Janis Paige

Janis Paige is an American film, musical theatre and television actress. She began singing in public from the age of five in local amateur shows. She then moved to Los Angeles after graduating from high school and then got a job as a singer at the Hollywood Canteen during World War II.

The Canteen, which was a studio-sponsored gathering spot for servicemen, is where Warner Bros. saw her potential and signed her up. She began her film career co-starring in secondary musicals, often paired with either Dennis Morgan or Jack Carson. She later was relegated to rugged adventures and dramas in which she was out of her element. Following her role in the forgettable Two Gals and a Guy released in 1951, she decided to leave the Hollywood scene.

She then took to the Broadway boards and scored a huge hit with the 1951 comedy-mystery play, Remains to Be Seen, co-starring Jackie Cooper. She also toured successfully as a cabaret singer, performing everywhere from New York City and Miami to Las Vegas and Los Angeles.

Stardom came in 1954 with the feisty role of "Babe" in the Broadway musical The Pajama Game. After a six-year hiatus, Paige returned to films in Silk Stockings, which starred Fred Astaire and Cyd Charisse, plus the Doris Day comedy Please Don't Eat the Daisies followed by a role as a love-starved married neighbor in Bachelor in Paradise with Bob Hope .

Jascha Heifetz

Jascha Heifetz was a violin virtuoso born in Vilnius. He is widely regarded as one of the greatest violinists of all time, and was called “The Violinist of the Century” by RCA Victor, the company for whom he recorded.

Heifetz was born into a Jewish family in Vilnius, Lithuania, then part of the Russian Empire. The record confirming his birth on January 20, 1901 is held at the Lithuanian State Historical Archives. The full archival citation is LVIA/728/4/77. A copy of the record is held on microfilm at the LDS in Salt Lake City. The LDS film is 2205068, the image number is 795. The record states the family was registered in Polotzk. His father, Reuven Heifetz, son of Elie, was a local violin teacher and served as the concertmaster of the Vilnius Theatre Orchestra for one season before the theatre closed down. Jascha took up the violin when he was three years old and his father was his first teacher. At five he started lessons with Ilya D. Malkin, a former pupil of Leopold Auer. He was a child prodigy, making his public debut at seven, in Kovno playing the Violin Concerto in E minor by Felix Mendelssohn. In 1910 he entered the Saint Petersburg Conservatory to study under Leopold Auer himself.

He played in Germany and Scandinavia, and met Fritz Kreisler for the first time in a Berlin private house together with other noted violinists in attendance. Kreisler, after accompanying the 12-year-old Heifetz at the piano in a performance of the Mendelssohn concerto, said to all present, “We may as well break our fiddles across our knees.” Heifetz visited much of Europe while still in his teens. In April 1911, Heifetz performed in an outdoor concert in St. Petersburg before 25,000 spectators; there was such a sensational reaction that police officers needed to protect the young violinist after the concert. In 1914, Heifetz performed with the Berlin Philharmonic conducted by Arthur Nikisch. The conductor was very impressed, saying he had never heard such an excellent violinist.

On October 27, 1917, Heifetz played for the first time in the United States, at Carnegie Hall in New York, and became an immediate sensation. Fellow violinist Mischa Elman in the audience asked “Do you think it’s hot in here?”, whereupon Leopold Godowsky, in the next seat, imperturbably replied, “Not for pianists.”

Jay Leno

James Douglas MuirJayLeno is an American stand-up comedian and television host.

From 1992 to 2009, Leno was the host of NBC’s The Tonight Show with Jay Leno. Beginning in September 2009, Leno started a primetime talk show, titled The Jay Leno Show, which aired weeknights at 10:00 p.m., also on NBC. After The Jay Leno Show was cancelled in January 2010 amid a host controversy, Leno returned to host The Tonight Show with Jay Leno on March 1, 2010.

Jay Leno was born in New Rochelle, New York, on April 28, 1950. His mother, Catherine, a homemaker, was born in Greenock, Scotland, and came to the United States at age 11. Her schooling was limited and as a result she prized her children’s successes. Leno’s father, Angelo, who worked as an insurance salesman, was born in New York to immigrants from Flumeri, Italy. Leno grew up in Andover, Massachusetts, and although his high school guidance counselor recommended that he drop out of school, he later obtained a Bachelor’s degree in speech therapy from Emerson College, where he started a comedy club in 1973. Leno’s siblings include his late older brother, Patrick, who was a Vietnam veteran and a lawyer.

He replaced Johnny Carson as host of The Tonight Show in 1992, after having been a regular substitute host for Carson since 1987. Leno continued to perform as a stand-up comedian throughout his tenure on The Tonight Show.

Jay Silverheels

Jay Silverheels was a Canadian Mohawk Indian actor. He was well known for his role as Tonto, the faithful American Indian companion of the Lone Ranger in a long-running American television series.

Silverheels was born Harold J. Smith on the Six Nations of the Grand River First Nation, near Brantford, Ontario, Canada, the son of a Canadian Mohawk Chief and military officer, A. G. E. Smith. Silverheels excelled in athletics and lacrosse as a boy before leaving home to travel around North America, competing in boxing and wrestling tournaments. In the 1930s he played indoor lacrosse under the name of Harry Smith with the Rochester, NY "Iroquois" of the North American Amateur Lacrosse Association. He lived for a time in Buffalo, New York. In 1938 Silverheels placed second in the middleweight section of the Golden Gloves tournament.

Silverheels began working in motion pictures as an extra and stunt man in 1937. During the early years of his screen career, he was billed variously as Harold Smith or Harry Smith, and appeared in low-budget features, westerns, and serials. From the late 1940s he played in more prestigious pictures, including Captain from Castile starring Tyrone Power, Key Largo with Humphrey Bogart, Broken Arrow with James Stewart, War Arrow with Maureen O'Hara, Jeff Chandler and Noah Beery, Jr., Drums Across the River, Walk the Proud Land with Audie Murphy and Anne Bancroft, Alias Jesse James with Bob Hope, and Indian Paint with Johnny Crawford. He made a brief appearance in True Grit, as a condemned criminal about to be executed. He played a substantial role as John Crow in Santee starring Glenn Ford.

Silverheels achieved his greatest fame as the Lone Ranger's friend Tonto. In addition to starring in the Lone Ranger television series from 1949 to 1957, Silverheels appeared in the films The Lone Ranger and The Lone Ranger and the Lost City of Gold .

Jay Thomas

In memory of Actor/Radio Personality and Walk of Famer Jay Thomas, flowers were placed on his star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame on Friday, August 25, 2017 at 11:00 AM PDT. The star in the category of Radio is located at 6161 Hollywood Boulevard. “Rest in Peace, Jay.” Ana Martinez, Producer of the Hollywood Walk of Fame signed the card on behalf of the Hollywood Historic Trust and the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce.

Jay Thomas is an American actor, comedian and radio talk show host.

Thomas was born Jon Thomas Terrell in Kermit, Texas, the son of Katharine "Kathy" and T. Harry Terrell, Sr. He was raised in his Italian American mother's Catholic religion. Thomas attended Jesuit High School in New Orleans, where he grew up. He is a graduate and holds a masters degree in Sociology from Jacksonville University. He lives in Southern California and is the father of three sons, Samuel, Jacob, and JT. Thomas fathered JT years earlier with another woman and gave him up for adoption. Thomas and his son John Harding are reunited and have spoken about their reunion on the Dr. Phil show. John Harding is the lead singer of the band JTX.

Thomas is perhaps best known for his recurring roles. The first on the sitcom Mork and Mindy, on which he played Remo DaVinci, the Italian deli-owner, from 1979 until 1981. He then played the hockey-player-turned-travelling-ice show-skater second husband, Eddie LeBec, of Carla on Cheers. He also appeared on Murphy Brown as a tabloid talk show host, Jerry Gold, who was also one of Murphy's love interests. Thomas won 2 Emmy Awards in 1990 and 1991 for "Outstanding Guest Actor in a Comedy Series" for his portrayal of Jerry Gold on Murphy Brown. His voice characterasations include Zeus In the animated series "Hercules" and best friend to the "American Dad " on FOX.

Thomas also starred in the short-lived 1990 show Married People. Thomas played Russell Myers, a writer who worked at home who was married to a high powered lawyer. When his wife had a baby, Thomas' character became a househusband.

Jay Ward

J Troplong “Jay” Ward was an American creator and producer of animated television cartoons. He produced animated series based on such characters as Crusader Rabbit, Rocky & Bullwinkle, Dudley Do-Right, Peabody and Sherman, Hoppity Hooper, George of the Jungle, Tom Slick and Super Chicken. His company, Jay Ward Productions, also designed the trademark characters for Cap’n Crunch, Quisp and Quake breakfast cereals and made commercials for those products, among others. Ward produced the non-animated series Fractured Flickers that featured comedy redubbing of silent films.

Jay Ward was born and raised in Berkeley, California, and earned an undergraduate degree at the University of California at Berkeley. He also received an MBA from Harvard University. His first career was real estate. Even when his animation company was at the height of its success, he continued to own his own real estate firm as a “fallback” business. Jay Ward was married to Ramona “Billie” Ward. He had three children: Ron, Carey, and Tiffany. He and his wife were avid collectors of African masks which is now part of the permanent collection of the Michelson Museum of Art in Marshall, Texas.

Ward moved into the infant medium of television with the help of his childhood friend, animator Alex Anderson. Anderson was the nephew of Terrytoons founder Paul Terry, and had unsuccessfully tried to sell Terry a concept for a cartoon series made specifically for the new medium. Together, Ward and Anderson took the character, Crusader Rabbit, to NBC and pioneering TV-program distributor Jerry Fairbanks. They put together a pilot film, The Comic Strips of Television, featuring Crusader; a parody of Sherlock Holmes named “Hamhock Bones”; and a bumbling Mountie named Dudley Do-Right.

NBC and Fairbanks were unimpressed with all but Crusader Rabbit. Crusader Rabbit premiered in 1949 and ended its initial run in 1952. Adopting a serialized, mock-melodrama format, the series followed the adventures of Crusader and his dimwitted sidekick Rags the Tiger. It was, in form and content, much like the series that would later gain Ward enduring fame, Rocky and His Friends.

Jayne Mansfield

Jayne Mansfield was an American actress working both on Broadway and in Hollywood. One of the leading blonde sex symbols of the 1950s, Mansfield starred in several popular Hollywood films that emphasized her platinum-blonde hair, hourglass figure and cleavage-revealing costumes.

While Mansfield’s film career was short-lived, she had several box office successes. She won the Theatre World Award, a Golden Globe and a Golden Laurel. As the demand for blonde bombshells declined in the 1960s, Mansfield was relegated to low-budget film melodramas and comedies, but remained a popular celebrity.

In her later career she continued to attract large crowds in foreign countries and in lucrative and successful nightclub tours. Mansfield had been a Playboy Playmate of the Month and appeared in the magazine several additional times. She died in an automobile accident at age 34.

Mansfield, of German and English ancestry, was the only child of Herbert William and Vera Palmer. Her birthname was Vera Jayne Palmer. A natural brunette, she was born in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania, but spent her early childhood in Phillipsburg, New Jersey. When she was three years old, her father, a lawyer who was in practice with future New Jersey governor Robert B. Meyner, died of a heart attack while driving a car with his wife and daughter. After his death, her mother worked as a school teacher. In 1939, when Vera Palmer remarried, the family moved to Dallas, Texas. Mansfield’s desire to become an actress developed at an early age. In 1950, Vera Jayne Palmer married Paul Mansfield, thus becoming Jayne Mansfield, and the couple moved to Austin, Texas.

Jane Seymour

Jane Seymour, OBE is an English actress, best-known as a Bond girl, in the 1973 James Bond film, Live and Let Die, and the star of the 1990s American television series, Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman, and its telefilm sequels.

Seymour was born Joyce Penelope Wilhelmina Frankenberg in Hayes, Middlesex, England, the daughter of Mieke, a nurse, and John Benjamin Frankenberg, an obstetrician. Her father was an English Jew whose family was from Poland, and her mother was a Dutch-born Protestant who was a prisoner of war during WWII. Seymour was educated at the independent The Arts Educational School in Tring, Hertfordshire, in England. She took on the stage name “Jane Seymour”, also the name of King Henry VIII’s third wife, at the age of 17.

Seymour has had a long acting career in both film and television, beginning in 1969 with an uncredited role in Richard Attenborough’s film version of Oh! What a Lovely War. Soon afterward, she married Attenborough’s son, Michael Attenborough. Her first major film role was as Lillian Stein, a Jewish woman seeking shelter from the Nazis, with a Danish family, in the 1970 war drama The Only Way.

From 1972 to 1973, she gained her first major TV role, as Emma Callon in the successful 1970s series The Onedin Line. During this time, she appeared as female lead Prima in the two-part TV mini-series Frankenstein: The True Story, and as Winston Churchill’s lover Pamela Plowden, in another of the films, produced by her father-in-law, Young Winston. She also drew her first major international attention, as Bond girl Solitaire in the 1973 James Bond film, Live and Let Die. IGN ranked her as 10th in a Top 10 Bond Babes list.

Jane Withers

Jane Withers is an American actress best known for being one of the most popular child film stars of the 1930s and early 1940s, as well as for her portrayal of “Josephine the Plumber” in a series of TV commercials for Comet cleanser in the 1960s and early 1970s.

Withers began her career as a child actress, first on local radio broadcasts in Atlanta, Georgia as “Dixie’s Dainty Dewdrop”. By the age of three, she was singing and imitating adult celebrities. In the early 1930s Withers and her family moved to Hollywood; she worked as an extra and a bit part player in several films in 1932 and 1933.

Withers’s big break came when she landed a supporting role in the 1934 Shirley Temple film Bright Eyes. Her character Joy Smythe was spoiled and obnoxious, a perfect foil to Temple’s sweet personality. In a 2006 interview on TCM’s with Robert Osborne, Withers recalled that she was hesitant to take this role because she had to be so “mean” to Shirley Temple and she thought the public would hate her for it. In a humorous scene of the two little girls playing with dolls, Withers tells Temple that she is going to the kitchen to get “the biggest knife I can find and operate on YOUR doll!” She also tells Temple: “There ain’t any Santa Claus, because my psychoanalyst told me!” Withers received positive notices for her work, and was awarded a long-term contract with Fox.

Through the remainder of the 1930s she starred in several movies every year, including Ginger, The Farmer Takes a Wife and Little Miss Nobody, usually cast as a wholesome, meddlesome young girl in films less sugary than Temple’s vehicles. Moviegoers flocked to see her films, and Withers became one of the top 10 box-office stars in 1937 and 1938. Her popularity was such that Fox gave her “name” co-stars: the Ritz Brothers and Gene Autry. Withers also took a flyer in screenwriting: she wrote the original story filmed as Small Town Deb, under the pseudonym “Jerrie Walters.”

Jane Wyatt

Jane Waddington Wyatt was an American actress perhaps best known for her role as the housewife and mother on the television series Father Knows Best and as Amanda Grayson, the human mother of Spock on the science fiction television show, . Wyatt was a three-time Emmy-winner.

Jane Wyatt was born on August 12, 1910 in Campgaw, but was raised in New York City. Her father, Christopher Billopp Wyatt, Jr., was a Wall Street investment banker, and her mother, the former Euphemia Van Rensselaer Waddington, was a drama critic for the Catholic World. Both of her parents were Roman Catholic converts.

One of her ancestors, Rufus King, was a signer of the U.S. Constitution, a U.S. Senator and ambassador, and the Federalist candidate in the 1816 United States presidential election. She was also a descendant of British Royal Navy captain Christopher Billopp. She was a distant cousin of Eleanor Roosevelt and the poet Harry Crosby, through their shared descent from Philip Livingston, also a signer of the Declaration of Independence.

While in New York City, Wyatt attended the Chapin School and later attended two years of Barnard College. After leaving Barnard, she joined the apprentice school of the Berkshire Playhouse at Stockbridge, Massachusetts, where for six months she played a varied assortment of roles.