Trivia: Paris-born actress Claudette Colbert was brought to New York at the age of seven by her banker father. She planned an art career after high school graduation, studying at the Art Student's League. Attending a party with actress Anne Morrison, the 18-year-old was offered a three-line bit in Morrison's new play The Wild Westcotts. That ended her art aspirations, and Colbert embarked on a stage career in 1925, scoring her first big critical success in the 1926 Broadway production of The Barker, in which she played a duplicitous snake charmer. One year later, the actress made her first film at Long Island's Astoria studio, For the Love of Mike (1927), but the film was unsuccessful and she enjoyed neither the experience nor her young director, Frank Capra. So back she went to Broadway, returning to films during the talkie revolution in The Hole in the Wall (1929), which was also the movie-speaking debut of Edward G. Robinson. Once again, Colbert disliked film acting; but audiences responded to her beauty and cultured voice, so she forsook the stage for Hollywood. Colbert's popularity (and salary) skyrocketed after she was cast as "the wickedest woman in history," Nero's unscrupulous wife Poppaea, in the Biblical epic The Sign of the Cross (1932). Colbert expanded her range as a street-smart smuggler's daughter in I Cover the Waterfront and in the pioneering screwball comedy Three-Cornered Moon (both 1933), but it was for a role she nearly refused that the actress secured her box-office stature. Virtually every other actress in Hollywood had turned down the role of spoiled heiress Ellie Andrews in Columbia's It Happened One Night (1934), and when director Frank Capra approached an unenthusiastic Colbert, she wearily agreed to appear in the film on the conditions that she be paid twice her normal salary and that the film be completed before she was scheduled to go on vacation in four weeks. Colbert considered the experience one of the worst in her life -- until the 1935 Academy Awards ceremony, in which It Happened One Night won in virtually all major categories, including a Best Actress Oscar for her. Colbert spent the next decade alternating between comedy and drama, frequently in the company of her most popular co-star, Fred MacMurray. She gained a reputation of giving 110 percent of her energies while acting, which compensated for her occasional imperviousness and her insistence that only one side of her face be photographed (which frequently necessitated redesigning movie sets just to accommodate her phobia about her "bad side"). Colbert remained a top money-making star until her last big hit, The Egg and I (1947), after which she lost some footing, partly because of producers' unwillingness to meet her demands that (under doctor's orders) she could only film a short time each day (her doctor was her husband). She hoped to jump-start her career in the role of Margo Channing in All About Eve, but those plans were squelched when she injured her back and had to relinquish the character to Bette Davis. Traveling the usual "fading star" route, Colbert made films in Europe and a budget Western in the U.S. before returning triumphantly to Broadway, first in 1956's Janus, then in the long-running 1958 comedy Marriage Go Round. The actress also appeared on television, although reportedly had trouble adjusting to live productions. In 1961, she returned to Hollywood as Troy Donahue's mother in Parrish. It would be her last film appearance until the 1987 TV movie, The Two Mrs. Grenvilles -- in which she far outclassed her material. Still a prominent figure in the Hollywood hierarchy, Colbert retired to her lavish home in California, where she frequently entertained her old friends Ronald and Nancy Reagan. Claudette Colbert died in 1996 in Bridgetown, Barbados, at the age of 92.

Trivia: Though his popularity rose and fell during his long career, American actor Don Ameche, born Dominic Amici in Kenosha, WI, was one of Hollywood's most enduring stars. He began his acting career in college, where he had been studying law. He had a natural gift for acting and got his first professional opportunity when he filled in for a missing lead in the stock theater production of Excess Baggage. After that, he forewent his law career and became a full-time theatrical actor. He also worked briefly in vaudeville beside Texas Guinan. Following that he spent five years as a radio announcer. He made his screen debut in a feature short, Beauty at the World's Fair (1933). Following this, Ameche moved to Hollywood where he screen-tested with MGM; they rejected him. In 1935, he managed to obtain a small role in Clive of India and this resulted in his signing a seven-year contract with 20th Century Fox. Ameche, with his trim figure, pencil-thin mustache, and rich baritone voice was neither a conventionally handsome leading man nor the dashing hero type. Instead he embodied a wholesomeness and bland honesty that made him the ideal co-lead and foil for the more complex heroes. He played supporting roles for many years before he came into his own playing the leads in light romances and musicals such as Alexander's Rag Time Band (1938), where he demonstrated a real flair for romantic comedy. In 1939, Ameche played the title role in the classic biopic The Story of Alexander Graham Bell. The film was a tremendous success and for years afterward, fans quipped that it was he, not Bell who invented the telephone; for a time the telephone was even called an "ameche." He continued working steadily through the mid-'40s and then his film career ground to an abrupt halt. He returned to radio to play opposite Frances Langford in the long-running and popular series The Bickersons. During the 1950s he worked occasionally on television.He began appearing infrequently in low-budget films during the '60s and '70s, but did not make a comeback proper until 1983, when he was cast as a replacement for the ailing Ray Milland in the comedy Trading Places. The success of this film brought Ameche back in demand. In 1985, the aging actor received a Best Supporting Actor Oscar for his work as a retirement home Casanova in Cocoon. He followed up that role to even more acclaim in 1988's David Mamet-Shel Silverstein concoction Things Change, in which Ameche played the role of a impish shoemaker chosen to take the fall for a mob hit. Before his death in 1993, Ameche rounded out his career with brief but memorable performances in Oscar (1991) and Corrina, Corrina (1994).

Trivia: American actor Robert Cummings studied for an engineer's degree at several colleges before concentrating his energies at the American School of Dramatic Arts. After returning from a trip to England, he became possessed with the notion that he could best conquer Hollywood if he passed himself off as a British actor, so for a brief uncomfortable period he called himself Blade Stanhope Conway. The best he could get was an extra part in Laurel and Hardy's Sons of the Desert (1933); after that, he renamed himself Brice Hutchens, under which name he played on Broadway with a magic act in Ziegfeld Follies of 1934. As plain old Robert Cummings, the actor made his film debut in Paramount's So Red the Rose (1935), in which he was killed off in the Civil War before the first reel was over. He finally got a meaty hysteria scene as a condemned prisoner in The Accusing Finger (1936) -- but thereafter played almost nothing but comedy at Paramount. Stronger dramatic roles came Cummings' way in Kings Row (1941) and Hitchcock's Saboteur (1942). By the early 1950s, the formerly callow Cummings had matured enough to be convincing as the "other man" in the Hitchcock thriller Dial M for Murder (1954), and in the difficult role of the compassionate Juror Number 8 in the original 1955 TV production of Twelve Angry Men. He also gained valuable off-camera prestige as an officer in the Air Force Reserves (he'd been a licensed pilot since age 17). Still, Cummings' main reputation in this decade rested on two lighthearted TV situation comedies: My Hero, which lasted 39 episodes in 1952, and the more famous Bob Cummings Show, a.k.a. Love That Bob, which ran from 1955 through 1958. Playing glamour photographer Bob Collins in the latter series, Cummings perpetuated public TV reputation as an eternally youthful ladies' man (though the biggest laughs went to supporting actress Ann B. Davis (as Schultzy). Newspaper and magazine articles of the period made much of Cummings' seeming agelessness, which the actor chalked up to careful dieting, plenty of vitamins and exercise. That anyone would find it unusual that a 50-year-old man could retain his looks and sex appeal is astonishing in these days of such over-50 movie idols as Harrison Ford and Sean Connery, but such was the state of press agentry in the Love That Bob days. Two later TV series didn't do so well for Cummings, nor did his performances in such 1960s films as The Carpetbaggers (1963); still, critics would marvel at how well the now sixtyish actor was "holding up." Unfortunately, Cummings fell victim to Parkinson's disease in the 1980s, and the once-virile actor deteriorated rapidly both in mind and body before his death at age 82. In his prime, however, Cummings was one of those rare film actors who managed to retain his fame and popularity even though he made relatively few films of importance.

Trivia: A former pianist and radio actress, Rita Johnson was on Broadway from 1935 and in films from 1937. An extraordinarily versatile performer, Johnson managed to play virtually every sort of role open to an actress of above-average beauty and intelligence in the 1940s. Portraying standard heroines in such films as Edison the Man (1940) and My Friend Flicka (1943), Johnson brought far more warmth and humanity to the parts than the scripts provided. She was equally as persuasive as haughty murderess Julia Farnsworth in Here Comes Mr. Jordan (1941) and as the hissable "other woman" in films like The Major and the Minor (1944). It is positively criminal that no Academy Award came Johnson's way for her astonishing portrayal of the born-to-be-killed wife of unscrupulous Robert Young in 1947's They Won't Believe Me. Johnson's film career came to a screeching halt after a 1948 accident that required delicate brain surgery; thereafter, her screen time was extremely limited, in keeping with her radically reduced mobility and powers of concentration. Fifty-three-year-old Rita Johnson died of a brain hemorhage in her Hollywood home in 1965.

Trivia: When his parents resisted his desire to become an actor, George Coulouris ran away from his home in Manchester, England. After training at London's Central School of Dramatic Art, Coulouris made his first professional stage appearance in 1925 with the Old Vic. In 1929, Coulouris came to Broadway, where he would remain throughout the 1930s save for a brief appearance in the 1933 Hollywood film Christopher Bean. The tall, aristocratic-sounding Coulouris joined Orson Welles's Mercury Theatre, appearing in Welles's 1937 modern-dress version of Julius Caesar. He also appeared as the Rockefeller-like Walter Parks Thatcher in Welles's landmark film Citizen Kane (1941) (for publicity purposes, Kane was advertised as Coulouris' cinematic debut). Most of Coulouris' subsequent film roles were villainous in nature; in 1944, he was Oscar-nominated for his performance as a hateful fascist in Watch on the Rhine, and in 1945 he was top-billed for his role as an incognito Nazi in The Master Race. A victim of Parkinson's disease, George Coulouris still managed to remain active until 1980, when he made his farewell screen appearance in The Long Good Friday.

Trivia: Supporting actress, onscreen from the '40s.

Trivia: Pixieish stage and screen soubrette Queenie Smith was a Broadway favorite in the 1920s, most notably as star of the 1925 George Gershwin musical Tip Toes (1925). She came to films in the mid-1930s, playing virtually the same role in two period musicals, the 1935 Bing Crosby/W.C. Fields concoction Mississippi and the 1936 version of Jerome Kern and Oscar Hammerstein's Show Boat. As her youthful rambunctiousness matured into middle-aged feistiness, Queenie was seen in dozens of tiny roles, usually cast as a nosy neighbor, landlady, housekeeper or (in later years) retirement-home resident. In 1970, she and nonagenarian actor Burt Mustin were teamed as a long-married couple on the TV comedy-sketch series The Funny Side. One of the last and best of Queenie Smith's film roles was the scatological scrabble player in the 1978 Goldie Hawn-Chevy Chase vehicle Foul Play (1978).

Trivia: In the first ten years of his life, Raymond Burr moved from town to town with his mother, a single parent who supported her little family by playing the organ in movie houses and churches. An unusually large child, he was able to land odd jobs that would normally go to adults. He worked as a ranch hand, a traveling tinted-photograph salesman, a Forest service fire guard, and a property agent in China, where his mother had briefly resettled. At 19, he made the acquaintance of film director Anatole Litvak, who arranged for Burr to get a job at a Toronto summer-stock theater. This led to a stint with a touring English rep company; one of his co-workers, Annette Sutherland, became his first wife. After a brief stint as a nightclub singer in Paris, Burr studied at the Pasadena Playhouse and took adult education courses at Stanford, Columbia, and the University of Chunking. His first New York theatrical break was in the 1943 play Duke in Darkness. That same year, his wife Sutherland was killed in the same plane crash that took the life of actor Leslie Howard. Distraught after the death of his wife, Burr joined the Navy, served two years, then returned to America in the company of his four-year-old son, Michael Evan Burr (Michael would die of leukemia in 1953). Told by Hollywood agents that he was overweight for movies, the 340-pound Burr spent a torturous six months living on 750 calories per day. Emerging at a trim 210 pounds, he landed his first film role, an unbilled bit as Claudette Colbert's dancing partner in Without Reservations (1946). It was in San Quentin (1946), his next film, that Burr found his true metier, as a brooding villain. He spent the next ten years specializing in heavies, menacing everyone from the Marx Brothers (1949's Love Happy) to Clark Gable (1950's Key to the City) to Montgomery Clift (1951's A Place in the Sun) to Natalie Wood (1954's A Cry in the Night). His most celebrated assignments during this period included the role of melancholy wife murderer Lars Thorwald in Hitchcock's Rear Window (1954) and reporter Steve Martin in the English-language scenes of the Japanese monster rally Godzilla (1956), a characterization he'd repeat three decades later in Godzilla 1985. While he worked steadily on radio and television, Burr seemed a poor prospect for series stardom, especially after being rejected for the role of Matt Dillon on Gunsmoke on the grounds that his voice was too big. In 1957, he was tested for the role of district attorney Hamilton Burger in the upcoming TV series Perry Mason. Tired of playing unpleasant secondary roles, Burr agreed to read for Burger only if he was also given a shot at the leading character. Producer Gail Patrick Jackson, who'd been courting such big names as William Holden, Fred MacMurray, and Efrem Zimbalist Jr., agreed to humor Burr by permitting him to test for both Burger and Perry Mason. Upon viewing Burr's test for the latter role, Perry Mason creator Erle Stanley Gardner jumped up, pointed at the screen, and cried "That's him!" Burr was cast as Mason on the spot, remaining with the role until the series' cancellation in 1966 and winning three Emmies along the way. Though famous for his intense powers of concentration during working hours -- he didn't simply play Perry Mason, he immersed himself in the role -- Burr nonetheless found time to indulge in endless on-set practical jokes, many of these directed at his co-star and beloved friend, actress Barbara Hale. Less than a year after Mason's demise, Burr was back at work as the wheelchair-bound protagonist of the weekly detective series Ironside, which ran from 1967 to 1975. His later projects included the short-lived TVer Kingston Confidential (1976), a sparkling cameo in Airplane 2: The Sequel (1982), and 26 two-hour Perry Mason specials, lensed between 1986 and 1993. Burr was one of the most liked and highly respected men in Hollywood. Fiercely devoted to his friends and co-workers, Burr would threaten to walk off the set whenever one of his associates was treated in a less than chivalrous manner by the producers or the network. Burr also devoted innumerable hours to charitable and humanitarian works, including his personally financed one-man tours of Korean and Vietnamese army bases, his support of two dozen foster children, and his generous financial contributions to the population of the 4,000-acre Fiji island of Naitauba, which he partly owned. Despite his unbounded generosity and genuine love of people, Burr was an intensely private person. After his divorce from his second wife and the death from cancer of his third, Burr remained a bachelor from 1955 until his death. Stricken by kidney cancer late in 1992, he insisted upon maintaining his usual hectic pace, filming one last Mason TV movie and taking an extended trip to Europe. In his last weeks, Burr refused to see anyone but his closest friends, throwing "farewell" parties to keep their spirits up. Forty-eight hours after telling his longtime friend and business partner Robert Benevides, "If I lie down, I'll die," 76-year-old Raymond Burr did just that -- dying as he'd lived, on his own terms.

Trivia: Over her long career, Lillian Bronson played numerous small character roles in a wide variety of films. The New York City native made her screen debut in The Happy Land (1943) starring Don Ameche. After many film appearances, she branched out into television, working as a regular on shows like Kings Row, where she played Grandma from 1955 to 1956, and Date With the Angels between 1957 and 1958. Bronson also guest starred on numerous television shows, especially Westerns like The Rifleman, Have Gun Will Travel, and The Guns of Will Sonnett.

Trivia: The older brother of actor Frank Morgan, Ralph Morgan graduated from Columbia University with a law degree, but chucked the stuffy world of jurisprudence for the more exciting (to him) vocation of journeyman actor. So successful was Morgan in stock and on Broadway that his kid brother, Frank, was encouraged to give the theater a try -- and as a result became even more famous than Ralph. The elder Morgan made his film bow in 1931, playing leading roles in such productions as Strange Interlude (1932) and Rasputin and the Empress (1933) before settling into secondary character parts. It was Morgan's distinction to play more "surprise" killers in more murder mysteries than virtually any other actor in Hollywood (to list the titles of these mysteries would give away the surprise -- if any). Among the actor's off-camera interests were politics and labor relations; he was one of the founders and charter members of the Screen Actors Guild. He was also the first President of the SAG. Ralph Morgan was the father of Claudia Morgan, an actress best known for her portrayal of Nora Charles on the "Thin Man" radio series.

Trivia: Although he is perhaps best remembered as the emcee of Walt Disney's The Mickey Mouse Club television show, for which he also wrote the opening theme, curly-haired actor/composer Jimmy Dodd (sometimes given as Jimmie Dodd) played sidekick Lullaby Joslin in the last six entries in Republic Pictures' long-running "Three Mesqueteers" series, replacing Rufe Davis and joining veterans Tom Tyler and Bob Steele. Dodd, however, was probably more city than prairie and spent the remainder of his career playing G.I.'s, elevator boys, and messengers. The people at Disney paid rather more attention to his composing of such tunes as "Rosemary,", "Ginny," and "Meet Me in Monterey" when they signed him to the Mickey Mouse Club, which ran from 1955-1959. Retired and living in Honolulu, Dodd was scheduled to star in yet another Disney venture, The Jimmie Dodd Aloha Show, when he succumbed to a fatal heart attack.

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).

Trivia: Scrawny supporting actor Syd Saylor managed to parlay a single comic shtick -- bobbing his adam's apple -- into a four-decade career. He starred in several silent two-reel comedies from 1926 through 1927, then settled into character parts. During the late '30s and early '40s, Saylor frequently found himself in B-Westerns as the comical sidekick for many a six-gun hero, though he seldom lasted very long in any one series. Syd Saylor was still plugging away into the 1950s, playing "old-timer" bits in such films as Cheaper by the Dozen (1950) and Jackpot (1950), and such TV series as Burns and Allen and Alfred Hitchcock Presents.

Trivia: Supporting actor Murray Alper's earliest screen credit was 1930's The Royal Family of Broadway. For the next 35 years, Alper was an inescapable movie presence, playing dozens of cab drivers, bookies, cops and GIs. One of his few credited appearances in an "A" picture was in The Maltese Falcon; he plays the friendly cabbie who drives Sam Spade (Humphrey Bogart) on a mid-film wild goose chase. Frequently seen in comedies, Alper showed up in eight Bowery Boys farces of the 1940s and 1950s, and was prominently featured in the Three Stooges' Trick Dicks (1953) and The Outlaws is Coming (1965, as Chief Crazy Horse!). One of Murray Alper's least characteristic roles was the judo instructor in Jerry Lewis' The Nutty Professor (1963).

Trivia: In the '30s, tall, sandy-haired, deep-voiced American actor Eddie Dunn was frequently cast as a laconic police officer in the 2-reelers of comedy producers Hal Roach and Mack Sennett. The actor's feature-film roles consisted mainly of small-town bullies, prison guards, bartenders, military policemen and private detectives. Eddie Dunn was last seen in a fleeting role as a sheriff in the 1950 MGM musical Summer Stock.

Trivia: African-American actress Lillian Randolph is best remembered for starring in the radio series "Beulah." On radio, she also worked in "Amos 'n' Andy" and "The Great Gildersleeve." In film, Randolph played character roles in many films including those in the Great Gildersleeve series of the '40s.

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: A former dentist, Robert Dudley began appearing in small supporting roles on screen around 1917 (he played a clerk in the first screen version of the mystery-comedy Seven Keys to Baldpate) and would appear in literally hundreds of films until his retirement in 1951. Often cast as jurors, shopkeepers, ticket agents, and court clerks, the typical Dudley character displayed a very short fuse. Of all his often miniscule performances, one in particular stands out: the apartment-hunting "Wienie King" in Preston Sturges' hilarious The Palm Beach Story (1942).

Trivia: American actor James Flavin was groomed as a leading man when he first arrived in Hollywood in 1932, but he balked at the glamour treatment and was demonstrably resistant to being buried under tons of makeup. Though Flavin would occasionally enjoy a leading role--notably in the 1932 serial The Airmail Mystery, co-starring Flavin's wife Lucille Browne--the actor would devote most of his film career to bit parts. If a film featured a cop, process server, Marine sergeant, circus roustabout, deckhand or political stooge, chances are Jimmy Flavin was playing the role. His distinctive sarcastic line delivery and chiselled Irish features made him instantly recognizable, even if he missed being listed in the cast credits. Larger roles came Flavin's way in King Kong (1933) as Second Mate Briggs; Nightmare Alley (1947), as the circus owner who hires Tyrone Power; and Abbott and Costello Meet the Killer, Boris Karloff (1949), as a long-suffering homicide detective. Since he worked with practically everyone, James Flavin was invaluable in later years as a source of on-set anecdotes for film historians; and because he evidently never stopped working, Flavin and his wife Lucille were able to spend their retirement years in comfort in their lavish, sprawling Hollywood homestead.

Trivia: The faces of most movie extras are unmemorable blurs in the public's memory. Not so the elegant, statuesque Bess Flowers, who was crowned by appreciative film buffs as "Queen of the Hollywood Dress Extras." After studying drama (against her father's wishes) at the Carnegie Inst of Technology, Flowers intended to head to New York, but at the last moment opted for Hollywood. She made her first film in 1922, subsequently appearing prominently in such productions as Hollywood (1922) and Chaplin's Woman of Paris (1923). Too tall for most leading men, Flowers found her true niche as a supporting actress. By the time talkies came around, Flowers was mostly playing bits in features, though her roles were more sizeable in two-reel comedies; she was a special favorite of popular short-subject star Charley Chase. Major directors like Frank Lloyd always found work for Flowers because of her elegant bearing and her luminescent gift for making the people around her look good. While generally an extra, Flowers enjoyed substantial roles in such films as Frank Capra's It Happened One Night (1934), Gregory La Cava's Private Worlds and Leo McCarey's The Awful Truth (1937). In 1947's Song of the Thin Man, the usually unheralded Flowers was afforded screen billing. Her fans particularly cherish Flowers' bit as a well-wisher in All About Eve (1950), in which she breaks her customary screen silence to utter "I'm so happy for you, Eve." Flowers was married twice, first to Cecil B. DeMille's legendary "right hand man" Cullen Tate, then to Columbia studio manager William S. Holman. After her retirement, Bess Flowers made one last on-camera appearance in 1974 when she was interviewed by NBC's Tom Snyder.