The Sniper

Adolphe Menjou (Actor)

Arthur Franz (Actor)

Born: February 29, 1920
Died: June 17, 2006

Trivia: Armed with extensive radio and stage credits, Arthur Franz made his first film appearance in 1948's Jungle Patrol. Franz has been prominently featured in a number of "fantastic" films: he played one-third of the title role in Abbott and Costello Meet the Invisible Man (1951), and had leads in Flight to Mars (1952), Invaders From Mars (1953), and The Atomic Submarine (1960). He has also thrived in military characterizations in films like Sands of Iwo Jima (1949), Submarine Command (1951), and The Caine Mutiny (1954). His finest screen portrayal was as the psychopathic "hero" of Stanley Kramer's The Sniper (1952). Arthur Franz flourished as a character actor into the 1980s, retiring from films after appearing in That Championship Season (1982).

Gerald Mohr (Actor)

Born: June 11, 1914
Died: November 10, 1968

Trivia: While attending the medical school of Columbia University, Gerald Mohr was offered an opportunity to audition as a radio announcer. The upshot of this was a job at CBS as the network's youngest reporter. He moved to the Broadway stage upon landing a role in The Petrified Forest. Shortly afterward, he became a member of Orson Welles' Mercury Theatre. He was chosen on the basis of his voice alone for his first film role as a heavily disguised phony mystic in Charlie Chan at Treasure Island (1939). Following wartime service, the dark, roguish Mohr was selected to play thief-turned-sleuth the Lone Wolf in Columbia's B-picture series of the same name. His detective activities spilled over into radio, where Mohr starred as Philip Marlowe, and TV, where in 1954 he was cast as Bogart-like café owner Chris Storm on the final season of the syndicated Foreign Intrigue. Gerald Mohr died at the age of 54, shortly after playing a crooked gambler in Funny Girl (1968).

Richard Kiley (Actor)

Born: March 31, 1922
Died: March 05, 1999
Birthplace: Chicago, Illinois

Trivia: Richard Kiley trained for a theatrical career at the Barnum Dramatic School. Just before his World War II service, Kiley played small roles in several Chicago-based radio programs. He relocated to New York in 1947, making his Broadway debut in a 1953 revival of Shaw's Misalliance (which earned him a Theatre World Award). He spent the next two decades alternating in "straight" plays and musicals: his credits in the latter category include Kismet, Redhead, No Strings and, of course, his Tony-winning dual performance as Cervantes and Quixote in Man of La Mancha. In films from 1950, Kiley was often cast as a menace, never more so than in 1953's Pickup on South Street, in which he commits the heinously antisocial act of murdering Thelma Ritter. He was more sympathetic as the alcoholic teacher in The Blackboard Jungle (1955), whose faith in his abilities is irreparably damaged when his juvenile delinquent students wantonly destroy his valuable record collection. On television, Kiley starred in the original 1956 staging of Rod Serlings Patterns and was Emmy-nominated for his work in The Thorn Birds (1983), Do You Remember Love? (1988), Separate But Equal (1990),and his own starring series A Year in the Life (1989). He finally won the Emmy for a 1994 guest appearance in Picket Fences. Ironically, the most successful film endeavor with which Richard Kiley was associated was one in which only his voice is heard; he's the fellow who explains the cloning process in the opening animated sequences of Jurassic Park (1993).

Marie Windsor (Actor) .. Jean Darr

Born: December 11, 1922
Died: December 10, 2000

Trivia: A Utah girl born and bred, actress Marie Windsor attended Brigham Young University and represented her state as Miss Utah in the Miss America pageant. She studied acting under Russian stage and screen luminary Maria Ouspenskaya, supporting herself as a telephone operator between performing assignments. After several years of radio appearances and movie bits, Windsor was moved up to feature-film roles in 1947's Song of the Thin Man. She was groomed to be a leading lady, but her height precluded her co-starring with many of Hollywood's sensitive, slightly built leading men. (She later noted with amusement that at least one major male star had a mark on his dressing room door at the 5'6" level; if an actress was any taller than that, she was out.) Persevering, Windsor found steady work in second-lead roles as dance hall queens, gun molls, floozies, and exotic villainesses. She is affectionately remembered by disciples of director Stanley Kubrick for her portrayal of Elisha Cook's cold-blooded, castrating wife in The Killing (1956). Curtailing her screen work in the late '80s, Windsor, who is far more agreeable in person than onscreen, began devoting the greater portion of her time to her sizeable family. Because of her many appearances in Westerns (she was an expert horsewoman), Windsor has become a welcome and highly sought-after presence on the nostalgia convention circuit.

Frank Faylen (Actor) .. Inspecteur Anderson

Born: December 08, 1907
Died: August 02, 1985

Trivia: American actor Frank Faylen was born into a vaudeville act; as an infant, he was carried on stage by his parents, the song-and-dance team Ruf and Clark. Traveling with his parents from one engagement to another, Faylen somehow managed to complete his education at St. Joseph's Prep School in Kirkwood, Missouri. Turning pro at age 18, Faylen worked on stage until getting a Hollywood screen test in 1936. For the next nine years, Faylen played a succession of bit and minor roles, mostly for Warner Bros.; of these minuscule parts he would later say, "If you sneezed, you missed me." Better parts came his way during a brief stay at Hal Roach Studios in 1942 and 1943, but Faylen's breakthrough came at Paramount in 1945, where he was cast as Bim, the chillingly cynical male nurse at Bellevue's alcoholic ward in the Oscar-winning The Lost Weekend. Though the part lasted all of four minutes' screen time, Faylen was so effective in this unpleasant role that he became entrenched as a sadistic bully or cool villain in his subsequent films. TV fans remember Faylen best for his more benign but still snarly role as grocery store proprietor Herbert T. Gillis on the 1959 sitcom Dobie Gillis. For the next four years, Faylen gained nationwide fame for such catch-phrases as "I was in World War II--the big one--with the good conduct medal!", and, in reference to his screen son Dobie Gillis, "I gotta kill that boy someday. I just gotta." Faylen worked sporadically in TV and films after Dobie Gillis was canceled in 1963, receiving critical plaudits for his small role as an Irish stage manager in the 1968 Barbra Streisand starrer Funny Girl. The actor also made an encore appearance as Herbert T. Gillis in a Dobie Gillis TV special of the 1970s, where his "good conduct medal" line received an ovation from the studio audience. Faylen was married to Carol Hughes, an actress best-recalled for her role as Dale Arden in the 1939 serial Flash Gordon Conquers the Universe, and was the father of another actress, also named Carol.

Mabel Paige (Actor) .. La propriétaire

Born: January 01, 1880
Died: February 09, 1954

Trivia: Mabel Paige was virtually "born in a trunk"; both her parents were busy stock company actors. Paige made her own stage bow at age four, in a production of Van the Virginian. When Paige was 11, she was headlining her own Southern stock company; upon reaching adulthood, she established the Paige Theater in Jacksonville, FL. During her stay in Jacksonville, Paige appeared in a quartet of silent comedies, co-starring with her husband, Charles Ritchie, and up-and-coming Oliver Hardy. Retiring from show business in the 1920s to raise her family, Paige returned to acting on radio and on Broadway in the late '30s. In 1941, she was brought to Hollywood to re-create her role as an eccentric theatrical boarding house landlady in Out of the Frying Pan, which wouldn't be released until 1943, under the title Young and Willing. Because of the delayed release of this film, Paige's "official" talkie debut was as the Runyon-esque street peddler in Paramount's Lucky Jordan (1942). Usually heading the supporting cast, and generally cast as a tart-tongued "swinging senior," Paige was given one top-billed starring role in Republic's Someone to Remember (1943), playing a feisty old lady who resides in a college dormitory in hopes of being reunited with her long lost son. After completing her final film, Houdini (1953), Mabel Paige accepted brief roles in such TV series as Racket Squad and I Love Lucy, but illness and age had eroded her comic gifts.

Marlo Dwyer (Actor) .. May Nelson

Born: March 25, 1908
Died: September 28, 1999

Trivia: As Wilma Francis, this dark-haired starlet began her screen career as a chorus girl at Warner Bros. and later played second leads in quite a few potboilers. She is perhaps better known as Marlo Dwyer, the alias she used in such well-remembered low-budget thrillers as The Man With Two Lives (1942) and Missing Women (1951). In between her many screen assignments, Francis/Dwyer took time out to appear in the 1946 Broadway show Loco and later popped up on such television series as Stories of the Century and Cannon.

Geraldine Carr (Actor) .. Checker

Born: January 01, 1915
Died: January 01, 1954

Jay Novello (Actor) .. Pete

Born: August 22, 1904
Died: September 02, 1982
Birthplace: Chicago, Illinois, United States

Trivia: American actor Jay Novello began his film career with Tenth Avenue Kid (1938). Small, wiry and mustachioed, Novello found a home in Hollywood playing shifty street characters and petty thieves; during the war he displayed a friendlier image as a Latin-American type, appearing as waiters and hotel clerks in innumerable Good Neighbor films set south of the border. Once the war was over, it was back to those scraggly little characters, even in such period pieces as The Robe (1953), in which Novello played the unsavory slave dealer who sold Victor Mature to Richard Burton. Adept in TV comedy roles as meek milquetoasts and henpecked husbands, Novello was a particular favorite of Lucille Ball, who used the actor prominently in both I Love Lucy (first as the man duped by the "Ethel to Tillie" seance, then as a gondolier in a later episode) and The Lucy Show (as a softhearted safecracker). Jay Novello remained active in films into the '60s, as scurrilous as ever in such fantasy films as The Lost World (1960) and Atlantis, the Lost Continent (1961); he also stayed busy in such TV programs as The Mothers in Law, My Three Sons and McHale's Navy, playing a recurring role in the latter series as a resourceful Italian mayor.

Ralph Peters (Actor) .. Police Interlocutor

Born: January 01, 1902
Died: June 05, 1959

Trivia: Moon-faced American character actor Ralph Peters was active in films from 1937 to 1956. At first, Peters showed up in Westerns, usually cast as a bartender. He then moved on to contemporary films, usually cast as a bartender. During the 1940s, Ralph Peters could be seen in scores of Runyon-esque gangster roles like Asthma Anderson in Ball of Fire (1941) and Baby Face Peterson in My Kingdom for a Cook (1943).

Max Palmer (Actor) .. Chadwick

Born: January 01, 1927
Died: January 01, 1984

Sidney Miller (Actor) .. Intern

Born: January 01, 1922
Died: January 10, 2004

Trivia: American performer Sidney Miller started out as a child actor in such films as Penrod and Sam (1930), The Penguin Pool Murder (1932) and The Mayor of Hell (1933). Miller's pronounced ethnic features precluded stardom in a Hollywood that celebrated blonde, blue-eyed children, but he brought a welcome touch of urbanity to his supporting and minor roles. In 1938, Miller attained one of his better roles as Mo Kahn in Boys Town, in which he acted with his longtime friend Mickey Rooney. Again featured with Rooney in Babes in Arms, an unbilled Miller was allowed to play the piano in accompaniment to Rooney's makeshift stage show and even got to do a couple of celebrity imitations. In the '40s, Miller specialized in portraying nerdish college freshmen (notably in Columbia's Glove Slingers two-reelers) and streetwise intellectuals (as in The East Side Kids' Mr. Wise Guy). He also toured USO bases and hospitals in a pantomime-boxing sketch with fellow child performer Frank Coghlan Jr. With the advent of television, Miller gained a measure of fame as Donald O'Connor's accompanist/cohort in several of O'Connor's TV series and in his subsequent nightclub act. Miller gave up performing briefly in the mid '50s when he assumed the directing chores on the daily TV series Mickey Mouse Club; perhaps due to his own experiences as a child actor, Miller saw to it that the kids were treated professionally but with dignity, and also insisted that stage mothers be banned from the set. Later on in the '60s, Miller directed four grown-up adolescents on several episodes of the music/comedy tver The Monkees. Sidney Miller made an acting comeback in the early '70s with such films as Which Way to the Front? (as Hitler!) and Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex (But Were Afraid to Ask) (1972); Miller was also on hand as director for the syndicated New Mickey Mouse Club in 1977. Sidney Miller was married to Dorothy Green; their son is actor Barry Miller.

Hugh Latimer (Actor) .. Sam

Born: May 01, 1913
Died: June 12, 2006

Herb Latimer (Actor) .. Sam

Dani Sue Nolan (Actor) .. Sandy

Born: January 01, 1923
Died: August 03, 2002

Harry Cheshire (Actor) .. Mayor

Born: August 16, 1891

Harry V. Cheshire (Actor) .. Mayor

Born: January 01, 1892
Died: June 16, 1968

Trivia: American character actor Harry Cheshire was usually billed as "Pappy," and, like S. Z. "Cuddles" Sakall, he certainly lived up to his nickname, both visually and temperamentally. After a long career on stage and in radio, Cheshire came to films in 1940, appearing in many of Republic's "hillbilly" musicals and westerns. In larger-budgeted films, he was usually seen in minor roles as businessmen, ministers, justice of the peaces and the like. He played Dr. Campbell in the Yuletide classic It's a Wonderful Life (1946), the stage manager of the ill-fated Iroquois theater in The Seven Little Foys (1955) and the Elvis-hating mayor in Loving You (1957). He also showed up in a few of the Ma and Pa Kettle entries, and was afforded a rare opportunity at all-out villainy in Dangerous Mission (1954). TV western fans will remember Harry Cheshire as Judge Ben Wiley on the Gene Autry-produced weekly Buffalo Bill Jr. (1954).

Cliff Clark (Actor) .. Chief of Police

Born: January 01, 1893
Died: February 08, 1953

Trivia: After a substantial stage career, American actor Cliff Clark entered films in 1937. His movie credits ranged from Mountain Music to the 1953 Burt Lancaster/Virginia Mayo affair South Sea Woman. The weather-beaten Clark usually played surly city detectives, most frequently in RKO's Falcon series of the 1940s. In 1944, Clark briefly ascended from "B"s to "A"s in the role of his namesake, famed politico Champ Clark, in the 20th Century-Fox biopic Wilson. And in the 1956 TV series Combat Sergeant, Cliff Clark was second-billed as General Harrison.

Robert Foulk (Actor) .. Policeman

Born: January 01, 1908
Died: January 01, 1989

Trivia: Starting his Hollywood career in or around 1951, American actor Robert Foulk was alternately passive and authoritative in such westerns as Last of the Badmen (1957), The Tall Stranger (1957), The Left-Handed Gun (1958) and Cast a Long Shadow (1958). He remained a frontiersmen for his year-long stint as bartender Joe Kingston on the Joel McCrea TV shoot-em-up Wichita Town (1959) (though he reverted to modern garb as the Anderson family's next-door neighbor in the '50s sitcom Father Knows Best). In non-westerns, Foulk usually played professional men, often uniformed. Some of his parts were fleeting enough not to have any designation but "character bit" (vide The Love Bug [1968]), but otherwise there was no question Foulk was in charge: as a doctor in Tammy and the Doctor (1963), a police official in Bunny O'Hare (1971) or a railroad conductor in Emperor of the North (1973). Robert Foulk was given extensive screen time in the Bowery Boys' Hold That Hypnotist (1957), as the title character; and in Robin and the Seven Hoods (1964), playing straight as Sheriff Glick opposite such "Merrie Men" as Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin Sammy Davis Jr. and Bing Crosby.

Vern Martell (Actor) .. Policeman

Fred Hartman (Actor) .. Policeman

Don Michaelian (Actor) .. Policeman

Born: July 08, 1922

Renaldo Viri (Actor) .. Policeman

Kernan Cripps (Actor) .. Policeman

Born: July 08, 1886
Died: August 12, 1953

Trivia: Kernan Cripps was recruited from the Broadway stage to play Trask in the early talkie melodrama Alibi (1929). This proved to be Cripps' most extensive screen role; thereafter, he was consigned to bits and minor roles, usually as muscle-bound cops, bodyguards and bartenders. Looking quite comfortable in uniform, he essayed such roles as the umpire in the baseball comedy Ladies Day (1943) and the train conductor in the noir classic Double Indemnity (1944). Kernan Cripps also proved to be a handy man to have around in such action-packed fare as the Republic serial Federal Operator 99.

Rory Mallinson (Actor) .. Policeman

Born: January 01, 1913
Died: March 26, 1976

Trivia: Six-foot-tall American actor Rory Mallinson launched his screen career at the end of WW II. Mallinson was signed to a Warner Bros. contract in 1945, making his first appearance in Price of the Marines. In 1947, he began free-lancing at Republic, Columbia and other "B"-picture mills. One of his larger roles was Hodge in the 1952 Columbia serial Blackhawk. Rory Mallinson made his last film in 1963.

J. Anthony Hughes (Actor) .. Policeman

Born: May 02, 1904
Died: February 11, 1970

Trivia: A tough-looking younger supporting player from New York, J. Anthony Hughes (the "J" stood for "Joseph") usually played reporters, cops (often on motorcycles), prison inmates, and various less-than-desirable members of the underworld. He also turned up as one of Mrs. O'Leary's sons in In Old Chicago (1937), Captain Williams in Abbott & Costello's Buck Privates (1941), and the owner of the Dirty Dog saloon in Alias Jesse James (1959), his final credited film. Hughes' death in 1970 was attributed to alcohol and barbiturate poisoning.

George Cheseboro (Actor) .. Concessionaire

Born: July 29, 1888
Died: May 28, 1959

Trivia: With his articulate speech patterns and his wide range of facial nuances, George Cheseboro was a cut above the usual western supporting player. He began his career with a stock company in 1907; three years later, he toured the Orient with another acting troupe. Vaudeville experience followed, and then in 1915 Cheseboro made his first motion picture. With 1918's Hands Up, Cheseboro became a popular serial star, extending his repertoire to western leads after serving in World War I. Though his star had faded by the time talkies arrived, Cheseboro prospered as a character actor in the many "B" westerns clogging the market in the 1930s, usually playing a scuzzy henchman, barroom bully or lynch-happy bystander. One of the actor's most satisfying screen moments occurred in the 1950 Roy Rogers feature Trail of Robin Hood. The climax contrives to have several popular western stars ride on the scene to rescue movie-star-turned-rancher Jack Holt from rustlers. As Allan Lane, Rex Allen, Monte Hale et. al. greet each other effusively, Cheseboro rides up to offer his help--whereupon he is roundly snubbed. A little girl steps out of the crowd to reprimand Cheseboro for spending his cinematic career on the wrong side of the law. "I know, honey," replies George Cheseboro with a warm smile. "But after being beaten up by Jack Holt in twenty pictures, he's reformed me!"

John H. Bradley (Actor) .. Rookie Policeman

Danny Mummert (Actor) .. Boy

Born: February 20, 1934

Trivia: Child actor Danny Mummert made his screen debut in 1938 as pesky neighbor kid Alvin Fuddle in the first Blondie picture. Mummert literally grew up before the audience's eyes in the Blondie series, essaying Alvin in virtually all the series' entries including the last, 1950's Beware of Blondie. He made a few side trips to other films in the 1940s, notably as Donna Reed's younger brother in the 1946 Capra classic It's a Wonderful Life. After the cessation of the Blondie series, Danny Mummert showed up in a handful of teenaged roles, retiring from films after his appearance in 1952's Member of the Wedding.

George Dockstader (Actor) .. Mapes

Died: January 01, 1987

Leslie Sketchley (Actor) .. Flaherty

Born: January 01, 1901
Died: January 01, 1972

Carl Benton Reid (Actor) .. Liddell

Born: August 14, 1893
Died: March 16, 1973

Trivia: Carl Benton Reid determined he wanted to be an actor and nothing else while still in high school. Graduating from the drama department at Carnegie Tech, Reid worked for several seasons with the Cleveland Playhouse in the 1920s. He appeared in abbreviated Shakespearean productions at the Chicago World's Fair in 1933, then went on to a fruitful Broadway career. Reid was brought to Hollywood in 1941 to re-create his stage role of Oscar Hubbard in the film version of Lillian Hellman's play The Little Foxes. Trafficking in "heavy" roles for most of his film career, Reid's favorite film assignment was also his least villainous: Clem Rogers, father of the title character in 1953's The Story of Will Rogers. As busy on television as he'd previously been on-stage and in films, Carl Benton Reid was seen regularly as "the Man," a shadowy espionage chief, in the 1965 TV series Amos Burke, Secret Agent.

Byron Foulger (Actor) .. Pete Eureka

Born: January 01, 1900
Died: April 04, 1970

Trivia: In the 1959 Twilight Zone episode "Walking Distance," Gig Young comments that he thinks he's seen drugstore counterman Byron Foulger before. "I've got that kind of face" was the counterman's reply. Indeed, Foulger's mustachioed, bespectacled, tremble-chinned, moon-shaped countenance was one of the most familiar faces ever to grace the screen. A graduate of the University of Utah, Foulger developed a taste for performing in community theatre, making his Broadway debut in the '20s. Foulger then toured with Moroni Olsen's stock company, which led him to the famed Pasadena Playhouse as both actor and director. In films from 1936, Foulger usually played whining milksops, weak-willed sycophants, sanctimonious sales clerks, shifty political appointees, and the occasional unsuspected murderer. In real life, the seemingly timorous actor was not very easily cowed; according to his friend Victor Jory, Foulger once threatened to punch out Errol Flynn at a party because he thought that Flynn was flirting with his wife (Mrs. Foulger was Dorothy Adams, a prolific movie and stage character actress). Usually unbilled in "A" productions, Foulger could count on meatier roles in such "B" pictures as The Man They Could Not Hang (1939) and The Panther's Claw (1943). In the Bowery Boys' Up in Smoke (1957), Foulger is superb as a gleeful, twinkly-eyed Satan. In addition to his film work, Byron Foulger built up quite a gallery of portrayals on television; one of his final stints was the recurring role of engineer Wendell Gibbs on the popular sitcom Petticoat Junction.

Roy Maypole (Actor) .. TV Announcer

Paul Marion (Actor) .. Al

Grandon Rhodes (Actor) .. Mr. Fitzpatrick

Born: January 01, 1904
Died: January 01, 1987

Trivia: Actor Grandon Rhodes worked steadily on stage, television, and in over 40 films during his four-decade career. On television, he had recurring roles on Bonanza (as a doctor) and Perry Mason.

Kay Sharpe (Actor) .. Millie

Harlan Warde (Actor) .. Harper

Born: January 01, 1917
Died: March 01, 1980

Trivia: American general purpose actor Harlan Warde came to films in 1941 and remained before the cameras until the mid-'60s. During WWII, Warde played many a young man in uniform. Afterwards, he showed up in supporting roles as detectives, doctors, and ministers. One of Harlan Warde's last assignments was the recurring part of Sheriff Brannon on the TV Western series The Virginian (1962-1971).

John Brown (Actor) .. Wise

Born: January 01, 1903
Died: January 01, 1957

John Eldredge (Actor) .. Stonecroft

Born: August 30, 1904
Died: September 23, 1961

Trivia: Lean, lightly mustached general purpose actor John Eldredge came to films after several successful seasons with the New York Civic Repertory. Signed to a Warner Bros. contract in 1934, Eldredge became a handy man to have around whenever the script called for a weakling or cad. He played Bette Davis' good-for-nothing husband in Dangerous (1935), and later offered a variation of the theme as Joan Leslie's callow beau in High Sierra (1941). Only rarely, as in Oil for the Lamps of China (1935), was he permitted to play a character with substance and intestinal fortitude. Even after the expiration of his Warners contract, he specialized in such namby-pamby characterizations as Walter W. Walker III in Columbia's Eve Knew Her Apples (1944). As he grew older and grayer, Eldredge's characters often assumed a weary dignity; one of his more rewarding later assignments was the part of Captain Collins in the sci-fi "sleeper" I Married a Monster From Outer Space (1958). A busy TV performer in the 1950s, Eldredge could be seen playing slimy villains in virtually every other cop or adventure series of the era; on a more respectable note, he played the heroine's father in the 1954 syndicated sitcom Meet Corliss Archer. John Eldredge is one of the few character actors of Hollywood's Golden Era to be afforded his own Internet website, which can be found under the heading "The Man Without Qualities."

Patricia Toun (Actor) .. Woman

Helen Linstrom (Actor) .. Woman

Wanda Wirth (Actor) .. Woman

Luanna Scott (Actor) .. Woman

Kathleen O'Rielly (Actor) .. Woman

Elsa Weber (Actor) .. Woman

Helen Eliot (Actor) .. Woman

Aline Watson (Actor) .. Woman

Mary Holly (Actor) .. Woman

Alice Bartlett (Actor) .. Woman

Betty Shute (Actor) .. Woman

Gail Bonney (Actor) .. Woman

Born: January 01, 1900
Died: January 01, 1984

Sarah Selby (Actor) .. Woman

Born: January 01, 1906
Died: January 07, 1980

Trivia: Character actress Sarah Selby came to films by way of radio. In fact, her first screen assignment was a voice-over as one of the gossiping elephants in Disney's animated feature Dumbo (1941). She continued to play minor roles as nurses, housekeepers, and town gossips until her retirement in 1977; one of her last roles was Aunt Polly in a 1975 TV-movie adaptation of Huckleberry Finn. On television, Sarah Selby was seen on a semi-regular basis as storekeeper Ma Smalley on Gunsmoke (1955-1975).

Robin Raymond (Actor) .. Woman

Born: October 04, 1916

Trivia: Supporting actress, former lead, onscreen from 1941.

Marlene Lyden (Actor) .. Woman

Jean Willes (Actor) .. Woman

Born: April 15, 1923
Died: January 03, 1989
Birthplace: Los Angeles, California

Trivia: Actress Jean Willes spent the first ten years of her life shuttling up and down the West Coast; born in Los Angeles, she was raised in Salt Lake City, then moved with her family to Seattle. In 1943, she made her film debut in So Proudly We Hail. Shortly afterward, she was signed by Columbia Pictures, billed under her given name, Jean Donahue. She was busiest in Columbia's B-pictures, Westerns, and two-reel comedies, playing a statuesque brunette foil for such comedians as the Three Stooges, Sterling Holloway, Hugh Herbert, and Bert Wheeler. In 1947, she changed her billing to her married name, Jean Willes. Some of her most memorable feature-film roles included the hostess at the New Congress Club who delivers a bored, by-rote recitation of the club's rules in From Here to Eternity (1953); Kevin McCarthy's "zombie-fied" nurse in The Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956); one of Clark Gable's quartet of leading ladies in A King and Four Queens (1956); the lady lieutenant who chews out Andy Griffith in No Time for Sergeants (1958); and Ernest Borgnine's would-be-sweetheart in McHale's Navy (1964). Jean Willes also made some 400 TV appearances (often as a sharp-tongued, down-to-earth blonde) in such series as The Jack Benny Show, The Twilight Zone, Perry Mason, and The Beverly Hillbillies.

Kathleen O'malley (Actor) .. Woman

Born: March 31, 1924

John M. Pickard (Actor) .. Allen Martin

Born: June 25, 1913
Died: August 04, 1993

Trivia: A graduate of the Nashville Conservatory and the model for U.S. Navy recruiting posters, John Pickard entered films in 1946 following a four-year stint in the navy. Pickard played supporting roles in scores of Westerns and action dramas before reaching stardom as Captain Shank of the U. S. Cavalry on the NBC television Western series Boots and Saddles. Filmed entirely on location at Kanab, UT, the series enjoyed a two-season run (1957-1958) and also featured Gardner McKay as Lieutenant Kelly. Pickard earned a second stab at small-screen stardom in Gunslinger (1961) and played supporting roles in nearly every other popular television drama, from Gunsmoke to Simon and Simon. He was tragically killed by a rampant bull while vacationing on a family farm in his home state of Tennessee.

Adrienne Marden (Actor) .. Woman

Born: January 01, 1908
Died: January 01, 1978

Jessie Arnold (Actor) .. Woman

Born: December 03, 1884

Elizabeth Whitney (Actor) .. Nurse

John H. Algate (Actor) .. Man

Thomas Heidt (Actor) .. Man

Richard Freye (Actor) .. Man

Harry Bechtel (Actor) .. Man

Willis West (Actor) .. Man

Norman Nazarr (Actor) .. Man

Nolan Leary (Actor) .. Man

Born: January 01, 1888
Died: January 01, 1987

Trivia: American actor/playwright Nolan Leary made his stage debut in 1911; 60 years later, he was still appearing in small film and TV roles. From 1943 onward, Leary showed up in some 150 movies, mostly in bit roles. One of his juicier screen assignments was as the deaf-mute father of Lon Chaney James Cagney in Man of 1000 Faces (1958). In 1974, Nolan Leary showed up briefly as Ted Baxter's prodigal father on The Mary Tyler Moore Show.

Billy Wayne (Actor) .. Man

Born: February 12, 1897

Trivia: American small-part player Billy Wayne was active from 1935 to 1955. Wayne spent most of his film career at Universal, with a few side trips to Fox and Paramount. He was often cast as a chauffeur, usually an all-knowing or sarcastic one. Billy Wayne also played more than his share of cabbies, sailors, reporters, photographers, and assistant directors (vide W.C. Fields' Never Give a Sucker an Even Break).

Paul Dubov (Actor) .. Man

Born: October 10, 1918
Died: September 20, 1979

Trivia: Actor/writer Paul Dubov did his first film work as a Universal contract player in 1942. Never a leading man, Dubov was the quintessential utility player, able to convey characters of virtually any age or ethnic range. He played sizeable roles in such modestly budgeted sci-fiers as The She Creature (1956), Atomic Submarine (1959) and The Underwater City (1960). In the early 1960s, he was given his first screenwriting opportunities through the auspices of Four Star Productions, headed by Dick Powell. With his wife Gwen Bagni, Dubov created and developed the Four Star TV series Honey West (1965), starring Anne Francis as a gadget-happy private eye. Paul Dubov's final screenplay credit, again in collaboration with Gwen Bagni, was the 1979 TV miniseries Backstairs at the White House.

Charles Lane (Actor) .. Man

Born: January 26, 1905
Died: July 09, 2007

Trivia: Hatchet-faced character actor Charles Lane has been one of the most instantly recognizable non-stars in Hollywood for more than half a century. Lane has been a familiar figure in movies (and, subsequently, on television) for 60 years, portraying crotchety, usually miserly, bad-tempered bankers and bureaucrats. Lane was born Charles Levison in San Francisco in 1899 (some sources give his year of birth as 1905). He learned the ropes of acting at the Pasadena Playhouse during the middle/late '20s, appearing in the works of Shakespeare, Chekhov, and Noel Coward before going to Hollywood in 1930, just as sound was fully taking hold. He was a good choice for character roles, usually playing annoying types with his high-pitched voice and fidgety persona, encompassing everything from skinflint accountants to sly, fast-talking confidence men -- think of an abrasive version of Bud Abbott. His major early roles included the stage manager Max Jacobs in Twentieth Century and the tax assessor in You Can't Take It With You. One of the busier character men in Hollywood, Lane was a particular favorite of Frank Capra's, and he appeared in Mr. Deeds Goes to Town, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, Arsenic and Old Lace, It's a Wonderful Life -- with a particularly important supporting part in the latter -- and State of the Union. He played in every kind of movie from screwball comedy like Ball of Fire to primordial film noir, such as I Wake Up Screaming. As Lane grew older, he tended toward more outrageously miserly parts, in movies and then on television, where he turned up Burns & Allen, I Love Lucy, and Dear Phoebe, among other series. Having successfully played a tight-fisted business manager hired by Ricky Ricardo to keep Lucy's spending in line in one episode of I Love Lucy (and, later, the U.S. border guard who nearly arrests the whole Ricardo clan and actor Charles Boyer at the Mexican border in an episode of The Lucy-Desi Comedy Hour), Lane was a natural choice to play Lucille Ball's nemesis on The Lucy Show. Her first choice for the money-grubbing banker would have been Gale Gordon, but as he was already contractually committed to the series Dennis the Menace, she hired Lane to play Mr. Barnsdahl, the tight-fisted administrator of her late-husband's estate during the first season of the show. Lane left the series after Gordon became available to play the part of Mr. Mooney, but in short order he moved right into the part that came very close to making him a star. The CBS country comedy series Petticoat Junction needed a semi-regular villain and Lane just fit the bill as Homer Bedloe, the greedy, bad-tempered railroad executive whose career goal was to shut down the Cannonball railroad that served the town of Hooterville. He became so well-known in the role, which he only played once or twice a season, that at one point Lane found himself in demand for personal appearance tours. In later years, he also turned up in roles on The Beverly Hillbillies, playing Jane Hathaway's unscrupulous landlord, and did an excruciatingly funny appearance on The Odd Couple in the mid-'70s, playing a manic, greedy patron at the apartment sale being run by Felix and Oscar. Lane also did his share of straight dramatic roles, portraying such parts as Tony Randall's nastily officious IRS boss in the comedy The Mating Game (1959), the crusty River City town constable in The Music Man (1962) (which put Lane into the middle of a huge musical production number), the wryly cynical, impatient judge in the James Garner comedy film The Wheeler-Dealers (1963), and portraying Admiral William Standley in The Winds of War (1983), based on Herman Wouk's novel. He was still working right up until the late '80s, and David Letterman booked the actor to appear on his NBC late-night show during the middle of that decade, though his appearance on the program was somewhat disappointing and sad; the actor, who was instantly recognized by the studio audience, was then in his early nineties and had apparently not done live television in many years (if ever), and apparently hadn't been adequately prepped. He seemed confused and unable to say much about his work, which was understandable -- the nature of his character parts involved hundreds of roles that were usually each completed in a matter or two or three days shooting, across almost 60 years. Lane died at 102, in July 2007 - about 20 years after his last major film appearance.

Harry Harvey (Actor) .. Man

Born: January 10, 1901
Died: November 27, 1985

Trivia: Actor Harry Harvey Sr. started out in minstrel shows and burlesque. His prolific work in Midwestern stock companies led to film assignments, beginning at RKO in 1934. Harvey's avuncular appearance (he looked like every stage doorman named Pop who ever existed) won him featured roles in mainstream films and comic-relief and sheriff parts in B-westerns. His best known "prestige" film assignment was the role of New York Yankees manager Joe McCarthy in the 1942 Lou Gehrig biopic Pride of the Yankees. Remaining active into the TV era, Harry Harvey Sr. had continuing roles on two series, The Roy Rogers Show and It's a Man's World, and showed up with regularity on such video sagebrushers as Cheyenne and Bonanza.

John Butler (Actor) .. Man

Born: January 01, 1883
Died: January 01, 1967

Frank Sully (Actor) .. Man

Born: January 01, 1908
Died: December 17, 1975

Trivia: American character actor Frank Sully worked as a vaudeville and Broadway comedian before drifting into movies in 1935. Often typecast as musclebound, doltish characters, the curly-haired, lantern-jawed Sully was seen in a steady stream of hillbilly, GI and deputy sheriff roles throughout the '40s and '50s. He was prominently cast as Noah in John Ford's memorable drama The Grapes of Wrath (1940), one of the few times he essayed a non-comic role. During the '50s, Sully accepted a number of uncredited roles in such westerns as Silver Lode (1954) and was a member in good standing of the Columbia Pictures 2-reel "stock company," appearing as tough waiters, murderous crooks and jealous boyfriends in several short comedies, including those of the Three Stooges (Fling in the Ring, A Merry Mix-Up etc.) Frank Sully's last screen appearance was a bit as a bartender in Barbra Streisand's Funny Girl (1968).

Donald Kerr (Actor) .. Man

Born: January 01, 1891
Died: January 25, 1977

Trivia: Character actor Donald Kerr showed up whenever a gumchewing Runyonesque type (often a reporter or process server) was called for. A bit actor even in two-reelers and "B" pictures, Kerr was one of those vaguely familiar faces whom audiences would immediately recognize, ask each other "Who is that?", then return to the film, by which time Kerr had scooted the scene. The actor's first recorded film appearance was in 1933's Carnival Lady. Twenty-two years later, Donald Kerr concluded his career in the same anonymity with which he began it in 1956's Yaqui Drums.

Ralph Smiley (Actor) .. Tony Debiaci

Born: January 01, 1914
Died: January 01, 1977

John Pickard (Actor) .. Allen Martin

Born: June 25, 1913

Ralph Volkie (Actor) .. Suspect

Born: January 01, 1910
Died: January 01, 1987

Joseph Miksak (Actor) .. Detective

Born: April 16, 1913

Trivia: American actor Joseph Miksak played character roles on stage, radio, television, and occasionally in feature films. He also appeared in a few television commercials. In addition to acting, Miksak taught at San Francisco State University and is a speech pathologist. His son is opera singer Matthew Miksak.

Richard Glyer (Actor) .. Detective

Howard Negley (Actor) .. Detective

Born: April 16, 1898

Trivia: American general purpose actor Howard Negley made his screen bow as Nelson in 20th Century Fox's Smokey. Negley went on to reasonably prominent character parts in such B-pictures as Charlie Chan in the Trap (1947). For the most part, he played nameless bit parts as police captains, politicians, and reporters. Howard Negley was last seen as the Twentieth Century Limited conductor in Hitchcock's North by Northwest (1959).

David McMahon (Actor) .. Detective

Born: January 01, 1908
Died: January 01, 1972

Robert Malcolm (Actor) .. Detective

Born: September 23, 1918

Charles Watts (Actor) .. Detective

Born: October 30, 1912
Died: January 01, 1966

Trivia: Rotund, moon-faced character actor Charles Watts made a mini-career out of portraying glad-handing politicians, voluble businessmen and salesmen, crafty bankers, and cheerful or cynical parents, uncles, family friends, and other supporting players. He never had a starring role, or even a co-starring role, in a motion picture, but his physical presence and voice made for some memorable moments. Born in Clarksville, TN, in 1912, Watts was a high-school teacher -- handling both business law and drama -- for a time during his mid-twenties, working in Chattanooga. He worked in local theater and tent shows early in his career, and after World War II was also in demand for industrial shows. Watts didn't start doing movie or television appearances until 1950, and in that first year he played small, uncredited roles in such serious dramas as The Killer That Stalked New York (1950), as a mailman, and Storm Warning (1951), as a lunch-counter proprietor -- and somewhat larger parts, as a sheriff, in three episodes of The Lone Ranger. Over the next 16 years, he was seen in nearly 100 movies and television shows. His most prominent big-screen role was that of Judge (and later United States Senator) Oliver Whiteside in George Stevens' Giant (1956), where his rich, melodious voice and cheerful demeanor were put to extensive use. Watts was also an uncredited man in the crowd in Stuart Heisler's I Died a Thousand Times, a police sergeant in Philip Dunne's The View From Pompey's Head (both 1955), and Mr. Schultz, the salesman from the suspender company, in Billy Wilder's The Spirit of St. Louis (1957). Watts even found his way into two big-scale musicals -- Million Dollar Mermaid (1952) and Jumbo (1962) -- a decade apart. When he had a role with dialogue of any length, he was often used -- or so it seemed -- for his tendency to speechify, and to make even ordinary words stand out in relief. As active on television as he was in movies, Watts was familiar to several generations of young viewers for his role as Bill Green, the skeptical anti-superstition league leader in the Adventures of Superman episode "The Lucky Cat" (1955). He also played a small but key role in the Father Knows Best episode "24 Hours in Tyrantland," done on behalf of the Treasury Department to sell U.S. Savings Bonds, as the Andersons' skeptical neighbor, whose brief, cynical talk to son Bud finally pushes Jim Anderson (Robert Young) to straighten his kids out about the importance of savings bonds. Watts remained busy into the mid-'60s, and died of cancer in 1966.

Steve Darrell (Actor) .. Detective

Born: November 14, 1904
Died: August 14, 1970

Trivia: Veteran B-Western player Steven Darrell (aka J. Stevan Darrell) got the acting bug early, playing Abraham Lincoln in a grade-school tableau. He made his professional debut with the Galloway Players of Pittsfield, MA, and his West Coast bow with the famed Pasadena Playhouse in 1937. Darrell, who told an interviewer that he "enjoyed all kind of character roles, the more villainous the better," went on to menace nearly every cowboy hero around, from Roy Rogers to Whip Wilson, appearing in more than 100 films and over 200 television segments. Retiring after a 1967 episode of television's Daniel Boone, the veteran actor died from a brain tumor in 1970 at the age of 63.

Frank Shaw (Actor) .. Anna Potch

Died: October 25, 2006

Frank Kreig (Actor) .. Jailer

Victor Sen Yung (Actor) .. Waiter

Born: October 18, 1915
Died: November 09, 1980

Trivia: Chinese/American actor Victor Sen Yung would always be limited by stereotype in his selection of film roles, but it cannot be denied that he did rather well for himself within those limitations. Billed simply as Sen Yung in his earliest films, the actor was elevated to semi-stardom as Jimmy Chan, number two son of screen sleuth Charlie Chan. He first essayed Jimmy in 1938's Charlie Chan in Honolulu, replacing number one son Keye Luke (both Luke and Yung would co-star in the 1948 Chan adventure The Feathered Serpent). Not much of an actor at the outset, Yung received on-the-job training in the Chan films, and by 1941 was much in demand for solid character roles. With the absence of genuine Japanese actors during World War II (most were in relocation camps), Yung specialized in assimilated, sophisticated, but nearly always villainous Japanese in such films as Across the Pacific (1942). Remaining busy into the '50s, Yung co-starred in both the stage and screen versions of Rodgers and Hammerstein's Flower Drum Song. His longest-lasting assignment in the '60s was as temperamental cook Hop Sing on the TV series Bonanza. Victor Sen Yung died in his North Hollywood home of accidental asphyxiation at the age of 65.

Gaylord "Steve" Pendleton (Actor) .. Ambulance Man

Born: September 16, 1908

Trivia: The younger brother of comic actor Nat Pendleton, Gaylord "Steve" Pendleton entered films in 1923. He was usually cast as collegiate types (undergrads, military school cadets), with a few weaklings and villains thrown in. Fans of Bob Hope and Bing Crosby will remember Pendleton as tuxedoed "other man" Gordon Wycott in Road to Singapore (1940). Active in films until 1960, Gaylord Pendleton was generally confined to minor roles, with a handful of leads and second leads in serials and comedy two-reelers.

Clark Howat (Actor) .. Police Photographer

Born: January 22, 1918

Dudley Dickerson (Actor) .. Cleaner

Born: November 27, 1906
Died: September 23, 1968

Trivia: Like most African-American performers of his generation, comic actor Dudley Dickerson played more than his fair share of Pullman porters, bell-boys, waiters, and shoe-shine boys. But from the late '30s until the mid-'50s, Dickerson was the most prominent black actor working in two-reel comedies. Contracted by Columbia's short subject department, the roly-poly supporting comic brought a refreshing energy to his portrayals of, yes, Pullman porters, shoe-shine boys, and the always demeaning "frightened Negro domestic." Closer in type to Mantan Moreland than Stepin Fetchit, Dickerson was especially good opposite Charley Chase in His Bridal Fright (1940) and the Three Stooges in A-Plumbing We Will Go (1940). Dickerson played a Pullman porter once again in his final film The Alligator People (1959), after which he concentrated on television work. The veteran comic died of cerebral thrombosis.

Edgar Novack (Actor) .. Concessionaire

Mike Lally (Actor) .. Concessionaire

Born: June 01, 1900
Died: February 15, 1985

Trivia: Mike Lally started in Hollywood as an assistant director in the early 1930s. Soon, however, Lally was steadily employed as a stunt man, doubling for such Warner Bros. stars as James Cagney and Pat O'Brien. He also played innumerable bit roles as reporters, court stenographers, cops and hangers-on. Active until 1982, Mike Lally was frequently seen in functionary roles on TV's Columbo.

George Chesebro (Actor) .. Concessionaire

Born: July 29, 1888

Charles Marsh (Actor) .. Manager

Born: January 01, 1893
Died: January 01, 1953

Lillian Bond (Actor) .. Mrs. Fitzpatrick

Born: January 18, 1910
Died: January 26, 1991

Trivia: Born and educated in England (where she studied the "oratorical arts"), Lillian Bond won a beauty contest on her home turf in 1926. Shortly afterward, she came to New York, where she was hired for The Ziegfeld Follies. Brought to Hollywood as a "WAMPAS Baby Star" in 1932, Lillian was prominently cast in such films as The Old Dark House (1932) and Fireman Save My Child (1932), where her refined British accent provided a unique contrast to the gold-digging characters she was required to play. One of Lillian Bond's last sizeable roles was as Lily Langtry in the closing scenes of The Westerner (1940).

Joe Palma (Actor) .. Man

Born: June 05, 1904
Died: April 23, 1989

Trivia: Onscreen from 1938, balding American comedian Joe Palma (sometimes billed Joseph Palma) became a fixture in Columbia Pictures short subjects, earning a reported 55 dollars a day supporting everybody from "Woo-Woo" Hugh Herbert to Vera Vague to the Three Stooges. Along with Johnny Kascier and the veteran Al Thompson, Palma played bit parts and did stunt work in virtually all the Stooges comedies of the 1940s and early '50s. When Shemp Howard died suddenly of a heart attack in November 1955, Palma doubled him in four comedies before producer/director Jules White finally settled on Joe Besser as the third Stooge. The studio kept up the charade by filming Palma, as Shemp, from the back or having him carry heavy loads of props that completely obscured his face. Joe Palma outlasted the Columbia short subject department, retiring from screen work in 1965.

Barry Brooks (Actor) .. Attendant

Bruce Cameron (Actor) .. Motorcycle Policeman

Born: January 01, 1910
Died: January 01, 1959

Tommy Hawkins (Actor) .. Outfielder

Lucas Farara (Actor) .. Child

Al Hill (Actor) .. Bartender

Born: July 14, 1892
Died: January 01, 1954

Trivia: Albert Hill Jr. was the son of stage actor Al Hill (not to be confused with the Hollywood character actor of the same name). The younger Hill's screen credits were limited to two variations on the same basic role. He was seen as Rod, one of the residents of Boys' Town (1938), then as Pete, an inmate of Boys' Reformatory (1939).

Ralph O. Clark (Actor) .. Man Who Falls from Smokestack

Robert Day (Actor)

Born: September 11, 1922
Died: March 17, 2017
Birthplace: Sheen

Trivia: Entering the British film industry as an assistant cameraman while still a teenager, Day became a director of photography in the '40s. He began directing in the mid '50s, and is remembered most fondly for his comedies The Green Man with Alastair Sim and Two-Way Stretch with Peter Sellers, and for his horror tales with Boris Karloff, Grip of the Strangler (aka The Haunted Strangler) and Corridors of Blood. He came to specialize in adventure films in the '60s, including She and several Tarzan movies. He turned his efforts to television in the '70s and '80s, amassing an impressive list of credits that included shows like Dallas, Kojak and Matlock. Day died in 2017, at age 94.

Lilian Bond (Actor) .. Madame Fitzpatrick

Born: January 18, 1908

Walter Bacon (Actor)

Chet Brandenburg (Actor)

Born: October 15, 1897
Died: July 17, 1974