Compact Biographies

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Compact Biographies episodes

August 23, 2018 Mary Shelley - S05E08
In the eighth episode of season 5 of the 5 Minute Biographies podcast, we take a look at the life of a renowned female author whose life was marred by tragedy - Mary Shelley.
8 min
August 16, 2018 Oliver Hardy

“That’s another fine mess you’ve gotten me into.” – Oliver Hardy.
Oliver Hardy Biography
Norvell Hardy was born on 18 January 1892 in Harlem, Georgia, USA. He was the son of a civil war veteran called Oliver, who had fought and been wounded fighting for the Confederates at the Battle of Antietam. His mother was Emily Norvell who was descended from Captain Hugh Norvell who had arrived in Williamsburg, Virginia sometime before 1635.

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Norvell’s father died when he was less than twelve months old. He was the youngest of five children, although tragically, his brother Sam had died when they were children as the result of an accident on the Oconee River. Norvell had managed to pull Sam from the water, but he was unable to revive him.
Norvell was known to be a somewhat difficult child and as a result was sent to a military academy in Milledgeville, Georgia and then when thirteen years old he attended junior high at the Young Harris College in North Georgia. He wasn’t a huge fan of formal education and ran away from boarding school in order to sing with a theatrical group he had joined. His mother, recognising that he had a talent for singing and that he had gained an interest in theatre, sent him to Atlanta where he studied music and singing with Adolf Dahm-Petersen. Norvell skipped some lessons though in order to make a little money, and sang at the Alcazar Theatre for $3.50 per week. It didn’t last though, and he ended up back at Milledgeville.
As a tribute to his father, Norvell added the name Oliver in front of his own sometime before 1910 and appears in the U.S. census for 1910 as Oliver N. Hardy. From that point forward he used the name Oliver on all formal documents and communications.
In 1910 a movie theatre opened in Milledgeville, which is where Oliver was now calling home. He worked in the theatre in a number of different roles including as projectionist and manager, but as he saw more and more movies on the big screen he started to believe that he could do a better job. Oliver wanted to get into the movie industry and a friend suggested that Jacksonville, Florida may be a good starting point as he knew some films were being made there. Oliver Hardy moved to Jacksonville in 1913. At night he sang at the local cabaret and vaudeville theatres. He had a regular job there during the day at the Lubin Manufacturing Company, which is where he met Madelyn Saloshin and they were married on 17 November 1913.
All the time he was working in Jacksonville, Oliver Hardy stayed on the lookout for work in the film industry and his patience paid off when in 1914 he acted in his first movie, called Outwitting Dad. However, he found that his large size, he was over six feet tall and weighed more than 300 pounds, restricted him to playing certain roles. These were usually along the lines of the “hired muscle” or the villain. He did however also find that his size lent itself quite nicely to comedy roles. Over the next twelve months, Oliver Hardy had appeared in more than 50 single reel short films for the Lubin company.
Over the next few years, Hardy worked for a number of different studios including Pathé and Edison in New York before returning to Jacksonville to work for the Vim Comedy Company. Although Vim closed down after Hardy found that they were stealing from the payroll, the company was bought by the King Bee studio, leading Oliver to work with Bill Ruge, Billy West and Ethel Burton Palmer. He was by this time known as a comedy actor but occasionally played the part of “the heavy” well into the 1920’s.
In 1917, Oliver Hardy moved to Los Angeles and worked as a freelance actor for a number of studios in Hollywood. He separated from his wife in 1919 and by November 1921, they were divorced. Seven days after his divorce had been finalised...
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August 16, 2018 Oliver Hardy - S05E07
In the seventh episode of season 5 of the 5 Minute Biographies podcast, we take a look at the life of one half of one of the best-loved comedy duo's of all time - Oliver Hardy.
10 min
August 09, 2018 Clark Gable

“Hell, if I’d jumped on all the dames I’m supposed to have jumped on, I’d have had no time to go fishing.” – Clark Gable
Clark Gable Biography
William Clark Gable was born in Cadiz, Ohio, USA on 1 February 1901. His father, William Henry Gable, worked in the oil industry as a driller. His mother Adeline had William baptised as a Catholic when he was six months old, but only a few short months later, she died, leaving William to be brought up by his father and from 1903, his father’s new wife, Jennie Dunlap, who raised him to be well presented.

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Gable had been named William after his father, but even from a very early age, it was the middle name that stuck and he would be forever known as Clark. He learned to play the piano from his step-mother and would later take to playing brass instruments. He took an interest in languages but was also practically minded having been pushed into doing things that were thought of as manly by his father such as fishing and hunting.
As Clark progressed through school, his father started to get into financial difficulties and decided to sell up and move to a place called Ravenna, still in Ohio, near the city of Akron to take up farming. He was hoping to get Clark to work the farm with him but the boy had other ideas and took a job instead at the Firestone Tyre and Rubber Company in Akron.
By the time he was 17 years old Clark Gable had started to become interested in acting after he had seen a play called The Bird of Paradise. When his step-mother died, he inherited some money and so by the time he was 21, he had started to variously take jobs at different companies whilst working his way across the country looking for acting work.
Whilst working as a logger in Portland, Oregon, he met the stage and movie actress Laura Hope Crews who persuaded him to pursue a life on the stage and recommended a theatre company to him. 20 years later, Crews would star alongside Gable when she played the part of Aunt Pittypat in Gone with the Wind.
During his time in Portland, he also met Josephine Dillon who took Gable under her wing. She paid to have his teeth straightened and she fed him enough to bulk him out. She also taught him to have better body posture so he could show a better presence on the stage. As a young man, Gable had a rather high pitched voice and Dillon spent a lot of time with him, training him to lower it. When she was finished with him, Dillon suggested it was time to pursue a career in film.
In 1924 using Josephine Dillon’s money, the pair headed for Hollywood and she became not only his manager but his first wife, even though she was 17 years his senior. He had been using the stage name W. C. Gable but upon their arrival in Hollywood, he changed it to Clark Gable. During 1924, 1925 and 1926, he appeared as an extra in a number of silent movies but wasn’t offered any major roles so took back to the stage.
During 1927 and 1928 Gable landed quite a number of stage parts, and became friends with Lionel Barrymore. The more he acted, the more he gained a following becoming somewhat of a matinee idol. Towards the end of 1928, Clark and Josephine moved to New York with the aim of getting Gable parts on Broadway but the following year would come the great depression and the advent of talking pictures which led to many plays being canceled to acting jobs being particularly hard to find.
Moving back out West, Gable was impressive in a stage production of The Last Mile and was offered a contract by MGM, with his first role in a ‘talkie’ being that of the villain in the Western The Painted Desert. The studio took notice of his performance but his relationship with Josephine broke down and the couple were divorced in 1930. Shortly afterward, he married Maria Langham, also known as Rhea.
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August 09, 2018 Clark Gable - S05E06
In the sixth episode of season 5 of the 5 Minute Biographies podcast, we take a look at the life of one of the leading man in over 60 Hollywood movies and who is often referred to as the King of Hollywood - Clark Gable.
11 min
August 02, 2018 Judy Garland
“If I am a legend, then why am I so lonely?” – Judy Garland
Judy Garland Biography
Frances Ethel Gumm, better known to the rest of the World as Judy Garland, was born on 10 June 1922 in Grand Rapids, Minnesota, USA. She was born into the entertainment industry as her parents, Francis Avent Gumm, known as Frank, and Ethel Marion Milne were the owners of a movie theatre in Grand Rapids within which they promoted vaudeville acts.

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It didn’t take long for Frances, or ‘Baby’ as the rest of the family called her to take to the stage as she first performed at the age of just two and a half years when she joined her two older sisters Mary Jane and Dorothy Virginia on the stage during a Christmas show to sing the chorus of Jingle Bells. This was the start of her career as the Gumm Sisters as they became known would perform regularly at their parents’ theatre, with their mother playing the piano for the next few years.
In June 1926, rumours started to circulate that Frank Gumm had made improper advances towards male ushers at the theatre and so the family moved to Lancaster in California where Frank bought another theatre. Ethel took it upon herself to manage her daughters and made it her goal to get them into the movies. After arriving in California Frances enrolled at the Hollywood High School and eventually went on to graduate from University High School in West Los Angeles.
The Gumm Sisters enrolled in a dance school in 1928 and joined the Meglin Kiddies dance troupe which led to an appearance by the sisters in their first movie, a 1929 short called The Big Revue in which they danced and sang a number called That’s the Good Old Sunny South. The following year saw them on two more shorts, A Holiday in Storyland and The Wedding of Jack and Jill. The former of the two featured Frances in her first on screen solo.
The Gumm Sisters toured for a number of years until they appeared in 1934 at the Oriental Theatre in Chicago, where George Jessel, a co-performer suggested they change their name to something a little more appealing than Gumm. There are a number of stories about how the sister’s new name came about and it remains unclear which if any of them are true, but suffice it to say by late 1934, the Gumm Sisters had become the Garland Sisters, and shortly afterwards, Frances changed her name to Judy, and at that point a legend was born. In August 1935, the Garland Sisters broke up when Mary Jane, who had changed her name to Suzanne flew to Reno, Nevada and married a member of the Jimmy Davies orchestra, a musician called Lee Kahn.
Almost immediately, Judy was invited to Culver City in Los Angeles to perform in an impromptu audition at MGM. She performed two songs, Zing! Went the Strings of My Heart and a popular Yiddish vaudeville song called Eli Eli, and was immediately signed to a contract. Garland was only 13 years old at the time but this was a problem for the studio as she was too old to play the standard child star types of role but too young to play glamorous leading lady parts. She was self-conscious about her appearance and was aware that she was not as pretty as some of her contemporaries such as Ava Gardner and Lana Turner. Even the studio’s chief, Louis B. Mayer referred to her as his ‘little hunchback”. This led to insecurities that Judy carried with her for the rest of her life.
Shortly afterwards, in November 1935, Judy’s father contracted meningitis and was hospitalised. He died at the age of only 49, leaving Judy devastated. Even so, she still managed to perform “Zing! When the Strings of My Heart” on the radio, her first professional rendition of the song. It went on to be one of the standard songs performed by her at her concerts.
A couple of years later, in 1937, Judy Garland met Mickey Rooney on the set of Thoroughbreds Don’t Cry and soon afterwards,
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August 02, 2018 Judy Garland - S05E05
In the fifth episode of season 5 of the 5 Minute Biographies podcast, we take a look at the life of an actress and singer who spent 45 of her 47 years in the public eye - Judy Garland.
19 min
July 26, 2018 Bugsy Siegel

“Las Vegas turns women into men and men into idiots.” – Benjamin ‘Bugsy’ Siegel
Benjamin Siegel, known to the world as Bugsy, was born on 28 February 1906 in the neighbourhood of Williamsburg in Brooklyn, New York City, USA. His parents were poor Jewish immigrants from the town of Letychiv in what is now Western Ukraine, but was then the Russian Empire, although this is contended in some places that his family was actually from Austria.

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Bugsy Siegel was the second of five children born to Max and Jennie Siegel and as a boy, he vowed that he would get himself out of the poor lifestyle which he, his siblings and his parents had up until then become accustomed to. He decided early on, that school wasn’t for him and so he dropped out and joined a gang on Lafayette Street, and so a life of crime began.
He started off with petty thievery, but this soon escalated into protection rackets, rape and armed robbery, all while he was still a teenager. During this time, he met and became friends with Meyer Lansky. Lansky was running a small gang which among other things was into gambling and auto theft. He had seen the success that the Italian gangs had had with organised crime and he wanted to organise the Jewish boys in a similar way. The first person to join Lansky in his efforts was Ben Siegel and their gang would become known as the Bugs and Meyer Mob.
Bugsy Siegel was a bootlegger for the mob and as it started to attract the attention of rivals, he also became the mob’s hitman, something which he found himself to be so talented at that Lansky would hire out his services to other gangs.
As well as Meyer Lansky, Siegel also counted amongst his friends Al Capone, who at one time was hidden by Siegel at his aunt’s house while the police were searching for him.
By the time he was twenty-one years old, he had fulfilled his promise to himself, having made so much money that he could afford to buy an apartment at the Waldorf-Astoria hotel. He wasn’t afraid to show off his wealth either and was frequently seen out and about in New York taking advantage of the nightlife.
On 28 January 1929, Bugsy Siegel married Esta Krakower who had been his sweetheart since childhood. The couple had two daughters together, but Bugsy couldn’t be with only one woman and so by 1946, the marriage was over.
At a conference held between various crime families and headed up by Charlie ‘Lucky’ Luciano in Atlantic City in May 1929, Bugsy Siegel suggested that the Italians and the Jews had no reason to be fighting between themselves and that such activity should stop. By 1931, Lucky Luciano and Meyer Lansky formed the National Crime Syndicate and with it, The Commission, which was designed to ensure that future wars between crime families were avoided. To ensure this went smoothly, the Bugs and Meyer gang was disbanded but the contract killing arm of this led by Siegel became what was known to the press as Murder Incorporated. Although control of Murder Inc. was passed to Lefty Buchalter and Albert ‘Mad Hatter’ Anastasia, Siegel continued to provide hitman services. His only conviction came in Miami in February 1932, when he was arrested for gambling and vagrancy for which he received a $100 fine.
At around the same time, following a disagreement with the Fabrizzo brothers which led to them attempting to assassinate both Meyer and Ben, Siegel hunted them down and killed them. This was later followed by the killing of their brother Tony Fabrizzo who had attempted to get revenge. Things started to get a little heated for Bugsy Siegel following this though and he learned that he was in serious danger. So, he was sent to California with a mission to develop the syndicate’s activities in Los Angeles. Once there he took over the numbers rackets and established a drug smuggling route to Mexico....
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July 26, 2018 Bugsy Siegel - S05E04
In the fourth episode of season 5 of the 5 Minute Biographies podcast, we take a look at the life of an American mobster who was one of the most infamous and feared gangsters of his day - Bugsy Siegel.
8 min
July 19, 2018 Ava Gardner

“What’s the point? My face, shall we say, looks lived in.” – Ava Gardner.
Ava Gardner Biography
When Ava Lavinia Gardner was born on 24 December 1922, her family were cotton and tobacco farmers in Smithfield, North Carolina. Mary Elizabeth, who everyone knew as Mollie and Jonas Bailey Gardner had seven children with, two boys, and five girls, with Ava being the youngest. Jonas and Mollie were poor, to begin with, but they lost their property when the children were all still quite young and so had to look for alternative income. Jonas found work in a sawmill and Mollie found work at a dormitory for school teachers as a housekeeper.

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The income wasn’t nearly enough though and the Gardners decided that they might have better luck in a larger city and so headed off to Newport News in Virginia to look for better work when Ava was about seven years old. Mollie found work running a boarding house for ship workers and things were ok for a while, but about seven years later, Jonas contracted bronchitis and unfortunately died.
Following her husband’s death, Mollie moved the family to Rock Ridge in North Carolina where once again, Mollie found work running a boarding house, this time for teachers.
After Ava Gardner graduated from the high school in Rock Ridge, she attended Atlantic Christian College, with a view to becoming a secretary, but this was to last for only about a year because of what happened next.
In 1941, Ava visited her sister, Beatrice, who had by now married a professional photographer called Larry Tarr and was living in New York. During her visit, Larry decided he would like to take a portrait photograph of Ava. The results were so good, that he displayed the portrait in the window of his studio on Fifth Avenue.
The portrait was spotted by Barnard Duhan, who worked for Loews Theatres, the owners of MGM Studios. Duhan was in the habit of pretending to be a talent scout for MGM in order to meet girls and so tried to get more information about the girl in the picture but was turned away by Larry Tarr’s secretary. However, as he was leaving he made an off the cuff remark about someone needing to get the girl to MGM.
This sounded like a great idea to Beatrice and Larry and they contacted the studio. Soon after, Ava traveled back to New York again to meet with Al Altman, who was head of the talent department at MGM’s New York office. He arranged for a camera to record Ava whilst he directed her with some simple tasks. He made no effort to record her voice as her deep Southern drawl made it all but impossible for Altman to understand her. As a result of the test MGM studios gave Ava Gardner a contract and in 1941 she left school and headed off to Los Angeles. The first thing she did when she arrived was a attend lessons with a speaking coach.
Shortly after she arrived in Los Angeles, she met Mickey Rooney and the pair fell for each other and decided to get married. The studio wasn’t that happy about it though as Rooney, another MGM contract actor was appearing in a popular series of movies as Andy Hardy and they thought that if it got out that he was married his popularity, and therefore that of the movies would suffer. Consequently, the studio arranged a venue for the wedding in the middle of nowhere, in a town called Ballard in California. The couple was married on 10 January 1942, but the studio needn’t have worried. Less than a year later, they were divorced, with the main cause being Rooney’s string of affairs.
Ava would marry again in 1945, this time to a bandleader called Artie Shaw. He had previously been married to Lana Turner, but this marriage too failed and the couple was divorced in 1946. Also during the 1940’s she had an on-off relationship with the reclusive Howard Hughes who she described a...
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About Compact Biographies

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Each week, we aim to bring you interesting information about interesting people in the form of short, compact biographies, which can be read on our website or listened to as a podcast episode. We hope…