Trivia: Although his career lacked the resilience of Charlie Chaplin and Laurel and Hardy, Buster Keaton may well have been the most gifted comedian to emerge from the cinema's silent era. And while his skills as a gag writer and physical comic were remarkable, Keaton was one clown whose understanding of the film medium was just as great as his talent for taking a pratfall. Keaton, however, had a roller-coaster career in which he fell just as far as he rose, though he was fortunate enough to enjoy a comeback in the later years of his life. Joseph Frank Keaton was born on October 4, 1895, to Joseph Hallie Keaton and Myra Cutler Keaton, a pair of vaudeville performers. Spending his childhood on the road with his family, he earned the nickname Buster at the age of six months; as legend has it, after the young Keaton fell down a flight of steps at a theater, a magician on the bill, Harry Houdini, said to the lad's father, "What a buster your kid took!" The name stuck, and, by the age of three, the youngster was appearing as part of his parents act whenever they could evade child labor laws. In vaudeville, Keaton developed remarkable talents as an acrobatic comedian with a superb sense of timing, and became a rising star by his teens. His father, however, had developed a serious drinking problem, which strained his relationship with his son and caused serious problems with their very physical stage act, which, in early 1917, Buster left. He appeared in a Broadway comic revue later that year, but the key to Keaton's future came when he met a fellow vaudeville comedian. Roscoe "Fatty" Arbuckle was starring in a low-budget two-reel screen comedy, The Butcher Boy, and invited Keaton to play a small role in the picture. The two hit it off and became a successful onscreen team, starring in a long string of comic hits. Fascinated by the medium of film, Keaton soon began writing their pictures, and assisted in directing them; Keaton was soon starring in his own films, as well, though he and Arbuckle remained lifelong close friends. Keaton developed a distinctive comic style which merged slapstick with a sophisticated sense of visual absurdity, and often included gags which made the most of the film medium, involving props, sets, and visual trickery that would have been impossible on the vaudeville stage. Keaton also developed his personal visual trademark, an unsmiling deadpan demeanor which made his epic-scale gags even funnier. Beginning with his first solo short subjects in 1920, The High Sign and One Week, Keaton became a major star, and after a series of successful two-reelers, including Cops and The Balloonatic, Keaton moved up to feature-length comedies in 1923 with the farcical The Three Ages. Keaton reached the peak of his craft with the features which followed, including Sherlock Jr., Seven Chances, The Navigator, Steamboat Bill, Jr., and the Civil War comedy The General, now universally regarded as Keaton's masterpiece. Independent producer Joseph M. Schenck was the man behind Fatty Arbuckle's comedies when Keaton came aboard, and they continued to work together when Keaton struck out on his own. Schenck believed in the comic's talent and allowed him to work without interference, resulting in a string of creative and popular triumphs. Then, in 1928 -- and with Keaton's approval -- Schenck sold his contract to the biggest studio in Hollywood, Metro Goldwyn Mayer. While Keaton's first vehicle for MGM, The Cameraman, was up to his usual high standards, he chafed at the studio's interference and insistence that the filmmaker work within the same boundaries as its other employees. With outside writers and directors controlling Keaton with a strong hand, his work suffered tremendously. Coupled with a crumbling marriage (to Natalie Talmadge, whom he wed in 1920), Keaton began to drink heavily. With the advent of sound, MGM seemed to have even less of an idea of what to do with the actor/director, and starred him in a series of second-rate comedies with Jimmy Durante, whose broad style did not mesh well with Keaton. By 1934, Keaton had hit bottom -- MGM fired him, declaring him unreliable after he refused to work on scripts he felt were inferior. His marriage to Talmadge had ended, and he impulsively (and while drunk) married Mae Scriven, a union that would last only three years. The IRS sued him for 28,000 dollars in back taxes. And his alcoholism had become so destructive that he was committed to a sanitarium, where he was placed in a straight jacket. Keaton eventually got his drinking problem under control, but his career in Hollywood was in dire straits. He starred in a series of low-budget short subjects for the tiny Educational Pictures and later Columbia Pictures, none of which made much of an impression. Keaton also appeared on-stage in touring productions of such comedies as The Gorilla, and, ironically, found himself employed as a gag writer and director at MGM, albeit at a fraction of his former salary. He also appeared in a few European comedies, where audiences held him in greater regard than in the U.S. But that began to change in 1949, when a cover story in Life magazine on great clowns of the silent movies reminded audiences of his comic legacy. Keaton began making guest appearances on television shows, and the now sober star made his way back into supporting roles in major movies (most notably Around the World in 80 Days and Charlie Chaplin's Limelight). In 1957, Keaton sold the rights to his life story to Paramount Pictures, who hired him as a technical advisor for The Buster Keaton Story. While the film was a severe disappointment (and had little to do with the facts of his life), the financial windfall was enough for Keaton to buy a new house, where he and his third wife, Eleanor Norris (whom Keaton wed in 1940), lived for the rest of their lives. Keaton found himself in increasing demand in the '60s, appearing in several of American International Pictures' "Beach" musicals (in which he was allowed to work up his own gags) and a number of television ad campaigns. He also starred in a short film created by playwright Samuel Beckett, appearing in a loving tribute to his silent films, The Railrodder, and landed a memorable role in A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum. Sadly, Keaton's second wave of success came to an end on February 1, 1966, when he lost a lengthy battle with lung cancer.

Trivia: Of Spanish extraction, petite blonde leading lady Anita Page entered films as an extra in 1924. Graduating to larger roles fairly rapidly, Page is best remembered as Ann, the mercenary jazz-baby who tricks millionaire Johnny Mack Brown into marriage, gets royally drunk, then tumbles down a huge flight of stairs to her death in the silent Our Dancing Daughters (1928). Page and her Dancing Daughters co-stars Joan Crawford and Dorothy Sebastian starred in two follow-ups (but not sequels), Our Modern Maidens (1929) and Our Blushing Brides (1930), but only Crawford went on to lasting fame. Making a graceful transition to talkies, Page did some nice work as Bessie Love's headstrong sister in the Oscar-winning Broadway Melody (1929), and proved a sprightly heroine for Buster Keaton in Free and Easy (1930) and Sidewalks of New York (1931). After her MGM contract came to an end in 1932, she made do with independent B-pictures, retiring to get married at the age of 26.

Trivia: Actor/director/producer. In his early career, from the late '20s to the early '40s, Montgomery was an amiable light comedian and dramatic actor, appearing in almost 40 sound films before 1935. He starred opposite Norma Shearer in Private Lives (1931), Joan Crawford in The Last of Mrs. Cheyney (1937), Carole Lombard in Hitchcock's comedy Mr. and Mrs. Smith (1941) and was nominated for an Academy Award for Night Must Fall (1937) and Here Comes Mr. Jordan (1941). His career took a more serious turn after his stint in World War II. For his first film after returning, They Were Expendable (1945), Montgomery not only starred but assisted John Ford in the direction. He also starred in and directed the Raymond Chandler detective thriller Lady in the Lake, noted for its unique first-person point of view. His attentions then turned to politics and television. Montgomery gave "friendly" testimony before the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) and by the mid '50s was a consultant to Republican President Eisenhower. As a prestigious television producer, he supervised the '50s dramatic anthology series Eye Witness (1953) and Robert Montgomery Presents (1950-57), which offered his daughter Elizabeth her acting debut and which won him an early Emmy Award in 1952.

Trivia: Hefty vaudeville performer Trixie Friganza (born Delia O'Callahan) enjoyed some success in films in the 1920s. Once describing herself a "perfect 46," Friganza rose from the chorus to headlining at the New York Palace, mainly by delivering an endless stream of self-deprecating "fat girl" jokes. Her screen performances in such comedies as The Whole Town's Talking (1926) and Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1928) were purely a matter of whether the audience found making fun of overweight women a hoot. Friganza can be seen as Lon Chaney's customer in The Unholy Three (1930), as Big Jo in the Paramount Western Wanderer of the Wasteland (1935), and, as herself, in a bizarre Dwain Esper short entitled How to Undress in Front of Your Husband (1937). Her career was cut short by crippling arthritis.

Trivia: American director Fred Niblo was a vaudeville actor for two decades before setting foot in a movie studio. In his travelling-actor days, Niblo worked with some of the biggest acts in the business, including the Four Cohans; in fact, his first wife was George M. Cohan's younger sister Josephine (this marriage was alluded to in the Cohan biopic Yankee Doodle Dandy, though Niblo's second marriage to actress Enid Bennett was not). By the time he went to work at the Ince Studios in 1917, Niblo had deserted acting for directing and producing. As a film director, Niblo secured his reputation as an action specialist with a series of Douglas Fairbanks vehicles, among them The Mark of Zorro (1920) and The Three Musketeers (1921). He also guided Rudolph Valentino through his box-office hit Blood and Sand (1921), and was listed as sole director on MGM's mammoth Ben-Hur (1926) -- though in both instances, the bulk of the impressive second-unit work was done by others. Despite Niblo's track record of blockbusters and his reputation as a loyal studio "team player," he really wasn't an inspired or imaginative director; this became evident in his talkie work, including such yawners as the John Gilbert starrer Redemption (1929) and the William Haines vehicle Way Out West (1930). After faltering in a comeback attempt in England, Niblo returned to Hollywood as a journeyman actor in B-films on the order of Life with Henry (1941). Fred Niblo's credits are sometimes confused with those of his screenwriter son, Fred Niblo Jr.

Trivia: Edgar Dearing was a full-time Los Angeles motorcycle cop in the '20s when he began accepting small roles in the 2-reel comedies of Hal Roach. These roles hardly constituted a stretch, since he was often cast as a motorcycle cop, principally because he supplied his own uniform and cycle; the best-remembered of these "performances" was in Laurel and Hardy's Two Tars (1928). Hal Roach cameraman George Stevens liked Dearing's work, and saw to it that the policeman-cum-actor was prominently featured in Stevens' RKO Wheeler & Woolsey features Kentucky Kernels (1934) and The Nitwits (1935). When he moved into acting full-time in the '30s, Dearing was still primarily confined to law-enforcement bit roles, though he achieved fourth billing as a tough drill sergeant in the Spencer Tracy/Franchot Tone feature They Gave Him a Gun (1937). Dearing's performing weight was most effectively felt in the Abbott and Costello features of the '40s, where he provided a formidable authority-figure foe for the simpering antics of Lou Costello (notably in the "Go Ahead and Sing" routine in 1944's In Society). Dearing also showed up in a number of '40s 2-reelers; he was particularly amusing as strong man Hercules Jones (a "Charles Atlas" takeoff) in the 1948 Sterling Holloway short Man or Mouse? Edgar Dearing's last screen assignment was a prominent role as townsman Mr. Gorman in Walt Disney's Pollyanna (1960).

Trivia: Born in New York City and educated at the University of Virginia, comic actor Edward Brophy entered films as a small part player in 1919. After a few years, he opted for the more financially secure production end of the business, though he never abandoned acting altogether. While working as property master for the Buster Keaton unit at MGM, Brophy was lured before the cameras for a memorable sequence in The Cameraman (1928) in which he and Buster both try to undress in a tiny wardrobe closet. Keaton saw to it that Brophy was prominently cast in two of the famed comedian's talking pictures, and by 1934 Brophy was once again acting full-time. Using his popping eyes, high pitched voiced and balding head to his best advantage, Brophy scored in role after role as funny gangsters and dyspeptic fight managers (he was less effective in such serious parts as the crazed killer in the 1935 horror film Mad Love). In 1940, Brophy entered the realm of screen immortality as the voice of Timothy Mouse in Walt Disney's feature-length cartoon Dumbo (1940). Curtailing his activities in the 1950s, he did his last work for director John Ford. Brophy died during production of Ford's Two Rode Together (1961); according to some sources, the actor's few completed scenes remain in the final release version of that popular western.

Trivia: An actor since the age of 15, John Miljan entered films in 1923. Miljan was handsome enough for leading roles, but realized early on that he'd have a longer screen career as a villain, usually an oily "other man" type. The archetypal Miljan performance can be seen in 1927's The Yankee Clipper. In the course of that film, he (a) feigned an injury to avoid heavy work on board ship, (b) fomented a mutiny, then pretended to fight off the mutineers, and (c) hoarded water for himself while the rest of the crew was dying of thirst--and all the while he pledged undying love for the heroine, who stupidly swallowed his line until the last reel. He made his talkie debut in the promotional trailer for The Jazz Singer (1927), ingratiatingly inviting the audience to see the upcoming landmark production. While he continued playing bad guys in the sound era, he was just as often seen as military officers and police inspectors. His slender frame and authoritative air enabled him to play such roles as General Custer in DeMille's The Plainsman (1936) and a character based on General Wainwright in Back to Bataan (1945). John Miljan remained in harness until 1958, two years before his death.

Trivia: Like his younger brother John, American actor Lionel Barrymore wanted more than anything to be an artist. But a member of the celebrated Barrymore family was expected to enter the family trade, so Lionel reluctantly launched an acting career. Not as attractive as John or sister Ethel, he was most effectively cast in character roles - villains, military officers, fathers - even in his youth. Unable to save what he earned, Barrymore was "reduced" to appearing in films for the Biograph Company in 1911, where he was directed by the great D.W. Griffith and where he was permitted to write a few film stories himself, which to Lionel was far more satisfying than playacting. His stage career was boosted when cast in 1917 as Colonel Ibbetson in Peter Ibbetson, which led to his most celebrated role, Milt Shanks in The Copperhead; even late in life, he could always count on being asked to recite his climactic Copperhead soliloquy, which never failed to bring down the house. Moving on to film, Barrymore was signed to what would be a 25-year hitch with MGM and begged the MGM heads to be allowed to direct; he showed only moderate talent in this field, and was most often hired to guide those films in which MGM wanted to "punish" its more rebellious talent. Resigning himself to acting again in 1931, he managed to cop an Academy Award for his bravura performance as a drunken defense attorney in A Free Soul (1931), the first in an increasingly prestigious series of movie character parts. In 1937, Barrymore was crippled by arthritis, and for the rest of his career was confined to a wheelchair. The actor became more popular than ever as he reached his sixtieth birthday, principally as a result of his annual radio appearance as Scrooge in A Christmas Carol and his continuing role as Dr. Gillespie in MGM's Dr. Kildare film series. Barrymore was aware that venerability and talent are not often the same thing, but he'd become somewhat lazy (if one can call a sixtyish wheelchair-bound man who showed up on time and appeared in at least three films per year "lazy") and settled into repeating his "old curmudgeon with a heart of gold" performance, save for the occasional topnotch part in such films as It's a Wonderful Life (1946) and Down to the Sea in Ships (1949). Denied access to television work by his MGM contract, Barrymore nonetheless remained active in radio (he'd starred in the long-running series Mayor of the Town), and at one point conducted a talk program from his own home; additionally, the actor continued pursuing his hobbies of writing, composing music, painting and engraving until arthritis overcame him. On the day of his death, he was preparing for his weekly performance on radio's Hallmark Playhouse; that evening, the program offered a glowing tribute to Barrymore, never once alluding to the fact that he'd spent a lifetime in a profession he openly despised.

Trivia: Leaving his Virginia hometown at age 14 to earn a living, William Haines was an assistant bookkeeper at a New York bond house when he sent in his photograph to a "New Faces" contest sponsored by movie producer Samuel Goldwyn. The winners of the contest were Haines and another future film star, Eleanor Boardman. Entering films in 1922, Haines rose to stardom at MGM as the star of several breezy comedy-dramas, in which he usually played a smart-lipped braggart who was forced to eat humble pie sometime before the fadeout. Some of Haines' most popular films were those with a sports setting: Brown of Harvard (1926), Slide Kelly Slide (1927), Spring Fever (1927). His favorite leading ladies included Joan Crawford and Marion Davies. Though he weathered the changeover to talkies, Haines' popularity diminished in the early 1930s, due to the emergence of younger cocksure types like James Cagney and Robert Montgomery. After his film career ended in 1934 (an event accelerated in part by public revelation of the actor's homosexuality), William Haines launched a successful second career as a highly sought-after interior decorator.

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: At the turn of the century, 14-year-old Karl Dane first appeared on stage in the Copenhagen theater owned by his father. During the 1910s he traveled to Hollywood and in 1918 was cast in My Four Years in Germany and To Hell With the Kaiser both silent anti-German propaganda pieces. After his impressive portrayal of a U.S. infantryman in the World War I chronicle The Big Parade (1925) his popularity and film roles declined and he began working as a character comedian, often opposite George K. Arthur. Because he retained his heavy Danish accent, his acting career was finished at the end of the silent-film era. Sadly, at the age of 48, Karl Dane committed suicide.

Trivia: Born in Russia, director David Burton lived in New York from an early age. An established stage actor, he made his film bow in 1915. He returned to the theatre, where for nearly a decade he flourished as a director. He was brought back to Hollywood from Broadway by MGM in 1929. While directing such early talkies as The Bishop Murder Case (1930), he found time to play himself in Buster Keaton's backstage farce Free and Easy (1930). He moved to Paramount to direct Gary Cooper's Fighting Caravans in 1931, then free-lanced. David Burton later settled down as a staff director with 20th Century Fox's "B" unit, where he remained until his career ended in 1941.

Trivia: An actor and general manager with his mother's theatrical troupe since the mid-1900s, Cecil B. DeMille formed a filmmaking partnership in 1913 with vaudeville artist Jesse L. Lasky and businessman Samuel Goldfish (soon to be known as Samuel Goldwyn). Their first venture was The Squaw Man (1914), which DeMille co-directed, co-wrote and co-produced with Oscar Apfel. This successful and elaborate six-reeler launched DeMille on a lifelong career in films. His first solo effort was the Western The Virginian (1914), which he also co-scripted. He edited and wrote (or co-wrote) almost all his successful films, with the notable exception of the popular melodrama The Cheat (1915). Writer Jeanie Macpherson began working for DeMille in 1914 with The Captive (1915), and wrote most of his later silent films: hits that included witty romantic farces (Don't Change Your Husband); epic morality tales that combined modern dramas with visions of history (Joan the Woman [1916]) or the Bible (The Ten Commandments [1923]); and perhaps DeMille's greatest artistic success, the handsome and moving life of Christ, The King of Kings (1927). Macpherson also wrote the director's first three talkies, ending their collaboration in 1930 with the bizarre comedy Madam Satan (1930). DeMille continued to score hits in the '30s with epics (Sign of the Cross [1932], Cleopatra [1934]) and Westerns (The Plainsman [1937], Union Pacific [1939]). His output became more sporadic during the '40s, but he still pleased the public with his rugged action films Northwest Mounted Police (1940) and Reap the Wild Wind (1942). DeMille's last three films -- Samson and Delilah (1950), The Greatest Show on Earth (1952), and The Ten Commandments (1956), a remake of his 1923 movie of the same name -- were the most successful releases of their respective years. DeMille's final directorial effort, The Ten Commandments was also the decade's box-office champ. He died in 1959 at the age of 77; his memoir, The Autobiography of Cecil B. DeMille, was published posthumously later that year.

Trivia: Dignified, shiny-domed American actor/playwright Richard Carle acted in both the U.S. and England for several decades before making his first film in 1916. Usually fitted with a pince-nez and winged collar, Carle was perfect for roles calling for slightly faded dignity. Comedy fans will recall Carle as the genially mad scientist in the Laurel and Hardy 2-reeler Habeas Corpus (1928) and as the besotted ship's captain who takes six months to travel from New York to Paris in Wheeler and Woolsey's Diplomaniacs (1933). He went on to appear as college deans, bankers and judges until his death in 1941, a year in which he showed up in no fewer than eight films. What might have been Richard Carle's finest screen role, the eccentric Father William in the 1933 version of Alice in Wonderland, was cut from the final release print of that film.

Trivia: American actor Jackie Coogan belonged to a family of vaudevillians. At age four Coogan was already a stage attraction performing with his father when he caught the eye of Charles Chaplin, who immediately hired him (and his father as well). After giving him a bit part in the short A Day's Pleasure (1919), he made Coogan his co-star in the masterpiece The Kid (1921). This launched Coogan's film career and he went on to become one of the highest paid film actors of the day. Movie audiences worldwide doted on him, but his career as a child star petered out when he was 13 and too old to be "cute." In 1935 when his mother and stepfather refused to let him have the $4 million that he had amassed during his child acting days, he filed suit against them. When the settlement finally came, he received a mere $126,000., but the legal fight brought attention to such abuses, and resulted in the "California Child Actor's Bill" also known as the "Coogan Act" which protected the earnings of child actors. He was married to Betty Grable for 3 years, and to three other showgirls in succession afterwards. During his adulthood, he occasionally appeared in films playing character roles and worked frequently in television, most notably as Uncle Fester in The Addams Family TV series. He died on March 1, 1984.

Trivia: American actress Ann Dvorak was the daughter of silent film director Sam McKim and stage actress Anne Lehr ("Dvorak" was her mother's maiden name). Educated at Page School for Girls in Los Angeles, Dvorak secured work as a chorus dancer in early talking films: she is quite visible amongst the female hoofers in Hollywood Revue of 1929 (1929). Reportedly it was her friend Joan Crawford, a headliner in Hollywood Revue, who introduced Dvorak to multimillionaire Howard Hughes, then busy putting together his film Scarface (1931). Dvorak was put under contract and cast in Scarface as gangster Paul Muni's sister, and despite the strictures of film censorship at the time, the actress' piercing eyes and subtle body language made certain that the "incest" subtext in the script came through loud and clear. Hughes sold Dvorak's contract to Warner Bros., who intended to pay her the relative pittance she'd gotten for Scarface until she decided to retreat to Europe. Warners caved in with a better salary, but it might have been at the expense of Dvorak's starring career. Though she played roles in such films as Three on a Match (1932) and G-Men (1935) with relish, the characters were the sort of "life's losers" who usually managed to expire just before the fadeout, leaving the hero to embrace the prettier, less complex ingenue. Dvorak cornered the market in portraying foredoomed gangster's molls with prolonged death scenes, but they were almost always secondary roles. One of her rare forays into comedy occurred in producer Hal Roach's Merrily We Live (1938), an amusing My Man Godfrey rip-off. In 1940, Dvorak followed her first husband to England, starring there in such wartime films as Squadron Leader X (1941) and This Was Paris (1942). Upon her return to Hollywood in 1945, Dvorak found very little work beyond westerns and melodramas; she did have a bravura role as a cabaret singer held prisoner by the Japanese in I Was an American Spy (1951), but it was produced at second-string Republic Pictures and didn't get top bookings. After Secret of Convict Lake (1951), Dvorak quit film work; she had never found it to be as satisfactory as her stage career, which included a year's run in the 1948 Broadway play The Respectful Prostitute. During her retirement, spent with her third husband, she divided her time between her homes in Malibu and Hawaii, and her passion for collecting rare books.