Central Library

Otto Kruger, grand-nephew of former South African President Paul Kruger, first took the Broadway stage at age fifteen and by the 1920s was a Broadway star. The Ohio native turned to the big screen becoming a prolific and popular character actor who often portrayed the villain or a charming, but corrupt businessman. He...

Like thousands of other families in the 19th century, the Hixons took advantage of photography as an affordable way to capture images of loved ones. During his own career, Hixon contributed to the development of a new, less formal type of studio portrait that emphasized individuality and personality rather than relying...

Born in Lithuania, Asa Yoelson-Al Jolson, known professionally as Al Jolson was a celebrated singer and dancer. He was a Broadway attraction prior to gaining worldwide fame as the star of "The Jazz Singer." This 1927 film signaled the transition from silent pictures to sound. Jolson was known as "The World's Greatest E...

A member of the McCoy side of the long and infamous Hatfield and McCoy feud, Clyde McCoy was nine years old when he moved with his family from Kentucky to Ohio. He picked up the trumpet there and blossomed into a Dixieland Jazz great whose popularity as a performer and band leader spanned seven decades. McCoy pioneered...

Australia-born Annette Kellerman took up swimming as treatment for a childhood condition that may have been mild polio and became a world-record holder in the sport. A pioneer of the one-piece bathing suit, she was famously arrested in Boston for indecency in 1907. The "Australian Mermaid" parlayed her notoriety into a...

Theda Bara was an American actress known for her roles in both silent film and stage. Bara was cinema's original vamp. She was the dark, heartless seductress who lured men to their destruction. The persona was one that she and her studio perpetuated off the screen as well. The daughter of immigrant Jews, Bara was born...

The portrait depicted here is of Irene Rich. Rich was a successful San Francisco real estate agent who received her first movie job as an extra in Mary Pickford’s "Stella Maris" in 1918. She graduated to starring roles in silent melodramas. Rich eventually made the transition to talkies, joining Will Rogers in a serie...

Joan Crawford's journey to screen stardom began with a poor childhood moving from Texas to Oklahoma and finally Kansas City where she worked to help support her family while attending school. She won a Charleston contest at a local café in her early teens. Later, Crawford moved to Detroit where she danced under the sta...

The photograph depicted here is of Pauline Frederick. Pauline Beatrice Libby took “Frederick” as her stage name and later as her legal surname after being disinherited by her father who disapproved of her pursuit of acting. Frederick was an accomplished stage actress, but began acting in silent films when she was 32...

When a punctured eardrum ended Japanese born Sessue Hayakawa's original dream of a naval career, he enrolled at the University of Chicago to study banking. During a 1914 trip to Los Angeles, Hayakawa was lured into acting and went on to become one of the great film idols of the early motion picture era, rivaling Dougla...