Trivia: American actor Douglas Fairbanks Jr. was the son of film star Douglas Fairbanks Sr. Fairbanks Jr. made his acting debut in 1923's Stephen Steps Out, which was remarkable only in how quickly it went out of circulation. Young Fairbanks was more impressive as Lois Moran's fiancé in 1926's Stella Dallas, though it did give Fairbanks Sr. pause to see his teenaged son sporting a Fairbanksian mustache. Even as a youth, Fairbanks' restlessness would not be satisfied by mere film work; before he was 20 he'd written an amusing article about the Hollywood scene for Vanity Fair magazine. In 1927, Fairbanks appeared in a stage play, Young Woodley, which convinced detractors that he truly had talent and was not merely an appendage to his father's fame. When talking pictures came in, he demonstrated a well-modulated speaking voice and as a result worked steadily in the early 1930s. Married at that time to actress Joan Crawford, Fairbanks was a fixture of the Tinseltown social whirl, but he had a lot more going for him than suspected; in 1935 he offered the earliest evidence of his sharp business savvy by setting up his own production company, Criterion Films--the first of six such companies created under the Fairbanks imprimatur. Fairbanks had his best role in 1937's The Prisoner of Zenda, in which he was alternately charming and cold-blooded as the villainous Rupert of Hentzau. Upon his father's death in 1939, Fairbanks began to extend his activities into politics and service to his country. He helped to organize the Hollywood branch of the William Allen White Committee, designed to aid the allied cause in the European war. From 1939 through 1944, Fairbanks, ever an Anglophile, headed London's Douglas Voluntary Hospitals, which took special care of war refugees. Fairbanks was appointed by President Roosevelt to act as envoy for the Special Mission to South America in 1940, and one year later was commissioned as a lieutenant j.g. in the Navy. In 1942 he was chief officer of Special Operations, and in 1943 participated in the allied invasion of Sicily and Elba. Fairbanks worked his way up from Navy lieutenant to commander and finally, in 1954 to captain. After the war's end, the actor spent five years as chairman of CARE, sending food and aid to war-torn countries. How he had time to resume his acting career is anybody's guess, but Fairbanks was back before the cameras in 1947 with Sinbad the Sailor, taking up scriptwriting with 1948's The Exile; both films were swashbucklers, a genre he'd stayed away from while his father was alive (Fairbanks Sr. had invented the swashbuckler; it wouldn't have been right for his son to bank on that achievement during the elder Fairbanks' lifetime). Out of films as an actor by 1951 (except for a welcome return in 1981's Ghost Story), Fairbanks concentrated on the production end for the next decade; he also produced and starred in a high-quality TV anthology, Douglas Fairbanks Jr. Presents (1952-55), which belied its tiny budget with excellent scripts and superior actors. Evidently the only setback suffered by Fairbanks in the last forty years was his poorly received appearance as Henry Higgins in a 1968 revival of My Fair Lady; otherwise, the actor managed to retain his status as a respected and concerned citizen of the world, sitting in with the U.S. delegation at SEATO in 1971 and accruing many military and humanitarian awards. He also published two autobiographies, The Salad Days in 1988 and A Hell of a War in 1993. Fairbanks, Jr. died on May 7, 2000, of natural causes.

Trivia: Born in South Africa, roguishly handsome leading man Louis Hayward was educated in England and the Continent. Hayward briefly managed a London nightclub before he went on stage as a protégé of playwright Noel Coward. He co-starred in the London stage productions of several Broadway plays, among them Dracula and Another Language, and in 1933 made his screen bow in the British Self Made Lady. Hayward came to Broadway in 1935 to star in Point Verlaine (1935), which won him a Hollywood contract. His first American film role of note was as the hero's father in the prologue of Warner Bros.' Anthony Adverse (1936). Hayward went on to play both heroes and heels, and sometimes a charming combination thereof. He starred as Leslie Charteris' soldier-of-fortune Simon Templar in the first and the last entries in the "Saint" "B"-picture series. He also thrived in costume swashbucklers, appearing twice as the Count of Monte Cristo and once each as D'Artagnan, Captain Blood and Dick Turpin. In 1941, he was cast in a pivotal role in Orson Welles' The Magnificent Ambersons, but his part ended up on the cutting room floor. Serving as a Marine during World War II, Hayward supervised the filming of the battle of Tarawa, winning a Bronze Star for his courage under fire. After the war, he developed one of first percentage-of-profits deals, ensuring him a steady income in perpetuity for both the theatrical and TV releases of his post-1949 films. In 1954, Hayward produced and starred in the 39-week TV series The Lone Wolf (aka Streets of Danger), after buying exclusive rights to several of Louis Joseph Vance's original "Lone Wolf" stories. His later TV projects included the British series The Pursuers (1966) and the American The Survivors (1970). The first of Louis Hayward's three wives was actress Ida Lupino; the others were Peggy Morrow and June Blanchard.

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: Educated by the Philadelphia and Boston school systems, Helen Broderick became a chorus dancer at age 14, despite protests from her parents. After service as a Ziegfeld beauty, Helen toured in vaudeville with her husband, comedian Lester Crawford. Developing a wry, withering comic style, she became a major Broadway performer in such musicals as The Band Wagon and As Thousands Cheer. Her movie career, which began in 1931 and ended in 1946, included memorable supporting stints in two Astaire-Rogers musicals (Top Hat and Swing Time) and the starring role of spinterish sleuth Hildegarde Withers in Murder on the Bridal Path (1936). Helen Broderick was the mother of Oscar-winning actor Broderick Crawford.

Trivia: Together with Arthur Treacher, Olaf Hytten and Wilson Benge, Charles Coleman was one of Hollywood's "perfect butlers." On stage, he was Pauline Frederick's leading man for many years. After touring the U.S. and Australia, he settled in Hollywood in 1923. Coleman was virtually always cast as a gentleman's gentleman, often with a streak of effeminacy; representative Charles Coleman assignments include Bachelor Apartment (1931), Diplomaniacs (1933), Three Smart Girls (1937) and Cluny Brown (1946). Charles Coleman is best remembered by film buffs for two classic lines of dialogue. Explaining why he falsely informed his master Charlie Ruggles that he was to dress for a costume ball in Love Me Tonight (1932), Coleman "I did so want to see you in tights!" And when asked by Deanna Durbin in First Love (1939) why butlers are always so dour, Coleman moans "Gay butlers are extremely rare."

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.

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: 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 very picture of an English gentleman officer, monocle and all, Lionel Pape came to Hollywood in 1935 after a distinguished career on stage and screen in his home country. Usually seen as a member of the horsy set, Pape played Major Allardyce in Shirley Temple's Wee Willie Winkie (1937), Lord Harry Droopy in The Big Broadcast of 1938, Lord Melrose in Raffles (1940), and Babberly in Charlie's Aunt (1941). Pape died at the then newly founded Motion Picture Country House and Hospital.

Trivia: Born on New Year's Day in 1883 (some sources say 1880), British actress Mary Forbes was well into her stage career when she appeared in her first film, 1916's Ultus and the Secret of the Night. By the time she made her first Hollywood film in 1919, the thirtysomething Forbes was already matronly enough for mother and grande-dame roles. Her most prolific movie years were 1931 through 1941, during which time she appeared in two Oscar-winning films. In Cavalcade (1933), she had the small role of the Duchess of Churt, while in You Can't Take It With You (1938) she was assigned the more substantial (and funnier) part of James Stewart's society dowager mother. Mary Forbes continued in films on a sporadic basis into the '40s, making her screen farewell in another Jimmy Stewart picture, You Gotta Stay Happy (1948).

Trivia: Stately stage leading man Howard C. Hickman entered films through the auspices of producer Thomas H. Ince. Hickman starred as Count Ferdinand, the Messianic protagonist of Ince's Civilization (1916). He co-starred with his actress wife Bessie Barriscale in several productions before returning to the theatre. In the talkie era, he accepted innumerable featured and bit roles as doctors, judges, ministers, senators, and executives. Generations of filmgoers will remember Howard Hickman for his brief appearance as John Wilkes, father of Ashley Wilkes and father-in-law of Melanie Hamilton, in Gone with the Wind (1939).

Trivia: Gaunt, rich-voiced British actor Leonard Mudie made his stage bow in 1908 with the Gaiety Theater in Manchester. Mudie first appeared on the New York stage in 1914, then spent the next two decades touring in various British repertory companies. In 1932, he settled in Hollywood, where he remained until his death 33 years later. His larger screen roles included Dr. Pearson in The Mummy (1932), Porthinos in Cleopatra (1934), Maitland in Mary of Scotland (1936), and De Bourenne in Anthony Adverse (1936). He also essayed dozen of unbilled bits, usually cast as a bewigged, gimlet-eyed British judge. One of his more amusing uncredited roles was as "old school" actor Horace Carlos in the 1945 Charlie Chan entry The Scarlet Clue, wherein he explained his entree into the new medium of television with a weary, "Well, it's a living!" Active well into the TV era, Leonard Mudie showed up memorably in a handful of Superman video episodes and was a semi-regular as Cmdr. Barnes in the Bomba B-picture series.

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: In films from 1919 onward, stocky American actor Wade Boteler hit his stride in talking pictures. Blessed with a pit-bull countenance, Boteler was in practically every other "B" western made between 1930 and 1935, often cast as a hard-hearted sheriff or crooked land baron. Affecting an Irish brogue, Boteler was also in demand for policeman roles, notably as Inspector Queen in the 1936 Ellery Queen opus The Mandarin Mystery. His most effective lovable-Irishman stint was as conclusion-jumping cop Michael Axford in the 1940 serial The Green Hornet; in fact, when fans of the Green Hornet radio version would ask Detroit station WXYZ for a picture of Axford, the station would send off an autographed photo of Boteler, even though Gil O'Shea essayed the part on radio. Frequently on call for bit parts at 20th Century-Fox studios, Boteler was seen in such Fox productions as In Old Chicago (1938) and A-Haunting We Will Go (1942). Wade Boteler's final film was Warner Bros.' prophetically titled The Last Ride (1944), released one year after Boteler's death.

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: One of the first stars to emerge from the old Edison film company, Canadian-born actor Edward Earle had toured in vaudeville and stock before settling on movies in 1915. The blonde, muscular Earle quickly rose to the rank of romantic lead in films like Ranson's Folly (1915), The Gates of Eden (1916), and East Lynne (1921). In the '20s he could be seen supporting such luminaries as George Arliss (The Man Who Played God [1922]) and Lillian Gish (The Wind [1928]). In talkies, Earle became a character player. Though his voice was resonant and his handsome features still intact, he often as not played unbilled bits, in everything from prestige pictures (Magnificent Obsession [1935]) to B-items (Laurel and Hardy's The Dancing Masters [1943] and Nothing but Trouble [1944]). In Beware of Blondie, Earle assumed the role of Dagwood's boss, Mr. Dithers -- but his back was turned to the camera and his voice was dubbed by the Blondie series' former Dithers, Jonathan Hale. Earle's best sound opportunities came in Westerns and serials; in the latter category, he was one of the characters suspected of being the diabolical Rattler in Ken Maynard's Mystery Mountain (1934). Edward Earle retired to the Motion Picture Country Home in the early '60s, where he died at age 90 in 1972.

Trivia: American actor Charles Sherlock made his first film in 1935 and his last in 1952. Limited to bit roles, Sherlock showed up as reporters, photographers, longshoremen, cabbies, and doctors. Befitting his name, he also appeared as cops in such films as My Buddy (1944), In Society (1944), and The Turning Point (1952). Charles Sherlock enjoyed a rare credited role, again as a cop, in the 1945 Charlie Chan entry The Scarlet Clue.

Trivia: A major presence in early American films, Edwin August (born Edwin August Philip von der Butz) was one of the first stage stars to embrace motion pictures. Having appeared opposite nearly all the leading Broadway stars of his era -- including Mrs. Leslie Carter, Otis Skinner, and Digby Bell -- August entered the film industry as an actor/writer/director with the pioneering Edison company around 1908. Directing or starring in literally hundreds of early films for nearly every company operating at the time -- including a lengthy stay at the famed Biograph-- August at one point even operated his own producing entity, Edwin August Feature Films. Playing leading roles as late as 1918, the veteran star turned to supporting roles in the 1920s, then spent the next couple of decades as a Hollywood extra. Besides his screen work, August also penned quite a few novels under the pseudonym of Montague Lawrence.

Trivia: A debonair, mustachioed leading man from England, Hugh Huntley co-starred as Corinne Griffith's mountain-climbing husband in the second screen version of Clyde Fitch's The Climbers (1919). It was an early highlight in a career that usually found Huntley playing the "other man" in such 1920s potboilers as Backbone (1923), Second Youth (1924) (with Alfred Lunt and Lynn Fontanne, and A Social Celebrity (1926). In the sound era, Huntley is perhaps best remembered as the banker's son in The Bat Whispers (1930), a role played by Arthur Housman in the original, silent version, The Bat (1926). His roles got increasingly smaller thereafter and he seems to have left films in the very early '40s.

Trivia: Essentially a bit player, onscreen with Universal from 1935, jolly-looking David Oliver played scores of newspapermen, news vendors, cab drivers, etc. Today, he is perhaps best remembered for playing the comedy relief role of the taxi driver, Pidge, in the 1937 serial Secret Agent X-9.

Trivia: He studied theater at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts. After establishing himself prominently on the American stage, he began appearing in silents beginning with The Gilded Lily (1921). He appeared in more than 100 films, the last of which was the Elvis Presley vehicle Wild in the Country (1961). He starred in a number of silents, often as a clean-living rural hero; in the sound era he began playing character roles, almost always as an arch villain. Due to a serious eye infection, he was absent from the big screen in the '50s. He was the father of actor Jason Robards, with whom he appeared on Broadway in 1958 in The Disenchanted.

Trivia: Hatchet-faced character actor Charles Lane has been one of the most instantly recognizable non-stars in Hollywood for more than half a century. Lane has been a familiar figure in movies (and, subsequently, on television) for 60 years, portraying crotchety, usually miserly, bad-tempered bankers and bureaucrats. Lane was born Charles Levison in San Francisco in 1899 (some sources give his year of birth as 1905). He learned the ropes of acting at the Pasadena Playhouse during the middle/late '20s, appearing in the works of Shakespeare, Chekhov, and Noel Coward before going to Hollywood in 1930, just as sound was fully taking hold. He was a good choice for character roles, usually playing annoying types with his high-pitched voice and fidgety persona, encompassing everything from skinflint accountants to sly, fast-talking confidence men -- think of an abrasive version of Bud Abbott. His major early roles included the stage manager Max Jacobs in Twentieth Century and the tax assessor in You Can't Take It With You. One of the busier character men in Hollywood, Lane was a particular favorite of Frank Capra's, and he appeared in Mr. Deeds Goes to Town, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, Arsenic and Old Lace, It's a Wonderful Life -- with a particularly important supporting part in the latter -- and State of the Union. He played in every kind of movie from screwball comedy like Ball of Fire to primordial film noir, such as I Wake Up Screaming. As Lane grew older, he tended toward more outrageously miserly parts, in movies and then on television, where he turned up Burns & Allen, I Love Lucy, and Dear Phoebe, among other series. Having successfully played a tight-fisted business manager hired by Ricky Ricardo to keep Lucy's spending in line in one episode of I Love Lucy (and, later, the U.S. border guard who nearly arrests the whole Ricardo clan and actor Charles Boyer at the Mexican border in an episode of The Lucy-Desi Comedy Hour), Lane was a natural choice to play Lucille Ball's nemesis on The Lucy Show. Her first choice for the money-grubbing banker would have been Gale Gordon, but as he was already contractually committed to the series Dennis the Menace, she hired Lane to play Mr. Barnsdahl, the tight-fisted administrator of her late-husband's estate during the first season of the show. Lane left the series after Gordon became available to play the part of Mr. Mooney, but in short order he moved right into the part that came very close to making him a star. The CBS country comedy series Petticoat Junction needed a semi-regular villain and Lane just fit the bill as Homer Bedloe, the greedy, bad-tempered railroad executive whose career goal was to shut down the Cannonball railroad that served the town of Hooterville. He became so well-known in the role, which he only played once or twice a season, that at one point Lane found himself in demand for personal appearance tours. In later years, he also turned up in roles on The Beverly Hillbillies, playing Jane Hathaway's unscrupulous landlord, and did an excruciatingly funny appearance on The Odd Couple in the mid-'70s, playing a manic, greedy patron at the apartment sale being run by Felix and Oscar. Lane also did his share of straight dramatic roles, portraying such parts as Tony Randall's nastily officious IRS boss in the comedy The Mating Game (1959), the crusty River City town constable in The Music Man (1962) (which put Lane into the middle of a huge musical production number), the wryly cynical, impatient judge in the James Garner comedy film The Wheeler-Dealers (1963), and portraying Admiral William Standley in The Winds of War (1983), based on Herman Wouk's novel. He was still working right up until the late '80s, and David Letterman booked the actor to appear on his NBC late-night show during the middle of that decade, though his appearance on the program was somewhat disappointing and sad; the actor, who was instantly recognized by the studio audience, was then in his early nineties and had apparently not done live television in many years (if ever), and apparently hadn't been adequately prepped. He seemed confused and unable to say much about his work, which was understandable -- the nature of his character parts involved hundreds of roles that were usually each completed in a matter or two or three days shooting, across almost 60 years. Lane died at 102, in July 2007 - about 20 years after his last major film appearance.

Trivia: Actor Matt McHugh was born into a show business family, joining his parents, his brother Frank, and his sister Kitty in the family stock company as soon as he learned to talk. Matt came to Hollywood to repeat his stage role in the 1931 film adaptation of Elmer Rice's Broadway hit Street Scene. He continued to have sizeable film assignments for the next few years (notably the bourgeois Italian bridegroom Francesco in Laurel and Hardy's The Devil's Brother [1933]) before settling into bits and minor roles. A dead ringer for his more famous brother Frank McHugh, Matt projected an abrasive, sardonic screen image; as such, he was utilized in such rough-edged roles as cab drivers, bartenders and mechanics. Matt McHugh's best screen opportunities in the '40s came with his supporting roles in the 2-reel comedy output of Columbia Pictures; he appeared in the short comedies of Andy Clyde, Hugh Herbert, Walter Catlett, The Three Stooges and many others, most often cast as a lazy or caustic brother-in-law.

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.

Trivia: American actress Glenda Farrell, like so many other performers born around the turn of the century, made her stage debut in a production of Uncle Tom's Cabin. Her first adult professional job was with Virginia Brissac's stock company in San Diego, after which she worked up and down the California coast until leaving for Broadway in the late 1920s. Farrell's performance in the stage play Skidding established her reputation, and in 1929 she was wooed to Hollywood along with many other stage actors in the wake of the "talkie" revolution. Uncharacteristically cast as the ingenue in Little Caesar (1930), Farrell would thereafter be cast in the fast-talking, "hard-boiled dame" roles that suited her best. Though her characters had a tough veneer, Farrell was sensitive enough to insist upon script changes if the lines and bits of business became too rough and unsympathetic; still, she seemed to revel in the occasional villainess, notably her acid performance as Paul Muni's mercenary paramour in I Am a Fugitive From a Chain Gang(1932). In 1937, Farrell was assigned by Warner Bros. to portray dauntless news reporter Torchy Blaine in a series of brisk "B" pictures. She was gratified by the positive fan mail she received for Torchy, and justifiably proud of her ability to spout out 390 words per minute in the role, but Farrell decided to leave Warners and free-lance after five "Torchy Blaines." The actress's character roles in the 1940s and 1950s may have been smaller than before, but she always gave 100 percent to her craft. Farrell moved into television with ease, appearing on virtually every major dramatic weekly series and ultimately winning an Emmy for her work on the two-part Ben Casey episode of 1963, "A Cardinal Act of Mercy." Farrell's exit from movies was the 1964 Jerry Lewis farce The Disorderly Orderly, an assignment she plunged into with all the enthusiasm and sheer professionalism that she'd brought to the rest of her screen career.

Trivia: Mary Martin was a wife, mother, and stage performer before she'd reached her 18th birthday. She became an overnight sensation in the 1938 Cole Porter Broadway musical Leave It to Me, stopping the show with her sly striptease number "My Heart Belongs to Daddy" (she would revise this piece in two Hollywood films, 1941's Love Thy Neighbor and the 1946 Cole Porter biopic Night and Day). From 1939 through 1943, Martin appeared in such Paramount films as New York Town (1941), Birth of the Blues (1941) and Happy Go Lucky (1942). She gave up Hollywood to return to the stage, where she became one of the biggest musical comedy attractions in Broadway history, starring in the original productions of One Touch of Venus, South Pacific, The Sound of Music, I Do I Do, and many others. Her 1953 Broadway hit Peter Pan was re-created on television several times, the 1960 telecast happily videotaped for posterity. She also had a successful run in both the Broadway and touring companies of Hello Dolly. In 1983, Martin and actress Janet Gaynor were seriously injured in a car accident; Gaynor eventually died from her injuries, but Martin recovered to the extent that she was able to continue playing guest roles on television. Mary Martin was the mother of actors Larry Hagman and Heller Halliday.