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: The son of a California lumberman, actor Steve Cohran spent his youth in Laramie, Wyoming, where he graduated from the University of Wyoming in 1939. After learning his craft at the Barter Theatre and the Carmel (California) Shakespeare Festival, he went on to work at Detroit's Federal Theatre, and was co-starred in the touring companies of Without Love and My Sister Eileen before his Broadway debut in the eight-performance flop Hickory Stick. During the war, Cochran directed Army camp shows. From 1945 through 1948, he was under contract to Sam Goldwyn, mostly playing secondary roles as gangsters. He left Hollywood to co-star with Mae West in Catherine Was Great and Diamond Lil; perhaps as a reward for not being acted off the stage by the formidable West, Cochran was signed by Warner Bros., where from 1949 through 1952 he was seen in rugged leading roles. In 1953, Cochran formed his own production company, Robert Alexander Productions, but he would not be seen in another film until 1956's Come Next Spring, which he produced for Republic Studios. He then headed for Europe, where he was given a starring assignment in Michelangelo Antonioni's The Outcry. In 1965, after several years of unimpressive movie and TV appearances, Cochran revived his production company and headed for Central and South America to scout locations. He hired three women, ages 14 through 25, to work as assistants, then headed for Costa Rica aboard his forty-foot yacht. On June 25, 1965, the yacht drifted into Port Champerico, Guatemala; on board were the three very distraught women--and the body of Steve Cochran, who had died some ten days earlier of a lung affection. Steve Cochran's last film project, Tell Me in the Sunlight (which he had produced, directed, written, scored and starred in back in 1964), was reedited and released posthumously.

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

Trivia: The son of American actress Lillian Elliott, Lloyd Corrigan began working in films as a bit actor in the silent era. But Corrigan's heart was in writing and directing during his formative professional years. He was among Raymond Griffith's writing staff for the Civil War comedy Hands Up (1926), and later penned several of Bebe Daniels' Paramount vehicles. Corrigan worked on the scripts of all three of Paramount's "Fu Manchu" films (1929-30) starring Warner Oland; he also directed the last of the series, Daughter of the Dragon (1930). In contrast to his later light-hearted acting roles, Corrigan's tastes ran to mystery and melodrama in most of his directing assignments, as witness Murder on a Honeymoon (1935) and Night Key (1937). In 1938, Corrigan abandoned directing to concentrate on acting. A porcine little man with an open-faced, wide-eyed expression, Corrigan specialized in likable businessmen and befuddled millionaires (especially in Columbia's Boston Blackie series). This quality was often as not used to lead the audience astray in such films as Maisie Gets Her Man (1942) and The Thin Man Goes Home (1944), in which the bumbling, seemingly harmless Corrigan would turn out to be a master criminal or murderer. Lloyd Corrigan continued acting in films until the mid '60s; he also was a prolific TV performer, playing continuing roles in the TV sitcoms Happy (1960) and Hank (1965), and showing up on a semi-regular basis as Ned Buntline on the long-running western Wyatt Earp (1955-61).

Trivia: When comic-strip artist Chester Gould created his famed detective Dick Tracy in 1931, he deliberately patterned Tracy's jut-jawed countenance and stoic demeanor after that of his favorite film star, Jack Holt. Dropping out of Virginia Military Institute as a teenager, Holt held down a variety of tough, he-man jobs before settling into film acting in 1913. He flourished in the 1920s as a virile action hero, especially in the late-silent Columbia productions of up-and-coming director Frank Capra. Holt was one of Columbia's most valuable commodities in the early talkie era, but his popularity waned as the quality of his films plummeted. After serving as a major in World War II, Holt returned to films as a supporting actor, often (as in the 1950 Roy Rogers vehicle Trail of Robin Hood) playing thinly disguised variations on his own off-screen persona. Jack Holt was the father of three film performers: western star Tim Holt, leading lady Jennifer Holt, and character actor David Holt.

Trivia: Character actor, onscreen from 1934; concurrently, for 33 years he was comedian Jack Benny's announcer and straight man on radio and TV.

Trivia: Character actor James Westerfield made comparatively few films, as his first love was the stage; he produced, directed and acted in a number of Broadway productions, and was the recipient of two New York Drama Critics awards. In films from 1941 (he's easily recognizable as a traffic cop in Orson Welles' The Magnificent Ambersons), he was generally cast as villains, notably as a recurring rapscallion on the 1963 TV series The Travels of Jamie McPheeters. Disney fans will remember Westerfield as the flustered small-town police officer (variously named Hanson and Morrison) in such fanciful farces as The Shaggy Dog (1959), The Absent Minded Professor (1960) and Son of Flubber (1963). James Westerfield was married to actress Fay Tracy.

Trivia: A successful screen actress in addition to her work as a prominent public relation executive, Shirley O'Hara Krims found fame on the silver screen with a series of films in the '30s and '40s before redefining her career in the '70s. Born in Rochester, MN, Krims was quickly signed to RKO after relocating to Hollywood at the tender age of 18. Her early appearances came in such films as Tarzan and the Amazons (1945) and the film that provided Frank Sinatra with his first feature role, Higher and Higher (1944). An avid supporter of American soldiers during World War II, Betty Davis presented Krims with a Support for America award for her work with the USO's Hollywood Canteen. After turning toward television in the '50s and '60s, Krims became the public relations director for Burbank Studios (later acquired by Warner Bros.). Krims was also a noted philanthropist, and through the Publicists Guild, the former actress supported such organizations as Operation Children. Married to Jimmy McHugh Jr. early in life, Krims would later wed Oscar-nominated screenwriter Milton Krims. In late December of 2002, Shirley O'Hara Krims died from complications of diabetes in Calabasas, CA. She was 78.

Trivia: His European/Scandinavia heritage notwithstanding, actor Martin Garralaga was most effectively cast in Latin American roles. Many of his screen appearances were uncredited, but in 1944 he was awarded co-starring status in a series of Cisco Kid westerns produced at Monogram. Duncan Renaldo starred as Cisco, with Garralaga as comic sidekick Pancho. In 1946, Monogram producer Scott R. Dunlap realigned the Cisco Kid series; Renaldo remained in the lead, but now Garralaga's character name changed from picture to picture, and sometimes he showed up as the villain. Eventually Garralaga was replaced altogether by Leo Carrillo, who revived the Pancho character. Outside of his many westerns, Martin Garralaga could be seen in many wartime films with foreign settings; he shows up as a headwaiter in the 1942 classic Casablanca.