List of Famous people who born in 1919
Desmond Doss
Desmond Thomas Doss was a United States Army corporal who served as a combat medic with an infantry company in World War II. He was twice awarded the Bronze Star Medal for actions in Guam and the Philippines. Doss further distinguished himself in the Battle of Okinawa by saving 75 men, becoming the only conscientious objector to receive the Medal of Honor for his actions during the war. His life has been the subject of books, the documentary The Conscientious Objector, and the 2016 film Hacksaw Ridge.
Isaac Asimov
Isaac Asimov was an American writer and professor of biochemistry at Boston University. He was known for his works of science fiction and popular science. Asimov was a prolific writer, and wrote or edited more than 500 books. He also wrote an estimated 90,000 letters and postcards.
Donald Pleasence
Donald Henry Pleasence was an English actor. He began his career on stage in the West End before transitioning into a screen career, where he played numerous supporting and character roles including RAF Flight Lieutenant Colin Blythe in The Great Escape (1963), the villain Ernst Stavro Blofeld in the James Bond film You Only Live Twice (1967), SEN 5241 in THX 1138 (1971), and the deranged Clarence "Doc" Tydon in Wake in Fright (1971).
Jackie Robinson
Jack Roosevelt Robinson was an American professional baseball player who became the first African American to play in Major League Baseball (MLB) in the modern era. Robinson broke the baseball color line when he started at first base for the Brooklyn Dodgers on April 15, 1947. When the Dodgers signed Robinson, they heralded the end of racial segregation in professional baseball that had relegated black players to the Negro leagues since the 1880s. Robinson was inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1962.
Charles Hercules Green
Lieutenant Colonel Charles Hercules Green DSO was the youngest Australian Army infantry battalion commander during World War II. He went on to command the 3rd Battalion, Royal Australian Regiment, during the Korean War, where he died of his wounds. He remains the only commanding officer of a Royal Australian Regiment battalion to die on active service. Green joined the part-time Militia in 1936, and before the outbreak of World War II had been commissioned as a lieutenant. He volunteered for overseas service soon after the war began in September 1939, and served in the Middle East and the Battle of Greece with the 2/2nd Battalion. After the action at Pineios Gorge on 18 April 1941, Green became separated from the main body of the battalion, and made his way through Turkey to Palestine, to rejoin the reformed 2/2nd Battalion. The 2/2nd Battalion returned to Australia in August 1942 via Ceylon, to meet the threat posed by the Japanese.
Pierre Trudeau
Joseph Philippe Pierre Yves Elliott Trudeau, also referred to by the initials PET, was a Canadian politician who was the 15th prime minister of Canada and leader of the Liberal Party of Canada from 1968 to 1984, with a brief period instead as Leader of the Opposition between 1979 and 1980. His tenure of 15 years and 164 days makes him Canada's third longest-serving Prime Minister, behind William Lyon Mackenzie King and John A. Macdonald.
Eva Perón
María Eva Duarte de Perón, better known as Eva Perón and Evita, was the wife of Argentine President Juan Perón (1895–1974) and First Lady of Argentina from 1946 until her death in 1952. She was born in poverty in the rural village of Los Toldos, in the Pampas, as the youngest of five children. In 1934 at the age of 15, she moved to the nation's capital of Buenos Aires to pursue a career as a stage, radio, and film actress.
Gayatri Devi
Maharani Gayatri Devi was the third Maharani consort of Jaipur from 1940 to 1949 through her marriage to Maharaja Sawai Man Singh II. Following her husband's signature for the Jaipur State to become part of the Union of India and her step-son's assumption of the title in 1970, she was known as Maharani Gayatri Devi, Rajmata of Jaipur.
Mikhail Kalashnikov
Mikhail Timofeyevich Kalashnikov was a Russian lieutenant general, inventor, military engineer, writer, and small arms designer. He is most famous for developing the AK-47 assault rifle and its improvements, the AKM and AK-74, as well as the PK machine gun and RPK light machine gun.
Dino De Laurentiis
Agostino "Dino" De Laurentiis was an Italian film producer. Along with Carlo Ponti, he was one of the producers who brought Italian cinema to the international scene at the end of World War II. He produced or co-produced more than 500 films, of which 38 were nominated for Academy Awards. He also had a brief acting career in the late 1930s and early 1940s.
Boris Shcherbina
Boris Yevdokimovich Shcherbina was a Soviet politician who served as a vice-chairman of the Council of Ministers from 1984 to 1989. During this period he supervised Soviet crisis management of two major catastrophes: the 1986 Chernobyl disaster and the 1988 Armenian earthquake.
Fred Korematsu
Fred Toyosaburo Korematsu was an American civil rights activist who objected to the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II. Shortly after the Imperial Japanese Navy launched its attack on Pearl Harbor, President Franklin D. Roosevelt issued Executive Order 9066, which authorized the removal of individuals of Japanese ancestry living on the West Coast from their homes and their mandatory imprisonment in internment camps, but Korematsu instead challenged the orders and became a fugitive.
Anne Buydens
Anne Buydens is a German-born American philanthropist, producer, and occasional actress. She has been a member of the International Best Dressed List since 1970. She is the widow of actor Kirk Douglas, to whom she had been married for 65 years until his death in 2020.
Mohammad Reza Pahlavi
Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, also known as Mohammad Reza Shah, was the last Shah (King) of Iran from 16 September 1941 until his overthrow in the Iranian Revolution on 11 February 1979. Due to his status as the last Shah of Iran, he is often known as simply the Shah.
Lex Barker
Alexander Crichlow Barker Jr. was an American actor best known for playing Tarzan of the Apes and leading characters from Karl May's novels.
Lino Ventura
Angiolino Giuseppe Pasquale Ventura was an Italian actor who grew up in France and starred in many French films. Born in Italy, he was raised in Paris by his Italian mother. After a first career as a professional wrestler was ended by injury, he was offered a part as a gang boss in the Jacques Becker film Touchez pas au grisbi (1954) and rapidly became one of France's favourite film actors, playing opposite many other great stars such as Bourvil, Jean Gabin, Alain Delon, Claude Rich, Bernard Blier, Jacques Brel, Michel Serrault, Jean-Paul Belmondo, and working with other leading directors such as Louis Malle, Claude Sautet, Claude Miller, and the great script writer Michel Audiard. Usually portraying a tough man, either a criminal or a cop, he also featured as a leader of the Resistance in the Jean-Pierre Melville directed Army of Shadows. After one of his four children, a daughter, was born handicapped, he and his wife founded a charity Perce-Neige (Snowdrop) which aids disabled children and their parents. Though he never renounced his Italian citizenship, he was voted 23rd in a poll for the 100 greatest Frenchmen.
Eva Gabor
Eva Gabor was a Hungarian-American actress, businesswoman, singer, and socialite. She was widely known for her role on the 1965–71 television sitcom, Green Acres, as Lisa Douglas, the wife of Eddie Albert's character, Oliver Wendell Douglas. She voiced Duchess in the Disney film The Aristocats, and Miss Bianca in Disney's The Rescuers and The Rescuers Down Under. Gabor was successful as an actress in film, on Broadway, and on television. She was also a successful businesswoman, marketing wigs, clothing, and beauty products. Her elder sisters, Zsa Zsa and Magda Gabor, were also actresses and socialites.
Liberace
Władziu Valentino Liberace was an American pianist, singer and actor. A child prodigy born in Wisconsin to parents of Italian and Polish origin, Liberace enjoyed a career spanning four decades of concerts, recordings, television, motion pictures, and endorsements. At the height of his fame, from the 1950s to the 1970s, Liberace was the highest-paid entertainer in the world, with established concert residencies in Las Vegas, and an international touring schedule. Liberace embraced a lifestyle of flamboyant excess both on and off stage, acquiring the nickname "Mr. Showmanship".
Zhao Ziyang
Zhao Ziyang was a high-ranking politician in the People's Republic of China (PRC). He was the third premier of the People's Republic of China from 1980 to 1987, vice chairman of the Communist Party of China from 1981 to 1982, and general secretary of the Communist Party of China from 1987 to 1989. He was in charge of the political reforms in China from 1986, but lost power in connection with the reformative neoauthoritarianism current and his support of the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989.
Nat King Cole
Nathaniel Adams Coles, known professionally as Nat King Cole, was an American singer and jazz pianist. He recorded over 100 songs that became hits on the pop charts. His trio was the model for small jazz ensembles that followed. Cole also acted in films and on television and performed on Broadway. He was the first African-American man to host an American television series. He was the father of singer-songwriter Natalie Cole (1950–2015).