Trivia: Left fatherless at the age of four, American actress Lucille Ball developed a strong work ethic in childhood; among her more unusual jobs was as a "seeing eye kid" for a blind soap peddler. Ball's mother sent the girl to the Chautauqua Institution for piano lessons, but she was determined to pursue an acting career after watching the positive audience reaction given to vaudeville monologist Julius Tannen. Young Ball performed in amateur plays for the Elks club and at her high school, at one point starring, staging, and publicizing a production of Charley's Aunt. In 1926, Ball enrolled in the John Murray Anderson American Academy of Dramatic Art in Manhattan (where Bette Davis was the star pupil), but was discouraged by her teachers to continue due to her shyness. Her reticence notwithstanding, Ball kept trying until she got chorus-girl work and modeling jobs; but even then she received little encouragement from her peers, and the combination of a serious auto accident and recurring stomach ailments seemed to bode ill for her theatrical future. Still, Ball was no quitter, and, in 1933, she managed to become one of the singing/dancing Goldwyn Girls for movie producer Samuel Goldwyn; her first picture was Eddie Cantor's Roman Scandals (1933). Working her way up from bit roles at both Columbia Pictures (where one of her assignments was in a Three Stooges short) and RKO Radio, Ball finally attained featured billing in 1935, and stardom in 1938 -- albeit mostly in B-movies. Throughout the late 1930s and '40s, Ball's movie career moved steadily, if not spectacularly; even when she got a good role like the nasty-tempered nightclub star in The Big Street (1942), it was usually because the "bigger" RKO contract actresses had turned it down. By the time she finished a contract at MGM (she was dubbed "Technicolor Tessie" at the studio because of her photogenic red hair and bright smile) and returned to Columbia in 1947, she was considered washed up. Ball's home life was none too secure, either. She'd married Cuban bandleader Desi Arnaz in 1940, but, despite an obvious strong affection for one another, they had separated and considered divorce numerous times during the war years. Hoping to keep her household together, Ball sought out professional work in which she could work with her husband. Offered her own TV series in 1950, she refused unless Arnaz would co-star. Television was a godsend for the couple; and Arnaz discovered he had a natural executive ability, and was soon calling all the shots for what would become I Love Lucy. From 1951 through 1957, it was the most popular sitcom on television, and Ball, after years of career stops and starts, was firmly established as a megastar in her role of zany, disaster-prone Lucy Ricardo. When her much-publicized baby was born in January 1953, the story received more press coverage than President Eisenhower's inauguration. With their new Hollywood prestige, Ball and Arnaz were able to set up the powerful Desilu Studios production complex, ultimately purchasing the facilities of RKO, where both performers had once been contract players. But professional pressures and personal problems began eroding the marriage, and Ball and Arnaz divorced in 1960, although both continued to operate Desilu. Ball gave Broadway a try in the 1960 musical Wildcat, which was successful but no hit, and, in 1962, returned to TV to solo as Lucy Carmichael on The Lucy Show. She'd already bought out Arnaz's interest in Desilu, and, before selling the studio to Gulf and Western in 1969, Ball had become a powerful executive in her own right, determinedly guiding the destinies of such fondly remembered TV series as Star Trek and Mission: Impossible. The Lucy Show ended in the spring of 1968, but Ball was back that fall with Here's Lucy, in which she played "odd job" specialist Lucy Carter and co-starred with her real-life children, Desi Jr. and Lucie. Here's Lucy lasted until 1974, at which time her career took some odd directions. She poured a lot of her own money in a film version of the Broadway musical Mame (1974), which can charitably be labeled an embarrassment. Her later attempts to resume TV production, and her benighted TV comeback in the 1986 sitcom Life With Lucy, were unsuccessful, although Ball, herself, continued to be lionized as the First Lady of Television, accumulating numerous awards and honorariums. Despite her many latter-day attempts to change her image -- in addition to her blunt, commandeering off-stage personality -- Ball would forever remain the wacky "Lucy" that Americans had loved intensely in the '50s. She died in 1989.

Trivia: A musican, singer, songwriter, actor and television producer, Arnaz came to the US from Cuba when he was sixteen and became a professional bandleader of popular Latin music. He married actress Lucille Ball in 1940 and, in 1951, costarred with her in their long-running and successful television series, I Love Lucy, in which he played the charming but long-suffering husband/straightman, Ricky Ricardo, a successful nightclub owner and entertainer. Arnaz insisted that the series be photographed on 35mm film at a time when syndicated reruns were a thing of the future and a TV show was lucky to even be preserved as a 16mm kinescope. He hired top Hollywood cinematographer Karl Freund for the job and supervised the entire making of the series through his and Ball's company, Desilu Productions. Arnaz appeared in several films with and without Ball up until 1960 when they were divorced and she bought out his interest in Desilu. In 1982 he came out of retirement to play a corrupt mayor and father to Raul Julia in the film, The Escape Artist. He died of lung cancer in 1986.

Trivia: Scratchy-voiced American character actress who appeared in dozens of Hollywood vehicles following years on the Chautauqua and Orpheum circuits, Marjorie Main eventually worked with W.C. Fields on Broadway, where she appeared in several productions. Widowed in 1934, she entered films in 1937, repeating her Broadway stage role as the gangster's mother in Dead End (1937). Personally eccentric, Main had an almost pathological fear of germs. Best known among her close to 100 film appearances, most for MGM, are Stella Dallas (1937), Test Pilot (1938), Too Hot to Handle (1938), The Women (1939), Another Thin Man (1939), I Take This Woman (1940), Susan and God (1940), Honky Tonk (1941), Heaven Can Wait (1943), Meet Me in St. Louis (1944), Murder, He Says (1945), The Harvey Girls (1946), Summer Stock (1950), The Long, Long Trailer (1954), Rose Marie (1954), and Friendly Persuasion (1956). Starting with their appearances in The Egg and I (1947), which starred Fred MacMurray and Claudette Colbert, Main and Percy Kilbride became starring performers as Ma and Pa Kettle in a series of rural comedies.

Trivia: Actor Keenan Wynn was the son of legendary comedian Ed Wynn and actress Hilda Keenan, and grandson of stage luminary Frank Keenan. After attending St. John's Military Academy, Wynn obtained his few professional theatrical jobs with the Maine Stock Company. After overcoming the "Ed Wynn's Son" onus (his father arranged his first job, with the understanding that Keenan would be on his own after that), Wynn developed into a fine comic and dramatic actor on his own in several Broadway plays and on radio. He was signed to an MGM contract in 1942, scoring a personal and professional success as the sarcastic sergeant in 1944's See Here Private Hargrove (1944). Wynn's newfound popularity as a supporting actor aroused a bit of jealousy from his father, who underwent professional doldrums in the 1940s; father and son grew closer in the 1950s when Ed, launching a second career as a dramatic actor, often turned to his son for moral support and professional advice. Wynn's film career flourished into the 1960s and 1970s, during which time he frequently appeared in such Disney films as The Absent-Minded Professor (1960) and The Love Bug (1968) as apoplectic villain Alonso Hawk. Wynn also starred in such TV series as Troubleshooters and Dallas. Encroaching deafness and a drinking problem plagued Wynn in his final years, but he always delivered the goods onscreen. Wynn was the father of writer/director Tracy Keenan Wynn and writer/actor Edmund Keenan (Ned) Wynn.

Trivia: Born and educated in Utah, tall, piercing-eyed actor Moroni Olsen learned how to entertain an audience as a Chautaqua tent-show performer. In the 1920s, he organized the Moroni Olsen Players, one of the most prestigious touring stock companies in the business. After several successful seasons on Broadway, Olsen came to films in the role of Porthos in the 1935 version of The Three Musketeers. Though many of his subsequent roles were not on this plateau, Olsen nearly always transcended his material: In the otherwise middling Wheeler and Woolsey comedy Mummy's Boys (1936), for example, Olsen all but ignites the screen with his terrifying portrayal of a lunatic. Thanks to his aristocratic bearing and classically trained voice, Olsen was often called upon to play famous historical personages: he was Buffalo Bill in Annie Oakley (1935), Robert E. Lee in Santa Fe Trail (1940), and Sam Houston in Lone Star (1952). Throughout his Hollywood career, Moroni Olsen was active as a director and performer with the Pasadena Playhouse, and was the guiding creative force behind Hollywood's annual Pilgrimage Play.

Trivia: Character actor Bert Freed prepared for his theatrical career at Penn State. Freed made his first Broadway appearance in the forgotten 1942 production Johnny 2 X 4, then went on to such long-running efforts as Counterattack, One Touch of Venus and Annie Get Your Gun. In films from 1947, he was most often cast as big-city detectives and small-town sheriffs. Some of his more memorable movie roles include Sgt. Boulanger in Paths of Glory (1957), Christopher Jones' institutionalized father in Wild in the Streets (1968), and all-around meanie Stuart Posner in Billy Jack (1969). A busy television actor, Freed settled down to a weekly-series grind only once, as Rufe Ryker on the 1966 video version of Shane. Outside of his performing activities, Bert Freed was for many years a member of the Motion Picture Academy's Committee of Foreign Films.

Trivia: Lanky, long-nosed supporting actor Oliver Blake acted on stage under his given name of Oliver Prickett. From the mid-1920s onward, Blake was a fixture at the Pasadena Playhouse, where his brother Charles was managing director and his sister Maudie was a resident character actress. At the Playhouse, he starred in such productions as Charley's Aunt and also taught classes for first-year students. He entered films in 1941, and for his first few years before the camera was confined to bit roles like the Blue Parrot waiter in Casablanca (1942). One of his more visible screen assignments was as dour-faced Indian neighbor Geoduck in Universal's Ma and Pa Kettle series. An apparent favorite of comedian Bob Hope, Blake showed up in a variety of roles in several Hope farces, notably as the world's most emaciated Santa Claus in The Seven Little Foys (1955). On TV, Oliver Blake played the recurring role of Carl Dorf in the 1956 sitcom The Brothers.

Trivia: An alumnus of the Indiana University Law School, Herbert Vigran gave up the legal world to become an actor. Making his 1935 film debut in Vagabond Lady, Vigran had a few lean months after his first flurry of Hollywood activity, but began getting stage work in New York on the basis of a portfolio of photos showing him sharing scenes with several well-known movie actors (never mentioning that most of his film roles were bit parts). After his first Broadway success in Having Wonderful Time, Vigran returned to L.A., accepting small parts in movies while keeping busy with plenty of lucrative radio work; among his hundreds of radio assignments was the title character on the wartime sitcom "The Sad Sack." In films, the harsh-voiced, heavily eyebrowed Vigran could usually be seen as brash reporters and Runyon-esque hoodlums; his favorite role was the rumpled private eye in the 1954 Dick Powell/Debbie Reynolds comedy Susan Slept Here. During the 1950s, Vigran was most active in TV, essaying half a dozen bad guy roles on the Superman series and appearing regularly as Monte the Bartender on the Dante's Inferno episodes of the anthology series Four Star Playhouse. In the early '70s, Herb Vigran found time during his hectic movie and voice-over schedule to play the recurring role of Judge Brooker on Gunsmoke.

Trivia: Character actor Karl Lukas was most famous for playing "Lindstrom" opposite Henry Fonda in the Broadway version of Mister Roberts(1948). While he spent most of his four-decade-long career on stage, he also dabbled in television and the occasional feature film. Lukas made his screen debut playing the "inspector" in the Lucille Ball/Desi Arnaz comedy The Long Long Trailer (1954). His other film credits include The Watermelon Man (1970), The Shaggy D.A. (1976), and Memories of Me (1988). Lukas also guest-starred on such television series as Family Affair, St. Elsewhere, and Little House on the Prairie.

Trivia: Character actor Emmett Vogan appeared in films from 1934 through 1956. A peppery gentleman with steel-rimmed glasses and an executive air, Vogan appeared in hundreds of films in a variety of small "take charge" roles. Evidently he had a few friends in the casting department of Universal Pictures, inasmuch as he showed up with regularity in that studio's comedies, serials and B-westerns. Comedy fans will recognize Emmett Vogan as the engineer partner of nominal leading man Charles Lang in W.C. Fields' Never Give a Sucker an Even Break (1941), and as the prosecuting attorney in the flashback sequences of Laurel and Hardy's The Bullfighters (1945).

Trivia: Edgar Dearing was a full-time Los Angeles motorcycle cop in the '20s when he began accepting small roles in the 2-reel comedies of Hal Roach. These roles hardly constituted a stretch, since he was often cast as a motorcycle cop, principally because he supplied his own uniform and cycle; the best-remembered of these "performances" was in Laurel and Hardy's Two Tars (1928). Hal Roach cameraman George Stevens liked Dearing's work, and saw to it that the policeman-cum-actor was prominently featured in Stevens' RKO Wheeler & Woolsey features Kentucky Kernels (1934) and The Nitwits (1935). When he moved into acting full-time in the '30s, Dearing was still primarily confined to law-enforcement bit roles, though he achieved fourth billing as a tough drill sergeant in the Spencer Tracy/Franchot Tone feature They Gave Him a Gun (1937). Dearing's performing weight was most effectively felt in the Abbott and Costello features of the '40s, where he provided a formidable authority-figure foe for the simpering antics of Lou Costello (notably in the "Go Ahead and Sing" routine in 1944's In Society). Dearing also showed up in a number of '40s 2-reelers; he was particularly amusing as strong man Hercules Jones (a "Charles Atlas" takeoff) in the 1948 Sterling Holloway short Man or Mouse? Edgar Dearing's last screen assignment was a prominent role as townsman Mr. Gorman in Walt Disney's Pollyanna (1960).

Trivia: From 1930 to 1934, American actress Ruth Warren was a contractee at Fox Studios. A slight woman with wide eyes and pursed lips, Warren essayed sizeable character roles in such Fox films as Lightnin' (1930), Six Cylinder Love (1931), and Zoo in Budapest (1933). She played bit roles from 1935 until her retirement in 1958. Laurel and Hardy buffs will remember Ruth Warren as the gossip-dispensing Mrs. Addlequist in Our Relations (1936).

Trivia: Character actor Howard McNear made a name for himself on network radio in a vast array of characterizations, from snivelling murderers to dapper French detectives. McNear's best-known radio role was as Doc on Gunsmoke, which ran from 1955 to 1962; his spin on the character was slightly more ghoulish than the interpretation offered by Milburn Stone on television. In films from 1954, the bespectacled, mustachioed McNear was usually cast as a querulous fussbudget. He was spotlighted as Dr. Dompierre in Otto Preminger's Anatomy of a Murder (1959), and was prominently featured in three Billy Wilder comedies, Irma La Douce (1963), Kiss Me Stupid (1964) and The Fortune Cookie (1966). He appeared with frequency on TV in the 1950s and 1960s, often as a foil to such comedians as Jack Benny and Burns and Allen. Howard McNear's most beloved TV characterization was as Mayberry barber Floyd Lawson on The Andy Griffith Show; when McNear suffered a debilitating stroke in 1967, Griffith kept him on the payroll, re-writing the scripts to allow "Floyd" to be seated and non-ambulatory without drawing undue attention to McNear's affliction.

Trivia: Husky, bushy-mustached, frequently unkempt Canadian actor Jack Kruschen appeared steadily on radio from 1938 onward. He began playing small film roles in 1949, often cast as minor villains and braying bullies. He became a cult favorite after playing one of the three earliest victims (the Hispanic one) of the Martian death ray in George Pal's War of the Worlds (1953). His larger film roles included MGM mogul Louis B. Mayer in the Carol Lynley version of Harlow (1965), and the remonstrative physician neighbor of Jack Lemmon in Billy Wilder's The Apartment (1960); the latter assignment copped a "Best Supporting Actor" Oscar nomination for Kruschen. A tireless TV performer, Kruschen has guested in a variety of roles on most of the top video offerings, and was a regular in the 1977 sitcom Busting Loose, playing the father of Adam Arkin. Relatively inactive after 1980, Jack Kruschen made a welcome return in PBS' 1993 adaptation of Arthur Miller's The American Clock.

Trivia: Beloved by television audiences for her roles on such popular series as Mr. Ed and Topper, actress Edna Skinner was also a renowned authority on the subject of fly-fishing. A native of Washington, D.C., whose show-business start came in vaudeville and club performances throughout Manhattan, Skinner had a voice which became a familiar sound to radio listeners thanks to numerous early character voices and sound effects. She was later hired as a singer by Rodgers & Hammerstein and took over the role of Ado Annie (originally essayed by Celeste Holm) in the composers' Broadway production of Oklahoma!, which ultimately became her breakout role. After organizing war bond rallies during WWII, Skinner played the role of neighbor Kay Allison in Mr. Ed. In the realm of feature films, the actress appeared in Easy to Love (1953) and Friendly Persuasion (1956) in addition to a handful of other films. Outside of her film work, the longtime angler wrote more than 280 articles for fishing and sports magazines and dedicated much of her free time to fly-fishing. Skinner died of heart failure August 8, 2003, in North Bend, OR. She was 82.

Trivia: American character actress Dorothy Neumann was long a stage performer before making her film bow in 1948's Sorry, Wrong Number. She spent the next two decades in small roles, usually playing clerks, domestics, ladies' club chairpersons and grandmothers. One of Ms. Neumann's best remembered assignments was her uncredited role in The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951), as the suspicious housekeeper of Einstein-like scientist Sam Jaffe, who is confronted in Jaffe's den by benevolent space alien Michael Rennie. Frequently on television, Dorothy Neumann was seen in the regular role of Miss Mittelman on the now-forgotten 1965 sitcom Hank.

Trivia: American singer and character actor Howard Wright was best known for starring in stage musicals following WWI. Much later, he began performing on radio, television, and in movies of the '50s and '60s.

Trivia: Tiny, bright-eyed character actress Ida Moore made her first film in 1925, but did not actively pursue moviemaking until well into her sixties. Nearly always cast as a twinkly grandma or man-hungry spinster, Ms. Moore enlivened the proceedings of many a film comedy of the 1940s and 1950s. Her most ardent fans treasure those moments wherein Moore was cast against type as a crook or confidence trickster (vide the 1949 Bowery Boys comedy Hold That Baby). Ida Moore somewhat surprisingly became a cult figure to film buffs of the 1960s, warranting a write-up in the encyclopedic The American Movies Reference Book: The Sound Era, a 1968 volume that curiously couldn't find room for several other deserving "Moores" like Victor and Colleen.

Trivia: Trained at Iowa's Morningside College for a career as a musician, American actor Emory Parnell spent his earliest performing years as a concert violinist. He worked the Chautauqua and Lyceum tent circuits for a decade before leaving the road in 1930. For the next few seasons, Parnell acted and narrated in commercial and industrial films produced in Detroit. Determining that the oppurtunities and renumeration were better in Hollywood, Emory and his actress wife Effie boarded the Super Chief and headed for California. Endowed with a ruddy Irish countenance and perpetual air of frustration, Parnell immediately landed a string of character roles as cops, small town business owners, fathers-in-law and landlords (though his very first film part in Bing Crosby's Dr. Rhythm [1938] was cut out before release). In roles both large and small, Parnell became an inescapable presence in B-films of the '40s; one of his better showings was in the A-picture Louisiana Purchase, in which, as a Paramount movie executive, he sings an opening song about avoiding libel suits! Parnell was a regular in Universal's Ma and Pa Kettle film series (1949-55), playing small town entrepreneur Billy Reed; on TV, the actor appeared as William Bendix' factory foreman The Life of Riley (1952-58). Emory Parnell's last public appearance was in 1974, when he, his wife Effie, and several other hale-and-hearty residents of the Motion Picture Country Home and Hospital were interviewed by Tom Snyder.

Trivia: In films from 1932, American actress Ruth Lee was an expert at portraying middle-America matriarchs. One of Lee's largest roles was as the "June Cleaver" mother in the classic 1939 promotional feature The Middleton Family at the World's Fair. From 1939 to 1943, Lee was a regular in the Robert Benchley one-reelers at both MGM and Paramount, superbly cast as the gently bellicose Mrs. Benchley. Ruth Lee remained active until 1962, when she essayed a minor role in Sergeants Three.

Trivia: Though he started in films around 1924, beefy American character actor Richard Alexander was regarded in studio press releases as a comparative newcomer when he was cast in the 1930 antiwar classic All Quiet on the Western Front. Alexander played Westhus, who early in the film orders novice soldier Lew Ayres to get out of his bunk. After this promising assignment, Alexander was soon consigned to bit parts, usually in roles calling for dumb brute strength; for example, Alexander is the bouncer at the violent Geneva "peace conference" in Wheeler and Woolsey's Diplomaniacs (33). Though familiar for his dozens of villainous roles in westerns, Alexander is best-known for his kindly interpretation of the noble Prince Barin in the Flash Gordon serials of the 1930s. Towards the end of his career, Richard Alexander became active with the executive board of the Screen Actors Guild, representing Hollywood extras.

Trivia: Tall, stony-faced, white-maned Frank Gerstle is most familiar to the baby-boomer generation for his many TV commercial appearances. In films from 1949 through 1967, Gerstle was generally cast as military officers, no-nonsense doctors and plainclothes detectives. His screen roles include Dr. MacDonald in DOA (1949), "machine" politician Dave Dietz in Slightly Scarlet (1954) and the district attorney in I Mobster (1959). Some of his more sizeable film assignments could be found in the realm of science fiction, e.g. Killers From Space (1953), The Magnetic Monster (1953) and Wasp Woman (1960). A prolific voiceover artist, Frank Gerstle pitched dozens of products in hundreds of TV and radio ads, and was a semi-regular on the 1961 prime-time cartoon series Calvin and the Colonel.

Trivia: Peter Leeds played straight man to some of the most popular comedians of the mid- to late 20th century, including Bob Hope, Lucille Ball, Milton Berle, Carole Burnett, and Johnny Carson. Leeds was also a fine dramatic actor. He spent most of his 40-plus-year career on television, appearing an astonishing 8,000 times on situation comedies and variety shows. Leeds has appeared on Broadway, in feature films, and on over 3,000 radio shows and was a popular voice-over artist. A native of Bayonne, NJ, Leeds received his training at the Neighborhood Playhouse. He made his film debut with a bit part in Public Enemies (1941). Leeds hooked up with Bob Hope in 1954 for a television special and continued working with Hope on specials and 14 U.S.O. tours through 1991. During the '70s, Leeds spent five years as the president of the Los Angeles chapter of AFTRA and later served on the actors' union's national and local Board of Directors. In 1992, AFTRA repaid his many years of service with its highest honor, the Gold Card. Leeds later served on the Board of Governors for the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences. Leeds died of cancer on November 12, 1996, at age 79.

Trivia: In films from 1941, American character actor Norman Leavitt spent much of his career in uncredited bits and supporting roles. Leavitt can briefly be seen in such "A" pictures of the 1940s and 1950s as The Inspector General (1949) and Harvey (1950). His larger roles include Folsom in the 1960 budget western Young Jesse James. Three Stooges fans will immediately recognize Norman Leavitt from The Three Stooges in Orbit (1962), in which he player scientist Emil Sitka's sinister butler--who turned out to be a spy from Mars!

Trivia: Bespectacled American actor Walter Baldwin was already a venerable stage performer at the time he appeared in his first picture, 1940's Angels over Broadway. With a pinched Midwestern countenance that enabled him to portray taciturn farmers, obsequious grocery store clerks and the occasional sniveling coward, Baldwin was a familiar (if often unbilled) presence in Hollywood films for three decades. Possibly Baldwin's most recognizable role was as Mr. Parrish in Sam Goldwyn's multi-Oscar winning The Best Years of Our Lives (1946), for which the actor received thirteenth billing. He also had a prime opportunity to quiver and sweat as a delivery man whose truck is commandeered by homicidal prison escapee Robert Middleton in The Desperate Hours (1955). Seemingly ageless, Walter Baldwin made his last film appearance three years before his death in 1969's Hail Hero.