Trivia: In an industry of prima donnas, actress Barbara Stanwyck was universally recognized as a consummate professional; a supremely versatile performer, her strong screen presence established her as a favorite of directors, including Cecil B. De Mille, Fritz Lang, and Frank Capra. Born Ruby Stevens July 16, 1907, in Brooklyn, NY, she was left orphaned at the age of four and raised by her showgirl sister. Upon quitting school a decade later, she began dancing in local speakeasies and at the age of 15 became a Ziegfeld chorus girl. In 1926, Stanwyck made her Broadway debut in The Noose, becoming a major stage star in her next production, Burlesque. MGM requested a screen test, but she rejected the offer. She did, however, agree to a supporting role in 1927's Broadway Nights, and after completing her stage run in 1929 appeared in the drama The Locked Door. With her husband, comedian Frank Fay, Stanwyck traveled to Hollywood. After unsuccessfully testing at Warner Bros., she appeared in Columbia's low-budget Mexicali Rose, followed in 1930 by Capra's Ladies of Leisure, the picture which shot her to stardom. A long-term Columbia contract was the result, and the studio soon loaned Stanwyck to Warners for 1931's Illicit. It was a hit, as was the follow-up Ten Cents a Dance. Reviewers were quite taken with her, and with a series of successful pictures under her belt, she sued Columbia for a bigger salary; a deal was struck to share her with Warners, and she split her time between the two studios for pictures including Miracle Woman, Night Nurse, and Forbidden, a major hit which established her among the most popular actresses in Hollywood. Over the course of films like 1932's Shopworn, Ladies They Talk About, and Baby Face, Stanwyck developed an image as a working girl, tough-minded and often amoral, rarely meeting a happy ending; melodramas including 1934's Gambling Lady and the following year's The Woman in Red further established the persona, and in Red Salute she even appeared as a student flirting with communism. Signing with RKO, Stanwyck starred as Annie Oakley; however, her contract with the studio was non-exclusive, and she also entered into a series of multi-picture deals with the likes of Fox (1936's A Message to Garcia) and MGM (His Brother's Wife, co-starring Robert Taylor, whom she later married).For 1937's Stella Dallas, Stanwyck scored the first of four Academy Award nominations. Refusing to be typecast, she then starred in a screwball comedy, Breakfast for Two, followed respectively by the downcast 1938 drama Always Goodbye and the caper comedy The Mad Miss Manton. After the 1939 De Mille Western Union Pacific, she co-starred with William Holden in Golden Boy, and with Henry Fonda she starred in Preston Sturges' outstanding The Lady Eve. For the 1941 Howard Hawks comedy Ball of Fire, Stanwyck earned her second Oscar nomination. Another superior film, Capra's Meet John Doe, completed a very successful year. Drama was the order of the day for the next few years, as she starred in pictures like The Gay Sisters and The Great Man's Lady. In 1944, she delivered perhaps her most stunning performance in Billy Wilder's classic noir Double Indemnity. Stanwyck's stunning turn as a femme fatale secured her a third Oscar bid and helped make her, according to the IRS, the highest-paid woman in America. It also won her roles in several of the decade's other great film noirs, including 1946's The Strange Love of Martha Ivers and 1949's The File on Thelma Jordon. In between, Stanwyck also starred in the 1948 thriller Sorry, Wrong Number, her final Academy Award-nominated performance. The 1950s, however, were far less kind, and strong roles came her way with increasing rarity. With Anthony Mann she made The Furies and with Lang she appeared opposite Marilyn Monroe in 1952's Clash by Night, but much of her material found her typecast -- in 1953's All I Desire, she portrayed a heartbroken mother not far removed from the far superior Stella Dallas, while in 1954's Blowing Wild she was yet another tough-as-nails, independent woman. Outside of the all-star Executive Suite, Stanwyck did not appear in another major hit; she let her hair go gray, further reducing her chances of winning plum parts, and found herself cast in a series of low-budget Westerns. Only Samuel Fuller's 1957 picture Forty Guns, a film much revered by the Cahiers du Cinema staff, was of any particular notice. It was also her last film for five years. In 1960, she turned to television to host The Barbara Stanwyck Show, winning an Emmy for her work.Stanwyck returned to cinemas in 1962, portraying a lesbian madam in the controversial Walk on the Wild Side. Two years later, she co-starred with Elvis Presley in Roustabout. That same year, she appeared in the thriller The Night Walker, and with that, her feature career was over. After rejecting a role in Hush...Hush, Sweet Charlotte, she returned to television to star in the long-running Western series The Big Valley, earning another Emmy for her performance as the matriarch of a frontier family. Upon the show's conclusion, Stanwyck made a TV movie, The House That Would Not Die. She then appeared in two more, 1971's A Taste of Evil and 1973's The Letters, before vanishing from the public eye for the remainder of the decade. In 1981, she was awarded an honorary Oscar; two years later, she was also the recipient of a Lincoln Center Life Achievement Award. Also in 1983, Stanwyck returned to television to co-star in the popular miniseries The Thorn Birds. Two years later, she headlined The Colbys, a spin-off of the hugely successful nighttime soap opera Dynasty. It was her last project before retiring. Stanwyck died January 20, 1990.

Trivia: The son of Congregationalist minister, Wendell Corey was pursuing a brief career as a washing machine salesman when he showed up at the rehearsals for a community play to pick up a friend. Invited by the director to read for a part, Corey found he liked performing, and eventually turned pro in summer stock. After a string of Broadway flops, Corey finally scored a success in the original 1945 production of Elmer Rice's Dream Girl. Entering films with a Paramount contract in 1946, the incisive, sharp-eyed Corey spent the next fifteen years alternating between leads (File on Thelma Jordon), "best friend" supporting characters (Rear Window), and, most effectively, villains (The Big Knife). On TV Corey starred in the weekly series Harbor Command (1957) and The Eleventh Hour (1961-63). Intensely interested in politics, Corey was once the president of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences and the director of the Screen Actors, and served on the Santa Monica City Council; he ran for but did not win California's Republican congressional seat.

Trivia: Paul Kelly was one of the few actors who not only played killers, but also had first-hand experience in this capacity! On stage from age 7, "Master" Paul Kelly entered films at 8, performing on the sunlight stages of Flatbush's Vitagraph Studios. His first important theatrical role was in Booth Tarkington's Seventeen; he later appeared in Tarkington's Penrod, opposite a young Helen Hayes. Star billing was Kelly's from 1922's Up the Ladder onwards. In films from 1926, Kelly alternated between stage and screen until his talkie debut in 1932's Broadway Through A Keyhole. The actor's career momentum was briefly halted with a two-year forced hiatus. On May 31, 1927, Kelly was found guilty of manslaughter, after killing actor Ray Raymond in a fistfight. The motivating factor of the fatal contretemps was Raymond's wife, Dorothy MacKaye, who married Kelly in 1931, after he'd served prison time for Raymond's death (MacKaye herself died in an automobile accident in 1940). This unfortunate incident had little adverse effect on Kelly's acting career, which continued up until his death in 1956. Returning to Broadway in 1947, Paul Kelly won the Donaldson and Tony awards for his performance in Command Decision; three years later, he starred in the original stage production of Clifford Odets' The Country Girl.

Trivia: A protégé of musical comedy star Beatrice Lillie in his native England, actor Stanley Ridges made his London stage debut in O' Boy. He went on to star as a romantic lead in several Broadway plays, and was cast in a similar capacity in his first film, the New York-lensed Crime of Passion (1934). Thereafter, the grey-templed Ridges excelled in dignified, underplayed, and distinctly non-British character roles. His best film assignments included the schizophrenic professor-turned-criminal in Black Friday (1940) (it would be unfair to say that he "stole" the picture from official star Boris Karloff, but he did have the best part), and the treacherous Professor Seletzky in Ernst Lubitsch's matchless black comedy To Be or Not to Be (1942). One of Stanley Ridges' last movie performances was as the kindly mentor of young doctor Sidney Poitier in the race-relations melodrama No Way Out (1950).

Trivia: Supporting actor Richard Rober came to films in 1947 most often playing character bits, frequently unbilled, at 20th Century-Fox. His one-and-only film starring role was as Sheriff Ben Kellogg in United Artists' The Well (1950), a low-budget but well-intentioned plea for racial tolerance. Richard Rober was 46 years old when he was killed in an automobile accident in 1952; he made his last screen appearance five years later, when producer Howard Hughes finally released his 1950 production Jet Pilot.

Trivia: Courtly character actor Minor Watson made his stage debut in Brooklyn in 1911. After 11 years of stock experience, Watson made his Broadway bow in Why Men Leave Home. By the end of the 1920s he was a major stage star, appearing in vehicles specially written for him. Recalling his entree into films in 1931, Watson was fond of saying, "I'm a stage actor by heart and by profession. I was a movie star by necessity and a desire to eat." Though never a true "movie star" per se, he remained gainfully employed into the 1950s in choice character roles. Often called upon to play show-biz impresarios, he essayed such roles as E.F. Albee in Yankee Doodle Dandy (1942) and John Ringling North in Trapeze (1956). One of Minor Watson's largest and most well-rounded screen assignments was the part of cagey Brooklyn Dodgers manager Branch Rickey in 1950's The Jackie Robinson Story.

Trivia: Trained at the Goodman Theatre in his hometown of Chicago, the 6'4", 230-pound Barry Kelley made his professional stage bow in 1930. Seventeen years later, he appeared in his first film, director Elia Kazan's Boomerang. Kelley was most often found in crime yarns and westerns, often cast as a corrupt law officer, e.g. Lieutenant Ditrich in John Huston's The Asphalt Jungle. Barry Kelley's hundreds of TV credits include the recurring roles of city editor Charlie Anderson in Big Town (1954) and Pete's boss Mr. Slocum in Pete and Gladys (1961).

Trivia: Kasey Rogers is best known for her four seasons portraying Louise Tate, the wife of advertising-agency boss Larry Tate (David White), on Bewitched. Between 1949 and 1964, however, she also appeared in nearly two dozen movies under the name Laura Elliot, ranging from leading roles to uncredited support parts, by filmmakers from Alfred Hitchcock down. Additionally, she was in over 200 episodes of the prime-time soap opera Peyton Place between 1964 and 1968. She was born Imogene Rogers in Morehouse, MO, in 1926, and began studying acting, elocution, and music at age seven. For a time, however, Rogers' most visible attribute was her prowess with a baseball bat, which earned her the nickname "Casey." It stuck, with a little change in the spelling, and she continued using it as an adult. Shortly after World War II, Rogers was spotted by a talent scout and got a screen test at Paramount Pictures. She was signed up, given the name Laura Elliot (sometimes spelled Laura Elliott), and put into her first movie a week later. Her early appearances included such major films as Chicago Deadline, Samson and Delilah, and The File on Thelma Jordan; she also got a leading role, on loan-out, in the fantasy adventure film Two Lost Worlds (1950), in which she played the female lead opposite James Arness. Rogers later recalled that film (which mixed a pirate story and dinosaurs) as being every bit as confusing to make as it is to watch, with one of the characters' names even changing midway through. As it happened, 1951 was Rogers' big year in movies; she got her biggest role in the most enduringly popular film of her career, playing Farley Granger's estranged wife in Alfred Hitchcock's Strangers on a Train. Her character, wearing glasses with lenses as thick as the base of shot glasses (so thick that, 50 years later, she recalled not even being able to see through them), is murdered by the cold-blooded psychopath portrayed by Robert Walker. She also appeared in George Stevens' A Place in the Sun, Rudolph Maté's classic sci-fi drama When Worlds Collide, the Bob Hope vehicle My Favorite Spy, and the Western Silver City. From there, however, Rogers receded to lesser movies such as The French Line and About Mrs. Leslie (both 1954). Starting in 1955, she was making regular appearances on television, alternating between the names Laura Elliot (or Elliott) and Kasey Rogers, across a range of programming that included Westerns such as Lawman, Bat Masterson, Trackdown, and Wanted: Dead or Alive, the dramatic anthology series Alcoa Presents, Goodyear Theater, and Stage 7, and the crime dramas Perry Mason and Richard Diamond, Private Detective. Rogers' first regular television role was on the night-time drama Peyton Place (1964-1968) as Julie Anderson, the mother of Barbara Parkins' Betty Anderson, the soap opera's resident bad girl. Rogers left the series in 1968 and was immediately offered the role of Louise Tate on Bewitched, which had previously been played by Irene Vernon. She was forced to cover her dark auburn hair with a black wig for the first few seasons so that she resembled her predecessor, and it was only at the end of the run that her own hair was revealed. Regardless of her coloring, however, she made a charming, funny, gorgeous, and unique TV "trophy wife" amid a decade of pretty, wholesome TV moms. Rogers has remained active intermittently as an actress and has pursued a writing career as well, including screenplays and a cookbook built around Bewitched as a thematic link. She appears at nostalgia conventions under both of her screen names, using Laura Elliot (the name under which she did most of her oaters) at Western shows and Kasey Rogers at television-oriented events.

Trivia: Of Russian descent, American actor Basil Ruysdael was a successful opera singer in the 'teens and twenties. Firmly based in New York, Ruysdael made his first screen appearance in the Marx Brothers Astoria-filmed The Cocoanuts (1929). His portrayal of Detective Hennessy in this film was ordinary enough, save for his hilarious vocal rendition of "Tale of a Shirt," an elaborate parody of "The Toreador Song" from Bizet's Carmen. Ruysdael remained in Manhattan for nearly two decades after Cocoanuts, working on the stage, in radio, and in the occasional film short. He moved to California in 1949, showing up in no fewer than six films during his first year in Hollywood. Active until his death in 1960, Ruysdael was invariably cast as orotund authority figures: military officers, judges, governors, college deans. During the early 1950s, Basil Ruysdael was the radio and TV spokesperson for Lucky Strike cigarettes, imparting in pear-shaped tones the vital message "L.S.M.F.T....Lucky Strikes Means Fine Tobacco."

Trivia: The older and more successful of the two Novak sisters (Eva Novak also appeared in films), Jane Novak became known as the strong outdoorsy type and was often cast in Northwest melodramas. A niece, by marriage, of actress Anne Seymour, Novak was awarded a contract by the Kalem company in 1913, mainly because she resembled "a blonde Alice Joyce." Earning ten dollars a week for her services, Novak appeared in a couple of rough-and-tumble one-reelers before switching to the more prominent Vitagraph company, where she was awarded a well-deserved raise and starring roles opposite the likes of Jack Mower, William Duncan, and Western favorite Myrtle Gonzales. She did several comedies for novice producer Hal Roach opposite a very young Harold Lloyd (Willie's Haircut) [1914], Just Nuts [1915], etc.) and cowboy actor Roy Stewart, but became a star opposite William S. Hart in five top-notch Westerns between 1918 and 1921. Persistent rumors teamed the two in private life as well and Novak divorced her husband, actor Frank Newburg. Hart, however, married another of his leading ladies, Winifred Westover, and the association with Novak came to an abrupt halt. Now firmly established as a Western heroine, Novack also appeared opposite Tom Mix (The Coming of the Law [1919]) and Monroe Salisbury (the still extant The Barbarian [1920])) and headlined several independent productions set either in Alaska or the Canadian wilderness (The Trail's End [1920], The Snowshoe Trail [1922], The Lure of the Wild [1925]). She scored a personal triumph in the society melodrama Thelma (1922) as a Norwegian peasant girl falling for a British aristocrat and earned equally fine reviews for The Lullaby (1925) as a wrongly convicted girl whose child is taken from her in prison. Making three films in the U.K. in 1925, she met future director Alfred Hitchock, who became a lifelong friend (she would later play a small role in his second Hollywood film Foreign Correspondent [1940]), but then concentrated mainly on raising her daughter with Newburg. From 1936, Novak was among scores of former silent stars offered bit parts and extra work in major studio films and she would pop up in many (mostly) unbilled bit roles through at least 1954. In 1989, she was one of the celebrities interviewed for the documentary Harold Lloyd: The Third Genius. She died of a stroke at the Motion Picture Country Hospital in Woodland Hills, CA, less than a year later.

Trivia: American character actor Harry Antrim is noted for his versatility. He primarily appeared in films of the '40s and '50s following extensive theatrical and opera experience.

Trivia: American actress Theresa Harris made her screen debut as one of the sullen "camp followers" in Josef von Sternberg's Morocco. Like most black performers working in Hollywood during the 1930s and 1940s, Harris was generally limited to servant roles. One of the more artistically rewarding of these was Josephine, the object of Eddie "Rochester" Anderson's affections in the Jack Benny vehicle Buck Benny Rides Again (1940). Harries and Anderson worked so well together that they were reteamed in the same roles in another Benny comedy, Love Thy Neighbor (1940). Evidently a favorite of RKO producer Val Lewton, Harris was prominently cast in several of Lewton's productions of the 1940s, most entertainingly as the cheerfully sarcastic waitress in Cat People (1943). Theresa Harris remained in films until 1958, her characters slowly moving up the social ladder to include nurses and governesses.

Trivia: Gig Young started his movie career billed under his birth name, Byron Barr. He made his debut in You're in the Army Now (1941). The following year, he played in The Gay Sisters playing a larger supporting role, a character called Gig Young. While he would he would still continue going by Byron Barr for a while, he would eventually change it to Gig Young because there was an actor named Byron Barr already in Hollywood. When not going by his birth name, Young sometimes billed himself as Bryant Fleming. During WWI, Young was part of the Coast Guard. Upon his discharge, he returned to his movie career. Dashing and witty, Young often played second bananas and was frequently cast as a carefree bachelor who was more interested in fun than commitment. He also played guys who were always unlucky in love in romantic comedies. Occasionally Young would win the lead in B-movies. In 1969, Young earned an Oscar for his performance in They Shoot Horses, Don't They? On television, Young occasionally guest starred on series and movies. In 1976, he starred in the short-lived series Gibbsville. In 1978, Young and his bride of three weeks (he had been married four times before) were found dead of gunshot wounds in his Manhattan apartment. In Young's hand was the pistol and police surmised that he had shot her and then himself. His wife was Kim Schmidt, a 31-year-old German actress.

Trivia: The son of an actress, Garry Owen first appeared on-stage with his mother in vaudeville. Owen went on to perform in such Broadway productions as Square Crooks and Miss Manhattan. In films from 1933, Owen was occasionally seen in such sizeable roles as private-eye Paul Drake in the 1936 Perry Mason movie Case of the Black Cat. For the most part, however, he played character bits, most memorably in the films of Frank Capra; in Capra's Arsenic and Old Lace (1944), for example, he plays the monumentally impatient taxi driver who closes the picture with the exclamation, "I'm not a cab driver, I'm a coffee pot!" In addition to his feature-film work, Garry Owen showed up in scores of short subjects for Hal Roach and MGM.

Trivia: A distinguished member of Broadway's famed Group Theater, with whom he appeared in Casey Jones (1938) and Night Music (1940), Clancy Cooper entered films with Warner Bros. in 1941. But despite his distinctive theater pedigree, Cooper's busy screen career proved middling at best and he mainly played bit roles. A notable exception came in the 1944 serial Haunted Harbor, as one of hero Kane Richmond's two sidekicks. A veteran of more than 100 feature films, the veteran actor went on to also embrace television, appearing in over 200 episodes in shows such as The Lone Ranger, Adventures of Rin Tin Tin, Gunsmoke, Twilight Zone, Maverick, Dr. Kildare, and The Wild Wild West. Married to novelist Elizabeth Cooper, Clancy Cooper died of a heart attack while driving in Hollywood.

Trivia: Seemingly placed on this earth to play hatchet-faced busybodies and spinsters, American actress Ottola Nesmith made her first film appearance in 1915's Still Waters. After a handful of subsequent films, Nesmith returned to the stage, then came back to Hollywood in 1935, where she remained until her retirement in 1965. Her screen roles include Lady Jane in Becky Sharp (1935), Mrs. Robinson in My Name Is Julia Ross (1946), and Mrs. Tugham in Cluny Brown (1946), as well as scores of anonymous nurses, governesses, maids, matrons, and senior-citizen-home residents. Ottola Nesmith's last appearance was in the Natalie Wood starrer Inside Daisy Clover (1967).

Trivia: American actor/playwright Nolan Leary made his stage debut in 1911; 60 years later, he was still appearing in small film and TV roles. From 1943 onward, Leary showed up in some 150 movies, mostly in bit roles. One of his juicier screen assignments was as the deaf-mute father of Lon Chaney James Cagney in Man of 1000 Faces (1958). In 1974, Nolan Leary showed up briefly as Ted Baxter's prodigal father on The Mary Tyler Moore Show.

Trivia: Actress/playwright Dot Farley launched her film career in 1912 as one of the earliest members of Mack Sennett's Keystone comedy troupe. Though she would leave Keystone after a few years, Farley occasionally returned to the Sennett fold in such roles as Ben Turpin's cross-eyed mother in A Small Town Idol (1921). A "regular" in 2-reel comedies, she could also be found in such elaborate features as DeMille's King of Kings (1927). In the talkie era, Farley was busiest in the short-subject field, usually playing domineering wives and mothers-in-law. From 1931 to 1948, she played Florence Lake's busybody mama in Edgar Kennedy's "Mr. Average Man" 2-reel series at RKO. Dot Farley's feature-film work during this period was usually limited to brief bits in films ranging from Val Lewton's Cat People (1942) to Preston Sturges' Hail the Conquering Hero (1944).

Trivia: Lee Phelps was a longtime resident of Culver City, California, the home of several film studios, including MGM and Hal Roach. Whenever the call went out for street extras, Phelps was always available; his Irish face and shiny pate can be easily spotted in such silent 2-reelers as Laurel and Hardy's Putting Pants on Phillip. Phelps was active in films from 1921 through 1953, often in anonymous bit or atmosphere parts, usually playing a cop or a delivery man. Lee Phelps has found his way into several TV movie-compilation specials thanks to his participation in two famous films of the early '30s: Phelps played the cowering speakeasy owner slapped around by Jimmy Cagney in The Public Enemy (1931), and also portrayed the waterfront waiter to whom Greta Garbo delivers her first talking-picture line ("Gif me a viskey, baby...etc.") in Anna Christie (1930).

Trivia: Though seemingly born with a battered bulldog countenance and a rattly voice best suited to such lines as "We don't like you kind around these parts, stranger," tough-guy character actor Kenneth Tobey was originally groomed for gormless leading man roles when he came to Hollywood in 1949. Possessing too much roughhewn authority to be wasted in romantic leads, Tobey was best served in military roles. One of these was the no-nonsense but likeable Capt. Patrick Hendrey in the 1951 sci-fi classic The Thing From Another World, a role that typed him in films of a "fantastic" nature for several years thereafter. From 1956 through 1958, Tobey co-starred with Craig Hill on the popular syndicated TV adventure series Whirlybirds; up to that time, televiewers were most familiar with Tobey as Jim Bowie in the ratings-busting Davy Crockett miniseries. Though often consigned by Hollywood's typecasting system to workaday villain roles, Kenneth Tobey has not be forgotten by filmmakers who grew up watching his horror-flick endeavors of the 1950s; he has been afforded key cameo roles in such latter-day shockers as Strange Invaders (1983) and Gremlins 2: The New Batch, and in 1985 he reprised his Thing From Another World character in The Attack of the B-Movie Monsters.

Trivia: Diminutive New York native Nick Cravat spent his first two decades in show business as a circus and carnival acrobat. From the mid-'30s to the early '40s, he was the smaller half of the Lang and Cravat trapeze act; "Lang" was his childhood pal Burt Lancaster. While it is commonly assumed that Cravat made his first screen appearances in tandem with Lancaster, his film debut was in fact My Friend Irma (1949), which starred Diana Lynn, Marie Wilson, and Martin and Lewis. He did, of course, show up quite often in Lancaster's starring features, beginning with The Flame and the Arrow (1950) and ending with The Island of Dr. Moreau (1977). In the delightful The Crimson Pirate (1952), Cravat was afforded co-star billing with Lancaster, above leading lady Eva Bartok. Because he so often played a mute, many filmgoers believed that Cravat was genuinely non-verbal; actually, he possessed so thick and pronounced an East Coast accent that he was averse to mouthing dialogue. Outside of his work with Lancaster, Cravat is best remembered for one of his uncredited appearances: as the "thing on the wing" in the 1963 Twilight Zone installment "Nightmare at 20,000 Feet."

Trivia: An oily looking supporting actor who often played gangsters or blue-collar working stiffs, Wisconsin-born, Oregon-educated Lew Harvey had spent three years on the legitimate stage before entering films with the Texas Guinan company in the very early '20s. Later in the decade he was mainly seen as "half-breeds" or gangsters but did turn up as Will Rogers in MGM's behind-the-scenes look at the Follies, in Pretty Ladies (1925). Reduced to bit parts in talkies and under long-term contract to MGM, Harvey turned up in scores of mostly dramas, usually playing truck drivers, two-bit hoodlums, guards, and policemen. His final-known appearance came in The File on Thelma Jordan (1949), in which he played a court reporter.

Trivia: Gertrude Astor did so much work in Hollywood in so many different acting capacities that it's not simple or easy to characterize her career. Born in Lakewood, OH, she joined a stock company at age 13, in the year 1900, and worked on showboats during that era. She played in vaudeville as well, and made her movie debut in 1914 as a contract player at Universal. She was an accomplished rider, which got her a lot of work as a stuntwoman, sometimes in conjunction with a young Maine-born actor named John Ford in pictures directed by the latter's brother, Francis Ford. But Astor soon moved into serious acting roles; a tall, statuesque, angular woman, she frequently towered over the leading men of the era, and was, thus, ideal as a foil in comedies of the 1910s and '20s, playing aristocrats, gold diggers, and the heroine's best friend (had the character of Brenda Starr existed that far back, she'd have been perfect playing Hank O'Hair, her crusty female editor). Astor was the vamp who plants stolen money on Harry Langdon in The Strong Man (1926), Laura La Plante's wisecracking traveling companion in The Cat and the Canary (1927), and the gold digger who got her hooks into Otis Harlan (as well as attracting the attention of fellow sailor Eddie Gribbon) in Dames Ahoy. When talkies came in, Astor's deep, throaty voice assured her steady work in character parts, still mostly in comedy. Her roles weren't huge, but she worked prolifically at Hal Roach studios with such headliners as Laurel and Hardy, in the Our Gang shorts, and especially with Charley Chase, and also worked at Columbia Pictures' short subjects unit. Astor's specialty at this time was outraged dignity; she was forever declaring, "I've never been so embarrassed in all my life!" and stalking out of a slapstick situation, usually with a comedy prop (a balloon, a folding chairs, a cream puff) affixed to her posterior. Astor worked regularly into the early '60s; she was briefly glimpsed as the first murder victim in the Sherlock Holmes adventure The Scarlet Claw (1944) and was among the ranks of dress extras in Around the World in 80 Days (1956). Her longtime friend John Ford also gave her roles in his feature films right into the early '60s, culminating with her appearance in The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance. Gertrude Astor remained alert and quick-witted into her eighties, cheerfully sharing her memories of the glory days of comedy short subjects with fans and film historians. And in a town that can scarcely remember last year's studio presidents, in 1975, when she was 87 years old, Astor was given a party at Universal, where she was honored by a gathering of old friends, including the directors George Cukor, Allan Dwan, and Henry Hathaway. She passed away suddenly and peacefully on the day of her 90th birthday in 1977.

Trivia: The older brother of actresses Etta and Hattie McDaniel, Sam McDaniel began his stage career as a clog dancer with a Denver minstrel show. Later on, he co-starred with his brother Otis in another minstrel troupe, this one managed by his father Henry. Sam and his sister Etta moved to Hollywood during the talkie revolution, securing the sort of bit roles usually reserved for black actors at that time. He earned his professional nickname "Deacon" when he appeared as the "Doleful Deacon" on The Optimistic Do-Nut Hour, a Los Angeles radio program. During this period, Sam encouraged his sister Hattie to come westward and give Hollywood a try; he even arranged Hattie's first radio and nightclub singing jobs. McDaniel continued playing minor movie roles doormen, porters, butlers, janitors while Hattie ascended to stardom, and an Academy Award, as "Mammy" in Gone with the Wind (1939). During the 1950s, McDaniel played a recurring role on TV's Amos 'N' Andy Show.

Trivia: Diminutive Scottish stage and screen actress Mary Gordon was seemingly placed on this earth to play care-worn mothers, charwomen and housekeepers. In films from the silent area (watch for her towards the end of the 1928 Joan Crawford feature Our Dancing Daughters), Gordon played roles ranging from silent one-scene bits to full-featured support. She frequently acted with Laurel and Hardy, most prominently as the stern Scots innkeeper Mrs. Bickerdyke in 1935's Bonnie Scotland. Gordon was also a favorite of director John Ford, portraying Irish, Scottish, Welsh and Englishwomen with equal aplomb (and sometimes with the same accent). She was the screen mother of actors as diverse as Jimmy Cagney, Leo Gorcey and Lou Costello; she parodied this grey-haired matriarch image in Olsen and Johnson's See My Lawyer (1945), wherein her tearful court testimony on behalf of her son (Ed Brophy) is accompanied by a live violinist. Mary Gordon is most fondly remembered by film buffs for her recurring role as housekeeper Mrs. Hudson in the Sherlock Holmes films of 1939-46 starring Basil Rathbone and Nigel Bruce, a role she carried over to the Holmes radio series of the '40s.