20th-century-personalities

[20th-century-personalities]

Novelist and playwright Doris Lessing. (Photo by Sophie Bassouls/Sygma/Sygma via Getty Images)

[20th-century-personalities]

Elizabeth Taylor, London Airport, 1955.

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Barbara Eden in her ‘I Dream of Jeannie’ costume

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Actress Catherine Deneuve, 1969

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John Amos in 1977 playing Kunte Kinte in “Roots.” The performance earned him an Emmy Award nomination. LeVar Burton played the character as a teenager / ABC Photo Archives, via Everett Collection

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[20th-century-personalities]

Cathy O'Donnell working on her poetry in her room at LaQuinta

Martha Holmes, Life, Dec 1945

[20th-century-personalities]

Jean Harlow

[20th-century-personalities]

Kris Kristofferson MICHAEL OCHS ARCHIVES/GETTY IMAGES

[20th-century-personalities]

Dikembe Mutombo in 1990 while playing for Georgetown

[20th-century-personalities]

Maggie Smith in 1969, the year she appeared in the film “The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie.” Her performance earned her the first of her two Oscars and introduced her to American audiences.

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Caterina Valente in a scene from the 1955 German movie “Love, Dance and 1,000 Songs.” She sang in more than a dozen languages and first became a star in Germany / Everett Collection

She was a polyglot performer who sang in more than a dozen languages and was a television mainstay on two continents in the 1950s and 1960s

[20th-century-personalities]

Anne Francis

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Bennie Golson at 15. (He started playing the saxophone at 14.) He grew up in a musically inclined middle-class family in Philadelphia / via Bennygolson.com

As a tenor saxophonist and composer, he played with some of the biggest names in jazz and was a founder of one of the leading groups of the hard bop era. Mr. Golson was a rarity in jazz: a highly accomplished musician who was also sought after as a composer. Indeed, he later had a flourishing second career writing and arranging music for television shows. His work was heard on several popular television shows of that era, including “M*A*S*H,” “Mission: Impossible,” “The Mod Squad” and “The Partridge Family.” He also wrote the music for the 1969 movie “Where It’s At,” a comedy written and directed by Garson Kanin.

As a senior statesman of jazz, Mr. Golson implored younger musicians to pay close attention to the history of the music. He attributed his longevity as a musician to a restless creative spirit.

[20th-century-personalities]

Caterina Valente in a scene from the 1955 German movie “Love, Dance and 1,000 Songs.” She sang in more than a dozen languages and first became a star in Germany / via Everett Collection

She was a polyglot performer who sang in more than a dozen languages and became a television mainstay on two continents in the 1950s and ’60s.

She first achieved stardom in mid-1950s Germany in a popular music genre known as schlager: novelty songs, with titles like “Ganz Paris Träumt von der Liebe” (“All Paris Dreams of Love”) and “Itsy Bitsy Teenie Weenie Honolulu Strandbikini.” By 1955, her hits had put her on the cover of the German newsmagazine Der Spiegel.

Her fluid, confident delivery and sure pitch, as well as her skill as both a guitar player and a tap dancer, carried her across the Atlantic, and by the early 1960s she was a regular on American television.

In the U.S., she appeared nine times on “The Dean Martin Show” and was seen on the variety shows of Ed Sullivan, Perry Como and others. She performed memorably with Louis Armstrong and Danny Kaye on a 1966 episode of “The Danny Kaye Show.” A jokey 1966 bossa nova duet with Dean Martin has more than 20 million hits on YouTube. In the 1964-65 TV season, Ms. Valente was a regular on “The Entertainers,” an hourlong variety show that also starred Carol Burnett and Bob Newhart.