Vivien Leigh

November 5, 1913-July 7, 1967

Leigh was an English actress who was born Vivian Mary Hartley in Darjeeling, India. She and her parents later moved to England, where young Leigh grew up. She attended the Convent of the Sacred Heart in Roehampton, England, along with fellow actress-to-be Maureen O'Sullivan.

In 1951 Leigh won a second Academy Award for her portrayal of Blanche DuBois in A Streetcar Named Desire.

John Berryman (originally John Smith)

October 25, 1914 - January 7, 1972 

John Berryman was an American  poet, born in McAlester, Oklahoma. He was a major figure in American poetry in the second half of the 20th century and often considered one of the founders of the Confessional school of poetry. He is one of the figures acting as a bridge between the formally loose, socially aware poetry of the Beats and the personal, grieving poetry of Sylvia Plath. He was the author of The Dream Songs, which are both playful, witty, and morbid. Berryman died by suicide in 1972.

Dylan Marlais Thomas

October 27, 1914, Swansea - November 9, 1953, New York City

Thomas was a Welsh  poet and writer. He is widely considered to be among the greatest poets of the 20th century; his most famous poems include "Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night " and "And Death Shall Have No Dominion ". Thomas gave himself over to his passionately felt emotions, and his writing is often both intensely personal and fiercely lyrical. Thomas, in many ways, was more in alignment with the Romantics than he was with the poets of his era (Auden  and Eliot, to name but two).

Dylan Thomas was born in Wales in 1914. He was a neurotic, sickly child who shied away from school and preferred reading on his own; he read all of D. H. Lawrence 's poetry, impressed by Lawrence's descriptions of a vivid natural world. Fascinated by language, he excelled in English and reading, but neglected other subjects and dropped out of school at sixteen. His first book, Eighteen Poems, was published to great acclaim when he was twenty.

Thomas first visited America in January 1950, at the age of thirty-five. His reading tours of the United States, which did much to popularize the poetry reading as new medium for the art, are famous and notorious, for Thomas was the archetypal Romantic poet of the popular American imagination: he was flamboyantly theatrical, a heavy drinker, engaged in roaring disputes in public, and read his work aloud with tremendous depth of feeling. He became a legendary figure, both for his work and the boisterousness of his life. Tragically, he died from alcoholism at the age of 39 after a particularly long drinking bout in New York City in 1953.

Robert Lowell

March 1, 1917 -September 12, 1977 

Mike Wallace

May 9, 1918 

Born as Myron Leon Wallace he is an American journalist with a long-running career. He is most well-known to modern audiences as a television correspondent for CBS 's 60 Minutes. He has been with that program since it first aired in 1968. He has also hosted a number of other talk shows including Night Beat. During his career at 60 Minutes he had The Mike Wallace Interviews interviewed a wide range of newsmakers including Johnny Carson, Deng Xiaoping, Ayatollah Khomeini, Kurt Waldheim, Yasir Arafat, Menachem Begin, Anwar Sadat, and Manuel Noriega.

Wallace was born in Brookline, Massachusetts. He has been married multiple times and had two sons. His oldest son died in a mountain climbing  accident in 1961 Chris Wallace, his second son, is also a newscaster.

Spike Milligan

1918-2002

Jonathon Winters

November 11, 1925

Actor, Editor, Writer, Born in Dayton, Ohio, USA

June 1, 1926 - August 5, 1962

Marilyn Munroe was an American actress of the 20th century. Her sizzling screen presence and premature death would make her a perennial sex symbol  and later a pop icon

Marilyn Monroe was found dead August 5, 1962 in the bedroom of her Brentwood, California home at age thirty-six from an overdose of barbiturates.

Rosemary Clooney

May 23, 1928 - June 29, 2002

Rosemary was an American popular singer and actress.

In 1945 the Clooney sisters won a spot on Cincinnati's radio station WLW as singers.

In 1951 her record of "Come On-a My House" became a hit, her first of many singles to hit the charts.  In 1954 she and Bing Crosby > starred in the movie "White Christmas "

In 1968  she was present at the assassination of Robert F. Kennedy, with whom she was a close friend, and the event traumatized her life for years afterward. She had a nervous breakdown and serious drug problems.

In 1986  she sang a duet with Wild Man on "It's a Hard Business".

She had two husbands, José Ferrer (from 1953  until the 1960s) by whom she had five children, including actor,Miguel Ferrer, born in 1955  and Gabriel Ferrer, born 1956, who married Debby Boone, and Dante DePaolo (whom she married in 1996.

November 9, 1928 -October 4, 1974

Born Anne Gray Harvey, Anne was an American poet and writer  Sexton was born in Newton, Massachusetts  in 1928, and spent most of her life near Boston.

Tragically, she suffered from depression for most of her life; in fact, her poetry was prescribed as a possible remedy and eventual cure for her condition. Sexton's first breakdown took place in 1954,

After a second breakdown in 1955, Anne met Dr. Martin Orne at Glenside Hospital, who encouraged her to take up poetry writing

In 1967, she won the Pulitzer Prize  for her collection, Live or Die.

born January 20, 1930 

He is an American pilot and astronaut who became the second man to set foot on the Moon (after Neil Armstrong) during the Apollo 11 mission, the first manned lunar landing.

After the nation's most famous astronaut, Buzz Aldrin, flew to the moon in 1969, he returned to Earth an American icon. But his training as a moonwalker hardly prepared him for fame. Scrutiny on a global scale led to depression, alcoholism and divorce. Over time, he summoned the courage to seek help and work through his difficulties.

November 30, 1936 – April 12, 1989

He was one of the Chicago Seven and the subject of the Kinky Friedman song, "Dear Abbie."

Author of several books, including; "Steal This Book", "Woodstock Nation: A Talk-Rock Album", "Revolution For the Hell of It", "Soon to be a Major Motion Picture", "Vote!", "Squaredancing in the Ice Age", Preserving Disorder: The Faking of the President 1988", "Steal This Urine Test".

Suffered from bouts of manic depression throughout his life (this may have been a contributing factor in his suicide).

The famous phrase "Today is the first day of the rest of your life" first appeared in print in his book "Revolution For the Hell of It"

Kate Millett

September 14, 1934

Richard Alva (Dick) Cavett

born November 19, 1936

Born in Gibbon, Nebraska Dick Cavett is a writer, media personality, and a television talk show host known for his conversational style of in-depth and often serious issues discussion. He has openly discussed his bouts with clinical depression in recent years, an illness he has had to deal with since his freshman year at Yale. He was the subject of a 1993 video produced by the Depression and Related Affective Disorders Association  called A Patient's Perspective.

Charley Frank Pride

March 18, 1938

Born in Sledge, Mississippi to poor sharecroppers, and one of eleven children. Pride has become the only African American to carve out a major career in country music . As a result of his success, he was able to return to Sledge and purchase the cotton farm where he was born.

Pride achieved more than 36 number one country singles and sold over 70 million albums, 31 gold and 4 platinum - including one quadruple platinum. On RCA Records, Charley Pride is second in sales only to Elvis Presley.

Robert Edward "Ted" Turner III

November 19, 1938

He is an American media mogul > and philanthropist. He is best known for founding CNN and Turner Classic Movies, his failed marriage to Jane Fonda, and his $1 billion pledge to the United Nations

Turner's media empire began with his father's billboard business which he took over at the age of 24 after his father's death. Purchase of an Atlanta  UHF station in 1970  began the assemblage of the Turner Broadcasting System His Cable News Network  revolutionized news media, coming to the fore covering the space shuttle Challenger disaster in and the Persian Gulf War in 1991.

He is America's largest private landowner, owning approximately two million acres (8,000 km²). He also has the largest private bison herd in the world, with 32,000 head. In 2002, Turner co-founded Ted's Montana Grill, a restaurant chain specializing in burgers  made from fresh ground bison meat.

Connie Francis

December 12, 1938

From 1958 until 1963, Connie Francis had 25 singles that were top 100 hits in the United States. She recorded her songs in nine languages and became an international star in the late 50s. is an American  singer. born in the Italian Seventh Avenue neighborhood of Newark, New Jersey,  She is considered the most prolific female rock 'n' roll hit-maker of the early rock era -- the late 1950s to the early 1960s.

In the first half of the 1960s she starred in three additional films -- "Follow the Boys" (1963), "Looking for Love" (1964) and "When the Boys Meet the Girls" (1965).

She has a grown son, Joey, born in 1974, who is a flight instructor.

During the height of the Vietnam War in 1967, she performed for U.S. troops.

In 1960 Francis became the youngest headliner to sing in Las Vegas, where she played 28 days a year for nine years.

Her latest CD "The American Tour" contains performances from recent shows.

Francis' autobiography, "Who's Sorry Now?" was published in 1984.

Francis ended her recording career 1969, returning in 1973  with The Answer, a song written just for her, and soon began performing again. Tragedies followed soon after. In 1974 she was raped in a hotel following a performance in Westbury, New York. Nasal surgery to correct a sensitivity to air conditioning deprived her of her ability to sing professionally for four years. Her brother was murdered in 1981. Francis was diagnosed as manic depressive  but resumed her career in 1989 and has continued singing and recording since then.

Mariette Hartley

June 21, 1940

She is an actress and advocate - For seven years, Mariette Hartley and James Garner shared a unique chemistry in their Polaroid commercials. Now Hartley is bringing into sharp focus another kind of chemistry - neurochemistry - that debilitates millions of Americans.

"Bipolar disorder is something that is mine," says Hartley, currently starring in the Broadway production of Cabaret. "And it is very difficult to talk about it. Breaking this silence has been really wrenching for me. Hartley, whose family has a history of suicide because of bipolar disorder went into a kind of depression wondering if she really wanted to talk about all this. I finally decided that education is more important."

To that end, Hartley has been hired by GlaxoSmithKline, manufacturers of a medication recently approved by the FDA for bipolar disorder, to let people know that their lives can return to balance if diagnosed and treated appropriately.

Martha Stewart

August 3, 1941 

Stewart is a popular Polish-American  television and magazine personality known for her cooking, gardening, etiquette, and arts and crafts  projects, and as a general lifestyle guide and homemaker. Starting in 2002 her career was rocked by a scandal involving her sale of shares in a drug company days before its application for a new drug was denied. She was eventually convicted of lying to investigators and sentenced to prison in 2004

Brian Douglas Wilson

June 20, 1942

Musician, Composer (Beach Boys)  Brian Wilson (born in Hawthorne, California) is an American  pop musician, best known as a founding member of and the main producer, composer, and arranger for The Beach Boys

Wilson's creativity reached its heights during the mid-1960s  with songs like "Good Vibrations", the Pet Sounds  album (which, according to Paul McCartney, heavily inspired The Beatles ' Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band) and the then-unreleased SMiLE  project. He also was the owner of a health food shop in Hollywood that lasted a year from its founding in the summer of 1969, the "Radiant Radish".

Larry Claxton Flynt

November 1, 1942

James Marshall "Jimi" Hendrix

November, 1942 - September 18, 1970

Jimi Hendrix was an American guitarist, singer, songwriter and producer who is widely considered to be the most important electric guitarist  in the history of popular music. As a guitarist, he built upon the innovations of blues  stylists such as B. B. King, Albert King, T-Bone Walker, and Muddy Waters, as well as those of R&B guitarists like Curtis Mayfield

Meanwhile, back in England, Hendrix's wild-man image and musical gimmickry (such as playing the guitar with his teeth and behind his back continued to bring him publicity, although he was to become more and more frustrated by media and audience concentration on his stage act and his early hits, and his increasing difficulty in getting his newer music accepted.

Jeannie C. Riley

October 19, 1945

Crippled by bipolar depression for years

Jeannie Carolyn Riley, née Stephenson, was just 23 when she rocketed to stardom with the overnight sensation "Harper Valley PTA" in 1968. Her sudden success proved overwhelming; her young marriage to childhood sweetheart Mickey Riley ended in divorce in 1970. However, after she became a born-again Christian, she and Riley remarried a few years later.

She continued recording country songs but never again came close to achieving the success of "Harper Valley PTA." Jeannie recorded gospel music and wrote an autobiography, From Harper Valley to the Mountain Top, published in 1980.

According to one source, Jeannie's family had her committed to a hospital for evaluation, probably in 1994, after she fell into a deep depression.