Trivia: The most well-known filmmaker to the public this side of Alfred Hitchcock, Orson Welles was the classic example of the genius that burns bright early in life only to flicker and fade later. The prodigy son of an inventor and a musician, Welles was well-versed in literature at an early age -- particularly Shakespeare -- and, through the unusual circumstances of his life (both of his parents died by the time he was 12, leaving him with an inheritance and not many family obligations), he found himself free to indulge his numerous interests, which included the theater. He was educated in private schools and traveled the world, even wangling stage work with Dublin's Gate Players while still a teenager. He found it tougher to get onto the Broadway stage, and traveled the world some more before returning to get a job with Katharine Cornell, with help from such notables as Alexander Woollcott and Thornton Wilder. He later became associated with John Houseman, and, together, the two of them set the New York theater afire during the 1930s with their work for the Federal Theatre Project, which led to the founding of the Mercury Theater. The Mercury Players later graduated to radio, and their 1938 "War of the Worlds" broadcast made history when thousands of listeners mistakenly believed aliens had landed on Earth. In 1940, Hollywood beckoned, and Welles and company went west to RKO, where he began his short-lived reign over the film world. Working as director, producer, co-author, and star, he made Citizen Kane (1941), the most discussed -- if not the greatest -- American movie ever created. It made striking use of techniques that had been largely forgotten or overlooked by other American filmmakers, and Welles was greatly assisted on the movie by veteran cinematographer Gregg Toland. Kane, himself, attracted more attention than viewers, especially outside the major cities, and a boycott of advertising and coverage by the newspapers belonging to William Randolph Hearst -- who had served as a major model for the central figure of Charles Foster Kane -- ensured that it racked up a modest loss. Welles second film, The Magnificent Ambersons, ran into major budget and production problems, which brought down the studio management that had hired him. With the director overextending himself, the situation between Welles and RKO deteriorated. Faced with a major loss on a picture that was considered unreleasable, RKO gained control of the film and ordered it recut without Welles' consent or input, and the result is considered a flawed masterpiece. However, it was a loss for RKO, and soon after the Mercury Players were evicted from RKO, word quickly spread through the film community of Welles' difficulty in adhering to shooting schedules and budgets. His career never fully recovered, and, although he directed other films in Hollywood, including The Stranger (1946), Macbeth (1948), and Touch of Evil (1958), he was never again given full control over his movies. European producers, however, were more forgiving, and with some effort and help from a few well-placed friends, Welles was able to make such pictures as Othello (1952), Chimes at Midnight (1967), and The Trial (1963). He also remained highly visible as a personality -- he discovered in the mid-'40s that, for 100,000 dollars a shot, he could make money as an actor to help finance his films and his fairly expensive lifestyle, which resulted in Welles' appearances in The Third Man (1949), The Roots of Heaven (1958), and Catch-22 (1970), among other pictures. He also made television appearances, did voice-overs and recordings, and occasional commercials until his death in 1985. Despite his lack of commercial success, Welles remains one of the most well-known, discussed, and important directors in the history of motion pictures.

Trivia: The son of British actor Roy Redgrave, Michael Redgrave attended Clifton College and Cambridge University. While teaching high school, Redgrave became involved with amateur theatricals. A professional by 1934, Redgrave made his London debut in Love's Labours Lost in 1936, and that same year appeared in his first film, Hitchcock's The Secret Agent (1936). It was thanks to his leading role in another Hitchcock effort, The Lady Vanishes (1938), that Redgrave achieved stardom. He was excellent in several starring vehicles of the 1940s, and at his very best in his 20-minute turn as a paranoid ventriloquist in Dead of Night (1946). An attempt to become a Hollywood star via Mourning Becomes Electra (1947) was scuttled due to the film's poor box office take, though Redgrave did earn an Oscar nomination for his performance. After starring in The Dam Busters, Britain's most popular 1955 movie release, Redgrave settled into film character roles, continuing all the while to headline on stage. He also wrote and directed several theatrical productions throughout his career, and was the author of four books: the instructional The Actor's Ways and Means, the novel The Mountebank's Tale, and two autobiographies. In 1959, Redgrave was knighted for his achievements in his chosen field. Long married to actress Rachel Kempson, Michael Redgrave was the father of actors Vanessa, Corin and Lynn Redgrave; and the grandfather of actresses Jemma Redgrave, Natasha and Joely Richardson.

Trivia: Earthy Russian character actor Akim Tamiroff was relatively aimless, not settling upon a theatrical career until he was nearly 19. Selected from 500 applicants, Tamiroff was trained by Stanislavsky at the Moscow Art Theater School. While touring the U.S. with a Russian acting troupe in 1923, Tamiroff decided to remain in New York and give Broadway a try. He was quite active with the Theatre Guild during the 1920s and early '30s, then set out for Hollywood, hoping to scare up movie work. After several years' worth of bit roles, Tamiroff's film career began gaining momentum when he was signed by Paramount in 1936. He became one of the studio's top players, appearing in juicy featured roles in A-pictures and starring in such B's as The Great Gambini (1937), King of Chinatown (1938), and The Magnificent Fraud (1939). Essaying a wide variety of nationalities, Tamiroff was most frequently cast as a villain or reprobate with a deep down sentimental and/or honorable streak. He was a favorite of many directors, including Cecil B. DeMille, starring in Union Pacific (1939), Northwest Mounted Police (1940), and Preston Sturges' The Great McGinty (1940). He was twice nominated for the best supporting actor Oscar for his work in The General Died at Dawn (1936) and For Whom the Bell Tolls (1943). During the 1950s, Tamiroff was a close associate of actor/director Orson Welles, who cast Tamiroff in underhanded supporting roles in Mr. Arkadin (1955), Touch of Evil (1958), and The Trial (1963), and retained his services for nearly two decades in the role of Sancho Panza in Welles' never-finished Don Quixote. Akim Tamiroff continued to flourish with meaty assignments in films like Topkapi (1964) and After the Fox (1966), rounding out his long and fruitful career with a starring assignment in the French/Italian political melodrama, Death of a Jew (1970).

Trivia: Trained as an opera singer in Geneva, Austria, and Berlin, Katina Paxinou switched artistic gears when she joined the Greek National Theater at age 29. Ms. Paxinou distinguished herself in the Classics, not only the ancient Greek tragedies but also the finest works of English and European playwrights. When World War II broke out, Paxinou emigrated to the U.S. While touring in Ibsen's Hedda Gabler, she was selected to play Spanish freedom fighter Pilar in the 1943 film version of Hemingway's For Whom the Bell Tolls, winning a Best Supporting Actress Oscar for her efforts. Alas, her win turned out to be one of the earliest examples of the "Oscar jinx"; though she continued appearing in Hollywood films until 1949, nothing she ever did measured up to her first screen assignment. Returning to Greece in 1950, Paxinou resumed her stage career there, forming the Royal Theater of Athens with actor/director Alexis Minotis, who had been her principal director since 1927 and her husband since 1940. Whenever her schedule permitted (and the spirit moved her), Katina Paxinou would accept the occasional film assignment; the last was in 1972, just prior to her death.

Trivia: In British films from her teens, actress Patricia Medina came to Hollywood in the company of her first husband, actor Richard Greene, in 1946. Invited to film a screen test at MGM by studio president Louis B. Mayer, the raven-haired actress was signed to a contract -- then promptly ignored when Mayer left the studio on an extended business trip. Spending much of her MGM contract on loan-out, Medina appeared in 20th Century-Fox's Moss Rose (1948) and The Foxes of Harrow (1948), and at Universal in Francis (1950) and Abbott and Costello in the Foreign Legion (1950). With the 1951 Columbia quickie The Magic Carpet, Medina established herself as the queen of the "B" costume pictures. One of her more worthwhile film assignments was as a femme fatale in Orson Welles' Mr. Arkadin (1955). She was also an impressive wicked queen in Snow White and the Three Stooges (1961), and surprisingly adept at portraying a predatory lesbian in The Killing of Sister George (1968). On television, Medina guest-starred on such series as Thriller, Alfred Hitchcock Presents and The Man From UNCLE, usually as black-widow villainesses. Patricia Medina is the widow of actor Joseph Cotten, whom she married in 1960.

Trivia: The screen's foremost "Mad Russian" (though he was more dour than demented in most of his movie appearances), Mischa Auer was the son of a Russian navy officer who died in the Russo-Japanese war. Auer's family scattered during the Bolshevik revolution, forcing the 12-year-old Mischa to beg, borrow, and steal to survive. Orphaned during a typhus epidemic, Auer moved to New York where he lived with his maternal grandfather, violinist Leopold Auer. Inspired by the elder Auer to become a musician, Mischa entered the Ethical Culture School in New York, where he developed an interest in acting. Playing small parts on Broadway and with Eva LeGalleine's company, Auer persisted until his roles increased in size and importance. While appearing with the Bertha Kalich Company in Los Angeles, Auer was hired by Hollywood director Frank Tuttle for a minor role in the Esther Ralston comedy Something Always Happens (1927). During his first nine years in films, the tall, foreboding Auer was typecast as sinister foreigners, often playing villainous Hindu priests, Arab chieftains, and feverish anarchists. His comic gifts were finally tapped by improvisational director Gregory La Cava, who cast Auer as society matron Alice Brady's free-loading "protege" in My Man Godfrey (1936). Thereafter, the actor flourished in eccentric comedy roles in such films as 100 Men and a Girl (1937), You Can't Take It With You (1938) (in which he popularized the catchphrase "Confidentially, it stinks!"), Destry Rides Again (1939), and Hellzapoppin' (1941). During the 1940s, Auer starred in the radio series Mischa the Magnificent and headlined several Broadway flops. The following decade, he spent most of his time in Europe, playing aging oddballs in films like Orson Welles' Mister Arkadin (1955). Among Mischa Auer's last professional engagements was a 1964-1965 revival of The Merry Widow -- one of his few successful stage ventures.

Trivia: Baby-faced British character actor Jack Watling was trained at the Italia Conti school. On stage from age 12, Watling made his earliest appearances in such Christmas pantomimes as Where the Rainbow Ends. In 1938, he was cast in his first film, Sixty Glorious Years. Entering his teen years, Watling worked in Donald Wolfit's repertory company, then was cast in his favorite stage role, that of Flight Lieutenant Graham in the 1942 West End production Flare Path. Following three years' service in the RAF, he played his most celebrated role, cashiered naval cadet Dickie Winslow in The Winslow Boy, which he would repeat for the 1950 screen version. Among his choicer screen assignments of the 1950s was the wastrely Marquis of Rutleigh in Orson Welles' Mr. Arkadin. In the 1970s, Jack Watling was a semi-regular in the British TV series Father, Dear Father.

Trivia: Armenian actor Gregoire Aslan was born in either Switzerland or Istanbul, depending upon which source one believes. He made his professional debut at 18 as a vocalist and drummer with a Paris dance band, then launched an acting career under the name of Koko Aslan. Shifting from comic to villainous parts with ease, Aslan was one of British filmdom's favorite nondescript foreigners, playing Frenchmen, Italians, Germans, and Middle Easterners with equal finesse. Gregoire Aslan's more prominent screen roles included gangster boss Ducas in Joe MacBeth (1956), Herod in King of Kings (1961), and Porthinos in Cleopatra (1963).

Trivia: Trained as a musician, Peter Van Eyck fled his native Germany when Hitler assumed power in 1933. Van Eyck secured work in the U.S. as a musical arranger for some of the top names in the business. Through the kindness of fellow German expatriate Billy Wilder, Van Eyck was able to get work as a radio actor, and in 1942 was cast in his first film, The Moon Is Down. While his name and Teutonic bearing typecast Van Eyck as a Nazi in most of his wartime films, he was equally effective in sympathetic roles. Closing out his Hollywood career in 1951, Peter Van Eyck spent his last two decades as a popular leading man in European films.

Trivia: At one time secretary to singer Edith Piaf, French actress Suzanne Flon began making films with 1947's Capitaine Blomet. Flon specialized in portraying bored European aristocrats, giving a particularly impressive performance in this vein in Orson Welles' Mr. Arkadin (1955). Welles later used Flon in The Trial (1962), wherein she played Miss Pitti. Suzanne Flon's most celebrated role was in the anti-war Tu ne Tueras point [Thou Shalt Not Kill] (1961), for which she won the 1961 Venice Film Festival "Best Actress" award.