Scarlet Street

Edward G. Robinson (Actor) .. Christopher Cross

Born: December 12, 1893
Died: January 26, 1973
Birthplace: Bucharest, Romania

Trivia: Born Emmanuel Goldenberg, Edward G. Robinson was a stocky, forceful, zesty star of Hollywood films who was best known for his gangsters roles in the '30s. A "little giant" of the screen with a pug-dog face, drawling nasal voice, and a snarling expression, he was considered the quintessential tough-guy actor. Having emigrated with his family to the U.S. when he was ten, Robinson planned to be a rabbi or a lawyer, but decided on an acting career while a student at City College, where he was elected to the Elizabethan Society. He attended the American Academy of Dramatic Arts on a scholarship, and, in 1913, began appearing in summer stock after changing his name to "Edward G." (for Goldenberg). Robinson debuted on Broadway in 1915, and, over the next 15 years, became a noted stage character actor, even co-writing one of his plays, The Kibitzer (1929). He appeared in one silent film, The Bright Shawl (1923), but not until the sound era did he begin working regularly in films, making his talkie debut in The Hole in the Wall (1929) with Claudette Colbert. It was a later sound film, 1930's Little Caesar, that brought him to the attention of American audiences; portraying gangster boss Rico Bandello, he established a prototype for a number of gangster roles he played in the ensuing years. After being typecast as a gangster he gradually expanded the scope of his roles, and, in the '40s, gave memorable "good guy" performances as in a number of psychological dramas; he played federal agents, scientists, Biblical characters, business men, bank clerks, among other characters. The actor experienced a number of personal problems during the '50s. He was falsely linked to communist organizations and called before the House Un-American Activities Committee (eventually being cleared of all suspicion). Having owned one of the world's largest private art collections, he was forced to sell it in 1956 as part of a divorce settlement with his wife of 29 years, actress Gladys Lloyd. Robinson continued his career, however, which now included television work, and he remained a busy actor until shortly before his death from cancer in 1973. His final film was Soylent Green (1973), a science fiction shocker with Charlton Heston. Two months after his death, Robinson was awarded an honorary Oscar "for his outstanding contribution to motion pictures," having been notified of the honor before he died. He was also the author of a posthumously published autobiography, All My Yesterdays (1973).

Joan Bennett (Actor) .. Kitty March

Born: February 27, 1910
Died: December 07, 1990

Trivia: The title of actress Joan Bennett's 1970 autobiography is The Bennett Playbill, in reference to the fact that she came from an old and well-established theatrical family: her father was stage star Richard Bennett and her sisters were screen actresses Constance and Barbara Bennett. Though she made an appearance as a child in one of her father's films, Joan Bennett did not originally intend to pursue acting as a profession. Honoring her wishes, her father bundled her off to finishing school in Versailles. Alas, her impulsive first marriage at 16 ended in divorce, leaving her a single mother in dire need of an immediate source of income. Thus it was that she became a professional actress, making her first Broadway appearance in her father's vehicle, Jarnegan (1928). In 1929, she began her film career in the low-budget effort Power, then co-starred with Ronald Colman in Bulldog Drummond. She was inexperienced and awkward and she knew it, but Bennett applied herself to her craft and improved rapidly; by the early '30s she was a busy and popular ingénue, appearing in such enjoyable programmers as Me and My Gal (1932) and important A-pictures like Little Women (1933) (as Amy). During this period she briefly married again to writer/producer Gene Markey. It was her third husband, producer Walter Wanger, who made the decision that changed the direction of her career: in Wanger's Trade Winds (1938), Bennett was obliged to dye her blonde hair black for plot purposes. Audiences approved of this change, and Bennett thrived throughout the next decade in a wide variety of "dark" roles befitting her brunette status. She was especially effective in a series of melodramas directed by Fritz Lang: Man Hunt (1941), The Woman in the Window (1944), Scarlet Street (1945), and The Secret Beyond the Door (1948). In 1950, she switched professional gears again, abandoning femme-fatale roles for the part of Spencer Tracy's ever-patient spouse in Father of the Bride (1950). Though her personal life was turbulent in the early '50s -- her husband Walter Wanger allegedly shot and wounded agent Jennings Lang, claiming that Lang was trying to steal his wife -- Bennett's professional life continued unabated on both stage and screen. Her television work included the 1959 sitcom Too Young to Go Steady and the "gothic" soap opera Dark Shadows (1965-1971). In failing health, Joan Bennett spent her last years in retirement with her fourth husband, media critic David Wilde.

Dan Duryea (Actor) .. Johnny Prince

Born: January 23, 1907
Died: June 07, 1968

Trivia: Hissable movie heavy Dan Duryea was handsome enough as a young man to secure leading roles in the student productions at White Plains High School. He majored in English at Cornell University, but kept active in theatre, succeeding Franchot Tone as president of Cornell's Dramatic Society. Bowing to his parents' wishes, Duryea sought out a more "practical" profession upon graduation, working for the N. W. Ayer advertising agency. After suffering a mild heart attack, Duryea was advised by his doctor to leave advertising and seek out employment in something he enjoyed doing. Thus, Duryea returned to acting in summer stock, then was cast in the 1935 Broadway hit Dead End. The first of his many bad-guy roles was Bob Ford, the "dirty little coward" who shot Jesse James, in the short-lived 1938 stage play Missouri Legend. Impressed by Duryea's slimy but somehow likeable perfidy in this play, Herman Shumlin cast the young actor as the snivelling Leo Hubbard in Lillian Hellman's The Little Foxes. This 1939 Broadway production was converted into a film by Sam Goldwyn in 1941, with many members of the original cast -- including Duryea -- making their Hollywood debuts. Duryea continued playing supporting roles in films until 1945's The Woman in the Window, in which he scored as Joan Bennett's sneering "bodyguard" (that's Hollywoodese for "pimp"). Thereafter, Duryea was given star billing, occasionally in sympathetic roles (White Tie and Tails [1946], Black Angel [1946]), but most often as a heavy. From 1952 through 1955, he starred as a roguish soldier of fortune in the syndicated TV series China Smith, and also topped the cast of a theatrical-movie spin-off of sorts, World for Ransom (1954), directed by Duryea's friend Robert Aldrich. One of the actor's last worthwhile roles in a big-budget picture was as a stuffy accountant who discovers within himself inner reserves of courage in Aldrich's Flight of the Phoenix (1965). In 1968, shortly before his death from a recurring heart ailment, Duryea was cast as Eddie Jacks in 67 episodes of TV's Peyton Place. Dan Duryea was the father of actor Peter Duryea, likewise a specialist in slimy villainy.

Margaret Lindsay (Actor) .. Millie Ray

Born: September 19, 1910
Died: May 09, 1981

Trivia: Born Margaret Kies, Margaret Lindsay was an all-American-looking lead and supporting actress with a low-pitched voice. She trained at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts in New York; unable to find roles in America, she went to London and gained stage experience there. After returning to America, she debuted onscreen in 1932. The following year she gained attention in Cavalcade, a Hollywood film with an all-British cast; supposedly, to land the role she lied to the studio and pretended to have an English background. Shortly thereafter she was signed by Warners and went on to appear in many films through the '30s; although appealing and talented, she had leads mostly in low-quality films, getting only supporting roles in major productions. Her B-movie experience included playing the female lead in seven Ellery Queen films. After leaving Warners she continued to appear mostly in B-movies, and later moved into character roles. She retired from the screen in 1963, going on to appear only in The Chadwicks, an unsuccessful 1973 TV pilot with Fred MacMurray. She never married.

Rosalind Ivan (Actor) .. Adele Cross

Born: January 01, 1881
Died: January 01, 1959

Trivia: British actress Rosalind Ivan gained most of her fame on the Broadway and London stages, but she also appeared in several memorable Hollywood films. At age ten, Ivan was a musical prodigy who gave piano recitals in London. This early experience performing led to her become a distinguished character actress in British Theater. In 1912, she first appeared on Broadway. In addition to acting, Ivan also wrote magazine articles, and book reviews; in 1927, she translated The Brothers Karamazov for a Theatre Guild production. In film, she first gained notice for her portrayal of a nagging wife in The Suspect (1945). This led her to be cast as unpleasant women in several other films; she was so convincing in her roles that some in Hollywood called her "Ivan the Terrible."

Jess Barker (Actor) .. Janeway

Born: June 04, 1912

Trivia: When college-hero-handsome Jess Barker was signed by producer Walter Wanger in 1935, he was billed as Philip Barker in such Wanger productions as Trail of the Lonesome Pine (1936). He re-emerged as Jess Barker in the early 1940s, heading the casts in a handful of long-forgotten programmers. In Abbott and Costello's The Time of Their Lives (1946)., Barker plays the aristocratic fiance of Marjorie Reynolds. Barker is perhaps best known as the first husband of actress Susan Hayward; their 10-year union produced twin sons, whose custody Susan won after a bitter courtroom battle. His movie career damaged by adverse publicity, Jess Barker worked for a while in radio, then returned to the screen as a character actor in such films as Night Walker (1965).

Arthur Loft (Actor) .. Dellarowe

Born: May 25, 1897
Died: January 01, 1947

Trivia: Character actor Arthur Loft was active in films from 1933 until his death in 1947. A fussy-looking man who appeared as though he been weaned on a lemon, Loft was usually cast as pushy types. He was seen in prominent officious roles in two Edward G. Robinson/Fritz Lang collaborations of the mid-1940s, The Woman in the Window (44) and Scarlet Street (45). Other typical fleeting Arthur Loft assignments included a carpetbagger in Prisoner of Shark Island (36) and an abrasive reporter in Blood on the Sun (45).

Samuel S. Hinds (Actor) .. Charles Pringle

Born: April 04, 1875
Died: October 13, 1948

Trivia: Raspy-voiced, distinguished-looking actor Samuel S. Hinds was born into a wealthy Brooklyn family. Well-educated at such institutions as Philips Academy and Harvard, Hinds became a New York lawyer. He moved to California in the 1920s, where he developed an interest in theatre and became one of the founders of the Pasadena Playhouse. A full-time actor by the early 1930s, Hinds entered films in 1932. Of his nearly 150 screen appearances, several stand out, notably his portrayal of Bela Lugosi's torture victim in The Raven (1935), the dying John Vincey in She (1935), the crooked political boss in Destry Rides Again (1939) and the doctor father of Lew Ayres in MGM's Dr. Kildare series. He frequently co-starred in the films of James Stewart, playing Stewart's eccentric future father-in-law in You Can't Take It With You (1938) and the actor's banker dad in the holiday perennial It's a Wonderful Life (1946). One of Samuel S. Hinds' final film roles was an uncredited supporting part in the 1948 James Stewart vehicle Call Northside 777.

Vladimir Sokoloff (Actor) .. Opo Lejon

Born: December 26, 1889
Died: February 14, 1962

Trivia: A literature and philosophy student in his native Moscow, Vladimir Sokoloff trained for an acting career under Stanislavsky at the Moscow Art Theatre. Leaving Russia in 1923, Sokoloff resettled in Germany, where he made his first film, Uneasy Money, in 1926. Dividing his time between Paris and Berlin throughout the 1930s, Sokoloff came to Hollywood in 1937, where his craggy face and colorful accent enabled him to secure choice character roles. Despite his name and ethnic derivation, Sokoloff successfully portrayed nearly 35 different nationalities during his American career: He was Frenchman Paul Cezanne in The Life of Emile Zola (1937), a Middle Easterner in Road to Morocco (1942), Spanish freedom fighter Anselmo in For Whom the Bell Tolls (1943), an elderly Mexican in The Magnificent Seven (1960), and so it went. Vladimir Sokoloff was active in films (Taras Bulba) and TV programs (The Twilight Zone) right up to his death in 1962.

Charles Kemper (Actor) .. Patcheye

Born: January 01, 1900
Died: May 12, 1950

Trivia: Chubby, gravelly-voiced American comic actor Charles Kemper learned his trade in vaudeville and minstrel shows. Kemper came to films as a short-subject headliner in 1929, working in the comedy output of Educational Studios at least until 1937. He then spent several seasons on stage and radio before returning to films in 1945 as a character actor. He is best remembered for his quietly chilling portrayal of outlaw leader Uncle Shilo Clegg in John Ford's Wagonmaster (1950). Charles Kemper was fifty years old when he died of injuries sustained in an auto crash; his last film, On Dangerous Ground (1951), was released posthumously.

Russell Hicks (Actor) .. Hogarth

Born: June 04, 1895
Died: June 01, 1957

Trivia: Trained in prep school for a career as a businessman, Baltimore-born Russell Hicks chucked his predestined lifestyle for a theatrical career, over the protests of his family. As an actor, Hicks came full circle, spending the bulk of his career playing businessmen! Though he claimed to have appeared in D.W. Griffith's Birth of a Nation (1915) and Intolerance (1916), Hicks' earliest recorded Hollywood job occured in 1920, when he was hired as an assistant casting director for Famous Players (later Paramount). Making his stage debut in It Pays to Smile, Hicks acted in stock companies and on Broadway before his official film bow in 1934's Happiness Ahead. The embodiment of the small-town business booster or chairman of the board, the tall, authoritative Hicks frequently used his dignified persona to throw the audience off guard in crooked or villainous roles. He was glib confidence man J. Frothingham Waterbury in W.C. Fields' The Bank Dick (1940) ("I want to be honest with you in the worst way!"), and more than once he was cast as the surprise killer in murder mysteries. Because of his robust, athletic physique, Hicks could also be seen as middle-aged adventurers, such as one of The Three Musketeers in the 1939 version of that classic tale, and as the aging Robin Hood in 1946's Bandit of Sherwood Forest (1946). Russell Hicks continued accepting film assignments until 1956's Seventh Cavalry.

Lou Lubin (Actor) .. Tiny

Born: November 09, 1895

Trivia: Diminutive character actor Lou Lubin enjoyed a career of about a dozen years in movies and early television, as well as radio work. As is the case with most character players, he usually got small roles in big pictures and more substantial roles in small-scale productions. Lubin's short stature and distinctly urban accent made him ideal for playing henchmen and other shady, disreputable characters, although he also turned up on the side of the angels from time to time -- his most memorable part was in Val Lewton's production of The Seventh Victim (1943), as a seedy private eye who loses his life trying to do something decent and then turns up as a corpse on a subway. That same year, he was also given a fair amount of screen time in William Wellman's Lady of Burlesque as Moey the candy butcher. And in 1945, he was seen in Max Nosseck's Dillinger as the luckless waiter who gets on the wrong side of Lawrence Tierney's John Dillinger and receives savage vengeance for his trouble. Lubin's had been out of pictures for 20 years at the time of his death in 1973, at age 77.

Anita Sharp-Bolster (Actor) .. Mrs. Michaels

Born: August 28, 1895

Cy Kendall (Actor) .. Nick

Born: March 10, 1898
Died: July 22, 1953

Trivia: Cyrus W. Kendall was eight years old when he made his acting debut at the fabled Pasadena Playhouse. As an adult, the portly Kendall became a charter member of the Playhouse's Eighteen Actors Inc., acting in and/or directing over 100 theatrical productions. In films from 1936, he was usually typecast as an abrasive, cigar-chomping detective, gangster or machine politician. He showed up in roles both large and small in feature films, and was prominently cast in several of MGM's Crime Does Not Pay short subjects. Typical Kendall assignments of the 1940s included Jumbo Madigan in Alias Boston Blackie (1941) and "Honest" John Travers in Outlaw Trail (1944). Remaining active into the early years of live television, Cyrus W. Kendall essayed several guest spots on the 1949 quiz show/anthology Armchair Detective, and co-starred with Robert Bice, Spencer Chan and Herb Ellis on the Hollywood-based ABC weekly Mysteries of Chinatown (1949-50).

Fred Essler (Actor) .. Marchetti

Born: January 01, 1895
Died: January 01, 1973

Lee Phelps (Actor) .. Policeman

Born: January 01, 1894
Died: March 19, 1953

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).

Matt Willis (Actor) .. Policeman

Born: October 16, 1913
Died: March 30, 1989

Trivia: Matt Willis -- who was known on-stage as Marion Willis -- was a successful general-purpose actor who appeared in a dozen Broadway productions, including Come Angel Band, How Beautiful With Shoes, Sweet River, Stork Mad, The Burning Deck, and Tobacco Road (as Lov Bensey), and over 60 feature films in the period from 1941 through 1952. He started out in vaudeville, and initially came to notice as a blackface comedian while a member of Hank White's Minstrels, before moving into legitimate theater in the mid-'30s. His screen career mostly consisted of small parts -- during World War II, he portrayed a succession of taciturn sergeants in single scenes -- though he occasionally rose to key supporting roles. The best-known movie in which Willis appeared was Alfred Hitchcock's Saboteur (1942); he played a sheriff's deputy. His credits also included Lewis Milestone's A Walk in the Sun (1945), Frank Borzage's Stage Door Canteen (1943), and Walt Disney's production of So Dear to My Heart (1949), but his best role was in a decidedly lower-budgeted B-feature, Columbia's The Return of the Vampire (1943), in which he played Andreas, the tormented werewolf under the spell of the vampire played by Bela Lugosi. Surprisingly, given the deep, gravel-textured voice that he often displayed, Willis also sang in at least one production, Swingtime Johnny. He passed away in at age 75.

Robert Malcolm (Actor) .. Policeman

Born: September 23, 1918

Edgar Dearing (Actor) .. Policeman

Born: May 04, 1893
Died: August 17, 1974

Trivia: Edgar Dearing was a full-time Los Angeles motorcycle cop in the '20s when he began accepting small roles in the 2-reel comedies of Hal Roach. These roles hardly constituted a stretch, since he was often cast as a motorcycle cop, principally because he supplied his own uniform and cycle; the best-remembered of these "performances" was in Laurel and Hardy's Two Tars (1928). Hal Roach cameraman George Stevens liked Dearing's work, and saw to it that the policeman-cum-actor was prominently featured in Stevens' RKO Wheeler & Woolsey features Kentucky Kernels (1934) and The Nitwits (1935). When he moved into acting full-time in the '30s, Dearing was still primarily confined to law-enforcement bit roles, though he achieved fourth billing as a tough drill sergeant in the Spencer Tracy/Franchot Tone feature They Gave Him a Gun (1937). Dearing's performing weight was most effectively felt in the Abbott and Costello features of the '40s, where he provided a formidable authority-figure foe for the simpering antics of Lou Costello (notably in the "Go Ahead and Sing" routine in 1944's In Society). Dearing also showed up in a number of '40s 2-reelers; he was particularly amusing as strong man Hercules Jones (a "Charles Atlas" takeoff) in the 1948 Sterling Holloway short Man or Mouse? Edgar Dearing's last screen assignment was a prominent role as townsman Mr. Gorman in Walt Disney's Pollyanna (1960).

William Hall (Actor) .. Policeman

Ralph Dunn (Actor) .. Policeman

Born: January 01, 1902
Died: February 19, 1968

Trivia: Ralph Dunn used his burly body and rich, theatrical voice to good effect in hundreds of minor feature-film roles and supporting appearances in two-reel comedies. He came to Hollywood during the early talkie era, beginning his film career with 1932's The Crowd Roars. A huge man with a withering glare, Dunn was an ideal "opposite" for short, bumbling comedians like Lou Costello in the 1944 Abbott and Costello comedy In Society, Dunn plays the weeping pedestrian who explains that he doesn't want to go to Beagle Street because that's where a two-ton safe fell on his head and killed him. A frequent visitor to the Columbia short subjects unit, Dunn shows up in the Three Stooges comedy Mummie's Dummies as the ancient Egyptian swindled at the Stooges' used chariot lot. Ralph Dunn kept busy into the '60s, appearing in such TV series as Kitty Foyle and such films as Black Like Me (1964).

Tom Dillon (Actor) .. Policemen

Born: January 01, 1919
Died: March 14, 2005

Chuck Hamilton (Actor) .. Chauffeur

Born: January 18, 1939

Trivia: In films from 1932, American actor/stunt man Chuck Hamilton was a handy fellow to have around in slapstick comedies, tense cop melodramas and swashbucklers. Hamilton showed up in the faintly fascistic law-and-order epic Beast of the City (1932), the picaresque Harold Lloyd comedy Professor Beware (1938), and the flamboyant Errol Flynn adventure Against All Flags (1952). When not doubling for the leading players, he could be seen in minor roles as policemen, reporters, chauffeurs, stevedores and hoodlum. From time to time, Chuck Hamilton showed up in Native American garb, as he did in DeMille's Northwest Mounted Police (1940).

Gus Glassmire (Actor) .. Employee

Born: August 29, 1879
Died: July 23, 1946

Trivia: A somber-looking, bit-part player from Philadelphia, Gus Glassmire popped up in scores of high- and low-budget movies from 1938-1945, often playing clerks, storekeepers, hospital doctors, and newspaper editors. Today, Glassmire is probably best remembered as one of the victims of Dr. Daka's (J. Carrol Naish fiendish plot to overthrow the world in the 1943 Columbia serial Batman.

Ralph Littlefield (Actor) .. Employee

Sherry Hall (Actor) .. Employee

Born: August 08, 1892

Trivia: American actor Sherry Hall popped up in innumerable bit roles between 1932 and 1951. Hall was typically cast as reporters, bartenders, court clerks, and occasional pianists. He was particularly busy at 20th Century-Fox in the 1940s, nearly always in microscopic parts. Sherry Hall's larger screen assignments included the "TV Scientist" in Dick Tracy Returns (1938), Robert Buelle in The Shadow Returns (1946), John Gilvray in The Prowler (1951), and Mr. Manners in The Well, a 1951 film populated almost exclusively by small-part players.

Howard Mitchell (Actor) .. Employee

Born: December 11, 1883
Died: October 09, 1958

Trivia: Howard M. Mitchell's screen acting career got off to a good start with a pair of silent serials, Beloved Adventurer (1914) and The Road of Strife (1915). Mitchell kept busy as a director in the 1920s, returning to acting in 1935. His roles were confined to bits and walk-ons as guards, storekeepers, judges, and especially police chiefs. Howard M. Mitchell closed out his career playing a train conductor in the classic "B" melodrama The Narrow Margin (1952).

Jack Statham (Actor) .. Employee

Milton Kibbee (Actor) .. Saunders

Born: January 27, 1896

Tom Daly (Actor) .. Penny

Born: May 24, 1911

George Meader (Actor) .. Holliday

Born: January 01, 1887
Died: January 01, 1963

Clarence Muse (Actor) .. Ben

Born: October 07, 1889
Died: October 13, 1979

Trivia: Black actor of Hollywood films, onscreen from 1929. He graduated from law school, but in his early '30s he abandoned law to work as an actor in New York with the Lincoln Players; he co-founded his next acting company, the Lafayette Players. He was offered a role in the all-black film musical Hearts in Dixie (1929), and accepted after the studio signed him for $1250 a week. He made films for almost five decades, and much of the time he was busy almost constantly; he often played Uncle Tom types, but also gave many performances that were invested with considerable dignity and intelligence. In 1973 he was inducted in the Black Filmmakers Hall of Fame.

John Barton (Actor) .. Hurdy Gurdy Man

Emmett Vogan (Actor) .. Prosecution Attorney

Born: September 27, 1893
Died: October 06, 1964

Trivia: Character actor Emmett Vogan appeared in films from 1934 through 1956. A peppery gentleman with steel-rimmed glasses and an executive air, Vogan appeared in hundreds of films in a variety of small "take charge" roles. Evidently he had a few friends in the casting department of Universal Pictures, inasmuch as he showed up with regularity in that studio's comedies, serials and B-westerns. Comedy fans will recognize Emmett Vogan as the engineer partner of nominal leading man Charles Lang in W.C. Fields' Never Give a Sucker an Even Break (1941), and as the prosecuting attorney in the flashback sequences of Laurel and Hardy's The Bullfighters (1945).

Horace Murphy (Actor) .. Milkman

Born: January 01, 1880
Died: January 01, 1975

Trivia: Succinctly described as "portly and pompous" by B-Western aficionado Don Miller, American character-actor Horace Murphy was the Eugene Pallette of the sagebrush. Spending most of his career in cowboy flicks, Murphy was usually cast as intrusive sheriffs, know-it-all doctors, and orotund snake-oil peddlers. In 1937, he made the first of several appearances as comedy-relief sidekick Stubby in the films of Western hero Tex Ritter. In non-Westerns, he could usually be found playing bartenders, burgomeisters, and train conductors. Horace Murphy made his last screen appearance in 1946.

Will Wright (Actor) .. Loan Officer Manager

Born: March 26, 1891
Died: June 19, 1962

Trivia: San Franciscan Will Wright was a newspaper reporter before he hit the vaudeville, legitimate stage, and radio circuit. With his crabapple face and sour-lemon voice, Wright was almost instantly typecast as a grouch, busybody, or small-town Scrooge. Most of his film roles were minor, but Wright rose to the occasion whenever given such meaty parts as the taciturn apartment house manager in The Blue Dahlia (1946). In one of his best assignments, Wright remained unseen: He was the voice of the remonstrative Owl in the Disney cartoon feature Bambi (1942). Will Wright didn't really need the money from his long movie and TV career: His main source of income was his successful Los Angeles ice cream emporium, which was as popular with the movie people as with civilians, and which frequently provided temporary employment for many a young aspiring actor.

Syd Saylor (Actor) .. Crocker

Born: March 24, 1895
Died: December 21, 1962

Trivia: Scrawny supporting actor Syd Saylor managed to parlay a single comic shtick -- bobbing his adam's apple -- into a four-decade career. He starred in several silent two-reel comedies from 1926 through 1927, then settled into character parts. During the late '30s and early '40s, Saylor frequently found himself in B-Westerns as the comical sidekick for many a six-gun hero, though he seldom lasted very long in any one series. Syd Saylor was still plugging away into the 1950s, playing "old-timer" bits in such films as Cheaper by the Dozen (1950) and Jackpot (1950), and such TV series as Burns and Allen and Alfred Hitchcock Presents.

Dewey Robinson (Actor) .. Derelict

Born: January 01, 1898
Died: December 11, 1950

Trivia: Barrel-chested American actor Dewey Robinson was much in demand during the gangster cycle of the early '30s. Few actors could convey muscular menace and mental vacuity as quickly and as well as the mountainous Mr. Robinson. Most of his roles were bits, but he was given extended screen time as a polo-playing mobster in Edward G. Robinson's Little Giant (1933), as a bored slavemaster in the outrageously erotic "No More Love" number in Eddie Cantor's Roman Scandals (1933) and as a plug-ugly ward heeler at odds with beauty contest judge Ben Turpin in the slapstick 2-reeler Keystone Hotel (1935). Shortly before his death in 1950, Dewey Robinson had a lengthy unbilled role as a Brooklyn baseball fan in The Jackie Robinson Story, slowly metamorphosing from a brainless bigot to Jackie's most demonstrative supporter.

Fritz Leiber (Actor) .. Evangelist

Born: January 31, 1882
Died: October 14, 1949

Trivia: With his piercing eyes and shock of white hair, Fritz Leiber seemed every inch the priests, professors, musical professors and religious fanatics that he was frequently called upon to play in films. A highly respected Shakespearean actor, Leiber made his film bow in 1916, playing Mercutio in the Francis X. Bushman version of Romeo and Juliet. His many silent-era portrayals included Caesar in Theda Bara's 1917 Cleopatra and Solomon in the mammoth 1921 Betty Blythe vehicle Solomon and Sheba. He thrived as a character actor in talkies, usually in historical roles; one of his larger assignments of the 1940s was as Franz Liszt in the Claude Rains remake of The Phantom of the Opera (1943). Fritz Leiber was the father of the famous science-fiction author of the same name.

Dick Wessel (Actor) .. 2nd Detective

Born: January 01, 1913
Died: April 20, 1965

Trivia: American actor Dick Wessel had a face like a Mack Truck bulldog and a screen personality to match. After several years on stage, Wessel began showing up in Hollywood extra roles around 1933; he is fleetingly visible in the Marx Brothers' Duck Soup (1933), Laurel and Hardy's Bonnie Scotland (1935), and the Columbia "screwball" comedy She Couldn't Take It (1935). The size of his roles increased in the '40s; perhaps his best feature-film showing was as the eponymous bald-domed master criminal in Dick Tracy vs. Cueball (1946). He was a valuable member of Columbia Pictures' short subject stock company, playing a variety of bank robbers, wrestlers, jealous husbands and lazy brother-in-laws. Among his more memorable 2-reel appearances were as lovestruck boxer "Chopper" in The Three Stooges' Fright Night (1947), Andy Clyde's invention-happy brother-in-law in Eight Ball Andy (1948), and Hugh Herbert's overly sensitive strongman neighbor in Hot Heir (1947). Wessel was shown to good (if unbilled) advantage as a handlebar-mustached railroad engineer in the superspectacular Around the World in 80 Days (1956), and had a regular role as Carney on the 1959 TV adventure series Riverboat. Dick Wessel's farewell screen appearance was as a harried delivery man in Disney's The Ugly Dachshund (1965).

Dick Curtis (Actor) .. 3rd Detective

Born: May 11, 1902
Died: January 03, 1952

Trivia: American actor Dick Curtis may have started out as an extra, and it's true that he seldom rose above the ranks of western supporting actors, but he still managed to get himself a full-page photo spread as a "typical" villain in the 1957 coffee table book The Movies. In this book, as in most of his movies, Curtis was seen squaring off in a series of bare-knuckle bouts with his perennial opponent, cowboy star Charles Starrett. Most of Curtis' career was centered at Columbia Pictures, where he scowled and skulked his way through bad guy roles in the studio's "B" pictures, westerns, serials, and two-reel comedies. Sometimes he'd get to wear a business suit instead of frontier garb, as in his role of a jury foreman in the Boris Karloff thriller The Man They Could Not Hang (1939), but even here he was unpleasant, unsympathetic, and fully deserving of an untimely end. A more lighthearted (but no less menacing) Dick Curtis can be seen in his many two-reel appearances with Charley Chase, Hugh Herbert and The Three Stooges. As Badlands Blackie in the Stooges' Three Troubledoers (1946), Curtis' acting is gloriously overbaked, and perhaps as a reward for long and faithful service to Columbia he is permitted to deliver outrageous "double takes" which manage to out-Stooge his co-stars.

Joe Devlin (Actor) .. Williams

Born: January 01, 1899
Died: October 01, 1973

Trivia: Bald-domed, prominently chinned American character actor Joe Devlin was seen in bits in major films, and as a less-costly Jack Oakie type in minor pictures. Devlin usually played two-bit crooks and sarcastic tradesmen in his 1940s appearances. The actor's uncanny resemblance to Benito Mussolini resulted in numerous "shock of recognition" cameos during the war years, as well as full-fledged Mussolini imitations in two Hal Roach "streamliners," The Devil With Hitler (1942) and That Nazty Nuisance (1943). In 1950, Joe Devlin was cast as Sam Catchem in a TV series based on Chester Gould's comic-strip cop Dick Tracy.

George Lloyd (Actor) .. Conway

Born: January 01, 1897

Trivia: Australian-born actor George Lloyd spoke without a trace of accent of any kind in his hundreds of movie appearances. Lloyd's mashed-in mug and caterpillar eyebrows were put to best use in roles calling for roughneck sarcasm. He was often seen as second-string gangsters, escape-prone convicts, acerbic garage mechanics and (especially) temperamental moving men. George Lloyd's film career began in the mid-1930s and petered out by the beginning of the TV era.

Herbert Heywood (Actor) .. Bellboy

Born: February 01, 1881
Died: September 15, 1964

Trivia: Herbert Heywood spent the bulk of his screen career answering to the nicknames "Pop" and "Old Timer." Already well into middle age when he began his film career in 1935, Heywood could be seen as mailmen, doormen, judges, convicts and railroad workers. Most of his films were made at Universal and Fox, two companies historically averse to crediting their minor players. Among the few roles played by Herbert Heywood to be given names rather than descriptions were Hot Cake Joe in Criminals of the Air (1937) and brakeman Arnold Kelly in King's Row (1941).

Charles Wilson (Actor) .. Watchman

Born: January 01, 1894
Died: January 07, 1948

Trivia: When actor Charles C. Wilson wasn't portraying a police chief onscreen, he was likely to be cast as a newspaper editor. The definitive Wilson performance in this vein was as Joe Gordon, reporter Clark Gable's apoplectic city editor in the 1934 multi-award winner It Happened One Night. Like many easily typecast actors, Wilson was usually consigned to one-scene (and often one-line) bits, making the sort of instant impression that hundreds of scripted words could not adequately convey. Shortly before his death in 1948, Charles C. Wilson could once more be seen at the editor's desk of a big-city newspaper -- this time as the boss of those erstwhile newshounds the Three Stooges in the two-reel comedy Crime on Their Hands (1948).

Constance Purdy (Actor) .. Matron

Born: January 01, 1884
Died: January 01, 1960

Wallace Scott (Actor) .. Drunk

Born: July 04, 1924

Edward Keane (Actor) .. Detective

Born: May 24, 1884
Died: October 12, 1959

Trivia: American actor Edward Keane was eminently suitable for roles requiring tuxedos and military uniforms. From his first screen appearance in 1921 to his last in 1952, Keane exuded the dignity and assurance of a self-made man of wealth or a briskly authoritative Armed Services officer. Fortunately his acting fee was modest, enabling Keane to add class to even the cheapest of poverty-row "B"s. Generations of Marx Bros. fans will remember Edward Keane as the ship's captain (he's the one who heaps praise upon the three bearded Russian aviators) in A Night at the Opera (1935).

Arthur Gould-Porter (Actor) .. Critic

Born: January 01, 1905
Died: January 01, 1987

Boyd Irwin (Actor) .. Critic

Born: February 12, 1880
Died: January 22, 1957

Trivia: According to his official studio bio, Boyd Irwin appeared for 17 years on stages in both his native England and Australia. He embarked on a screen career in the latter country in 1915, as a leading man with J.C. Williamson Prod., Southern Cross Feature Film Co., and Haymarket Pictures Corp. In America from 1919, Irwin was relegated to character roles, often villainous in nature, and can be seen as Rochefort in Douglas Fairbanks' The Three Musketeers (1921). He also played the Duc de Guise in Norma Talmadge's Ashes of Vengeance (1923) and Levasseur in Vitagraph's Captain Blood (1924) before returning to Australia. Irwin was back in Hollywood after the changeover to sound, however, lending his ramrod-straight presence to playing scores of military officers, noblemen, and even hotel clerks in films ranging from Madam Satan (1930) to Forever Amber (1947).

Richard Abbott (Actor) .. Critic

Born: May 22, 1899
Died: June 01, 1986

Thomas Jackson (Actor) .. Chief of Detectives

Born: July 04, 1886

Dick Cramer (Actor) .. Principal Keeper

Born: January 01, 1888
Died: January 01, 1960

Trivia: Before coming to feature films in 1929, American actor Dick Cramer was a stage actor for 20 years. With a coarse face and a menacing demeanor, Cramer was well-suited to play villains.

Neal Dodd (Actor) .. Priest

Born: September 06, 1878
Died: May 26, 1966

Trivia: The screen's favorite minister, the Rev. Neal Dodd had established his first Hollywood church in a storefront in 1918. Two years later, he was functioning as technical advisor on The Furnace (1920) and, in 1921, became a founding member of a relief fund to aid film workers in need. A lifelong supporter of the industry, Dodd made himself available whenever a film needed a pastor and ended up making more than 300 screen appearances. In 1924, he became a founding member of the Motion Picture Relief Fund of America (later Motion Picture and Television Fund), the charitable organization that today runs the Motion Picture Country House and Hospital in Woodland Hills, CA, a facility catering to retired motion picture and television personnel.

Kerry Vaughn (Actor) .. Blonde Girl

Beatrice Roberts (Actor) .. Secretary

Born: March 07, 1905

Trivia: Beatrice Roberts only ever had one notable acting role in a career lasting a little more than 15 years. But she started out with a lot of hope and encouragement, growing out of her partial success in beauty pageants while in her late teens. She was born Alice Beatrice Roberts in New York City in 1905. And she was clearly a striking beauty and also advanced for her years, as she married cartoonist Robert L. Ripley (of believe-it-or-not fame) in 1919, a union that only lasted three months, but which wasn't dissolved officially until 1926. They evidently never saw each other again after 1919, and Roberts competed in the Miss America pageants of 1924 and 1925, as Miss Manhattan and Miss Greater New York. She won awards in both years as "Best Dressed Girl In Evening Gown," an honor that, with its implications of a dignified, imperious quality, seemed to point toward her one significant contribution to the screen, a little more than a decade later.She arrived in Hollywood in 1933 and, after appearances in a few low-budget productions (including the serial The Return of Chandu, starring Bela Lugosi), she landed at MGM. She seldom ascended above smaller, uncredited supporting roles in the studio's productions; typical was her portrayal of one of the three graces in the 1935 fantasy/comedy The Night Life of the Gods. Offscreen, however, she was one of the most notable women on the studio lot, as the mistress of studio chief Louis B. Mayer. They were together for two years, ending in 1936, and she continued to work in MGM films in small roles for another few years. It was at Universal in 1938, however, that Roberts got the most prominent and enduring role of her career, as Queen Azura in Flash Gordon's Trip to Mars. She brought startling beauty as well as an imperious evil to the role of the witch queen, who is an ally of the evil Emperor Ming (Charles Middleton) and also responsible for the curse upon the Clay People. It might not have been a heavy-lifting acting assignment, but she was just about as memorable within the context of the Flash Gordon serials as Priscilla Lawson's wild-eyed, lustful Princess Aura in the first chapterplay or Anne Gwynne's devious Lady Sonya in the third serial. In those days, regardless of the worth of one's performance, serial work was not conducive to an advancing career in features, and Roberts never did get another starring role. She continued to appear in movies, mostly at Universal, until 1949, after which she retired.

Byron Foulger (Actor) .. Apartment House Manager Jones

Born: January 01, 1900
Died: April 04, 1970

Trivia: In the 1959 Twilight Zone episode "Walking Distance," Gig Young comments that he thinks he's seen drugstore counterman Byron Foulger before. "I've got that kind of face" was the counterman's reply. Indeed, Foulger's mustachioed, bespectacled, tremble-chinned, moon-shaped countenance was one of the most familiar faces ever to grace the screen. A graduate of the University of Utah, Foulger developed a taste for performing in community theatre, making his Broadway debut in the '20s. Foulger then toured with Moroni Olsen's stock company, which led him to the famed Pasadena Playhouse as both actor and director. In films from 1936, Foulger usually played whining milksops, weak-willed sycophants, sanctimonious sales clerks, shifty political appointees, and the occasional unsuspected murderer. In real life, the seemingly timorous actor was not very easily cowed; according to his friend Victor Jory, Foulger once threatened to punch out Errol Flynn at a party because he thought that Flynn was flirting with his wife (Mrs. Foulger was Dorothy Adams, a prolific movie and stage character actress). Usually unbilled in "A" productions, Foulger could count on meatier roles in such "B" pictures as The Man They Could Not Hang (1939) and The Panther's Claw (1943). In the Bowery Boys' Up in Smoke (1957), Foulger is superb as a gleeful, twinkly-eyed Satan. In addition to his film work, Byron Foulger built up quite a gallery of portrayals on television; one of his final stints was the recurring role of engineer Wendell Gibbs on the popular sitcom Petticoat Junction.

Rodney Bell (Actor) .. Barney

Born: January 01, 1915
Died: January 01, 1968

Richard Cramer (Actor)

Born: July 03, 1889

Henri DeSoto (Actor) .. Waiter

Lance Fuller (Actor)

Born: January 01, 1928
Died: December 22, 2001

Trivia: The sun rose and set on American leading man Lance Fuller's film career during the decade of the 1950s. From Cattle Queen of Montana (1954) onward, Fuller seemed most at home in westerns. Surprisingly, Fuller was never tapped for a regular role in one of the many TV westerns of the era, though he kept busy in guest-star assignments. Lance Fuller's best screen role was as Jim Leslie in the watered-down filmization of Erskine Caldwell's God's Little Acre (1958); a possible runner-up was his portrayal of a slimy fortune hunter in producer Alex Gordon's Voodoo Woman (1957).

Thomas E. Jackson (Actor) .. Chief of Detectives

Born: January 01, 1894
Died: September 08, 1967

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.

Anita Bolster (Actor) .. Mrs. Michaels

Born: August 29, 1895
Died: June 01, 1985

Trivia: A member of Ireland's famed Abbey Theatre, sharp-featured character actress Anita Bolster (sometimes billed Anita Sharp-Bolster) had enjoyed a long career on the British stage and screen before coming to America in 1938. She received rave reviews on Broadway in Lady in Waiting, with which she also toured until making her American screen debut in 1941. Bolster became one of the busiest character actresses of the 1940s, usually playing prissy spinsters, gossips, and housekeepers. In the 1950s, she twice played "second witch" in television versions of Macbeth and she finished her career playing yet another housekeeper, this time in the cult daytime soap opera Dark Shadows.

Joan Barton (Actor) .. Hurdy Gurdy Man

Born: January 01, 1924
Died: January 01, 1977

Milt Kibbee (Actor) .. Saunders

Born: January 01, 1896
Died: April 21, 1970

Trivia: Milton Kibbee was the younger brother of prominent stage and screen character actor Guy Kibbee. Looking like a smaller, skinnier edition of his brother, Milton followed Guy's lead and opted for a show business career. The younger Kibbee never reached the professional heights enjoyed by Guy in the '30s and '40s, but he was steadily employed in bit parts and supporting roles throughout the same period. Often cast as desk clerks, doctors and park-bench habitues, Milton Kibbee was most frequently seen as a pencil-wielding reporter, notably (and very briefly) in 1941's Citizen Kane.

08:00 am - 10:00 am, Wednesday, November 12 on WNJJ Main Street Television (16.1)