Trivia: American singer/actress Grace Hayes was a popular chanteuse and vaudeville performer during the 1930s. She started her film career in 1930 appearing opposite Paul Whiteman in The King of Jazz. She appeared occasionally in films after that through 1950. As a singer, some of her better known songs include "I Can't Give You Anything but Love, Baby" and "Sunny Side of the Street." In the 1940s, she established the star-studded San Fernando Valley hot-spot-- the Grace Hayes Lodge--where she also performed.

Trivia: Peter Lind Hayes was the son of entertainer/nightclub entrepreneur Grace Hayes (1896-1989). Hayes was nine years old when he joined his mother's vaudeville act, doing an impression of Hollywood child star Jackie Coogan. He then spent several years as the star attraction of the Grace Hayes Lodge in the San Fernando Valley. In 1938, he made the first of his sporadic film appearances, and in 1940, he married his future stage and screen partner, singer/actress Mary Healy. While serving with distinction in the Army Air Force, Hayes was featured in the 1944 20th Century-Fox feature Winged Victory. From 1946 onward, the songs-and-snappy-patter team of Peter Lind Hayes and Mary Healey was a top New York nightclub and theatrical attraction. They extended their activities to TV in 1949, starring in such variety series as Inside the USA With Chevrolet (1949-50), The Stork Club (1950), The Peter Lind Hayes Show (1950-51, with Mary--originally titled Peter and Mary) and Star of the Family (1951). Their last regular TV gig was the semiautobiographical 1960 sitcom Peter Loves Mary (1960). In addition, Hayes and Healey starred in the 1958 Broadway play Who Was That Lady I Saw You With?, while Hayes soloed as Arthur Godfrey's TV and radio summer replacement and as one of the post-Paar, pre-Carson hosts of The Tonight Show. While his film career never attained the heights of his activities elsewhere, Hayes enjoyed at least one truly memorable screen role: Mr. Zalbedowski in the cult musical fantasy 5000 Fingers of Dr. T, co-starring wife Mary and Hans Conried. Active in a number of entertainment fields, Peter Lind Hayes was the author of three books and several magazine and newspaper articles, and served as producer-host of the 1975 anthology series When Television Was Live.

Trivia: American variety entertainer Mary Healy was still in her teens when she sang with various dance bands at New Orleans' Roosevelt Hotel. Signed to a 20th Century Fox film contract in 1939, she was sent on a nationwide vaudeville tour of studio contractees in 1940. During this junket she met and married night club comedian Peter Lynd Hayes, joining her husband's cabaret act shortly afterward. Except for a handful of film appearances and a co-starring assignment in Orson Welles' Broadway production of Around the World in 80 Days, Healy worked exclusively with her husband from the mid-'40s onward. The team of Peter Lynd Hayes and Mary Healy starred in several TV shows, including the 1960 sitcom Peter Loves Mary; they were also teamed in the "cult" movie musical fantasy The 5000 Fingers of Dr.T (1953) and in the original 1958 Broadway production of Harry Kurnitz' Who Was That Lady?.

Trivia: Benny Rubin inaugurated his career as a 14-year-old tap dancer in his hometown of Boston. He worked in stock and on showboats during the WWI years, breaking into burlesque as a dialect comedian in 1918. A vaudeville headliner throughout the 1920s, Rubin seemed a sure bet for movie stardom when he was signed by MGM in 1927. According to one source, however, the powers-that-be decided that Rubin looked "too Jewish" for movies. Nonetheless, he entered films during the talking era, starring in a brace of Tiffany Studios musicals -- Sunny Skies and Hot Curves, both filmed in 1930 -- before freelancing as a character actor. Though he was top-billed in a handful of two-reelers and was given prominent screen credit as one the scenarists for the Wheeler and Woolsey films Off Again -- On Again (1937) and High Flyers (1937), Rubin had to settle for bits and minor roles as a feature-film actor. He would later claim that his fall from grace was due to his bad temper and his chronic gambling. Far more successful on radio, Rubin became one of the most prominent members of Jack Benny's "stock company," usually playing an obnoxious information desk attendant ("I dunno! I dunno! I dunno!). During the 1950s and 1960s, Rubin worked steadily in TV programs, feature films, and two-reel comedies; he also worked in animated cartoons and TV commercials as a voice-over artist, truthfully proclaiming that he could convincingly convey any foreign accent -- "except Arabian." In 1973, Rubin produced a self-published, self-serving autobiography, Come Backstage With Me, in which he made innumerable specious claims about his show biz accomplishments; for example, he stated that it was he who advised fledging film director Orson Welles to hire cameraman Gregg Toland for the 1941 classic Citizen Kane (in truth, Rubin's contribution to the film was confined to a one-scene bit as a typesetter, which was cut from the final release print). Benny Rubin's final appearance was in the TV miniseries Glitter.

Trivia: The 14th of 16 children born to a New York air-conditioner repairman and his wife, Henry Richard Hall was nicknamed "Huntz" because of his Teutonic-looking nose. At the ripe old age of one year, Huntz made his stage debut in Thunder on the Left. He went on to attend New York's Professional Children's School, perform in radio programs and at least one experimental TV broadcast, and sing with a youthful quintette; the last activity came to an end when he "ruined" his voice hawking peanuts at Madison Square Garden. In 1935, Hall was cast as slum-kid Dippy in Sidney Kingsley's Dead End, repeating the role in the 1937 screen version. Together with his fellow "Dead End Kids" Leo Gorcey, Gabriel Dell, Billy Halop, Bobby Jordan and Bernard Punsley. Hall was signed by Warner Bros in 1938. In between such Warners' assignments as Angels With Dirty Faces (1938) and They Made Me a Criminal (1939), Hall co-starred with Halop, Dell, Punsley and Leo Gorcey's brother David in Universal's Little Tough Guy, the first of many "Dead End Kid" spin-offs. During his years at Universal, Hall began developing his trademarked goofy comic style, which came to full fruition when he was reunited with Leo Gorcey in Sam Katzman's East Side Kids series at Monogram. Previously, his character name (and character) had changed from film to film: at Monogram, Hall was consistently cast as Gorcey's perennial punching bag Glimpy. Occasionally, he accepted non-"East Side Kids" assignments in the mid-1940s, earning high critical praise for his performance as Carraway in Lewis Milestone's A Walk in the Sun. In 1946, Hall, Gorcey and producer Jan Grippo created the Bowery Boys series for Monogram. Hall played the increasingly buffoonish Horace Debussy "Sach" Jones in 48 inexpensive but profitable "Bowery Boys" entries, graduating to top billing when Gorcey left the series in 1955. After the final Bowery Boys entry in 1958, he appeared in nightclubs and dinner-theater productions. Thanks to his 10% ownership of the Bowery Boys series and his investments in offshore oil, Hall was wealthy enough to retire in the early 1960s, but he was never able to completely divest himself of the urge to perform. His post-"Sach" appearances include a semi-heavy role in Ivan Tors' Gentle Giant (1977), regular stints in the weekly TV series The Chicago Teddy Bears (1971), The Ghost Busters (1975) and Uncle Croc's Block (1977), his unexpectedly effective portrayal of movie mogul Jesse Lasky in Ken Russell's Valentino (1977), and any number of supporting roles in such R-rated fare as Gas Pump Girls and Auntie Lee's Meat Pies. He also turned director for the made-for-TV feature Lost Island (1979). Hall was appointed by Princess Grace to Monaco's Council on Drug Abuse in the 1970s. Huntz Hall remained active on the nostalgia-convention circuit into the 1990s until his death in early 1999.

Trivia: American actress Jan Wiley played small roles in films of the early '40s. A native of Marion, Indiana, she began her career as a model (billing herself as Harriet Brandon).

Trivia: Tall, distinguished-looking Eddie Kane was never remotely a star in movies or television, but he played just about every kind of important supporting and bit role that there was to portray in a Hollywood career that stretched over a quarter century. Born in 1889, Kane entered show business by way of vaudeville and rose to the top of that field as a member of the team of Kane & Herman. Hollywood beckoned with the coming of sound and his first role was typical of the kind of work that he would do for the next 25 years. In MGM's The Broadway Melody, although uncredited, Kane played the important supporting role of Francis Zanfield (a thin burlesque of Ziegfeld), the theatrical producer whose interest in one of the two sisters, played by Anita Page and Bessie Love, gets the backstage plot rolling. In later films, the actor's parts varied from anonymous head waiters and hotel managers to essential supporting roles, small but telling in the plot. He was apparently at least a nodding acquaintance of James Cagney, playing important bit parts in two of Cagney's movies: in Something To Sing About, Kane portrayed the San Francisco theater manager who shelters Cagney from the crowds swarming around him on his return from an ocean voyage; in Yankee Doodle Dandy he played the actor in Little Johnny Jones who tells Cagney's George M. Cohan, in the title role of Jones, of the plan to fire a rocket from the ship when the evidence clearing him has been found. Kane's range of roles ran from business executives and impressarios to maitre d's and as he grew older and more distinguished-looking, his delivery grew even sharper onscreen. Kane is probably best known to audiences from the 1950s and beyond for his portrayal (uncredited, as usual) of Mr. Monahan, Ralph Kramden's boss at the Gotham Bus Company, in The Honeymooners' episode in which Kramden impersonates a bus company executive to impress an old rival. Kane retired from movies and television after the 1950s and died in 1969 of a heart attack at his home.

Trivia: Eternally grinning comic actor Richard Gallegher became a vaudevillian in the early part of the 20th century after briefly entertaining plans for a law career. His professional nickname "Skeets" was short for "Mosquito," a childhood name bestowed upon Gallegher because of his habit of darting around at top speed. Gallegher made his first film in 1923, but did not appear before the cameras on a regular basis until signed by Paramount in 1927. On both sides of the talkie revolution, Gallegher appeared in support of such leading lights as W.C. Fields (The Potters), Jack Oakie (Fast Company) and Joe E. Brown (Polo Joe); once in a while (though not often enough) he played the leading role. Along with virtually the entire Paramount stable, Gallegher played a guest cameo in 1933's Alice in Wonderland (that's his voice as the White Rabbit, though it's not quite clear who's in the costume). After 1937, Skeets Gallegher spent less of his time in films, preferring live audiences to sullen camera crews; he made one final screen appearance in 1952's Three for Bedroom C before illness forced him to retire.