Suzanne Pleshette
Suzanne Pleshette was an American actress, on stage, screen and television.
After beginning her career in theatre, she began appearing in films in the early 1960s, such as Rome Adventure and Alfred Hitchcock’s The Birds. She later appeared in various television productions, often in guest roles, and played the role of Emily Hartley on The Bob Newhart Show from 1972 until 1978, receiving Emmy Award nominations for her work.
She continued acting until 2004, and died from respiratory failure as a result of lung cancer in 2008.
Pleshette was born in Brooklyn Heights, New York City, of Russian Jewish heritage. Her mother, Geraldine, was a dancer and artist who performed under the stage name Geraldine Rivers. Her father, Eugene Pleshette, was a stage manager, network executive and manager of the Paramount Theater in Brooklyn. She graduated from Manhattan’s High School of Performing Arts and then attended Syracuse University for one semester before transferring to Finch College.
Suzanne Somers
Suzanne Somers is an American actress, author, singer and businesswoman, best known for her television roles as Christmas Snow AKA Chrissy Snow on Three’s Company and as Carol Lambert on Step by Step.
Somers later became the author of a series of best-selling self-help books, including Ageless: The Naked Truth About Bioidentical Hormones, a book about bioidentical hormone replacement therapy. She has also released two autobiographies, four diet books, and a book of poetry entitled “Touch Me”. She currently features items of her design on ShopNBC.
She has been criticized for her views on some medical subjects and her advocacy of the Wiley Protocol, which has been labelled as “scientifically unproven and dangerous”. Her promotion of alternative cancer treatments has received criticism from the American Cancer Society.
Born Suzanne Marie Mahoney in San Bruno, California, Somers was the third of four children in an Irish Catholic family. Her mother, Marion Elizabeth, was a medical secretary, and her father, Francis Mahoney, was a laborer and gardener. Her family attended church at St. Robert’s Catholic Church in San Bruno.
Sting
Sting, CBE is an English musician, singer-songwriter, activist, actor and philanthropist. Prior to starting his solo career, he was the principal songwriter, lead singer and bassist of the rock band The Police.
As a solo musician and member of The Police, Sting has received sixteen Grammy Awards for his work, receiving his first Grammy for Best Rock Instrumental Performance in 1981, and receiving an Oscar nomination for best song. He is a member of both the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and the Songwriters Hall of Fame.
Sting was born Gordon Matthew Sumner in Wallsend, England, near Newcastle upon Tyne, the eldest of four children born to Audrey, a hairdresser, and Ernest Matthew Sumner, a milkman and engineer. His parents had three more children: Philip, Angela and Anita. Young Gordon would often assist his father with the early-morning milk-delivery rounds and his “best friend” was an old Spanish guitar with five rusty strings which had been left behind by an uncle who had emigrated to Canada.
He attended St. Cuthbert’s High School in Newcastle upon Tyne. He would often sneak into nightclubs like the Club-A-Go-Go, where he would watch acts such as Cream and Jimi Hendrix, artists who would later influence his own music. After jobs as a bus conductor, a construction labourer, and a tax officer, he attended Northern Counties College of Education, from 1971 to 1974 and qualified as a teacher. He then worked as a schoolteacher at St. Paul’s Middle School in Cramlington for two years.
Stu Nahan
Stu Nahan was an American sportscaster best known for his television broadcasting career in Los Angeles from the 1950s through the 1990s. He is also remembered for his role as a boxing commentator in most of the Rocky films. He received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame on May 25, 2007. Nahan had battled lymphoma, a form of cancer, since being diagnosed in January 2006.
A native of Los Angeles, Nahan moved at age 2 with his mother to Canada, where he grew up playing ice hockey.
A star goalie at McGill University in Montreal, he signed a contract with the Toronto Maple Leafs of the National Hockey League in 1946. He was assigned to the minor-league Los Angeles Monarchs, who through the early 1950s played at the Pan Pacific Auditorium.
Nahan originally began working on a children's television program, appearing as "Skipper Stu" in Sacramento in the 1950s. He also worked for KCRA in Sacramento as a sportscaster.
Stuart Whitman
Stuart Maxwell Whitman is an American actor. Stuart Whitman is arguably best-known for playing Marshal Jim Crown in the western television series Cimarron Strip in 1967. Whitman also starred with John Wayne in the Western movie, The Comancheros, in 1961, and received top billing as the romantic lead in the extravagant aerial epic Those Magnificent Men in Their Flying Machines in 1965.
Whitman was born in San Francisco, California, the eldest of two sons. His parents, Cecilia and Joseph Whitman, traveled frequently during his childhood, and as a result, he attended over twenty schools. He graduated from high school and spent three years in the Army Corps of Engineers. He became a boxer and was at one time a top light heavyweight contender. After leaving the army, he enrolled in Los Angeles City College and the Los Angeles Academy of Dramatic Art.
Whitman was a supporting actor in When Worlds Collide, All American, Brigadoon, Silver Lode, Ten North Frederick, These Thousand Hills, and The Sound and the Fury. His first leading man role is in Murder, Inc. in 1960. He was signed on as a contract star with 20th Century Fox.
In 1961, Whitman was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actor for his role as a child molester in The Mark, a role many other better known actors turned down. He has since appeared in starring and supporting roles in many films, including Francis of Assisi, The Fiercest Heart, The Longest Day, The Comancheros, Convicts 4, The Day and the Hour, Signpost to Murder, Shock Treatment, Rio Conchos, Those Magnificent Men in Their Flying Machines, Sands of the Kalahari, The City Beneath the Sea, An American Dream, The Last Escape, The Decks Ran Red starring Dorothy Dandridge on whose face Stuart planted Hollywood’s first interrracial kiss, The Invincible Six, Night of the Lepus, Shatter, Tony Saitta, Guyana: Crime of the Century, Treasure Seekers and The White Buffalo.
Sue Carol
Sue Carol was an American actress and talent agent.
While at a social function in Los Angeles in 1927, a director offered her a part in a film. She took it and began playing minor parts. Carol's film career lasted from the late 1920s into the 1930s, and when it ended she became a talent agent; one of her clients was Alan Ladd to whom she was married from 1942 until his death in 1964.
Carol was born Evelyn Lederer in Chicago, Illinois to Caroline, a German Jewish immigrant, and Samuel Lederer, a Jewish immigrant from Austria. One of the WAMPAS Baby Stars, she performed in motion pictures from 1927 until 1937.
Among the movies in which she appeared are Fox Movietone Follies of 1929 and Girls Gone Wild. Her films were made in association with producer Cecil B. Demille and MGM.
Stu Erwin
Stuart Erwin was an American actor. Erwin began acting in college in the 1920s, first appearing on the stage, then breaking into films in 1928 in Mother Knows Best. He was cast as amiable oafs in several films such as The Sophomore, The Big Broadcast, Hollywood Cavalcade, Our Town, International House and Viva Villa!. In 1934 he was cast as Joe Palooka in the film Palooka, and in 1935 he had a supporting role in After Office Hours. He co-starred in the Paramount Pictures all-star revue Paramount on Parade. In 1936, he was cast in Pigskin Parade, for which he was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor. Since it was the first year that the Best Supporting Actor/Actress existed, many errors occurred, including Erwin’s nomination. In Walt Disney’s Bambi, he did the voice of a tree squirrel.
In 1950, Erwin made the transition to television, where he starred in Trouble with Father, which was eventually retitled The Stu Erwin Show. He co-starred with his wife, actress June Collyer. He later appeared in the Disney films Son of Flubber and The Misadventures of Merlin Jones. He also appeared with Jack Palance in the ABC series The Greatest Show on Earth during the 1963-1964 television season.
Susan Hayward
Susan Hayward was an American actress. After working as a fashion model in New York, Hayward travelled to Hollywood in 1937 when open auditions were held for the leading role in Gone With the Wind. Although she was not selected, she secured a film contract, and played several small supporting roles over the next few years. By the late 1940s the quality of her film roles had improved, and she achieved recognition for her dramatic abilities with the first of five Academy Award nominations for Best Actress for her performance as an alcoholic in Smash-Up, the Story of a Woman. Her career continued successfully through the 1950s and she won the Academy Award for Best Actress for her portrayal of death row inmate Barbara Graham in I Want to Live!. By this time, Hayward was married and living in Georgia and her film appearances became infrequent, although she continued acting in film and television until 1972. She died in 1975 following a long battle with brain cancer.
Hayward was born Edythe Marrenner in Brooklyn, New York to Walter Marrenner and Ellen Pearson. Her paternal grandmother was an actress, Kate Harrigan, from County Cork, Ireland. Her maternal grandparents were from Sweden. She began her career as a photographer’s model, going to Hollywood in 1937, aiming to secure the role of Scarlett O’Hara in Gone with the Wind.
Although she did not win the role of Scarlett, Hayward found employment playing bit parts until she was cast in Beau Geste opposite Gary Cooper. During the war years, she played leading lady to John Wayne twice, in Reap the Wild Wind and The Fighting Seabees. She also starred in the film version of The Hairy Ape. Later in 1955, she was cast by Howard Hughes to play Bortai in the historical epic The Conqueror, again opposite John Wayne.
Susan Lucci
Susan Victoria Lucci is an American actress, best known for portraying Erica Kane on the daytime drama All My Children. Lucci has been called “Daytime’s Leading Lady” by TV Guide, with New York Times and Los Angeles Times citing her as the highest-paid actor in daytime television. Midway into her career, her salary had been reported as over $1 million a year.
Susan Lucci was born in Scarsdale, New York, to parents Jeanette and Victor Lucci. Her father is Italian, and her mother is Swedish. She attended Garden City High School in Garden City, New York, graduating in 1964. She then attended Marymount College at Fordham University, and graduated from Marymount in 1968.
Lucci is best known for playing Erica Kane on the ABC television soap opera All My Children, on which she has appeared since the show’s inception on January 5, 1970. She is the only original cast member remaining on the series.
Lucci was nominated for the Outstanding Lead Actress in a Drama Series Emmy for her work on All My Children almost every year since 1978. When Lucci did not win the award after several consecutive nominations, her image in the media began to be lampooned, as she became notoriously synonymous with never winning an Emmy. NBC’s Saturday Night Live exploited this by asking her to host an episode, where her monologue parodied the cast, crew, and even stagehands carrying Emmys of their own in her presence. In addition, she appeared in a 1989 television commercial for the sugar substitute “Sweet One,” intended to portray her as the opposite of her villainess character, yet throwing one of Erica Kane’s characteristic tantrums, shouting “11 years without an Emmy! What does a person have to do around here to get an Emmy?”