Gregg Toland

popular name: Martha Raye

date_of_death: October 19, 1994 (aged 78)

age: 78

cause_of_death: Aspiration and Pneumonia

claim_to_fame: Show Business

best_know_for: Martha Raye, nicknamed The Big Mouth, was an American comedic actress and singer who performed in the stage, in the movies and later on television. While she might be best remembered for those annoying television commercials for Polident denture cleanser in the 1970s and 1980s, she actually had quite the remarkable career over her 5 decades in show business. In 1936, she was signed for comic roles by Paramount Pictures and her first feature film was Rhythm on the Range with Bing Crosby. Over the next 25 years she starred opposite such A-list comedians including Joe E. Brown, Bob Hope, W.C. Fields, Abbott and Costello, Charlie Chaplin and Jimmy Durante. She was a television star very early in its history. She starred in the short-lived (28 episodes) The Martha Raye Show (1954–1956), opposite retired middleweight boxer Rocky Graziano, who played her boyfriend. She went on and appeared in numerous T.V. series including Alice, Murder She Wrote, The Andy Williams Show and McMillan and Wife. During her last 5 years she suffered from difficult health issues including circulator issues (which resulted in the amputation both legs below the knee) and several strokes. Raye died at age 78 of aspiration and pneumonia.

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: Roscoe Arbuckle

date_of_death: June 29, 1933

age: 46

cause_of_death: Heart attack

claim_to_fame: Show Business

best_know_for: Roscoe "Fatty" Arbuckle was one of the most popular silent stars of the 1910s and one of the highest paid actors in Hollywood. As a silent film actor, comedian, director, and screenwriter, Arbuckle mentored legendary Charlie Chaplin and discovered Buster Keaton and Bob Hope. In 1921, Arbuckle was accused of alleged rape and manslaughter of actress Virginia Rappe. After three trials, Arbuckle was acquitted but the scandal had tarnished his legacy as a pioneering comedian.