Sonny Tufts

Bowen Charlton "Sonny" Tufts III (July 16, 1911 – June 4, 1970) was an American stage, film, and television actor. He is best known for the films he made as a contract star at Paramount in the 1940s, including So Proudly We Hail!. He also starred in the cult classic Cat-Women of the Moon. Early life and family Bowen Charlton Tufts III (some sources give "Charleston") (nicknamed "Sonny") was born in Boston into a prominent banking family, the son of Octavia Emily (Williams) and Bowen Charlton Tufts. The Tufts family patriarch, Peter Tufts, sailed to America from Wilby, Norfolk, England in 1638. His granduncle was businessman and philanthropist Charles Tufts, for whom Tufts University is named. Tufts attended the Phillips Exeter Academy, He later broke with the family banking tradition by not studying business at Harvard and attending rival Yale instead and following other pursuits. There he played for the Yale football team, served as an editor of the campus humor magazine The Yale Record, was inducted a member of the elite, secret Skull and Bones society, and performed in Yale's famous musical group, the Whiffenpoofs. It was while on a Whiffenpoofs tour of Europe that Tufts decided to study opera, struck by the urge during a stop in Naples. He followed up with a year of tutelage in Paris and three more in the United States.