Trivia: American actress/singer Jeanette MacDonald made her first public appearance at age three, singing at a benefit show. She trained her own voice by listening to recordings, and honed her dancing and acting skills in school productions. MacDonald entertained notions of starring in grand opera, but her soprano voice, though pleasant and vibrant, was not quite up to operatic standards; she settled instead for supporting roles in Broadway musicals of the 1920s. Director Ernst Lubitsch was impressed by MacDonald's movie screen test and cast her in his 1929 film The Love Parade opposite Maurice Chevalier. In this first phase of her film career, MacDonald was not yet the "iron butterfly" that her detractors described but a bewitching, sexy young lady who was seen in her lingerie as often as the censors allowed. One of her best early films was Monte Carlo (1930), which reached a wondrous peak of Hollywood artifice as MacDonald sang "Beyond the Blue Horizon" from the observation car of a moving train, with the peasants and farmers standing by the tracks picking up the lyrics as if by ESP. Offstage she clashed with frequent co-star Maurice Chevalier to the extent that neither performer would agree to work with the other after The Merry Widow (1934). Under contract to MGM in the mid-1930s, MacDonald (with studio press-agent assistance) altered her image from a kittenish provacateur to a mature, above-reproach prima donna; she also managed to drop six years off her age in official studio biographies. In 1935, MGM teamed MacDonald with baritone Nelson Eddy in Naughty Marietta, the first of eight highly popular MacDonald-Eddy film musicals. Though mercilessly lampooned by comedians and by cartoonmaker Jay Ward's "Dudley DoRight" cartoons, the pair's films were consummately produced and strove to entertain every member of the film audience, not merely opera lovers; if there were laughable moments in these films, they were usually intentional. After I Married an Angel (1942), the singing team split. Eddy wanted to establish himself in comedy roles (which he didn't), and MacDonald trained diligently to become a bonafide opera star, finally making her operatic debut in a 1943 Montreal production of Romeo and Juliet; soon afterward, she headlined a Chicago staging of Faust as Marguerite. But MacDonald failed to impress critics, who wrote her off as a mere film personality, unsufficiently gifted to carry off a live opera. She continued making films, though -- even spoofing her own image in 1942's Cairo.Throughout the 1950s and 1960s, MacDonald toured in concert and stage productions, playing to large and enthusiastic crowds, though seldom attempting to re-establish herself as an opera diva. In 1965, MacDonald died from heart complications, with her longtime husband, actor Gene Raymond, at her side.

Trivia: Nelson Eddy was an actor and singer noted for his rich baritone voice and wooden acting. He sang soprano in church choirs as a boy. He moved to Philadelphia as a teenager, and after a number of odd jobs won a competition in 1922 to join the Philadelphia Civic Opera; he went on to perform frequently with the group, and played Tonio in Pagliacci at the New York Metropolitan Opera in 1924. In the early '30s Eddy began appearing on radio and had a successful concert tour; this led to a movie contract with MGM, and he debuted onscreen in 1933. In 1935 he and Jeanette MacDonald were teamed together, going on to appear in a series of sentimental operettas beginning with Naughty Marietta (1935); billed as "America's Sweethearts" or the "Singing Sweethearts," the team became extraordinarily popular, and for a time they were the screen's most popular duo, appearing in one box office smash after another. After their last film, I Married an Angel (1942), Eddy's career quickly went into decline, and he made no films after 1947. He continued to appear in concerts and nightclubs and made some recordings; in March 1967, he died of a stroke.

Trivia: Throughout much of his screen career, actor George Sanders was the very personification of cynicism, an elegantly dissolute figure whose distinct brand of anomie distinguished dozens of films during a career spanning nearly four decades. Born in St. Petersburg on July 3, 1906, Sanders and his family fled to the U.K. during the Revolution, and he was later educated at Brighton College. After first pursuing a career in the textile industry, Sanders briefly flirted with a South American tobacco venture; when it failed, he returned to Britain with seemingly no other options outside of a stage career. After a series of small theatrical roles, in 1934 he appeared in Noel Coward's Conversation Piece; the performance led to his film debut in 1936's Find the Lady, followed by a starring role in Strange Cargo. After a series of other undistinguished projects, Sanders appeared briefly in William Cameron Menzies' influential science fiction epic Things to Come. In 1937, he traveled to Hollywood, where a small but effective role in Lloyd's of London resulted in a long-term contract with 20th Century Fox. A number of lead roles in projects followed, including Love Is News and The Lady Escapes, before Fox and RKO cut a deal to allow him to star as the Leslie Charteris adventurer the Saint in a pair of back-to-back 1939 features, The Saint Strikes Back and The Saint in London. The series remained Sanders' primary focus for the next two years, and in total he starred in five Saint pictures, culminating in 1941's The Saint at Palm Springs. Sandwiched in between were a variety of other projects, including performances in a pair of 1940 Alfred Hitchcock thrillers, Foreign Correspondent and the Best Picture Oscar-winner Rebecca.After co-starring with Ingrid Bergman in 1941's Rage in Heaven, Sanders began work on another adventure series, playing a suave investigator dubbed the Falcon; after debuting the character in The Gay Falcon, he starred in three more entries -- A Date With the Falcon, The Falcon Takes Over, and The Falcon's Brother -- before turning over the role to his real-life brother, Tom Conway. Through his work in Julien Duvivier's Tales of Manhattan, Sanders began to earn notice as a more serious actor, and his lead performance in a 1943 adaptation of the W. Somerset Maugham novel The Moon and Sixpence established him among the Hollywood elite. He then appeared as an evil privateer in the Tyrone Power swashbuckler The Black Swan, followed by Jean Renoir's This Land Is Mine. A pair of excellent John Brahm thrillers, 1944's The Lodger and 1945's Hangover Square, helped bring Sanders' contract with Fox to its close.With his portrayal of the world-weary Lord Henry Wooten in 1945's The Portrait of Dorian Gray, Sanders essayed the first of the rakish, cynical performances which would typify the balance of his career; while occasionally playing more sympathetic roles in pictures like The Strange Affair of Uncle Harry and The Ghost and Mrs. Muir, he was primarily cast as a malcontent, winning a Best Supporting Actor Oscar for his venomous turn in 1951's All About Eve. The award brought Sanders such high-profile projects as 1951's I Can Get It for You Wholesale, 1952's Ivanhoe, and Roberto Rossellini's 1953 effort Viaggio in Italia. However, his star waned, and the musical Call Me Madam, opposite Ethel Merman, was his last major performance. A series of historical pieces followed, and late in the decade he hosted a television series, The George Sanders Mystery Theater. In 1960, he also published an autobiography, Memoirs of a Professional Cad.Sanders spent virtually all of the 1960s appearing in little-seen, low-budget foreign productions. Exceptions to the rule included the 1962 Disney adventure In Search of the Castaways, the 1964 Blake Edwards Pink Panther comedy A Shot in the Dark, and 1967's animated Disney fable The Jungle Book, in which he voiced the character of Shere Khan the Tiger. After appearing on Broadway in the title role of The Man Who Came to Dinner, Sanders appeared in John Huston's 1970 thriller The Kremlin Letter, an indication of a career upswing; however, the only offers which came his way were low-rent horror pictures like 1972's Doomwatch and 1973's Psychomania. Prior to the release of the latter, Sanders killed himself on August 25, 1972, by overdosing on sleeping pills while staying in a Costa Brava hotel; his suicide note read, "Dear World, I am leaving you because I am bored." He was 66 years old.

Trivia: German actor Felix Bressart made his stage debut in 1914, and his film bow in 1928's Liebe Im Kuhstall (1928). Forced out of Germany by the Nazis, Bressart came to the United States in 1936, concentrating on theatrical work until his first American film, Swanee River (1939). Two of his best screen roles were for director and fellow German expatriate Ernst Lubitsch: the hilariously hedonistic Soviet agent Buljanoff in Ninotchka (1939), and the deceptively mild-mannered Jewish actor Greenberg in To Be or Not to Be (1942). While playing the role of Professor Kropotkin in the 1949 film version of the popular radio series My Friend Irma, Felix Bressart died; he was replaced by the radio program's Kropotkin, Hans Conried, though Bressart still can be glimpsed in long shots.

Trivia: Dropping the "Cooper" in his name to avoid confusion with bit player Edward Cooper, British actor Edward Ashley was a seven-year film veteran when he came to America in 1940. His first Hollywood picture, and for many years his best, was MGM's Pride and Prejudice (1940). Ashley was but one of many handsome Englishmen wandering around the MGM lot, so the studio used him in anything that came along. He was afforded a rare star-billing credit in the "Passing Parade" short subject Strange Testament (1941), in which he played a New Orleans millionaire who left a monetary legacy to all Louisiana newlyweds as compensation for betraying his own true love. Freelancing by the late 1940s, Ashley appeared in several second leads and character parts such as the Commissioner in the Mexican-filmed Tarzan and the Mermaids (1948). Banking on his resemblance to Errol Flynn, Ashley played the Fox, a Robin Hood type, in The Court Jester (1956), but most of the derring-do went to the film's true star, Danny Kaye (who impersonated the Fox). Edward Ashley remained a journeyman actor into the 1970s, appearing with dignity if not distinction in such films as Herbie Rides Again (1973) and Won Ton Ton, The Dog Who Saved Hollywood (1976).

Trivia: Delicate blonde actress Lynne Carver came to films in 1934 on the strength of a beauty contest. First billed as Virginia Reid, she worked at RKO in such musicals as Down to Their Last Yacht (1934) and Roberta (1935) before moving to MGM as "Lynne Carver" in 1937. She was a most fetching presence in such period dramas as A Christmas Carol (1938) and The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1939), and equally attractive in contemporary garb as Lew Ayres' hometown girl friend in Young Dr. Kildare (1938). Free-lancing after 1942, Lynne Carver appeared in a handful of westerns before retiring due to poor health in 1948.

Trivia: The daughter of vaudevillians, Diana Lewis made her screen debut as bird-brained preteen Miss Dunk in W.C. Fields' It's a Gift (1934), disrupting Fields' early-morning slumber with her inane, top-at-the-lung questions. She then quit acting to attend high school, but by 1939 was back before the cameras, this time as an MGM contractee. Her best-known role at Metro was as the antiseptic heroine in the Marx Brothers 'Go West (1940). Known to her friends as "Mousie," Lewis began losing interest in pursuing a film career when, in 1940, she married MGM star William Powell. Retiring from the screen in 1943, Diana Lewis happily devoted herself to her marriage and social obligations; she remained Mrs. William Powell until her husband's death in 1984.

Trivia: German actor Curt Bois took to the stage at age seven. After experience as a cabaret performer, Bois worked with the legendary impresario Max Reinhardt and appeared in 25 German films. He left Germany to escape Hitler in 1933, then re-established himself on the Broadway stage. His first film, in which he was seen in his standard characterization of a slick, self-important European, was 1937's Tovarich. Bois' best-known film appearance was brief: he played the obsequious pickpocket ("There are vultures everywhere) in the 1942 classic Casablanca. As a result, he spent many of his last years being interviewed on the subject of that film, his stories improving with each telling. Bois went on to work with such directors as Lubitsch and Ophuls before returning to Germany in 1950. Here he continued to appear in films, and in 1955 directed the feature Ein Polterabend. One of Curt Bois' last performances was as the wizened historian who endlessly wanders Berlin in hopes of properly capturing the city on paper in Wim Wenders' Wings of Desire (1988).

Trivia: Born Dorothy Fay Hammerton, she appeared as a dancer on the British stage by the age of nine, and later turned to acting; eventually she worked with California's Pasadena Playhouse. Not until her early 40s did she enter films, working in Hollywood and debuting onscreen in 1936; at first she was billed as "Gaby Fay," which she soon changed to "Fay Holden." For the next two-plus decades she played supporting roles in numerous films, frequently cast as a warm, devoted mother. She is perhaps best remebered as Mickey Rooney's wise and loving mother in the popular Andy Hardy series. She retired from the screen after 1958. She was married to actor David Clyde, the brother of actor Andy Clyde.

Trivia: Born in Germany, actor Sig Rumann studied electro-technology in college before returning to his native Hamburg to study acting. He worked his way up from bits to full leads in such theatrical centers as Stettin and Kiel before serving in World War I. Rumann came to New York in 1924 to appear in German-language plays. He was discovered simultaneously by comedian George Jessel, playwright George S. Kaufman, and critic Alexander Woollcott. He began chalking up an impressive list of stage roles, notably Baron Preysig in the 1930 Broadway production of Grand Hotel (in the role played by Wallace Beery in the 1932 film version). Rumann launched his film career at the advent of talkies, hitting his stride in the mid 1930s. During his years in Hollywood, he whittled down his stage name from Siegfried Rumann to plain Sig Ruman. The personification of Prussian pomposity, Rumann was a memorable foil for the Marx Brothers in A Night at the Opera (1935), A Day at the Races (1937), and A Night in Casablanca (1946). He also was a favorite of director Ernst Lubitsch, appearing in Ninotchka (1939) as a bombastic Soviet emissary and in To Be or Not to Be (1942) as the unforgettable "Concentration Camp Ehrardt." With the coming of World War II, Ruman found himself much in demand as thick-headed, sometimes sadistic Nazis. Oddly, in The Hitler Gang (1944), Rumann was cast in a comparatively sympathetic role, as the ailing and senile Von Hindenburg. After the war, Rumann was "adopted" by Lubitsch admirer Billy Wilder, who cast the actor in such roles as the deceptively good-natured Sgt. Schultz in Stalag 17 (1953) and a marinet doctor in The Fortune Cookie (1966); Wilder also used Rumann's voice to dub over the guttural intonations of German actor Hubert von Meyerinck in One, Two, Three (1961). In delicate health during his last two decades, Rumann occasionally accepted unbilled roles, such as the kindly pawnbroker in O. Henry's Full House (1952). During one of his heartier periods, he had a recurring part on the 1952 TV sitcom Life with Luigi. Rumann's last film appearance was as a shoe-pounding Russian UN delegate in Jerry Lewis' Way... Way Out (1967).

Trivia: American character actress Janet Beecher spent much of her film career as everybody's mother. After three decades on stage, Beecher made her first film, Gallant Lady, in 1934. Because of her handsome features, matronly demeanor and naturalistic acting style, Ms. Beecher was ideally cast as firm but compassionate matriarchs; one of her best screen assignments was as Tyrone Power's mother in Mark of Zorro (1940), never wavering in her belief of her son's fortitude despite his (apparently) foppish manners. Even when appearing as the First Lady in the political drama The President Vanishes, Beecher was spiritually the "mother" of her country. Undoubtedly Janet Beecher felt straitjacketed by the roles offered her in Hollywood; she retired in 1943, after only ten years before the cameras.

Trivia: A solid, good-looking leading man with an upper-class British accent, he moved to England while in his teens and joined the army in 1917, serving in France. He debuted onstage in 1919, then onscreen in 1924; for the next decade he alternated between plays and films, usually as a leading man, then moved to Hollywood in 1934 and appeared in many American films. He was often cast as an upright, conscientious husband, lover, or friend. He returned to England for war service in 1942. After the war he continued to perform in British plays and films for the next two decades.

Trivia: Dutch-born character actor Charles Judels' expertise with dialects served him well throughout his fifty-year career. After several seasons in vaudeville, Judels made his Broadway debut as a snotty Frenchman in The Ziegfeld Follies of 1912. He went on to provide comedy relief for such stage musicals as Nobody Home (1914) and George M. Cohan's Mary (1920). In films from 1915, Judels was a fixture of the Vitaphone short-subject product in the early 1930s, starring in his own series of 2-reelers and providing support to such comedians as Jack Haley and Shemp Howard. His feature-film assignments found him playing Italians, Greeks, Slavs, Germans and Spaniards (he also served as dialogue director for 1928's Mother Knows Best, which curiously contained no dialect humor whatsoever!) Film buffs will remember Charles Judels as the cheese-store proprietor in Laurel & Hardy's 1938 effort Swiss Miss (his musical number with Stan and Ollie was, alas, left on the cutting room floor), the plot-motivating murder victim in the early "film noir" Stranger on the Third Floor (1940), and the voice of Stromboli and the Coachman in the Disney cartoon feature Pinocchio (1940).

Trivia: Yes, that was her real name. Born in Massachussetts, Veda Ann Borg established herself as a model in New York in the early 1930s. Though she'd never had any previous acting experience, Veda was given a secret screen test by Paramount in 1936 and signed on the spot. After a few years of nondescript roles, Veda was nearly killed in a serious automobile accident in 1939. Her face completely reconstructed by plastic surgery, Veda emerged from the bandages with a harder, more distinctive countenance than before--one that proved ideal for the many brassy chorus girls, gun molls and "kept women" that she would portray over the next twenty years. Usually laboring away in B pictures, Veda began picking up some impressive "A" credits in the 1950s, notably as Vivian Blaine's showgirl pal in the mammoth musical Guys and Dolls (1955). Her last appearance was as an bedraggled Indian woman in the John Wayne-directed The Alamo (1960). For eleven years, Veda Ann Borg was the wife of director Andrew V. McLaglen.

Trivia: Along with such immortals as Percy Helton, Franklin Pangborn and Grady Sutton, Herman Bing is a member of that Valhalla of film character actors. Educated in his native Germany for a musical career, Bing went into vaudeville at 16, and soon after found work as a circus clown. Entering films in the mid-1920s, Bing apprenticed under the great director F. W. Murnau. He accompanied Murnau to Hollywood in 1927, where he worked as a scripter and assistant director on the classic silent drama Sunrise. After several more years assisting the likes of John Ford and Frank Borzage, Bing established himself as a character actor. Nearly always cast as a comic waiter, excitable musician, apoplectic stage manager or self-important official, Bing became famous for his wild-eyed facial expressions and his thick, "R"-rolling Teutonic accent. When the sort of broad comedy for which Herman Bing was renowned became passe in the postwar era, work opportunities dried up; despondent over his fading career, Bing shot himself at the age of 57.

Trivia: Wagnerian German actress Greta Meyer began appearing in films in her own country in the silent era; her credits during this period include 1922's De Jantjes and 1929's Die Konigsloge. Meyer made her American screen bow in 1930's The Royal Box. For the next decade or so, she could often as not be found playing hefty, apple-cheeked hausfraus, maids, nurses, cooks and cleaning ladies. Whenever Greta Meyer was given a character name, it was usually along the mittel-European or Scandinavian lines of Mrs. Svenson, Mrs. Oxenreich, Mrs. Schroldt, Mrs. Vogelhuger or Mrs. Rovitch.

Trivia: Actor Hans Conried, whose public image was that of a Shakespearean ham, was born not in England but in Baltimore. Scrounging for work during the Depression era, Conried offered himself to a radio station as a performer, and at 18 became a professional. One of his earliest jobs was appearing in uncut radio adaptations of Shakespeare's plays, and before he was twenty he was able to recite many of the Bard's lengthier passages from memory. After several years in summer stock and radio, Conried made his screen debut in Dramatic School (1938). Conried's saturnine features and reedy voice made him indispensable for small character roles, and until he entered the service in World War II the actor fluctuated between movies and radio. Given a choice, Conried would have preferred to stay in radio, where the money was better and the parts larger, but despite the obscurity of much of his film work he managed to sandwich in memorable small (often unbilled) appearances in such "A" pictures as Once Upon a Honeymoon (1942), The Big Street (1942) and Passage to Marseilles (1944). While in the army, Conried was put in charge of Radio Tokyo in postwar Japan, where he began his lifelong hobby of collecting rare Japanese artifacts; the actor also had a near-encyclopedic knowledge of American Indian lore. As big-time radio began to fade during the late 1940s and early 1950s, Conried concentrated more on film work. He was awarded the starring role in the bizarre musical 5,000 Fingers of Dr. T. (1952), written by his friend Dr. Seuss; unfortunately, the studio, not knowing how to handle this unorthodox project, cut it to ribbons, and the film was a failure. Later he was engaged for a choice co-starring role in Cole Porter's Broadway musical Can Can; in addition, he became a favorite guest on Jack Paar's late-night TV program, popped up frequently and hilariously as a game show contestant, and in 1957 made the first of many special-guest visits as the imperishable Uncle Tonoose on The Danny Thomas Show. Cartoon producers also relied heavily on Conried, notably Walt Disney, who cast the actor as the voice of Captain Hook in the animated feature Peter Pan, and Jay Ward, for whom Conried played Snidely Whiplash on The Bullwinkle Show and Uncle Waldo on Hoppity Hooper. In 1963, Jay Ward hired Conried as the supercilious host of the syndicated comedy series Fractured Flickers. Conried cut down on his TV show appearances in the 1970s and 1980s, preferring to devote his time to stage work; for well over a year, the actor co-starred with Phil Leeds in an Atlanta production of Neil Simon's The Sunshine Boys. Just before his death, Conried was cast in a recurring role on the "realistic" drama series American Dream, where he was permitted to drop the high-tone Shakespearean veneer in the gruff, down-to-earth part of Jewish oldster Abe Berlowitz.

Trivia: American actor Jeff Corey forsook a job as sewing-machine salesman for the less stable world of New York theatre in the 1930s. The 26-year-old Corey was regarded as a valuable character-actor commodity when he arrived in Hollywood in 1940. Perhaps the best of his many early unbilled appearances was in the Kay Kyser film You'll Find Out (40), in which Corey, playing a game-show contestant (conveniently named Jeff Corey), was required to sing a song while stuffing his mouth full of crackers. The actor was busiest during the "film noir" mid-to-late 1940s, playing several weasely villain roles; it is hard to forget the image of Corey, in the role of a slimy stoolie in Burt Lancaster's Brute Force, being tied to the front of a truck and pushed directly into a hail of police bullets. Corey's film career ended abruptly in 1952 when he was unfairly blacklisted for his left-leaning political beliefs. To keep food on the table, Corey became an acting coach, eventually running one of the top training schools in the business (among his more famous pupils was Jack Nicholson). He was permitted to return to films in the 1960s, essaying such roles as a wild-eyed wino in Lady in a Cage (64), the louse who kills Kim Darby's father in True Grit (68), and a sympathetic sheriff in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (68). In addition to his film work, Jeff Corey has acted in and directed numerous TV series; he was seen as a regular on the 1985 Robert Blake series Hell Town and the 1986 Earl Hamner Jr. production Morningstar/Eveningstar. The following decade found Corey appearing in such films as Sinatra (1992), Beethoven's 2nd (1993) and the action thriller Surviving the Game (1994). Shortly after suffering a fall at his Malibu home in August of 2002, Corey died in Santa Monica due to complications resulting from the accident. He was 88.

Trivia: Actor Armand Kaliz was a reasonably successful vaudeville performer when he made his first film appearance in The Temperamental Wife (1919). Kaliz would not return to filmmaking on a full-time basis until 1926. At first, he enjoyed sizeable screen roles: along with most of the cast, he essayed a dual role in Warners' Noah's Ark (1928), and was given featured billing as DeVoss in Little Caesar (1930). Thereafter, Armand Kaliz made do with minor roles, usually playing hotel clerks, tailors and jewelers.