Trivia: Oxford-educated Leslie Banks embarked upon a stage career at London's Vaudeville Theatre in 1911. During combat in World War I, Banks' face was scarred and partially paralyzed. Returning to the theater at war's end, Banks was able to use his disfigurement to his advantage, favoring the unblemished side of his face when playing comedy, then conversely utilizing his "marked" side when essaying villains. Some of his more celebrated stage roles included Captain Hook in Peter Pan, Petruchio in Taming of the Shrew, the capricious title character in Springtime for Henry, and the kindly, doddering lead in the original 1938 staging of Goodbye Mr. Chips. He also distinguished himself as a theatrical producer and director. Banks entered films in 1932, starring as diabolical "people hunter" Count Zaroff in The Most Dangerous Game (1932). Leslie Banks continued making occasional film appearances until 1950, most notably as the reluctant hero of Hitchcock's 1934 version of The Man Who Knew Too Much, and the Chorus in Olivier's brilliant Henry V (1945).

Trivia: Making her first stage appearance at age 17, British actress Edna Best scored a substantial hit in the original 1926 staging of The Constant Nymph. Her most frequent stage co-star was Herbert Marshall, to whom she was married from 1928 until 1940; their daughter Sarah Marshall became an actress herself in the 1950s. Ms. Best's New York stage triumphs included the starring roles in Shaw's Captain Brassbound's Conversion and Maugham's Jane. Infrequently seen in films, Edna Best's most memorable movie assignment included the mother of kidnap victim Nova Pilbeam in Hitchcock's The Man Who Knew Too Much (1934) and the wife of prodigal violinist Leslie Howard in Intermezzo (1939).

Trivia: With the possible exception of Edward G. Robinson, no actor has so often been the target of impressionists as the inimitable, Hungarian-born Peter Lorre. Leaving his family home at the age of 17, Lorre sought out work as an actor, toiling as a bank clerk during down periods. He went the starving-artist route in Switzerland and Austria before settling in Germany, where he became a favorite of playwright Bertolt Brecht. For most of his first seven years as a professional actor, Lorre employed his familiar repertoire of wide eyes, toothy grin, and nasal voice to invoke laughs rather than shudders. In fact, he was appearing in a stage comedy at the same time that he was filming his breakthrough picture M (1931), in which he was cast as a sniveling child murderer. When Hitler ascended to power in 1933, Lorre fled to Paris, and then to London, where he appeared in his first English-language film, Hitchcock's The Man Who Knew Too Much (1934). Although the monolingual Lorre had to learn his lines phonetically for Hitchcock, he picked up English fairly rapidly, and, by 1935, was well equipped both vocally and psychologically to take on Hollywood. On the strength of M, Lorre was initially cast in roles calling for varying degrees of madness, such as the love-obsessed surgeon in Mad Love (1935) and the existentialist killer in Crime and Punishment (1935). Signed to a 20th Century Fox contract in 1936, Lorre asked for and received a chance to play a good guy for a change. He starred in eight installments of the Mr. Moto series, playing an ever-polite (albeit well versed in karate) Japanese detective. When the series folded in 1939, Lorre freelanced in villainous roles at several studios. While under contract to Warner Bros., Lorre played effeminate thief Joel Cairo in The Maltese Falcon (1941), launching an unofficial series of Warner films in which Lorre was teamed with his Falcon co-star Sidney Greenstreet. During this period, Lorre's co-workers either adored or reviled him for his wicked sense of humor and bizarre on-set behavior. As far as director Jean Negulesco was concerned, Lorre was the finest actor in Hollywood; Negulesco fought bitterly with the studio brass for permission to cast Lorre as the sympathetic leading man in The Mask of Dimitrios (1946), in which the diminutive actor gave one of his finest and subtlest performances. In 1951, Lorre briefly returned to Germany, where he directed and starred in the intriguing (if not wholly successful) postwar psychological drama The Lost One. The '50s were a particularly busy time for Lorre; he performed frequently on such live television anthologies as Climax; guested on comedy and variety shows; and continued to appear in character parts in films. He remained a popular commodity into the '60s, especially after co-starring with the likes of Vincent Price, Boris Karloff, and Basil Rathbone in a series of tongue-in-cheek Edgar Allan Poe adaptations for filmmaker Roger Corman. Lorre's last film, completed just a few months before his fatal heart attack in 1964, was Jerry Lewis' The Patsy, in which, ironically, the dourly demonic Lorre played a director of comedy films.

Trivia: Frank Vosper began the 1930s as an up-and-coming major playwright as well as a recognized, talented actor on-stage and, later, onscreen. He was the subject of interviews and articles, and had the world at his feet. As the decade wore on, he gained the favor of such directors as Alfred Hitchcock and Michael Powell onscreen. The son of a doctor, Vosper came from a family that, in the preceding 200 years at least, had not a single member of the acting profession in its ranks. He was bitten by the acting bug as a boy, however, to the degree that his devotion of time and energy to amateur theatricals destroyed his academic record. At 17, in lieu of college, he joined the F.R. Benson and then the Ben Greet Players, and played small roles with each company. He served in uniform during the latter part of World War I and was lucky enough to make it into an entertainment unit run by Captain Basil Dean, which only reinforced his devotion to the theater. On returning to civilian life, Vosper made his West End debut as a footman in The Young Visitors. He spent two years in a company that toured the Far Eastern part of the British Empire and surrounding locales, including India and China. Vosper essayed over 130 roles in his repertory, but found himself increasingly trapped in character parts, specifically as old men. He had to break out of that trap before his serious acting career began, and at that point he also started writing plays. His first, The Combined Maze (1927), became a cause célèbre for critics as an outstanding piece of modern theater, and over the next few years he authored several more critical successes in everything from thrillers to comedies. At the same time, Vosper continued acting on stage, playing such roles as Orlando to Edith Evans' Rosalind in As You Like It, and started appearing in movies as well. Vosper played the assassin in Alfred Hitchcock's The Man Who Knew Too Much (1934) and that same year had a starring role in the best of Michael Powell's early low-budget thrillers, Red Ensign (1934). By 1936, Vosper bided fair to have a major career for years to come, when tragedy struck in the wake of his latest success. In late 1936, Vosper went to Jamaica on a vacation that subsequently took him to New York, to assist in mounting an American production of one of his plays, Love From a Stranger (adapted from Agatha Christie's work). On his way back to England on the liner Paris, on the last night before arrival, Vosper attended a party in the quarters of British beauty queen Muriel Oxford. Sometime late that night, he was heard to suggest that he was tired and wished to leave the party as unobtrusively as possible. He was last seen standing at a window on the veranda outside Oxford's room, and then was missing...his body was found off Plymouth days later. An inquiry led to a ruling of death-by-misadventure, though no one can explain why Vosper, who did not drink to excess, and was not depressed so far as anyone knew, and wasn't given to irresponsible behavior, would have climbed out the window of the veranda to get to his room. The death and the mystery surrounding it consumed the legitimate British press for weeks before a judgment of accidental death was delivered. As a coda to his foreshortened career, three film adaptations of Vosper's plays -- including two different movies based on Love From a Stranger -- were produced for the screen.

Trivia: 15-year-old Nova Pilbeam was already a seasoned stage veteran when she made her screen debut as the youthful kidnap victim in Alfred Hitchcock's The Man Who Knew Too Much (1934). She went on to deliver a superb performance as the ill-fated Lady Jane Grey in Nine Days a Queen (1934). Her first significant adult role was in Young and Innocent (1937), again for Hitchcock. Nova Pilbeam retired in 1939 upon marrying director Pen Tennyson, returning to the screen after Tennyson's death in WWII.

Trivia: Over and above his near-lifetime association with Paris' Comedie Francaise, French leading man Pierre Fresnay managed to squeeze in quite a few memorable film appearances between 1915 and 1960. He became a film star on both sides of the Atlantic when he appeared as Marius in all three of Marcel Pagnol's "Marseilles Trilogy" (Marius [1931], Fanny [1932] and Cesar [1936]). In 1934, he played Armand in La Dame aux Camelias; Camille was portrayed by Fresnay's wife, Yvonne Printemps. Three years later, he appeared as Captain de Boeldieu in Jean Renoir's antiwar masterpiece La Grande Illusion (1937). One of Pierre Fresnay's few English-speaking roles was as the first-reel murder victim in Hitchcock's The Man Who Knew Too Much (1956). In 1940, Pierre Fresnay turned film director for the first and last time with Le Duel.

Trivia: Trained at the Royal Academy of Arts and Music in Vienna, Celia Lovsky gained popularity on the Austrian and German stage in the 1920s. When Hitler assumed power in 1933, Lovsky left for France in the company of her then-husband, actor Peter Lorre. Resettling in Hollywood in 1935, she put her career on hold during her marriage to Lorre, returning to films after their divorce (they remained friends and confidants until Lorre's death in 1964). From 1947 until her retirement in the 1960s, Lovsky was most often seen in maternal roles: George Sanders' mother in Death of a Scoundrel (1956), James Cagney's mother in Man of 1000 Faces (1957), Sal Mineo's mother in The Gene Krupa Story (1959), and so on. Star Trek devotees will remember Celia Lovsky as the Queen of Vulcana in the 1967 episode "Amok Time."

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: 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: 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: 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: He escaped working in the impoverished mining town of his youth when he won scholarships to a Swiss school and Oxford. In 1927 he debuted onstage in both London and New York, and by the early '30s he was among the most well-respected leading men of his day; meanwhile he branched out into playwrighting and direcing. The best known of his plays is The Corn is Green (1938), which won the New York Drama Critics Award as best foreign play in 1941. He authored the autobiographies George (1961) and Emlyn (1973). He debuted onscreen in 1932 and for a decade he was very busy in films; after 1942 his film work was sporadic.