Nancy Kwan played a pivotal role in the acceptance of actors of Asian descent

Nancy Kwan (born May 19, 1939) is an American actress, who played a pivotal role in the acceptance of actors of Asian descent in major Hollywood film roles. Widely praised for her beauty, Kwan was considered a sex symbol in the 1960s. Nancy Kwan was born in Hong Kong to a Cantonese father, architect Kwan Wing Hong, and Scottish mother, model Marquita Scott. Her parents divorced when she was two years old. During the Japanese invasion of Hong Kong, in December 1941, Kwan's father, who worked for British intelligence, fled the city on foot along with Nancy and her brother, Ka Keung, and hid out in western China. The family returned to Hong Kong at the end of World War II. Kwan later studied at the Royal Ballet School in England, performing in Swan Lake and Sleeping Beauty at Covent Garden. She completed her studies with a certificate to teach ballet. While she was in England, producer Ray Stark discovered her. At the time, Asian film characters, particularly those in major film roles

Geraldine McEwan diverse history in theatre and film

Geraldine McEwan (born Geraldine McKeown on 9 May 1932) is an English actor with a diverse history in theatre, film, and television. From 2004 to 2009 she appeared as Miss Marple, the Agatha Christie sleuth, for the series Marple, shown on ITV1 in the UK and on PBS in the U.S.. She was born Geraldine McKeown on 9 May 1932 in Old Windsor, Berkshire, England, the daughter of Donald McKeown and his wife, Nora (Burns). She was married to the former principal of RADA, Hugh Cruttwell, who died in 2002. McEwan attended Windsor County Girls' School, and her extensive theatrical career began at 14 as assistant stage manager at the Theatre Royal, Windsor. She made her first appearance on the Windsor stage in October 1946 as an attendant of Hippolyta in A Midsummer Night's Dream and played many parts with the Windsor Repertory Company from March 1949 to March 1951, including a role in the Ruth Gordon bio play Years Ago opposite guest player John Clark

Belle Bennett was a stage and screen actress

Belle Bennett (April 22, 1891 – November 4, 1932) was a stage and screen actress who started her professional career in vaudeville. She was born in Milaca, Minnesota. Bennett appeared in circus performances during her childhood. Her father was Billie Bennett, owner of a circus. He trained her to be a trapeze performer after she spent some years in the Sacred Heart Convent in Minneapolis, Minnesota. By age thirteen she was appearing in public. Performances with stock companies led Bennett to Broadway. There she appeared in theatrical productions staged by David Belasco. Bennett was cast in numerous minor Hollywood motion pictures like the western film A Ticket to Red Horse Gulch (1914). Then Samuel Goldwyn selected her from among seventy-three actresses for the leading role in Stella Dallas (1925). The film has been ranked as one of the finest movies of all time. While filming the movie her son, sixteen-year-old William Howard Macy, died

Barbara Rush American stage, film, and television actress

Barbara Rush (born January 4, 1927) is a American stage, film, and television actress. A student at the University of California, Santa Barbara, Barbara Rush performed on stage at the Pasadena Playhouse before signing with Paramount Pictures. She made her screen debut in the 1951 movie The Goldbergs and went on to star opposite the likes of James Mason, Marlon Brando, Paul Newman, Richard Burton, Dean Martin, Frank Sinatra and Kirk Douglas. In 1954 she won the Golden Globe Award for "Most Promising Newcomer - Female" for her performance in It Came from Outer Space. Rush began her career on stage and it has always been a part of her professional life. In 1970, she earned the Sarah Siddons Award for dramatic achievement in Chicago theatre for her leading role in Forty Carats and brought her one-woman play A Woman of Independent Means to Broadway in 1984. She began working on television in the 1950s. She later became a regular performer in TV movies, miniseries

Leila Hyams an unforgotten silent movie star

Leila Hyams (1 May 1905 – 4 December 1977) was an American film actress. Her relatively short film career began in silent films, and ended in the mid 1930s. Born in New York, New York to vaudeville comedy performers John Hyams and Leila McIntyre, Hyams appeared on-stage with her parents while still a child. As a teenager she worked as a model and become well known across the United States after appearing in a successful series of newspaper advertisements. This success led her to Hollywood. She made her first film in 1924, and with her blonde hair, delicate features, and good natured demeanour, was cast in a string of supporting roles, where she was required to do very little but smile and look pretty. She proved herself capable of handling the small roles she was assigned, and over a period of time she came to be taken seriously as an actress. By 1928 she was playing starring roles, achieving success in MGM's first talkie release, Alias Jimmy Valentine (1928) opposite William Haines

Celeste Holm an unforgettable face from the past

Celeste Holm (born April 29, 1917) is an American stage, film, and television actress, known for her Academy Award-winning performance in Gentleman's Agreement (1947), as well as for her Oscar-nominated performances in Come to the Stable (1949) and All About Eve (1950). Born and raised in New York City, Holm grew up as an only child. She attended Friends Seminary. Her mother, Jean Parke, was an American portrait artist and author; her father, Theodor Holm, was a Norwegian insurance adjuster for Lloyd's of London. Holm studied acting at the University of Chicago before becoming a stage actress in the late 1930s following a brief first marriage, which produced her first child, son Ted Nelson. Holm's first professional theatrical role was in a production of Hamlet starring Leslie Howard. Holm's first major Broadway part was as Mary L. in William Saroyan's 1940 revival of The Time of Your Life co-starring fellow newcomer Gene Kelly

Carolyn Jones

Carolyn Sue Jones (April 28, 1930 – August 3, 1983) was an American actress. Jones began her film career in the early 1950s, and by the end of the decade had achieved recognition with a nomination for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress for The Bachelor Party (1957) and a Golden Globe Award as one of the most promising actresses of 1959. Her film career continued for a few years, and in 1964 she began playing the role of Morticia Addams in the television series The Addams Family, receiving a Golden Globe Award nomination for her work. Jones was born in Amarillo, Texas, the daughter of Julius Alfred and Cloe Jeanette (née Southern) Jones. She had some Native American ancestry In 1934 her father abandoned the family and her mother moved her and the two children to her parents' home. Carolyn grew up living in her grandparents' home in Amarillo. She suffered from severe asthma that often restricted her from childhood activities

Danielle Darrieux

Danielle Darrieux, originally uploaded by Truus, Bob & Jan too!.German postcard. Starfoto, Progress, Nr. 1292. The card refers to the films Le rouge et le noir (1954) and Pot-Bouille (1957).

French actress and singer Danielle Darrieux (1917) is an enduringly beautiful, international leading lady. From her film debut in 1931 on she progressed from playing pouty teens to worldy sophisticates. In the early 1950’s she starred in three classic films by Max Ophüls, and she played the mother of Catherine Deneuve in five films