- Arnold Alois Schwarzenegger
Arnold clearly harbored political ambitions for a long time. In 1977, six years before he became a US citizen, he told a German magazine: "When one has money, one day it becomes less interesting. And when one is also the best in film, what can be more interesting? Perhaps power. Then one moves into politics and becomes governor or president or something." He realized that one day his movie-making days were numbered and began thinking about a career in politics.
- Josef von Sternberg
Josef von Sternberg (29 May 1894 - 22 December 1969) was an Austrian-American film director. He is one of the earliest examples of auteur filmmakers, and performed many other duties on his films besides directing, including cinematographer, writer, and editor. Von Sternberg's style has had a vast influence on later directors, particularly during the "film noir" movement. His mastery of mise-en-scene, lighting and soft lense is unrivaled, …
- Max Reinhardt
Max Reinhardt (September 9, 1873 - October 30, 1943) was an influential Austrian-American director and actor. He was born as Maximilian Goldmann, of Jewish ancestry, in Baden bei Wien, Austria-Hungary. From 1902 until the beginning of Nazi rule in 1933, he worked as a director at various theaters in Berlin. From 1905 to 1930 he managed the "Deutsches Theater" ("German Theatre") in Berlin and, in addition, …
- Elfi von Dassanowsky
Elfi von Dassanowsky is an Austrian singer, pianist and film producer. She was born in Vienna as Elfriede Maria Elisabeth Charlotte von Dassanowsky (the Austrian branch of the Polish Counts Taczanowski). Recognized internationally for her unique work as a pioneering woman in film production and as a multi-talent in postwar Austrian arts and culture, von Dassanowsky is the only Austrian woman to receive the Women’s International Center’s prestigious Living Legacy Award, …
- Wolfgang Pauli
Wolfgang Ernst Pauli (April 25, 1900 - December 15, 1958) was an Austrian theoretical physicist noted for his work on the theory of spin, and in particular the discovery of the exclusion principle, which underpins the structure of matter, and (as such) the whole of chemistry.
- Robert von Dassanowsky
Robert von Dassanowsky (aka Robert Dassanowsky) born January 28, 1960 in New York, is an Austrian-American academic, writer, film and cultural historian, and producer. A student of the American Academy of Dramatic Arts and a graduate of the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), Dassanowsky is a widely published academican, award-winning playwright and has written for television.
- Bibi Besch
Bibiana Besch (February 1 1940 - September 7 1996) was an Austrian/American actress.
- Fred Astaire
Fred Astaire (May 10, 1899 - June 22, 1987), born Frederick Austerlitz in Omaha, Nebraska, was an American film and Broadway stage dancer, choreographer, singer and actor. His stage and subsequent film career spanned a total of seventy-six years, during which he made thirty-one musical films. He is particularly associated with Ginger Rogers, with whom he made ten films that revolutionized the genre.
- Johnny Weissmuller
Johnny Weissmuller (June 2 1904 - January 20 1984) was an American swimmer and actor who was one of the world's best swimmers in the 1920s, winning five Olympic gold medals and one bronze medal. He won fifty-two US National Championships and set sixty-seven world records. After his swimming career, he became the sixth actor to portray Tarzan in films, a role he played in twelve motion pictures. Other actors also played Tarzan, but Weissmuller was the best-known.
- Sylvia Plath
Sylvia Plath (October 27, 1932 - February 11, 1963) was an American poet, novelist, and short story writer. Known primarily for her poetry, Plath also wrote a semi-autobiographical novel, "The Bell Jar", under the pseudonym Victoria Lucas, detailing her struggle with depression. Along with Anne Sexton, Plath is credited with advancing the genre of confessional poetry that Robert Lowell and W.D. Snodgrass initiated.
- Hedy Lamarr
Hedy Lamarr, born Hedwig Eva Maria Kiesler, was an Austrian-Jewish naturalized American actress and communications technology innovator. Though known primarily for her great beauty and her successful film career, she also co-invented the first form of spread spectrum, a key to modern wireless communication.
- Max Fleischer
Max Fleischer was an important Austrian-American pioneer in the development of the animated cartoon. He brought such characters as Betty Boop, Koko the Clown, Popeye, and Superman to the movie screen and was responsible for a number of technological innovations.
- Fred Zinnemann
Fred Zinnemann (April 29, 1907-March 14, 1997) was an Austrian-American film director. He won four Academy Awards and directed classic movies like "From Here to Eternity", "High Noon" and "A Man for All Seasons".
- Victor Francis Hess
Victor Francis Hess (June 24, 1883 - December 17, 1964) was an Austrian-American physicist. After teaching at the universities of Graz and Innsbruck, he relocated to the United States in 1938 in order to escape Nazi persecution (his wife was Jewish) and was appointed professor of physics at Fordham University that same year. He later became a naturalized U.S. citizen. By means of instruments carried aloft in balloons, …
- Richard Neutra
Richard Joseph Neutra (April 8, 1892 - April 16, 1970) is considered one of modernism's most important architects. Neutra was born in Vienna, Austria in 1892. He studied under Adolf Loos, was influenced by Otto Wagner, and worked for a time in Germany in the studio of Erich Mendelsohn. He moved to the United States by 1923 and became a naturalized citizen in 1929.
- Wolfgang Johann Puck
Wolfgang Puck was one of the first celebrity chefs , rising to fame as a young man with his inspired "California cuisine" which he has served at famed Los Angeles restaurant Spago since its debut in 1982 . ... Before moving to America, Puck apprenticed at restaurants in Provence, Monaco , and Paris . The first restaurant he part owned was Ma Maison in Los Angeles, California . He pioneered California cuisine in the 1980s, with the opening of his restaurant Spago in 1982.
- Felix Frankfurter
Felix Frankfurter was an Associate Justice of the United States Supreme Court.
- Alfred Schütz
Alfred Schütz was a philosopher and sociologist. He was born in Austria, studied law in Vienna, worked as an international businessperson for Reitler and Company, and moved to the United States ]]in 1939, where he became a member of the faculty of the New School for Social Research. He worked on phenomenology, social science methodology and the philosophy of Edmund Husserl, William James and others.
- Harry Shearer
Harry Julius Shearer (born December 23, 1943) is an American comedic actor and writer.
- Walter Slezak
Walter Slezak was an Austrian actor. Born in Vienna, Austria, the son of famed opera star Leo Slezak, he was a medical student and later a bank teller before becoming an actor. A hulking figure at 6'6", Slezak usually portrayed a villain or thug, but occasionally he played lighter, kindlier roles, as in "The Wonderful World of the Brothers Grimm". Slezak began his movie career as a thin leading man in many silent films.
- Leah Remini
Leah Remini (born June 15, 1970 in Bensonhurst, Brooklyn, New York) is an American actress. She is best known for her role as Carrie Heffernan on the sitcom "The King of Queens".
- Walter Bricht
Walter Bricht noted pianist, composer and teacher was born in Vienna, Austria on September 9, 1904. Bricht was exposed to multiple musical influences from his youth. His father, Balduin Bricht, was a music critic for the Volkszeitung, a newspaper in Vienna. His mother, Agnes Pylleman Bricht was a famous concert singer and pianist, and became his first teacher. His remarkable talent was recognized early on. Still nearly a toddler, …
- Victor Frederick Weisskopf
Victor Frederick Weisskopf (September 19, 1908 - April 22, 2002) was an Austrian-American physicist. During World War II he worked at Los Alamos on the Manhattan Project to develop the atomic bomb, and later campaigned against the proliferation of nuclear weapons. Weisskopf was a co-founder and board member of the Union of Concerned Scientists. He served as director-general of CERN from 1961-1966.
- Isidor Isaac Rabi
Isidor Isaac Rabi was a Nobel Prize-winning Austrian-born physicist. Rabi was born in Rymanów, Galicia, Austrian Empire (now Poland), and was brought to the United States as a child the following year. He achieved a Bachelor of Chemistry degree from Cornell University in 1919, continuing his studies at Columbia University and received his Ph.D. in 1927. A fellowship enabled him to spend the next two years in Europe working with such eminent physicists as Niels Bohr, …
- Sidney Hook
Sidney Hook (December 20 1902-July 12 1989) was a prominent New York intellectual and philosopher who championed pragmatism.
- Ricardo Cortez
Ricardo Cortez was a film actor who began his career during the silent film era. Born Jacob Krantz in Vienna, Austria-Hungary into a Jewish family, he worked on Wall Street before his looks got him into the film business. Hollywood executives changed his name to Cortez to appeal to film-goers as a "Latin lover" to compete with such highly popular actors of the era as Rudolph Valentino, Ramon Novarro and Antonio Moreno.
- Maria von Trapp
Maria Augusta von Trapp was the matriarch of the Trapp Family Singers. Her story and that of her family's escape from the Nazis after the Anschluss was the inspiration for the musical "The Sound of Music". Maria Kutschera, born in Austria, had entered Nonnberg Abbey, a Benedictine (Roman Catholic) convent in Salzburg, intending to become a nun.
- Joe Theismann
Former quarterback for the Washington Redskins. Chosen as one of the 70 greatest Washington Redskins (June 2002). Played college football at Notre Dame. Originally pronounced his last name "THEES-man" until he enrolled, when Notre Dame's sports information department convinced him to change the pronunciation to rhyme with "Heisman." All during his senior season, they would promote him to sportswriters as "Theismann, as in Heisman!" in hopes that he would win enough votes for the Heisman...
- Paul Pisk
Paul Amadeus Pisk was an Austria-born composer and musicologist. A prize named in his honor is the highest award for a graduate student paper at the annual meeting of the American Musicological Society He learned from Arnold Schönberg and Guido Adler.
- Karl H. Pribram
Karl H. Pribram (born February 25, 1919 in Vienna, Austria) is an emeritus professor of Psychology at Stanford University School of Medicine. Trained as a neurosurgeon he did pioneering work on the cerebral cortex. To the general public, he is best known for his development of the holonomic brain model of cognitive function and his contribution to ongoing neurological research into the engram. He is also interested in the neurophysiological basis of "spiritual" experiences.
- Samantha Mathis
Samantha Mathis (born May 12, 1970) is an American actress. Mathis was born in Brooklyn, New York, the daughter of actress Bibi Besch and granddaughter of actress Gusti Huber. When Mathis was three years old, her parents divorced, and she stayed with her mother. Growing up with an actress mother influenced Mathis's career choice. Her first starring role in a feature film was the part of Nora in "Pump Up the Volume" with Christian Slater, …
- Fannie Bloomfield Zeisler
Fannie Bloomfield Zeisler (July 16, 1863 - August 20 1927) was an Austrian-born U.S. pianist.
- Herman Mark
Herman Mark (May 3, 1895 - April 6, 1992) is an Austrian-American chemist regarded for his contributions to the development of polymer science. Mark's x-ray diffraction work on the molecular structure of fibers provided important evidence for the macromolecular theory of polymer structure. In 1947, Mark founded the Polymer Research Institute at Brooklyn Polytechnic, the first academic facility in the United States dedicated to polymer research.
- Art Fleming
Art Fleming (May 1 1924 - April 25 1995) was the original host of the TV game show "Jeopardy!"
- Greta Kempton
Greta Kempton (March 22, 1901 - December 10, 1991) born Martha Greta Kempton in Vienna, Austria. American artist. She served as the White House artist during the Truman administration. She studied at the Vienna Academy of Fine Arts before emigrating to the United States circa 1926 and in the 1930s was a student at the National Academy of Design and Art Students League both in New York City.
- Adele Astaire
Lady Charles Cavendish (September 10, 1896 -January 25, 1981), better known as Adele Astaire was an American dancer and entertainer. She was Fred Astaire's elder sister. Her birthdate was often given as 1897 or 1898, but the 1900 U.S. census shows her correct birthdate to be 1896.
- Paul Gallico
Paul William Gallico (July 26, 1897-July 15, 1976) was a successful U.S. novelist and short story writer. Many of his works were adapted for motion pictures. He is perhaps best remembered for the story "The Snow Goose", which was his only real critical success, and for his novel "The Poseidon Adventure", primarily because it has been made into several films, particularly the generally well-received 1972 version. Gallico was born in New York City.
- Hank Bauer
Henry Albert "Hank" Bauer (July 31 1922 - February 9,2007) was an American right fielder and manager in Major League Baseball. He played with the New York Yankees (1948-1959) and Kansas City Athletics (1960-1961); he batted and threw right-handed. He served as manager of the Athletics in both Kansas City (1961-62) and Oakland (1969), as well as of the Baltimore Orioles (1964-68), winning the 1966 World Series championship.
- Walt Gorney
Walter Gorney (April 12, 1912 - March 5, 2004) was an American actor. He was known for his role as Crazy Ralph, the drunken old man who warns "You're all doomed!" in the 1980 hit horror movie "Friday the 13th", he reprized his role in the sequel "Friday the 13th Part 2" in 1981. Gorney was born in Austria and immigrated to the United States at the age of ten.
- Gusti Huber
Gusti Huber (b. July 27 1914 in Wiener Neustadt Austria - d. July 12 1993 in New York City) was an Austrian theater and film actress. She received her acting training from Dr. Beer who also arranged her debut in Zurich. She had her first film roll in 1935 and two years later achieved her big breakthrough in the film adaptation of the play "Unentshuldigte Stunde" (Unexcused Hour).