Georgia Engel

popular name: Florence Lawrence

date_of_death: December 28, 1938

age: 52

cause_of_death: Suicide by poison (eating ant paste)

claim_to_fame: Show Business

best_know_for: Florence Lawrence was a Canadian-American stage performer and film actress. She is often referred to as the "first movie star", and was thought to be the first film actor to be named publicly until evidence published in 2019 indicated that the first named film star was French actor Max Linder. At the height of her fame in the 1910s, she was known as the "Biograph Girl" for work as one of the leading ladies in silent films from the Biograph Company. She appeared in almost 300 films for various motion picture companies throughout her career.

popular name: Yul Brynner

date_of_death: October 10, 1985

age: 65

cause_of_death: Lung cancer

claim_to_fame: Show Business

best_know_for: Exotic leading man of American films, famed as much for his completely bald head as for his performances, Yul Brynner masked much of his early life in mystery. He traveled to the U.S. in 1941 to study with acting teacher Michael Chekhov and toured the country with Chekhov's theatrical troupe. That same year, he debuted in New York as Fabian in "Twelfth Night" (billed as Youl Bryner). After working in a very early TV series, Mr. Jones and His Neighbors (1944), he played on Broadway in "Lute Song" with Mary Martin, winning awards and mild acclaim. He and his wife, actress Virginia Gilmore, starred in the first TV talk show, Mr. and Mrs. (1948). Brynner then joined CBS as a television director. He made his film debut in Port of New York (1949). Two years later Mary Martin recommended him for the part he would forever be known for: the King in Richard Rodgers' and Oscar Hammerstein II's musical "The King and I". Brynner became an immediate sensation in the role, repeating it for film (The King and I (1956)) and winning the Oscar for Best Actor. For the next two decades, he maintained a starring film career despite the exotic nature of his persona, performing in a wide range of roles from Egyptian pharaohs to Western gunfighters, almost all with the same shaved head and indefinable accent. In the 1970s he returned to the role that had made him a star, and spent most of the rest of his life touring the world in "The King and I".

popular name: Bette Davis

date_of_death: October 6, 1989

age: 81

cause_of_death: Metastasized breast cancer

claim_to_fame: Show Business

best_know_for: Bette Davis was an American actress of film, television, and theater. Regarded as one of the greatest actresses in Hollywood history, she was noted for her willingness to play unsympathetic, sardonic characters and was known for her performances in a range of film genres, from contemporary crime melodramas to historical and period films and occasional comedies, although her greatest successes were her roles in romantic dramas. In 101 feature films and TV movies, she created Hollywood’s first and finest portrait of the thoroughly modern woman: her independence born in neurosis, her strength forged in professional and domestic combat, her man of the moment an irrelevance or a desperate burden. ”I either have to hold him off/ Or have to hold him up,” she sang in Thank Your Lucky Stars. She won the Academy Award for Best Actress twice, was the first person to accrue ten Academy Award nominations (and one write-in) for acting, and was the first woman to receive a Lifetime Achievement Award from the American Film Institute. In 1999, Davis was placed second on the American Film Institute's list of the greatest female stars of classic Hollywood cinema. In 1983, after filming the pilot episode for the television series Hotel, Davis was diagnosed with breast cancer and underwent a mastectomy. Within two weeks of her surgery, she had four strokes which caused paralysis in the left side of her face and in her left arm, and left her with slurred speech. Davis collapsed during the American Cinema Awards in 1989, and later discovered that her cancer had returned. Too weak to make the long journey back to the U.S., she traveled to France, where she died of metastasized breast cancer on October 6, 1989, at the American Hospital in Neuilly-sur-Seine. Davis was 81 years old. Bette was buried at Forest Lawn Memorial Park in Hollywood, California.