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- Music Department
- Soundtrack
William Cool White was born on 28 July 1821 in Pennsylvania, USA. William Cool is known for My Darling Clementine (1946), Her Lucky Night (1945) and Hoosier Holiday (1943). William Cool was married to Mrs. Eliza F. Foster, née Bonnet and ? (second). William Cool died on 23 April 1891 in Chicago, Illinois, USA.- Soundtrack
J.A. Butterfield was born on 18 May 1837 in England, UK. J.A. was married to Caroline S. Sheppard. J.A. died on 6 July 1891 in Chicago, Illinois, USA.- Robert Henry Hall was born on 15 November 1837 in Detroit, Michigan, USA. He died on 29 December 1914 in Chicago Heights, Illinois, USA.
- George Siler was born on 23 September 1846 in New York City, New York, USA. He died on 13 June 1908 in Chicago, Illinois, USA.
- Writer
- Actor
Opie Percival Read was the youngest of ten children born to Guilford and Elizabeth Wallace Read. He was raised on his parent's plantation near Gallatin, Tennessee and later attended Neophagen College in Nashville. Prior to his enrollment, Read had worked for the Franklin (KY) Patriot Newspaper where he learned to set type. A skill that would later help pay his way through college working for the school newspaper. Read would go on to be the editor of the Little Rock Gazette and the Cleveland Leader. In 1882 Read and Philo D. Benham founded the Arkansas Traveler. Five years later Read and Benham moved their popular humor based paper from Little Rock to Chicago. There Read became a prolific contributor of stories about Southern life to a number of national publications. He would also author several bestsellers over the waning years of the nineteenth century and the birth of the twentieth century. His most successful book "The Jucklins" (1895) stayed in print for the better part of twenty years. "Len Gansett" (1882) and "The Turkey Egg Griffin" (1905), were also well received by the public. Read also achieved some notoriety on the lecture circuit talking about life in the South. On 30 June, 1881, Read married his partner's sister, Ada Benam. The couple would go on to have three sons and three daughters. Ada would pass away in 1928, a week shy of her seventy-seventh birthday. Their daughter Enid died some ten years earlier while still in her early twenties. Opie Read's romantic style of writing had fallen out of favor with the reading public by the 1920s and has been largely overlooked since.- Frank McNish was born on 14 December 1853 in Camden, New Jersey, USA. He was an actor, known for Rustic Reggie's Record (1916), Silas Marner (1916) and Alma, Where Do You Live? (1917). He died on 27 December 1925 in Chicago, Illinois, USA.
- Thomas Commerford was born on 1 August 1855 in New York City, New York, USA. He was an actor, known for The Ex-Convict (1913), Frauds (1915) and The Hobo's Rest Cure (1912). He died on 17 February 1920 in Chicago, Illinois, USA.
- Richard Foster Baker was born on 25 January 1857 in Detroit, Michigan, USA. He was a director and actor, known for The Little Girl Next Door (1916), A Bunch of Keys (1915) and Kidder and Ko (1918). He died on 21 February 1921 in Chicago, Illinois, USA.
- Harriet Converse Tilden was an American English teacher, writer and business woman. As a young girl her family relocated to Chicago where her father became successful operating a business that transported live stock. She graduated from Cornell University in 1876 with a degree in English Literature after completing the four year course in less than three. In 1889, after her first marriage failed and her father had died, she became a teacher in the Chicago School System.
On 5 July, 1909 she married writer William Vaughn Moody at Wesleyan Methodist Church in Québec, Canada. When they had first met he was a Professor of English Literature at the University of Chicago. While most likely on their honeymoon, her husband became seriously ill on board a passenger ship in the South Atlantic. At first his illness mystified their doctors, but eventually they came to discover he had an inoperative brain tumor. William Vaughn Moody passed away at Colorado Springs on 17 October, 1910, less than fifteen months after they had married.
In the years follow her husband's death, she served as a writer and consultant on several films that were adapted from his works. Mrs. Moody became the first woman to serve as a trustee (1912-1922) at Cornell University. A patron the arts, she could count among her friends such poets as, John Masefield, Rabindranath Tagore, Padraic Colum and James Stephens. She was also known for assisting young poets, even to the point of letting them and their families into her home. In her 1948 book "A House in Chicago" Olivia H. Dunbar writes of Harriet Moody's romance and marriage with William Vaughn Moody and how, in the years following his death, her Chicago home became a mecca for many of the writers and intellectuals of that era.
Before the 1929 stock market crash greatly reduced her circumstances, she maintained a mansion in Chicago, an apartment in New York and a farm in New England. She owned a successful catering business with branches in both Britain and America that operated several French restaurants. After the crash she wrote the relatively successful "Mrs. William Vaughn Moody's Cookbook" and a newspaper column on cooking. She also donated her time teaching cooking classes to the deaf.
Mrs. Moody died in Chicago on 22 February, 1932 of bronchial asthma. - Actor
- Writer
Generally considered to be the most brilliant legal mind in the history of American jurisprudence, Clarence Seward Darrow was born in Kinsma, OH, in 1857, the son of a failed minister who became a furniture-store owner and an intellectual but religiously puritanical mother. In 1873 he attended Allegheny College in Meadville, PA, but the financial crisis known as the Panic of 1873 swept the US that year, and Darrow was forced to leave school and find work--first in a factory, then in a store, and finally he spent three cold winters teaching in a country school.
At age 19 he entered the University of Michigan to study law, and was admitted to the bar at age 21. He began his first law practice in Andover, OH, then went to Ashtabula. After several successful years there he moved to Chicago in 1888. It was there he read and was greatly influenced by John P. Altgeld's "Our Penal Code and Its Victims", which reinforced many ideas he already had about the law and crime--that poverty is a cause of crime, not a result of it, and, most importantly to him, that the death penalty was what he blasted as "organized, legal murder". He put his energies into his causes and took on some of the most controversial cases of the day--defending and winning an acquittal for socialist and labor organizer Eugene V. Debs following the American Railway Union strike; getting acquittals on trumped-up murder charges for three Western Federation of Miners officials, including "Big Bill" Haywood, a firebrand labor organizer. His most famous case, though, involved the "Scopes Monkey Trial", in which he defended a teacher in Tennessee who--in violation of state law--dared to teach that the theory of evolution was valid. The trial attracted worldwide attention, and Darrow found himself up against the famous lawyer and politician William Jennings Bryan, a conservative ideologue with a reputation to equal his. Darrow lost that case, but it resulted in the overturning of that particular law, and the ensuing ridicule heaped upon it resulted in similar legislation in other states being overturned.
In addition to his activities as a lawyer, Darrow was also a writer, and in 1899 he edited a collection of his essays, called "The Persian Pearl". In 1906 he wrote "Farmington", an account of his childhood. He also wrote several sociological treatises, including "Resist Not Evil" in 1903 and "An Eye for an Eye" in 1904, and in 1922 wrote what is considered his best-known work: "Crime: Its Cause and Treatment". He didn't wrote solely on legal topics, however; he came out with "Infidels and Heretics: An Agnostic's Anthology" in 1929. His full autobiography, "The Story of My Life", which he called "a plain unvarnished account of how things really have happened, as nearly as I can possibly hold to the truth", was published in 1932.
Clarence Darrow was married twice--to Jesse Ohl, with whom he had a son, Paul, and whom he divorced in 1897, and later to Ruby Hammerstrom, who survived him. He died in 1938 in Chicago, IL.- May Treat was born on 17 November 1857 in Canada. She was an actress, known for The Mission Worker (1911). She was married to Joseph D. Clifton (née Dilks) (actor, playwright). She died on 25 December 1914 in Chicago, Illinois, USA.
- Costume and Wardrobe Department
Fritz Schultz was born on 2 December 1857 in Copenhagen, Denmark. Fritz is known for The Fairylogue and Radio-Plays (1908). Fritz died on 20 March 1931 in Chicago, Illinois, USA.- Mary Scheller was born on 16 February 1858 in Stralsund, Germany. She was an actress, known for Der Doppelgänger (1913), Das Feuer (1914) and The Call of the Child (1914). She died on 17 April 1933 in Chicago, Illinois, USA.
- Soundtrack
Composer ("Oh, Promise Me") and author, educated at St. John's College in Oxford, England. He also studied with Lebert, Pruckner, Vannucini, von Suppe, Genee, and Delibes. He earned an honorary Mus. D. at Racine College. He first worked in a brokerage firm, and also owned a dry-cleaning business in 1882, becoming a music critic for the Chicago Evening Post in 1889 and Harper's Weekly from 1895-1897, and the New York World between 1898 and 1900 and again between 1907 and 1912. He organized and conducted the Washington, D.C. Symphony Orchestra between 1902 and 1904, and was a member of the National Institute of Arts and Letters, and also ASCAP since 1929. He wrote the Broadway stage scores for "The Begum", "Robin Hood", "The Knickerbockers", "The Algerian", "The Fencing Master", "Rob Roy", "The Highwayman", "Papa's Wife", "The Little Duchess", "Maid Marian", "Red Feather", "Happyland", and "The Beauty Spot". His chief musical collaborator was Harry B. Smith, and his other popular-song compositions include "Brown October Ale", "Sweetheart, My Own Sweetheart", "The Spinning Song", "Little Boy Blue", "My Home Is Where the Heather Blooms", "Come, Lads of the Highlands", "Dearest Heart of My Heart", "Do You Remember Love?", "Moonlight Song", Gypsy Song", and "Hammock Love".- Soundtrack
Mildred J. Hill was born on 27 June 1859 in Louisville, Kentucky, USA. Mildred J. died on 5 June 1916 in Chicago, Illinois, USA.- Jane Addams was born on 6 September 1860 in Cedarville, Illinois, USA. She was a writer, known for Shoes (1916), Votes for Women (1912) and Mutual Weekly, No. 16 (1915). She died on 21 May 1935 in Chicago, Illinois, USA.
- Actor
Donald Robertson was born on 12 December 1860 in Edinburgh, Scotland, UK. He was an actor. He was married to Anna Titus (actress). He died on 20 May 1926 in Chicago, Illinois, USA.- William E. Dever was born on 13 March 1862 in Woburn, Massachusetts, USA. He died on 3 September 1929 in Chicago, Illinois, USA.
- Additional Crew
Billy Sunday was born on 19 November 1862 in Ames, Iowa, USA. He is known for Pathé's Weekly, No. 9 (1914), Hearst-Selig News Pictorial, No. 32 (1915) and The Pathé Daily News, No. 4 (1915). He was married to Helen Amelia Thompson. He died on 6 November 1935 in Chicago, Illinois, USA.- Bob Fitzsimmons was born on 26 May 1863 in Helston, Cornwall, England, UK. He died on 22 October 1917 in Chicago, Illinois, USA.
- Actor
- Writer
Frank Bacon was born on 16 January 1864 in Marysville, California, USA. He was an actor and writer, known for Lightnin' (1925), Lightnin' (1930) and The Magnavox Theater (1950). He was married to Jane Jennie Weidman (actress). He died on 19 November 1922 in Chicago, Illinois, USA.- Kenesaw M. Landis was born on 20 November 1866 in Millville, Ohio, USA. He was married to Winifred Reed. He died on 25 November 1944 in Chicago, Illinois, USA.
- Gutzon Borglum was born on 25 March 1867 in Bear Lake, Idaho, USA. He was married to Mary Williams. He died on 6 March 1941 in Chicago, Illinois, USA.
- William Hale Thompson was born on 14 May 1868 in Boston, Massachusetts, USA. He died on 19 March 1944 in Blackstone Hotel, Chicago, Illinois, USA.
- A veteran actor, comedian, minstrel and musician, Tom Brown started in show business as a member of a number of traveling minstrel shows starting in the mid-1880s. He developed his impersonations of various ethnic group, soon being known for his Chinese impersonations, although he was able to do Hebrew and Italian characterizations. He worked with nearly all of the major African-American actors of the late Nineteenth Century; with his first wife, a beautiful young dancer named Siren Navarro, he had a successful comedy dance act that played the Keith Circuit. Brown also played with Ernest Hogan in the show "Rufus Rastus" and with Bert Williams in his solo show "Mr. Lode of Koal." Brown also was a member of the Pekin Theatre stock company of Chicago, and of the Lafayette Players in Harlem. He died in Chicago, but is buried at Cypress Hills Cemetery in Brooklyn, New York.
- Robert S. Abbott was born on 24 November 1868 in St. Simons Island, Georgia, USA. He was an actor, known for The Millionaire (1927). He was married to Edna Rose (Brown) Denison and Helen Thornton Morrison. He died on 29 February 1940 in Chicago, Illinois, USA.
- One-Eye Connelly was born on 4 March 1869 in Lowell, Massachusetts, USA. He was an actor, known for The Barker (1928). He died on 21 December 1953 in Chicago, Illinois, USA.
- Harry Cashman born in America in 1870, became well-known in the theatre from the 1890's. tall, stocky wavy haired performer who starred and supported in many comedy and drama films for the Chicago based Essanay Film Company in 1911-12, often played Father's or Chief of Police often teamed with Francis X. Bushman until his death in 1912 from pneumonia.
- Music Department
- Soundtrack
Composer and songwriter ("Meet Me Tonight In Dreamland", "Let Me Call You Sweetheart"), educated with Emil Liebling in Chicago and at the Berlin Conservatory with Yetlitzky. Joining ASCAP in 1939, his chief musical collaborator was Beth Slater Whitson. His other popular-song compositions include "When I Dream of Old Erin", "If I Should", "In His Steps", "Baby Mine", "In Poppyland", "Wigwam Dance", "Indian Sun Dance", and "The Trailing Arbutus".- Composer/songwriter Tom Lemonier joined the American Society and Composers and Publishers (ASCAP) in 1942, and his popular-song compositions include "Is Everybody Happy?", "America, Land of Promise", "Hello, Mr. Moon, Hello", "Better Days Will Come Again", "You Are Up Today and Down Tomorrow", "Praise God We're Not Weary", and "Just One Word of Consolation".
- David Craig Montgomery was born on 21 April 1870 in St. Joseph, Missouri, USA. He died on 20 April 1917 in Chicago, Illinois, USA.
- William Johnston was born on 26 January 1871 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA. He was a writer, known for When a Feller Needs a Friend (1932). He died on 16 February 1929 in Chicago, Illinois, USA.
- Producer
- Additional Crew
George K. Spoor was born on 18 December 1871 in Highland Park, Illinois, USA. He was a producer, known for A Pair of Sixes (1918), Men Who Have Made Love to Me (1918) and The Truant Soul (1916). He was married to Ada May Thompson. He died on 24 November 1953 in Chicago, Illinois, USA.- Walter Noble Burns was born on 24 October 1872 in Lebanon, Kentucky, USA. Walter Noble was a writer, known for Billy the Kid (1941), Tombstone: The Town Too Tough to Die (1942) and Billy the Kid (1930). Walter Noble was married to Rose Marie. Walter Noble died on 15 April 1932 in Chicago, Illinois, USA.
- Director
- Writer
Ulysses Davis was born on 5 November 1872 in South Amboy, New Jersey, USA. He was a director and writer, known for The White Scar (1915), Tainted Money (1915) and The Soul's Cycle (1916). He died on 1 October 1924 in Chicago, Illinois, USA.- Don Merrifield was born on 6 December 1872 in Union City, Michigan, USA. He was an actor, known for The Proof of Innocence (1922) and The Black Panther's Cub (1921). He died on 27 July 1944 in Chicago, Illinois, USA.
- Alexander Gaden was born on 20 February 1873 in Newfoundland, Canada. He was an actor, known for The Skull (1914), The Daughter of the Hills (1913) and The Quality of Faith (1916). He died on 14 January 1958 in Chicago, Illinois, USA.
- Writer Zona Gale was born in Portage, WI, on August 26, 1874. She graduated from the University of Wisconsin in 1895. She had had an interest in writing from childhood (she printed and bound her first "book" herself at age seven) and after college she obtained work on various newspapers in Milwaukee. In 1901 she got a job s a reporter on the New York World newspaper. She continued to write short stories on the side, however, and in 1904 she had one of them published in "Success" magazine. After that she moved back to Portage (a town she she would later make famous as the locale for her "Friendship Village" series of books). She adapted her novel "Miss Lulu Bett" into a play that was produced on Broadway in 1920, and it won the Pulitzer Price that year (it was made into a film, Miss Lulu Bett (1921), the next year).
- Billie 'Swede' Hall was born on 8 November 1874 in Brooklyn, New York, USA. He was an actor, known for Hilda (1929). He was married to Jennie Colbern. He died on 27 October 1944 in Chicago, Illinois, USA.
- Notorious Chicago gangster--and one of the last of the "Mustache Petes", a nickname given to the old-line Italian gangsters by the "Young Turks" trying to take over--Giacomo "Big Jim" Colosimo was born in Colosimi, Italy. His family emigrated to Chicago in 1895, where "Big Jim" got an early start in the criminal underworld. He worked as a precinct captain and bagman for a succession of corrupt Chicago politicians, garnering himself some valuable political connections. that came in very handy later in his career. In 1902 he married a woman who was a madam at a long-established Chicago brothel, and he soon opened a second one. Colosimo had a knack for the prostitution business, and it wasn't long before he had expanded his holdings from two brothels to more than 200. This brought him into close contact with the men who ran Chicago's underworld, many of whom patronized Colosimo's houses, which not only offered women but gambling.
His success attracted the attention of the dreaded Black Hand extortion gang, and he turned to Johnny Torrio, a New York gangland figure he had befriended, and brought him to Chicago to take care of this problem, which Torrio promptly did--the Black Hand hoods who threatened Colosimo were sound found dead. With the threat of the Black Hand no longer hanging over his head, Colosimo indulged his penchant for the good life--which resulted in his being nicknamed "Diamond Jim"--and opened an exclusive restaurant named after himself. Torrio also helped Colosimo open several new brothels, and in one of them he installed a friend and colleague from his Brooklyn days to be a combination bartender/bouncer/enforcer--a tough cookie named Al Capone.
In 1920 the Volstead Act, prohibiting the manufacture and sale of alcohol, went into effect. Torrio saw that there would be huge amounts of money to be made supplying a thirsty population with booze and advised Colosimo to get in on the ground floor, but he refused. Shortly afterwards Colosimo, who had abandoned his first wife, left Chicago to marry his second wife. He returned to Chicago a week later and was contacted by Torrio, who asked Colosimo to meet him at his restaurant for an important meeting. Colosimo arrived there, sat down at a table to wait for Torrio and was promptly shot and killed by several unknown gunmen. Torrio, Capone and New York gangster Frankie Yale were suspected of being the triggermen, but nothing was ever proved and they were never charged with the murder.
Colosimo's funeral was, as was the custom among gangsters at the time, an epic. Huge, expensive floral arrangements surrounded an ornate bronze coffin. There were more than 50 pallbearers, many of them judges and Congressmen. More than 1000 marchers followed the coffin to Oak Woods cemetery. Colosimo was scheduled to be buried in a Catholic cemetery, but the Archbishop of New York forbade Colosimo from being buried in any Catholic cemetery in the city. It wasn't because of the innumerable murders, thefts, beatings, corruption, gambling, prostitution and other crimes he was responsible for--he was banned from burial in a Catholic cemetery because he had divorced his first wife. - Ottilie A. Liljencrantz was born on 19 January 1876 in Chicago, Illinois, USA. Ottilie A. was a writer, known for The Viking (1928). Ottilie A. died on 7 October 1910 in Chicago, Illinois, USA.
- Soundtrack
Tell Taylor was born on 14 October 1876 in Hancock County, Ohio, USA. He died on 24 November 1937 in Chicago, Illinois, USA.- Salem Tutt Whitney started out with his younger brother Homer singing and dancing for nickels and dimes on the streets of their home town of Logansport, Indiana. A graduate of Manual High School in Indianapolis, like his brother, Salem studied for the ministry, but eventually went with his brother into vaudeville. From 1904 to 1906, they appeared in S. H. Dudley's Smart Set company; from 1906 to 1909, they were the leading performers in the Black Patti's Troubadors company; afterwards, they organized the Smart Set Company No. 2, and after gaining full financial and creative control of the company in 1916, they called it the "Smarter Set" company, and traveled the country for over a decade. Both Whitney and Tutt were known throughout the African-American theatrical world as pioneers and innovators; Whitney himself either composed the music or the lyrics for over fifty songs and wrote (in whole or in part) twenty-five musical comedies. Starting in 1930, Salem Tutt Whitney appeared in 640 Broadway performances of "Green Pastures"; he portrayed Noah.
- Writer
- Director
- Animation Department
Sidney Smith was born on 13 February 1877. He was a writer and director, known for Doc Yak Plays Golf (1914), Doc Yak and Santa Claus (1914) and Doc Yak's Cats (1914). He died on 20 October 1935 in Chicago, Illinois, USA.- Producer
- Writer
- Executive
H.E. Aitken was born on 4 October 1877 in Waukesha, Wisconsin, USA. He was a producer and writer, known for The Life of General Villa (1914), Home, Sweet Home (1914) and The Electric Alarm (1915). He died on 1 August 1956 in Chicago, Illinois, USA.- Music Department
- Actor
- Writer
Songwriter ("I Wonder Who's Kissing Her Now"), composer, actor, singer, producer, director and author. He was a boy soprano in vaudeville at age eleven, and toured in a stock-company production of "Little Eva". He wrote he Broadway and Chicago stage scores (also produced and directed) for "The Land of Nod", "The Time, the Place and the Girl", "The Girl Question", "A Stubborn Cinderella", "The Goddess of Liberty", and "The Prince of Tonight". He would also entertain in night clubs and theatres and on radio and elevision. Joining ASCAP in 1921, his chief musical collaborators were Frank Adams, Will Hough and Harold Orlob, and his other popular-song compositions include "Can't Get You Out of My Mind", "Hello, My Baby", "Goodbye, My Lady Love", "There's Nothing Like a Good Old Song", "Somewhere in France Is the Lily", "On a Saturday Night", "Love Me Litle, Love Me Long", "Montana", "Silver in Your Hair", "Whistle a Song", "On the Boulevard", "San Francisco Frizz", "An Echo of Her Smile", "I Don't Like Your Family", "Blow the Smoke Away", "What's the Use of Dreaming?", "Honeymoon", "When You First Kiss the Last Girl You Love", "Be Sweet to Me, Kid", "Tonight Will Never Come Again", and "Cross Your Heart".- Cinematographer
Henry Bredesen was born on 10 April 1878 in Beloit, Wisconsin, USA. He was a cinematographer, known for Right Off the Bat (1915), Polly Ann (1917) and The Turn of a Card (1918). He died on 4 November 1927 in Chicago, Illinois, USA.- Writer
- Additional Crew
H.M. Walker was born on 27 June 1878 in West Middlebury, Ohio, USA. He was a writer, known for Safety Last! (1923), A Sailor-Made Man (1921) and Pardon Us (1931). He was married to Virginia Grose. He died on 23 June 1937 in Chicago, Illinois, USA.- Annabelle Moore was born Annabelle Theresa Whitford on July 6, 1878 in Chicago, Illinois. Her father passed away shortly after she was born and her mother remarried. At the age of fifteen Annabelle made her dancing debut at the World's Columbian Expedition in Chicago. Then she moved to New York City and started making movies at Edison Studios. Between 1894 and 1897 Annabelle made ten short films including Serpentine Dance, Flag Dance, and Butterfly Dance. She was paid just $15 a day. Her sexy dancing made her very popular and it was said she introduced eroticism in film. During this time she also modeled for artists like Charles Dana Gibson. She made headlines in 1897 when she refused an offer to dance nude at a bachelor party. Annabelle was engaged to a Baron from Austria and to Henry Bissing, head of the Bissing Electric Company. In 1900 she made her Broadway debut in The Sprightly Romance Of Marsac.
She also appeared in the shows A Venetian Romance and The Belle Of Mayfair (she was now billed as Annabelle Whitford). While performing at Chicago's Iroquois Theater in 1903 a fire broke out that killed six hundred people. Florenz Ziegfeld cast her as the Gibson Girl in the 1907 Ziegfeld Follies. She remained with the Follies for two more years earning more than $750 a week. Annabelle married Dr. Edward Buchan, a surgeon, in 1910. Soon after she decided to retire from show business. She and her husband moved back to her hometown of Chicago. The couple remained out of the spotlight until 1957 when newspapers reported that they were broke and living in an unheated apartment. Edward died in 1958 at the age of seventy-seven. Annabelle, who was now an invalid, spent the next few years living on assistance. On November 29, 1961 she died at the age of eighty-three. She was cremated and her ashes were given to a family friend. - Ben L. Reitman was born on 1 January 1879 in St. Paul, Minnesota, USA. Ben L. was a writer, known for Boxcar Bertha (1972). Ben L. was married to Medina Rivets Oliver, Anna Martindale and May Schwartz. Ben L. died on 16 November 1942 in Chicago, Illinois, USA.