DeForest Kelley, an Atlanta native, was an actor best known for playing the role of Dr. Leonard "Bones" McCoy in the television series Star Trek and feature films.
From the collections of the Margaret Herrick Library
J. Richardson Jones, an Atlanta native, was a journalist, filmmaker, and entertainer whose work both challenged segregation and celebrated African American life during the Jim Crow era.
Courtesy of Atlanta History Center.
J. Richardson Jones, kneeling right, is pictured on a handbill from the 1925 production of his play Thy Will Be Done at the Strand Theatre in Jacksonville, Florida. The play was later produced in July 1926 at the Douglass Theatre in Macon. An Atlanta native, Jones began his career in vaudeville and radio, and later became a journalist for the Atlanta Daily World.
Courtesy of Middle Georgia Archives, Washington Memorial Library.
A poster advertises Parade of Negro Progress, a Technicolor feature film based on a short newsreel produced in 1939 by J. Richardson Jones as an advertisement for the Atlanta Life Insurance Company. The feature played in all-Black theaters around the South in 1941-42.
Courtesy of Archives Division, Auburn Avenue Research Library on African American Culture and History, Atlanta-Fulton Public Library System
Tyler Perry, a native of New Orleans, Louisiana, is an Atlanta-based filmmaker, playwright, and performer. His Tyler Perry Studios, established in Atlanta in 2008, is the first major film studio in the nation to be solely owned by an African American.
Photograph from AMFM STUDIOS LLC
Actress Butterfly McQueen is best known for her portrayal of Prissy in the film Gone With the Wind (1939). McQueen spent her childhood and many of her adult years in Augusta, where she died in 1995.
Courtesy of Atlanta History Center.
Scott Wilson, an Atlanta native, was an actor with credits in more than fifty feature films and in numerous television productions. His filmography includes In the Heat of the Night (1967), In Cold Blood (1967), The Great Gatsby (1974), Dead Man Walking (1995), Pearl Harbor (2001), and Junebug (2005).
Courtesy of Scott Wilson
Melvyn Douglas was a prominent film, television, and theater actor in the mid-twentieth century, and one of the few to win an Oscar, an Emmy, and a Tony award. Born in Macon, Douglas first entered show business at the age of two, when he won first prize at the 1903 Georgia State Fair Baby Show.
Actor Melvyn Douglas (right), a Macon native, chats with actor Paul Robeson at a benefit in Washington, D.C., in June 1942. Earlier that year Douglas, an active member of the Democratic Party, was appointed head of the Office of Civilian Defense Arts Council, which enlisted the help of artists to support the war effort during World War II.
Courtesy of Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division
Melvyn Douglas (seated) starred as Henry Drummond in a stage production of Inherit the Wind during the 1950s.
Joanne Woodward, born in Thomasville and raised in Marietta, became a major film star during the 1950s. Known for playing southern characters, Woodward won an Oscar in 1958 for her portrayal of a Georgia woman with multiple personality disorder in The Three Faces of Eve.
Photograph by Fran Collin
Joanne Woodward, a Georgia native, married fellow actor Paul Newman in 1958 and starred with him in a number of films, including The Long Hot Summer (1958), The Drowning Pool (1975), and Mr. and Mrs. Bridge (1990). The couple also established the food-products line Newman's Own, which donates all proceeds to charity, as well as the Scott Newman Foundation, which works to prevent drug abuse.
Courtesy of Westport Country Playhouse
Joanne Woodward, a well-known film actor and Georgia native, sits in the auditorium of the Westport Country Playhouse in Westport, Connecticut. Woodward served as the company's artistic director from 2000 through 2005.
Courtesy of Westport Country Playhouse
Hollywood actor Kim Basinger signs autographs in 1991 at the University of Georgia's Henry Field Stadium tennis complex. An Athens native, Basinger donated a lighting system to the facility.
Courtesy of Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
Kim Basinger arrives at the Ritz-Carlton Hotel in Buckhead, circa 1990. Born in Athens, Basinger is a well-known Hollywood actor, as well as a fashion model and recording artist.
Courtesy of Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
Kim Basinger attends a 2006 benefit for the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City. The Oscar-winning actor and former model is a native of Athens. In 1989 the actress purchased the town of Braselton in Jackson County, with plans to build a movie studio and begin a film festival there. In 1994 she sold the town.
Photograph by Corbis
William Lundigan and Susan Hayward played the newly married couple William and Mary Thompson in the 1951 film I'd Climb the Highest Mountain, which was filmed in north Georgia around Cleveland and Helen. Hayward was honored by the state senate as an "adopted daughter of Georgia" during the film's Atlanta premiere.
Courtesy of Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation
Susan Hayward, a successful Hollywood actress during the 1940s and 1950s, poses for a publicity portrait, circa 1939. Hayward starred in I'd Climb the Highest Mountain (1951), written and produced by Lamar Trotti, a Georgia native. The film was based on The Circuit Rider's Wife (1910), a novel written by Georgia author Corra Harris.
Image from Wikimedia
Susan Hayward received an Academy Award for her portrayal of convicted murderer Barbara Graham in I Want to Live! (1958). Hayward, a native of New York, moved to Carrollton with her husband in the late 1950s and remained until her death in 1975.
Image from Insomnia Cured Here
Georgia native Miriam Hopkins received an Oscar nomination for her performance in Becky Sharp (1935), the first full-length color film made in Hollywood. A few years later Hopkins was disappointed to be passed over for the role of Scarlett O'Hara in the film adaptation of Gone With the Wind (1939).
Image from Wikimedia
Actress Miriam Hopkins was born in Savannah and grew up in Bainbridge. She began her career in the 1920s as a dancer and vaudeville performer before finding success as a Hollywood actress during the 1930s. Hopkins appeared in thirty-six feature films over the course of her career.
Image from Wikimedia
Georgia native Julia Roberts, an established Hollywood icon, has starred in numerous films, most notably Pretty Woman (1990) and Erin Brockovich (2000), for which she received an Academy Award. Roberts, pictured in 2005, also owns a production company and is known for her philanthropic work with UNICEF and the International Rett Syndrome Association.
Photograph from Corbis
The character actor Charles Coburn began his acting career as a young boy in Savannah. In 1896 he moved to New York City and established himself as a stage actor. About forty years later, after the death of his wife, Coburn moved to California and worked in radio, television, and film.
Burt Reynolds was an actor and filmmaker recognized around the world. Over the course of his career, Reynolds made a number of films in Georgia, including Deliverance (1972), Smokey and the Bandit (1977), The Cannonball Run (1981), and Sharky's Machine (1981).
Holly Hunter plays the role of Barb in the 2004 film Little Black Book. Hunter, a native of Conyers, began her professional career in 1981 and has established herself since that time as a versatile actress of both stage and screen.
Photograph from Corbis
Jane Fonda has been an active presence in Atlanta since her move to the city in 1991. A well-known Hollywood actress and former wife of CNN founder Ted Turner, Fonda has initiated both philanthropic and artistic endeavors within Georgia.
In 2001 the Jane Fonda Center at Emory University in Atlanta opened to conduct research in adolescent reproductive health. The center also offers training for health care professionals. Jane Fonda, who donated $2 million to open the center, stands beside Dr. Michael Johns, the chief executive officer of Emory Healthcare.
Courtesy of Emory University
Ossie Davis at the 1963 Civil Rights March in Washington, D.C.
From Wikimedia
Ossie Davis, a native of south Georgia, was an acclaimed actor, civil rights activist, and writer. Along with his wife of fifty-six years, Ruby Dee, Davis received numerous awards, including the National Medal of Arts in 1995 and a Kennedy Center Honor in 2004.
Courtesy of Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University, Yale Collection of American Literature, Photograph by Carl Van Vechten.
Lamar Trotti (middle), a prolific Hollywood screenwriter and producer during the 1930s and 1940s, visited the University of Georgia campus in 1945 with John E. Drewery (left) and T. W. Reed (right).
Jane Withers, an Atlanta native, starred in thirty-eight Hollywood films over twelve years, beginning with a bit role in the 1932 film Handle with Care. In 1934 she performed a scene in the film It's a Gift with comedian W. C. Fields, who later praised her abilities.
Courtesy of Classic Movie Kids
Jane Withers, a child star in Hollywood, California, during the 1930s, was born and began her career in Atlanta. The young Withers sang, danced, performed impressions, and starred in her own radio program in Atlanta before moving to Hollywood in 1932.
Courtesy of Classic Movie Kids
In 1934 Jane Withers won the part of Joy in the film Bright Eyes, starring Shirley Temple, the most popular child actor in Hollywood at the time. Withers's successful performance led to a contract with Fox Studios and to her first starring role in the 1935 film Ginger.
Courtesy of Classic Movie Kids
At the age of fifteen, Atlanta native and child star Jane Withers wrote a story for Fox Studios that became the 1941 film Small Town Deb. Frustrated with continuing to be cast as a child by the studio, Withers wrote a part that enabled her to play a character closer to her actual age.
Courtesy of Classic Movie Kids
Nunnally Johnson, a native of Columbus, wrote for newspapers in Columbus, Savannah, and New York City before embarking on a career as a screenwriter and film director in Los Angeles, California. An accomplished short-story writer, Johnson excelled at adapting fiction, including the novel Tobacco Road by Georgia writer Erskine Caldwell, for the screen.
Courtesy of Dorris Bowdon Johnson
In 1991 the U.S. Postal Service commemorated several iconic comedians, including Georgia native Oliver Hardy. He is pictured in this stamp alongside Stanley Laurel, with whom Hardy starred in several successful comedies during the twenties and thirties, including the Academy Award-winning film The Music Box (1931).
Courtesy of Smithsonian National Postal Museum
As a young boy, Oliver Hardy lived in several Georgia towns, where he began singing in local theater productions. Hardy continued to perform during his college years and in 1913 embarked on a film career in Jacksonville, Florida.
The New Movie, Feb. 1930
By 1926 Oliver Hardy had appeared in more than ninety Hollywood films, including both comedies and dramas. Hardy typically played the role of the "heavy," a large and intimidating villain often seen in silent films of the 1920s.
Image from Insomnia Cured Here
The comedy team of Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy was formed in 1927 when the duo starred in The Second Hundred Years for Hal Roach Studios. Laurel and Hardy performed together in sixty short and sixteen feature films between 1927 and 1940.
Image from Insomnia Cured Here
Oliver Hardy, a native of Harlem, Georgia, became one of the most recognized and acclaimed slapstick comedians during the 1920s as part a comedy team with Stan Laurel. Today Laurel and Hardy are remembered with museums in each of their hometowns, as well as an international appreciation society.
Image from Wikimedia
Sterling Holloway poses with Winnie the Pooh at Disneyland in Anaheim, California. Holloway created the voices of Pooh and a number of other animated characters for Walt Disney Studios.
Courtesy of Donnie Jarrell Collection
Alan Ball at work on the set of the HBO series Six Feet Under, for which he wrote, produced, and directed. The series received the Peabody Award in 2002. Ball also wrote the Oscar-winning screenplay for the 1999 film American Beauty.
Photograph from Corbis
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