Deaths 2022

Deaths 2021

Deaths 2020

Deaths 2019

Deaths 2018

Deaths 2017

Deaths 2016

Deaths 2015

Deaths 2014

Deaths 2013

Deaths 2012

Deaths 2011

Deaths 2010

Deaths 2009


Full list by date of death

Gloria Jean

Actress/singer

Born - 14 April 1926, Buffalo, New York, USA
Died - 31 August 2018

Personable American child star and teenage singer/dancer with curly brown hair, a kind of teenybopper's Diana Lynn. Hired by Universal as a minor-league rival to Deanna Durbin, the young star, born Gloria Jean Schoonover, was as pretty as paint and cute as a button. Her youthful freshness enlivened many a penny-pinching swing session and she deserved better than a relatively brief career that saw her working in a restaurant by the early 1960s. After a debut in The Under-Pup (1939), she made A Little Bit of Heaven (1940), Never Give a Sucker an Even Break (1941), Wake Up and Dream (1942), Mister Big (1943), Ghost Catchers (1944), Pardon My Rhythm (1944), I'll Remember April (1945), Easy to Look At (1945), Copacabana (1947), An Old-Fashioned Girl (1948), Manhattan Angel (1949), Wonder Valley (1953), Air Strike (1955), Them Nice Americans (1958), Laffing Time/The Madcaps (1959, released 1963) and The Ladies' Man (1961), for which Jerry Lewis hired her to sing, then cut her numbers out of the film. It was her last. She died from heart failure and pneumonia.