Archive for August, 2026

Joe DiMaggio

Posted in Holy Cross Cemetery (Colma) with tags , , on August 31, 2026 by Cade

November 25, 1914 – March 8, 1999

In 1924, on a playground in San Francisco, a baseball team made up of neighborhood kids paid $2 to entice a rival player to join their team. Little did anyone on that lot know that player would go on to be one of the greatest baseball players of all time. $2 for Joe DiMaggio? Even by 1920s standards, an absolute steal.

Giuseppe Paolo DiMaggio was born in California to an Italian immigrant fisherman. He was one of nine kids in the family (two of his brothers also played baseball) and his father had hopes he would carry on the family business. Some time after the $2 trade, DiMaggio began playing minor league baseball and got pretty good, pretty quick. He set a Pacific Coast League record hitting safely in 61 straight games and was named the league MVP in his final season…a preamble of what was to come.

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Mary Wilson

Posted in Holy Cross Cemetery (CA) with tags , , , on August 24, 2026 by Cade

March 6, 1944 – February 8, 2021

Diana Ross may have been the most famous Supreme…but even she left the group. Only one member never left the Motown hitmakers: the legendary Mary Wilson.

Wilson founded the group (known originally as the Primettes) alongside schoolmate and friend, Florence Ballard, with Ross and Betty McGlown joining by recommendation from the Primes members, Eddie Kendricks and Paul Williams. By 1962, the group was a trio and had a contract with Motown and had changed their name to “the Supremes.” The next 7 years would be one of the most successful runs in American pop music history.

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James Caan

Posted in Eden Memorial Park with tags , on August 17, 2026 by Cade

March 26, 1940 – July 6, 2022

“A lot of stars take a while to warm up – Caan was good from the beginning.” – Stephen Vagg

As a kid in New York, James Edmund Caan, fancied himself a boxer. He often fought in the streets with friends and when he went to college, football was his life. He never graduated from college and football soon took a back seat to something new and exciting for the young man: acting.

Off-Broadway led to Broadway, which led to television and, ultimately, film. By his mid-20s, Caan was filming alongside the likes of Olivia de Haviland, John Wayne and Robert Mitchum. He gained fans – both the public and his co-stars – with every performance. In 1969, he starred in the movie, The Rain People, which was written a directed by Francis Ford Coppola and co-starred Robert Duvall.

It would not be the last time the three worked together.

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Suzanne Somers

Posted in Desert Memorial Park with tags , , on August 10, 2026 by Cade

October 16, 1946 – October 15, 2023

We have all heard every adage about blondes. Blondes have more fun. Gentlemen prefer blondes. She’s having a blonde moment…

Whatever stereotype you choose to accept or deny, one thing can’t be argued: Blondes get noticed.

So, when a bubbly blonde from California gets her first role in a motion picture (1973’s American Graffiti) and is billed as “Blonde in Thunderbird”…well, you better believe a career arc has been born.

Suzanne Somers (née Mahoney) didn’t have the best home life growing up. Her father was an alcoholic and was abusive. She was dyslexic and struggled in school. She dropped out of college after becoming pregnant. But she found a positive outlet in performing. She modeled in her native San Francisco. She appeared in some local TV game shows. She wrote poetry. After being noticed in the NBC Commissary in Los Angeles, she was asked to appear on The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson to promote a book of poetry she had just written. Watching that night was ABC President, Fred Silverman, who remembered Somers a few years later when trying to find the third lead in a new sitcom called Three’s Company.

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Otto Preminger

Posted in Woodlawn Cemetery (Bronx) with tags , on August 3, 2026 by Cade

December 05, 1905 – April 23, 1986

Otto Preminger was an Austrian-born film and theatre director who was as know for his successful projects as he was for his hot-tempered demeanor.

Born in what is modern-day Ukraine (formerly of the Austria-Hungarian empire) he was raised in a Jewish family. When World War I broke out and the Russian army invaded his hometown, the Premingers moved to Graz, and then later to Vienna, where young Otto gained an interest in the theatre. He worked his way up to directing and was eventually offered a chance to direct a film…which he reluctantly accepted.

Several German-speaking theatrical and film credits followed and when he was 29, Otto met Jospeh Schenck and Darryl Zanuck, who were looking for talent for their new studio in Hollywood: Twentieth Century Fox.

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