Los Angeles

The Centinela Adobe, also known as La Casa de la Centinela, is an Spanish Colonial style adobe house built in 1834. It is operated as a house museum... by the Historical Society of Centinela Valley, and is one of the 43 surviving adobes within Los Angeles County, California. The Adobe was the seat of the 25,000-acre Rancho Aguaje de la Centinela, a Mexican Alta California era land grant partitioned from the Spanish Las Californias era Rancho Sausal Redondo. The Centinela Adobe, which is the Centinela Valley's oldest residence, was built by Ygnacio Machado in 1834. Since then, farmers, ranchers, a Scotsman, and Inglewood's founding father, Daniel Freeman, have lived in the structure. It is the oldest building in the area and has been called the "Birthplace of Inglewood", although it now lies within the boundaries of the Westchester district of Los Angeles. In 1822, after the Mexican War of Independence brought freedom for Mexico from Spain, Antonio Ygnacio Avila received a Mexican land grant for Rancho Sausal Redondo in Alta California, where he grazed cattle.
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The Getty Villa in Pacific Palisades, California, USA, is one of two locations of the J. Paul Getty Museum. The Getty Villa is an educational center... and museum dedicated to the study of the arts and cultures of ancient Greece, Rome, and Etruria. The collection has 44,000 Greek, Roman, and Etruscan antiquities dating from 6,500 BC to 400 AD, including the Lansdowne Heracles and the Victorious Youth. The UCLA/Getty Master’s Program in Archaeological and Ethnographic Conservation is housed on this campus. The collection is documented and presented through the online GettyGuide as well as through audio tours. In 1954, oil tycoon J. Paul Getty opened a gallery adjacent to his home in Pacific Palisades. Quickly running out of room, he built a second museum, the Getty Villa, on the property down the hill from the original gallery. The villa design was inspired by the Villa of the Papyri at Herculaneum and incorporated additional details from several other ancient sites. It opened in 1974, but was never visited by Getty, who died in 1976. Following his death, the museum inherited $661 million and began planning a much larger campus, the Getty Center, in nearby Brentwood.
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Judson Studios is a fine arts studio specializing in stained glass located in the Highland Park section of northeast Los Angeles. The stained glass... studio was founded in the Mott Alley section of Downtown Los Angeles in the mid-1890s by English-born artist William Lees Judson and his three sons. It moved to its current location in 1920 and remains in operation as a family-run business. The Judson Studios building was named a Historic-Cultural Landmark by the City of Los Angeles in 1969, and listed in the National Register of Historic Places in 1999. William Lees Judson was born in 1842 in Manchester, England, and moved to the United States with his parents when he was ten years old. After serving four years with the Illinois volunteers during the American Civil War, Judson studied art in New York and Paris. He settled in London, Ontario, where he became a successful portrait painter and art teacher. He moved to Chicago in 1890 but, suffering from failing health, he moved to Los Angeles in 1893. He settled on the banks of the Arroyo Seco in the Garvanza section of Los Angeles.
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Ralph J. Bunche House, also known as the Ralph Bunche Peace & Heritage Center, was the Victorian-Bungalow style boyhood home of Nobel Peace Prize... winner Ralph Bunche located in South Los Angeles. It was declared a Los Angeles Historic-Cultural Monument-HCM #159 by the Los Angeles Cultural Heritage Commission in 1976, and listed in the National Register of Historic Places in 1978. Bunche won the 1950 Nobel Peace Prize for his work in negotiating and drafting the 1949 Armistice Agreements that ended the 1948 Arab-Israeli War. He was the first person of color from any country to receive the Nobel Peace Prize. Bunche was born in Detroit, Michigan and later lived in Albuquerque, New Mexico, but moved to Los Angeles to live with his maternal grandmother when his mother died in 1917. Bunche and his sister, Grace, were raised at the house on 40th Place by their grandmother, Lucy Taylor Johnson, their two aunts , and their uncle Thomas Johnson. While living in Los Angeles, Bunche became the valedictorian at both Jefferson High School, one-half block away, and UCLA, then located at Vermont Avenue and Melrose. Bunche was also a star basketball player while at UCLA.
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Jennifer Joanna Aniston is an American actress, film director, and producer. Aniston gained worldwide recognition in the 1990s for portraying Rachel... Green on the television sitcom Friends, a role which earned her an Emmy Award, a Golden Globe Award, and a Screen Actors Guild Award. Aniston has also enjoyed a successful Hollywood film career. She gained critical acclaim for her performances in the independent films She's the One , Office Space , The Good Girl , and Friends with Money . She has had her greatest commercial successes with the films Bruce Almighty , The Break-Up , Marley & Me , Just Go with It , and Horrible Bosses . Aniston has been selected for a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 2012. Jennifer Aniston was born in Sherman Oaks, Los Angeles to actors John Aniston and Nancy Dow. Her father is Greek and a native of Crete. Her mother was born in New York City and has Scottish, Italian, Irish and a small amount of Greek ancestry. Aniston has two half-brothers, John Melick, her maternal older half-brother, and Alex Aniston, her younger paternal half-brother.
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Eva Mendes is an American actress and model. She began acting in the late 1990s, and after a series of minor roles and performances in several... smaller films such as Children of the Corn V: Fields of Terror and Urban Legends: Final Cut , she broke into the mainstream, appearing in leading roles in Hollywood releases, such as Training Day ; All About The Benjamins ; 2 Fast 2 Furious, Once Upon a Time in Mexico and Stuck on You ; Hitch ; Ghost Rider and We Own the Night ; The Spirit ; Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans ; The Other Guys and Last Night . Mendes was born in Miami, Florida, to Cuban parents, and was raised in the Los Angeles suburb of Glendale by her mother after her parents' divorce; Mendes has said that her mother "suffered so much to make my life OK" during her early years. Mendes was raised a Roman Catholic and aspired to be a nun. She is also fluent in Spanish. Mendes never saw herself as an actress while she was young and pursued other interests.
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Pete Sampras is a retired American tennis player and former world no. 1. During his 15-year tour career, he won 14 Grand Slam singles titles and... became recognized as one of the greatest tennis players of all time. Sampras debuted on the professional tour in 1988 and played his last top-level tournament in 2002 when he won the US Open, defeating rival Andre Agassi in the final. He was the year-end world no. 1 for six consecutive years , a record for the open era. His seven Wimbledon singles championships are also an Open Era record. He spent 286 weeks at no. 1, the most of any player. His five US Open singles titles is an Open Era record shared with former world no. 1 players Jimmy Connors and Roger Federer. Sampras is the last American male to win Wimbledon and the ATP World Tour Finals . Pete Sampras was born in Potomac, Maryland, and is the third child of Sammy and Georgia Sampras. His mother immigrated from Sparta, Greece, and his father was born in the United States to a Greek father and a Jewish mother. Greek culture played a big role in his upbringing.
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William Daniel "Danny" Hillis is an American inventor, entrepreneur, and author. He co-founded Thinking Machines Corporation, a company that... developed the Connection Machine, a parallel supercomputer designed by Hillis at MIT. He is also co-founder of the Long Now Foundation, Applied Minds, Metaweb, and author of The Pattern on the Stone: The Simple Ideas That Make Computers Work. Daniel Hillis was born in Baltimore, Maryland in 1956. His father, William Hillis, was a US Air Force epidemiologist studying hepatitis in Africa and relocated with his family through Rwanda, Burundi, Zaire, and Kenya. He spent a brief part of his childhood in Calcutta, India when his father was a visiting faculty at ISI, Calcutta. During these years the young Hillis was home schooled by his mother Aryge Briggs Hillis, a biostatistician, and developed an early appreciation for mathematics and biology. His younger brother is David Hillis, a professor of evolutionary biology at the University of Texas at Austin, and his sister is Argye E. Hillis, a professor of neurology at Johns Hopkins University.
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Mira Furlan is a Croatian actress and singer currently residing in the United States. She is well known for her roles as the Minbari Ambassador... Delenn on all five seasons of the science fiction television series Babylon 5 , and Danielle Rousseau on Lost. Furlan was born to an intellectual and academic family that included a large number of university professors in Zagreb, which was at that time part of Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, now the capital city of the Republic of Croatia. She was born to a Jewish mother, and a father of Slovenian and Croatian heritage. Furlan graduated from the Academy for Dramatic Arts in Zagreb and holds an equivalent to the BA in theatre. She was a member of the Croatian National Theatre and frequently appeared in Yugoslav television and films, including Cannes Film Festival winner When Father Was Away on Business . In the 1980s, she briefly appeared as singer for Le Cinema, a spin-off from the rock band Film. She has also appeared on the stage in New York and Los Angeles. She has released an album, Songs From Movies That Have Never Been Made.
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Richard T. "Dick" Biggs was an American television and stage actor, best known for his roles on the television series Days of our Lives and Babylon... 5. Born in Columbus, Ohio, Biggs attended the University of Southern California on scholarship, studying theatre. He briefly taught at a Los Angeles high school before landing his first major television role, that of Dr. Marcus Hunter on the soap opera Days of our Lives. Biggs played Hunter from 1987 to 1992. Biggs then landed the role of Dr. Stephen Franklin on the hit science fiction series Babylon 5 , and appeared as the same character in an episode of the spin-off show, Crusade . After Babylon 5, he played roles on Any Day Now and Strong Medicine, as well as the recurring role of Clayton Boudreaux on the soap opera Guiding Light. Biggs' stage credits include The Tempest, Cymbeline and The Taming of the Shrew. He and Lori Gebers were married from August 1, 1998 until Biggs' death in 2004. They have two children, RJ and Hunter. Biggs was diagnosed with hearing problems when he was 13, and was partially deaf in one ear, completely deaf in the other.
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Kenneth S. "Kingfish" Washington was a professional football player who was the first African-American to sign a contract with a National Football... League team in the modern era. He was a star running back at Abraham Lincoln High School in Los Angeles In college at UCLA, he rushed for 1,914 yards in his college career, a school record for 34 years. He was one of four African American players on the 1939 UCLA Bruins football team, the others being Woody Strode, Jackie Robinson and Ray Bartlett. Washington, Strode, and Robinson starred on the 1939 UCLA Bruins football team, in which they made up three of the four backfield players. This was a rarity to have so many African Americans when only a few dozen at all played on college football teams. They played eventual conference and national champion USC to a 0-0 tie with the 1940 Rose Bowl on the line. It was the first UCLA-USC rivalry football game with national implications. UCLA teammates have commented how strong Washington was when confronted with racial slurs and discrimination.
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Matthew Beard, Jr. was an American child actor, most famous for portraying the character of Stymie in the Our Gang short films from 1930 to 1935. He... was a native of Los Angeles, California. Beard had previously played baby parts in many films before signing a five year contract to play in Our Gang. In contrast to Farina, the character he replaced, Stymie was a slick-tongued con-artist who was always self-assured, nonchalant, and ready with a sly comment as well as clever ideas to solve the problems he faced. The character's trademark was a bald head crowned by an oversize derby hat, a gift to Beard from comedian Stan Laurel, who had also worked under Our Gang creator Hal Roach. Stymie is the only Our Ganger to both replace one of the original gang members and be replaced by one that would stay on until the series disbanded, Billie "Buckwheat" Thomas. The name "Stymie" was provided by Our Gang director Robert McGowan, who was always frustrated by little Matthew's curious wanderings around the studio; the character was originally to be named "Hercules".
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Mary Ann Jackson was an American former child actress who appeared in the Our Gang short subjects series from 1928 to 1931. She was a native of Los... Angeles, California. Mary Ann Jackson's film career began under the shadow of her actor relatives, mother Charlotte Jackson and older sister, "Peaches" Jackson . Peaches had a fairly prolific stint as a child actress, working with such stars as Rudolph Valentino and DW Griffith in full-length features. Jackson made her film debut in a 1925 Ruth Taylor short, Dangerous Curves. Her first big break came with the role of Baby Smith in the comedy short series The Smiths, which starred Billy Gilbert. She made her feature debut in 1927's Smith's Pony. Jackson joined the Our Gang cast in 1928, at the tail end of the silent era. Often used as the second female lead or the spunky older sister of "Wheezer" , Mary Ann's snappy delivery came in handy during the series' somewhat rocky transition to sound.
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Natalie Maria Cole is an American singer, songwriter and performer. The daughter of jazz legend Nat King Cole, Cole rode to musical success in the... mid-1970s as an R&B artist with the hits "This Will Be ", "Inseparable" and "Our Love". After a period of failing sales and performances due to a heavy drug addiction, Cole reemerged as a pop artist with the 1987 album, Everlasting, and her cover of Bruce Springsteen's "Pink Cadillac". In the 1990s, she re-recorded standards by her father, resulting in her biggest success, Unforgettable with Love, which sold over seven million copies and also won Cole numerous Grammy Awards. Natalie Cole was born in Los Angeles, California, the daughter of crooner Nat King Cole and former Duke Ellington Orchestra singer Maria Cole. Raised in the affluent Hancock Park district of Los Angeles; regarding her childhood, Cole has referred to her family as "the black Kennedys" and was exposed to many great singers of jazz, soul, and blues. At the age of six Natalie sang on her father's Christmas album and later began performing at age 11.
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Lee Ann Meriwether is an American actress, former model, and the winner of the 1955 Miss America pageant. She is perhaps best known for her role as... Betty Jones, the crime-solving partner in the long-running 1970s crime drama, Barnaby Jones. The role earned her two Golden Globe Award nominations in 1975 and 1976, and an Emmy Award nomination in 1977. She is also known for her role as John Schuck's long-haired wife, Lily Munster, in the 1990s sitcom The Munsters Today, as well as for her portrayal of Catwoman in the 1966 film version of Batman. Meriwether had a recurring role as Ruth Martin on the daytime soap opera All My Children until the end of the series in September 2011. Lee Meriwether was born in Los Angeles, California to Claudius Gregg Meriwether and Ethel Eve Mulligan . She has one brother, Don Brett Meriwether, born May 14, 1938, in Los Angeles. She grew up in San Francisco after the family moved there from Phoenix, Arizona. She attended George Washington High School, where one of her classmates was Johnny Mathis.
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James Caughey "Coy" Watson, Jr. was an American child actor of the silent era who appeared in more than 60 films . He was the son of actor,... stuntman, and pioneer special effects artist Coy Watson Sr. They lived by the Echo Park area of the city and Coy attended nearby Belmont High School. He died of stomach cancer at 96. The younger Watson made his film debut in 1921, and appeared in approximately 24 films over a period of eight years. He had five brothers and three sisters who also acted in films, including Billy, Delmar, Garry, Harry, Vivian, Gloria, Louise Watson Roberts, and Bobs Watson. Because he was featured in several of Mack Sennett's popular "The Keystone Cops" comedies, he earned the nickname, "The Keystone Kid" . Coy Watson Jr. was a Los Angeles-based news photographer for CBS Television in the 1950s. He was the head news photographer at KCRA-TV in Sacramento, Calif. in the late 1950s. Watson's autobiography, The Keystone Kid: Tales of Early Hollywood, was published in 2001. The Watsons were honored by the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce by placing the Watson family star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, at 6674 Hollywood Blvd.
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