Trivia: The son of an Irish whiskey distiller, Brian Donlevy was 10 months old when his family moved to Wisconsin. At 15, Donlevy ran away from home, hoping to join General Pershing's purge against Mexico's Pancho Villa. His tenure below the border was brief, and within a few months he was enrolled in military school. While training to be a pilot at the U.S. Naval Academy, Donlevy developed an interest in amateur theatricals. He spent much of the early 1920s living by his wits in New York, scouting about for acting jobs and attempting to sell his poetry and other writings. He posed for at least one Arrow Collar ad and did bit and extra work in several New York-based films, then received his first break with a good supporting role in the 1924 Broadway hit What Price Glory?. Several more Broadway plays followed, then in 1935 Donlevy decided to try his luck in Hollywood. A frustrated Donlevy was prepared to head back to Manhattan when, at the last minute, he was cast as a villain in Sam Goldwyn's Barbary Coast. In 1936 he was signed to a 20th Century-Fox contract, alternating between "B"-picture heroes and "A"-picture heavies for the next few years. The most notable of his bad-guy roles from this period was the cruel but courageous Sgt. Markoff in Beau Geste (1939); reportedly, Donlevy deliberately behaved atrociously off-camera as well as on, so that his co-workers would come to genuinely despise his character. From 1940 through 1946, Donlevy was most closely associated with Paramount Pictures, delivering first-rate performances in such films as The Great McGinty (1940), Wake Island (1942), The Glass Key (1942) and The Virginian (1946). His own favorite role was that of the good-hearted, raffish con-artist in Universal's Nightmare (1942). In 1950, Donlevy took time off from films to star and co-produce the syndicated radio (and later TV) series Dangerous Assignment. He went on to introduce the character of Dr. Quatermass in two well-received British science fiction films, The Creeping Unknown (1955) and Enemy From Space (1957). Brian Donlevy left behind an impressive enough filmic legacy to put the lie to his own assessment of his talents: "I think I stink."

Trivia: Though born in the American Midwest, Henry Rowland had heavily Teutonic facial features, making him an invaluable commodity in wartime films. Rowland "heiled" and "achtunged" his way through films ranging from 1942's Casablanca to 1975's Russ Meyer's Supervixens, in which he played a suspicious old coot named Martin Borman! Conversely, he showed up as an American flight surgeon in 1944's Winged Victory, billed under his military ranking as Corporal Henry Rowland. In his last years, Rowland continued playing such Germanic characters as the Amish farmer in 1975's The Frisco Kid.

Trivia: The son of actors, Percy Helton began his own career at age two in a Tony Pastor revue in which his parents were performing. The undersized Helton was a valuable juvenile player for producer David Belasco, making his film debut in a 1915 Belasco production, The Fairy and the Waif. Helton matured into adult roles under the stern guidance of George M. Cohan. After serving in the Army during World War I, Helton established himself on Broadway, appearing in such productions as Young America, One Sunday Afternoon and The Fabulous Invalid. He made his talkie debut in 1947's Miracle on 34th Street, playing the inebriated Macy's Santa Claus whom Edmund Gwenn replaces. Perhaps the quintessential "who is that?" actor, Helton popped up, often uncredited, in over one hundred succinct screen characterizations. Forever hunched over and eternally short of breath, he played many an obnoxious clerk, nosey mailman, irascible bartender, officious train conductor and tremulous stool pigeon. His credits include Fancy Pants (1950), The Robe (1953), White Christmas (1954), Rally Round the Flag Boys (1959), The Music Man (1962) and Hush Hush Sweet Charlotte (1965), as well as two appearances as sweetshop proprietor Mike Clancy in the Bowery Boys series. Thanks to his trademarked squeaky voice, and because he showed up in so many "cult" films (Wicked Woman, Kiss Me Deadly, Sons of Katie Elder), Helton became something of a high-camp icon in his last years. In this vein, Percy Helton was cast as the "Heraldic Messenger" in the bizarre Monkees vehicle Head (he showed up at the Monkees' doorstep with a beautiful blonde manacled to his wrist!), the treacherous Sweetieface in the satirical western Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969), and the bedraggled bank clerk Cratchit on the TV series The Beverly Hillbillies.

Trivia: "I started at 20th Century-Fox in 1902," was Elena Verdugo's flippant response to an interviewer who had the poor taste to ask her age. In truth, Verdugo descended from a Spanish family that had settled in California in 1776, made her first movie appearance as a dancer in Fox's 1940 musical Down Argentine Way after studying Latin-style terpsichore from the age of three. Educated by studio tutors, she spent her teen years playing Mexican peasants, gypsy girls, harem handmaidens and exotic South Sea islanders. Her co-stars ranged from Lou Costello (in 1946's Little Giant) to the Wolfman (aka Lon Chaney Jr. in 1945's House of Frankenstein). Verdugo's comic potential lay largely dormant until 1952, when she replaced Audrey Totter as star of the radio sitcom Meet Millie. She continued to portray Brooklynese secretary Millie Bronson on the subsequent TV version, which ran from 1954 to 1956. Verdugo then went into early retirement, reemerging in 1959 on the straw-hat circuit in such musicals as Oklahoma! and South Pacific. Beginning with her role as hotel manager Gerry in Redigo (1963), she entered into her TV-series supporting player phase; she went on to portray Audrey in The New Phil Silvers Show (1964), Lynn Hall in Many Happy Returns (1964) and Alice Henderson in Mona McCluskey (1965). Elena Verdugo is most fondly remembered as pragmatic but warmhearted nurse Consuelo Lopez on Marcus Welby MD (1969-76).

Trivia: Mabel Paige was virtually "born in a trunk"; both her parents were busy stock company actors. Paige made her own stage bow at age four, in a production of Van the Virginian. When Paige was 11, she was headlining her own Southern stock company; upon reaching adulthood, she established the Paige Theater in Jacksonville, FL. During her stay in Jacksonville, Paige appeared in a quartet of silent comedies, co-starring with her husband, Charles Ritchie, and up-and-coming Oliver Hardy. Retiring from show business in the 1920s to raise her family, Paige returned to acting on radio and on Broadway in the late '30s. In 1941, she was brought to Hollywood to re-create her role as an eccentric theatrical boarding house landlady in Out of the Frying Pan, which wouldn't be released until 1943, under the title Young and Willing. Because of the delayed release of this film, Paige's "official" talkie debut was as the Runyon-esque street peddler in Paramount's Lucky Jordan (1942). Usually heading the supporting cast, and generally cast as a tart-tongued "swinging senior," Paige was given one top-billed starring role in Republic's Someone to Remember (1943), playing a feisty old lady who resides in a college dormitory in hopes of being reunited with her long lost son. After completing her final film, Houdini (1953), Mabel Paige accepted brief roles in such TV series as Racket Squad and I Love Lucy, but illness and age had eroded her comic gifts.