannesburg, South Africa, where his American father worked as a geologist. After his father died of tropical fever, Daly’s mother moved the family to Boston, Massachusetts in the United States. Daly was an alumnus of Tilton School in Tilton, New Hampshire; he later served on its board of directors for many years and contributed to the construction or restoration of many buildings on campus. He did his postsecondary education at Boston College.

He married twice; first to Margaret Griswell Neal in January 1937. The marriage resulted in sons John Neal Daly and John Charles Daly III and daughter Helene Fitzgerald Daly. It ended in divorce in April 1959 or 1960. On December 22, 1960, Daly married Virginia Warren, daughter of then-Chief Justice Earl Warren, in San Francisco. They were married for over thirty years, until his death. The marriage also yielded three children: John Warren Daly, John Earl Jameson Daly, and Nina Elisabeth Abath Taylor. He died in Chevy Chase, Maryland, of cardiac arrest.

Daly began his broadcasting career as a reporter for NBC radio, and then for WJSV, the local CBS Radio Network affiliate in Washington, DC, serving as CBS’s White House correspondent.

John Derek

John Derek was an American actor, director and photographer most famous for the women to whom he was married.

Born Derek Delevan Harris in Hollywood, California, he was first married to actress Pati Behrs, née Pati Behrs Eristoff. Pati Behrs was a Russian-born American actress, a grandniece of Leo Tolstoy. She was married to Derek from 1951 to 1957. They had two children, Russell and Sean.

His matinee-idol good looks quickly got him supporting roles, most notably as Broderick Crawford’s son in All the King’s Men, but he also enjoyed leads such as “Nick Romano” in Knock on Any Door opposite Humphrey Bogart, “Brock Mitchell” in Fury at Showdown, and as Robin Hood in Rogues of Sherwood Forest with Alan Hale.

Perhaps Derek’s most memorable film appearance was as the noble Joshua in The Ten Commandments .

John Drew Barrymore

John Drew Barrymore, born John Blyth Barrymore, Jr., was a member of the Barrymore family of actors, which included his father, John Barrymore, and his father’s siblings, Lionel and Ethel. He was the father of four children, including John Blyth Barrymore and Drew Barrymore.

Barrymore was born in Los Angeles, California to John Barrymore and Dolores Costello. He is Irish. His parents divorced when he was around three years old in 1935, and Barrymore claimed to have met his father only once. He also stated that he and his cousin, Dirk Drew Davenport, enlisted in the United States Navy during World War II. As both were tall for their age, the military did not discover until several weeks later that the boys were below the minimum enlistment age. Barrymore ran away when he was 17 years old and signed a film contract, but repeatedly abandoned leading roles and had no major film career.

In 1958, he changed his middle name to Drew, although he had previously been credited in past works as Blyth. This was followed by a brief resurgence in Italian movies, as he appeared in several leading roles. However, Barrymore’s social behavior obstructed any professional progress. In the 1960s, he was occasionally incarcerated for drug use, public drunkenness, and spousal abuse.

In 1966, Barrymore accepted a major guest role as Lazarus in the episode “The Alternative Factor”. However, he failed to show up, resulting in a SAG suspension of six months. He did appear as Stacey Daggart in the 1966-1967 NBC series The Road West, starring Barry Sullivan.

John Ericson

John Ericson, born John Meibes in Düsseldorf, Germany, is a German-American actor and film and television star. He trained at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts in New York, played the lead role in Stalag 17 by Donald Bevan and Edmund Trzcinski on Broadway. He went on to make a number of films for MGM in quick succession in the 1950s. His first appearance was in Teresa, directed by Fred Zinnemann, which also launched the film careers of Pier Angeli and Rod Steiger. He then went on to appear in a series of films which included Rhapsody, The Student Prince, Green Fire, and Bad Day at Black Rock. His career continued, mostly on television, for the next thirty years. He appeared in the lead role in “The Peter Bartley Story” of CBS’s fantasy drama, The Millionaire. Child actor Johnny Washbrook appeared in the same episode in a flashback segment of Ericson as a boy. Ericson guest starred in the 1961 ABC crime drama, In 1965-1966, he co-starred with Anne Francis in the detective series Honey West. He occasionally appeared in such films as Pretty Boy Floyd, 7 Faces of Dr. Lao and Bedknobs and Broomsticks .

John Farrow

John Farrow CBE was an Australian, later American, film director, producer and screenwriter. In 1957 he won the Academy Award for Best Writing / Best Screenplay for Around the World in Eighty Days and in 1942 he was nominated as Best Director for Wake Island.

Born John Villiers Farrow in Sydney, Australia, John Farrow began writing while working as a sailor in the 1920s. He moved to Hollywood to work in films as a marine technical advisor and stayed on as a screenwriter. He wrote for films between 1927 and 1959, and also directed between 1934 and 1959. Farrow was also a writer of short stories and plays, as well as non-fiction. He was married to actress Maureen O’Sullivan from 12 September 1936 until his death. He fathered four daughters: actresses Mia, Prudence, Stephanie, Tisa; three sons: Michael Namien, Patrick Joseph, John Charles. Maureen O’Sullivan was his second wife, after he converted to Catholicism and she received a papal dispensation to marry a divorcee.

He became an American citizen in 1947. In 1953 he was appointed an Honorary Commander of the Order of the British Empire. He was also appointed him a Knight Grand Cross of the Order of the Holy Sepulchre by Pope Pius XI.

John Belushi

John Adam Belushi was an American comedian, actor, and musician from Albanian descent ,best known as one of the original cast members of the NBC sketch comedy show Saturday Night Live and for his roles in the films National Lampoon's Animal House and The Blues Brothers. He was the older brother of James Belushi.

Belushi was born in Chicago, Illinois, the son of Agnes Belushi, a first generation Albanian-American, and Adam Belushi, an Albanian immigrant and restaurant operator who left his native village, Qytezë, in 1934 at the age of sixteen. The family's name at the time of immigration was Bellios, or Belliors. Belushi was raised in the Albanian Orthodox church and grew up outside Chicago in Wheaton with a brother Jim, five-and-a-half years his junior. He attended Wheaton Central High School, where he met his future wife, Judy Jacklin.

Belushi's first big break as a comedian occurred in 1971, when he joined The Second City comedy troupe in Chicago. He was cast in National Lampoon's Lemmings, a parody of Woodstock, which played Off-Broadway in 1972 and also showcased future Saturday Night Live performers Chevy Chase and Christopher Guest.

In 1973, Belushi and Jacklin moved together to New York. From 1973 to 1975, National Lampoon Inc. aired The National Lampoon Radio Hour, a half-hour comedy program syndicated across the country on approximately 600 stations. Belushi was a regular player on the show. Other players included future SNL regulars Gilda Radner, Bill Murray, Brian Doyle-Murray and Chevy Chase. Jacklin became an associate producer for the show, and she and Belushi were married on December 31, 1976. A number of comic segments first performed on The Radio Hour would be translated into SNL sketches in the show's early seasons.

John Beradino

John Beradino was an American infielder in Major League Baseball and an actor. Known as Johnny Berardino during his baseball career, he was also credited during his acting career as John Baradino, John Barardino or John Barradino.

He was born Giovanni Berardino in Los Angeles, California. He attended Belmont High School, located in Downtown, Los Angeles.

Beradino is often mentioned as having appeared in the silent Our Gang comedies produced by Hal Roach as a child actor, but has not been identified as having appeared in any of the existing films.

After attending the University of Southern California where he played baseball under coach Sam Barry and was member of Phi Kappa Tau fraternity, Beradino was a major league player from 1939 to 1953. He played second base and shortstop for the St. Louis Browns, Cleveland Indians, and Pittsburgh Pirates, winning the World Series with the Indians in 1948. After injuring his leg and being released by Pittsburgh in 1952, he retired from baseball and returned to acting, having appeared in his first film in 1948.

John Boles

John Love Boles was an American actor. Boles was born in Greenville, Texas, into a middle-class family. He graduated with honors from the University of Texas in 1917 and married Marielite Dobbs in that same year. His parents wanted him to be a doctor and Boles studied and finally got his B.A. degree, but the stage called. John Boles preferred acting and singing, and he demonstrated talents for them from an early age and this won him a place alongside Gloria Swanson when she chose him to play in film with her. During World War I, he was a US spy in Germany, Bulgaria, and Turkey.

He started out in Hollywood in the silent movie era, but became a huge star with the advent of talkies. After the war, Boles moved to New York to study music. He quickly became well-known for his talents and was selected to play the leading man in the 1923 Broadway musical Little Jesse James. He became an established star on Broadway and attracted the attention of Hollywood producers and actors.

He was hired by MGM to appear in a silent film in 1924. He starred in two more films for that studio before returning to New York and the stage. In 1927, he returned to Hollywood to star in The Love of Sunya opposite Gloria Swanson, which was a huge success for him. Unfortunately, because the movies were still silent he was unable to show off his singing ability until late in the decade. In 1929, the Warner Brothers hired him to star in their lavish musical operetta The Desert Song. This film featured sequences in Technicolor and was a box-office success. Soon after, Radio Pictures selected him to play the leading man in their extravagant production of Rio Rita, opposite Bebe Daniels. Audiences were enthralled by his beautiful voice, and John Boles suddenly found himself in huge demand. RCA Victor even hired him to make phonograph records of songs that he had sung in his films.

As soon as Rio Rita was completed, Boles went back to Warner Brothers as the leading man in an even more extravagant musical entitled Song of the West that was filmed entirely in Technicolor. Shortly after this film, Universal Pictures offered John Boles a contract, which he accepted. He starred in a number of pictures for them, most notably the all-Technicolor musical revue entitled The King of Jazz and a historical operetta entitled Captain of the Guard. In 1931, he starred in One Heavenly Night, which would prove to be his last major musical.

John Bowers

John Bowers was an American stage and silent film actor who starred in ninety-four films including short subjects.

Born John E. Bowersox in Garrett, Indiana, to George and Ida Bowersox, he attended Huntington Business College in Huntington, Indiana, where he became interested in acting. He joined a stock stage group and traveled until he landed in New York in 1912, where he appeared in Broadway productions. Bowers began his film career in 1914. Within five years, he became one of the most popular leading men. During his career he co-starred frequently with Marguerite De La Motte, whom he later married.

Like many silent film stars, Bowers saw his career collapse when talkies became the standard. On November 17, 1936, he heard that his old friend Henry Hathaway was directing Gary Cooper in Souls At Sea on and off the shore of Santa Catalina. The 50 year old actor rented a sixteen-foot sloop and sailed to the island, hoping to land a part in the picture only to learn that it had been cast. He never returned to shore and his body was found on the beach at Santa Monica, California. His life and particularly his death is identified as inspiration for the character Norman Maine in A Star is Born. The character was also based on Errol Flynn and Norman Kerry.

John Bowers last address was 1459 North Vine Street, Los Angeles.