Rosalind Russell was an American actress of stage and screen, perhaps best known for her role as a fast-talking newspaper reporter in the Howard Hawks screwball comedy His Girl Friday, as well as the role of Mame Dennis in the film Auntie Mame. She won all 5 Golden Globes for which she was nominated, and was tied with Meryl Streep for wins until 2007 when Streep was awarded a sixth. Russell won a Tony Award in 1953 for Best Performance by an Actress in a Musical for her portrayal of Ruth in the Broadway show Wonderful Town.

Russell was known for playing character roles, exceptionally wealthy, dignified ladylike women. She had a wide career span from the 1930s to the 1970s and attributed her long career to the fact that, although usually playing classy and glamorous roles, she never became a sex symbol, thereby not being famous for her looks.

Rosalind Russell was one of seven siblings born in Waterbury, Connecticut, to Clara and James Edward Russell, an Irish-American Catholic family. She was not named after the character from Shakespeare’s As You Like It, but rather after a ship on which her parents had traveled. She attended Roman Catholic schools, including Marymount College in Tarrytown, New York, before attending the American Academy of Dramatic Arts in New York City. Her parents thought Russell was studying to become a teacher, and were unaware that she was planning on becoming a stage comedienne.

The house in which she grew up, on Willow Street in Waterbury, was purchased in 1934 by Mayor Raymond E. Snyder, Sr. and then turned into a funeral home. It is still an active funeral business today, called “Snyder Funeral Home”.

Roscoe Conkling “Fatty” Arbuckle was an American illustrated song slide “model,” silent film actor, comedian, director, and screenwriter. Starting at the Selig Polyscope Company he eventually moved to Keystone Studios where he worked with Mabel Normand and Harold Lloyd. He mentored Charlie Chaplin and discovered Buster Keaton and Bob Hope. He was one of the most popular silent stars of the 1910s, and soon became one of the highest paid actors in Hollywood, signing a contract to make $1 million a year in 1918.

In 1921 Arbuckle threw a party during Labor Day weekend. Bit player Virginia Rappe became ill at the party and died days later. Soon Arbuckle was accused of raping and accidentally killing Rappe, enduring three widely publicized trials for manslaughter. His films were subsequently banned, his career was ruined, and he was publicly ostracized. Though he was acquitted by a jury and received a written apology, the trial’s scandal has mostly overshadowed his legacy as a pioneering comedian. Though the ban on his films was eventually lifted, Arbuckle only worked sparingly through the 1920s. In 1932 he began a successful comeback, which he briefly enjoyed before his death in 1933.

Born in Smith Center, Kansas, one of nine children born to Mollie and William Goodrich Arbuckle who were of Scottish descent. Roscoe Arbuckle weighed in excess of at birth and as both parents had slim builds this resulted in his father not believing the child was his own offspring. This disbelief led him to name the child after a politician whom he despised, Republican senator Roscoe Conkling. The birth was traumatic for Mollie and resulted in chronic health problems which contributed to her death 12 years later.

Arbuckle had a “wonderful” singing voice and was extremely agile. At the age of eight his mother encouraged him to perform in theatres which he enjoyed until she died in 1899 when he was 12. His father, who had always treated him harshly, now refused to support him and Arbuckle got work doing odd jobs in a hotel. Arbuckle was in the habit of singing while he worked and was overheard by a customer who was a professional singer. The customer invited him to perform in an amateur talent show. The show consisted of the audience judging acts by clapping or jeering with bad acts pulled off the stage by a shepherd’s crook. Arbuckle sang, danced and did some clowning around but did not impress the audience. He saw the crook emerge from the wings and to avoid it somersaulted into the orchestra pit in obvious panic. The audience went wild and he not only won the competition but began a career in vaudeville.