- Yul Brynner
Yul Brynner (July 11, 1920 - October 10, 1985) was a Russian-born Broadway and Hollywood actor. He appeared in many movies and stage productions in the United States. He is best known for his portrayal of the Siamese king in the Rodgers & Hammerstein musical "The King and I" on the stage and on the screen, as well as Rameses II in the 1956 Cecil B. DeMille film "The Ten Commandments" and as Chris Adams in "The Magnificent Seven". - Dana Reeve
Dana Reeve (March 17 1961 - March 6 2006) was an American actress, singer, and activist for disability causes. She was also the wife of actor Christopher Reeve. - Peter Jennings
Peter Jennings, CM (July 29, 1938 - August 7, 2005) was a Canadian-American journalist and news anchor. He was the sole anchor of ABC's "World News Tonight" from 1983 until his death in 2005 of complications from lung cancer. A high-school dropout, he transformed himself into one of America's most prominent journalists. Jennings started his career early, hosting a Canadian radio show at the age of nine. - Bueno de Mesquita
Abraham ('Appie') Bueno de Mesquita (Amsterdam, July 23, 1918 - Lelystad, August 19, 2005), commonly known under his stage name Bueno de Mesquita was a Dutch comedian, actor and stage artist, well known for his ability to make funny faces. His comical talents literally saved his life. In World War II, the (Sephardi) Jewish Bueno de Mesquita was imprisoned in the Dossin Barracks in Mechelen, Belgium, and was scheduled to be deported to Auschwitz. - Fred Hutchinson
Frederick Charles Hutchinson was an American pitcher and manager in Major League Baseball. Stricken with fatal lung cancer at the zenith of his managerial career as leader of the pennant-contending Cincinnati Reds, he was commemorated one year after his death when his brother, Dr. William Hutchinson, created the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center as a division of the Pacific Northwest Research Foundation, in the Hutchinsons’ native city of Seattle, Washington. - Roy Castle
Roy Castle OBE (born August 31 1932 in Scholes, near Holmfirth; died September 2 1994) was an English dancer, singer, comedian, actor, television presenter and musician. He attended Honley High School. where there is now a building in his name. He was a talented jazz trumpet player. He was diagnosed with lung cancer in January 1992 and died in September 1994, just two days after his 62nd birthday. He blamed his illness on years of playing the trumpet in smoky jazz clubs, … - Edward R. Murrow
Edward R. Murrow ( April 25 , 1908 - April 27 , 1965 ) is viewed by historians as one of the great figures who stood for honesty and integrity in American broadcast journalism during the middle of the 20th Century . His radio news broadcasts during World War II were eagerly followed by millions of radio listeners. - Allen Carr
Allen Carr was most notable as the author of books on how to stop smoking (having given up after 31 years as a five-pack-per-day chain smoker) and, as he stressed, escape nicotine addiction. - Warren Zevon
Warren William Zevon (January 24, 1947 - September 7, 2003) was an American rock and roll musician and songwriter. He was noted for his offbeat, sardonic view of life which was reflected in his dark, sometimes humorous songs, which often incorporated political or historical themes. - Oriana Fallaci
Oriana Fallaci (June 29 1929 - September 15 2006) was an Italian journalist, author, and political interviewer. A former partisan during World War II, she died in her native Florence, Italy, at age 77. She was called "our most celebrated female writer" by Ferruccio De Bortoli, former director of the newspaper "Corriere della Sera". - Jesse Owens
James Cleveland "Jesse" Owens was an American track and field athlete. He participated in the 1936 Summer Olympics in Berlin, Germany where he achieved international fame by winning four gold medals; one each in the 100 meters, the 200 meters, the long jump, and as part of the 4x100 meter relay team. - George Harrison
George Harrison, MBE (25 February 1943 – 29 November 2001) was an Academy Award and Grammy Award-winning English rock guitarist, singer, songwriter, author and sitarist best known as the lead guitarist of The Beatles. Following the band's demise, Harrison had a successful career as a solo artist and later as part of the Traveling Wilburys super group where he was known as both Nelson Wilbury and Spike Wilbury. - Roger Miller
Roger Dean Miller was an American singer, songwriter, and musician who is best known for his 1965 hit song King of the Road. - Gary Cooper
Gary Cooper was a two-time Academy Award-winning American film actor of English heritage. His career spanned from the 1920s until the year of his death, and saw him make one hundred films. He was renowned for his quiet, understated acting style and his stoic, individualistic, emotionally restrained, but at times intense screen persona, which was particularly well suited for the many Westerns he made. Cooper received five Oscar nominations for Best Actor, winning twice. - Ann Miller
Ann Miller was an American dancer, singer and actress, who was christened Johnnie Lucille Collier. Born in Chireno, Texas (some sources cite Houston, where she was raised), her father insisted on the name Johnnie because he had wanted a boy, but she was often called Annie. She took up dancing to exercise her legs to help her rickets. She was considered a child dance prodigy. - Billy Smart Jr
Billy Smart, Jr was widely known in Britain as a circus performer and impresario. Smart, whose real name was Stanley, was the tenth child and third son of Billy Smart, Sr. His father was a showman and fairground proprietor, who bought a circus in 1946. Smart made his circus debut with "Billy Smart’s New World Circus" as assistant ringmaster aged 12. He was soon performing with ponies and horses, but became best known later for his elephant acts. - Nat King Cole
Nat King Cole was born Nathaniel Adams Coles in 1919 in Montgomery, Alabama. When Cole was four years old, his father, Edward, a Baptist minister, accepted a pastorship of a church in Chicago. The family, which included Cole's mother, Perlina, his older brother, Edward, and two sisters, Eddie Mae and Evelyn, moved north. Two younger brothers, Issac and Lionel (called Freddie), were born later in Chicago. - Heather Crowe
Heather Crowe (born April 23, 1945 in Yarmouth, Nova Scotia, died May 22, 2006 in Ottawa, Ontario) was a former Canadian waitress who became the public face of Canada's anti-smoking campaign. She contracted lung cancer in 2002, allegedly from second-hand smoke encountered at her workplace of over forty years, and later appeared in numerous television public service announcements. The last place she worked was the well-known Newport Restaurant in Ottawa. - Wayne McLaren
Wayne McLaren (12 September 1940 - 22 July 1992) was an American actor. In 1976, he did promotional work for the famous Marlboro cigarette advertising campaign as the "Marlboro Man". He smoked a pack-and-a-half every day before developing lung cancer at the age of 49. Chemotherapy and the removal of one of his lungs did not stop the cancer spreading to his brain, killing him two years after the initial diagnosis. - Nicholas Ray
Nicholas Ray (born Raymond Nicholas Kienzle) (August 7, 1911-June 16, 1979) was an American film director. Coming from a radio background, Ray directed his first and only Broadway production, the Duke Ellington musical "Beggar's Holiday", in 1946. One year later, he directed his first film, "They Live By Night". It was released two years later due to the chaotic conditions surrounding Howard Hughes' takeover of RKO Pictures. - Steve McQueen
Steve McQueen (March 24, 1930 - November 7, 1980) was an Academy Award-nominated American movie actor, nicknamed "The King of Cool". He was one of the biggest box-office draws of the 1960s and 1970s due to a popular "anti-hero" persona. McQueen was combative with directors and producers; regardless, he was able to command large salaries and was in high demand. - Bobby Bonds
Bobby Lee Bonds was an American right fielder in professional baseball from 1968 to 1981, primarily with the San Francisco Giants. Noted for his outstanding combination of power hitting and speed, he was the first player to have more than two seasons of 30 home runs and 30 stolen bases, doing so a record five times, and was the first to accomplish the feat in both leagues; he became the second player to hit 300 career home runs and steal 300 bases, joining Willie Mays. - Benny Parsons
Benny Parsons was an American NASCAR driver, and later an announcer/analyst on TBS, ESPN, NBC and TNT. He became famous as the 1973 NASCAR Winston Cup (now NEXTEL Cup) champion. He was nicknamed "BP" and "The Professor", the latter in part because of his popular remarks and relaxed demeanor. - David McLean
David McLean (May 19, 1922 - October 12 1995) was an American film and television actor, best-known for appearing in many Marlboro television and print advertisements, starting in the early 1960s. McLean also starred as the title character in the short-lived 1960 western "Tate", and appeared in numerous television series' and feature films in the '60s and '70s. A lifelong smoker, McLean started suffering from emphysema in 1985, and had a tumour removed in 1994. - Claude Monet
Claude Monet also known as Oscar-Claude Monet or Claude Oscar Monet (November 14, 1840 - December 5, 1926) was a founder of French impressionist painting, and the most consistent and prolific practitioner of the movement's philosophy of expressing one's perceptions before nature, especially as applied to plein-air landscape painting. The term Impressionism is derived from the title of his painting "Impression, Sunrise". - Freddy Fender
Freddy Fender, born Baldemar Huerta in San Benito, Texas, USA, was a Mexican-American, Tejano, country, and rock and roll musician, known for his work as a solo artist and in the groups Los Super Seven and the Texas Tornados. He is best known for his 1975 hit "Before the Next Teardrop Falls." - Vincent Schiavelli
Vincent Andrew Schiavelli was an Italian-American character actor noted for his work in film, stage and television. He was often described as "the man with the sad eyes". - Walt Elias Disney
Walter Elias Disney was an American film producer, director, screenwriter, voice actor, animator, entrepreneur, and philanthropist. Disney is notable as one of the most influential and innovative figures in the field of entertainment during the twentieth century. As the co-founder (with his brother Roy O. Disney) of Walt Disney Productions, Walt became one of the best-known motion picture producers in the world. - Norman Shumway
Norman E. Shumway, M.D. (February 9 1923 - February 10 2006) was a pioneer of heart surgery at Stanford University. He was born in Kalamazoo, Michigan. He was famous for being the first doctor to successfully carry out an open heart transplant operation in the USA in 1968, after Christiaan Barnard's 1967 operation in South Africa. The early years of the procedure were chequered with few patients surviving for long after it finished. - David Blow
David Mervyn Blow (born June 27, 1931 in Birmingham, England; died June 8, 2004 in Appledore, England) was an influential British biophysicist. He was best known for the development of X-ray crystallography, a technique used to determine the molecular structures of tens of thousands of biological molecules. This has been extremely important to the pharmaceutical industry. As a youth, Blow attended Kingswood School in Bath, England, … - Lou Rawls
Louis Allen Rawls (December 1, 1933 - January 6, 2006) was a Chicago-born American soul music, jazz, and blues singer. Known for his smooth vocal style, Frank Sinatra once said that Rawls had "the classiest singing and silkiest chops in the singing game." Rawls released more than 70 albums, sold more than 40 million records, appeared as an actor in motion pictures and on television, and voiced-over many cartoons. He had been called "The Funkiest Man Alive". - Jim Bacon
James Alexander Bacon AC (May 15, 1950 - June 20, 2004) was Premier of Tasmania from 1998 to 2004. Bacon was born in Melbourne; his father Frank, a doctor, died when his son was twelve, leaving him to be raised by his mother Joan. He was educated at Scotch College and later at Monash University, but he did not graduate. At Monash he was a Maoist student leader. He became an official of the Builders Labourers Federation, which sent him to Tasmania as an organiser. - Pat Nixon
Thelma Catherine (Pat) Ryan Nixon (March 16, 1912 - June 22, 1993) was the wife of former President Richard Nixon and the First Lady of the United States of America from 1969 to 1974. She was commonly known as Pat Nixon. - Carrie Hamilton
Carrie Hamilton (December 5, 1963 in New York City - January 20, 2002, in Los Angeles) was an American actress, singer, and playwright. She was the daughter of comedienne/actress Carol Burnett and the late producer Joe Hamilton, and the god-daughter of British actress Julie Andrews. Hamilton worked in a number of productions for stage, film, video, and television. - Boris Pasternak
Boris Leonidovich Pasternak (May 30, 1960) was a Nobel Prize-winning Russian poet and writer, in the West best known for his epic novel "Doctor Zhivago". The novel is a tragedy, whose events span through the last period of Czarist Russia and early days of Soviet Union, and was first translated and published in Italy in 1957. In fact, Boris Pasternak, however, is most celebrated in Russia as a poet. - Gene Austin
Gene Austin (June 24, 1900-January 24, 1972) was an American singer and songwriter who is considered to have been the first "crooner". Austin was born as Lemeul Eugene Lucas in Gainesville, Texas (north of Dallas), to Nova Lucas (died 1943) and the former Serena Belle Harrell (died 1956). He took the name "Gene Austin" from his stepfather, Jim Austin, a blacksmith. Austin grew up in Minden, the seat of Webster Parish in northwestern Louisiana, … - Herb Caen
Herbert Eugene Caen (April 3, 1916 - February 1, 1997) was a Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist working in San Francisco. Born in Sacramento, California, Caen worked for the "San Francisco Chronicle" from the late 1930s until his death, with an interruption from 1950 to 1958 during which he wrote for the "San Francisco Examiner." His collection of essays entitled "Baghdad-by-the-Bay" was published in 1949. - Duke Ellington
Edward Kennedy “Duke” Ellington was an African American jazz composer, pianist, and band leader who has been one of the most influential figures in jazz, if not in all American music. As a composer and a band leader especially, Ellington's reputation has increased since his death, with thematic repackagings of his signature music often becoming best-sellers. A man of suave demeanor and puckish wit that masked occasional brusqueness, … - Roger Johnson
Roger Johnson (June 24, 1934 - February 21, 2005) was an American businessman and government official. Johnson was born in Hartford, Connecticut, the son of an AFL-CIO leader. Although he was initially influenced by his father's Democratic Party politics, young Roger decided to join the Republican Party, according to him, the first time he had to pay taxes. Johnson was valedictorian at Clarkson University, where he graduated in 1956 with a degree in business. - Fritz Richmond
Fritz Richmond (1939-2005) was an American musician and recording engineer. Fritz Richmond was considered the foremost washtub bassist in the world, and was also the most successful professional jug player. Richmond, born in Newton, Massachusetts on July 10, 1939, was a founding member of The Hoppers, a school-chum jug band that played the coffeehouse circuit in the Boston area.
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