Trivia: American actor Joel McCrea came from a California family with roots reaching back to the pioneer days. As a youth, McCrea satiated his fascination with movies by appearing as an extra in a serial starring Ruth Roland. By 1920, high schooler McCrea was a movie stunt double, and by the time he attended USC, he was regularly appearing at the Pasadena Playhouse. McCrea's big Hollywood break came with a part in the 1929 talkie Jazz Age; he matriculated into one of the most popular action stars of the 1930s, making lasting friendships with such luminaries as director Cecil B. DeMille and comedian Will Rogers. It was Rogers who instilled in McCrea a strong business sense, as well as a love of ranching; before the 1940s had ended, McCrea was a multi-millionaire, as much from his land holdings and ranching activities as from his film work. Concentrating almost exclusively on westerns after appearing in The Virginian (1946), McCrea became one of that genre's biggest box-office attractions. He extended his western fame to an early-1950s radio series, Tales of the Texas Rangers, and a weekly 1959 TV oater, Wichita Town, in which McCrea costarred with his son Jody. In the late 1960s, McCrea increased his wealth by selling 1200 acres of his Moorpark (California) ranch to an oil company, on the proviso that no drilling would take place within sight of the actor's home. By the time he retired in the early 1970s, McCrea could take pride in having earned an enduring reputation not only as one of Hollywood's shrewdest businessmen, but as one of the few honest-to-goodness gentlemen in the motion picture industry.

Trivia: American actor John Halliday went the usual route of Brooklyn-born performers by hiding behind a stage British accent in his theatrical and film performances. Except for a few awkward early-talkie appearances where he's laying it on too thick (Perfect Understanding [1933]), Halliday pulled off his artifice so well that at least one knowledgable historian has pigeonholed the actor as Scottish! In films since 1920 and on stage for at least a decade prior to that, Halliday was one of the best of the gentleman villains of the screen: He'd never get the girl, but he could ruin her boyfriend in business, destroy the lives of her family, or kill her off altogether. In the little-seen horror gem Terror Aboard (1933), it's fairly obvious throughout that Halliday is the hidden killer, but he performs his perfidy with such grisly aplomb that the audience is half hoping he'll get away with it. As a subtler conniver in the 1936 Gary Cooper-Marlene Dietrich vehicle Desire, he is able to shift from suavity to menace so abruptly that it throws Dietrich's character momentarily off balance. Even when he was cast in the lead, as in Hollywood Boulevard (1936), his behavior as a Barrymore-like faded actor is caddish enough to get him murdered a reel before the fadeout. John Halliday was permitted a modicum of audience empathy in one of his last films: as Katharine Hepburn's gently philandering father in The Philadelphia Story (1940), he manages to invest humanity and a touch of wistfulness into a basically unsympathetic idle-rich stock character.

Trivia: Mountainous American actor Bert Roach reportedly launched his film career at the Keystone Studios in 1914. The porcine Mr. Roach remained in comedy during his years of comparative prominence in the '20s, providing jovial support to the romantic leads in such films as Tin Hats (1927). In talkies, Roach occasionally enjoyed a substantial role, notably as Leon Waycoff's whining roomate in Murders in the Rue Morgue (1932). In general, Bert Roach's talkie career consisted of featured and bit parts, often as a sentimental inebriate (e.g. 1932's Night World and 1934's The Thin Man).

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: Sometimes billed Arnold Gregg, Ohio-born Arnold Gray (born Samberg) began his screen career in Universal two-reel action melodramas. Gray later starred opposite Seena Owen in Flame of the Yukon (1925) but spent the remainder of his screen career in supporting roles and as Joel McCrea's stand-in.

Trivia: Born into an aristocratic Mexican family, actress Dolores Del Rio was the daughter of a prominent banker. After a convent education, she was married at age 16 to writer Jaime Del Rio, whose name she retained long after the marriage had dissolved. The second cousin of silent film star Ramon Novarro, Del Rio was a regular guest at Hollywood parties; at one of these, director Edwin Carewe, struck by her dazzling beauty, felt she'd be perfect for a role in his upcoming film Joanna (1925). Stardom followed rapidly, with Del Rio achieving top billing in several major silent productions, including What Price Glory? (1927), as the French coquette Charmaine, and The Loves of Carmen (1927), in the title role. Since Del Rio spoke fluent English, the switch-over to sound posed no problem for her, though her marked Hispanic accent limited her range of roles. Most often, she was cast on the basis of beauty first, talent second; she is at her most alluring in 1932's Bird of Paradise, in which she appears all but nude in some sequences. Del Rio looked equally fetching when fully clothed, as in the title role of Madame Du Barry (1934). Upon the breakup of her second marriage to art director Cedric Gibbons, the graceful, intelligent Del Rio became the most eligible "bachelor girl" in Hollywood; one of her most ardent suitors was Orson Welles, ten years her junior, who cast her in his 1942 RKO production Journey Into Fear. In 1943, Del Rio returned to Mexico to star in films, negotiating a "percentage of profits" deal which increased her already vast fortune. Enormously popular in her native country, Del Rio returned only occasionally to Hollywood, usually at the request of such long-standing industry friends as director John Ford. Her seemingly ageless beauty and milk-smooth complexion was the source of envy and speculation; from all accounts, she used no cosmetic surgery, maintaining her looks principally through a diligent (and self-invented) diet and exercise program. Even as late as 1960, she looked far too young to play Elvis Presley's mother in Flaming Star. Del Rio retired from filmmaking in 1978, choosing to devote her time to managing her financial and real estate holdings, and to her lifelong hobbies of writing and painting.

Trivia: Of English, French and Irish descent.At six months old, joined his parents for the first time onstage.Attended business college and worked in an appliance corporation.Developed makeup skills which he learned from his father.Started working in films in 1930 after his father's death.In 1935, changed his stage name to Lon Chaney Jr.Played classic movie monsters like a wolf man, Frankenstein's Monster, a mummy and a vampire (Dracula's son).

Trivia: The son of actors Lon Chaney and Cleva Creighton, Creighton Tull Chaney was raised in an atmosphere of Spartan strictness by his father. He refused to allow Creighton to enter show business, wanting his son to prepare for a more "practical" profession; so young Chaney trained to be plumber, and worked a variety of relatively menial jobs despite his father's fame. After Lon Sr. died in 1930, Creighton entered movies with an RKO contract, but nothing much happened until, by his own recollection, he was "starved" into changing his name to Lon Chaney Jr. He would spend the rest of his life competing with his father's reputation as The Man With a Thousand Faces, hoping against hope to someday top Lon Sr. professionally. Unfortunately, he would have little opportunity to do this in the poverty-row quickie films that were his lot in the '30s, nor was his tenure (1937-1940) as a 20th Century Fox contract player artistically satisfying. Hoping to convince producers that he was a fine actor in his own right, Chaney appeared as the mentally retarded giant Lennie in a Los Angeles stage production of John Steinbeck's Of Mice and Men. This led to his being cast as Lennie in the 1939 film version -- which turned out to be a mixed blessing. His reviews were excellent, but the character typed him in the eyes of many, forcing him to play variations of it for the next 30 years (which was most amusingly in the 1947 Bob Hope comedy My Favorite Brunette). In 1939, Chaney was signed by Universal Pictures, for which his father had once appeared in The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1923) and The Phantom of the Opera (1925); Universal was launching a new cycle of horror films, and hoped to cash in on the Chaney name. Billing Lon Jr. as "the screen's master character actor," Universal cast him as Dynamo Dan the Electric Man in Man Made Monster (1941), a role originally intended for Boris Karloff. That same year, Chaney starred as the unfortunate lycanthrope Lawrence Talbot in The Wolf Man, the highlight of which was a transformation sequence deliberately evoking memories of his father's makeup expertise. (Unfortunately, union rules were such than Lon Jr. was not permitted to apply his own makeup). Universal would recast Chaney as the Wolf Man in four subsequent films, and cast him as the Frankenstein Monster in The Ghost of Frankenstein (1942) and the title role in Son of Dracula (1943). Chaney also headlined two B-horror series, one based upon radio's Inner Sanctum anthology, and the other a spin-off from the 1932 film The Mummy. Chaney occasionally got a worthwhile role in the '50s, notably in the films of producer/director Stanley Kramer (High Noon, Not As a Stranger, and especially The Defiant Ones), and he co-starred in the popular TV series Hawkeye and the Last of the Mohicans. For the most part, however, the actor's last two decades as a performer were distinguished by a steady stream of cheap, threadbare horror films, reaching a nadir with such fare as Hillbillies in a Haunted House (1967). In the late '60s, Chaney fell victim to the same throat cancer that had killed his father, although publicly he tried to pass this affliction off as an acute case of laryngitis. Unable to speak at all in his last few months, he still grimly sought out film roles, ending his lengthy film career with Dracula vs. Frankenstein(1971). He died in 1973.

Trivia: Eternally grinning comic actor Richard Gallegher became a vaudevillian in the early part of the 20th century after briefly entertaining plans for a law career. His professional nickname "Skeets" was short for "Mosquito," a childhood name bestowed upon Gallegher because of his habit of darting around at top speed. Gallegher made his first film in 1923, but did not appear before the cameras on a regular basis until signed by Paramount in 1927. On both sides of the talkie revolution, Gallegher appeared in support of such leading lights as W.C. Fields (The Potters), Jack Oakie (Fast Company) and Joe E. Brown (Polo Joe); once in a while (though not often enough) he played the leading role. Along with virtually the entire Paramount stable, Gallegher played a guest cameo in 1933's Alice in Wonderland (that's his voice as the White Rabbit, though it's not quite clear who's in the costume). After 1937, Skeets Gallegher spent less of his time in films, preferring live audiences to sullen camera crews; he made one final screen appearance in 1952's Three for Bedroom C before illness forced him to retire.

Trivia: Silent-film leading man Creighton Hale was brought to America from his native Ireland via a theatrical touring company. While starring in Charles Frohman's Broadway production of Indian Summer, Hale was spotted by a representative of the Pathe film company and invited to appear before the cameras. His first film was the Pearl White serial The Exploits of Elaine, after which he rose to stardom in a series of adventure films and romantic dramas. Director D.W. Griffith used Hale as comedy relief in his films Way Down East (1920) and Orphans of the Storm (1922)--possibly Hale's least effective screen appearances, in that neither he nor Griffith were comedy experts. Despite his comparative failure in these films, Hale remained a popular leading man throughout the 1920s. When talking pictures arrived, Hale's star plummeted; though he had a pleasant, well-modulated voice, he was rapidly approaching fifty, and looked it. Most of Hale's talkie roles were unbilled bits, or guest cameos in films that spotlighted other silent movie veterans (e.g. Hollywood Boulevard and The Perils of Pauline). During the 1940s, Hale showed up in such Warner Bros. productions as Larceny Inc (1941), The Maltese Falcon (1941) and Casablanca (1943); this was due to the largess of studio head Jack Warner, who kept such faded silent favorites as Hale, Monte Blue and Leo White on permanent call. Creighton Hale's final appearance was in Warners' Beyond the Forest (1949).