Celebrity Name :Gene Simmons

Celebrity Real Name : Chaim Witz

Date of Birth : August 25, 1949

Birth Location : Haifa, Israel

Biography of Chaim Witz :
Gene Simmons (born Chaim Witz on August 25, 1949 in Haifa, Israel) is the performer and entertainment mogul best known as “The Demon”, his blood-spitting, fire-breathing, tongue-wagging persona in the rock band KISS. He plays bass guitar and does vocals. Simmons currently lives in Beverly Hills, California with his longtime partner Shannon Tweed and their two children, Nicholas and Sophie.

Early life and career :
Born Chaim Witz in Haifa, Israel, Simmons immigrated to New York City in 1957 with his mother—a Hungarian immigrant and the only member of her family to survive the Holocaust—after his father, Feri Witz, abandoned his family. After immigrating to the US, he took the name Gene Klein (Klein having been his mother’s maiden name). In the late 1960s, he changed his name again, this time to Gene Simmons, as he felt that “Gene Klein” did not have enough of a ring to it. Gene was heavily influenced by the books, magazines, and comics he read and the movies he saw as a child and later incorporated elements from these influences into his “Demon” character, costume, and gestures on stage. He has cited Lon Chaney Sr. as one of his favorite actors.
Simmons became involved with his first band, Bullfrog Bheer, while attending Sullivan County Community College in Fallsburg, New York. A Bullfrog Bheer song, “Little Lady”, eventually was recorded by KISS as “Goin’ Blind”, and an early-Who-ish sounding song called “Stanley the Parrot” is said to have been the original incarnation of KISS’ “Strutter”. He joined another band, Coffee, when he transferred to Richmond College in Staten Island, New York. The band made a demo, “Leeta”, which was eventually released on the KISS box set in demo form. During this time, Simmons earned a B.A. in Education from Sullivan College, and worked as a teacher in Harlem, New York.
Simmons formed the rock band Wicked Lester in the early 1970s with Stanley Eisen (also known as Paul Stanley) and recorded one album, which was never released. Dissatisfied with Wicked Lester’s sound and look, Simmons and Stanley went looking for other musicians and eventually joined up with drummer Peter Criscuola and lead guitarist Paul Frehley—who would become Peter Criss and Ace Frehley, respectively. When Simmons and Stanley’s attempts to fire their old band members met with resistance, they simply quit Wicked Lester, walking away from their record deal with Epic Records. They formed a new band with Criss and Frehley, which they soon dubbed KISS. KISS released their first self-titled debut album in February of 1974 and have continued to perform to this present day, with Simmons as lead performer on stage and the driving force behind the extensive KISS merchandising franchise.
He has two children with Shannon Tweed - a son, Nicholas (b. 22 Jan 1989), and a daughter, Sophie (b. 7 Jul 1992).

CD releases :
* Gene Simmons 1978
* Sex Money Kiss (audiobook CD) 2003
* Asshole 2004
* Monster (due in 2007)

Trivia :
* He was inducted into the Long Island Music Hall of Fame on Oct 15, 2006.
* Gene sent a video recording in August 2006 to an Israeli soldier severely wounded in combat in Lebanon, praising him as his hero. Gene spoke in “confident Hebrew” at one point during the video, according to AssociatedPress.[wikipedia]

Celebrity Name : Gene Barry

Celebrity Real Name : Eugene Klass

Date of Birth :

Birth Location :

Biography of Eugene Klass :
Gene Barry (born June 14, 1919) is an American actor.
Born Eugene Klass to a Jewish family in New York City, New York, he exhibited early skills with his singing and violin playing. He adopted his professional name in honor of John Barrymore.
He appeared on Broadway in Catherine was Great in 1944, and, many years later, he starred in the musical La Cage aux Folles (based on the French film of the same name about a gay couple with a straight son) with George Hearn as his life partner/spouse. For his contribution to live theater, Gene Barry has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 6555 Hollywood Blvd.
An early film role was in the 1953 production of The War of the Worlds. He made a cameo appearance in Steven Spielberg’s 2005 War of the Worlds, along with his 1953 co-star Ann Robinson.
Known for his suave manner, Barry starred on television in Our Miss Brooks, Bat Masterson, The Name of the Game, and Burke’s Law. He won the 1965 Golden Globe for Burke’s Law. Barry played the lead in the most famous episode of The Name of the Game, a science fiction story directed by Steven Spielberg and written by Philip Wylie called L.A. 2017. He also starred in the 1973 ITV television series The Adventurer, with Barry Morse and Catherine Schell.
Barry has appeared in a number of films, television programs, and stage shows. His wife of 60 years, Betty Clair Kalb, died in 2003. He has two sons, Michael and Frederick, and a daughter, Elizabeth.
Mr. Barry was Cub Scout Master of Pack 100 in Beverly Hills, California in the mid 1950s. [wikipedia]

Celebrity Name : Fred Astaire

Celebrity Real Name : Frederick Austerlitz

Date of Birth :

Birth Location :

Biography of Frederick Austerlitz :
Fred Astaire (May 10, 1899 – June 22, 1987), born Frederick Austerlitz in Omaha, Nebraska, was an American film and Broadway stage dancer, choreographer, singer and actor. His stage and subsequent film career spanned a total of seventy-six years, during which he made thirty-one musical films. He is particularly associated with Ginger Rogers, with whom he made ten films which revolutionized the genre.
Balanchine and Nureyev rated him the greatest dancer of the 20th century, and he is generally acknowledged to have been the most influential dancer in the history of filmed and televised musicals. He was named the fifth Greatest Male Star of All Time by the American Film Institute.

Early life and career :
His father was an Austrian immigrant and a Catholic; his mother was born in the U.S. to Lutheran German parents; Astaire became an Episcopalian in 1912.
Astaire was a name taken by him and his sister Adele Astaire for their vaudeville act in 1905. Family legend attributes it to an uncle surnamed “L’Astaire”. Their vaudeville career continued, with mixed fortunes and some interruptions due to the actions of the Gerry Society, until they broke into Broadway with Over The Top in 1917. Many sources state that the Astaire siblings appeared in a 1915 film entitled Fanchon, the Cricket, starring Mary Pickford, but this is uncorroborated. Fred Astaire first met George Gershwin, who was working as a song plugger in Jerome H. Remick’s, in 1916 and struck up a close friendship which was to have profound consequences for the subsequent careers of both artists.
During the 1920s, Fred and Adele appeared on Broadway and on the London stage in shows such as Lady Be Good, Funny Face and The Band Wagon, winning popular acclaim with the theater crowd on both sides of the Atlantic. As a team they made a few recordings. They split in 1932, when Adele married her first husband, Lord Charles Cavendish, a son of the Duke of Devonshire. Fred went on to achieve success on his own on Broadway and in London with Gay Divorce, while considering offers from Hollywood.

Trivia :
Fred Astaire is biographical entry number at the Internet Movie Database.
Astaire made headlines again at age 78 when hospitalized after breaking his left wrist while riding his grandson’s skateboard, and was awarded life membership of the National Skateboard Society. At the time he remarked: “Gene Kelly warned me not to be a damned fool, but I’d seen the things those kids got up to on television doing all sorts of tricks. What a routine I could have worked up for a film sequence if they had existed a few years ago. Anyway I was practising in my drive-way.” [wikipedia]

Celebrity Name : Fred Allen

Celebrity Real Name : John Sullivan

Date of Birth : May 31, 1894

Birth Location : Cambridge, York City

Biography of John Sullivan :
Fred Allen (born John Florence Sullivan on May 31, 1894 in Cambridge, Massachusetts, died March 17, 1956 in New York City) was an American comedian whose absurdist, pointed radio show (1934–1949) made him one of the most popular and forward-looking humorists in the so-called classic era of American radio.
Born in Cambridge, Massachusetts to Irish Catholic parents, Allen barely knew his mother, Cecilia Herlihy Sullivan, who died of pneumonia when he was short of three years old. His father, James Henry Sullivan, and his infant brother, Robert, were taken in by one of his mother’s sisters, “my Aunt Lizzie”, around whom he focused the first chapter of his second memoir, Much Ado About Me. The father was so shattered by the mother’s death that, according to his son, he drank more heavily.
Aunt Lizzie, too, suffered: her husband, Michael, was partially paralysed by lead poisoning shortly after they married, leaving him mostly unable to work, something Allen remembered causing contention among Lizzie’s sisters. Eventually, Allen’s father remarried and offered his sons the choice between coming with him and his new wife or staying with Aunt Lizzie. Allen’s younger brother chose to go with their father, but Allen decided to stay. “I never regretted it,” he wrote.
His best-remembered gag may be his long-running mock feud with friend and fellow comedian Jack Benny. Allen has been considered one of the more accomplished, daring and relevant humorists of his time. A master ad libber, he constantly battled censorship and developed routines the style and substance of which influenced future comic talents. Perhaps more than any of his generation, Fred Allen wielded influence that outlived both his contemporaries and the medium that made him famous. [wikipedia]

Celebrity Name :Flavor Flav

Celebrity Real Name : William Johnathon Drayton Jr.

Date of Birth : March 16, 1959

Birth Location : Roosevelt, Long Island, New York.

Biography of William Johnathon Drayton Jr.:
William Jonathan Drayton Jr. (born March 16, 1959), professionally known as Flavor Flav, is an American rap artist and television star. He is a founding member of the influential politically conscious hip hop group Public Enemy. After falling from the public eye, he has recently regained fame as a star of American reality television. He has starred in a series of highly-rated VH-1 programs, most recently the Flavor of Love series.

Born in Roosevelt, New York on Long Island, William Drayton graduated high school in Freeport, New York before attending Adelphi University. While rapping at Adelphi under the name MC DJ Flavor Flav, he met a graphic-design student, Carlton Ridenhour (Chuck D).
Chuck D, DJ Terminator X, Professor Griff, and Flavor Flav formed Public Enemy and released their debut album Yo! Bum Rush the Show in 1987.
Flav participated in Public Enemy as second rapper or vocalist (the primary vocalist was Chuck D), and as the band’s drummer. His stuttering vocal style has influenced rappers including Busta Rhymes and the late Ol’ Dirty Bastard. Providing a comic foil to the political message of Chuck D, some credit Flav with the development of the rap sidekick (often referred to as a “hype man”). Unlike later practitioners of the hype man role, however, Flav’s stage presence and musical contributions were at least as strong as Chuck D’s, and his surreally absurd rapping added a humanizing light-heartedness to the group. In addition to the comic and derisive asides he offers on most Public Enemy performances, he has also taken center stage on songs such as “Too Much Posse,” the bizarre and unforgettable “Cold Lampin’ with Flava,” and “911 Is a Joke,” which provided one of the group’s most colorful music videos. On the group’s 1998 “comeback” single–following a four-year hiatus–”He Got Game,” the title song to a contemporaneous film by Spike Lee, Flav performs essentially a duet with Chuck D.
Flav often wears a clock around his neck, stating that observers will “know what time it is.” The clock became one of Flav’s trademarks, along with comic sunglasses. Flav credits himself as having been the originator of the current platinum grill craze in hip hop fashion.[citation needed] Flav acknowledges that his style is bizarre, and he is proud of his distinctiveness. Another of Flav’s trademarks is his catchphrase, a loud and exaggerated “Yeeeeaaaahhhh Booooyyyy!”
Flav has reportedly completed two solo albums, both of which were rejected by his record label,[8] Def Jam. A third LP, It’s About Time, was due to be released in 1999 but never appeared. A fourth album, “Hollywood,” is scheduled for release on October 31, 2006.

Trivia :
* Flavor Flav has 6 children and would like 4 more before he dies.
* Flav’s current mate is London Charles (Deelishis).
* Flav went to jail more than once.
* Flav as trained as a classical pianist when he was a child.
* Flav attended New York’s Adelphia University.
* Flav rapped under the alias MC DJ Flavor.
* Flav joined Chuck D to form the legendary hip hop group Public Enemy in 1982. *Their controversial hits included “Fight the Power”.
* Flav has six children by two women.
* Flav says he started wearing a clock around his neck because he wanted people to know what time it is.
* Flav appeared in the Taking Back Sunday video “You’re So Last Summer”.[wikipedia]

Celebrity Name : Fatboy Slim

Celebrity Real Name : Quentin Norman Cook

Date of Birth : July 31, 1963

Biography of Quentin Norman Cook :
Fatboy Slim (born Quentin Leo Cook on July 31, 1963, also known as Norman Cook) is an English musician in the dance music genre. His style is known as big beat, a combination of hip hop, breakbeat, rock, trance, house and rhythm and blues. He stopped using ‘Quentin’ and began calling himself ‘Norman’ long before he adopted any other pseudonym.
Studio albums :
* Better Living Through Chemistry (1996)
* You’ve Come a Long Way, Baby (1998) #1 UK, #34 US Platinum
* Halfway Between the Gutter and the Stars (2000) #8 UK
* Palookaville (2004) #14 UK
[wikipedia]

Celebrity Name : Fanny Brice

Celebrity Real Name : Fanny Borach

Date of Birth : October 29, 1891

Birth Location : United States

Biography of Fanny Borach :
Fanny Brice (October 29, 1891 – May 29, 1951) was a popular and influential United States comedian, singer, and entertainer, remembered best for her many stage, radio and film appearances, her phonograph records, and as the creator and star of Baby Snooks. After her death she was depicted on stage and film by Barbra Streisand as Funny Girl.
Early life and career :
Fanny Brice (occasionally spelled Fannie) was the stage name of Fania Borach, born in New York City, the third child of relatively well-off saloon owners of Hungarian Jewish descent. In 1908, she dropped out of school to work in a burlesque review. She is best known for both her association with Florenz Ziegfeld, headlining his Ziegfeld Follies from 1910 into the 1930s, and for her later radio career which lasted a decade and a half.
In the 1921 Follies, she was featured singing “My Man” which became a big hit and is considered Fanny Brice’s signature song. She made a popular recording of it for RCA Victor Records. The second song most associated with her is the tune “Second Hand Rose”. She recorded nearly two dozen record sides for Victor, and also cut several for Columbia. She is a posthumous recipient of a Grammy Hall of Fame Award for her 1921 recording of “My Man.”
Trying to leap from stage to screen, Fanny made several films. She appeared in My Man (1928), Be Yourself! (1930), Everybody Sing (1938) (with Judy Garland), The Great Ziegfeld (she, Ray Bolger and Harriet Hoctor were the only original Ziegfeld performers to portray themselves in the 1936 film), and 1946’s Ziegfeld Follies. For her contribution to the motion picture industry, she has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at MP 6415 Hollywood Blvd.

Death :
Six months after her Big Show appearance, Fanny Brice died in Hollywood, California at the age of 59 of a cerebral hemorrhage.
She is interred in the Westwood Village Memorial Park Cemetery in Los Angeles. The May 29, 1951 episode of The Baby Snooks Show was broadcast as a memorial to the star who created the brattish toddler, crowned by Hanley Stafford’s brief on-air eulogy: “We have lost a very real, a very warm, a very wonderful woman.”

Film tributes :
A loosely-based biopic of Brice was released in 1939 entitled Rose of Washington Square, starring Alice Faye and Tyrone Power. The title “Rose of Washington Square,” came from the title of a song which Brice popularized by performing it in the Follies. Brice soon found out via gossip columnist Louella Parsons that the film was based on her life and ordered 20th Century Fox head Darryl F. Zanuck to cut several production numbers.
Barbra Streisand later starred as Brice in the 1964 Broadway musical Funny Girl, which made Streisand an overnight sensation. In 1968, she won the Academy Award for Best Actress for reprising her role in the film version of “Funny Girl.” In 1975, a sequel film, Funny Lady, was produced. Streisand also eventually recorded both “My Man” and “Second Hand Rose”.[wikipedia]

Celebrity Name : Eve Arden

Celebrity Real Name : Eunice Quedens

Date of Birth : April 30, 1908

Biography of Eunice Quedens :
Eve Arden (April 30, 1908 – November 12, 1990) was an Academy Award-nominated American actress who established a lengthy career as a supporting and character actor.

Early life and career :
Arden was born Eunice Quedens in Mill Valley, California to Lucille and Charles Peter Quedens. Her parents divorced when she was a child. Arden was an insecure child, declaring later in life that she needed therapy because her mother was so much more beautiful than she was.
At 16, Arden left Tamalpais High School and joined a stock theater company. She appeared in a few minor film roles under her real name. Her Broadway debut came in 1934, when she was cast in the stage play Ziegfeld Follies.

Personal life and death :
She was married to Ned Bergen from 1939 to 1947, and to actor Brooks West from 1952 until his death in 1984 from a heart ailment. She and West had four children, three of whom were adopted.
Arden died of advanced colorectal cancer and heart disease at her home in Los Angeles, California at the age of 82, and was interred in the Westwood Village Memorial Park Cemetery in Westwood, California.

Trivia :
* Legend has it that Arden selected her stage name after seeing the phrases “Evening in Paris” and “Elizabeth Arden” at a cosmetics counter.
* Arden was in the cast of one of the most notable Broadway flops, the 1983 play Moose Murders. Arden, who was 75 at the time of production, had difficulties with remembering her lines in the play and was eventually replaced by actress Holland Taylor. The show opened and closed in the same evening.[wikipedia]

Celebrity Name : Erykah Badu

Celebrity Real Name : Erica Wright

Date of Birth : February 26, 1971

Birth Location : Dallas, Texas, United States

Biography of Erica Wright :
Erykah Badu (born Erica Abi Wright on February 26, 1971 in Dallas, Texas) is one of the US-American neo-soul, R&B/hip hop artist whose work crosses over into jazz. She is best known for her singles “You Got Me,” her collaboration with The Roots, as well as her own songs “Tyrone”, “Next Lifetime”, “On & On”, “Bag Lady” and “Clevah.” Influenced early on by singers such as Stevie Wonder, Marvin Gaye and Chaka Khan, (her all-time favorite artist), Erykah was taking to the local radio microphones, freestyling on the air by the age of 14.
While a dance student at Booker T. Washington High, Dallas’s art-magnet school, “MC Apples” (her high school nickname) used her freestyle rap skills as a member of a female rap duo. Not only was she known as MC Apples, but she would also no longer be known as Erica — as she felt it was a slave name — and opted to change her name by adding “Kah” to the end (rather than “Ca”), since “Kah,” connotes the inner self.
She went from Wright to Badu, as it was similar to a sound she made while scatting (incidentally, she later learned that Badu is Arabic for “to manifest truth and light”).
Once a high school graduate, Erykah went on to study theater at the historically Black college Grambling State University. Since she wanted to concentrate on music full-time, she decided to leave the university in 1993 before graduating and took on several minimum wage jobs to support herself. She even taught drama and dance to children at the South Dallas Cultural Center.
Her lyrics are highly personal urban philosophies which throw emotional challenges in the face of the listener. She weaves unusual musical influences together creating a rich texture of sound. In many aspects she remains the quintessential Hip-Hop B-Girl.
Some music journalists have labeled her Nu soul or neo soul, often comparing her to Billie Holiday in lyrical delivery and grouping her with Maxwell and D’Angelo in musical genre. She has performed with roots rock reggae musician and singer Burning Spear.
Badu has a son named Seven (b. 1997) with ex-boyfriend Andre 3000 of Outkast fame. On July 5, 2004, Badu gave birth to a daughter, Puma, in her Dallas home; the father is reportedly rapper The D.O.C..
Albums :
felicQ SAXY
* Funky Cousins (Demo) by Erykah Free
* Baduizm (1997) US #2 (3x Platinum)
* Live (1997) US #4 (2x Platinum)
* Heartache (1998)
* Mama’s Gun (2000) US #11 (Platinum)
* Worldwide Underground (2003) US #3 (Gold)

 Filmography :
* Blues Brothers 2000 (1998) as ‘Queen Mousette’
* The Cider House Rules (1999) as ‘Rose Rose’
* House of D (2004) as ‘Lady’ Bernadette Odelia Glasser
* Dave Chappelle’s Block Party (2006) as herself

Celebrity Name : Enya

Celebrity Real Name : Eithne Ni Bhraonian

Date of Birth : May 17, 1961

Birth Location : Gaoth Dobhair, County Donegal, Ireland

Biography  of Eithne Ni Bhraonian :
Enya, birth name Eithne Ní Bhraonáin (sometimes presented in the media as the Anglicised Enya Brennan; born May 17, 1961), is the Republic of Ireland’s best-selling solo artist and one of Ireland’s best known musicians. As a musical group, Enya is a collaboration between three people: Enya herself, who composes and performs the music; Nicky Ryan, who produces the albums, and Roma Ryan, who writes the lyrics in various languages. Enya is an approximate transcription of how Eithne is pronounced in her native Irish. Enya is one of the biggest selling female artists in history, and was the world’s biggest selling female artist of 2001 and 2002. She has been unofficially ranked as the 12th biggest-selling female artist in the world in 2006.
Enya was born in Gweedore, County Donegal, in Ireland in 1961 to a musical family, the fourth youngest of nine children. Her grandparents were in a band that played throughout Ireland, her father was the leader of the Slieve Foy Band before opening a pub, and her mother played in a dance band and later taught music at the Gweedore Comprehensive School. Enya has four brothers and four sisters, several of whom formed the band An Clann As Dobhair in 1968. They renamed the band Clannad in the 1970s.
In 1980, Enya joined Clannad, the band composed of her siblings Máire (Moya), Pól, and Ciarán and twin uncles Noel and Padraig Duggan. Eithne played the keyboard and provided backing vocals on their albums Crann Úll (1980) and Fuaim (1982). In 1982, shortly before Clannad became famous for “Theme From Harry’s Game,” producer and manager Nicky Ryan left the group and Enya joined him to start her own solo career.

Trivia :
* The asteroid 6433 Enya is named after her.
* The B-Side single “Eclipse” is actually a reversed and modified version of Enya’s song “Deireadh An Tuath”, from the 1987 album ‘Enya’.

Albums :
* Enya (1987)  * Watermark (1988) * Shepherd Moons (1991)  * The Celts (1992)  * The Memory of Trees (1995)  * Paint the Sky with Stars (1997)   * A Day Without Rain (2000)     * Amarantine (2005)