Gregg Toland

popular name: Virginia Valli

date_of_death: September 24, 1968

age: 73

cause_of_death: Stroke

claim_to_fame: Show Business

best_know_for: Virginia Valli was an American stage and film actress whose motion picture career started in the silent film era and lasted until the beginning of the sound film era of the 1930s. Valli was an established star at the Universal studio by the mid-1920s. In 1924 she was the female lead in King Vidor's southern gothic Wild Oranges, a film now recovered from film vault obscurity. She also appeared in the romantic comedy, Every Woman's Life, about "the man she could have married, the man she should have married and the man she DID marry." Most of her films were made between 1924 and 1927, and included Paid to Love (1927), with William Powell, and Evening Clothes (1927), which featured Adolphe Menjou. In 1925, Valli performed in The Man Who Found Himself with Thomas Meighan. Never a top star, but always busy, Valli had made over 30 films by 1928 and had co-starred with many important leading men, including Bert Lytel, Lon Chaney, Milton Sills, Thomas Meighan, George O’Brien, and Lloyd Hughes. In addition to Wild Oranges, Valli's other standout films include The Signal Tower (1924), directed by Clarence Brown, costarring Rockcliffe Fellowes and Wallace Beery, and The Pleasure Garden (1925), an early film by director Alfred Hitchcock, made in England for Gainsborough Studios.

popular name: James Mason

date_of_death: July 27, 1984

age: 75

cause_of_death: Heart attack

claim_to_fame: Show Business

best_know_for: James Mason was one of the greatest actors of his generation. The British-born actor noted for portraying suave and cerebral aristocrats and scoundrels in more than 100 films over nearly half a century. He achieved considerable success in British cinema before becoming a star in Hollywood. He was the top box-office attraction in the UK in 1944 and 1945; his British films included The Seventh Veil (1945) and The Wicked Lady (1945). He starred in Odd Man Out (1947), the first recipient of the BAFTA Award for Best British Film. In the U.S. Mason starred in such films as George Cukor's A Star Is Born (1954), Alfred Hitchcock's North by Northwest (1959), Stanley Kubrick's Lolita (1962), Warren Beatty's Heaven Can Wait (1978), and Sidney Lumet's The Verdict (1982). He also starred in a number of successful British and American films from the 1950s to the early 1980s, including: The Desert Fox (1951), Julius Caesar (1953), Bigger Than Life (1956), 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea (1954), Journey to the Center of the Earth (1959), Georgy Girl (1966), and The Boys from Brazil (1978). Mason was nominated for three Academy Awards, three Golden Globes (winning the Golden Globe in 1955 for A Star is Born) and two BAFTA Awards throughout his career.

popular name: Preston Sturges

date_of_death: August 6, 1959

age: 60

cause_of_death: Heart attack

claim_to_fame: Show Business

best_know_for: Preston Sturges was one of the more celebrated American playwright, screenwriter, and film director of the 1940s and early 1950s with films like “The Great McGinty,” “The Lady Eve,” “Sullivan's Travels,” “The Palm Beach Story,” “The Miracle of Morgan's Creek” and “Hail the Conquering Hero.” Sturges took the screwball comedy format of the 1930s to another level, writing dialogue that, heard today, is often surprisingly naturalistic, mature, and ahead of its time, despite the farcical situations. The writer/director won the first Oscar for Best Original Screenplay for “The Great McGinty” in 1941. He is also credited as the first successful screenwriter to move into directing his own screenplays.