The love goddesses: 1920s and 1930s

1. Jean Harlow

Actress | Suzy

Harlean Carpenter, who later became Jean Harlow, was born in Kansas City, Missouri, on March 3, 1911. She was the daughter of a successful dentist and his wife. In 1927, at the age of 16, she ran away from home to marry a young businessman named Charles McGrew, who was 23. The couple pulled up ...

2. Clara Bow

Actress | Wings

Clara Gordon Bow, destined to become "The It Girl", was born on July 29, 1905 in Brooklyn, New York, and was raised in poverty and violence. Her often absentee and brutish father could not or did not provide and her schizophrenic mother tried to slit Clara's throat when the girl spoke of becoming ...

3. Marlene Dietrich

Soundtrack | Witness for the Prosecution

Her father was a police lieutenant and imbued in her a military attitude to life. Marlene was known in school for her "bedroom eyes" and her first affairs were at this stage in her life - a professor at the school was terminated. She entered the cabaret scene in 1920s Germany, first as a spectator ...

4. Greta Garbo

Actress | Ninotchka

Greta Garbo was born Greta Lovisa Gustafsson on September 18, 1905, in Stockholm, Sweden, to Anna Lovisa (Johansdotter), who worked at a jam factory, and Karl Alfred Gustafsson, a laborer. She was fourteen when her father died, which left the family destitute. Greta was forced to leave school and ...

5. Louise Brooks

Actress | Die Büchse der Pandora

Mary Louise Brooks, also known by her childhood name of Brooksie, was born in the Midwestern town of Cherryvale, Kansas, on November 14, 1906. She began dancing at an early age with the Denishawn Dancers (which was how she left Kansas and went to New York) and then with George White's Scandals ...

6. Joan Crawford

Actress | What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?

Joan Crawford was born Lucille Fay LeSueur on March 23, 1906, in San Antonio, Texas, to Anna Belle (Johnson) and Thomas E. LeSueur, a laundry laborer. By the time she was born, her parents had separated, and by the time she was a teenager, she'd had three stepfathers. It wasn't an easy life; ...

7. Myrna Loy

Actress | The Thin Man

Myrna Williams, later to become Myrna Loy, was born on August 2, 1905 in Helena, Montana. Her father was the youngest person ever elected to the Montana State legislature. Later on her family moved to Radersburg where she spent her youth on a cattle ranch. At the age of 13, Myrna's father died of ...

8. Anna May Wong

Actress | The Toll of the Sea

Anna May Wong, the first Chinese-American movie star, was born Wong Liu Tsong on January 3, 1905, in Los Angeles, California, to laundryman Wong Sam Sing and his wife, Lee Gon Toy. A third-generation American, she managed to have a substantial acting career during a deeply racist time when the ...

9. Katharine Hepburn

Actress | The Lion in Winter

Katharine Houghton Hepburn was born on May 12, 1907 in Hartford, Connecticut to a suffragist, Katharine Martha (Houghton), and a doctor, Thomas Norval Hepburn, who both always encouraged her to speak her mind, develop it fully, and exercise her body to its full potential. An athletic tomboy as a ...

10. Mae West

Actress | She Done Him Wrong

Mae West was born August 17, 1893 in Brooklyn, New York, to "Battling Jack" West and Matilda Doelger. She began her career as a child star in vaudeville, and later went on to write her own plays, including "SEX", for which she was arrested. Though her first movie role, at age 40, was a small part ...

11. Carole Lombard

Actress | To Be or Not to Be

Carole Lombard was born Jane Alice Peters in Fort Wayne, Indiana, on October 6, 1908. Her parents divorced in 1916 and her mother took the family on a trip out West. While there they decided to settle down in the Los Angeles area. After being spotted playing baseball in the street with the ...

12. Brigitte Helm

Actress | Metropolis

After her role in Metropolis (1927) she made a string of movies in which she almost always had the starring role, easily making the transition to sound films. Her last film was An Ideal Spouse (1935) (An Ideal Spouse) in 1935.

13. Thelma Todd

Actress | Horse Feathers

Thelma Todd was born in Lawrence, Massachusetts, an industrial city near the New Hampshire state line. She was a lovely child with good academic tendencies, so much so that she decided early on to become a schoolteacher. After high school she went on to college but at her mother's insistence ...

14. Dolores del Rio

Actress | Las abandonadas

Dolores del Rio was the one of the first Mexican movie stars with international appeal and who had meteoric career in the 1920s/1930s Hollywood. Del Rio came from an aristocratic family in Durango. In the Mexican revolution of 1916, however, the family lost everything and emigrated to Mexico City, ...

15. Bette Davis

Actress | All About Eve

Ruth Elizabeth Davis was born April 5, 1908, in Lowell, Massachusetts, to Ruth Augusta (Favor) and Harlow Morrell Davis, a patent attorney. Her parents divorced when she was 10. She and her sister were raised by their mother. Her early interest was dance. To Bette, dancers led a glamorous life, but...

16. Dita Parlo

Actress | La grande illusion

Dita Parlo was born on September 4, 1906 in Stettin, Pomerania, Germany [now Szczecin, Zachodniopomorskie, Poland]. She was an actress, known for The Grand Illusion (1937), Melody of the Heart (1929) and Tropennächte (1931). She was previously married to Frank Guetal. She died on December 12, ...

17. Jean Arthur

Actress | You Can't Take It with You

This marvelous screen comedienne's best asset was only muffled during her seven years' stint in silent films. That asset? It was, of course, her squeaky, frog-like voice, which silent-era cinema audiences had simply no way of perceiving, much less appreciating. Jean Arthur, born Gladys Georgianna ...

18. Mary Astor

Actress | The Maltese Falcon

Mary Astor was born Lucile Vasconcellos Langhanke, on May 3, 1906 in Quincy, Illinois to a German immigrant father, Otto Ludwig Langhanke, and an American mother from Illinois, Helen Marie Vasconcellos, of Portuguese and Irish ancestry. Her parents were very ambitious for her as they recognized ...

19. Nita Naldi

Actress | Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde

Nonna Dooley, the future silent screen star, began her career as a showgirl in a Shubert revue in the Winter Garden, later went on to the famed Ziegfeld Follies.

After a successful career on the stage with the Follies, Nita decided to try her hand with films in Hollywood. Her rise to fame was very ...

20. Mae Murray

Actress | Sweet Kitty Bellairs

Dubbed "The Girl with the Bee Stung Lips" and "The Gardenia of the Screen," silent screen star Mae Murray was born in New York City as Marie Adrienne Koenig on May 10, 1885. The middle of three children born to French and German émigrés, she began studying dance at a young age.

Mae's professional ...

21. Pola Negri

Actress | Bella Donna

Pola Negri was born in Lipno, Poland, and moved to Warsaw as a child. Living in poverty with her mother, a teenage Pola auditioned and was accepted to the Imperial Ballet. Due to an illness that ended her dancing career, she soon switched to the Warsaw Imperial Academy of Dramatic Arts and became ...

22. Marion Davies

Actress | Little Old New York

Marion Davies was one of the great comedic actresses of the silent era and into the 1930s.

Marion Cecelia Douras was born in the borough of Brooklyn, New York on January 3, 1897, the daughter of Rose (Reilly) and Bernard J. Douras, a lawyer and judge. Her parents were both of Irish descent. Marion ...

23. Ginger Rogers

Actress | Kitty Foyle

Ginger Rogers was born Virginia Katherine McMath in Independence, Missouri on July 16, 1911, the daughter of Lela E. Rogers (née Lela Emogene Owens) and William Eddins McMath. Her mother went to Independence to have Ginger away from her husband. She had a baby earlier in their marriage and he ...

24. Joan Blondell

Actress | Grease

With blonde hair, big blue eyes and a big smile, Joan Blondell was usually cast as the wisecracking working girl who was the lead's best friend.

Joan was born Rose Blondell in Manhattan, New York, the daughter of Katie and Eddie Blondell, who were vaudeville performers. Her father was a Polish ...

25. Ann Dvorak

Actress | Scarface

Ann Dvorak was the daughter of silent film star Anna Lehr and silents director Edwin McKim. She entered films at the start of sound, as a dance instructor for the lavish MGM musicals. She came to international prominence in Scarface (1932) with Paul Muni, but often complained about the lack of ...

26. Anita Page

Actress | The Broadway Melody

Beautiful Anita Page was one of the most famous and popular leading ladies during the last years of the silent screen and the first years of the talkie era. She was best known for starring in The Broadway Melody (1929), the first sound film to win the Academy Award for Best Picture. Her leading men...

27. Nina Mae McKinney

Actress | Hallelujah

Nina Mae McKinney is known as the seductress "Chick" from Hallelujah (1929), the first all-black, all-sound musical. Even though she was acknowledged as a great actress, singer and dancer by audiences in the U.S. and Europe, today she is mostly forgotten. She certainly had the looks, enthusiasm, ...

28. Josephine Baker

Soundtrack | Zouzou

Josephine Baker was born Freda Josephine McDonald in St. Louis, MO, in 1906 to Carrie McDonald, a laundress, and Eddie Carson, a musician. Her early life hinted at her future career. She first danced for the public on the streets of St. Louis for nickels and dimes. Later she became a chorus girl on...

29. Lya De Putti

Actress | Manon Lescaut

The daughter of a Hungarian baroness and a military officer, Lya De Putti went on to perform classical ballet in Berlin, Germany, after a brief stint in Hungarian vaudeville. She later made several films at the German UFA studios, most notably Variety (1925), before going to Hollywood in 1926. ...

30. Gloria Swanson

Actress | Sunset Blvd.

Gloria Swanson was born Gloria May Josephine Svensson in Chicago, Illinois. She was destined to be perhaps one of the biggest stars of the silent movie era. Her personality and antics in private definitely made her a favorite with America's movie-going public. Gloria certainly didn't intend on ...

31. Colleen Moore

Actress | Why Be Good?

Colleen Moore was born Kathleen Morrison in Port Huron, Michigan. Her father was an irrigation engineer and his job was good enough to provide the family a middle-class environment. She was educated in parochial schools and studied at the famed Detroit Conservatory. Colleen's family moved to ...

32. Virginia Bruce

Actress | The Invisible Woman

American leading lady of the 1930s and 1940s, Virginia Bruce was born in Minnesota but grew up in Fargo, North Dakota, and came to California to attend college. Her blond good looks got her an entry into films, and after a few extra roles and bit parts she began to make serious inroads as a leading...

33. Jeanette MacDonald

Soundtrack | Cairo

She was the third daughter of Daniel and Anne MacDonald, younger sister to Blossom (MGM's character actress Marie Blake), whom she followed to New York and a chorus job in 1920. She was busy in a string of musical productions. In 1928 Paramount tested and rejected her, but a year later Ernst ...

34. Claudette Colbert

Actress | It Happened One Night

One of the brightest film stars to grace the screen was born Emilie Claudette Chauchoin on September 13, 1903, in Saint Mandé, France where her father owned a bakery at 57, rue de la République (now Avenue Général de Gaulle). The family moved to the United States when she was three. As Claudette ...

35. Miriam Hopkins

Actress | The Heiress

Born into wealth in Savannah, Georgia, on October 18, 1902, Ellen Miriam Hopkins was able to attend the finest educational institutions, including Goddard Seminary in Plainfield, Vermont, and Syracuse University in New York State. Studying dance in New York, she received her first taste of show ...

36. Kay Francis

Actress | Mandalay

Kay Francis is possibly the biggest of the 'forgotten stars' from Hollywood's Golden Era. Yet, for a while in the 1930s she ranked as one of America's most popular actresses, tagged the 'Queen of Warner Brothers'. By 1935, she earned a yearly salary of $115,000 (compared to Bette Davis with $18,000...

37. Loretta Young

Actress | The Stranger

Sweet, sweeter, sweetest. No combination of terms better describes the screen persona of lovely Loretta Young. A&E's Biography (1987) has stated that Young "remains a symbol of beauty, serenity, and grace. But behind the glamour and stardom is a woman of substance whose true beauty lies in her ...

38. Norma Shearer

Actress | The Divorcee

She won a beauty contest at age fourteen. In 1920 her mother, Edith Shearer, took Norma and her sister Athole Shearer (Mrs. Howard Hawks) to New York. Ziegfeld rejected her for his "Follies," but she got work as an extra in several movies. She spent much money on eye doctor's services trying to ...

39. Olivia de Havilland

Actress | The Heiress

Olivia Mary de Havilland was born on July 1, 1916 in Tokyo, Japan to British parents, Lilian Augusta (Ruse), a former actress, and Walter Augustus de Havilland, an English professor and patent attorney. Her sister Joan, later to become famous as Joan Fontaine, was born the following year. Her ...

40. Alice Faye

Soundtrack | Hello Frisco, Hello

As A&E's Biography put it, "She rose from the mean streets of New York's Hell's Kitchen to become the most famous singing actress in the world. When the pressures of fame became too much, she had the courage to leave Hollywood on her own terms". Alice Faye was born Alice Jeanne Leppert in NYC on ...

41. Lupe Velez

Actress | The Girl from Mexico

Lupe Velez was born on July 18, 1908, in San Luis Potosi, Mexico, as Maria Guadalupe Villalobos Velez. She was sent to Texas at the age of 13 to live in a convent. She later admitted that she wasn't much of a student because she was so rambunctious. She had planned to become a champion roller ...

42. Mae Clarke

Actress | Frankenstein

Vivacious, blonde Mae Clarke was exposed to cinema from an early age, her father being an organist in a motion picture cinema. Growing up in Atlantic City, New Jersey, she learned how to dance. At the tender age of 13 she was already performing in nightclubs and amateur theatricals. In 1924, she ...

43. Karen Morley

Actress | Scarface

Born Mildred Linton in Ottumwa, Iowa on December 12, 1909, Karen Morley was adopted by a well-to-do family who moved to Los Angeles in the mid-1920s. She enrolled at Hollywood High School and studied for a career in medicine at UCLA, but a class in theater changed her career ambitions.

After ...

44. Janet Gaynor

Actress | A Star Is Born

Janet Gaynor was born Laura Gainor on October 6, 1906, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. As a child, she & her parents moved to San Francisco, California, where she graduated from high school in 1923. She then moved to Los Angeles where she enrolled in a secretarial school. She got a job at a shoe ...

45. Vivien Leigh

Actress | A Streetcar Named Desire

If a film were made of the life of Vivien Leigh, it would open in India just before World War I, where a successful British businessman could live like a prince. In the mountains above Calcutta, a little princess is born. Because of the outbreak of World War I, she is six years old the first time ...

46. Margaret Sullavan

Actress | The Shop Around the Corner

Born in Norfolk, Virginia to wealthy stockbroker Cornelius Hancock Sullavan and heiress Garland Council Sullavan, Margaret Brooke overcame a muscle weakness in her childhood to go on to become a rebellious teenager at posh private schools. She went on to perform with the University Players at ...

47. Rosalind Russell

Actress | Auntie Mame

The middle of seven children, she was named, not for the heroine of "As You Like It" but for the S.S. Rosalind on which her parents had sailed, at the suggestion of her father, a successful lawyer.

After receiving a Catholic school education, she went to the American Academy of Dramatic Art in New ...

48. Norma Talmadge

Actress | Camille

Norma Talmadge was born on May 26, 1895, in Jersey City, New Jersey. The daughter of an unemployed alcoholic and his wife, Norma did not have the idyllic childhood that most of us yearn for. Her father left the family on Christmas Day and his wife and three daughters had to fend for themselves. Her...

49. Joan Bennett

Actress | Suspiria

Joan Geraldine Bennett was born on February 27, 1910, in Palisades, New Jersey. Her parents were both successful stage actors, especially her father, Richard Bennett, and often toured the country for weeks at a time. In fact, Joan came from a long line of actors, dating back to the 18th century. ...

50. Ann Harding

Actress | When Ladies Meet

Ann, born Dorothy Gatley, spent most of her childhood as an "army brat" constantly moving around before the family finally settled in New York. Ann first appeared on the stage while she spent a year attending Bryn Mawr College. She became a clerk and freelance script reader with a film company ...

51. Barbara Stanwyck

Actress | Double Indemnity

Today Barbara Stanwyck is remembered primarily as the matriarch of the family known as the Barkleys on the TV western The Big Valley (1965), wherein she played Victoria, and from the hit drama The Colbys (1985). But she was known to millions of other fans for her movie career, which spanned the ...

52. Constance Bennett

Actress | Topper

Independent, outspoken Constance Bennett, the first of the Bennett sisters to enter films, appeared in New York-produced silents before a chance meeting with Samuel Goldwyn led to her Hollywood debut in Cytherea (1924). She abandoned a burgeoning career in silents for marriage to Philip Plant in ...

53. Fay Wray

Actress | King Kong

Canadian-born Fay Wray was brought up in Los Angeles and entered films at an early age. She was barely in her teens when she started working as an extra. She began her career as a heroine in westerns at Universal during the silent era. In 1926 the Western Association of Motion Picture Advertisers ...

54. Madeleine Carroll

Actress | The 39 Steps

The original ash-blonde "iceberg maiden", Madeleine Carroll was a knowing beauty with a confident air, the epitome of poise and "breeding". Not only did she have looks and allure in abundance, but she had intellectual heft to go with them, graduating with a Bachelor of Arts from Birmingham ...

55. Sylvia Sidney

Actress | Beetlejuice

Sylvia Sidney was born in The Bronx, New York City, on August 8, 1910 as Sophia Kosow to Jewish parents. Her father was born in Russia and her mother was born in Romania. They divorced not long after her birth. Her mother subsequently remarried and young Sophia was adopted by her stepfather, ...

56. Nancy Carroll

Actress | The Kiss Before the Mirror

Nancy Carroll was born Ann Veronica Lahiff on November 19, 1903 in New York City. Nancy was the youngest of seven children. At the age of sixteen she dropped out of high school to work as a stenographer. Then she began performing in local talent competitions. She was a gifted dancer and appeared in...

57. Tallulah Bankhead

Actress | Lifeboat

Tallulah Brockman Bankhead was born on January 31, 1902 in Huntsville, Alabama. Her father was a mover and shaker in the Democratic Party who served as Speaker of the United States House of Representatives from June 4, 1936, to September 16, 1940. Tallulah had been interested in acting and, at age ...

58. Eleanor Powell

Soundtrack | Born to Dance

Eleanor Powell was born in 1912 in Springfield, Massachussetts, and got her professional start in Atlantic City clubs, from where she moved into in revue in New York at the Ritz Grill and Casino de Paris at the age of sixteen. She started her career on Broadway in 1929, where her machine-gun foot ...

59. Ann Sothern

Actress | The Whales of August

Ann Sothern's film career started as an extra in 1927. Originally a redhead, she began to bleach her hair blonde for comedy roles. After working at MGM and on Broadway, Ann was signed by Columbia Pictures for Let's Fall in Love (1933). The next year she would work with Eddie Cantor in his hit Kid ...

60. Irene Dunne

Actress | The Awful Truth

Irene Marie Dunne was born on December 20, 1898, in Louisville, Kentucky. She was the daughter of Joseph Dunne, who inspected steamships, and Adelaide Henry, a musician who prompted Irene in the arts. Her first production was in Louisville when she appeared in "A Midsummer Night's Dream" at the age...

61. Frances Farmer

Actress | Flowing Gold

Born in Seattle, Frances Farmer studied drama at the University of Washington, Seattle. In 1935, she went to Hollywood where she secured a seven-year contract with Paramount. In 1943, she was wrongfully declared mentally incompetent and committed by her parents to a series of asylums and public ...

62. Maureen O'Sullivan

Actress | The Thin Man

Of Irish, English, and Scottish descent, Maureen Paula O'Sullivan was born on May 17, 1911 in Boyle, County Roscommon, Ireland. Her father was Charles Joseph O'Sullivan, an officer in the Connaught Rangers, and his wife, the former Mary Fraser (or Frazer). She was educated at Catholic schools in ...

63. Merle Oberon

Actress | Wuthering Heights

Estelle Merle Thompson was born in India on February 19, 1911 of Welsh and Ceylonese (now Sri Lankan) descent. She was educated in that country until the age of 17, when she left for London. She began her career in British films with mostly forgettable roles or bit parts. She appeared in an ...

64. Vilma Bánky

Actress | The Son of the Sheik

Vilma Bánky appeared in Hungarian, Austrian and French movies between 1920 and 1925, the year in which Samuel Goldwyn signed her, in Budapest, to a Hollywood contract. In Hollywood she was billed as the "The Hungarian Rhapsody". In the mid and late 1920s she was Goldwyn's biggest money maker, ...

65. Margaret Lindsay

Actress | Scarlet Street

Picture-pretty brunette Margaret Lindsay was one of a number of pleasant, sweet-natured ingénues who could do no wrong in a score of 1930s stylish Hollywood pictures. Such altruistic love interests were often overlooked in pictures that were carried by the flashy histrionics of a jaunty James Cagney...

66. Simone Simon

Actress | Cat People

Diminutive, fiery-tempered Simone Simon was born in France, but spent much of her early childhood in Madagascar, where her father managed a graphite mine. Her schooling was somewhat unsettled, her family moving from city to city (Berlin, Budapest, Turin) before finally establishing themselves in ...

67. Luise Rainer

Actress | The Great Ziegfeld

Luise Rainer, the first thespian to win back-to-back Oscars, was born on January 12, 1910 in Dusseldorf, Germany, into a prosperous Jewish family. Her parents were Emilie (Königsberger) and Heinrich Rainer, a businessman. She took to the stage, and plied her craft on the boards in Germany. As a ...

68. Phyllis Haver

Actress | The Christian

Phyllis Haver was born Phyllis O'Haver on January 6, 1899, in Douglas, KS. When she was a child her family moved to California. Young Phyllis got a job playing piano at a local movie theater. Producer Mack Sennett saw her and hired her to be one of his "Sennett Bathing Beauties". Between 1916-20 ...

69. Bessie Love

Actress | The Broadway Melody

Bessie Love was born in Texas. Her cowboy father moved the family to Hollywood, where he became a chiropractor. As the family needed money, Bessie's mother sent her to Biograph Studios, hoping she would become an actress. D.W. Griffith saw she was pretty and had some acting talent, and put her in ...

70. Mary Pickford

Actress | Coquette

Mary Pickford was born Gladys Louise Smith in Toronto, Ontario, Canada, to Elsie Charlotte (Hennessy) and John Charles Smith. She was of English and Irish descent. Pickford began in the theater at age seven. Then known as "Baby Gladys Smith", she toured with her family in a number of theater ...

71. Claire Trevor

Actress | Key Largo

Claire Trevor was born Claire Wemlinger in the Bensonhurst section of Brooklyn, New York, the only child of Fifth Avenue merchant-tailor Noel Wemlinger, an immigrant Frenchman from Paris who lost his business during the Depression, and his Belfast-born wife, Benjamina, known as "Betty". Young ...

72. Leila Hyams

Actress | Freaks

Leila Hyams was one of the top leading ladies of the early talkie pre-code years. She was a likable, pleasing actress with a charming presence. She had much spark, personality and charisma, and a touch of down-to-earthiness and naturalness that won over movie fans; they could relate to her. A ...

73. Geraldine Fitzgerald

Actress | Dark Victory

Geraldine Fitzgerald was the only actress to appear as both Laurence Olivier's wife and Rodney Dangerfield's mother-in-law, which surely qualifies her as running the gamut (if not the gauntlet, in the latter case) of A to Z for co-starring with cinema immortals. The Irish lass appeared in many ...

74. Valerie Hobson

Actress | Bride of Frankenstein

Elegant, quintessentially English (although born in Ireland) Valerie Hobson was the daughter of a British army officer. She studied dancing at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (RADA) and appeared on the stage for the first time at age 16, but she contracted a case of scarlet fever and decided to ...

75. Margaret Lockwood

Actress | The Lady Vanishes

Karachi-born Margaret Lockwood, daughter of a British colonial railway clerk, was educated in London and studied to be an actress at the Italia Conti Drama School. Her first moment on stage came at the age of 12, when she played a fairy in "A Midsummer Night's Dream" in 1928. She had a bit part in ...

76. Gloria Stuart

Actress | Titanic

Gloria Stuart was born on a dining room table on 4th Street in Santa Monica, California on July 4, 1910. Her early roles as a performing artist were in plays she produced in her home as a young girl. She was the star of her senior class play at Santa Monica High School in 1927. Attending the ...

77. Raquel Torres

Actress | Duck Soup

Fetching Raquel Torres had a very brief but sexy reign in Hollywood with the advent of sound, but late-night viewers can still get a sampling of this spitfire's charms in one zany piece of slapstick with The Marx Brothers.

Born Guillermina Ostermann in Hermosillo, Mexico, on November 11, 1908, she ...

78. Bebe Daniels

Actress | 42nd Street

Bebe Daniels already had toured as an actor by the age of four in a stage production of "Richard III". She had her first leading role at the age of seven and started her film career shortly after this in movies for Imperial, Pathe and others. At 14 she was already a film veteran, and was enlisted ...

79. Zita Johann

Actress | The Mummy

Zita Johann was born on July 14, 1904 in Temesvar, Austria-Hungary [now Timisoara, Timis, Romania]. She was an actress, known for The Mummy (1932), The Sin of Nora Moran (1933) and Luxury Liner (1933). She was previously married to Bernard Edward Shedd (Schetnitz), John McCormick and John Houseman....

80. Anita Louise

Actress | The Little Princess

An actress from the age of 6, Anita appeared with Walter Hampden in the Broadway production of Peter Ibbetson. As a juvenile actor, Anita used the name Louise Fremault and made her film debut at 9 in the film The Sixth Commandment (1924). She continued to make films as a child actor, and in 1929, ...

81. Olga Baclanova

Actress | Freaks

Born Olga Vladimirovna Baklanova, one of six children of Vladimir Baklanoff and his wife Alexandra, later billed as the Russian Tigress in her early talking films, was born August 19, 1893. She graduated from the Cherniavsky Institute in Moscow prior to her selection in 1912 at age 19 to apprentice...

82. Evelyn Brent

Actress | The Silver Horde

Petite, sultry leading lady of the 1920's and 30's who was born and schooled in Tampa, Florida, until the age of ten when she lost her mother. She moved to New York with her dad and started modelling while still in her teens. Her original intention was to go into the teaching profession. Instead, ...