American Women Showbiz and Celebrity Breaking News

Dorothy “Dot” Cole was a U.S. Marines veteran of World War II who was the oldest living Marine.Cole was determined to enlist in the military after the bombing of Pearl Harbor in 1941, when the U.S.

Elfrida von Nardroff was a big winner on the fixed 1950s TV quiz show “Twenty-One.”  Elfrida von Nardroff appeared on the fixed 1950s TV quiz show “Twenty-One,” a popular program that was hosted by Jack Barry. She won $220,500, more than any contestant on the show.

Marjorie Tallchief was a Native American ballerina and the sister of acclaimed ballerina Maria Tallchief (1925–2013).Tallchief was a member of the Osage Nation who learned to dance as a child. While her older sister became a sensation in the U.S.

Wanda Young was a singer with the Motown group the Marvelettes, who sang lead vocals on hit singles including “Don’t Mess with Bill.”Young joined the Marvelettes just after they signed with Motown Records, as they were working on the song that would make them stars, “Please Mr. Postman.” Young sang backing vocals on the track, the first No.

Sylvia Weinstock was a cake baker and decorator known as the “Queen of Cakes.”Weinstock didn’t begin baking professionally until after age 50 – in her previous career, she taught elementary school. But once she began creating custom cakes, her reputation grew until she became the cake designer of choice in celebrity circles.

Penny Harrington was the chief of the Portland, Oregon Police Bureau in the mid-1980s, becoming the first woman to lead a major U.S. city’s police department.Harrington joined Portland’s police force in 1964, at a time when there were few women working in law enforcement.

Irma Kalish was a pioneering TV producer and writer for classic sitcoms including “Maude,” “The Facts of Life,” and “Good Times.”Kalish was one of the first women working behind the scenes in television when she began her TV career in the 1950s. She got her start working in radio, writing for “The Martin & Lewis Show” along with her late husband, Austin “Rocky” Kalish.

Carolyn Shoemaker was an astronomer who co-discovered Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 and set a record for comets discovered.Shoemaker didn’t have scientific training, but she learned her work by working side by side with her husband, Eugene Shoemaker, a planetary geologist. The two used telescopes to scan and photograph the night sky, then Shoemaker worked with those photographs to identify comets, asteroids, and other minor bodies in space.

Daffney Unger was a professional wrestler with World Championship Wrestling (WCW) and Tonal Nonstop Action Wrestling (TNA).Born Shannon Spruill, Unger began wrestling professionally in 1999 with WCW. Her “Scream Queen” persona included goth styling and a piercing scream she’d utter when she was ringside.

Ruth Marx was a singer known for commercial jingles, as well as the mother of singer Richard Marx.After growing up poor in Ohio, Marx began touring with big bands as a young woman. She sought out vocal coach and songwriter Dick Marx to help improve her technique, and the two later married.

Vivian Milligan was a clean water activist who prominently fought for the cleanup of a New Jersey Superfund site.Milligan was a member of the Turtle Clan of the Ramapough Lenape tribe, some of whom live in Ringwood, New Jersey. In the 1970s, the Ford Motor Company dumped toxic waste, including lead-based paint sludge, in a Ringwood landfill, which was later declared a Superfund site by the EPA.

Kelli Hand was a DJ and producer better known as K-Hand, who was called the “first lady of Detroit techno.”Hand was one of the pioneering women involved in the techno and house scene at a time when it was dominated by male DJs. She founded her record label, Acadia Records, in 1988and became a powerful force in Detroit dance music by the 1990s.

Phyllis Gould was a World War II defense plant worker who fought for recognition for all the Rosie the Riveters who worked on the home front.During World War II, Gould worked as a welder in a California shipyard, one of many women who took on traditionally male jobs in factories as the U.S. fought in World War II.

Gloria Richardson was a civil rights activist known for her role in intense protests in early-1960s Cambridge, Maryland.Richardson became involved in the civil rights movement in the early 1960s, becoming a leader of the Cambridge Nonviolent Action Committee (CNAC), an associate of the famed Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). She worked to survey the Black residents of Cambridge and determined they were most concerned about severe inequalities in housing, jobs, and education.

Ayesha K. Faines was a journalist and influencer who was a panelist on “The Grapevine” and the founder of Women Love Power.Faines was best known for her work on “The Grapevine,” a YouTube-based talk show elevating the voices of Black millennials.

Linda Thurston was an activist who served as the director of Amnesty International’s Program to Abolish the Death Penalty.Thurston worked toward creating a more peaceful world as she tried to bring an end to war and the death penalty as well as advocating criminal justice reform and prison abolition.

Kay Lahusen was an activist and photojournalist who chronicled some of the earliest U.S. protests for LGBTQ rights.Lahusen and her partner, Barbara Gittings, were key members of the early movement to secure equal rights for the LGBTQ community.

Lois Ehlert was an illustrator known for children’s books including the classic “Chicka Chicka Boom Boom.”Ehlert was working as a graphic designer before she began illustrating children’s books while she was in her 50s. Her first book was 1987’s “Growing Vegetable Soup,” but it was the 1989 book “Chicka Chicka Boom Boom,” with text by Bill Martin Jr.

Anna Halprin was a choreographer known for her experimental postmodern dance style, as well as for using dance as a healing tool.Halprin based her work in California, where she founded the San Francisco Dancers’ Workshop in 1959. She broke boundaries there by bring dance out of the studio and concert hall, having dancers perform in parks, on rooftops, and in other non-traditional dance spaces.

Arlene Pieper Stine became the first woman to officially finish a sanctioned marathon in 1959, when she ran the Pikes Peak Marathon.When Stine made history, she was running Arlene’s Health Studio, a women’s fitness center in Colorado Springs along with her husband. She decided to run the grueling Pikes Peak Marathon to promote the studio.

LaDonna Brave Bull Allard was the founder of the first camp for the protests against the Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL).Allard opposed DAPL from the beginning, because it ran past her son’s grave. Like other protesters, she was concerned that a spill would contaminate water sources as well as land that’s sacred to native peoples.

Beverly Cleary penned award-winning books for children and young adults including the popular “Ramona” series, notably the National Book Award-winning “Ramona and Her Mother” as well as “Ramona the Brave,” “Ramona Quimby, Age 8,” and “Ramona Forever.”Born Beverly Atlee Bunn April 12, 1916, in McMinnville, Oregon, in the heart of the Willamette Valley, Cleary initially didn’t seem destined for a career of writing beloved classics for young readers.

Rhea Hurrle Allison Woltman was a pilot who was one of the Mercury 13, the women who were tested as potential astronaut candidates in the early 1960s.Woltman became a pilot at a young age, and in 1959, she was among 21 women who were recruited to take the same tests that were being undergone by male astronaut candidates at NASA. Woltman was among the 13 women who passed preliminary tests and became known as the Mercury 13.

Dianna Ortiz was a Catholic nun who was abducted and tortured while serving as a missionary in Guatemala, and later founded the Torture Abolition and Survivors Support Coalition International (TASSC).Ortiz traveled from the U.S. to Guatemala in 1989, working with the poor there and teaching children to read.

Helen Jackson was the last known surviving widow of a Civil War veteran.Jackson volunteered as a caregiver to Civil War veteran James Bolin when she was a young woman and he, a neighbor, was in his final years. He appreciated her help, but he couldn’t afford to pay her – so he offered to marry her so she would inherit his Civil War pension when he died.

Debra White Plume was a Lakota activist who was one of the leaders of the protests at Standing Rock against the Dakota Access Pipeline (DAPL).White Plume was a member of the Oglala Lakota tribe, and her home at the Pine Ridge reservation was where Native American activists occupied the town of Wounded Knee, South Dakota in 1973 and demanded that the U.S. government honor its treaties with their tribes.

Bette Greene was an author of children’s and young adult books including the 1973 National Book Award finalist “Summer of My German Soldier.”“Summer of My German Soldier” takes place in Arkansas during World War II, following a young Jewish girl as she develops a relationship with a German POW and hides him in her garage. Greene later said that the story was autobiographical.

Jackie Stallone was a popular astrologer known for her psychic hotline on television and was the mother of Hollywood star Sylvester Stallone.  This is a breaking news story.

Shere Hite was a sex educator and feminist who issued the groundbreaking Hite Reports that explored human sexuality and focused on women’s experiences.Hite began her series of studies on human sexuality after working as a model as a student.

Joan Feynman was a pioneering astrophysicist who discovered the science behind the aurora borealis and aurora australis.Feynman was the younger sister of Nobel Prizewinning physicist Richard Feynman.

Mary Hartline was one of TV’s earliest stars, best known as the bandleader in “Super Circus” from 1949 to 1955.“Super Circus” was one of the first shows broadcast on ABC television, debuting just a year after the network’s launch. The weekly circus program was broadcast live, featuring circus acts, clowns, and Hartline in white boots and a short skirt leading the Super Circus Band and acting in skits.

Doris Buffett was a philanthropist who was the older sister of billionaire Warren Buffett and helped with his charitable giving efforts.Buffett, like her brother, received a large inheritance from her parents, and she was determined to use it to benefit others rather than keep it to herself. Calling herself a “retail philanthropist,” she had a goal of giving away her entire fortune during her lifetime.

Connie Culp was the first U.S. recipient of a partial face transplant, who lived longer than any other face transplant recipient to date.Culp’s face was badly damaged in 2004, when her then-husband shot her in an attempted murder-suicide.

Emily Howell Warner was a professional pilot who was the first woman hired by a U.S. commercial airline as a permanent pilot, in 1973.Warner was a teenager training to be a flight attendant when her interest in flying was sparked.

Ola Mae Spinks was a retired librarian who led the team that organized the historic “Slave Narratives” in the U.S. Library of Congress.Raised in the historic all-Black community of Vernon, Oklahoma, Spinks settled in Detroit as an adult, where she taught first grade before becoming a middle school librarian.

Stacy Park Milbern was an activist for disability justice who stressed the importance of listening to LGBTQ+ and BIPOC voices in the disability community.Milbern, who had muscular dystrophy, spent her adult life working to spread understanding of the issues faced by people with disabilities, and fighting for their equality. In North Carolina, she worked to have high schools add information on disability history added to their curriculum.