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Zsa Zsa Gabor
Vivacious actress and socialite, Zsa Zsa Gabor was famous for her take no crap attitude and numerous marriages. Born in Budapest, Hungary on February 6, 1917, Sari Gabor was the middle daughter of Vilmos and Jolie Gabor. Jolie was the heiress to a European jewelry business and a Vilmos was a soldier. She had two sisters, Eva and Magda, and they all lived a luxurious life in Budapest complete with servants, vacations and expensive boarding schools. Sari began calling herself “Zsa Zsa” at an early age, and the pet name stuck. She and her sisters were all blonde, lovely and known on the social circuit. They were rather like…
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Gene Wilder
“Time is a precious thing. Never waste it” – Willy Wonka (Gene Wilder) Jerome Silberman was born on June 11, 1933 in Milwaukee, Wisconsin to William J. and Jeanne (Baer) Silberman. He would later adopt “Gene Wilder” as his professional name explaining, “I had always liked Gene because of Thomas Wolfe’s character Eugene Gant in Look Homeward, Angel and Of Time and the River. And I was always a great admirer of Thornton Wilder.” Wilder first became interested in acting at age 8, when his mother was diagnosed with rheumatic fever and the doctor told him to “try and make her laugh.” Around the age of 11, he saw…
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Muhammed Ali
Born in Kentucky, January 1942, Cassius Clay was one of five children of Cassius Marcellus Clay Sr and his wife Odessa O’Grady. Clay Sr was named for the 19thC abolitionist of the same name and passed the name on to his own son. Clay Sr was the descendant of slaves, Odessa however was the grand-daughter of a white Irish immigrant through her paternal line and the great-grand-daughter of a white man and a slave on her maternal side. Cassius would later adopt the name Muhammed Ali, upon his conversion to Islam, and thereafter refusing to answer to what he called his “slave-name”, despite its link with abolition, rather than slavery.…
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Prince
It seems like we have been writing way too many of these memorial tributes lately. 2016 had been a rough year, and now we have lost another great musician. Prince Rogers Nelson was an amazing musician, icon and innovator. Born in Minneapolis, Minnesota on June 7, 1958, Prince had been interested in music from a young age writing songs as young as seven years old. He hit the big time when he was 19, with his first commercial album For You in 1978, He continued his success with four more albums , one of which went platinum. In 1984, Prince and the Revolution, as he had named his backup band,…
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Victoria Wood
This is only going to be a short post, dedicated to my favourite female comedian who died on 20th April 2016 following a short battle with cancer. Victoria was born on 19th May, 1953 in Prestwich, Lancashire, the youngest daughter of Stanley and Nellie Wood, with two sisters and a brother. She received her education at Bury Grammar School then studied drama at University of Birmingham. Victoria was well known for her style of humour, which played a lot on understated sarcasm, her delivery was very subtle, and yet deadly accurate. I remember the first time I heard ‘The Ballad of Barry and Freda (Let’s do it!), a song Victoria…
