Trivia: British actor Herbert Marshall was born to a theatrical family, but initially had no intentions of a stage career himself. After graduating from St. Mary's College in Harrow, Marshall became an accounting clerk, turning to acting only when his job failed to interest him. With an equal lack of enthusiasm, Marshall joined a stock company in Brighton, making his stage debut in 1911; he ascended to stardom two years later in the evergreen stage farce, Brewster's Millions. Enlisting in the British Expeditionary Forces during World War I, Marshall was severely wounded and his leg was amputated. While this might normally have signalled the end of a theatrical career, Marshall was outfitted with a prosthesis and determined to make something of himself as an actor; he played a vast array of roles, his physical handicap slowing him down not one iota. In tandem with his first wife, actress Edna Best, Marshall worked on stage in a series of domestic comedies and dramas, then entered motion pictures with Mumsie (1927). His first talking film was the 1929 version of Somerset Maugham's The Letter, which he would eventually film twice, the first time in the role of the heroine's illicit lover, the second time (in 1940) as the cuckolded husband. With Ernst Lubitsch's frothy film Trouble in Paradise (1932), Marshall became a popular romantic lead. Easing gracefully into character parts, the actor continued working into the 1960s; he is probably best remembered for his portrayal of author Somerset Maugham in two separate films based on Maugham's works, The Moon and Sixpence (1942) and The Razor's Edge (1946). Alfred Hitchcock, who'd directed Marshall twice in films, showed the actor to good advantage on the Hitchcock TV series of the 1950s, casting Marshall in one episode as a washed-up matinee idol who wins a stage role on the basis of a totally fabricated life story. Marshall hardly needed to embroider on his real story of his life: he was married five times, and despite his gentlemanly demeanor managed to make occasional headlines thanks to his rambunctious social activities.

Trivia: British actress Norah Baring starred in films during the late '20s through the early '30s.

Trivia: Burly British stage actor (and ex-bank clerk) Edward Chapman was brought to films by Alfred Hitchcock, who cast Chapman prominently in Juno and the Paycock (1929), Murder (1930) and The Skin Game (1931). Sci-fi aficionados will remember Chapman for his portrayal of two generations of the Passworthy family in Things to Come (1936) and the pompous Major Grigsby in The Man Who Could Work Miracles (1937). Chapman put his career on hold for World War II service with the RAF, then returned to character roles as stern politicians, baleful bank presidents, unfeeling factory owners and the like; he was also a useful starched-shirt aristocrat, vide his performance as the vengeful Queensbury in Oscar Wilde (1960). Edward Chapman's final screen appearance was in 1970's The Man Who Haunted Himself.

Trivia: The son of an English manufacturer, Miles Mander had dabbled in several careers before making his screen bow as an extra in 1918. He'd been a farmer, a novelist, a playwright, a stage director and a cinema exhibitor -- and, if all the stories can be believed, a fight promoter, horse and auto racer, and aviator. He was billed as Luther Miles in his earliest film appearances, reserving his real name for his screenwriting credits. In Hollywood from 1935 on, the weedy, mustachioed Mander made a specialty of portraying old-school-tie Britishers who, for various reasons, had fallen into disgrace. He was never more unsavory than when he portrayed master criminal Giles Conover in the 1945 "Sherlock Holmes" entry The Pearl of Death. Mander also showed up in two separate versions of The Three Musketeers, playing Louis XIII in the 1935 version and Richelieu in the 1939 edition (he also played Aramis in the Musketeers sequel The Man in the Iron Mask [1939]). Shortly after wrapping up his scenes in Imperfect Lady (1947), 57-year-old Miles Mander died of a sudden heart attack.

Trivia: Donald Calthrop came to acting as a birthright, descended as he was from 19th-century theatrical impresario Dion Boucicault. He made his theatrical debut in 1906 at age 18, and his screen debut in 1918. The gaunt, sharp-featured Calthrop, with his intense stare -- resembling his better-known younger contemporaries John Laurie and Duncan Macrae -- was most often cast as villains, and is probably best-remembered today for his sinister portrayals in Alfred Hitchcock's early work. He skulked his way through Blackmail (1929) as well as Hitchcock's non-thriller Juno and the Paycock (1930) and the suspense pieces Murder (1930) and Number Seventeen (1932), all of which are among the most widely seen of early British talkies, thanks to their director. Calthrop occasionally played sympathetic roles, such as Bob Crachit in the Seymour Hicks version of Scrooge (1935) -- which was heavily shown on public television and low-power television stations during the early 1980s -- and even comedic foils, as in the historical drama Fire Over England (1936). But he was more often seen as malevolent or disreputable characters, the latter most notably -- apart from the Hitchcock films -- in The Ghost Train (1931) and Rome Express (1932). The final decade of his personal and professional life was blighted by a tragic incident that took place during the shooting of the 1930 talkie Spanish Eyes. According to author Matthew Sweet in his 2006 book Shepperton Babylon, Calthrop had invited a young chorus girl named Nita Foy, who was also working on the film up to his dressing room for some brandy, and while there her costume caught fire. The young actress died, and the tragedy destroyed Calthrop's marriage, as well as turning the actor into a habitual alcoholic, which cost him a good deal of his career momentum. A decade later, he finally ascended to a movie role worthy of his talent with Gabriel Pascal's production of Major Barbara (1941), based on the George Bernard Shaw play. Calthrop was cast in the film as Peter Shirley, the angry, disillusioned fitter who has been forced out of his job because of his age, under doubly tragic circumstances (his age was revealed at the coroner's inquest for his daughter . . . ). The role allowed the actor some superb scenes with Robert Newton and Wendy Hiller, and he might well have gotten a new lease on life, at least professionally, from the acclaimed, prestigious production (and doubly so, as David Lean was actually responsible for a good deal of the direction credited to producer Pascal). Alas, Calthrop died of a heart attack very early in the production of the movie, in July of 1940 -- he had been deceased over a year at the time of Major Barbara's opening in the summer of 1941.

Trivia: With the body of a scarecrow, the contemptuous stare of a house detective, and the voice of an air-raid siren, Irish-born Una O'Connor was one of filmdom's most unforgettable character actresses. Beginning her career with Dublin's Abbey Players and extending her activities to the London's West End and Broadway, O'Connor was cast as the socially conscious housekeeper in Noel Coward's 1932 London production Cavalcade; it was this role which brought her to Hollywood in 1933. She rapidly became a favorite of two prominent directors, James Whale and John Ford, neither of whom were inclined to ask her to tone down her film performances. For Whale, O'Connor screeched her way through two major 1930s horror films, The Invisible Man (1933) and The Bride of Frankenstein (1935); for Ford, O'Connor played the grieving mother of martyred IRA activist Wallace Ford in The Informer (1935) and Mrs. Grogan in The Plough and the Stars (1936). For those detractors who believe that O'Connor never gave a subtle, controlled performance in her life, refer to Lubitsch's Cluny Brown (1946), wherein Ms. O'Connor spoke not a single word as the glowering mother of upper-class twit Richard Haydn. Fourteen years after portraying Charles Laughton's overprotective mother in This Land Is Mine (1943), Una O'Connor once more appeared opposite Laughton in 1957's Witness for the Prosecution, playing a hard-of-hearing housekeeper; it was her last screen performance.

Trivia: On stage from 1899, Gus McNaughton began as a juvenile comedian with the Fred Karno company, the legendary British pantomime troupe which also spawned such comic talents as Charlie Chaplin and Stan Laurel. In films from 1930 to 1947, McNaughton's forte was the "fast-talking sidekick." In this capacity, he was memorably cast in several popular George Formby film farces of the 1930s and 1940s. His talents were also put to good use by Alfred Hitchcock in Murder (1930) and The 39 Steps (1935). One of Gus McNaughton's finest screen hours was as P. C. Hargreaves in the wartime comedy A Place of One's Own (1944).