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William Claude Dukenfield was the eldest of five children born to Cockney immigrant James Dukenfield and Philadelphia native Kate Felton. He went to school for four years, then quit to work with his father selling vegetables from a horse cart. At eleven, after many fights with his alcoholic father (who hit him on the head with a shovel), he ran away from home. For a while he lived in a hole in the ground, depending on stolen food and clothing. He was often beaten and spent nights in jail. His first regular job was delivering ice. By age thirteen he was a skilled pool player and juggler. It was then, at an amusement park in Norristown PA, that he was first hired as an entertainer. There he developed the technique of pretending to lose the things he was juggling. In 1893 he was employed as a juggler at Fortescue's Pier, Atlantic City. When business was slow he pretended to drown in the ocean (management thought his fake rescue would draw customers). By nineteen he was billed as "The Distinguished Comedian" and began opening bank accounts in every city he played. At age twenty-three he opened at the Palace in London and played with Sarah Bernhardt at Buckingham Palace. He starred at the Folies-Bergere (young Charles Chaplin and Maurice Chevalier were on the program).

He was in each of the Ziegfeld Follies from 1915 through 1921. He played for a year in the highly praised musical "Poppy" which opened in New York in 1923. In 1925 D.W. Griffith made a movie of the play, renamed Sally of the Sawdust (1925), starring Fields. Pool Sharks (1915), Fields' first movie, was made when he was thirty-five. He settled into a mansion near Burbank, California and made most of his thirty-seven movies for Paramount. He appeared in mostly spontaneous dialogs on Charlie McCarthy's radio shows. In 1939 he switched to Universal where he made films written mainly by and for himself. He died after several serious illnesses, including bouts of pneumonia.

Lionel Atwill was born into a wealthy family and was educated at London's prestigious Mercer School to become an architect, but his interest turned to the stage. He worked his way progressively into the craft and debuted at age 20 at the Garrick Theatre in London. He acted and improved regularly thereafter, especially in the plays of Henrik Ibsen and George Bernard Shaw. Atwill came to the US in 1915 and would appear in some 25 plays on Broadway between 1917 and 1931, but he was already trying his hand in silent films by 1918. He had a sonorous voice and dictatorial British accent that served him well for the stage and just as well for sound movies. He did some Vitaphone short subjects in 1928 and then his first real film role in The Silent Witness (1932) (also titled "The Verdict").

That voice and his bullish demeanor made Atwill a natural for a spectrum of tough-customer roles. As shady noblemen and mad doctors, but also gruff military men and police inspectors (usually with a signature mustache), he worked steadily through the 1930s. He had the chance to show a broader character as the tyrannical but unforgettable Col. Bishop in Captain Blood (1935). It's hard to forget his Inspector Krogh in Son of Frankenstein (1939), wherein he agrees to a game of darts with Basil Rathbone and proceeds to impale the darts through the right sleeve of his uniform (the character sported a wooden right arm). And he sends himself up with rolling and blustering dialogue as the glory-hog ham stage actor Rawitch in the classic To Be or Not to Be (1942) with Jack Benny. However, Atwill effectively ruined his burgeoning film career in 1943 after he was implicated in what was described as an "orgy" at his home, naked guests and pornographic films included--and a rape perpetrated during the proceedings. Atwill "lied like a gentleman," it was said, in the court proceedings to protect the identities of his guests and was convicted of perjury and sentenced to five years' probation.

He was thereafter kept employed on Poverty Row with only brief periods of employment by Universal Pictures, while the rest of Hollywood turned its collective back on him. He is more remembered for the horror films generally than for better efforts, but they have fueled his continued popularity and a bid by the Southern California Lionel Atwill Fan Club to petition for a Hollywood Blvd. star (he never received one).

Mae Busch can certainly claim career versatility, having successfully played Erich von Stroheim's mistress, Lon Chaney's girlfriend, Charley Chase's sister, James Finlayson's ex-wife and Oliver Hardy's wife! She was born in Melbourne, Australia, in 1891; her parents were in the theater and when she was six years old the family moved to the US, arriving in San Francisco in 1897 before moving to New York. It is claimed Mae was placed in St. Elizabeth's Convent in New Jersey until at least the age of 12, when she joined her parents in vaudeville as part of the Busch Devere Trio (New York press articles confirm Mae as being part of the group in early 1908). Her big break came in March 1912 when she replaced Lillian Lorraine in the lead role in the Broadweay play "Over the River", with Eddie Foy. She continued in this role until the end of the season, when she joined one of Jesse L. Lasky's touring "girl" shows, where she stayed until signed by Mack Sennett for his Keystone Pictures in 1915. As she was performing on Broadway at the same time as "The Agitator" was filming in California, the claim that this was her first film is incorrect. Similarly, there is no evidence that she knew Mabel Normand prior to arriving in Los Angeles in 1915.

In Hollywood things didn't begin so well for Mae. In order to get work, she falsely claimed to have lived in Tahiti and to be able to swim and dive. A high dive she took while filming The Water Nymph (1912) resulted in an injury and her returning to her parents in New York. It was only then when working in the theater again that she developed into leading-lady status.

Mae returned to Hollywood, and Keystone, in 1915. However, her friendship with Mabel ended abruptly when she was "caught" with Sennett, Mabel's fiancé, and Mae was forced to leave Keystone. Over the years she had substantial roles in quite a few films, such as von Stroheim's The Devil's Passkey (1920) and Foolish Wives (1922). Although 1927 was the year of her first movie with Stan Laurel and Hardy, it wasn't until Unaccustomed As We Are (1929) that she first played Mrs. Hardy, the role that she will always be remembered for. She was Mrs. Hardy again in Their First Mistake (1932), Sons of the Desert (1933), and The Bohemian Girl (1936). She also appeared in other Laurel and Hardy pictures but not as Mrs. Hardy, such as Charlie Hall's wife in Them Thar Hills (1934), and she only flirted with Hardy in Tit for Tat (1935).

Mae's Hollywood career lasted 30 years; she worked with many of the leading directors, actors and actresses of the time. After a long illness she died in 1946, aged 54. She was cremated and her ashes remained in a cardboard box at the Motion Picture Country Home Hospital for over 20 years until a proper interment and plaque was provided.

Rags Ragland was a boxer, then a burlesque comedian and then a Broadway performer before ending up in Hollywood to repeat his stage role as the boisterous sailor in Panama Hattie (1942), in which Ann Sothern played on film the part that had been played on Broadway by Ethel Merman. Ragland, typecast as a good-natured oaf with a knack for fracturing the English language, had as his sole movie employer Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, in some two dozen of whose lighter vehicles he appeared, in the company of such MGM luminaries as Red Skelton, Lucille Ball, Judy Garland and Gene Kelly.

Respected character actor of the silent and early sound period, specializing in cruel villains. The son of Kansas City policeman Noah Webster Beery and Frances Margaret Fitzgerald Beery, Noah Nicholas Beery and his younger brother Wallace Beery both left home in their teens, each seeking a career as a performer. Noah made his stage debut at the age of 16 and worked steadily in the theatre until his early 30s. Following his brother into films, he quickly established himself as a competent player and a familiar heavy in all sorts of films, particularly westerns. He never achieved the great fame of his younger brother, but succeeded in carving a memorable niche for himself in the history of film. His son Noah Beery Jr. became equally familiar as a character actor, though usually in more genial roles.

Was an only child, Rondo Hatton was born to Stewart and Emily Hatton in Hagerstown, Maryland. The family moved to Tampa, Florida, in 1912, when he was a high-school senior, and his father joined a family-owned business there. Rondo was apparently popular and a good athlete, especially in football.

After leaving high school, Rondo joined the Florida National Guard to pursue a military career. Rondo first saw battle in the Mexican border war and then in France in World War I. There, he was exposed to poison gas, was hospitalized with lung injury, and was subsequently medically discharged from service and consigned to a pension.

Returning to Tampa, he took employment as a reporter for the Tampa Tribune, where he worked until 1936 when he moved to Hollywood.

Sometime after his exposure to the poison gas, Rondo began to develop acromegaly, a slowly progressive medical condition, which brings after a person has matured physically, and reached their adult height.

Acromegaly (a disorder of the pituitary gland) causes deformation of bones in the head, hands and feet, and internal and external soft tissues. The body resumes production of growth hormone, but as the bone structure can no longer continue symmetric growth (as in giantism). According to all available sources, Rondo's acromegaly was a result of the poison gas he'd been exposed to, though it is almost always caused by a tumor on the pituitary.

In any event, Rondo's increasing disfigurement is thought to have led to his first divorce and certainly was responsible for his being noticed by director Henry King. who was shooting a movie, Hell Harbor (1930), near Tampa. Reporter Hatton was covering the filming, and King offered him a role.

Hatton continued his work as a reporter, until after his second marriage in 1934; in 1936, he and his new, more faithful wife moved to Hollywood. Thereafter, Hatton appears to have subsisted primarily on bit parts or extra roles, with an occasional role substantial enough to earn him cast acknowledgment, until being cast for the role of the "Hoxton Creeper" in Universal's The Pearl of Death (1944). Universal thereafter attempted to promote Hatton to horror film stardom because of his acromegalic appearance, including a burgeoning series about a spine-breaking maniac called "The Creeper."

Around Christmas, 1945, Rondo suffered a mild heart attack. (weakness, along with diabetes and blindness being common complications of acromegaly) and, seemingly recovered. But approximately one month later, Rondo suffered a major heart attack, which proved fatal.

Rondo's body was returned to Tampa for burial. In 1988, filmmaker Fred Olen Ray extensively researched Hatton's life, producing the sensitive article "Rondo Hatton: Monster Man" (referenced below), giving this man the graceful memorial he deserved.

One Hollywood stalwart whose screen incarnations more than lived up to his name was bald-domed character actor Donald Meek, forever typecast as mousy, timorous or browbeaten Casper Milquetoasts. He stood at 5 ft. 6 in. in his boots and weighed a mere 81 pounds. However, the little Glaswegian's personal history rather belied his gormless image on the silver screen. By the age of fourteen, Donald had joined an acrobatic team ("The Marvells") on the piano wire as a top mounter. He accompanied the troupe on their tour of the U.S. but sustained several compound fractures in a fall and had to quit. After spending six months on crutches, he joined the U.S. 6th Pennsylvania Regiment and saw action during the Spanish-American War in Cuba, was wounded and lost his hair after a bout of yellow fever. This did not deter him from re-enlisting at the onset of World War I. He went on to serve with the Canadian Highlanders as a corporal, but, to his consternation, never got any further than Toronto.

Donald had been infatuated with acting since early childhood. At the age of eight, he first performed publicly in the comic pantomime "Le Voyage en Suisse". Later, he toured Australia, South Africa, India and England in "Little Lord Fauntleroy". During his wartime sojourn in Cuba he had learned to "listen to those Yankees" and imitated their manner of speech, losing his Scottish accent in the process. When he was forced to abandon his career as an acrobat, he devoted more time to acting with various traveling stock companies and in New York. He made the first (of many) appearances on Broadway in 1903. Until the late 1920s, Donald remained quite gainfully employed in droll comical roles. Having flirted with screen acting since 1923, he made the move to the celluloid media by the end of the decade. Filmed at the Warner Brothers Eastern Vitaphone Studio in Brooklyn, he found himself an unlikely star, as amateur sleuth Dr. Amos Crabtree in The Clyde Mystery (1931), the first of eleven detective two-reelers, averaging just over twenty minutes in length. In 1933, Donald and wife Belle relocated to Hollywood.

Moving from studio to studio (his only long-tern tenure was at MGM from 1940 to 1944), Donald Meek quickly emerged as one of the most prolific, sought-after character players in the business. Invariably, he was respectability personified, all prim and proper. The role of eccentric toy maker Mr. Poppins in You Can't Take It with You (1938) was specially written for him. Other memorable performances included the nervy little whiskey salesman Samuel Peacock, losing his samples to Thomas Mitchell in Stagecoach (1939) ("the cutest coach rider in the wagon", according to a New York Times review); shady gambler Amos Budge in My Little Chickadee (1940); Mr. Wiggs thinking himself to sleep in Mrs. Wiggs of the Cabbage Patch (1934); the eccentric little bee-keeper Bartholomew, helping the crime fighting exploits of Nick Carter, Master Detective (1939); and the intoxicated food taster and mince-meat enthusiast Hippenstahl of State Fair (1945). On odd occasions, Donald managed to step out of character, notably as the courageous Scottish prospector McTavish standing up to the villains of Barbary Coast (1935); scene-stealing, as miserly financier Daniel Drew in The Toast of New York (1937); as a rather loony citizen determined to collect a reward by unmasking Edward G. Robinson in The Whole Town's Talking (1935); or as tough railroad executive McCoy in Jesse James (1939) and The Return of Frank James (1940).

Donald Meek crammed more than 120 screen roles into a mere one and a half decades. His performances were consistently a joy to watch. He was never able to realise his ambition of retiring to raise hybrid roses, dying in November 1946 at the age of 68. Fourteen years later, he was awarded a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

Writer, born in Bromley, Kent. He was apprenticed to a draper, tried teaching, studied biology in London, then made his mark in journalism and literature. He played a vital part in disseminating the progressive ideas which characterized the first part of the 20th-c. He achieved fame with scientific fantasies such as The Time Machine (1895) and War of the Worlds (1898), and wrote a range of comic social novels which proved highly popular, notably Kipps (1905) and The History of Mr Polly (1910). Both kinds of novel made successful (sometimes classic) early films. A member of the Fabian Society, he was often engaged in public controversy, and wrote several socio-political works dealing with the role of science and the need for world peace, such as The Outline of History (1920) and The Work, Wealth and Happiness of Mankind

Born in Albuquerque, New Mexico in 1892, rustic-looking George "Slim" Summerville possessed one of those malleable mugs that made you laugh even before he opened his mouth. Young Slim ran away from home as a youth and lived a rather wanderlust life until a chance meeting with Mack Sennett through his comedian friend Edgar Kennedy changed everything.

Slim broke into silent films at age nineteen as one of Sennett's pie-hurling Keystone Kops and became part of the stock company of players. Making an unbilled appearance in Keystone's first feature film Tillie's Punctured Romance (1914), Summerville's gangly build and naive innocence, not to mention his potato-like nose, mournful mug, and slim, curling upper lip, helped set him apart -- so much so that Summerville eventually branched out into his own short vehicles.

Much more comfortable in rumpled clothes and overalls than a suit and tie, he later learned the ropes of directing and in the 1920s helmed a string of short films for both Fox and Universal studios. He refocused on acting come the advent of sound and made a rather easy transition, standing out in a number of commercial films, both comedic and dramatic, including the mammoth war epic All Quiet on the Western Front (1930), the landmark musical film King of Jazz (1930), Hecht-MacArthur's classic The Front Page (1931), the Shirley Temple vehicles Captain January (1936) and Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm (1938), and John Ford's Tobacco Road (1941). In addition, Slim scored in a series of short comedies opposite Zasu Pitts, and a slew of supports in Hoot Gibson westerns.

Usually playing much older than he was, the sleepy-eyed, slow-drawling Summerville played his last role in The Hoodlum Saint (1946), before dying of a stroke on January 5, 1946, at the not-so-old age of 53. He left a strong enough legacy, however, to be remembered as one of the screen's more reliable comedians. He was survived by his wife Eleanor and son Elliot.

Pete the Dog was born as Pal. He was known for Dr. Pyckle and Mr. Pryde (1925), Bear Shooters (1930), The First Seven Years (1930), and Dog Heaven(1930). He of course is best known for playing Spanky's dog in The Little Rascalls. He died on January 28, 1946 in Los Angeles, Californians, USA.

Renée Jeanne or Maria Falconetti, born in Pantin (not in Sermano, Corsica, as many film dictionaries wrongly attest) on July 21, 1892 and died in Buenos Aires on December 12, 1946, is a French actress of theater and cinema. Joining the troupe of the Odeon theater in 1916, she made her debut in "l'Arlésienne", and played the heroines of Saint-Georges de Bouhélier "The Life of a Woman", 1919. She made a short passage at the Comédie Française (1924-1925), where she plays Rosine among others in "La Dame aux camélias" and "Lorenzaccio". His last role before a long stay in South America will be that of Andromache in "The Trojan War will not happen", Jean Giraudoux. She remains world famous for having embodied in the cinema the main role of "The Passion of Joan of Arc" by Carl Theodor Dreyer.

Primula Rollo was born on 18 February 1918 in London, England, UK. She was an actress, known for Her Man Gilbey (1944). She was married to David Niven. She died on 21 May 1946 in Beverly Hills, California, USA.

Henry Bergman was born on 23 February 1868 in San Francisco, California, USA. He was an actor and assistant director, known for Modern Times (1936), City Lights (1931) and The Gold Rush (1925). He died on 22 October 1946 in Hollywood, California, USA.

A storybook hero, the original screen cowboy, ever forthright and honest, even when (as was often the case) he played a villain, William S. Hart lived for a while in the Dakota Territory, then worked as a postal clerk in New York City. In 1888 he began to study acting. In 1899 he created the role of Messala in "Ben-Hur", and received excellent reviews for his lead part in "The Virginian" (1907). His first film was a two-reeler, His Hour of Manhood (1914). In 1915 he signed a contract with Thomas H. Ince and joined Ince's Triangle Film Company. Two years later he followed Ince to Famous Players-Lasky and received a very lucrative contract from Adolph Zukor. His career began to dwindle in the early 1920s due to the publicity surrounding a paternity suit against him, which was eventually dismissed. He made his last film, Tumbleweeds (1925), for United Artists and retired to a ranch in Newhall, CA. By that time audiences were more interested in the antics of a Tom Mix or Hoot Gibson than the Victorian moralizing of Hart. He is buried in Greenwood Cemetery, NY.

Ben Carter was born on 10 February 1911 in Fairfield, Iowa, USA. He was an actor and composer, known for Crash Dive (1943), The Harvey Girls (1946) and Maryland (1940). He died on 12 December 1946 in New York City, New York, USA.

One of the oldest actors on the screen in the 1920s and 1930s, George Arliss starred on the London stage from an early age. He came to the United States and starred in several films, but it was his role as British Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli in Disraeli (1929) that brought him his greatest success.

Dorothy Winnifred Brown was born at the home of her parents, Pauline Caroline Boesen Brown and John Brown on May 17, 1889 at 320 Willow Avenue in Hoboken, New Jersey. John Brown died while she was an infant and Leonard Gibson became her stepfather four years later. She had two siblings but both died in infancy. Later, Pauline and Dorothy moved to Manhattan.

In 1909 Dorothy met George Battier Jr. They were soon married, but the marriage was short-lived. Soon, she became an actress for Eclair Studios, making one-reelers. In 1912, she finished The Easter Bonnet (1912) and traveled to Europe. By April she was ready to return. On April 10, 1912, she and her mother boarded the Titanic in Southampton, England. They occupied a cabin on E-Deck. When the Titanic struck an iceberg at 11:40 p.m. on the 14th, she described it as "a long sickening crunch". She and her mother boarded the first lifeboat to leave with friends William Sloper and Fredrick Seward. She later appeared in the film, Saved from the Titanic (1912), a one-reel quickie. It was to be her last. She soon quit the business and married Jules Brulatour. This marriage was also short, lasting only two years.

In 1928 Dorothy left with her mother for Europe, never to see the States again. She lived in Italy and France. During World War II she was suspected of spying for the Nazis, but this is unsubstantiated. She died in Paris on February 17, 1946, found by a hotel maid.

Charles Butterworth was, before he came to Hollywood in 1930, a stage attraction on Broadway. In the '30s, he had his big successes as the hero's no-nonsense best friend. He made a practice of ad-libbing dry quips and bons mots during shooting, and screenwriters took advantage of this by writing only fragments of his scripts, hoping that he would fill in the missing lines. He didn't like that very much, however, and his star began sinking in the late '30s. In the '40s, he worked for smaller studios; Warner's A production, This Is the Army (1943), was a notable exception. Two years after his last movie, Dixie Jamboree (1944) for PRC, he died in a car crash.

Hermann Göring was born on January 12, 1893, in Rosenheim, Bavaria, the son of a prominent judge. He entered the German Royal Military Academy at Gross Lichterfeide outside Berlin in his teens and graduated in 1911. At the beginning of World War I he saw service as an infantry lieutenant but soon transfered to the air corps. During the war he racked up 22 aerial kills, earning the coveted Blue Max and a promotion to commanding officer of Manfred von Richthofen's "Flying Circus" in 1918 after that famous ace was killed in action. In the years following World War I Göring became one of Adolf Hitler's most devoted followers. The former war hero was named head of Hitler's private army, the Brownshirts, a Nazi paramilitary organization similar to the Blackshirt fascist group in Italy commanded by Benito Mussolini, in 1922. Göring took part in the unsuccessful "Beer Hall Putsch" attempt to overthrow the Bavarian state government in 1923, was wounded and spent some time in prison. In 1933, after Hitler was appointed Chancellor of Germany, Göring became commissioner for aviation and in 1935 commander in chief of the newly established German Air Force (the Luftwaffe). By the opening days of World War II, Göring had built the Luftwaffe into the largest air force in the world. His planes performed superbly in the "blitzkrieg" campaigns against Poland, the Low Countries, Norway and France. In recognition of his work, Göring was promoted to Reichsmarschall (a rank above field marshal) on June 19, 1940. The tall, heavyset Göring became well known for his garish, colorful uniforms and his devotion to the war aims of the Nazi party, rivaled only by Hitler's. Göring didn't confine his efforts on behalf of the Nazi party to purely military matters, however; he also developed much of Nazi Germany's anti-Jewish legislation.

Unfortunately for Göring, his hour of military triumph was short-lived. He seriously botched the Battle of Britain in August and September of 1940 by overestimating the Luftwaffe's capability for long-range combat and underestimating the resolve of Britain's Royal Air Force, which resulted in the loss of huge numbers of his aircraft in daily air raids against England, not to mention the death or capture of thousands of his most experienced bomber crews. During the invasion of the Soviet Union in June of 1941, the Luftwaffe first held the upper hand against the undertrained and underequipped Soviet Air Force. However, it wasn't long before the tide turned, and before long the Russians were turning out thousands of fighters and bombers and inflicting serious damage on the Luftwaffe, which could ill afford such losses. Starting in 1943 Allied bombers had turned the tide of the air war against Germany, and Göring's vaunted Luftwaffe began losing increasing numbers of planes, not to mention experienced pilots, to the US and British air forces, and Allied bombing campaigns smashed many more German aircraft on the ground in addition to destroying many aircraft factories. In April 1945, with the defeat of Germany a certainty, Göring suggested to Hitler that he make peace with the Allies before they brought total destruction to Germany. Enraged, Hitler ordered his arrest. Göring managed to escape from Nazi custody but was captured on May 2, 1945, by soldiers of the U.S. 7th Army. He was eventually tried, convicted and sentenced to death for crimes against humanity during the war crimes trials at Nuremberg late in 1945. His lawyers fought for time with appeals and requests to overturn his death sentence, but they were all denied. On October 15, 1946, just two hours before the former Reichsmarshall was to face the hangman to pay for his crimes, the 53-year-old Hermann Göring committed suicide in his jail cell by taking poison that he somehow had smuggled in with him.

Heinrich George was born on 9 October 1893 in Stettin, Pomerania, Germany [now Szczecin, Zachodniopomorskie, Poland]. He was an actor and producer, known for Metropolis (1927), Burning Hearts (1945) and Die Degenhardts (1944). He was married to Berta Drews. He died on 25 September 1946 in Soviet Special Camp No. 7, Oranienburg, Brandenburg, Germany.

Etta McDaniel was born on 1 December 1890 in Wichita, Kansas, USA. She was an actress, known for The Great Man's Lady (1941), What a Man! (1944) and The Pittsburgh Kid (1941). She died on 13 January 1946 in Los Angeles, California, USA.

Born out of wedlock in Manhattan, Kansas, but grew up in Denver. A close friend of fellow New York sportswriter--and former western gunfighter--William Barclay 'Bat' Masterson, who knew the Runyan family in Denver. In the late teens and early 1920s both Ed Sullivan and Walter Winchell worked as Runyon's leg men. Buried in New York's Woodlawn Cemetery.

Fern Emmett was born on 22 March 1896 in Oakland, California, USA. She was an actress, known for Ten Nights in a Bar-Room (1931), Cinderella Swings It (1943) and Scattergood Baines (1941). She was married to Henry Roquemore. She died on 3 September 1946 in Hollywood, Los Angeles, California, USA.

Alfred Stieglitz is undoubtedly one of the most significant contributors to the history of photography. He contributed not only scientific and artistic photographic studies, but also introduced modern art to America and furthered the theory of photography as art. Stieglitz was born in Hoboken, New Jersey on January 1, 1864.

The renowned photographer Stieglitz first studied photochemistry with Hermann Wilhelm Vogel at the Technische Hochschule in Berlin, from 1882-1886, and took his first photographs in 1883. He continued to travel and photograph in Germany, Austria, and Switzerland until 1890, when he returned to New York City. From 1890 to 1895 he was a partner in a photogravure firm. During this time he concentrated on photographing the streets of New York City. In 1894, Stieglitz travelled to Europe and was elected a member of the Linked Ring, a pictorialist society in London. In 1902, Stieglitz founded the Photo-Secession Movement which attempted to prove that pictorialist photography was a fine art form. From 1903 to 1917, Stieglitz was publisher and director of Camera Work magazine.

The graphic section was run by Edward Steichen (1879-1973). In 1905, Stieglitz opened the Little Galleries of the Photo-Secession "291" on Fifth Avenue in New York City with Steichen. Along with the other original members, Gertrude Kasebier and Clarence H. White, they formulated their mission to secede from conventional expectations and explore the creative potential of photography from both a theoretical and scientific point of view. Needing space to gather, work and exhibit, the gallery was open to and exhibited such paintings by Cezanne, Picasso, Braque and Matisse. The gallery was also a gathering place for writers, philosophers and musicians.

Georgia O'Keeffe and Stieglitz began their relationship in 1917; she eventually became his wife. Over the next twenty years together, Stieglitz made more than 300 images of O'Keeffe.

Accomplished photographic scientist, photographer, gallery owner, art dealer, collector and writer, Stieglitz was inducted into the International Photography Hall of Fame and Museum in 1971. Throughout his life, until his death in 1946, he fought for the art and science of photography. A great, fearless fight. And if he were alive today he would still be fighting. Photography as a respected art form is still not accepted by some today.

Joe Keaton and wife Myra were grade-Z vaudeville performers in the early 1900s. Their son Buster joined the act when he was only a few months old. The act was a rough-and-tumble one, with Buster being thrown around on stage most of the time. As the years went by, Joe Keaton became an alcoholic, which forced Buster to quit the act by the time he was a teenager. However, after he hit it big in silent film, Buster provided Joe with small parts in several movies. Myra and Joe split up long after Buster had become an adult. She'd had it with the constant verbal and physical abuse Joe put her through. He lived alone in a Hollywood hotel for many years and was said to have stopped drinking after becoming a Christian Scientist. Buster said Joe died as a result of being run over by a passing car.