Gregg Toland

popular name: James Cagney

date_of_death: March 30, 1986

age: 86

cause_of_death: Heart attack

claim_to_fame: Show Business

best_know_for: James Cagney was one of greatest actors, dancer, entertainer and performer during the Golden Age of Hollywood. On stage and in film, he was known for his consistently energetic performances, distinctive vocal style, and deadpan comic timing. Cagney is remembered for playing multifaceted tough guys in films such as The Public Enemy (1931), Taxi! (1932), Angels with Dirty Faces (1938), The Roaring Twenties (1939), City for Conquest (1940) and White Heat (1949). To avoid being typecast as a gangster in every film, he was able to negotiate dancing opportunities in his films and ended up winning the Academy Award for his role in the musical Yankee Doodle Dandy (1942). Ending three decades on the screen, he retired to his farm in Stanfordville, New York after starring in Billy Wilder's One, Two, Three (1961). He emerged from retirement to star in the 1981 screen adaptation of E.L. Doctorow's novel "Ragtime" (Ragtime (1981)), in which he was reunited with his frequent co-star of the 1930s, Pat O'Brien, and which was his last theatrical film (and O'Brien's as well). Cagney's final performance came in the title role of the made-for-TV movie Terrible Joe Moran (1984), in which he played opposite Art Carney. In 1999 the American Film Institute ranked him eighth on its list of greatest male stars of the Golden Age of Hollywood. Orson Welles described him as "maybe the greatest actor who ever appeared in front of a camera". Today fans of the great actor can visit the grave of James Cagney at Gate of Heaven Cemetery in Hawthorne, New York.

popular name: Greta Garbo

date_of_death: April 15, 1990

age: 84

cause_of_death: Pneumonia and kidney failure

claim_to_fame: Show Business

best_know_for: Greta Garbo was a Swedish-American actress, renowned for her iconic roles in the silent film and early sound film eras. Born Greta Lovisa Gustafsson in Stockholm, Sweden, she worked as a shop assistant and appeared in a few Swedish films before being discovered by Hollywood in 1925. She signed with Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM) in 1927 and soon became one of the most popular stars of the 1920s and 1930s. Garbo's mysterious, often melancholic on-screen presence earned her the nickname "The Divine Garbo." She starred in several classic films such as Flesh and the Devil (1926), Camille (1936), and Grand Hotel (1932), which showcased her range, from passionate lovers to tragic figures. Her roles often reflected themes of love and loss, matching her off-screen enigmatic persona. Garbo made a successful transition to sound films, and in 1939, she received an Academy Award nomination for Ninotchka. Despite her success, Garbo was known for her desire for privacy, and in 1941, she retired from acting at the age of 36 after making only 26 films in 17 years. When Garbo quit Hollywood, she spent the remainder of her life in shuttered and fenced residences in France, Switzerland and Manhattan, where she lived in an East Side high-rise. Known as “the Swedish sphinx” because of her deep fear of reporters and other strangers, she ironically became one of the most publicized women in the world while trying to guard her privacy. Her biographer John Bainbridge wrote in “Garbo,” that except at the start of her career, she “granted no interviews, signed no autographs, attended no premieres, answered no fan mail.” At the time of her death in 1990 she owned 18th-century antiques, fine rugs, damask curtains, real estate and many pieces of art, including a Renoir. She left her entire estate of $32 million (equivalent to $75,000,000 in 2023) to her niece. She was interred Skogskyrkogården cemetery in Stockholm, Sweden.

popular name: George M. Cohan

date_of_death: November 5, 1942

age: 64

cause_of_death: Abdominal cancer

claim_to_fame: Show Business

best_know_for: George M. Cohan began his career as a child, performing with family as "The Four Cohans". Over the span of six decades that simple beginning developed into Cohan becoming perhaps the greatest entertainer, playwright, composer, lyricist, actor, singer, dancer and theatrical producer in Broadway history. Over his career Cohan appeared in more than three dozen Broadway musicals, wrote more than 50 shows and published more than 300 songs during his lifetime, including the standards "Over There", "Give My Regards to Broadway", "The Yankee Doodle Boy" and "You're a Grand Old Flag". In 1959 a $100,000 bronze statue of Cohan was dedicated in Times Square at Broadway and 46th Street in Manhattan. The 8-foot bronze remains the only statue of an actor on Broadway.