ACTOR
Fern Persons
- Known for
- Hoosiers (1986), Class (1983)
21 archived facts 3 topics 1 source Last reviewed Oct 2026
Fern Persons is an actor best known for Hoosiers and Class.
All facts (21)
- #001
Fern Persons was an American film and television actress and was a member of the Screen Actors Guild and the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists from 1937 until her death.
- #002
She was nominated for the 1982 Joseph Jefferson Award for Supporting Actress for "Les Belles Souers" at the Northlight Theatre in Chicago, Illinois.
- #003
For 44 years she served on SAG's Chicago Branch Council and for more than thirty years on the AFTRA Chicago Local Board.
- #004
Persons joined the Screen Actors Guild (SAG) in 1937 and became the fifth member of the SAG Chicago Branch when she joined it in 1953.
- #005
In 1933, she earned a bachelor's degree in drama from Kalamazoo College.
- #006
Much of Persons's work at SAG and AFTRA focused on improving professional acting opportunities for older actors.
- #007
Her husband and newborn daughter moved to Chicago so that Persons could continue her acting career in the second half of the 1930s.
- #008
She received a Bachelor of Fine Arts in acting from the Carnegie Institute of Technology, now known as Carnegie Mellon University, in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
- #009
She was also awarded the Otto Kahn Prize for excellence in acting at Carnegie.
- #010
Fern Gwendolyn Ball was born in Chicago, Illinois, in 1910 and moved with her family to Kalamazoo, Michigan, as a young girl.
- #011
After graduating from Carnegie, Persons worked briefly in radio in Detroit.
- #012
Ball met her future husband, Max Persons, while they were both college students. They married in 1935.
- #013
She graduated magna cum laude from both universities and was a member of Phi Beta Kappa.
- #014
Throughout the 1980s and intermittently through the 1990s, she served as the SAG Regional Branch Division representative on the TV/Theatrical and Commercials negotiating committees.
- #015
She also served on the AFTRA Chicago Local Board of Directors for more than thirty years.
- #016
Fern Ball married Max Persons in October 1935, and they remained married for thirty-six years until his death in November 1971.
- #017
In 1962, she was elected to the Chicago Branch Council and served for forty-four years until 2006, when she resigned because she could no longer drive.
- #018
She died in her sleep on July 22, 2012, five days before her 102nd birthday.
- #019
Persons donated $100,000 to the Kaufherr Members Resource Center's endowment fund in Chicago. At our discretion, the KMRC video package was renamed The Fern Persons Video Suite.
- #020
Persons moved to Colorado in 2010 to be closer to her daughter.
- #021
Persons was honored with the AFTRA Founders Award in 2006 and received SAG's prestigious Howard Keel Award in 2009.
Continue through the archive
Sources & editorial notes
Reference databases
Sources for the entries on this page
- IMDb IMDb kaydı
Information from external sources is independently selected, consolidated and edited by Arka Evren. Sources are listed for verification and further reading. Encyclopedia text is used under its licence (CC BY-SA). How we work