Photo by Abraham Caro Marin - AP
Willem Dafoe
Willem Dafoe
“I'm just a square boy from Wisconsin”.
—Willem Dafoe
Willem Dafoe
The Appleton native has appeared in nearly 150 films including Platoon, Spider-Man and Clear and Present Danger. After performing with Milwaukee’s Theater X, a 1970s avant-garde theater group he left to join several experimental theater companies in New York. “I was young and unsophisticated, but eager to train and perform,” Dafoe said. “I was totally involved and spent most nights on a couch in the theater because I was always studying and didn’t want to go home.”
Dafoe moved to Los Angeles and was cast in small film roles. His performance in To Live and Die in LA led to Mississippi Burning, Born on the Fourth of July and The English Patient.
“I’m not ‘conventional’ looking,” Dafoe said. “As a result I’m usually cast as a bad guy.” He remains one of the hardest working actors in the business.
Allan “Bud” Selig
Allan Selig attended Washington High School in the early 1950s with former Wisconsin Sen. Herb Kohl and film actor Gene Wilder. All three lived in the Jewish neighborhood of nearby Sherman Park. Selig was a baseball fan who followed the minor league Milwaukee Brewers at Borchert Field and later, the Braves when they moved to Milwaukee. After a stint in the Army, Selig sold cars at the family’s Ford dealership in West Allis. His love of baseball remained undiminished, and he invested his wages in the Braves team. By 1963, he was the largest public stockholder in the organization.
In 1970 Selig turned the bankrupt Seattle Pilots into the Milwaukee Brewers and became one of the game’s most influential owners. Thirty years later Selig was named Commissioner of Major League Baseball. He went into the Baseball Hall of Fame in 2017.
Spencer Tracy
As a teenager, future Academy Award-winning actor Spencer Tracy spent much of his time fighting in the rowdy Irish neighborhood of Tory Hill. When he set fire to the family home, his parents enrolled him at Marquette High School. “I only went to school to learn how to read subtitles in the movies,” he said. Tracy went to Wauwatosa East before finally graduating.
Having been in school plays, he went to New York to be an actor. Tracy was surprisingly good and appeared on Broadway in a prison drama, The Last Mile. He went to Hollywood for John Ford’s crime picture, Up the River. Even as a successful actor, Tracy battled depression and insomnia by drinking. At times, he woke up in an alcoholic ward with no idea of how he got there. He won back-to-back Oscars for Captains Courageous (1937) and Boys Town (1938). Spencer Tracy made 75 films during his career and died in 1967.
John Ridley
Writer, actor, and director John Ridley was born in Mequon to a successful ophthalmologist and a special education teacher. Ridley graduated from Homestead high school and then attended New York University. He became a stand-up comedian and appeared on the David Letterman and Johnny Carson late-night shows. Ridley also wrote for “The Fresh Prince of Bel Air.” His script for 12 Years a Slave won an Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay.
Robert Bloch
One of the most prolific pulp magazine writers was Robert Bloch, who lived at 620 E. Knapp Street from 1929 to 1953. He sold stories to Weird Tales while still in high school. Bloch also wrote for Dime Mystery Magazine, Mammoth Detective, Thrilling Mystery and others. During his career, Bloch wrote more than 200 pulp stories, 30 novels and scripts for films and TV. His Psycho was inspired by the terrifying Ed Gein murders in Plainfield, Wis. The book was given to director Alfred Hitchcock, and his film is ranked #18 on the American Film Institute’s 100 Greatest American Films.
Peter Straub
Another horrormeister, Peter Straub, was born in Milwaukee in 1943. He attended Country Day School and became an English teacher at UWM. His novels, Ghost Story and The Haunting of Julia were made into successful films.
Hattie McDaniel
Hattie McDaniel called Milwaukee “her springboard to Hollywood.” McDaniel was working as a ladies’ room attendant at Club Madrid, a roadhouse on Bluemound Road owned by gangster Sam Pick. One night when a performer was unable to go onstage, the management needed an act. McDaniel stepped in brought down the house singing “St. Louis Blues.” She performed at Club Madrid for two years, and then encouraged by myriad actors, politicians, sports stars and other visitors to the club, hopped on a bus to Los Angeles. McDaniel became the first person of color to win an Oscar, and it was for her role in Gone with the Wind.
James Lovell
In 1944 James Lovell attended Juneau High School and earned an engineering degree from UW-Madison. He went to the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis and joined NASA after graduation. To enter the Gemini and Apollo programs as an astronaut, Lovell studied spacecraft propulsion, orbital mechanics, astronomy, computing and space medicine. He made seven voyages into space before becoming the commander of Apollo 13’s mission to the moon in 1970.
“Houston we have a problem” was the catchphrase of Ron Howard’s 1995 film Apollo 13. An oxygen tank on board had exploded and the spacecraft was losing air. Lovell brought the module safely back to earth, setting a record for the farthest humans had ever traveled into space.
In Apollo 13, Lovell is played by Oscar-winning actor Tom Hanks.
Dan Jansen
U.S. speed skater Dan Jansen was a favorite to win the gold medal in the 500-meter race at the Calgary Winter Olympics (1988). He fell in the race, having just learned his sister had died of cancer. Jansen suffered disappointment after disappointment in subsequent Olympic competitions before winning a gold medal in 1994.
Gene Wilder
Actor Gene Wilder was born Jerry Silberman and grew up on 44th and Burleigh and attended Washington High School. He studied communication and theatre arts at the University of Iowa. In 1955 he joined the prestigious Old Vic Theatre School in Bristol, England.
After a stint in the army, Wilder performed on Broadway, most notably with Kirk Douglas in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. Wilder played the socially awkward Billy Bibbit, who suffers from PTSD. Around this time, Wilder discarded the name Silberman. In 1967 he was a Best Supporting Actor nominee for his work in The Producers.
Wilder’s other film credits include Blazing Saddles, Stir Crazy, and Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. One of greatest commercial successes was Young Frankenstein, which he conceived and scripted.
