Trivia: Droll, moon-faced Scottish actor Alastair Sim was for the first decade of his adult life a professor of elocution. A late bloomer, Sim made his stage debut at age 30; in 1935, he broke into British films, appearing in no fewer than five pictures during his first year. In many of his early films, Sim portrayed slow-witted, regional types, notably the buffoonish sergeant in the Inspector Hornleigh mysteries of the late '30s. He achieved movie stardom during the 1940s, frequently portraying dithering eccentrics who weren't quite as distracted or disorganized as they seemed: the undercover detective in Cottage to Let (1943), the inquisitive Inspector Cockrill in Green for Danger (1946), and the befuddled birdwatcher in Hue and Cry (1947), for instance. Among his most fondly remembered roles of the 1950s were the taciturn moralist forced to break the law in order to qualify for an inheritance in Laughter in Paradise (1952); the enigmatic "voice of conscience" in An Inspector Calls (1954); the mild-mannered professional assassin in The Green Man (1956); his "drag" appearances as the snooty headmistress in the St. Trinians farces; and, of course, the title role in Scrooge (1951), his finest hour and a half. Seemingly growing funnier with each passing year, the 72-year-old Sim all but stole the show as a doddering cleric in the outrageous The Ruling Class (1972). Throughout his four-decade film career, Sim retained his ties to the theater, directing and starring in several of the works of playwright James Bridie and, by popular request, made frequent appearances as Captain Hook in Barrie's Peter Pan; Sim made his last stage appearance in 1975, the year before his death.

Trivia: Mischievious blonde British actress Joan Sims spent most of her formative film days playing cameo roles as brash cockneys. Often her characters had cultural pretensions, making her East End accent all the more amusing. Sims came to films from the stage and television in the early '50s. As her roles increased in size, so did her waistline, allowing her to play a wider variety (no pun intended) of comedy character parts. She joined up with the looney Carry On gang in 1960, remaining with the troupe for all but five of its films. She remained a regular with the comedy aggregation right through its tawdriest days in such non-epics as Carry on Emmanuelle (1978). When the Carry-On'ers packed it in after this film, so did Joan Sims, who for all her chumminess on camera was in reality a lonely and retiring person.

Trivia: A graduate of Britain's Brighton College, Michael Hordern entered the workaday world as a schoolteacher. Engaging in amateur theatricals in his off-hours, Hordern turned pro in 1937, making his film debut two years later. After serving in the Royal Navy from 1940 to 1945, Hordern returned to show business, matriculating into one of England's most delightful and prolific character actors. His extensive stage work included two Shakespearean roles that may as well have been for him: King Lear and The Tempest's Prospero. In films, Hordern appeared as Marley's Ghost in the 1951 Alastair Sim version of A Christmas Carol (1951), Demosthenes in Alexander the Great (1956), Cicero in Cleopatra (1963), Baptista in Zeffirelli's Taming of the Shrew (1967), Thomas Boleyn in Anne of a Thousand Days (1968), and Brownlow in the 1982 TV adaptation of Oliver Twist. Other significant movie credits include the lascivious Senex (he's the one who introduces the song "Everybody Ought to Have a Maid") in A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum (1966), a pathetic Kim Philby type in The Spy Who Came in From the Cold (1967), theatre critic George Maxwell (who has his heart cut out by looney actor Vincent Price) in Theatre of Blood (1973), and what many consider his finest film assignment, the dissipated, disillusioned journalist in England Made Me (1983). He also served as offscreen narrator for Barry Lyndon (1976) and Young Sherlock Holmes (1985). Michael Hordern was knighted in 1983, and a decade later published his autobiography, A World Elsewhere.