Trivia: Studied to be a surgeon at the behest of his father prior to pursuing a career in acting.Was 6'0 and 180 pounds while in school and excelled in baseball and football.Starred in Paramount's first sound film, the baseball comedy Warming Up, a role his early sports experience prepared him for.Excelled in both silent films and talkies, and was one of few actors to successfully make that transition.Had a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame dedicated to him on February 8, 1960 in the Motion Pictures section at 1610 Vine Street.

Trivia: The daughter of a boat manufacturer and a concert pianist, American actress Irene Dunne began voice training lessons before the age of thirteen. Dunne's diligence won her a scholarship to the Chicago Musical College, but her dreams of a career with New York City's Metropolitan opera faded when she failed the audition. Still, there was an outlet for her talents in musical comedy, which she began in a touring company of the popular stage production Irene. After her Broadway debut in 1923, Dunne was able to secure leading roles in several musicals, and marry Francis J. Griffin, a New York dentist, with whom she remained married until his death in 1965. In 1929, Dunne was cast as Magnolia in the Chicago company production of Show Boat; her superlative performance led to a movie contract with RKO, where after a few inconsequential programmers like Leathernecking (1930), she became one of the top dramatic stars at that studio. In Ann Vickers (1933), she plays a lady doctor who undergoes an illegal abortion, and in The Age of Innocence (1934), Dunne played the same role reprised by Michelle Pfeiffer in the 1994 remake of that film. Dunne was finally permitted to show off her singing talents in Sweet Adeline (1935), and in 1936 Universal Pictures cast her in her stage role as Magnolia in the studio's definitive film version of Show Boat (1936). After Show Boat, Dunne entered the second phase of her movie career as a comedienne, contributing hilarious performances to such screwball farces as Theodora Goes Wild (1936), The Awful Truth (1937), and My Favorite Wife (1940). It was back to dramatic roles in the early 1940s, and as age crept up on Dunne, she made a seamless transition to starring character roles in such films as Anna and the King of Siam (1946) and Life with Father (1947). Approaching fifty, Dunne retained her classically beautiful features and; in fact, Hollywood makeup artists were compelled to draw lines on her face and fit her with heavy body suits for her "aged" roles in I Remember Mama (1948) and The Mudlark (1950). Upon completion of It Grows on Trees (1952), Dunne retired from films, though she remained active on television, notably in such Catholic-oriented programs as The Christophers. In recognition of her charitable work and interest in conservative political causes, Dunne was appointed by President Eisenhower as one of five alternative delegates to the United Nations in 1957.

Trivia: From typist to movie star: that was the dream of many a female office worker of the early 20th century, and that dream came true for breathtaking brunette Estelle Taylor. It helped, of course, that she was possessed with boundless ambition and a keen business sense. Marrying into wealth at age 14, she divorced her husband at 18 when her modelling career began to flourish. She enjoyed the attentions of many a Stage Door Johnny while working as a Broadway chorus dancer, and caught the eye of not a few well-heeled producers when she decided upon a film career in 1920. Exotically beautiful, Taylor essayed such film roles as Miriam in DeMille's The Ten Commandments (1923), Mary Queen of Scots in the Mary Pickford vehicle Dorothy Vernon of Haddon Hall (1925), and Lucrezia Borgia (a delightfully wry performance) in John Barrymore's Don Juan. In 1925, Taylor married world heavyweight champion Jack Dempsey, but the marriage ended in a well-publicized divorce in 1931. Making the switchover to sound with ease, Taylor continued to play good roles in such talkies as Cimarron (1931) and Call Her Savage (1932, as Clara Bow's mother) until she retired in the early 1930s. Taylor made a few short subjects in the late 1930s; her last appearance was in Jean Renoir's 1945 feature The Southerner. In the 1988 TV-movie biopic Dempsey, Estelle Taylor was portrayed by Victoria Tennant.

Trivia: A major stage star who played Lady Macbeth, Hedda Gabler, and Camille, the tall (nearly six feet) Nance O'Neil was reportedly the lover of murderess Lizzie Borden. A notorious spendthrift always in financial trouble, O'Neil was one of the first of her generation of actresses to embrace motion pictures. Signing with producer William Fox, she starred in a 1915 screen version of Leo Tolstoy's The Kreutzer Sonata. Although receiving favorable reviews, the veteran star was somewhat upstaged by the colorful Theda Bara, and it was Bara who would become Fox's major dramatic star, not the aging O'Neil. The latter continued to appear in films through 1917 -- including playing the Czarina in The Fall of the Romanoffs -- but moviegoers never truly warmed up to her and she returned to the stage. O'Neil was back in the new, audible Hollywood by 1929, supporting John Gilbert and Catherine Dale Owen in the ill-fated His Glorious Night. Neither Gilbert nor Owen had much future in sound films, but O'Neil lent her considerable presence to scores of early talkies, including appearing as the mother superior in Call of the Flesh, the Grand Mere in Their Mad Moment (1931), and unbilled as Mrs. Von Stael in Westward Passage. Nance O'Neil was briefly the wife of actor Alfred Hickman (1872-1931).

Trivia: Mississippi-born Roscoe Ates spent a good portion of his childhood overcoming a severe stammer. Entering show business as a concert violinist, the shriveled, pop-eyed Ates found the money was better as a vaudeville comedian, reviving his long-gone stutter for humorous effect. In films from 1929, Ates appeared in sizeable roles in such films as The Champ (1931), Freaks (1932) and Alice in Wonderland (1933), and also starred in his own short subject series with RKO and Vitaphone. Though his trademarked stammer is something of an endurance test when seen today, it paid off in big laughs in the 1930s, when speech impediments were considered the ne plus ultra of hilarity. By the late 1930s Ates's popularity waned, and he was reduced to unbilled bits in such films as Gone with the Wind (1939) and Dixie (1942). His best showing during the 1940s was as comic sidekick to singing cowboy Eddie Dean in a series of 15 low-budget westerns. Remaining busy in films and on TV into the 1960s, Roscoe Ates made his last appearance in the 1961 Jerry Lewis comedy The Errand Boy.

Trivia: Probably no one came by the label "Runyon-esque" more honestly than Polish-born actor George E. Stone; a close friend of writer Damon Runyon, Stone was seemingly put on this earth to play characters named Society Max and Toothpick Charlie, and to mouth such colloquialisms as "It is known far and wide" and "More than somewhat." Starting his career as a Broadway "hoofer," the diminutive Stone made his film bow as "the Sewer Rat" in the 1927 silent Seventh Heaven. His most prolific film years were 1929 to 1936, during which period he showed up in dozens of Warner Bros. "urban" films and backstage musicals, and also appeared as the doomed Earle Williams in the 1931 version of The Front Page. He was so closely associated with gangster parts by 1936 that Warners felt obligated to commission a magazine article showing Stone being transformed, via makeup, into an un-gangsterish Spaniard for Anthony Adverse (1936). For producer Hal Roach, Stone played three of his oddest film roles: a self-pitying serial killer in The Housekeeper's Daughter (1938), an amorous Indian brave in Road Show (1940), and Japanese envoy Suki Yaki in The Devil With Hitler (1942). Stone's most popular role of the 1940s was as "the Runt" in Columbia's Boston Blackie series. In the late '40s, Stone was forced to severely curtail his acting assignments due to failing eyesight. Though he was totally blind by the mid-'50s, Stone's show business friends, aware of the actor's precarious financial state, saw to it that he got TV and film work, even if it meant that his co-stars had to literally lead him by the hand around the set. No one was kinder to George E. Stone than the cast and crew of the Perry Mason TV series, in which Stone was given prominent billing as the Court Clerk, a part that required nothing more of him than sitting silently at a desk and occasionally holding a Bible before a witness.

Trivia: General purpose actor George Meader appeared in films from 1940 to 1951. Meader played small roles for such big studios as Warner Bros., Universal, Paramount, MGM and Columbia. He was cast as district attorneys, judges, murder suspects, murder victims, medical examiners and doctors (including a singing doctor in 1942's Madame Curie. One of George Meader's best showings was his dual role in Boston Blackie Booked on Suspicion (1945).

Trivia: Frail-looking character actor Frank Darien began working in films around 1910, playing parts in a smattering of D. W. Griffith and Mack Sennett shorts. Darien was busiest during the early-talkie era, essaying peripheral roles in such productions as Cimarron (1931), The Miracle Man (1932) and Mystery of the Wax Museum (1932). He was most often cast as coroners, doctors, household servants, doormen and justices of the peace. Frank Darien's most memorable role was Uncle John in The Grapes of Wrath (1940), directed by another D. W. Griffith alumnus, John Ford.

Trivia: "Horse faced" was the usual capsule assessment given American actress Edna May Oliver - a gross disservice to her talent and accomplishments. A descendant of President John Quincy Adams, she aspired to a career in opera, and at 16 her uncle secured her a job with a light opera company. Her voice was damaged from overuse and exposure to bad weather, so Oliver turned her energies to acting. Stock company work began in 1911, and even as a teenager she lanternlike facial features assured her older character roles. Her 1916 Broadway debut led to a string of small and unsatisfying roles, until fortune smiled upon her with a supporting part as a servant in Owen Davis' Icebound. Davis' play won the 1923 Pulitzer Prize, thrusting everyone involved into the spotlight. Oliver was hired to repeat her Icebound duties for the film cameras in 1924, and though not technically her film debut, she would always list Icebound as her starting point in cinema. Solid roles in the Broadway productions The Cradle Snatchers, Strike Up the Band and the immortal Show Boat kept Oliver busy during the '20s, culminating in a contract with RKO Radio Studios. RKO thrust her into anything and everything, from Wheeler and Woolsey comedies to the Oscar-winning Cimarron (1931). The best testament to her popularity in films were the Edna May Oliver caricatures (complete with "Oh, reaaallly" voice imitation) that popped up with regularity in animated cartoons of the '30s. Oliver worked for virtually all the big studios in the '30s, at one point starring briefly in the Hildegarde Withers mystery series, a role she seemed born to play. Evidently, producers loved to put her angular frame in period costumes, as witness her marvelous roles in David Copperfield (1934), Tale of Two Cities (1935), Romeo and Juliet (1936) and Drums Along the Mohawk (1939). By 1940, Edna May Oliver was a law unto herself (even dictating what hours she would and wouldn't work) and filmakers wisely allowed her to use all the acting tricks at her disposal, from her famous loud sniff of distaste to her low, claxonish voice. After a long intestinal illness, Edna May Oliver died in 1942 on her 59th birthday; ironically, her last screen role had been as an infuriatingly healthy hypochondriac in Lydia (1941).

Trivia: Rising to fame as Pineapple in Hal Roach's Our Gang shorts in the mid-1920s, comic child actor Eugene Jackson performed in vaudeville in addition to his film work, and later continued to work alongside such comic icons as Redd Foxx. Born in Buffalo, NY, in 1916, Jackson got his break in show business while performing the shimmy for a bag of groceries at Central Avenue's Rosebud Theater in 1923. Winning the competition for three weeks in a row, his mother recognized the youngster's talents and soon took him to Hollywood to attempt a career in the entertainment industry. Soon signed to a two-year contract by Roach (who dubbed the child Pineapple due to his afro-frizz), Jackson made his Our Gang debut in The Mysterious Mystery! Later working for Mack Sennett and alongside Mary Pickford, Jackson made a successful transition into talkies with his role in the 1928 musical Hearts in Dixie, and toured in vaudeville when adolescence took hold. Later turning up on television in both Julia and Sanford and Son, the former child-star published a biography titled Eugene Pineapple Jackson: His Own Story in 1998. Jackson also established studios in both Compton and Pasadena, where he taught dance. Eugene Jackson died of a heart attack in Compton, CA, on October 26, 2001. He was 84.

Trivia: Gangly, bald-pated stage actor Otto Hoffman inaugurated his screen career with producer Thomas Ince in 1916. After directing Ince's Secret of Black Mountain (1917), Hoffman concentrating on acting. He was seen as cadaverous, crafty, menacing, and sometimes near-moronic types in such silents as Human Wreckage (1918), The Eagle (1925), The Terror (1928) and Noah's Ark (1929). His ethnic range in talkies embraced the Riffian Hasse in Desert Song (1929), frontiersman Murch Rankin in Cimarron (1931), and Gandhi parody "Khook" in Eddie Cantor's Kid Millions (1934). Otto Hoffman spent his last film years in bit roles, most often cast as pawnbrokers or caretakers.

Trivia: Wizened character actor William Orlamond delivered at least two standout performances in the latter part of the silent era, that of Uncle Kutowski, who strenuously attempts to organize a welcome home parade for John Gilbert and Lars Hanson in The Flesh and the Devil (1925), and as Sourdough, comically fighting with Hanson over Lillian Gish in The Wind (1928). He was also in the riotous comedies Up in Mabel's Room (1926) and Getting Gertie's Garter (1927) and along with countryman Karl Dane and Louise Fazenda constituted a rather unconventional love triangle in Marion Davies' The Red Mill (1927). Hailing from a well-known Danish family of touring actors, Orlamond (born William Andersen Orlamundt) came to America in the latter part of the 19th century and by 1912 was playing comedy roles onscreen for the Lubin Mfg. Company in Philadelphia. He became associated with Metro in the late 1910s and remained with the company when it became MGM, his reputation as a reliable scene-stealer steadily growing. Sound proved no hindrance to Orlamond's screen activity and he earned good roles in such films as The Way of All Men (1930), Are These Our Children? (1931), and Roar of the Dragon (1932). By then, however, Orlamond had become quite elderly and he retired from the screen in 1937. A brother, Fritz Orlamond, and a sister, Ruth Orlamond, also appeared in American silent films, as did Mrs. Orlamond, the former Madge Bertrand (1861-1947) of St. Charles, MN.

Trivia: The daughter of a stage actress, Helen Parrish began appearing in silent films as a child. In the early '30s, she was briefly a member of Hal Roach's Our Gang. Parrish went on to inspire hisses as Deanna Durbin's spiteful nemesis in such films as Three Smart Girls Grow Up (1939) and First Love (1939). She began playing adult roles at Universal and RKO in 1940 before her career went into a slow decline at Monogram. For many years the wife of People Are Funny and You Bet Your Life producer John Guedel, Helen Parrish died of cancer at the age of 34. Her older brother was juvenile star-turned-editor-turned-director Robert Parrish.

Trivia: Won 50 races on 46 poles as a driver, and had 132 wins and six championships as an owner. Bootlegging moonshine as a teen in North Carolina's Brushy Mountains led to a start in racing, like the roots of NASCAR. Dubbed the "Last American Hero" in a 1965 Esquire article by Tom Wolfe. Convicted by the federal government for moonshining in 1956, for which he received a pardon in 1986 from President Reagan. Inducted into the International Motorsports Hall of Fame in 1990. Inducted into the Motorsports Hall of Fame of America in 1991. Named one of NASCAR's 50 Greatest Drivers in 1998. Inducted into the NASCAR Hall of Fame as part of the inaugural class with Richard Petty, Dale Earnhardt, Bill France Sr. and Bill France Jr., on May 23, 2010. Of the five, Richard Petty was the only other living inductee. Built an authentic moonshine still for the Hall of Fame facility.

Trivia: In films from 1928, heavy-set character actor Henry Roquemore essayed small-to-medium roles as politicians, storekeepers, judges, and "sugar daddies." A typical Roquemore characterization was "the Match King," one of Mae West's many over-the-hill suitors in Goin' to Town (1935). His more memorable roles include the Justice of the Peace who marries Spencer Tracy and Katharine Hepburn in Woman of the Year (1941). Henry Roquemore was the husband of actress Fern Emmett.

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: Irish-born Robert McKenzie was already a theatrical showman of some renown by the time he made his first film appearance in 1921. The barrel-chested, snaggle-toothed McKenzie appeared in dozens of westerns and comedies, usually as a bombastic lawman or backwoods con artist. Even when he played bits (which was often), his raspy voice and hyena-like laugh always identified him. His more memorable feature-film roles included W. C. Fields' drinking buddy Charlie Bogle in You're Telling Me (1934), larcenous Judge Roy Dean in Gene Autry's Sing, Cowboy, Sing (1937), and the jolly captain who rents Laurel & Hardy a broken-down boat in Saps at Sea (1940). In addition, he appeared in hundreds of short subjects, playing opposite the likes of Our Gang, Andy Clyde, Charley Chase and the Three Stooges. In 1927, McKenzie tried his hand at screenwriting with the low-budget western The White Outlaw. Robert McKenzie and his actress-wife Eva had three daughters, all of whom acted in films at one time or another; their daughter Ella was the wife of comedian Billy Gilbert.

Trivia: In films after 1915, hatchet-faced Robert Kortman claimed to have served in the U.S. Cavalry prior to going on-stage. With producer Thomas H. Ince in the mid-1910s, the menacing actor often supported the era's great Western icon William S. Hart (he was one of the rowdy townsmen in 1916's Hell's Hinges) and was equally busy in the '20s. Kortman, however, came into his own in sound serials, especially at Mascot and its successor Republic Pictures, where his menacing visage turned up everywhere, from playing Magua in Last of the Mohicans (1932) to portraying One-Eye Chapin in Adventures of Red Ryder (1940). His roles grew increasingly smaller, and Kortman continued to play mostly villains until at least 1951. He died of cancer.

Trivia: After a brief Broadway career, actor William Janney came to films in 1929. He was sometimes cast as the reckless kid brother who gets knocked off in the first or second reel, as witness The Dawn Patrol (1930) and Hopalong Cassidy Returns. Otherwise, it was Janney's unfortunate lot to play weaklings and snivelers; his films included Crime of the Century (1933), in which he was a red-herring suspect who didn't do it, and Secrets of the Blue Room (1933), in which he was the least likely suspect who did. He also played the nominal hero in Laurel & Hardy's Bonnie Scotland (1935), a film he'd later remember as a pleasurable experience, save for the whining, indecisive character he was called upon to portray. Tired of playing the same basic part over and over, William Janney retired from films in 1936.

Trivia: Born Edward Flanagan, O'Keefe was a lithe, brash, charming, tall, rugged lead actor. The son of vaudevillians, he began appearing onstage in his parents' act while still a toddler. By age 16 he was writing scripts for "Our Gang" comedy shorts. He attended some college and did more work on vaudeville before entering films in the early '30s, appearing in bit roles in more than 50 films under the name Bud Flanagan. His work in a small role in the film Saratoga (1937) impressed Clark Gable, who recommended that he be cast in leads. MGM agreed, so he changed his name to Dennis O'Keefe and went on to play leads in numerous films, beginning with Bad Man of Brimstone (1938). Besides many light action-oriented films, he also appeared in numerous '40s comedies, and later specialized in tough-guy parts. Later in his career he directed a film or two and also wrote mystery stories. In the late '50s O'Keefe starred in the short-lived TV series "The Dennis O'Keefe Show." He was in only two films in the '60s. He died at 60 of lung cancer. His widow is actress Steffi Duna.

Trivia: The son of famed theatrical personality William Collier, William H. Collier Jr. made his acting debut at age four in his dad's vehicle Caught in the Rain. The younger Collier appeared in his first movie in 1914. Nicknamed "Buster," Collier was a lifelong pal of another celebrated Buster whose last name was Keaton. Gaining a bon vivant reputation in the 1920s, Collier made headlines for his New Year's Eve marriage to Ziegfeld girl Marie Stevens (the best man was none other than William Randolph Hearst). A successful screen leading man of the silent era, Collier made a smooth talkie transition in the Frank Capra-directed The Donovan Affair (1929). His best-remembered talkie role was as the stool pigeon who is gunned down on steps of a church in 1930's Little Caesar. After his film career petered out in the early 1930s, Buster Collier went to work as an actor's agent for the William Morris Agency; throughout the 1940s, Collier was a principal conduit between Hollywood and radio, coaxing several mike-shy movie stars to appear on such airwaves anthologies as Lux Radio Theatre.

Trivia: Bulky, foghorn-voiced Stanley Fields was a professional prizefighter before becoming a vaudeville comedian. He came to Hollywood when the movies began to talk, establishing himself as a scowling villain. One of his biggest early film roles was the gang boss who gives torpedo Edward G. Robinson his first big break in Little Caesar (1931). Thereafter, Fields frequently popped up unbilled but never unnoticeable, as witness his spirited performance as a hillbilly theatre patron in Show Boat (1936). Fields' foreboding brutishness made him an excellent foil for such comedians as Wheeler and Woolsey (Cracked Nuts [1931] and Girl Crazy [1932]) Eddie Cantor (The Kid From Spain [1932]) and Laurel and Hardy (Way Out West [1937]). Evidently changing agents in the late 1930s, Stanley Fields enjoyed some of his most sizeable screen assignments in the years just prior to his death in 1941, notably the practical joke-playing crime czar in the 1939 John Garfield vehicle Blackwell's Island.