Trivia: It had originally been the hope of Walter Brennan (and his family) that he would follow in the footsteps of his father, an engineer; but while still a student, he was bitten by the acting bug and was already at a crossroads when he graduated in 1915. Brennan had already worked in vaudeville when he enlisted at age 22 to serve in World War I. He served in an artillery unit and although he got through the war without being wounded, his exposure to poison gas ruined his vocal chords, leaving him with the high-pitched voice texture that made him a natural for old man roles while still in his thirties. His health all but broken by the experience, Brennan moved to California in the hope that the warm climate would help him and he lost most of what money he had when land values in the state collapsed in 1925. It was the need for cash that drove him to the gates of the studios that year, for which he worked as an extra and bit player. The advent of the talkies served Brennan well, as he had been mimicking accents in childhood and could imitate a variety of different ethnicities on request. It was also during this period that, in an accident during a shoot, another actor (some stories claimed it was a mule) kicked him in the mouth and cost him his front teeth. Brennan was fitted for a set of false teeth that worked fine, and wearing them allowed him to play lean, lanky, virile supporting roles; but when he took them out, and the reedy, leathery voice kicked in with the altered look, Brennan became the old codger with which he would be identified in a significant number of his parts in the coming decades. He can be spotted in tiny, anonymous roles in a multitude of early-'30s movies, including King Kong (1933) (as a reporter) and one Three Stooges short. In 1935, however, he was fortunate enough to be cast in the supporting role of Jenkins in The Wedding Night. Directed by King Vidor and produced by Samuel Goldwyn, it was supposed to launch Anna Sten (its female lead) to stardom; but instead, it was Brennan who got noticed by the critics. He was put under contract with Goldwyn, and was back the same year as Old Atrocity in Barbary Coast. He continued doing bit parts, but after 1935, his films grew fewer in number and the parts much bigger. It was in the rustic drama Come and Get It (1936) that Brennan won his first Academy Award as Best Supporting Actor. Two years later, he won a second Best Supporting Actor Oscar for his performance in Kentucky (1938). That same year, he played major supporting roles in The Texans and The Buccaneer, and delighted younger audiences with his moving portrayal of Muff Potter, the man wrongfully accused of murder in Norman Taurog's The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. Brennan worked only in high-profile movies from then on, including The Story of Vernon and Irene Castle, Stanley and Livingston, and Goldwyn's They Shall Have Music, all in 1939. In 1940, he rejoined Gary Cooper in The Westerner, playing the part of a notoriously corrupt judge. Giving a beautifully understated performance that made the character seem sympathetic and tragic as much as dangerous and reprehensible, he won his third Best Supporting Actor award. There was no looking back now, as Brennan joined the front rank of leading character actors. His ethnic portrayals gradually tapered off as Brennan took on parts geared specifically for him. In Frank Capra's Meet John Doe and Howard Hawks' Sergeant York (both 1941), he played clear-thinking, key supporting players to leading men, while in Jean Renoir's Swamp Water (released that same year), he played another virtual leading role as a haunted man driven by demons that almost push him to murder. He played only in major movies from that point on, and always in important roles. Sam Wood used him in Goldwyn's The Pride of the Yankees (1942), Lewis Milestone cast him as a Russian villager in The North Star (1943), and he was in Goldwyn's production of The Princess and the Pirate (1944) as a comical half-wit who managed to hold his own working alongside Bob Hope. Brennan played the choice role of Ike Clanton in Ford's My Darling Clementine (1946) and reprised his portrayal of an outlaw clan leader in more comic fashion in Burt Kennedy's Support Your Local Sheriff some 23 years later. He worked with Cooper again on Delmer Daves' Task Force (1949) and played prominent roles in John Sturges' Bad Day at Black Rock and Anthony Mann's The Far Country (both 1955). In 1959, the 64-year-old Brennan got one of the biggest roles of his career in Hawks' Rio Bravo, playing Stumpy, the game-legged jailhouse keeper who is backing up the besieged sheriff. By that time, Brennan had moved to television, starring in the CBS series The Real McCoys, which became a six-season hit built around his portrayal of the cantankerous family patriarch Amos McCoy. The series was such a hit that John Wayne's production company was persuaded to release a previously shelved film, William Wellman's Goodbye, My Lady (1956), about a boy, an old man (played by Brennan), and a dog, during the show's run. Although he had disputes with the network and stayed a season longer than he had wanted, Brennan also liked the spotlight. He even enjoyed a brief, successful career as a recording artist on the Columbia Records label during the 1960s. Following the cancellation of The Real McCoys, Brennan starred in the short-lived series The Tycoon, playing a cantankerous, independent-minded multimillionaire who refuses to behave the way his family or his company's board of directors think a 70-year-old should. By this time, Brennan had become one of the more successful actors in Hollywood, with a 12,000-acre ranch in Northern California that was run by his sons, among other property. He'd invested wisely and also owned a share of his first series. Always an ideological conservative, it was during this period that his political views began taking a sharp turn to the right in response to the strife he saw around him. During the '60s, he was convinced that the anti-war and civil rights movements were being run by overseas communists -- and said as much in interviews. He told reporters that he believed the civil rights movement, in particular, and the riots in places like Watts and Newark, and demonstrations in Birmingham, AL, were the result of perfectly content "Negroes" being stirred up by a handful of trouble-makers with an anti-American agenda. Those on the set of his last series, The Guns of Will Sonnett -- in which he played the surprisingly complex role of an ex-army scout trying to undo the damage caused by his being a mostly absentee father -- say that he cackled with delight upon learning of Martin Luther King Jr.'s assassination in 1968. Brennan later worked on the 1972 presidential campaign of reactionary right-wing California Congressman John Schmitz, a nominee of the American Party, whose campaign was predicated on the notion that the Republican Party under Richard Nixon had become too moderate. Mostly, though, Brennan was known to the public for his lovable, sometimes comical screen persona, and was still working as the '60s drew to a close, on made-for-TV movies such as The Over-the-Hill Gang, which reunited him with one of his favorite directors, Jean Yarbrough, and his old stablemate Chill Wills. Brennan died of emphysema in 1974 at the age of 80.

Trivia: American actor Richard Crenna started out as a radio performer at age 11, demonstrating an astonishing range for one so young. The momentum of his career was unaffected by an army hitch and time spent earning an English degree at the University of Southern California. But even though he was by then in his twenties, Crenna found himself still playing adolescents, notably squeaky-voiced high schooler Walter Denton on the radio comedy Our Miss Brooks. That he was able to play characters of virtually any age was overlooked by movie and TV casting directors, who could see Crenna only in callow-juvenile roles. After making an excellent impression as ballplayer Daffy Dean in the 1953 film Pride of St. Louis, for example, Crenna wasn't cast in another film until the 1955 movie version of Our Miss Brooks--in which, at 29, he was Walter Denton once more. The following year, Crenna decided "to sorta let Walter Denton die," and took a decidedly mature role in the sleazy exploitation film Over-Exposed (1956). It was a fully grown Crenna who took on the role of Luke McCoy on the Walter Brennan TV series The Real McCoys, which ran from 1957 through 1963 and which gave Crenna his first opportunities as a director. After McCoys, Crenna found himself facing potential career standstill again, since it seemed that now he was typed as the rubeish Luke McCoy. This time, however, the actor had impressed enough producers with his dogged work ethic and the range displayed in guest-star appearances. In 1964, Crenna was cast in a prestigious TV drama For the People as assistant DA David Koster, and though the program lasted only one season, Crenna was firmly established as a compelling dramatic actor. Still, and despite solid Richard Crenna film performances in The Sand Pebbles (1966), Body Heat (1981) and The Flamingo Kid (1985), the actor has never completely escaped the spectre of Walter Denton. Crenna was able to conjure up the old adenoidal Denton voice on talk shows of the 1980s and 1990s, and in the action-film spoof Hot Shots: Part Deux, the actor, with an absolute straight face, portrayed Colonel Denton Walters!

Trivia: The son of a Scottish theatrical producer/manager, Andy Clyde joined his siblings David and Jean on stage in childhood. At the invitation of his close friend James Finlayson, Clyde came to the U.S. in the early 1920s to join producer Mack Sennett's roster of comedians. An expert at makeup, Clyde played a variety of supporting roles, from city slickers to unshaven bums; he was also co-starred with Billy Bevan for such classic Sennett 2-reelers as Wandering Willies (1926) and Ice Cold Cocos (1927). His best-known characterization was as a grizzled, paintbrush-mustached old codger. In this guise, Andy was Sennett's most popular star in the early talkie era, appearing in as many as 18 comedies per year. After parting company with Sennett in 1932, Clyde worked briefly at Educational Studios, then in 1934 signed on with Columbia's short subject unit, where he remained the next 22 years. With 79 shorts to his credit, Andy was second only to the Three Stooges as Columbia's premiere comedy attraction. He also appeared as "California," comic sidekick to western star William Boyd, in the popular Hopalong Cassidy westerns of the 1940s. Clyde filled out his busy schedule with character roles in such films as Million Dollar Legs (1932), Annie Oakley (1936) and Abe Lincoln in Illinois (1940). Barely pausing for breath, Clyde kept up his hectic pace on TV in the 1950s and 1960s, appearing regularly on the weekly series The Real McCoys, Lassie and No Time for Sergeants. A real trouper, Andy Clyde was one of Hollywood's best-liked actors, never giving less than 100% to any role of any size.

Trivia: With his crotchety persona, wrinkled visage, and nervous manner, Forrest Lewis is best remembered by most viewers for the neurotic and comical old man roles that he played in dozens of movies and television shows in the 1950s and '60s -- he was somewhere between Harry Carey Sr. and Strother Martin in his characterizations for over two decades. In reality, he'd been playing old men since the age of 20, in 1919. Born in Knightstown, IN, in 1899, Lewis was a linear descendant of Meriwether Lewis, the explorer immortalized by the Lewis and Clark expedition. Forrest Lewis was drawn to performing as a boy, and made his first appearance on a theatrical stage as a singer, at age 12. He made his professional acting debut at 20, with the Emerson Stock Company, portraying an 80-year-old man. Over the next decade, he toured the United States in vaudeville and stock companies, before landing on Broadway in Lulu Belle, starring Lenore Ulric. Radio began its boom years in the late '20s, and Lewis made his debut in the commercial broadcast medium in 1929. He had some small roles until fate took a hand; he inadvertently received a call for an audition that had been intended for another actor, and won the part. There was no looking back for Lewis, who was busy from then on, playing numerous key supporting roles, including Harry Freeman on the radio series Scattergood Baines and (with Van McCune) one half of the comedy team of Buck and Wheat, on the Aunt Jemima radio show. Lewis resisted offers to appear in movies until the mid-'40s, when he began playing character roles -- mostly far older (or acting far older) than his 44 years -- in movies such as Gildersleeve on Broadway (1943) and I'll Tell the World (1945). Lewis' career remained focused on radio, however, until that medium began retrenching in the early '50s. He jumped to television on Amos 'n' Andy and Dragnet, and also became downright ubiquitous on the big screen during the first half of the 1950s, playing a succession of doctors, judges, nit-picking public officials, police officers, and crotchety old men. Westerns predominated as a genre in his film career, but he also played in a few Disney movies (The Shaggy Dog, Son of Flubber) and even two minor B-horror classics, The Thing That Couldn't Die (1958) and The Monster of Piedras Blancas (1959), the latter offering Lewis one of the biggest parts of his career, as the town constable faced with a series of grisly murders. And Howard Hawks used him in Man's Favorite Sport? (1964) and Red Line 7000 (1965). By the time of Riot on Sunset Strip (1967), in which he played a senior citizen seen in the movie's opening who expresses his anger over the behavior of the teenagers on the renowned stretch of Los Angeles real estate, Lewis had aged into the role. He died in 1977 of a heart attack at age 77, four years after his last television appearance.