Trivia: When Carole Lombard died at the age of 34 in a plane crash following a World War II war bond drive, the American film industry lost one of its most talented and intelligent actresses. Starting out in silent films as a Mack Sennett bathing beauty, she later epitomized screwball comedy in Twentieth Century (1934); My Man Godfrey (1936), for which she was Oscar nominated as Irene Bullock, with ex-husband William Powell as Godfrey; and Nothing Sacred (1937), playing the not-so-doomed Hazel Flagg. But Lombard was also a capable dramatic actress whose talents can be seen in her subdued performance as a nurse in one of her final roles, in Vigil in the Night (1940), as well as in The Eagle and the Hawk (1933), In Name Only (1939) and They Knew What They Wanted (1940). Other fine appearances include teaming with Fred MacMurray in several films, the best of which are Hands Across the Table (1935) and The Princess Comes Across (1936), in which Lombard does a humorously accurate Greta Garbo takeoff. Her two final films contain two of her best performances: Mr. and Mrs. Smith (1940) and the Ernst Lubitsch war satire, To Be or Not To Be (1942). She was married to William Powell from 1931-33 and to Clark Gable from 1939 til her death.

Trivia: James Stewart was the movies' quintessential Everyman, a uniquely all-American performer who parlayed his easygoing persona into one of the most successful and enduring careers in film history. On paper, he was anything but the typical Hollywood star: Gawky and tentative, with a pronounced stammer and a folksy "aw-shucks" charm, he lacked the dashing sophistication and swashbuckling heroism endemic among the other major actors of the era. Yet it's precisely the absence of affectation which made Stewart so popular; while so many other great stars seemed remote and larger than life, he never lost touch with his humanity, projecting an uncommon sense of goodness and decency which made him immensely likable and endearing to successive generations of moviegoers.Born May 20, 1908, in Indiana, PA, Stewart began performing magic as a child. While studying civil engineering at Princeton University, he befriended Joshua Logan, who then headed a summer stock company, and appeared in several of his productions. After graduation, Stewart joined Logan's University Players, a troupe whose membership also included Henry Fonda and Margaret Sullavan. He and Fonda traveled to New York City in 1932, where they began winning small roles in Broadway productions including Carrie Nation, Yellow Jack, and Page Miss Glory. On the recommendation of Hedda Hopper, MGM scheduled a screen test, and soon Stewart was signed to a long-term contract. He first appeared onscreen in a bit role in the 1935 Spencer Tracy vehicle The Murder Man, followed by another small performance the next year in Rose Marie.Stewart's first prominent role came courtesy of Sullavan, who requested he play her husband in the 1936 melodrama Next Time We Love. Speed, one of six other films he made that same year, was his first lead role. His next major performance cast him as Eleanor Powell's paramour in the musical Born to Dance, after which he accepted a supporting turn in After the Thin Man. For 1938's classic You Can't Take It With You, Stewart teamed for the first time with Frank Capra, the director who guided him during many of his most memorable performances. They reunited a year later for Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, Stewart's breakthrough picture; a hugely popular modern morality play set against the backdrop of the Washington political system, it cemented the all-American persona which made him so adored by fans, earning a New York Film Critics' Best Actor award as well as his first Oscar nomination.Stewart then embarked on a string of commercial and critical successes which elevated him to the status of superstar; the first was the idiosyncratic 1939 Western Destry Rides Again, followed by the 1940 Ernst Lubitsch romantic comedy The Shop Around the Corner. After The Mortal Storm, he starred opposite Katherine Hepburn and Cary Grant in George Cukor's sublime The Philadelphia Story, a performance which earned him the Best Actor Oscar. However, Stewart soon entered duty in World War II, serving as a bomber pilot and flying 20 missions over Germany. He was highly decorated for his courage, and did not fully retire from the service until 1968, by which time he was an Air Force Brigadier General, the highest-ranking entertainer in the U.S. military. Stewart's combat experiences left him a changed man; where during the prewar era he often played shy, tentative characters, he returned to films with a new intensity. While remaining as genial and likable as ever, he began to explore new, more complex facets of his acting abilities, accepting roles in darker and more thought-provoking films. The first was Capra's 1946 perennial It's a Wonderful Life, which cast Stewart as a suicidal banker who learns the true value of life. Through years of TV reruns, the film became a staple of Christmastime viewing, and remains arguably Stewart's best-known and most-beloved performance. However, it was not a hit upon its original theatrical release, nor was the follow-up Magic Town -- audiences clearly wanted the escapist fare of Hollywood's prewar era, not the more pensive material so many other actors and filmmakers as well as Stewart wanted to explore in the wake of battle. The 1948 thriller Call Northside 777 was a concession to audience demands, and fans responded by making the film a considerable hit. Regardless, Stewart next teamed for the first time with Alfred Hitchcock in Rope, accepting a supporting role in a tale based on the infamous Leopold and Loeb murder case. His next few pictures failed to generate much notice, but in 1950, Stewart starred in a pair of Westerns, Anthony Mann's Winchester 73 and Delmer Daves' Broken Arrow. Both were hugely successful, and after completing an Oscar-nominated turn as a drunk in the comedy Harvey and appearing in Cecil B. De Mille's Academy Award-winning The Greatest Show on Earth, he made another Western, 1952's Bend of the River, the first in a decade of many similar genre pieces.Stewart spent the 1950s primarily in the employ of Universal, cutting one of the first percentage-basis contracts in Hollywood -- a major breakthrough soon to be followed by virtually every other motion-picture star. He often worked with director Mann, who guided him to hits including The Naked Spur, Thunder Bay, The Man From Laramie, and The Far Country. For Hitchcock, Stewart starred in 1954's masterful Rear Window, appearing against type as a crippled photographer obsessively peeking in on the lives of his neighbors. More than perhaps any other director, Hitchcock challenged the very assumptions of the Stewart persona by casting him in roles which questioned his character's morality, even his sanity. They reunited twice more, in 1956's The Man Who Knew Too Much and 1958's brilliant Vertigo, and together both director and star rose to the occasion by delivering some of the best work of their respective careers. Apart from Mann and Hitchcock, Stewart also worked with the likes of Billy Wilder (1957's Charles Lindbergh biopic The Spirit of St. Louis) and Otto Preminger (1959's provocative courtroom drama Anatomy of a Murder, which earned him yet another Best Actor bid). Under John Ford, Stewart starred in 1961's Two Rode Together and the following year's excellent The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance. The 1962 comedy Mr. Hobbs Takes a Vacation was also a hit, and Stewart spent the remainder of the decade alternating between Westerns and family comedies. By the early '70s, he announced his semi-retirement from movies, but still occasionally resurfaced in pictures like the 1976 John Wayne vehicle The Shootist and 1978's The Big Sleep. By the 1980s, Stewart's acting had become even more limited, and he spent much of his final years writing poetry; he died July 2, 1997.

Trivia: American actor Charles Coburn had already put in nearly forty years as a stage actor, producer, and director (specializing in Shakespeare) before making his screen debut at age 61 in Of Human Hearts (1938). At home in any kind of film, Coburn was most popular in comedies, and in 1943 won an Academy Award for his role in The More the Merrier as the bombastic but likable business executive forced by the wartime housing shortage to share a Washington D.C. apartment with Jean Arthur and Joel McCrea. Coburn continued playing variations on his elderly scalawag character (he was the living image of the Monopoly-board millionaire) throughout the late 1940s and 1950s, most notably as Marilyn Monroe's erstwhile "sugar daddy" in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1953). The actor also kept busy on stage, touring with the Theatre Guild as Falstaff in Merry Wives of Windsor and supervising the annual Mohawk Drama Festival at Schenectady's Union College, which he'd founded in 1934. Moving into television work with the enthusiasm of a novice, the octogenarian Coburn continued acting right up to his death. Coburn's last appearance, one week before his passing, was as Grandpa Vanderhoff in an Indianapolis summer-stock production of You Can't Take It With You.

Trivia: Canadian-born, convent-educated Lucille Watson studied acting in the waning years of the 19th century at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts. On the Broadway stage from 1900, Watson scored her first big hit in the 1902 production The Girl with Green Eyes. She made her first film in 1916, but for the most part avoided Hollywood until after the death of her husband, playwright Louis Shipman, in 1934. Frequently cast as the mother, grandmother or maiden aunt of the hero/heroine, the formidable Ms. Watson was seen in such roles as Louisa Bradley in The Razor's Edge (1946) and Aunt March in the 1949 version of Little Women. In 1943, Lucille Watson earned an Oscar nomination for her portrayal of blinkered Washington D.C. matriarch Fanny Fannelly in Watch on the Rhine.

Trivia: Eddie Quillan made his performing debut at age seven in his family's vaudeville act. By the time he was in his teens, Quillan was a consummate performer, adept at singing, dancing, and joke-spinning. He made his first film, Up and At 'Em, in 1922, but it wasn't until 1925, when he appeared in Los Angeles with his siblings in an act called "The Rising Generation," that he began his starring movie career with Mack Sennett. At first, Sennett tried to turn Quillan into a new Harry Langdon, but eventually the slight, pop-eyed, ever-grinning Quillan established himself in breezy "collegiate" roles. Leaving Sennett over a dispute concerning risqué material, Quillan made his first major feature-film appearance when he co-starred in Cecil B. DeMille's The Godless Girl (1929). This led to a contract at Pathé studios, where Quillan starred in such ebullient vehicles as The Sophomore (1929), Noisy Neighbors (1929), Big Money (1930), and The Tip-Off (1931). He remained a favorite in large and small roles throughout the 1930s and 1940s; he faltered only when he was miscast as master sleuth Ellery Queen in The Spanish Cape Mystery (1936). Among Quillan's more memorable credits as a supporting actor were Mutiny on the Bounty (1935), Young Mr. Lincoln (1939), The Grapes of Wrath (1940), and Abbott and Costello's It Ain't Hay (1943). From 1948 through 1956, Quillan co-starred with Wally Vernon in a series of 16 two-reel comedies, which showed to excellent advantage the physical dexterity of both men. Quillan remained active into the 1980s on TV; from 1968 through 1971, he was a regular on the Diahann Carroll sitcom Julia. In his retirement years, Eddie Quillan became a pet interview subject for film historians thanks to his ingratiating personality and uncanny total recall.

Trivia: American actress Esther Dale concentrated her cinematic efforts on portraying warm-hearted aunts, mothers, nurses, neighbors and shopkeepers--though there were a few domineering dowagers along the way. She began her career on a semi-professional basis with a New England stock troupe operated by her husband, Arthur Beckhard. Esther was the resident character actress in stage productions of the late '20s and early '30s featuring such stars-to-be as Henry Fonda and Margaret Sullavan. She first appeared before the cameras in 1934's Crime Without Passion, filmed in Long Island. Esther then moved to Hollywood, where she popped up with increasing frequency in such films as The Awful Truth (1937) (as Ralph Bellamy's mother), Back Street (1941), Margie (1946) and The Egg and I (1947). Her participation in the last-named film led to a semi-regular stint in Universal's Ma and Pa Kettle series as the Kettles' neighbor Birdie Hicks. Esther Dale's last film, made one year before her death, was the John Wayne vehicle North to Alaska (1960), in which she had one scene as "Woman at Picnic."

Trivia: Harry Davenport was descended from a long and illustrious line of stage actors who could trace their heritage to famed 18th-century Irish thespian Jack Johnson. Davenport made his own stage bow at the age of five, racking up a list of theatrical credits that eventually would fill two pages of Equity magazine. He started his film career at the age of 48, co-starring with Rose Tapley as "Mr. and Mrs. Jarr" in a series of silent comedy shorts. He also directed several silent features in the pre-World War I era. Most of his film activity was in the sound era, with such rich characterizations as Dr. Mead in Gone With the Wind (1939) and Louis XI in The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1939) to his credit. He also essayed a few leading film roles, notably as a lovable hermit in the 1946 PRC programmer The Enchanted Forest. At the time of his final screen performance in Frank Capra's Riding High (1950), much was made in the press of the fact that this film represented Davenport's seventy-eighth year in show business. Married twice, Harry Davenport was the father of actors Arthur Rankin and Dorothy Davenport.

Trivia: The word "formidable" seems to have been especially coined for American actress Alma Kruger, who for over a decade was the quintessential immovable society dowager. Alma had been a stage actress for nearly sixty years before making her first film, These Three (1936), in which she played the easily shocked grandmother who swallowed the scandalous lies told by spiteful little Bonita Granville. She was a bit nicer but no less forceful as the mother-in-law who saw right through Rosalind Russell's shallow kindliness in Craig's Wife (1936). Alma played Empress Maria Theresa in Marie Antoinette (1938), who supervised the arranged marriage of Marie and the dullwitted Louis XVI; while in His Girl Friday (1940) she was Ralph Bellamy's domineering mother, who underwent the indignity of being first kidnapped and then arrested thanks to the machinations of newspaper editor Cary Grant. From 1938 through 1943 Alma played head nurse Molly Byrd, the friendly adversary to crusty Lionel Barrymore in the Dr. Kildare series. Alma Kruger made her last film, Forever Amber, in 1947, in which, despite the presence of a stellar supporting cast, the septugenarian actress still managed to dominate her big scenes.

Trivia: American actor Donald Briggs began his career on the radio in Chicago. He received national attention when he played the radio hero "Frank Merriwell" in California. During the mid-1930s he began appearing in films.

Trivia: Renee Orsell translated the script of the Swedish film Intermezzo so that an American version could be made in 1939. The one-time secretary of David O. Selznick played a small part in the film. She also played a bit part in Made for Each Other later that year.

Trivia: African American actress Louise Beavers was born in Cincinnati and raised in California, where she attended Pasadena High School. Louise's entree into Hollywood was as maid to silent film star Leatrice Joy. With Ms. Joy's encouragement, Louise began accepting small film parts in 1923, and three years later became a full-time performer when she joined the Ladies Minstrel Troupe. After co-starring in the 1927 Universal remake of Uncle Tom's Cabin, Ms. Beavers worked steadily in films, usually playing maids, housekeepers and "mammies." Her most famous role was as troubled pancake entrepreneur Aunt Delilah in the 1934 filmization of Fannie Hurst's Imitation of Life. Another breakaway from stereotype was as the title character's strong-willed mother in The Jackie Robinson Story (1950), On television, Louise Beavers starred on the weekly sitcom Beulah from 1952 through 1953, and played Louise the maid on the 1953 pilot episode of Make Room for Daddy.

Trivia: After a considerable career on stage as an actor and director, Dublin-born Edwin Maxwell made his screen debut as Baptista in the Doug Fairbanks-Mary Pickford version of Taming of the Shrew (1929). The stocky, balding Maxwell spent the 1930s specializing in oily bureaucrats, crooked businessmen and shyster lawyers. Once in a while, he'd play a sympathetic role, notably the scrupulously honest Italian-American detective in Scarface. More often (especially in the films of director Frank Capra), his characters existed merely as an easily deflatable foil. One of Maxwell's most flamboyant performances was as the maniacal serial killer, in Night of Terror(1933), who rose from the dead at fade-out time to warn the audience not to reveal the end of the film or else! Essaying more benign characters in 1940s, he was seen as William Jennings Bryan in Wilson (1944) and as Oscar Hammerstein in The Jolson Story (1946). From 1939 to 1942, Maxwell served as dialogue director for the films of Cecil B. DeMille. Edwin Maxwell holds the distinction of appearing in four Academy Award-winning films: All Quiet on the Western Front (1930), Grand Hotel (1932), The Great Ziegfeld (1936) and You Can't Take It With You (1938).

Trivia: Handsome American silent-screen comic Harry Depp starred for producer Al Christie in two-reel situation comedies such as Girl in the Box (1918) and 'Twas Henry's Fault (1919), both opposite pretty Elinor Field. He later showed a talent for female impersonation in several Universal comedies of the 1920s and continued to play bit parts through the late 1940s. In the talkie era, however, Depp was better known as an artists' representative.

Trivia: Milburn Stone got his start in vaudeville as one-half of the song 'n' snappy patter team of Stone and Strain. He worked with several touring theatrical troupes before settling down in Hollywood in 1935, where he played everything from bits to full leads in the B-picture product ground out by such studios as Mascot and Monogram. One of his few appearances in an A-picture was his uncredited but memorable turn as Stephen A. Douglas in John Ford's Young Mr. Lincoln. During this period, he was also a regular in the low-budget but popular Tailspin Tommy series. He spent the 1940s at Universal in a vast array of character parts, at one point being cast in a leading role only because he physically matched the actor in the film's stock-footage scenes! Full stardom would elude Stone until 1955, when he was cast as the irascible Doc Adams in Gunsmoke. Milburn Stone went on to win an Emmy for this colorful characterization, retiring from the series in 1972 due to ill health.

Trivia: In films from 1911, American actor Robert Strange was largely confined to walk-on roles as bankers, landlords, lawyers, and doctors. Cast as Kettler in the 1929 serial King of the Kongo, Strange launched his lengthy career in "chapter plays." He went on to play such serial roles as John Malcolm in The Adventures of Captain Marvel (1940) and Professor Gordon in The Perils of Nyoka (1942). Robert Strange's grandfatherly facial features were cast in a satanic light when he was cast as the court clerk for the "jury of the damn'd" in 1941's The Devil and Daniel Webster.

Trivia: A slightly built, often mustachioed, supporting actor who usually played professional men (dentists, fingerprint experts, druggists, bookkeepers, etc.), Perry Ivins had been in the original 1924 production of Eugene O'Neill's Desire Under the Elms. He entered films as a dialogue director in 1929 (The Love Parade [1929], The Benson Murder Case [1930]) before embarking on a long career as a bit part player. Among Ivins' more notable roles were the copy editor in Mystery of the Wax Museum (1933), the assistant home secretary in Charlie Chan in London, and the mysterious but ultimately benign Crenshaw in the serial Devil Dogs of the Air (1937). Ivins' acting career lasted well into the television era and included guest roles on such programs as Gunsmoke and Perry Mason.

Trivia: American actor Ward Bond was a football player at the University of Southern California when, together with teammate and lifelong chum John Wayne, he was hired for extra work in the silent film Salute (1928), directed by John Ford. Both Bond and Wayne continued in films, but it was Wayne who ascended to stardom, while Bond would have to be content with bit roles and character parts throughout the 1930s. Mostly playing traffic cops, bus drivers and western heavies, Bond began getting better breaks after a showy role as the murderous Cass in John Ford's Young Mr. Lincoln (1939). Ford cast Bond in important roles all through the 1940s, usually contriving to include at least one scene per picture in which the camera would favor Bond's rather sizable posterior; it was an "inside" joke which delighted everyone on the set but Bond. A starring role in Ford's Wagonmaster (1950) led, somewhat indirectly, to Bond's most lasting professional achievement: His continuing part as trailmaster Seth Adams on the extremely popular NBC TV western, Wagon Train. No longer supporting anyone, Bond exerted considerable creative control over the series from its 1957 debut onward, even seeing to it that his old mentor John Ford would direct one episode in which John Wayne had a bit role, billed under his real name, Marion Michael Morrison. Finally achieving the wide popularity that had eluded him during his screen career, Bond stayed with Wagon Train for three years, during which time he became as famous for his offscreen clashes with his supporting cast and his ultra-conservative politics as he was for his acting. Wagon Train was still NBC's Number One series when, in November of 1960, Bond unexpectedly suffered a heart attack and died while taking a shower.

Trivia: Born John Mulhall, he sang with a traveling show as a boy and later toured in stock and vaudeville. He moved to New York to study art, and while there appeared in several silent films. In 1914 he moved to Los Angeles and soon became a leading man in films, starring in numerous productions opposite major actresses; for a time he earned $3000 a week, but lost his considerable fortune in the first year of the Great Depression. In the early sound era he continued to play leads for a time, mostly in routine films and serials; in the mid '30s he moved into supporting roles, and continued a fairly steady screen career through the mid '40s, after which he appeared in only a few more films.

Trivia: The son of an actress, Garry Owen first appeared on-stage with his mother in vaudeville. Owen went on to perform in such Broadway productions as Square Crooks and Miss Manhattan. In films from 1933, Owen was occasionally seen in such sizeable roles as private-eye Paul Drake in the 1936 Perry Mason movie Case of the Black Cat. For the most part, however, he played character bits, most memorably in the films of Frank Capra; in Capra's Arsenic and Old Lace (1944), for example, he plays the monumentally impatient taxi driver who closes the picture with the exclamation, "I'm not a cab driver, I'm a coffee pot!" In addition to his feature-film work, Garry Owen showed up in scores of short subjects for Hal Roach and MGM.

Trivia: A genuine westerner, Lane Chandler, upon leaving Montana Wesleyan College, moved to LA and worked as a garage mechanic while seeking out film roles. After several years in bit parts, Chandler was signed by Paramount in 1927 as a potential western star. For a brief period, both Chandler and Gary Cooper vied for the best cowboy roles, but in the end Paramount went with Cooper. Chandler made several attempts to establish himself as a "B" western star in the 1930s, but his harsh voice and sneering demeanor made him a better candidate for villainous roles. He mostly played bits in the 1940s, often as a utility actor for director Cecil B. DeMille. The weather-beaten face and stubbly chin of Lane Chandler popped up in many a TV and movie western of the 1950s, his roles gradually increasing in size and substance towards the end of his career.

Trivia: Actress Mary Field kept her private life such a well-guarded secret that not even her most devoted fans (including several film historians who've attempted to write biographies of the actress) have ever been able to find out anything about her background. So far as anyone can ascertain, she entered films around 1937; her first important assignment was the dual role of the mothers of the title characters in The Prince and the Pauper (1937). Viewers may not know the name but they have seen the face: too thin and sharp-featured to be beautiful, too soft and kindly to be regarded as homely. Mary Field is the actress who played Huntz Hall's sister in the 1941 Universal serial Sea Raiders; the spinsterish sponsor of Danny Kaye's doctoral thesis in A Song of Born (1947); the nice lady standing in Macy's "Santa Claus" line with the little Dutch girl in Miracle on 34th Street (1947); the long-suffering music teacher in Cheaper by the Dozen (1950); and Harold Peary's bespectacled vis-a-vis in The Great Gildersleeve (1942)--to name just four films among hundreds.

Trivia: Stage actor Russell Hopton made his first screen appearance in a bit role in 1926's Ella Cinders. Hopton came into his own in the early 1930s, playing glowering, sarcastic characters who often bear such ill-suited names as Smiley and Happy. One of his largest roles was phony elocution expert Jerry Daniels in Once in a Lifetime, the famed 1932 satire of Hollywood's early-talkie days. In 1935 and 1936, Hopton directed a handful of "B" pictures for producer Maurice Conn. Russell Hopton spent the last eight years or so of his life as an RKO contract player, essaying villainous or disreputable supporting roles in both feature films and 2-reel comedies.

Trivia: Stage actor/director Arthur Hoyt first stepped before the movie cameras in 1916. During the silent era, Hoyt played sizeable roles in such major productions as Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (1921) and The Lost World (1925). In sound films, he tended to be typecast as a henpecked husband or downtrodden office worker. One of his mostly fondly remembered talkie performances was as befuddled motel-court manager Zeke in It Happened One Night (1934). Despite advancing age, he was busy in the late 1930s, appearing in as many as 12 pictures per year. In his last active decade, Arthur Hoyt was a member of writer/director Preston Sturges' unofficial stock company, beginning with The Great McGinty (1940) and ending with The Sin of Harold Diddlebock (1947).

Trivia: Diminutive American character actor Harlan Briggs was a vaudeville and stage performer since the turn of the century. After spending three years on Broadway appearing with Walter Huston in the stage adaptation of Sinclair Lewis' Dodsworth, Briggs was brought to Hollywood in 1935 to re-create his role. Because of post-production delays, movie audiences first saw Briggs not in Dodsworth but in Selznick's The Garden of Allah (1936). In films until 1952's Carrie, Harlan Briggs most often portrayed small-town big-wigs, usually with an oversized pipe clamped between his teeth; his most memorable role was as the eminently bribeable Doctor Stall in W.C. Fields' The Bank Dick (1940).

Trivia: Silver-haired, aristocratic American actress Nella Walker was a salesgirl in her native Chicago before touring in vaudeville with her husband, entertainer Wilbur Mack. After her talking-picture debut in Vagabond Lover (1929), Ms. Walker joined the ranks of the "lorgnette and old lace" character actresses. Nearly always a society matron in her film appearances, Nella was virtually unsurpassed in her ability to summon up disdain for all those born "beneath" her, and to haughtily enunciate such lines as "The very idea!" and "My dear, it just isn't being done." By providing so easily deflatable a target, Ms. Walker was an ideal foil for such low comedians as Laurel and Hardy (Air Raid Wardens [1943]) and Abbott and Costello (In Society [1944]). Nella Walker remained a member in good standing of moviedom's "upper crust" until her final appearance in Billy Wilder's Sabrina (1954), in which she played the mother of both Humphrey Bogart and William Holden.

Trivia: Scottish stage actor Ivan Simpson made the first of his many film appearances in 1915. A favorite of theatrical luminary George Arliss, Simpson appeared in nine of Arliss' Hollywood vehicles, beginning with 1922's The Man Who Played God. His most memorable roles during this period included the Jewish business adviser to Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli in 1929's Disraeli, and the smarmy cockney general factotum to the Rajah of Rukh in 1930's The Green Goddess. Outside of his association with Arliss, Simpson's other noteworthy roles included Lord Faulkner in the 1932 Clive Brook version of Sherlock Holmes. Ivan Simpson remained active until 1948, playing scores of minor parts as magistrates, pubkeepers, clerks, butlers, and professors.

Trivia: American actress Betty Farrington worked in Hollywood from 1929 to 1949, mostly at Paramount and mostly in minor roles. Farrington's screen appearances frequently went uncredited, even when she played such pivotal roles as the malevolent ghost of Mary Meredith in The Uninvited (1943). She occasionally enjoyed larger assignments at other studios like Republic and 20th Century-Fox. For example, Betty Farrington was given ample screen time as Mrs. Al Smith in Fox's The Dolly Sisters (1945).

Trivia: Actress Ruth Gillette worked steadily on stage, screen, and television from the mid-'20s through the early '80s. She made her Broadway debut in a 1925 production of Gay Paree. She subsequently played supporting roles in many more shows. She made her feature film debut in Woman in the Dark (1934). One of her most acclaimed film roles was that of Lillian Russell in The Great Ziegfeld (1936). On television, Gillette guest starred on such shows as McHale's Navy, Dennis the Menace, and Dr. Kildare. She made her final film appearance in Going Ape (1981).

Trivia: The younger brother of actress Jobyna Howland, Olin Howland established himself on Broadway in musical comedy. The actor made his film debut in 1918, but didn't really launch his Hollywood career until the talkie era. Generally cast as rustic characters, Howland could be sly or slow-witted, depending on the demands of the role. He showed up in scores of Warner Bros. films in the 1930s and 1940s, most amusingly as the remonstrative Dr. Croker (sic) in The Case of the Lucky Legs (1934). A favorite of producer David O. Selznick, Howland played the laconic baggage man in Nothing Sacred (1937), the grim, hickory-stick wielding schoolmaster in The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1938) and an expansive Yankee businessman in Gone with the Wind (1939). During the 1940s, he could often as not be found at Republic, appearing in that studio's westerns and hillbilly musicals. One of his best screen assignments of the 1950s was the old derelict who kept shouting "Make me sergeant in charge of booze!" in the classic sci-fier Them (1954). Howland made several TV guest appearances in the 1950s, and played the recurring role of Swifty on the weekly Circus Boy (1956). In the latter stages of his career, Olin Howland billed himself as Olin Howlin; he made his final appearance in 1958, as the first victim of The Blob.

Trivia: Most of character actress Fern Emmett's early appearances were in westerns, where she played scores of maiden aunts, hillbilly wives, town spinsters, ranch owners and stagecoach passengers. When she moved into contemporary films, she was most often seen as a landlady or gossip. She enjoyed a rare breakaway from this established screen persona when she played a screaming murder victim in the 1943 Universal thriller Captive Wild Women. Seldom given more than a few lines in "A" features, Emmett was better-served in programmers and 2-reel comedies. Emmett so closely resembled "Wicked Witch of the West" Margaret Hamilton that some historians have lumped their credits together, even though Emmett began her film career in 1930, three years before Hamilton ever stepped before a camera. Fern Emmett was the wife of actor Henry Rocquemore.

Trivia: From 1935 until his retirement in 1943, mustachioed Harry Worth (not to be confused with the British silent era actor of the same name) played the quintessential "Boss Villain" in scores of B-Westerns, a thorn in the sides of everyone from Red Ryder to Hopalong Cassidy. In between these assignments, Worth could be found further down the cast lists in Grade-A productions, as a Hindu in Easy Living or a Caballero in The Mark of Zorro (1940). But he was apparently happiest at modest Republic Pictures, where he played Frank James to Don "Red" Barry's Jesse in Days of Jesse James (1939). (For some reason, the studio billed him Michael Worth in that one.) Oilier even than Harry Woods and more refined than Roy Barcroft, Harry Worth was at his hissable best as John Wilkes Booth in Tennessee Johnson (1942) and as a desperate gunman in the Three Mesqueteers series entry Riders of the Rio Grande (1943), his final credited film performance. Worth spent the remainder of his career in unbilled bits.

Trivia: Born into a poor San Francisco family, Raymond Bailey dropped out of school in the 10th grade to help make ends meet. He took on a variety of short-term jobs before escaping his lot by hopping a freight to New York. He tried in vain to find work as an actor, eventually signing on as a mess boy on a freighter. While docked in Honolulu, Bailey once more gave acting a try, and also sang on a local radio station. In Hollywood from 1932 on, Bailey took any nickel-and-dime job that was remotely connected to show business, but when World War II began, he once more headed out to sea, this time with the Merchant Marine. Only after the war was Bailey able to make a living as a character actor on stage and in TV and films. In 1962, he was cast as covetous bank president Milburn Drysdale on The Beverly Hillbillies, a role that made him a household name and one which he played for nine seasons (ironically, he'd once briefly worked in a bank during his teen years). After the show was cancelled in 1971, Bailey dropped out of sight and became somewhat of a recluse.

Trivia: Boasting a colorful show-biz background as a circus and vaudeville performer, Robert Emmet O'Connor entered films in 1926. Blessed with a pudgy Irish mug that could convey both jocularity and menace, O'Connor was most often cast as cops and detectives, some of them honest and lovable, some of them corrupt and pugnacious. His roles ranged from such hefty assignments as the flustered plainclothesman Henderson in Night at the Opera (1935) to such bits as the traffic cop who is confused by Jimmy Cagney's barrage of Yiddish in Taxi! (1932). One of his most famous non-cop roles was warm-hearted bootlegger Paddy Ryan in Public Enemy. During the 1940s, O'Connor was a contract player at MGM, showing up in everything from Our Gang comedies to the live-action prologue of the Tex Avery cartoon classic Who Killed Who? (1944). Robert Emmet O'Connor's last film role was Paramount studio-guard Jonesy in Sunset Boulevard (1950). Twelve years later, he died of injuries sustained in a fire.