Ventriglia, Franco
Music
Age 90
October 20, 1922 - November 28, 2012
Oak Lawn Cemetery / Fairfield / Connecticut / USA / North America
Franco Ventriglia was an opera singer who sang bass in every major European opera house during the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s. Serving in the 1st Marine Aircraft Wing in the South Pacific during World War II upon return stateside Fra...
Blackwell, Richard
Show Business
Age 86
August 29, 1922 - October 19, 2008
Hollywood Forever Cemetery / Los Angeles / California / USA / North America
Mr. Blackwell, whose first name was Richard, was a little-known dress designer when he issued his first tongue-in-cheek criticism of Hollywood fashion disasters for 1960 – long before Joan Rivers and others turned such ridicule ...
Davis, Ossie
Historical Figure
Age 87
December 18, 1917 - February 4, 2005
Ferncliff Cemetery / Hartsdale / New York / USA / North America
Ossie Davis was an American actor, director, writer, and activist. He and his wife, Ruby Dee were named to the NAACP Image Awards Hall of Fame; were awarded the National Medal of Arts and were recipients of the Kennedy Center Hono...
Monk, Thelonious
Music
Age 64
October 10, 1917 - February 17, 1982
Ferncliff Cemetery / Hartsdale / New York / USA / North America
Thelonious Monk was American jazz pianist and composer. He had a unique improvisational style and was greatly influential in the genre of jazz. Some of his best known work includes "'Round Midnight", "Blue Monk", "Straight, No Cha...
Munson, Ona
Show Business
Age 51
June 16, 1903 - February 11, 1955
Ferncliff Cemetery / Hartsdale / New York / USA / North America
Ona Munson was an American film and stage actress. She starred in 9 Broadway productions and 20 feature films in her career, which spanned over 30 years. By the mid-1950s, Munson was suffering from health complications following a...
Gould, Jay
Business and Finance
Age 56
May 27, 1836 - December 2, 1892
Woodlawn Cemetery / Bronx / New York / USA / North America
Jay Gould was an American railroad magnate and financial speculator who is generally identified as one of the original Robber Barons of the Gilded Age. His sharp and often unscrupulous business practices made him one of the wealth...
Liberace
Show Business
Age 67
05/16/1919 - 02/04/1987
Forest Lawn Memorial Park – Hollywood Hills / Los Angeles / California / USA / North America
Liberace was an American pianist, singer, and actor. He had a successful career spanning four decades of concerts, recordings, television, motion pictures, and endorsements. At the height of his fame from the 1950s to 1970s, Liber...
Genna, Tony
Crime and their Victims
Age 34
July 12, 1890 - July 8, 1925
Mount Carmel Catholic Cemetery / Hillside / Illinois / USA / North America
Before becoming a gangster, Tony Genna was an excellent building contractor and architect. But the lure of working with his family, The Terrible Genna Brothers, in the lucrative bootlegging business during Prohibition was too much...
Rao, Vincenzo
Crime and their Victims
Age 90
June 21, 1898 - September 25, 1988
Ferncliff Cemetery / Hartsdale / New York / USA / North America
Vincenzo Rao was a Consigliere for the Lucchese crime family in New York City. In 1957, Rao was arrested with 60 other mobsters at the notorious Apalachin Meeting. During the 1963 Valachi hearings, Rao was listed as the Lucchese f...
Guitar Slim
Music
Age 32
December 10, 1926 - February 7, 1959
Moses Allen Chapel Calvary Cemeteries / Thibodaux / Louisiana / USA / North America
In the 1950s, no blues guitarist even came close to equaling the flamboyant Guitar Slim on stage. A masterful guitarist who pioneered the use of the distorted guitar solo, Slim would appear on stage resplendent in a blue suit, blu...
Twombly, Hamilton McKown
Business and Finance
Age 60
08/11/1849 - 01/11/1910
Woodlawn Cemetery / Bronx / New York / USA / North America
Hamilton McKown Twombly was a successful American businessman husband to Florence Adele Vanderbilt Twombly. In 1892, Twombly and his wife were both included in Ward McAllister's "Four Hundred", purported to be an index of New York...
Wolfe, Tom
Writers and Poets
Age 88
March 2, 1930 - May 14, 2018
Hollywood Cemetery / Richmond / Virginia / United States / North America
Tom Wolfe was an innovative journalist and novelist whose technicolor, wildly punctuated prose brought to life the worlds of California surfers, car customizers, astronauts and Manhattan’s moneyed status-seekers in works like "T...
Butera, Sam
Music
Age 81
August 17, 1927 - June 3, 2009
Greenwood Cemetery / New Orleans / Louisiana / USA / North America
Sam Butera was a tenor saxophonist best noted for his collaborations with Louis Prima and Keely Smith. Butera is frequently regarded as a crossover artist who performed with equal ease in both R&B and the post-big band pop style o...
Strauss ll, Johann
Music
Age 73
October 25, 1825 - June 3, 1899
Der Wiener Zentralfriedhof / Simmeringer Hauptstraße 234 / Vienna / Austria / Europe
Johann Strauss II (also referred to as Johann Strauss Jr., the Younger) was an Austrian composer of light music, particularly dance music and operettas as well as a renown violinist. He composed over 500 waltzes, polkas, quadrille...
Wray, Fay
Show Business
Age 96
September 15, 1907 - August 8, 2004
Hollywood Forever Cemetery / Los Angeles / California / USA / North America
Fay Wray was a Canadian born American actress best known for starring as Ann Darrow in the classic 1933 film King Kong. After appearing in minor film roles, Wray gained media attention after being selected as one of the "WAMPAS Ba...