Trivia: British actor Roddy McDowall's father was an officer in the English merchant marine, and his mother was a would-be actress. When it came time to choose a life's calling, McDowall bowed to his mother's influence. After winning an acting prize in a school play, he was able to secure film work in Britain, beginning at age ten with 1938's Scruffy. He appeared in 16 roles of varying sizes and importance before he and his family were evacuated to the U.S. during the 1940 Battle of Britain. McDowall arrival in Hollywood coincided with the wishes of 20th Century-Fox executive Darryl F. Zanuck to create a "new Freddie Bartholomew." He tested for the juvenile lead in Fox's How Green Was My Valley (1941), winning both the role and a long contract. McDowall's first adult acting assignment was as Malcolm in Orson Welles' 1948 film version of Macbeth; shortly afterward, he formed a production company with Macbeth co-star Dan O'Herlihy. McDowall left films for the most part in the 1950s, preferring TV and stage work; among his Broadway credits were No Time for Sergeants, Compulsion, (in which he co-starred with fellow former child star Dean Stockwell) and Lerner and Loewe's Camelot (as Mordred). McDowall won a 1960 Tony Award for his appearance in the short-lived production The Fighting Cock. The actor spent the better part of the early 1960s playing Octavius in the mammoth production Cleopatra, co-starring with longtime friend Elizabeth Taylor. An accomplished photographer, McDowall was honored by having his photos of Taylor and other celebrities frequently published in the leading magazines of the era. He was briefly an advising photographic editor of Harper's Bazaar, and in 1966 published the first of several collections of his camerawork, Double Exposure. McDowall's most frequent assignments between 1968 and 1975 found him in elaborate simian makeup as Cornelius in the Planet of the Apes theatrical films and TV series. Still accepting the occasional guest-star film role and theatrical assignment into the 1990s, McDowall towards the end of his life was most active in the administrative end of show business, serving on the executive boards of the Screen Actors Guild and the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. A lifelong movie collector (a hobby which once nearly got him arrested by the FBI), McDowall has also worked diligently with the National Film Preservation Board. In August, 1998, he was elected president of the Academy Foundation. One of Hollywood's last links to its golden age and much-loved by old and new stars alike -- McDowell was famed for his kindness, generosity and loyalty (friends could tell McDowall any secret and be sure of its safety) -- McDowall's announcement that he was suffering from terminal cancer a few weeks before he died rocked the film community, and many visited the ailing actor in his Studio City home. Shortly before he was diagnosed with cancer, McDowall had provided the voiceover for Disney/Pixar's animated feature A Bug's Life. A few days prior to McDowall's passing, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences named its photo archive after him.

Trivia: A former pianist and radio actress, Rita Johnson was on Broadway from 1935 and in films from 1937. An extraordinarily versatile performer, Johnson managed to play virtually every sort of role open to an actress of above-average beauty and intelligence in the 1940s. Portraying standard heroines in such films as Edison the Man (1940) and My Friend Flicka (1943), Johnson brought far more warmth and humanity to the parts than the scripts provided. She was equally as persuasive as haughty murderess Julia Farnsworth in Here Comes Mr. Jordan (1941) and as the hissable "other woman" in films like The Major and the Minor (1944). It is positively criminal that no Academy Award came Johnson's way for her astonishing portrayal of the born-to-be-killed wife of unscrupulous Robert Young in 1947's They Won't Believe Me. Johnson's film career came to a screeching halt after a 1948 accident that required delicate brain surgery; thereafter, her screen time was extremely limited, in keeping with her radically reduced mobility and powers of concentration. Fifty-three-year-old Rita Johnson died of a brain hemorhage in her Hollywood home in 1965.

Trivia: Character actor James Bell has appeared in many films during his 40-year film career. He was usually cast as a sympathetic character. The Virginia-born Bell first attended the Virginia Polytechnic Institute before making his theatrical debut in 1921. Eleven years later he made his film debut in I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang. Most of the films he appeared in were made during the '40s and '50s.

Trivia: American actor Jeff Corey forsook a job as sewing-machine salesman for the less stable world of New York theatre in the 1930s. The 26-year-old Corey was regarded as a valuable character-actor commodity when he arrived in Hollywood in 1940. Perhaps the best of his many early unbilled appearances was in the Kay Kyser film You'll Find Out (40), in which Corey, playing a game-show contestant (conveniently named Jeff Corey), was required to sing a song while stuffing his mouth full of crackers. The actor was busiest during the "film noir" mid-to-late 1940s, playing several weasely villain roles; it is hard to forget the image of Corey, in the role of a slimy stoolie in Burt Lancaster's Brute Force, being tied to the front of a truck and pushed directly into a hail of police bullets. Corey's film career ended abruptly in 1952 when he was unfairly blacklisted for his left-leaning political beliefs. To keep food on the table, Corey became an acting coach, eventually running one of the top training schools in the business (among his more famous pupils was Jack Nicholson). He was permitted to return to films in the 1960s, essaying such roles as a wild-eyed wino in Lady in a Cage (64), the louse who kills Kim Darby's father in True Grit (68), and a sympathetic sheriff in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (68). In addition to his film work, Jeff Corey has acted in and directed numerous TV series; he was seen as a regular on the 1985 Robert Blake series Hell Town and the 1986 Earl Hamner Jr. production Morningstar/Eveningstar. The following decade found Corey appearing in such films as Sinatra (1992), Beethoven's 2nd (1993) and the action thriller Surviving the Game (1994). Shortly after suffering a fall at his Malibu home in August of 2002, Corey died in Santa Monica due to complications resulting from the accident. He was 88.

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).

Trivia: Diminutive British knockabout comedian Jimmy Aubrey got his start with the legendary Fred Karno troupe, working alongside such budding stars as Charlie Chaplin and Stan Laurel. Like Charley and Stan, Aubrey flourished as a silent screen comic. He headlined a series of Vitagraph two-reelers in 1919 and 1920, with a young Oliver Hardy lending support. In the mid-1920s, he starred in another comedy series for producer Joe Rock. By 1927, Aubrey's stardom was a thing of the past, and he found himself virtually unemployable. His old colleagues Laurel and Hardy cast Aubrey in supporting roles in three of their starring vehicles, most memorably as the flirtatious drunk in the 1929 2-reeler That's My Wife. Jimmy Aubrey continued taking movie jobs until his retirement in 1952, playing bits and featured roles as drunken sailors, hoboes, store clerks and cowboy sidekicks.

Trivia: Preston S. Foster's first public appearance was in the church choir in his home town of Ocean City, New Jersey. Gifted with a robust singing voice and muscular physique, Foster was one of the most prominent members of Pittsburgh's Pennsylvania Grand Opera Company. After Broadway experience, Foster entered films in 1929, at first specializing in such unsympathetic roles as the rebellious death-row inmate in The Last Mile (1932). He offered strong, complex performances in roles like the Irish rebel leader in The Informer (1935), the blacksmith-turned-gladiator in Last Days of Pompeii (1935), and pompous sharpshooter Frank Butler in Annie Oakley (1935). He played the title character in 1943's Roger Touhy Gangster, which barely made it to the screen thanks to severe censorial cuts. From 1954 through 1955, Preston Foster starred as tugboat skipper/ adventurer/ family man Cap'n John Herrick on the popular syndicated TV series Waterfront.