He is the first African-American to play Othello in a major movie, following in the footsteps of Lawrence Olivier and Orson Welles. Laurence Fishburne was born in Augusta in 1961. His mother moved the family to Brooklyn, where Fishburne grew up. He’s been acting almost all his life, beginning with the soap opera One Life […]
He was one of those classic character actors from the golden age of Hollywood but you probably didn’t know his name. Actor Charles Coburn was born in Macon in 1877 and grew up in Savannah. At age 19, after working in local theater, he headed off to Broadway. When his first wife died in 1937, […]
As an actor, he was defined by two roles: the eldest of Ben Cartwright’s sons and the chief of medicine at a San Francisco hospital. Pernell Roberts was born in Waycross in 1928. He attended Georgia Tech and the University of Maryland with a two-year stint in the Marines in between. Roberts made his stage […]
His namesake college in north Georgia is small. Its effect has been anything but. Young Loftin Harris was born in Elbert County around 1812. He became a lawyer, judge, and state representative, but he made his money in the insurance business. Harris joined the Southern Mutual Insurance Company in 1849. Over a 45-year career, he […]
It started with Deliverance in 1972. From there, Burt Reynolds “delivered” a lot of film business to the state of Georgia. As he was becoming Hollywood’s biggest box office draw for five years running, Georgia became number three in the nation for film production behind only New York and California. Burton Leon Reynolds, Jr. was […]
As an actor, and as an activist, Ossie Davis made his mark. Born Rayford Chatman Davis in 1917 in Cogdell, Georgia, in Clinch County, he got his nickname from the way his mother pronounced his initials. Davis served in Africa in World War II, and made his Broadway debut in 1946 in the play Jeb, […]
Star Trek only ran three years, but you can’t kill it with a phaser. Its characters are immortal as well. They have lived long, and prospered. One of them was DeForest Kelley, born in Atlanta in 1920 and a graduate of Decatur Boys High in 1938. After a hitch in the Army Air Corps in […]
He was the large half of the duo that was widely considered the greatest comedy team in film history, always complaining, “This is another fine mess you’ve gotten us into.” Norvell Hardy was born in Harlem, Georgia, in 1892, and grew up in Madison, Covington, Athens, and Milledgeville. He was working at a theater when […]
Her fame rested on one indelible performance: a slave who lacked the midwifery skills to help Melanie Hamilton. Thelma McQueen was born in Florida in 1911. She moved to Augusta after her father abandoned the family. She studied acting, dance, and music in New York. Her nickname derived from a performance in the Butterfly Ballet […]
You may not have known his name, but you couldn’t miss his voice, especially when he played a small cartoon bear — and that was just one of over 150 movies and TV shows Sterling Holloway did. Holloway was born in 1905 in Cedartown. He attended the Georgia Military Academy before moving on to New […]