Trivia: A professional actor since childhood, Philadelphia-born William Tracy came to Hollywood in his Broadway role as a military school "plebe" in Brother Rat (1938). Kept briefly under contract to Warner Bros, Tracy went on to play Pat O'Brien as a boy in the classic gangster saga Angels with Dirty Faces. The cherub-faced actor then went on to Hal Roach Studios, where he costarred in several "streamliners" (45 minute films, designed for double-feature bills) with Joe Sawyer. In such slick little comedies as Tanks a Million (1941), About Face (1941) and Yanks Ahoy (1942), Tracy played a rookie serviceman with a photographic memory, while Sawyer played his tough topkick. An attempt to recreate the team in 1951 with a pair of Lippert Studios quickies, As You Were! and Mister Walkie Talkie, sank without a trace. Tracy's other big-screen role of note was as Terry Lee in the serialized movie version of Milton Caniff's comic strip Terry and the Pirates (1940). William Tracy spent the remainder of his career in the '50s and '60s in small movie and TV supporting parts, save for a worthwhile costarring stint with John Russell in the popular 1955 syndicated TV adventure show Soldiers of Fortune.

Trivia: Beefy, puffy-faced Canadian actor Joseph Sawyer spent his first years in films (the early- to mid-'30s) acting under his family name of Sauer. Before he developed his comic skills, Sawyer was often seen in roles calling for casual menace, such as the grinning gunman who introduces "Duke Mantee, the well-known killer" in The Petrified Forest (1936). While under contract to Hal Roach studios in the 1940s, Sawyer starred in several of Roach's "streamliners," films that ran approximately 45 minutes each. He co-starred with William Tracy in a series of films about a GI with a photographic memory and his bewildered topkick: Titles included Tanks a Million (1941), Fall In (1942), and Yanks Ahoy (1943) (he later reprised this role in a brace of B-pictures produced by Hal Roach Jr. for Lippert Films in 1951). A second "streamliner" series, concerning the misadventures of a pair of nouveau riche cabdrivers, teamed Sawyer with another Roach contractee, William Bendix. Baby boomers will remember Joe Sawyer for his 164-episode stint as tough but soft-hearted cavalry sergeant Biff O'Hara on the '50s TV series Rin Tin Tin.

Trivia: A stunningly beautiful blond superstar of the silent era, Betty Compson was billed as the "Vagabond Violinist." She started her career on vaudeville at age 15. Three years later she landed a continuing role in movies as the heroine of dozens of Al Christie's comedy shorts, work she continued for three years. Her rise to stardom as a dramatic actress began with her role opposite Lon Chaney in The Miracle Man (1919). She went on to be one of Hollywood's top stars in the '20s, earning as much as $5000/week. Her career was an up-and-down affair, and several times she was labelled "washed up" only to bounce back again. She was nominated for a "Best Actress" Oscar for her work in The Barker (1928). She made the transition into the sound era, but after 1941 made only a few additional films, retiring from the screen after a bit part in the 1948 "B"-movie Here Comes Trouble. She later became a successful California businesswoman.

Trivia: Tall, alluring actress Joan Woodbury was a professional dancer in the Los Angeles area before entering films in the early '30s. Almost exclusively confined to B-pictures, Woodbury had few pretensions about her "art" and disdained any sort of star treatment; while being interviewed for the leading role in the independently produced Paper Bullets (1941), Woodbury ignored the fact that the producers couldn't afford any office furniture and sat on the floor. While she claimed to have never made more than 300 dollars a week as an actress, Woodbury was a thorough professional, treating even the shabbiest assignment as a job of importance. She was proudest of the time when, while starring in the Columbia serial Brenda Starr, Reporter (1945), she prevented the film from going over budget by performing a complicated five-minute scene in a single take -- which earned her a spontaneous round of applause from the crew members. After retiring from films in the 1960s, Woodbury organized and maintained the Palm Springs-based Valley Player's Guild, staging plays which featured other veteran performers. Joan Woodbury was married twice, to actor/producer Henry Wilcoxon and actor Ray Mitchell.

Trivia: Trained at Iowa's Morningside College for a career as a musician, American actor Emory Parnell spent his earliest performing years as a concert violinist. He worked the Chautauqua and Lyceum tent circuits for a decade before leaving the road in 1930. For the next few seasons, Parnell acted and narrated in commercial and industrial films produced in Detroit. Determining that the oppurtunities and renumeration were better in Hollywood, Emory and his actress wife Effie boarded the Super Chief and headed for California. Endowed with a ruddy Irish countenance and perpetual air of frustration, Parnell immediately landed a string of character roles as cops, small town business owners, fathers-in-law and landlords (though his very first film part in Bing Crosby's Dr. Rhythm [1938] was cut out before release). In roles both large and small, Parnell became an inescapable presence in B-films of the '40s; one of his better showings was in the A-picture Louisiana Purchase, in which, as a Paramount movie executive, he sings an opening song about avoiding libel suits! Parnell was a regular in Universal's Ma and Pa Kettle film series (1949-55), playing small town entrepreneur Billy Reed; on TV, the actor appeared as William Bendix' factory foreman The Life of Riley (1952-58). Emory Parnell's last public appearance was in 1974, when he, his wife Effie, and several other hale-and-hearty residents of the Motion Picture Country Home and Hospital were interviewed by Tom Snyder.

Trivia: Conservatively attired in a three-piece suit and Hoover collar, with a pince-nez firmly perched on his upper nose, American actor Paul Stanton was the very model of a small-town rotarian, banker, or school principal. After a brief fling at films in 1915, Stanton began his movie career proper in 1934, remaining before the cameras until 1949. He spent most of the '30s at 20th Century Fox, with such occasional side trips as Columbia's The Awful Truth (1937), in which he played the nonplused judge presiding over Irene Dunne and Cary Grant's divorce. At MGM in the 1940s, he served as an excellent foil for the undignified antics of the Marx Brothers (The Big Store, 1941) and Laurel and Hardy (Air Raid Wardens, 1943). Usually a pillar of respectability, Paul Stanton turned in a surprising characterization in the Universal comedy-mystery She Gets Her Man (1945), playing a genial general practitioner whose hobby is homicide.

Trivia: Thomas Jackson's first stage success was in the role of the non-speaking Property Man in the original 1912 production of Yellow Jacket. He was starring as police detective Dan McCorn in the lavish Broadway production Broadway when he was tapped to repeat his role in the even more spectacular 1929 film version. For the rest of his career, which lasted into the 1960s, Jackson more or less played variations on Dan McCorn, notably as the soft-spoken "copper" Flaherty in 1931's Little Caesar. When he wasn't playing detectives, Thomas Jackson could be seen in dozens of minor roles as newspaper editors, bartenders, doctors and Broadway theatrical agents.