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Charlie Bird Parker
Charlie Bird Parker (Charles Christopher Parker, Jr.), 1920-55, American musician and composer, b. Kansas City, Kans. He began playing alto saxophone in 1933, and after shifting from one band to another he met Dizzy Gillespie in New York City. They formed a quintet, which in 1945 made the first b...
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Donald Cameron of Lochiel
Donald Cameron of Lochiel , 1695?-1748, Scottish clan chieftain, known as the Gentle Lochiel; grandson of Sir Ewen Cameron . He was the first of the major chieftains to join Charles Edward Stuart , Bonnie Prince Charlie, in the unsuccessful Jacobite uprising in 1745. He was wounded in the battles ...
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Charlie Chaplin
Charlie Chaplin (Sir Charles Spencer Chaplin), 1889-1977, English film actor, director, producer, writer, and composer, b. London. Chaplin began on the music-hall stage and then joined a pantomime troupe. While on tour in the United States, he was recruited by Mack Sennett . Chaplin merged physica...
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Shelagh Delaney
Shelagh Delaney , 1939-, English playwright, b. Salford, Lancashire. Her first play, written when she was only 17, was A Taste of Honey (1958), about a young working-class girl who refuses to conform to her dreary surroundings. It was a critical and popular success and was made into a film. After ...
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Flora Macdonald
Flora Macdonald 1722-90, Scottish Jacobite heroine. She aided Charles Edward Stuart , known as Bonnie Prince Charlie, to escape to France after the defeat of the Jacobites at Culloden Moor in 1746. For smuggling the prince, disguised as a woman, to the Isle of Skye, she was imprisoned briefly in t...
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Dizzy Gillespie
Dizzy Gillespie (John Birks Gillespie) , 1917-93, American jazz musician and composer, b. Cheraw, S.C. He began to play the trumpet at 15 and later studied harmony and theory at Laurinburg Institute, N.C. He played with the bands of Cab Calloway and Billy Eckstine. Gillespie and Charlie "Bird" ...
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Douglas Fairbanks
Douglas Fairbanks 1883-1939, American movie actor, b. Denver. From 1901 to 1914, Fairbanks appeared on stage in light comedies. In 1915 he began making movies, becoming the swashbuckling hero of his day in such films as The Mark of Zorro (1921), The Three Musketeers (1921), Robin Hood (1922),...
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Mary Pickford
Mary Pickford 1893-1979, American movie actress, b. Toronto, Ont. In 1909 she began working with D. W. Griffith . Specializing in playing young girls, she was dubbed "America's Sweetheart." Her films include A Poor Little Rich Girl (1917), Pollyanna (1919), Little Lord Fauntleroy (1921),...
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Charles Edward Stuart
Charles Edward Stuart 1720-88, claimant to the British throne, b. Rome. First son of James Francis Edward Stuart (the Old Pretender), he was known as Bonnie Prince Charlie and as the Young Pretender. When the failures and irregular life of the Old Pretender had alienated his followers, Charles Ed...
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Miles Davis
Miles Davis 1926-91, American jazz musician, b. Alton, Ill. Rising to prominence with the birth of modern jazz in the mid-1940s, when he was a sideman in Charlie Parker 's bop quintet, Davis became a dominant force in jazz trumpet. He was influential in the development of "cool" jazz in 1949-5...
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