Famous People of California

A six-time Pro Bowler, Allen was also the MVP of Super Bowl XVIII; born in San Diego. In 1997 Allen will start his last season in the National Football League. With the help of Stowers (Sins of the Son, LJ 3/1/95), he has written an account of his life, covering a childhood in San Diego, the four years at University of Southern California that culminated in his winning the Heisman Trophy, his acrimonious relationship with Al Davis during the 11 years Allen was with the Los Angeles Raiders, and the four years with the Kansas City Chiefs. Allen and his coauthor skip lightly over such major football controversies as drug abuse, artificial turf, steroids, racism, management-player conflict, and the lack of black coaches and team executives. The book's last section covers Allen's peripheral involvement with the O.J. Simpson case. Ultimately, the reader learns a lot of facts about Allen but gains few insights into his personal life. Not a necessary purchase. • Marcus Allen Books

He was the author of 168 published papers in scientific journals, mostly in the field of physics, and was elected to the National Academy of Science in 1947 and the National Academy of Engineering in 1969. He was a member of the American Physical Society, a fellow in 1939, and served as President in 1969. He was awarded the Collier Trophy by the National Aeronautics Association in 1946. The trophy was presented by President Truman; and won the Presidential Medal for Merit in 1947. In 1960 he was named California Scientist of the Year; in 1961 he won the Albert Einstein Award. In 1963 he was presented the National Medal of Science by Lyndon B. Johnson; in 1965 the Michelson Award; in 1978 he received the University of Chicago Alumni Medal and was inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame. In 1987, the US Department of Energy granted him its Enrico Fermi award. • Luis Walter Alvarez Books

After her husband's death, in 1887, she was free to pursue her writing career as a protégée of Ambrose Bierce, eventually writing 60 books and numerous articles and short stories. Atherton's first signed novel, What Dreams May Come, was published in 1888 under the pseudonym Frank Lin.

She is best remembered for her "California Series," several novels and short stories dealing with the social history of California. • Gertrude Atherton Books

He is designer of the MOSAIC Threat Assessment Systems used to screen threats to Justices of the Supreme Court of the United States, members of United States Congress, and senior officials of the Central Intelligence Agency. Along with the United States Marshals Service, he co-designed the MOSAIC system currently used for assessing all threats to Federal Judges and prosecutors.

He was twice appointed to the President's Advisory Board at the United States Department of Justice, and he served two terms on the Governor's Advisory Board at the California Department of Mental Health. de Becker is the author of three best-selling books, The Gift of Fear, Protecting the Gift, and Fear Less.

His latest book, Just 2 Seconds, has been described as the essential guide for protectors of at-risk people and includes 5 lessons for people charged with protecting others. It also includes summaries of incidents and near-incidents from the last several decades for training and analysis. Co-authors of the book are Tom Taylor and Jeff Marquart.  • Gavin de Becker Books

During his long career between 1884 and 1930, Belasco either wrote, directed, or produced more than 100 Broadway plays including Hearts of Oak, The Heart of Maryland, and Du Barry, making him the most powerful personality on the New York city theater scene. Although he is perhaps most famous for having penned Madame Butterfly and The Girl of the Golden West for the stage, both of which were adapted as operas by Giacomo Puccini, more than forty motion pictures have been made from the many plays he authored, including Buster Keaton's Seven Chances. • David Belasco Books • David Belasco Films

Child was born Julia Carolyn McWilliams to John and Julia Carolyn ("Caro") McWilliams in Pasadena, California. The eldest  of three children, she had a brother, John III, (1914–2002), and a sister Dorothy D. (1917–2006). Child was raised in a well-to-do family where she ate traditional New England food prepared by the family cook. She attended Westridge School, Polytechnic School from fourth grade to ninth grade and then The Branson School in Ross, California, which was at the time a boarding school. At six feet, two inches (1.88 m) tall, Child played tennis, golf, and basketball as a child and continued to play sports while attending Smith College, where she graduated in 1934 with a Bachelor of Arts degree in History. Following her graduation from college, Child moved to New York City, where she worked as a copywriter for the advertising department of upscale home-furnishing firm W. & J. Sloane. Returning to California in 1937, she spent the next four years writing for local publications and working in advertising. • Julia Child Books • Julia Child Films & TV

Coolio was born in Compton, California the son of Jackie Slater, a factory worker, and Artis Leon Ivey Sr., a carpenter. His parents divorced. Coolio got into trouble outside home as he spent time with Mona Park Compton Crips gang members, although he was never formally inducted nor accepted into the gang, and therefore was not considered as a member of a gang. Coolio spent several months in jail for larceny. 

Coolio was a regular guest on the Los Angeles radio station KDAY. The beginning of Coolio's musical career was derailed as he began selling crack cocaine. After rehab, Coolio worked various odd jobs, including as a California Conservation Corps member at the Pomona site,  and as a firefighter in the forests of northern California in the 1980s. • Coolio Books • Coolio Discography

He gained fame for his role as Jack Dawson in Titanic, and has starred in many other successful films including Romeo + Juliet, Catch Me If You Can, and Blood Diamond, for which he was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actor. Another Academy Award nomination came for his role as Howard Hughes in The Aviator, directed by Martin Scorsese. He has also worked with Scorsese in films such as Gangs of New York and The Departed. This working partnership brought comparison to the earlier working relationship between Scorsese and actor Robert De Niro, who also benefited from roles in Scorsese films early in his career.

DiCaprio has also been nominated two times for BAFTA, three times for SAG, and seven Golden Globe Awards. He is a Golden Globe and a Silver Bear Award winner. • Leonardo DiCaprio Books • Leonardo DiCaprio Movies

Duncan was the youngest of the four children of Joseph Charles Duncan (1819–1898), a banker, mining engineer and connoisseur of the arts, and Mary Isadora Gray (1849–1922), youngest daughter of Thomas Gray, a California state senator, and his wife Mary Gorman. The other children were Elizabeth, Augustin, and Raymond. Her father was the son of Joseph Moulder Duncan and Harriett Bioren. Soon after Isadora's birth, Joseph Duncan lost the bank and was publicly disgraced. Her parents were divorced by 1880 (the papers were lost in the San Francisco earthquake), and her mother Dora moved with her family to Oakland. She worked there as a pianist and music teacher. In her early years, Duncan did attend school, but finding it to be constricting to her individuality, she dropped out. As her family was very poor, both she and her sister gave dance classes to local children to earn extra money.  • Isadora Duncan Books

Frémont's mother, Anne Beverley Whiting, was the youngest daughter of socially prominent Virginia planter Colonel Thomas Whiting and his wife. The colonel died when Anne was less than a year old. Her mother married Samuel Cary, who soon exhausted most of the Whiting estate. To enable Anne to escape the family’s financial problems, her mother placed Anne with an older married sister. In 1796 the sister arranged for the 17-year-old Anne to marry local Revolutionary War veteran Major John Pryor, a wealthy Richmond resident in his early 60s. (The difference in age was not so unusual when widowers often married younger women.) In 1810 Pryor hired Charles Fremon, a French immigrant who had fought with the Royalists during the French Revolution, to tutor his wife. In July 1811, Pryor learned that Whiting and Fremon were having an affair. Confronted by Pryor, the couple left Richmond together on July 10, 1811, creating a scandal that shook city society • John Frémont Books  • Stockton History

One of its original founders, Garcia performed with The Grateful Dead for their entire three-decade career (1965-1995). Garcia also founded and participated in a variety of side projects, including the Saunders-Garcia Band with longtime friend Merl Saunders, Jerry Garcia Band, Old and in the Way, the Garcia/Grisman acoustic duo, and Legion of Mary. Garcia co-founded the New Riders of the Purple Sage with John Dawson and David Nelson. He also released several solo albums, and contributed to a number of albums by other artists over the years as a session musician. He was well known by many for his distinctive guitar playing and was ranked 13th in Rolling Stone's "100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time" cover story. Later in life, Garcia was sometimes ill because of his unstable weight, and in 1986 went into a diabetic coma that nearly cost him his life. Although his overall health improved somewhat after that, he also struggled with heroin addiction, and was staying in a California drug rehabilitation facility when he died of a heart attack in August 1995  • Grateful Dead Website • Grateful Dead Discography • Jerry Garcia Books

Born in San Francisco, California, Ginsburg earned a bachelor's degree from San José State University in 1948. He worked as an engineer at AM-radio station KQW (now KCBS). He joined Ampex in 1951, and remained there until his retirement in 1986, holding the title Vice President of Advanced Technology. Ginsburg was elected a member of the National Academy of Engineering in 1973, being cited for invention and pioneering development of video magnetic tape recording for instant playback. • Charles P. Ginsburg Books

Gordon began racing at the age of five, racing quarter midgets. The Roy Hayer Memorial Race Track (Previously the CrackerJack Track) in Rio Linda, California is noted as the first track Gordon ever competed on. By the Age of 6 Gordon had won 35 main events and set 5 track records. By the age of 13 Gordon took an interest in the 650 horsepower (480 kW) sprint cars. Gordon and his family had to overcome an insurance hurtle. The minimum age for driving the sprint cars was 16. His persistence paid off with an all Florida speed weeks. Supporting his career choice, Gordon's family moved from Vallejo, California to Pittsboro, Indiana, where there were more opportunities for younger racers. • Jeff Gordon Books

Hearst was born in San Francisco, California, to millionaire mining engineer George Hearst and Phoebe Apperson Hearst. Following preparation at St. Paul's School in Concord, New Hampshire, he enrolled in the Harvard College class of 1885, where he was a member of Delta Kappa Epsilon fraternity (Alpha chapter), the A.D. Club (a prestigious Harvard Final club), and of the Harvard Lampoon prior to his expulsion from Harvard for giving several of his professors expensive chamber pots with their names elaborately painted on the inside.

Hearst entered the publishing business in 1887 after taking control of The San Francisco Examiner from his father. Moving to New York City, he acquired The New York Journal and engaged in a bitter circulation war with Joseph Pulitzer's New York World which led to the creation of yellow journalism — sensationalized stories of dubious veracity. Acquiring more newspapers, Hearst created a chain that numbered nearly 30 papers in major American cities at its peak. He later expanded to magazines, creating the largest newspaper and magazine business in the world. • William Randolph Hearst Books

Hemingway was born in Mill Valley, California, the third daughter of Byra Louise (née Whittlesey) Hemingway and John 'Jack' Hadley Nicanor Hemingway, a writer. Her sisters are Joan Hemingway (born 1950) and Margaux Louise Hemingway (born 1955). Margaux, who became an actress and model, died of a barbituate overdose in 1996 at age 41. Her paternal grandfather was writer Ernest Hemingway; She never met her grandfather as he committed suicide several months before she was born.

She was named after the Cuban port of Mariel—a village that her father and grandfather visited regularly as sportsmen to fish. Her middle name was after her paternal grandmother, Ernest's first wife Hadley Richardson.

Hemingway grew up primarily in Ketchum, Idaho, where her father lived, and where her paternal grandfather had also spent a great deal of time as a sportsman and writer. Mariel also spent part of her adolescence growing up in New York City, New York, and Los Angeles, California. • Mariel Hemingway Books • Mariel Hemingway Movies

Howard was born in Oakland, California, the son of Helen Louise Coe and John Lawrence Howard. He graduated from the University of California, Berkeley in 1915 and went on to Harvard University to study the art of playwriting under George Pierce Baker in his "47 workshop." Along with other students of Harvard professor A. Piatt Andrew, Sidney Howard volunteered with Andrew's American Field Service, serving in France and the Balkans during World War I. After the War, Howard, competent at foreign languages, translated a number of literary works from French, Spanish, Hungarian and German. • Sidney Howard Books

Kennedy was born and raised in Sacramento, California as the son of a prominent attorney. He is not a member of the Kennedy political family. As a boy he came into contact with prominent attorneys such as Earl Warren. He served as a page in the California State Senate as a young man.

Kennedy graduated from C. K. McClatchy High School in 1954. He was an undergraduate student at Stanford University from 1954-58, graduating with a B.A. in Political Science, after spending his senior year at the London School of Economics. He earned an LL.B from Harvard Law School in 1961. • Anthony M. Kennedy Books