Tanya Roberts

Tanya Roberts was born Victoria Leigh Blum in 1949 (although long given as 1955) in Manhattan, New York City, to Oscar Blum and his wife Dorothy (née Smith). Oscar Maximilian Blum was born in New York City. Oscar's father, Theodor Blum, did pioneering work in local anesthesia and the use of x-rays in dental care. Theodor was born in Vienna, Austria and immigrated to New York in 1904. Oscar earned a bachelor's degree from Cornell University in 1934 and was a first year student in the medical college there. In 1940, Tanya's father was working as an assistant manager for a music publishing house in New York City. He married in 1945 in Weymouth, England, to Dorothy Leigh Smith from Oldham, England. At age 22 Dorothy arrived in New York City in April 1945. In 1948, Dorothy returned to New York from a trip to England with Tanya's two-year-old sister, Barbara. Tanya's father was of Jewish descent and her mother was of English or Irish descent. It has also been reported that her father was of Irish descent and her mother was Jewish. She had one older sister, Barbara. The 1950 U.S. Census shows that, as of April 1950, the Blum family lived in the hamlet of Hewlett in Hempstead, NY and that Oscar Blum was a sales executive for a pen manufacturer. The Blum family were living in Scarsdale, New York in July 1950, purchasing the property in March 1951, and selling it January 1958. Later in the same month in 1958 Tanya's parents obtained a mortgage to buy a property in neighboring Greenburgh, New York and later sold it in July 1961. After meeting psychology student Barry Roberts while waiting in line for a movie, Victoria Blum proposed to him in a subway station and they were soon married in 1973. While Barry pursued a career as a screenwriter, she began to study at the Actors Studio with Lee Strasberg and Uta Hagen under the name Tanya Roberts.