Jean Renoir, French Filmmaker
Lauded after his death as one of cinema’s greatest directors, Jean Renoir earned comparatively few words of praise during his lifetime. From a childhood...
Marlon Brando, Stage and Motion Picture Star
Arguably the greatest actor of his generation, Marlon Brando combined his talent for subtle emoting with a rejection of the traditional methods of approaching...
Jimmy Stewart, Award-Winning Actor and War Hero
Whether playing a sardonic journalist, earnest politician, recalcitrant cowboy or a man at his wit’s end, Jimmy Stewart stuttered and shuffled his way into...
Sonia Sotomayor, First Hispanic Supreme Court Justice
Sonia Sotomayor is the first Hispanic and the third female justice to serve on the U.S. Supreme Court. Hailing from a working-class background, Sotomayor...
Carole King, Chart-Topping Singer-Songwriter
Carole King started playing the piano at age 4 and hasn’t stopped since. Out of college in the 1960s King was writing some of...
Saul Bellow, American Novelist
“The backbone of 20th-century American literature”—this was novelist Philip Roth’s assessment of Saul Bellow. His struggle with modernism, his Jewish upbringing, his feelings of...
George Crockett Jr., Lawyer, Politician and Civil Rights Activist
George Crockett Jr. was a prominent attorney and politician with a career that lasted nearly six decades. An outspoken man who didn’t shy away...
Madeleine Albright, First Female Secretary of State
Madeleine Albright, the first female U.S. secretary of state, served as the face of U.S. foreign policy during Bill Clinton's second term as president....
Albert Einstein, Physicist Who Developed Theory of Relativity
Albert Einstein grew up in Munich, Germany and spent much of his life as a scholar in Berlin. He wrote several monumental papers that...
Arthur Ashe, Tennis Star and Human Rights Activist
Arthur Ashe was one of the most accomplished tennis players of his generation and the only African-American man to win a Grand Slam title,...
