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: Chris Farley

date_of_death: December 18, 1997

age: 33

cause_of_death: Overdose of cocaine and morphine (a combination known as a speedball) with advanced atherosclerosis cited as a "significant contributing factor."

claim_to_fame: Show Business

best_know_for: Chris Farley was an actor and a physical comedy genius known for his over-the-top loud, energetic comedic style. He started out as a member of Chicago's Second City Theatre before going on to national fame as a member of Saturday Night Live. He graduated to films such as Tommy Boy, Black Sheep and Billy Madison before he died of a drug overdose at age 33.

popular name: Anne Bancroft

date_of_death: June 6, 2005

age: 73

cause_of_death: Uterine cancer

claim_to_fame: Show Business

best_know_for: Anne Bancroft was a gifted and talented American actress whose 50+ year career was studded with renowned successes on stage, screen, and television. She won both a Tony Award and an Academy Award for best actress for one of her most physically and emotionally demanding roles, that of Helen Keller’s teacher, Annie Sullivan, in The Miracle Worker. However, it was with another Oscar-nominated film role, the seductive Mrs. Robinson in The Graduate (1967), that—to her bewilderment—she was most identified. In addition to her Tony and Oscar awards, Bancroft received three BAFTA Awards, two Golden Globe Awards, two Tony Awards, two Primetime Emmy Awards, and a Cannes Film Festival Award. Her film career progressed with Oscar nominated performances in The Pumpkin Eater (1964), The Turning Point (1977) and Agnes of God (1985). Bancroft continued to act in the later half of her life, with prominent roles including The Elephant Man (1980), Garbo Talks (1984), 84 Charing Cross Road (1987), Torch Song Trilogy (1988), Home for the Holidays (1995), G.I. Jane (1997), Great Expectations (1998), and Up at the Villa (2000). She received multiple Primetime Emmy Award nominations, including for the television films Broadway Bound (1992), Deep in My Heart (1999), for which she won, and The Roman Spring of Mrs. Stone (2003). She died in 2005, at the age of 73, as a result of uterine cancer. She was married to director, actor, and writer Mel Brooks, with whom she had a son, author Max Brooks. She is one of only 24 thespians to achieve the Triple Crown of Acting. Upon her death, she was laid to rest at Kensico Cemetery in Valhalla, New York.