Trivia: American actress Esther Dale concentrated her cinematic efforts on portraying warm-hearted aunts, mothers, nurses, neighbors and shopkeepers--though there were a few domineering dowagers along the way. She began her career on a semi-professional basis with a New England stock troupe operated by her husband, Arthur Beckhard. Esther was the resident character actress in stage productions of the late '20s and early '30s featuring such stars-to-be as Henry Fonda and Margaret Sullavan. She first appeared before the cameras in 1934's Crime Without Passion, filmed in Long Island. Esther then moved to Hollywood, where she popped up with increasing frequency in such films as The Awful Truth (1937) (as Ralph Bellamy's mother), Back Street (1941), Margie (1946) and The Egg and I (1947). Her participation in the last-named film led to a semi-regular stint in Universal's Ma and Pa Kettle series as the Kettles' neighbor Birdie Hicks. Esther Dale's last film, made one year before her death, was the John Wayne vehicle North to Alaska (1960), in which she had one scene as "Woman at Picnic."

Trivia: American actor Dennis Moore made his first stage appearance with a Texas stock company in 1932. If his official bio is to be believed, Moore was 18 at the time, casting some doubt over his claim of having been a commercial pilot before inaugurating his acting career. Whatever the case, it is a matter of record that Moore entered films in 1936 when he was discovered by a Columbia Pictures talent scout. Two years later, he made the first of his many Westerns at Republic Pictures. In his earliest sagebrush appearances, he was a bit player, stunt man, or villain; in 1940, he attained his first cowboy leading role in The Man From Tascosa, though he would continue to take bad-guy parts (notably as a serial killer in the East Side Kids' 1941 feature Spooks Run Wild) even after his good-guy debut. In 1943, Moore joined Ray "Crash" Corrigan and Max Terhune as a member of the Range Busters in the Monogram Western series of the same name. Until his retirement from films in 1957, Moore alternated between Westerns and such serials as The Purple Monster Strikes (1945). Dennis Moore owns the distinction of starring in the last serial ever made by Republic, King of the Carnival (1956), and the last serial ever made in Hollywood, Columbia's Blazing the Overland Trail (1956).

Trivia: A witty and stylish lead actress of stage and screen, Russell tended to play successful career women who were skilled in repartee. She trained at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts, then began her stage career in her early '20s. She debuted onscreen in 1934 and immediately had a very busy film career. At first appearing in routine films, in the '40s she began to specialize in light, sophisticated comedies, for which she had a unique talent. In the '50s her career briefly declined and she went to Broadway, where she starred in three successful productions. One of these was Auntie Mame, later made into a film in which she reprised her stage role (1958). She went on to appear in a handful of films before she was struck by crippling arthritis. Known for her charity work, in 1972 she received the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award, a special Oscar. Russell received four Academy Award nominations during her career. She was married to producer Frederick Brisson. She authored an autobiography, Life is a Banquet.

Trivia: American actress Theresa Harris made her screen debut as one of the sullen "camp followers" in Josef von Sternberg's Morocco. Like most black performers working in Hollywood during the 1930s and 1940s, Harris was generally limited to servant roles. One of the more artistically rewarding of these was Josephine, the object of Eddie "Rochester" Anderson's affections in the Jack Benny vehicle Buck Benny Rides Again (1940). Harries and Anderson worked so well together that they were reteamed in the same roles in another Benny comedy, Love Thy Neighbor (1940). Evidently a favorite of RKO producer Val Lewton, Harris was prominently cast in several of Lewton's productions of the 1940s, most entertainingly as the cheerfully sarcastic waitress in Cat People (1943). Theresa Harris remained in films until 1958, her characters slowly moving up the social ladder to include nurses and governesses.

Trivia: One of Virginia Weidler's earliest directors sadly predicted that the precocious young miss would never become a major juvenile star like Shirley Temple or Jackie Cooper: "All she can do is act." Indeed, in a 1930s Hollywood festooned with child stars, Weidler may well have been the first child character actress. The daughter of an architect father and German opera-singer mother, Weidler made her first screen appearance at the age of 3. She created a minor sensation as Europena, most contentious of the many Wiggs children, in 1934's Mrs. Wiggs of the Cabbage Patch. While playing opposite John Barrymore in The Great Man's Votes (1938), her scene-stealing propensities were so pronounced that, at one point, Barrymore threw her off his knee and bellowed "Who the hell do you think you're acting with, you silly little brute. Silly, hell!--crafty, God damn you, crafty!" The next day, the two actors were on the best of terms again, but, true professional that she was, she'd gotten the message: never try to upstage a Barrymore! Weidler's last important role was as the irksome younger sister of Katharine Hepburn in The Philadelphia Story. Her film career finished by 1943, Weidler staged an unsuccessful comeback as a nightclub singer, then retired from show business in favor of a happy and enduring marriage. Virginia Weidler died of a heart attack in her early forties.

Trivia: Best known today for her recurring role as the floor nurse Parker in MGM's Dr. Kildare series, brunette actress Nell Craig had begun her long screen career with Essanay in Chicago in 1913. By 1914, she was starring or co-starring in such melodramas as In the Palace of the King (1915), from F. Marion Crawford's popular novel, and The Breaker (1916). She played a girl detective in the latter and both films were directed by her husband, Fred E. Wright. The 1920s brought mainly supporting roles, notably that of Mary Todd Lincoln opposite George A. Billings in the low-budget Abraham Lincoln (1924), but she was reduced to walk-ons in talkies. Like several of her contemporaries, Craig was rescued by Louis B. Mayer of MGM, who awarded her a player contract. Craig, who also appeared semi-regularly in Paramount's Henry Aldrich series, retired from films in the late '40s and spent her final years as a resident of the Motion Picture Country House and Hospital in Woodland Hills, CA.

Trivia: After training at the University of Michigan School of Drama, Ruth Hussey worked as a fashion commmentator on a local radio station, then moved to New York, becoming a Powers model. In the mid '30s she performed in several plays with touring companies, and shortly thereafter was signed to a film contract with MGM. She debuted onscreen in 1937, and for the remainder of the decade she appeared in minor films. In 1940 she was nominated for a Best Supporting Actress Oscar for her work in The Philadelphia Story, after which she became a leading lady; she was often cast as a graceful, sophisticated, intelligent woman. Her greatest success came on the stage, starring opposite Ralph Bellamy in the 1945 Broadway production State of the Union, after which she concentrated on the stage and made only sporadic film appearances, lastly in 1960. She is the mother of Oscar-winning filmmaker John William Longenecker.

Trivia: Dora Clement (sometimes credited as Dora Clemant) spent most of her professional acting career in the far west of the United States, where she was born, in Spokane, WA, in 1891. The tall, elegant actress -- who made one think of Frieda Inescourt -- was in almost 700 plays before making her Broadway debut in November 1944 in the original cast of Harvey as Betty Chumley (the role played by Nana Bryant in the 1950 movie). By that time, she was no longer doing movies, having been in some 73 of them (usually in uncredited roles) between 1934 and 1942. Most of her movie work involved small roles with no more than a day -- or, at most, a few days' -- shooting at a time, and Clement was able to squeeze them in around acting in the theater and also lecturing and teaching about theater. She usually played smaller roles that required dignity and distinctly middle-aged beauty -- mothers, society matrons, middle-level female executives, and secretaries -- in bigger movies, such as a saleslady in Mitchell Leisen's Easy Living (1937) or the woman under the sunlamp in George Cukor's The Women (1939). She was called by all of the major studios at one time or another, including Fox, MGM, Paramount, and Columbia, but she seemed to get some of her best roles at Universal, most notably in Buck Privates (1941), Abbott & Costello's debut starring vehicle. She actually had three major scenes in that picture (one of them excellent) as Miss Durling, the woman in charge of the camp hostesses (which include co-stars Jane Frazee and the Andrews Sisters). And Clement's most important movie role in terms of plot -- also at Univeral -- was in one of the lowest budgeted vehicles in which she ever appeared, as Ann Zorka, the beloved wife of Bela Lugosi's mad scientist Alex Zorka, in the serial The Phantom Creeps (1939). Her character's death, caused accidentally by her husband in the second chapter -- when he disables a plane carrying the government agents pursuing him (on which his wife, unbeknownst to him, also happens to be traveling) -- pushes Zorka over the edge, to seek revenge on the entire world for the next 10 chapters. In the early '50s, she made a few appearances in various early television dramas and on anthology shows such as Philco Television Playhouse and Goodyear Television Playhouse, but she had retired from that medium, as well, by the middle of the decade. She reportedly passed away a quarter century later in Washington, D.C.

Trivia: Cora Witherspoon began her 50-year career as a character actress at age 17, playing a septuagenarian in the New York production In Concert. She spent the better part of her Hollywood years portraying imperious society matrons, domineering maiden aunts, and henpecking hausfraus. Most filmgoers closely associate Witherspoon with her portrayal of W. C. Fields' slatternly wife in The Bank Dick (1940); despite their on camera animosity, Witherspoon and Fields were friends in real life, frequently exchanging complimentary correspondence. Though she preferred to work in New York, Cora Witherspoon continued commuting to Hollywood into the 1950s to maintain a decent standard of living.

Trivia: Immortalized as Princess Aura, daughter of Ming the Merciless (Charles Middleton) in the first Flash Gordon serial, beautiful but ultimately star-crossed Priscilla Lawson (née Shortridge) had been crowned Miss Miami Beach in 1935. The honor resulted in a contract with Universal and, in turn, the plum role of Princess Aura. But the studio quickly dropped her option and a stint with Paramount resulted in only a few supporting roles, including 1936's Rose Bowl, opposite former co-star Larry "Buster" Crabbe. She spent the remainder of her brief screen career playing bit parts at MGM and was, at the time, better known for marrying handsome B-movie actor Alan Curtis. According to former co-star Jean Rogers, who had played Dale Arden in Flash Gordon, Lawson lost a leg in an accident while serving in the Women's Army Corps during World War II. Divorced from Curtis, she later managed a stationary shop in Los Angeles. Her untimely death in the Veterans' Administration Hospital in West Los Angeles in 1958 was listed as upper gastro-intestinal bleeding, due to a duodenal ulcer.

Trivia: Blonde stage actress Muriel Hutchison (The Amazing Dr. Clitterhouse, 1937) enjoyed a brief screen career at MGM in the late '30s, playing Norma Shearer's maid in The Women) and Sheldon Leonard's moll in Another Thin Man (1939).

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: Joan Crawford was not an actress; she was a movie star. The distinction is a crucial one: She infrequently appeared in superior films, and her work was rarely distinguished regardless of the material, yet she enjoyed one of the most successful and longest-lived careers in cinema history. Glamorous and over the top, stardom was seemingly Crawford's birthright; everything about her, from her rags-to-riches story to her constant struggles to remain in the spotlight, made her ideal fodder for the Hollywood myth factory. Even in death she remained a high-profile figure thanks to the publication of her daughter's infamous tell-all book, an outrageous film biography, and numerous revelations of a sordid private life. Ultimately, Crawford was melodrama incarnate, a wide-eyed, delirious prima donna whose story endures as a definitive portrait of motion picture fame, determination, and relentless ambition.Born Lucille Fay Le Sueur on March 23, 1908, in San Antonio, TX, she first earned notice by winning a Charleston contest. She then worked as a professional dancer in Chicago, later graduating to a position in the chorus line of a Detroit-area club and finally to the Broadway revue Innocent Eyes. While in the chorus of The Passing Show of 1924, she was discovered by MGM's Harry Rapf, and made her movie debut in 1925's Lady of the Night. A series of small roles followed before the studio sponsored a magazine contest to find a name better than Le Sueur, and after a winner was chosen, she was rechristened Joan Crawford.Her first major role, in 1925's Sally, Irene and Mary, swiftly followed, and over the next few years she co-starred opposite some of the silent era's most popular stars, including Harry Langdon (1926's Tramp Tramp Tramp), Lon Chaney (1927's The Unknown), John Gilbert (1927's Twelve Miles Out), and Ramon Navarro (1928's Across to Singapore). Crawford shot to stardom on the strength of 1928's Our Dancing Daughters, starring in a jazz-baby role originally slated for Clara Bow. The film was hugely successful, and MGM soon doubled her salary and began featuring her name on marquees.Unlike so many stars of the period, she successfully made the transformation from the silents to the sound era. In fact, the 1929 silent Our Modern Maidens, in which she teamed with real-life fiancé Douglas Fairbanks Jr., was so popular -- even with audiences pining for more talkies -- that the studio did not push her into speaking parts. Finally, with Hollywood Revue of 1929 Crawford began regularly singing and dancing onscreen and scored at the box office as another flapper in 1930's Our Blushing Brides.However, she yearned to play the kinds of substantial roles associated with Greta Garbo and Norma Shearer and actively pursued the lead in the Tod Browning crime drama Paid. The picture was another hit, and soon similar projects were lined up. Dance Fools Dance (1931) paired Crawford with Clark Gable. They were to reunite many more times over in the years to come, including the hit Possessed. She was now among Hollywood's top-grossing performers, and while not all of her pictures from the early '30s found success, those that did -- like 1933's Dancing Lady -- were blockbusters.With new husband Franchot Tone, Crawford starred in several features beginning with 1934's Sadie McKee. She continued appearing opposite some of the industry's biggest male stars, but by 1937 her popularity was beginning to wane. After the failure of films including The Bride Wore Red and 1938's Mannequin, her name appeared on an infamous full-page Hollywood Reporter advertisement which listed actors deemed "glamour stars detested by the public." After the failure of The Shining Hour, even MGM -- which had just signed Crawford to a long-term contract -- was clearly worried. However, a turn as the spiteful Crystal in George Cukor's 1939 smash The Women restored some of Crawford's lustre, as did another pairing with Gable in 1940's Strange Cargo.Again directed by Cukor, 1941's A Woman's Face was another major step in Crawford's comeback, but then MGM began saddling her with such poor material that she ultimately refused to continue working, resulting in a lengthy suspension. She finally left the studio, signing on with Warners at about a third of her former salary. There Crawford only appeared briefly in 1944's Hollywood Canteen before the rumor mill was abuzz with claims that they too planned to drop her. As a result, she fought for the lead role in director Michael Curtiz's 1945 adaptation of the James M. Cain novel Mildred Pierce, delivering a bravura performance which won a Best Actress Oscar. Warners, of course, quickly had a change of heart, and after the 1946 hit Humoresque, the studio signed her to a new seven-year contract. At Warner Bros., Crawford began appearing in the kinds of pictures once offered to the studio's brightest star, Bette Davis. She next appeared in 1947's Possessed, followed by Daisy Kenyon, which cast her opposite Henry Fonda. For 1949's Flamingo Road, meanwhile, she was reunited with director Curtiz. However, by the early '50s, Crawford was again appearing in primarily B-grade pictures, and finally she bought herself out of her contract.In 1952, she produced and starred in Sudden Fear, an excellent thriller which she offered to RKO. The studio accepted, and the film emerged as a sleeper hit. Once again, Crawford was a hot property, and she triumphantly returned to MGM to star in 1953's Torch Song, her first color feature. For Republic, she next starred in Nicholas Ray's 1954 cult classic Johnny Guitar, perceived by many as a "thank you" to her large lesbian fan base. The roller-coaster ride continued apace: Between 1955 and 1957, Crawford appeared in four films -- Female on the Beach, Queen Bee, Autumn Leaves, and The Story of Esther Costello -- each less successful than the one which preceded it, and eventually the offers stopped coming in.Over the next five years, she appeared in only one picture, 1959's The Best of Everything. Then, in 1962, against all odds, Crawford made yet another comeback when director Robert Aldrich teamed her with Bette Davis in Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?, in which the actresses appeared as aging movie queens living together in exile. The film was a major hit, and thanks to its horror overtones, Crawford was offered a number of similar roles, later appearing in the William Castle productions Strait-Jacket (as an axe murderer, no less) and I Saw What You Did. Aldrich also planned a follow-up, Hush...Hush, Sweet Charlotte, but an ill Crawford was replaced by Olivia de Havilland. The final years of Crawford's screen career were among her most undistinguished. She co-starred in 1967's The Karate Killers, a spin-off of the hit television espionage series The Man From U.N.C.L.E., and she subsequently headlined the slasher film Berserk! The 1970's Trog was her last feature-film appearance, and she settled into retirement, penning a 1971 memoir, My Way of Life. A few years later, she made one final public appearance on a daytime soap opera, taking over the role played by her adopted daughter, Christina, when the girl fell ill.After spending her final years in seclusion, Crawford died in New York City on May 10, 1977, but she made headlines a year later when Christina published Mommie Dearest, among the first and most famous in what became a cottage industry of tell-all books published by the children of celebrities. In it, Christina depicted her mother as vicious and unfeeling, motivated only by her desire for wealth and fame. In 1981, Faye Dunaway starred as Crawford in a feature adaptation of the book which has gone on to become a camp classic.

Trivia: American actress and gossip columnist Hedda Hopper was born Elda Furry, but used the last name of her then-husband, Broadway star DeWolf Hopper, when she launched her movie career in 1915. Never a major star in silent films, Hedda was a competent character actress specializing in "best friend" and "other woman" roles. When she divorced DeWolf Hopper, Hedda found that she had to take any roles that came her way in order to support herself and her son DeWolf Jr. (who later became a film and TV actor under the name William Hopper). Her career running smoothly if not remarkably by 1932, Ms. Hopper decided to branch out into politics, running for the Los Angeles city council; she lost and returned to movies, where good roles were becoming scarce. Practically unemployed in 1936, Hedda took a job on a Hollywood radio station, dispensing news and gossip about the film capital. Impressed by Hedda's chatty manner and seemingly bottomless reserve of "dirt" on her fellow actors (sometimes gleaned from her own on-set experiences, sometimes mere wild-card speculations), the Esquire news syndicate offered Ms. Hopper her own column, one that would potentially rival the Hearst syndicate columnist Louella Parsons. Carried at first by only 17 papers, Hedda did much better for herself by switching to the Des Moines Register and Tribune syndicate; her true entree into the big time occured in 1942, when she linked up with the behemoth Chicago Tribune-Daily News syndicate. Between them, Hedda and archrival Louella Parsons wielded more power and influence than any other Hollywood columnists - and they exploited it to the utmost, horning in uninivited at every major social event and premiere, and throwing parties that few dared not to attend. While Louella had the stronger newspaper affiliations, Hedda was more popular with the public, due to her breezy, matter-of-fact speaking style and her wry sense of humor; she also more flamboyant than Louella, given to wearing elaborate hats which cost anywhere from $50 to $60 each. On the credit side, Hedda touted several new young stars without expecting favors in return from their studios; she'd admit her errors (and there were many) in public, giving herself "the bird" - a bronx cheer - during her broadcasts; and wrote flattering and affectionate pieces about old-time stars who had long fallen out of favor with filmakers. On the debit side, Hedda carried long and vicious grudges; demanded that stars appear for free as guests on her radio program, or else suffer the consequences; and set herself up as an arbiter of public taste, demanding in the '50s and '60s that Hollywood censor its "racy" films. Hedda's greatest influence was felt when the studio system controlled Hollywood and a mere handful of moguls wielded the power of professional life and death on the stars; the studios needed a sympathetic reporter of their activities, and thus catered to Hedda's every whim. But as stars became their own producers and film production moved further outside Hollywood, Hedda's control waned; moreover, the relaxing of movie censorship made her rantings about her notions of good taste seem like something out of the Dark Ages. Also, Hedda was a strident anti-communist, which worked to her benefit in the days of the witchhunts and blacklists, but which made her sound like a reactionary harpy in the more liberal '60s. Evidence of Hedda's downfall occured in 1960 when she assembled an NBC-TV special and decreed that Hollywood's biggest stars appear gratis; but this was a year fraught with industry strikes over wages and residuals, and Hedda was only able to secure the services of the few celebrities who agreed with her politics or were wealthy enough to appear for free. By the early '60s, Hedda Hopper was an institution without foundation, "starring" as herself in occasional movies like Jerry Lewis' The Patsy (1964) which perpetuated the myth of her influence, and writing (or commissioning, since she'd stopped doing her own writing years earlier) long, antiseptic celebrity profiles for Sunday-supplement magazines.

Trivia: Actress/playwright Dot Farley launched her film career in 1912 as one of the earliest members of Mack Sennett's Keystone comedy troupe. Though she would leave Keystone after a few years, Farley occasionally returned to the Sennett fold in such roles as Ben Turpin's cross-eyed mother in A Small Town Idol (1921). A "regular" in 2-reel comedies, she could also be found in such elaborate features as DeMille's King of Kings (1927). In the talkie era, Farley was busiest in the short-subject field, usually playing domineering wives and mothers-in-law. From 1931 to 1948, she played Florence Lake's busybody mama in Edgar Kennedy's "Mr. Average Man" 2-reel series at RKO. Dot Farley's feature-film work during this period was usually limited to brief bits in films ranging from Val Lewton's Cat People (1942) to Preston Sturges' Hail the Conquering Hero (1944).

Trivia: American actress Grace Hayle spent most of her screen time playing bejeweled dowagers, huffy department store customers and aggressive lady journalists. Hayle proved a worthy Margaret Dumont type in Wheeler and Woolsey's Diplomaniacs (1933), supplied laughs as a ruddy-faced cyclist in The Women (1939) and played a most unlikely rhumba dancer in Two-Faced Woman (1940). One of her few credited roles was the long-suffering Madame Napaloni in Chaplin's The Great Dictator (1940). Grace Hayle remained in Hollywood long enough to appear in an early Elvis Presley film.

Trivia: Formerly an art student at USC, Betty Blythe began her stage work in such tried-and-true theatrical pieces as So Long Letty and The Peacock Princess. After touring Europe and the States, Betty entered films in 1918 at the Vitagraph Studios in Brooklyn, then was brought to Hollywood's Fox Studios as a replacement for screen vamp Theda Bara. As famous for her revealing costumes as for her dramatic skills, Betty became a star in such exotic vehicles as The Queen of Sheba (1921) and She (1925). Her stage training served her well during the transition to talkies, but Ms. Blythe's facial features had matured rather quickly, and soon she was consigned to supporting roles. She spent most of the 1940s in touring companies of Broadway hits like The Man Who Came to Dinner and Wallflower, supplementing her income by giving acting and diction lessons. Betty Blythe's final screen appearance was a one-line bit in the Embassy Ball sequence in My Fair Lady (1964), in which she was lovingly photographed by her favorite cameraman from the silent days, Harry Stradling.

Trivia: Stock-company actress Maria Elliot was transformed into Judith Allen when signed to a Paramount contract in 1933. Her brief Paramount stay was rather unexceptional, except for her leading-lady assignment in DeMille's This Day and Age (1933) and her gently satirical portrayal of the daughter of two-bit impresario W. C. Fields in The Old Fashioned Way (1934). Her bid for stardom forgotten by the mid-1930s, Judith nonetheless remained in films into the 1950s. Judith Allen's leading-lady duties opposite Gene Autry in such late-1930s westerns as Boots and Saddles assured her work in low-budget sagebrushers until the day she retired.

Trivia: Born Edith Blossom MacDonald, Marie Blake started out as a child performer in vaudeville, singing with her younger sisters Jeanette and Elsie. In 1926, Marie married song-and-dance man Clarence Rock, forming an act that endured into the 1930s. When vaudeville died, Marie and Clarence went "legit" in straight drama. While playing a consumptive prostitute in the Los Angeles company of Dead End, Marie was spotted by an MGM talent agent. Since sister Jeanette was already an established MGM star, the studio decided to avoid accusations of nepotism by changing Marie's last name to Blake. Never a leading lady, Marie remained a reliable member of MGM's featured-player stable for nearly ten years. She played hospital receptionist Sally in 13 of the studio's Dr. Kildare entries, and also showed up in such short subjects as Our Gang's Alfalfa's Aunt (1940). Loaned out to RKO in 1944, she enjoyed one of her meatiest roles as Harold Peary's vis-a-vis in Gildersleeve's Ghost. From 1957 onward, Blake acted under her married name, Blossom Rock (her husband, who'd retired from show business to work as night manager of the Beverly Hilton, died in 1960). Marie Blake/Blossom Rock's last major assignment was as Grandmama in the TV series The Addams Family (1965-66).

Trivia: British actress Flora Finch left the theater behind when she entered the infant American film industry in 1909. While at the Vitagraph Studios in Brooklyn, Finch was teamed with porcine star comedian John Bunny in a series of extremely popular domestic farces. Finch and John were among the first film actors to be identified by name on the screen, and as a result the audience demanded more and more "Bunnyfinches". When John Bunny died suddenly in 1915, Finch's career was finished, though she didn't know it at the time. She set up her own production company to produce short comedies, which were distinguished only by their vulgarity and lack of genuine humor. By the 1920s, Finch was playing minor roles in the feature films of others. Flora Finch hung on in the business as a bit player and extra until her death in 1940; her last role of any consequence was the fleeting part of "Maw", the bearded miner's wife, in Laurel and Hardy's Way Out West (1937).

Trivia: Born in Tampa, where her father worked as a stevedore and her mother as a maid, Thelma McQueen determined early in life to become a dancer. By age 13 she was living in Harlem performing with a dance troupe and theater company. While appearing in a 1935 production of A Midsummer Night's Dream, she danced in the Butterfly Ballet, earning her professional name of Butterfly McQueen in the process (she hated the name Thelma and later had her new moniker legalized). Her first Broadway appearance in the 1937 George Abbott production Brown Sugar led to an even better assignment in the long-running stage comedy What a Life! This in turn led to her discovery by film producer David O. Selznick, who cast McQueen as the simple-minded slave Prissy ("I don't know nuthin' 'bout birthin' no babies!") in his super-production Gone With the Wind (1939). Though the role earned her worldwide fame, it also typecast her as screechy-voiced, hysterical domestics. Even so, she delivered memorable performances in such '40s productions as Cabin in the Sky (1943), Mildred Pierce (1945), and Selznick's Duel in the Sun (1946). Her inability to get along with most of her co-stars, coupled with her unhappiness over the film roles assigned her, prompted the actress to quit the movies in 1947. The ensuing two decades were not easy ones for McQueen; she was obliged to accept a dizzying series of clerical and domestic jobs, occasionally resurfacing in short-running stage productions and briefly co-starring as Oriole on TV's Beulah series. At one point, she served as hostess at the Stone Mountain Civil War Memorial Museum in Atlanta, GA. She returned to Broadway in 1964, and four years later scored a personal success with a tailor-made role in the off-Broadway musical spoof Curley McDimple. She came back to films in 1974 while pursuing a Political Science degree at New York's City College. In 1980, she won an Emmy for her performance in the TV special The Seven Wishes of a Rich Kid, and in 1986 made her final screen appearance (looking and sounding pretty much as she did back in 1939!) in Peter Weir's The Mosquito Coast. Butterfly McQueen was 85 when she died of burns sustained in a fire caused by a faulty kerosene heater.

Trivia: Born into wealth, American actress Aileen Pringle was educated in San Francisco (her home town), Paris, and London. Married to a titled Englishman before the age of twenty, Pringle defied the wishes of her husband and her family to take on a stage career in 1915. The actress worked on stage and in non-Hollywood films until 1922, when she was awarded a major-studio movie contract. She was personally selected by romance novelist Elinor Glyn (one of the great poseurs of the '20s) to star in the 1942 film adaptation of Glyn's steamy Ruritanian bodice-ripper Three Weeks (1924). An apocryphal story popped up during the making of this film, wherein Pringle, being carried into the boudoir by co-star Conrad Nagel, play-acted deep passion while actually whispering to Nagel, "If you drop me, you bastard, I'll break your neck." (Something like this did happen on the set of another film that starred neither Pringle or Nagel). Not well liked by coworkers due to her haughty attitude, Aileen nonetheless became Hollywood's unofficial "Darling of the Intelligentsia," and was regularly sent out by the studios to greet such literary wits as H.L. Mencken upon their arrival in Tinseltown. Indeed, Pringle's second husband was a celebrated writer, James M. Cain (Double Indemnity, The Postman Always Rings Twice), though hardly one of the intellectual elite. Behaving as contrarily as possible due to her disdain of filmmakers, Pringle sabotaged her chances at continuing her starring career in talking pictures; by 1942, she was played unbilled bits in such films as They Died with Their Boots On (1942). Comeback attempts in the '50s were thwarted because of Aileen Pringle's condescention and outspokenness; if the extremely wealthy actress truly wanted stardom, she sure didn't actively court it.

Trivia: A show girl prior to signing with Fox in the early days of sound, brunette Lita Chevret also played show girls onscreen in such musicals as Fox Movietone Follies of 1929 (1929) and The Cuckoos (1930). The latter starred the team of Bert Wheeler and Robert Woolsey. She was re-teamed with the cigar-chomping Woolsey in Everything's Rosie, as juvenile lead Johnny Darrow's too-sophisticated fiancée. There would be several other such roles: Lili Damita's rival in Goldie Gets Along (1932) and Constance Cummings' nemesis in Glamour (1934). But more often than not, she played unnamed chorus girls or "party guests." She was a manicurist in her final credited film, The Philadelphia Story (1940).

Trivia: The daughter of British actress Irene Riano, young Renie Riano headlined in music halls and vaudeville as "Baby Irene." As an adult, Riano's unusual appearance assured her steady work as a character comedienne. She was featured in several Broadway productions, notably Irving Berlin's Music Box Revue, before entering films in 1937. Amidst dozens of cameos and bits, she played the recurring role of sardonic maidservant Effie Schneider in Warner Bros.' Nancy Drew series, and starred as Maggie opposite Joe Yule Sr.'s Jiggs in a late-'40s Monogram series based on the comic strip Bringing up Father. Active until 1966, Renie Riano's later assignments included a frantic maid in the American-International musicomedy Pajama Party (1964) and an amorous ghost in a first-season episode of TV's Green Acres.

Trivia: Born and educated in England (where she studied the "oratorical arts"), Lillian Bond won a beauty contest on her home turf in 1926. Shortly afterward, she came to New York, where she was hired for The Ziegfeld Follies. Brought to Hollywood as a "WAMPAS Baby Star" in 1932, Lillian was prominently cast in such films as The Old Dark House (1932) and Fireman Save My Child (1932), where her refined British accent provided a unique contrast to the gold-digging characters she was required to play. One of Lillian Bond's last sizeable roles was as Lily Langtry in the closing scenes of The Westerner (1940).

Trivia: Canadian-born, convent-educated Lucille Watson studied acting in the waning years of the 19th century at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts. On the Broadway stage from 1900, Watson scored her first big hit in the 1902 production The Girl with Green Eyes. She made her first film in 1916, but for the most part avoided Hollywood until after the death of her husband, playwright Louis Shipman, in 1934. Frequently cast as the mother, grandmother or maiden aunt of the hero/heroine, the formidable Ms. Watson was seen in such roles as Louisa Bradley in The Razor's Edge (1946) and Aunt March in the 1949 version of Little Women. In 1943, Lucille Watson earned an Oscar nomination for her portrayal of blinkered Washington D.C. matriarch Fanny Fannelly in Watch on the Rhine.

Trivia: A specialist in portraying light-headed, pretentious society dowagers, American actress Mary Boland began her stage career at age 15, shortly after the death of her actor father. Though she played roles of every sort throughout her theatrical career, Boland found that her forte was scatterbrained comedy in such Broadway productions of the 1920s as Clarence, The Torch Bearers and The Cradle Snatchers. Boland made her movie debut in the silent film The Edge of the Abyss (1914), but her Hollywood career really took off with the advent of the talkies. She worked in movies steadily throughout the 1930s and 1940s, collaborating with everyone from Cecil B. DeMille to W.C. Fields; her most frequent costar was comic actor Charlie Ruggles, with whom she appeared in a number of droll domestic comedies. Mary Boland continued to alternate between stage and screen work until her retirement in the mid 1950s, finding time for occasional TV appearances.

Trivia: American actress Paulette Goddard, born Pauline Marion Levy, spent her teen years as a Broadway chorus girl, gaining attention when she was featured reclining on a prop crescent moon in the 1928 Ziegfeld musical Rio Rita. In Hollywood as early as 1929, Goddard reportedly appeared as an extra in several Hal Roach two-reel comedies, making confirmed bit appearances in a handful of these short subjects wearing a blonde wig over her naturally raven-black hair. Continuing as a blonde, she appeared as a "Goldwyn Girl" in the 1932 Eddie Cantor film Kid From Spain, where she was awarded several close-ups. Goddard's career went into full gear when she met Charlie Chaplin, who was looking for an unknown actress to play "The Gamin" in his 1936 film Modern Times. Struck by the actress's breathtaking beauty and natural comic sense, Chaplin not only cast her in the film, but fell in love with her. It is still a matter of contention in some circles as to whether or not Chaplin and Goddard were ever legally married (Chaplin claimed they were; it was his third marriage and her second), but whatever the case, the two lived together throughout the 1930s. Goddard's expert performances in such films as The Young in Heart (1938) and The Cat and the Canary (1939) enabled her to ascend to stardom without Chaplin's sponsorship, but the role she truly craved was that of Scarlett O'Hara in the 1939 epic Gone With the Wind. Unfortunately, that did not work out, and Vivien Leigh landed the part.After working together in The Great Dictator (1940), Goddard and Chaplin's relationship crumbled; by the mid-1940s she was married to another extremely gifted performer, Burgess Meredith. The actress remained a box-office draw for her home studio Paramount until 1949, when (presumably as a result of a recent flop titled Bride of Vengeance) she received a phone call at home telling her bluntly that her contract was dissolved. Goddard's film appearances in the 1950s were in such demeaning "B" pictures as Vice Squad (1953) and Babes in Baghdad (1953). Still quite beautiful, and possessed of a keener intellect than most movie actors, she retreated to Europe with her fourth (or third?) husband, German novelist Erich Maria Remarque (All Quiet on the Western Front). This union was successful, lasting until Remarque's death. Coaxed out of retirement for one made-for-TV movie in 1972 (The Snoop Sisters), Goddard preferred to remain in her lavish Switzerland home for the last two decades of her life.

Trivia: Blonde American actress Charlotte Wynters made her talkie debut as Nina in D.W. Griffith's final film, The Struggle (1931). Wynters spent the rest of her career freelancing at every major studio, and not a few of the minor ones. Either by accident or design, she essayed supporting parts in several B-film series, including Warners' Nancy Drew, MGM's Andy Hardy, RKO's The Falcon, and Columbia's Ellery Queen. Charlotte Wynters retired in 1955.

Trivia: From the chorus ranks of Broadway's George White's Scandals, Alabama-born Dorothy Sebastian was recruited for films in 1925. The high point of her brief starring career came when she was teamed with Joan Crawford and Anita Page for a popular series of MGM romantic dramas, released on both sides of the talkie revolution: Our Dancing Daughters (1928), Our Modern Maidens (1929) and Our Blushing Brides (1930). She was also well-served in 1929's Spite Marriage, wherein she was cast opposite her then-lover Buster Keaton as a tempestuous stage actress (years later, Keaton and Sebastian were reunited in the inexpensive 2-reel comedy Allez Oop [1935]). Sebasian went into semi-retirement in the mid-1930s upon her marriage to future Hopalong Cassidy star William Boyd. When the Boyds divorced in 1936, Dorothy attempted a comeback, but the parade had passed her by. Dorothy Sebastian spent her last working years playing unstressed bit roles in such A pictures as The Women (1939) and Reap the Wild Wind (1942).

Trivia: Gertrude Astor did so much work in Hollywood in so many different acting capacities that it's not simple or easy to characterize her career. Born in Lakewood, OH, she joined a stock company at age 13, in the year 1900, and worked on showboats during that era. She played in vaudeville as well, and made her movie debut in 1914 as a contract player at Universal. She was an accomplished rider, which got her a lot of work as a stuntwoman, sometimes in conjunction with a young Maine-born actor named John Ford in pictures directed by the latter's brother, Francis Ford. But Astor soon moved into serious acting roles; a tall, statuesque, angular woman, she frequently towered over the leading men of the era, and was, thus, ideal as a foil in comedies of the 1910s and '20s, playing aristocrats, gold diggers, and the heroine's best friend (had the character of Brenda Starr existed that far back, she'd have been perfect playing Hank O'Hair, her crusty female editor). Astor was the vamp who plants stolen money on Harry Langdon in The Strong Man (1926), Laura La Plante's wisecracking traveling companion in The Cat and the Canary (1927), and the gold digger who got her hooks into Otis Harlan (as well as attracting the attention of fellow sailor Eddie Gribbon) in Dames Ahoy. When talkies came in, Astor's deep, throaty voice assured her steady work in character parts, still mostly in comedy. Her roles weren't huge, but she worked prolifically at Hal Roach studios with such headliners as Laurel and Hardy, in the Our Gang shorts, and especially with Charley Chase, and also worked at Columbia Pictures' short subjects unit. Astor's specialty at this time was outraged dignity; she was forever declaring, "I've never been so embarrassed in all my life!" and stalking out of a slapstick situation, usually with a comedy prop (a balloon, a folding chairs, a cream puff) affixed to her posterior. Astor worked regularly into the early '60s; she was briefly glimpsed as the first murder victim in the Sherlock Holmes adventure The Scarlet Claw (1944) and was among the ranks of dress extras in Around the World in 80 Days (1956). Her longtime friend John Ford also gave her roles in his feature films right into the early '60s, culminating with her appearance in The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance. Gertrude Astor remained alert and quick-witted into her eighties, cheerfully sharing her memories of the glory days of comedy short subjects with fans and film historians. And in a town that can scarcely remember last year's studio presidents, in 1975, when she was 87 years old, Astor was given a party at Universal, where she was honored by a gathering of old friends, including the directors George Cukor, Allan Dwan, and Henry Hathaway. She passed away suddenly and peacefully on the day of her 90th birthday in 1977.

Trivia: The winner of a beauty contest at 14, she was born into a wealthy family that lost everything in the 1910s. Her mother brought her to New York in the hope that show business might provide the family with money. Shearer failed an audition with Florenze Ziegfeld but found some work as a model. She began appearing in bit roles in New York-shot films in 1920; in one of these, The Stealers (1920), she was spotted by talent scout Irving Thalberg, who couldn't track her down until 1923. Signed to a long-term screen contract in 1925, she began playing leads in numerous films. Meanwhile, Thalberg rose to a position of authority at MGM; she married him in 1927 and started getting the best roles the studio had to offer, leading her to stardom. Shearer got her pick of directors and scripts, and made sure to vary her work so she would avoid being typecast. She received five Oscar nominations, winning for The Divorcee (1930). Soon she was billed by MGM as "the First Lady of the Screen." Thalberg died at age 37 in 1936, after which Shearer showed bad judgment in her choice of films; she turned down the leads in Gone with the Wind and Mrs. Miniver and instead appeared in two consecutive flops, We Were Dancing and Her Cardboard Lover (both 1942). After that she retired from the screen, meanwhile marrying a ski instructor 20 years her junior.

Trivia: One of Hollywood's great dowagers, long under contract to MGM, May Beatty, from New Zealand, rarely had more than a few moments to make her presence felt. But felt it was, from a silent bit in Dinner at Eight (1933) to the inquisitive Lady Handel in the thriller I Wake Up Screaming (1941).

Trivia: Stage actress Josephine Whittell began appearing in films in 1919, often acting opposite her then-husband Robert Warwick. In the first year of the talkies, Whittell cornered the market in middle-aged flirts, as witness her saucy scenes with comedian Robert Woolsey in Caught Plastered and Peach o' Reno (1931). When the Production Code came in, Whittell's characters became a little more respectable, if a bit on the naggy side; W.C. Fields fans will remember her as the mother of troublesome Baby LeRoy in It's a Gift (1934). Josephine Whittell remained active in films until the late '40s.

Trivia: Whenever Ellen Corby or Mary Field weren't available to play a timid, spinsterish film role, chances are the part would go to Dorothy Adams. Though far from a shrinking violet in real life, Ms. Adams was an expert at portraying repressed, secretive women, usually faithful servants or maiden aunts. Her best-remembered role was the overly protective maid of Gene Tierney in Laura (1944). Dorothy Adams was the wife of veteran character actor Byron Foulger; both were guiding forces of the Pasadena Playhouse, as both actors and directors. Dorothy and Byron's daughter is actress Rachel Ames, who played Audrey March on TV's General Hospital.

Trivia: A noted stage actress, Maude Allen made only very infrequent visits to the screen -- The Moth (1917), the French-language version of The Big Pond -- until the mid-'30s when she began turning up in bit parts in scores of Hollywood films. Today, Allen is remembered only for playing the original Duchess, the hero's indomitable aunt, in the 1940s Republic serial Adventures of Red Ryder. Although she was billed Maude Allen in the serial's trailer, she became Maude Pierce Allen in the credits of the actual chapter play. In the subsequent Red Ryder series starring William Elliott, the character of the Duchess was played by Alice Fleming. Allen, meanwhile, did a few additional supporting roles before retiring in 1942.

Trivia: Originally an opera singer, American actress Margaret Dumont was engaged in 1925 to act in The Cocoanuts, a Broadway musical comedy starring the Marx Brothers. As wealthy widow Mrs. Potter, Dumont became the formidable stage target for the rapid-fire insults and bizarre lovemaking approach of Groucho Marx. So impressive was her "teaming" with Groucho that she was hired for their next Broadway production, Animal Crackers (1928), in which she portrayed society dowager Mrs. Rittenhouse. Though Groucho would later insist that Dumont never understood his jokes, she more than held her own against the unpredictable Marx Brothers, facing their wild ad-libs, practical jokes and roughhouse physical humor with the straight-faced aplomb of a school principal assigned a classroom of unruly children. Dumont continued appearing opposite the Marx Brothers when they began making motion pictures, co-starring in seven of the team's films, most notably as hypochondriac Emily Upjohn in A Day at the Races (1937). It was for this picture that Dumont won a Screen Actor's Guild award; upon this occasion, film critic Cecilia Ager suggested that a monument be erected in honor of Dumont's courage and steadfastness in the face of the Marx invasion. Although she appeared in many other films (sometimes in the company of other famous comedy teams such as Laurel and Hardy, Wheeler and Woolsey, and Abbott and Costello), it is for her Marx appearances that Dumont--often dubbed "the Fifth Marx Brother"--is best remembered. Dumont made her last professional appearance a week before her death, on the TV variety series Hollywood Palace; appropriately, it was in support of Groucho Marx in a re-creation of the "Hooray for Captain Spaulding" production number from Animal Crackers.

Trivia: Actress Carol Hughes was 13 years old when she married comic actor Frank Faylen. Hughes' own film career began in 1936: while sometimes enjoying full supporting roles, e.g. Frank McHugh's nagging wife in Three Men on a Horse (1936), she generally made do with bits, such as the Modiste Salon salesgirl in 1939's The Women. In 1940, Hughes replaced Jean Rogers in the role of Dale Arden in the third and last of Universal's "Flash Gordon" serials, Flash Gordon's Trip to Mars. She retired from films in the early 1950s, after playing Gil Lamb's leading lady in a series of RKO Radio 2-reelers. Carol Hughes is the mother of actress Carol Faylen, who appeared in the 1964 TV sitcom The Bing Crosby Show as Crosby's daughter Joyce.

Trivia: Born Joan de Beauvoir de Havilland, Joan Fontaine began her acting career in her late teens with various West Coast stage companies under the name Joan Burfield. She also used that name when she made her 1935 feature film debut in No More Ladies, in which she had a minor role. The daughter of '40s actress Lilian Fontaine, she returned to the screen as Joan Fontaine after two more years of stage work, although appearing primarily in B-movies. Two exceptions were A Damsel in Distress (1937) opposite Fred Astaire and Gunga Din (1939) with Douglas Fairbanks, Jr. Her career took off in the early '40s due largely to leads in two Alfred Hitchcock films. Fontaine received Best Actress Oscar nominations for her work in the director's Rebecca (1940) and The Constant Nymph (1943), and won an Oscar for her performance in Hitchcock's Suspicion (1941). She starred in many subsequent films, at first playing innocent, well-bred types, but later maturing into roles as sophisticated, worldly, often hot-headed or maliciously calculating women. Appearing in few films after 1958, Fontaine was also a licensed pilot, champion balloonist, prize-winning tuna fisherman, expert golfer, licensed interior decorator, and Cordon Bleu cook. The sister of actress Olivia de Havilland (with whom she supposedly had many feuds), the first three of Fontaine's four husbands were actor Brian Aherne, producer William Dozier, and producer/screenwriter Collier Young. She published an autobiography, No Bed of Roses, in 1978 and made two rare TV movie and miniseries appearances in 1986. Joan Fontaine's final big-screen appearance was the intelligent British horror/drama The Devil's Own; her last TV work was in the 1994 production Good King Wenceslas. She died in 2013 at age 96.

Trivia: Jo Ann Sayers was a beautiful and talented young actress of the late '30s. Born Miriam Lucille Lilygren in Seattle, she was a natural performer as a child, dancing as well as taking up the violin and the piano. Her initial career goals were more serious than acting, however, as she attended the University of Washington with the intention of eventually earning a law degree. Acting and dramatics beckoned, however, and she was soon approached by a talent agent; she got a screen test that led her to Hollywood in the second half of the 1930s, in short subjects and also in roles of varying sizes in feature films at Columbia and MGM. These included a test for the role of Scarlett O'Hara in Gone With the Wind, a co-starring part in Young Dr. Kildare (1938) and good part The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1939), an uncredited role in The Women (1939), and a decent-sized role in the Boris Karloff chiller The Man With Nine Lives (1940). Her biggest and best role, however, was her last, in the Paramount-made The Light of Western Stars (1940), as the headstrong heroine who helps put the cowpoke played by Victor Jory on the path to sobriety and righteousness. On Broadway, she co-starred with Shirley Booth in My Sister Eileen. She retired from the Broadway stage after marrying, but later appeared in summer theater productions and did some broadcast work as well.

Trivia: The daughter of silent comedy film director Ray Grey, who died when she was eight, Virginia Grey debuted onscreen at age 10 as Little Eva in Uncle Tom's Cabin (1927). She did a few more juvenile roles in silents, then as a teenager she appeared in small roles in talkies before working her way up to leading lady in a number of second features; she also played second leads in a few major productions. Grey went on to a prolific, long-lived screen career over the next three-plus decades; she also worked occasionally on TV and for a time was a regular on the soap opera General Hospital. Though she never married, at one time she was romantically involved with actor Clark Gable, whom she reportedly came close to marrying.

Trivia: Another Hollywood hard-luck case, red-haired Peggy Shannon (born Winona Sammon) was brought in by producer B.P. Schulberg as a replacement for Clara Bow, who had suffered a nervous breakdown during the production of The Secret Call (1931). Shannon earned heaps of publicity, and along with Sylvia Sidney, was considered Bow's replacement in more ways than one.No overnight success, Shannon had studied dance with famous choreographer Ned Wayburn and had made her stage bow in the 1923 version of the Ziegfeld Follies. She returned for the 1924 show, which featured Will Rogers and Ann Pennington, and appeared in two subsequent editions of Earl Carroll's rival Vanities. Her acting debut came opposite Humphrey Bogart's wife, Mayo Methot, in What Ann Brought Home (1927), and she later interrupted an already waning Hollywood career to star in Page Miss Glory in 1934.Although she certainly was easy on the eyes, Shannon did not have what it takes to become a screen star. In film after film, the expected sparks stubbornly refused to ignite and she was soon appearing in Grade-B assignments. The return to Broadway did little for her stature in Hollywood and by the late '30s, Shannon was playing bits. Divorced from actor Alan Davis, she remarried photographer Albert G. Roberts and it was he who found her slumped over a kitchen table in their North Hollywood home, dead from a liver ailment caused by acute alcoholism. Tragically, Roberts committed suicide less than three weeks later.

Trivia: Statuesque, platinum-blonde American actress Natalie Moorhead entered films in 1929; by the end of the next year, she had nearly a dozen movies to her credit. Moorhead was most effectively cast in vampish roles, notably her turn as one of the suspects in The Thin Man (1934). She also proved an excellent foil for such slight-statured comedians as Wheeler and Woolsey (Hook, Line and Sinker, 1930) and Buster Keaton (Parlor Bedroom and Bath, 1931). Natalie Moorhead went on to play lady-outlaw Belle Starr in Heart of Arizona (1938), then continued appearing in supporting roles and bits until the mid-'40s.

Trivia: Like her contemporaries Lynn Bari and Veda Ann Borg, blonde actress Mary Beth Hughes seldom rose above "starlet" or "second-echelon star" status, even though she worked steadily and enjoyed a loyal fan following. Encouraged to pursue a theatrical career by her grandmother, a onetime actress, Hughes went from stage to films in 1938. From 1940 through 1943, Hughes was part of the "B" stable at 20th Century-Fox, playing both good and bad girls in the popular Michael Shayne series with Lloyd Nolan, and going through the usual "other woman" paces in films like Orchestra Wives (1942). She is billed second in the moody western The Ox-Bow Incident (1943), but her role is utterly expendable; in fact, she has fewer lines than George Meeker, the unbilled actor playing her husband. While her film career never really went anywhere, Hughes remained in the public eye through her many cheesecake photos in movie-oriented magazines of the era. In the mid-1950s, Hughes gave up films in favor of work as a nightclub singer/musician and television actress; she was often cast as nagging wife Clara Appleby on TV's The Red Skelton Show, possibly because she was one of the few actresses whom Skelton couldn't break up. Mary Beth Hughes briefly returned to filmmaking in the mid-1970s, playing character roles in such drive-in fare as The Working Girls (1974) and How's Your Love Life? (1977).