Trivia: James Stewart was the movies' quintessential Everyman, a uniquely all-American performer who parlayed his easygoing persona into one of the most successful and enduring careers in film history. On paper, he was anything but the typical Hollywood star: Gawky and tentative, with a pronounced stammer and a folksy "aw-shucks" charm, he lacked the dashing sophistication and swashbuckling heroism endemic among the other major actors of the era. Yet it's precisely the absence of affectation which made Stewart so popular; while so many other great stars seemed remote and larger than life, he never lost touch with his humanity, projecting an uncommon sense of goodness and decency which made him immensely likable and endearing to successive generations of moviegoers.Born May 20, 1908, in Indiana, PA, Stewart began performing magic as a child. While studying civil engineering at Princeton University, he befriended Joshua Logan, who then headed a summer stock company, and appeared in several of his productions. After graduation, Stewart joined Logan's University Players, a troupe whose membership also included Henry Fonda and Margaret Sullavan. He and Fonda traveled to New York City in 1932, where they began winning small roles in Broadway productions including Carrie Nation, Yellow Jack, and Page Miss Glory. On the recommendation of Hedda Hopper, MGM scheduled a screen test, and soon Stewart was signed to a long-term contract. He first appeared onscreen in a bit role in the 1935 Spencer Tracy vehicle The Murder Man, followed by another small performance the next year in Rose Marie.Stewart's first prominent role came courtesy of Sullavan, who requested he play her husband in the 1936 melodrama Next Time We Love. Speed, one of six other films he made that same year, was his first lead role. His next major performance cast him as Eleanor Powell's paramour in the musical Born to Dance, after which he accepted a supporting turn in After the Thin Man. For 1938's classic You Can't Take It With You, Stewart teamed for the first time with Frank Capra, the director who guided him during many of his most memorable performances. They reunited a year later for Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, Stewart's breakthrough picture; a hugely popular modern morality play set against the backdrop of the Washington political system, it cemented the all-American persona which made him so adored by fans, earning a New York Film Critics' Best Actor award as well as his first Oscar nomination.Stewart then embarked on a string of commercial and critical successes which elevated him to the status of superstar; the first was the idiosyncratic 1939 Western Destry Rides Again, followed by the 1940 Ernst Lubitsch romantic comedy The Shop Around the Corner. After The Mortal Storm, he starred opposite Katherine Hepburn and Cary Grant in George Cukor's sublime The Philadelphia Story, a performance which earned him the Best Actor Oscar. However, Stewart soon entered duty in World War II, serving as a bomber pilot and flying 20 missions over Germany. He was highly decorated for his courage, and did not fully retire from the service until 1968, by which time he was an Air Force Brigadier General, the highest-ranking entertainer in the U.S. military. Stewart's combat experiences left him a changed man; where during the prewar era he often played shy, tentative characters, he returned to films with a new intensity. While remaining as genial and likable as ever, he began to explore new, more complex facets of his acting abilities, accepting roles in darker and more thought-provoking films. The first was Capra's 1946 perennial It's a Wonderful Life, which cast Stewart as a suicidal banker who learns the true value of life. Through years of TV reruns, the film became a staple of Christmastime viewing, and remains arguably Stewart's best-known and most-beloved performance. However, it was not a hit upon its original theatrical release, nor was the follow-up Magic Town -- audiences clearly wanted the escapist fare of Hollywood's prewar era, not the more pensive material so many other actors and filmmakers as well as Stewart wanted to explore in the wake of battle. The 1948 thriller Call Northside 777 was a concession to audience demands, and fans responded by making the film a considerable hit. Regardless, Stewart next teamed for the first time with Alfred Hitchcock in Rope, accepting a supporting role in a tale based on the infamous Leopold and Loeb murder case. His next few pictures failed to generate much notice, but in 1950, Stewart starred in a pair of Westerns, Anthony Mann's Winchester 73 and Delmer Daves' Broken Arrow. Both were hugely successful, and after completing an Oscar-nominated turn as a drunk in the comedy Harvey and appearing in Cecil B. De Mille's Academy Award-winning The Greatest Show on Earth, he made another Western, 1952's Bend of the River, the first in a decade of many similar genre pieces.Stewart spent the 1950s primarily in the employ of Universal, cutting one of the first percentage-basis contracts in Hollywood -- a major breakthrough soon to be followed by virtually every other motion-picture star. He often worked with director Mann, who guided him to hits including The Naked Spur, Thunder Bay, The Man From Laramie, and The Far Country. For Hitchcock, Stewart starred in 1954's masterful Rear Window, appearing against type as a crippled photographer obsessively peeking in on the lives of his neighbors. More than perhaps any other director, Hitchcock challenged the very assumptions of the Stewart persona by casting him in roles which questioned his character's morality, even his sanity. They reunited twice more, in 1956's The Man Who Knew Too Much and 1958's brilliant Vertigo, and together both director and star rose to the occasion by delivering some of the best work of their respective careers. Apart from Mann and Hitchcock, Stewart also worked with the likes of Billy Wilder (1957's Charles Lindbergh biopic The Spirit of St. Louis) and Otto Preminger (1959's provocative courtroom drama Anatomy of a Murder, which earned him yet another Best Actor bid). Under John Ford, Stewart starred in 1961's Two Rode Together and the following year's excellent The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance. The 1962 comedy Mr. Hobbs Takes a Vacation was also a hit, and Stewart spent the remainder of the decade alternating between Westerns and family comedies. By the early '70s, he announced his semi-retirement from movies, but still occasionally resurfaced in pictures like the 1976 John Wayne vehicle The Shootist and 1978's The Big Sleep. By the 1980s, Stewart's acting had become even more limited, and he spent much of his final years writing poetry; he died July 2, 1997.

Trivia: The epitome of the "pull yourself up by the bootstraps" mentality and "Que Sera Sera" mantra, Doris Day has weathered the numerous storms of both career and personal life, using these carefree and easygoing sentiments as a testament to the endearing endurance and eternal optimism that defines her infectiously positive outlook on life.Born Doris Mary Ann Kappelhoff in Evanston, OH, Day's optimistic philosophies would be tested from her earliest experiences. With childhood dreams of becoming a ballerina dashed after being involved in a near-fatal car crash, Day took to heart her mother's suggestion of refining her skills as a vocalist. Possessing a voice of distinct beauty at the youthful age of 14, Day was soon discovered by a vocal coach who arranged an appearance on a local radio station WLW. The rest, as they say, is history.Soon after her radio appearance, Day was approached by local bandleader Barney Rapp, leading the young songstress to adopt the moniker that would soon become a household name. Revealing her birth name to Rapp after auditioning with the song "Day By Day," Rapp jokingly suggested that her name was nice, though a little long for the theater's marquee. With her auditioning ballad becoming the inspiration for her stage persona, 14-year-old Day now had all the makings of a starlet ripe with potential. Discovered shortly after by big-band maestro Les Brown in 1940, Day toured briefly with his band, soon departing to accept the marriage proposal of sweetheart Al Jorden and pursue dreams of starting a family. Day's matrimonial happiness was short-lived, however, when Jorden's violent and jealous tendencies proved to be too much to take. Soon after the birth of their son in 1942, the couple divorced and Day rejoined Les Brown and his band, leading to the collaboration that would project the young singer into the heart of millions -- "Sentimental Journey."Day's contribution to film began with her appearance in Warner Bros.' romantic musical Romance on the High Seas (1948). The film, in which she co-starred with Jack Carson, was recognized with an Oscar nomination for the song "It's Magic," providing young Day with her first success as a pop singer. Throughout the 1950s, Day's wholesome image sustained her film career with successful turns in musicals (Calamity Jane [1953]) and romantic comedies (Teacher's Pet [1958]). Day's successful film career continued well into the 1960s with highlights including Alfred Hitchcock's The Man Who Knew Too Much (1956), The Pajama Game (1957), and Pillow Talk (1959). The latter is considered among the best of the Doris Day/Rock Hudson comedies, with her image as the innocently alluring virgin breathing new life into her previously wholesome persona.In April of 1968, just as she was beginning five-year contract with CBS for The Doris Day Show, Day's film career came to an abrupt end with the death of her husband/manager/producer Marty Melcher. Left penniless and deep in debt through a series of Melcher's sordid investments, Day soon bounced back. Awarded a 22-million-dollar settlement, Day found success in television with The Doris Day Show. Her future television ventures, including Doris Day Today (1975) and Doris Day's Best Friends (1985) (which included one of the last appearances of a gravely ill Rock Hudson) were just a few examples of Day's enthusiastic and enduring nature. In 1975 Doris Day authored her biography, Doris Day: Her Own Story, which became a number one best-seller. Day went on to become an active and vocal supporter of animal rights, focusing the majority of her attentions on her Animal League and Animal Foundation organizations, as well as owning the pet-friendly Cypress Inn in Carmel, CA.

Trivia: British leading lady Brenda DeBanzie made her stage bow in 1935. She chose not to appear in films until she was well into her thirties; her first movie assignment was the psychological melodrama The Long Dark Hall (1951). Brenda's biggest film success was as Charles Laughton's industrious daughter in director David Lean's Hobson's Choice (1954). Her best-known role was Phoebe Rice, the long-suffering wife of third-rate music hall comedian Archie Rice (played by Laurence Olivier) in both the 1957 stage production and the 1960 film version of John Osborne's The Entertainer. Brenda DeBanzie was the aunt of actress Lois DeBanzie.

Trivia: A graduate of the Pembrooke College of Oxford University, Bernard Miles taught school before entering films as a bit player in 1933. A regular in the films of Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger, Miles played many a bucolic rustic before graduating to larger roles; his first starring assignment was in Noel Coward's In Which We Serve (1942). He contributed to the scripts of several films, and was director of the 1944 comedy Tawny Pipit, which he also co-wrote and co-produced. Miles' many memorable screen characterizations included Joe Gargery in Great Expectations (1946) and Newton Noggs in Nicholas Nickelby (1947). In 1959, Miles and his wife, Josephine Wilson, founded England's Mermaid Theatre. Knighted in 1969, Bernard Miles was given a life peerage in 1979, ending his days answering to both Lord Bernard Miles and Baron Bernard.

Trivia: British actor Ralph Truman may seldom have played a leading role in films, but on radio he was a 14-carat star. On the air since 1925 (he was one of the first), Truman once estimated that he'd appeared in 5000 broadcasts. The actor's film career commenced with City of Song in 1930, followed by a string of cheap "quota quickies" and a few worthwhile films like Mr. Cohen Takes a Walk (1936), Under the Red Robe (1937), Dinner at the Ritz (1938) and The Saint in London (1941). The '40s found Truman cast as Mountjoy in Laurence Olivier's filmization of Henry V (1945) and in such equally prestigious productions as Oliver Twist (1948) and Christopher Columbus (1949). American audiences were treated to Truman in the wildly extroverted role of pirate George Merry in Treasure Island (1950); he'd beem deliberately cast in that role by director Robert Stevenson so that his hammy costar Robert Newton (as Long John Silver) would look "downright underplayed" in comparison. Though hardly as well served as he'd been on radio, Ralph Truman stayed with films until retiring in 1970; his last appearance was in Lady Caroline Lamb (released in 1971).

Trivia: Daniel Gelin studied theater at the Paris Conservatoire then began appearing in French films in 1939 while he was still in his teens. At first playing bit parts and light juvenile roles, he eventually (after a long break during World War II) became one of the major leading men of French cinema; Gelin was often cast in sensitive, intelligent, sophisticated, worldly roles. He directed the film Les Dents Longues (1953). Gelin is also a published poet who has received some acclaim for his work. From 1945-54 he was married to actress Daniele Delorme. Daniel Gelin is the father of actress Maria Schneider, best known as Marlon Brando's co-star in Last Tango in Paris (1972).

Trivia: Born to a non-theatrical British family, Alan Mowbray was in his later years vague concerning the exact date that he took to the stage. In some accounts, he was touring the provinces before joining the British Navy in World War I; in others, he turned to acting after the war, purportedly because he was broke and had no discernible "practical" skills. No matter when he began, Mowbray climbed relatively quickly to Broadway and London stardom, spending several seasons on the road with the Theater Guild; his favorite stage parts were those conceived by Bernard Shaw and Noel Coward. Turning to films in the early talkie era, Mowbray received good notices for his portrayal of George Washington in 1931's Alexander Hamilton (a characterization he'd repeat along more comic lines for the 1945 musical Where Do We Go From Here?). He also had the distinction of appearing with three of the screen's Sherlock Holmeses: Clive Brook (Sherlock Holmes [1932]), Reginald Owen (A Study in Scarlet [1933], in which Mowbray played Lestrade), and Basil Rathbone (Terror by Night [1946]). John Ford fans will remember Mowbray's brace of appearances as alcoholic ham actors in My Darling Clementine (1946) and Wagonmaster (1950). Lovers of film comedies might recall Mowbray's turns as the long-suffering butler in the first two Topper films and as "the Devil Himself" (as he was billed) in the 1942 Hal Roach streamliner The Devil With Hitler. And there was one bona fide romantic lead (in Technicolor yet), opposite Miriam Hopkins in Becky Sharp (1935). Otherwise, Mowbray was shown to best advantage in his many "pompous blowhard" roles, and in his frequent appearances as the "surprise" killer in murder mysteries (Charlie Chan in London, The Case Against Mrs. Ames, Abbott and Costello Meet the Killer: Boris Karloff, and so many others). In his off hours, Mowbray was a member of several acting fraternities, and also of the Royal Geographic Society. One of Alan Mowbray's favorite roles was as the softhearted con man protagonist in the TV series Colonel Humphrey Flack, which ran on the Dumont network in 1953, then as a syndicated series in 1958.

Trivia: Her cultured Mayfair accent notwithstanding, frosty blonde actress Hillary Brooke was born on Long Island. After attending Columbia University, Hillary launched a modelling career, which led to film work in 1937. Though a handful of her screen portrayals were sympathetic, Hillary's talents were best utilized in roles calling for sophisticated truculence: "other women," murderesses, wealthy divorcees and the like. She is also known for her extensive work with the comedy team of Abbott and Costello. First appearing with the team in 1949's Africa Screams, she was briefly nonplused by their ad-libs and prankishness, but soon learned to relax and enjoy their unorthodox working habits. Retiring in 1960 upon her marriage to MGM general manager Ray Klune, Hillary Brooke has devoted much of her time since to religious and charitable work.

Trivia: Austrian character actor Reggie Nalder, with his sharp, angular face and disconcerting leer, was frequently cast as villains in French and German films. Two of his most memorable roles were as the assassin in Hitchcock's The Man Who Knew Too Much and as the Russian spy in charge of brainwashing American soldiers in The Manchurian Candidate.

Trivia: For almost 40 years, from the end of the 1930s to the mid-'70s, Richard Wattis enjoyed a reputation as one of England's more reliable character actors, and -- in British films, at least -- developed something akin to star power in non-starring roles. Born in 1912, as a young man he managed to avoid potential futures in both electric contracting and chartered accountancy, instead becoming an acting student in his twenties. His stage career began in the second half of the 1930s, and in between acting and sometimes producing in repertory companies, Wattis became part of that rarified group of British actors who appeared on the BBC's pre-World War II television broadcasts. He made his big-screen debut with a role in the 1939 feature A Yank at Oxford, but spent the most of the six years that followed serving in uniform. It was after World War II that Wattis came to the attention of critics, directors, and producers for his comic timing and projection, and began getting cast in the kinds of screen and stage roles for which he would ultimately become famous, as pompous, dry, deadpan authority figures, snooping civil servants, and other comical pests. Beginning with Frank Launder and Sidney Gilliat's The Happiest Days of Your Life (1950), his roles and billing got bigger, and he was cast to perfection as Manton Bassett in the "St. Trinian's" films of Launder and Gilliat. Wattis became so well liked by audiences in those kinds of parts -- as annoying government officials, in particular -- that producers would see to it, if his part was big enough, that he was mentioned on posters and lobby cards. He remained very busy in films right up until the time of his death in the mid-'70s.

Trivia: Irish character actor, onscreen from the '50s.

Trivia: Trained at the Pasadena Playhouse, Texas-born Carolyn Jones supported herself as a radio disk jockey when acting jobs were scarce. She entered films as a bit player in 1952, attaining prominence for a role in which (for the most part) she neither moved nor spoke: the waxwork Joan of Arc -- actually one of mad sculptor Vincent Price's many murder victims -- in 1953's House of Wax. In 1957, Jones was Oscar-nominated for her five-minute role as a pathetic "good time girl" in The Bachelor Party; two years later, she stole the show in Frank Capra's A Hole in the Head as Frank Sinatra's bongo-playing girlfriend. During the early 1960s, Jones was married to producer Aaron Spelling, who frequently cast her on such TV series as The Dick Powell Show and Burke's Law. In 1964, Jones achieved TV sitcom immortality as the ghoulishly sexy Morticia Addams on the popular series The Addams Family. Though her TV and movie activities were curtailed by illness in her last decade (she died of cancer in 1983), Carolyn Jones continued making occasional appearances, notably a return engagement as Morticia in a 1978 Addams Family reunion special.

Trivia: American character actor Lou Krugman appeared in a few feature films from the late '50s through the early '60s including I Want to Live! (1958) but may be best known for his work on radio. He is said to have appeared on over 10,000 broadcasts and did over 700 voiceovers for television commercials.

Trivia: Leo Gordon cut one of the toughest, meanest, and most memorable figures on the screen of any character actor of his generation -- and he came by some of that tough-guy image naturally, having done time in prison for armed robbery. At 6 feet 2 inches tall, and with muscles to match, Gordon was an implicitly imposing screen presence, and most often played villains, although when he did play someone on the side of the angels he was equally memorable. Early in his adult life, Gordon did, indeed, serve a term at San Quentin for armed robbery; but after his release he studied at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts, and was a working actor by the early 1950's. His first credited screen appearance (as Leo V. Gordon) was on television, in the Hallmark Hall of Fame production of "The Blue And White Lamp", with Frank Albertson and Earl Rowe, in 1952. His early feature film appearances included roles in China Venture (1953) and Gun Fury (1953), the latter marking the start of his long association with westerns, which was solidified with his villainous portrayal in the John Wayne vehicle Hondo (1953). It was in Don Siegel's Riot in Cell Block 11 (1954), which was shot at San Quentin, that a lot of mainstream filmgoers discovered precisely how fearsome Gordon could be, in the role of "Crazy Mike Carnie." One of the most intimidating members of a cast that was overflowing with tough guys (and which used real cons as extras), Gordon's career was made after that. Movie work just exploded for the actor, and he was in dozens of pictures a year over the next few years, as well as working in a lot of better television shows, and he also earned a regular spot in the series Circus Boy, as Hank Miller. More typical, however, was his work in the second episode of the western series Bonanza, "Death on Sun Mountain", in which he played a murderous profiteer in Virginia City's boomtown days. Once in a while, directors triped to tap other sides of his screen persona, as in the western Black Patch (1957). And at the start of the next decade, Gordon got one of his rare (and best) non-villain parts in a movie when Roger Corman cast him in The Intruder (1962), in the role of Sam Griffin, an onlooker who takes it upon himself to break up a race riot in a small southern town torn by court-ordered school integration. But a year later, he was back in his usual villain mold -- and as good as ever at it -- in McLintock!; in one of the most famous scenes of his career, he played the angry homesteader whose attempt to lynch a Native American leads to a head-to-head battle with John Wayne, bringing about an extended fight featuring the whole cast in a huge mud-pit. Gordon was still very busy as an actor and sometime writer well into the 1980's and early 1990's. He played General Omar Bradley in the mini-series War And Remembrance, and made his final screen appearance as Wyatt Earp in the made-for-television vehicle The Adventures of Young Indiana Jones: Hollywood Follies. He passed away in 2000 of natural causes.

Trivia: French character actor Louis Mercier was in American films from 1929's Tiger Rose until well into the 1970s. Mercier was particularly busy at 20th Century-Fox's "B"-picture unit in the 1930s and 1940s, usually cast as detectives and magistrates. He can be seen fleetingly in Casablanca (1942) as a smuggler in the first "Rick's Café Americain" sequence. Louis Mercier's later credits include An Affair to Remember (1957, in which he was given a character name--a rarity for him), The Devil at 4 O'Clock (1961) and Darling Lili (1970).

Trivia: Dark, pencil-mustached American actor Anthony Warde made his film bow in 1936. Throughout his career, Warde excelled in unsavory characterizations, usually in serials and low-budget crime and Western films. He played Killer Kane in the 1939 chapter play Buck Rogers, and also showed up in such Republic serials as The Masked Marvel (1943), The Purple Monster Strikes (1945), and The Black Widow (1947). Active until 1964, Anthony Warde made a number of TV appearances in the 1950s, including a brief turn as a counterfeiter in an episode of Amos 'N' Andy.

Trivia: American character actress Gladys Holland played small roles in a number of 1950s' films. She was born in Texas and got her start in theater. Later she, who learned French from her Belgian parents, became a French dialogue/voice specialist.

Trivia: Supporting actor Albert Carrier was born in Italy. He made his film debut in Mexico where he appeared in five films. He went on to work in numerous Hollywood films during the '50s and '60s where he usually portrayed Frenchmen. He later went on to make over sixty guest appearances on television.

Trivia: American actor Milton Frome made an unlikely film debut as the cowboy star of Grand National's Ride 'Em Cowgirl (1939)--unlikely in that the tall, bald actor spent the rest of his career playing nervous corporate types and "second bananas" for some of show business' greatest clowns. After touring with the USO during World War II, the vaudeville-trained Frome was an early arrival on the television scene: he worked as a straight man and foil on Milton Berle's variety series, and also functioned as the hapless target of the antics of Martin and Lewis on The Colgate Comedy Hour. The actor was also busy in live and filmed detective and action series (he frequently appeared in Superman with his good friend George Reeves) as well as in two-reel comedies with The Three Stooges. After Jerry Lewis broke away from Dean Martin, Frome continued to function as one of Lewis' stock company in such films as The Delicate Delinquent (1957), The Nutty Professor (1963) and Disorderly Orderly (1964). TV sitcom buffs remember Milton Frome best as Lawrence Chapman, the hapless mogul who ran a film studio owned by rustic millionaire Jed Clampett on The Beverly Hillbillies.

Trivia: British character actor Walter Gotell spent most of his screen time as the "enemy." He was especially adept at portraying hissable Nazis in WWII dramas and equally odious KGB agents in Cold War films. His best-known role was Russian General Gogol in three of the James Bond epics: Moonraker, For Your Eyes Only, and View to a Kill. Walter Gotell remained active in films and TV throughout the 1990s, as sinister as ever in such works as Puppet Master IV (1991).

Trivia: Lancashire-born character actor Frank Atkinson appeared in at least 130 films in the 33 years between the advent of sound in 1930 and his death in 1963. His work extended to both sides of the Atlantic -- although he worked primarily in his native England, he did go over to Hollywood in the mid-1930's, where he seemed to keep busy at Fox. He was often in roles too small to be credited, but that didn't stop him from doing a memorable turn (or two) in pictures. Tall and slender, and with gaunt facial features that lent themselves to looks of eccentricity, and with a highly cultured speaking voice, he could melt unobtrusively into a scene, as an anonymous bit-player, or could, with the utterance of a few words or a look, transform himself into a wryly comedic presence -- he played everything from jailers, guards, garage attendants, and soldiers to upper-class twits, and, in a manner unique to his era, sometimes got into some gender-bending portrayals. His most interesting attributes were shown off in a pair of Raoul Walsh-directed features: Sailor's Luck (1933), starring James Dunn and Sally Eilers, in which Atkinson plays an overtly gay swimming pool attendant in an important scene in the middle of the picture; and in Me And My Gal (1932), an excellent romantic comedy/thriller starring Spencer Tracy and Joan Bennett, in which he turns in a brief (but wonderfully rewarding) comedic tour-de-force as the funniest of a trio of effete, drunken waterfront tavern patrons, debating the matter of the type of fish with which one of them has been assaulted. His roles were usually not named, but Atkinson was highly regarded enough so that in The Green Cockatoo, he gets some memorable lines as a wry-toned butler named Provero, whose name becomes a comical issue. Atkinson also wrote screenplays and scripts for various British films in the 1930's, in genres ranging from light comedy to thrillers. Toward the end of his career, he also worked extensively in British television, on series such as Z-Cars and The Saint, and in 1963, the year of his death -- at age 69 -- he was in three television episodes as well as chalking up an uncredit appearance in Murder At the Gallop. In more recent years, thanks to the activity of various researches and scholars, and revivals of Fox's pre-Code features, especially Sailor's Luck, Atkinson has been mentioned in articles and books dealing with gay images and personae in Hollywood films.

Trivia: German actor Wolfgang Preiss first stepped before the cameras in 1942, then disappeared from the view of moviegoers for nearly a dozen years. Preiss gained belated celebrity in the 1960s as the demonic title character in the "Dr. Mabuse" film series, beginning with 1000 Eyes of Dr. Mabuse (1960). In American films, he tended to be typecast as high-ranking Nazis. Wolfgang Preiss' most prominent assignments in this vein were the roles of Erwin Rommel in Raid on Rommel (1971) and General Von Runstedt in A Bridge Too Far (1977).

Trivia: British actor Harold Kasket usually portrayed Arabs and other ethnic roles in films, stage and television. Born and raised in London, he got his start working as a comic impressionist. He began his film career in 1947.

Trivia: Great Britain's first true screen star, brunette Alma Taylor gained her greatest popularity playing one of the two sprightly "Tilly girls" in a series of comedies produced by Hepworth in 1910-1911. The other Tilly girl was Chrissie White and each in her own way would come to personify the typical British silent screen heroine: innocuous, well-mannered, and invariably dressed for comfort. Taylor, who at one point was favorably compared to America's Mary Pickford, found her career waning after World War I and she was decidedly long in the tooth when producer/director Cecil M. Hepworth decided to remake the already then old-fashioned Comin' Thro the Rye in 1923. Taylor played her usual heroine, suffering nobly and at great length after losing her man to another woman. One critic dismissed the film as poor melodrama, complaining that the starring role was not played by Taylor but by "a field in which the rye, as far as I remember, failed to function obediently." Due to a slump in British film production, Taylor disappeared until 1926, when Hepworth launched a comeback of sorts with The House of Marney, and she did a couple of thrillers in Germany, including a version of The Hound of the Baskervilles (1929). Once the darling of British movie audiences and the wife of prolific film producer Walter West, Alma Taylor was reduced to minor bit parts in sound films until her retirement in the late '50s.

Trivia: British actor Richard Wordsworth was primarily a theater actor across a career of 40 years. Interspersed among his stage work, however, were some three dozen or so movie and television performances, in everything from 1950s mini-series adaptations of Dickens (Newman Noggs in Nicholas Nickleby; Mr. Gashford in Barnaby Rudge) to the 1970 international film release of Song of Norway (as Hans Christian Andersen). But it was in science fiction and horror that Wordsworth cut his most memorial on-screen figure, for his work in three of those films. Born in Halesowen, Worcestershire, England in 1915, he was the great-great-grandson of the poet William Wordsworth, and initially set out for a career in the church, until he was bitten by the acting bug. Wordsworth's intense eyes and resonant voice made him a natural for a stage career, though not necessarily for traditional leading man roles -- he specialized in classical theatrical roles during the first decade or so of his career, and enjoyed a huge success as well in 1959 in the musical Lock Up Your Daughters. Television and film were little more than an adjunct to his theater work; he made his first small-screen appearance in 1952, and over the next two years portrayed such parts as Tybalt (Romeo And Juliet in BBC productions. In 1955, Wordsworth made his big-screen debut in the most memorable role of his career -- a role for which, ironically, he barely had a chance to use his voice at all -- as stricken astronaut Victor Caroon in Val Guest's The Quatermass Experiment. In a cast that included American star Brian Donlevy and British star Jack Warner, Wordsworth managed to steal every scene he was in without uttering a single word of dialogue, using little more than his eyes. Wordsworth's film and television appearances were few and far-between up through his retirement in 1989, but also included Hammer Films' The Revenge of Frankenstein (1958) and a memorable speaking role in Curse of the Werewolf (1961). He also appeared in such important non-genre movies as Joseph Losey's Time Without Pity (1957). Wordsworth retired in 1989 and passed away in 1993. During his final decade, he wrote and toured with a one-man show entitled The Bliss of Solitude, dealing with the life and work of his ancestor William Wordsworth.

Trivia: Some actors can convey wide-eyed confusion, others are adept at business-like pomposity; Frank Albertson was a master of both acting styles, albeit at the extreme ends of his film career. Entering movies as a prop boy in 1922, Albertson played bit roles in several late silents, moving up the ladder to lead player with the 1929 John Ford talkie Salute. The boyish, open-faced Albertson was prominently cast in a number of Fox productions in the early 1930s, notably A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court (1931) and Just Imagine (1931). By the mid-1930s he had settled into such supporting roles as Katharine Hepburn's insensitive brother in Alice Adams (1935) and the green-as-grass playwright who falls into the clutches of the Marx Brothers in Room Service (1938). His best showing in the 1940s was as the wealthy hometown lad who loses Donna Reed to Jimmy Stewart in It's a Wonderful Life (1946). By the 1950s, a graying, mustachioed Albertson was playing aging corporate types. Frank Albertson's more memorable roles in the twilight of his career included the obnoxious millionaire whose bank deposit is pilfered by Janet Leigh in Hitchcock's Psycho (1960) and his uncredited turn as the flustered mayor of Sweetapple in Bye Bye Birdie (1963).

Trivia: A composition prize winner at age 13, Manhattan-born composer Bernard Herrmann studied at New York University and Julliard before accepting his first conductor's post at age 20. While he wrote for virtually every branch of the musical theater -- ballet, concert hall, opera -- Herrmann's latter-day fame rests squarely on his prolific film work. As one of several composer/conductors retained by the CBS radio network in the mid-1930s (he was briefly married to radio writer Lucille Fletcher, of Sorry Wrong Number fame), Herrmann worked on Orson Welles' Mercury Theatre of the Air. When Welles headed to Hollywood to direct Citizen Kane (1941), he invited Herrmann to write the film's score, promising the young composer full artistic freedom. Welles so respected Herrmann's talent that many scenes in Kane were tailored to fit the music, rather than the other way around. Herrmann capped his first year in Hollywood with an Academy Award -- not for Kane, but for another RKO production, All That Money Can Buy (1941). He was engaged to score Welles' second picture, The Magnificent Ambersons (1942), but angrily demanded that his name be removed from the credits after his music was extensively rearranged by RKO contractee Roy Webb. The range of Herrmann's talent was so enormous that he remained in demand until his death in 1975. With Jane Eyre (1944), Herrmann began a lengthy association with 20th Century-Fox, best exemplified by the scores for such films as The Ghost and Mrs. Muir (1947), Five Fingers (1952), The Snows of Kilimanjaro (1953) and The Man in the Grey Flannel Suit (1954). At his best, Herrmann was tirelessly creative, ever finding new ways to match his scores to the mood and locale of his films. As one of many examples, Herrmann wrote an orchestration incorporating authentic native African musical instruments for the 1954 jungle actioner White Witch Doctor. Many of his innovations have since become cinematic clichés, notably his vibraphonic score for the 1951 sci-fi classic The Day the Earth Stood Still and the screeching violins for 1960's Psycho. In the 1950s, Herrmann inaugurated two long associations with a brace of notable filmmakers: special-effects maven Ray Harryhausen (Seventh Voyage of Sinbad [1957], Mysterious Island [1961], Three Worlds of Gulliver [1962], Jason and the Argonauts [1963]) and suspense specialist Alfred Hitchcock (The Trouble With Harry [1955], The Wrong Man [1956], Vertigo [1958], North by Northwest [1959], Psycho [1960], Marnie [1964] and The Birds [1963], for which Herrmann orchestrated genuine bird sounds). After acrimoniously severing his ties with Hitchcock over a dispute arising from the score of 1966's Torn Curtain, Herrmann accepted assignments from a number of Hitchcock emulators, including Francois Truffaut (The Bride Wore Black [1967]), Larry Cohen (It's Alive! [1974]), Brian De Palma (Obsession [1976]) and Martin Scorsese (Taxi Driver [1976]). Herrmann completed the jazz Driver score on the day he died, but received his final credit for an original score posthumously, on the 1978 La More Al Lavoro. Herrmann also kept busy on TV, principally on Rod Serling's Twilight Zone series; for the 1962 Zone episode "Little Girl Lost," the composer was billed above the director.

Trivia: From 1944 through 1949, California-born Robert Burks headed the Special Photographic Effects division at Warner Bros., specializing in forced-perspective miniatures. A full director of photography by 1949, Burks worked with Alfred Hitchcock on the director's fourth Warners production, Strangers on a Train. Hitchcock liked Burks' crisp, clean, deep-focus visual style, retaining the cameraman's services for the rest of his Warners films. When Hitchcock moved to Paramount, Burks moved along with him, winning an Academy Award for 1955's To Catch a Thief. When Hitchcock set up shop at Universal in the early 1960s, Burks collaborated on such pictures as The Birds (1963) and Marnie (1964) -- both of which were heavily reliant on the sort of miniature and process work in which Burks specialized in his earliest Warner Bros. days. Robert Burks died along with his wife in a fire at his Los Angeles home in July of 1968.

Trivia: As was the case with most of Alfred Hitchcock's screenwriters, John Michael Hayes has tended to be overshadowed by "The Master." The general assumption is that Hitchcock was the predominant guiding force behind such films as Rear Window (1954), To Catch a Thief (1955) The Trouble With Harry (1956) and The Man Who Knew Too Much (1956), while Hayes (and his collaborators) merely provided the words and the character names. Proof that Hayes was a potent talent without Hitchcock's input is provided by his adaptations of such literary and theatrical pieces as Peyton Place (1957, which earned him the second of his two Oscar nominations), Butterfield Eight (1958) and The Chalk Garden (1964). After many years of retirement, John Michael Hayes resurfaced to co-write the screenplay of director Charles Haid's Iron Will (1994). He died in 2008 at age 89.