Portrait of Gilda Gray

Birthday profile

Gilda Gray

Gilda Gray, Polish-American actress, singer, and dancer (died 1959)

Born
October 24, 1901
Died
December 22, 1959
Zodiac sign
Scorpio
Birth year
1901

About Gilda Gray

Gilda Gray was a Polish-American dancer and actress who popularized a dance called the "shimmy" which became fashionable in 1920s films and theater productions. Gray appropriated it as her own, saying that she had accidentally invented the shimmy while dancing at her father-in-law's Cudahy saloon and "shaking her chemise" (or her "shimee", as her Polish accent rendered it). It was Tucker who prompted her to change her first name to Gilda. Their son later became a bandleader, performing under the name Martin Gray (1913–1969).

Biography source: Wikipedia. The profile adds birthday-specific historical context from the Celebs Birthday Today editorial database.

The world when Gilda Gray was born

Gilda Gray was born in 1901. The year snapshot below places that birthday in its cultural and historical setting: the music and films people were following, the headlines shaping public life, and the everyday prices families encountered.

Culture in 1901

  • Best-selling book"The Crisis" – Winston Churchill

Headlines and milestones

  • Major sports momentFirst American League season
  • Top headlinePresident McKinley assassinated — Roosevelt becomes president
  • Technology milestoneFirst transatlantic radio signal by Marconi
  • World population~1.61B

United States snapshot

  • U.S. leaderWilliam McKinley / Theodore Roosevelt
  • U.S. population77.6M

1901 versus 2026

These figures put everyday life in Gilda Gray's birth year beside the site's latest United States snapshot.

Measure19012026
Population77.6M341 million

Sources and editorial standards

This profile combines a biographical source with structured birthday and historical context. Sources recorded for this profile: Wikipedia, IMDb, Wikidata. See our editorial policy for sourcing, corrections, and review standards.

Read the source biography on Wikipedia. Wikipedia text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License.