Trivia: A blonde German leading lady, her stage career began in Zurich in 1919, then she put in appearances all over Europe and on Broadway, gaining an international reputation as one of the finest actresses of her time; she became a favorite of celebrated German stage director Max Reinhardt. Bergner's film career began in Germany in 1923, leading to great success there in fey gamine roles until Hitler's rise to power in 1933; then she and her husband, German film director Dr. Paul Czinner (who directed most of her films to that point), moved to England, where she continued her stage and screen work. Her performance as Rosalind in As You Like It (1936), directed by Czinner, was the raison d'etre for the movie -- Bergner having done it successfully on-stage in Germany -- but her German accent and mannered acting were considered detriments to what was otherwise a potentially fine film. In his 1986 autobiography A Life In Movies, director Michael Powell revealed that Bergner was originally cast in his 1941 film 49th Parallel in the role of Anna, the young Hutterite girl, and contrived to be brought to Canada to shoot the exteriors and long shots of her scenes (the other British-based stars used doubles for their Canadian scenes). But while in Canada, she slipped across the border into the United States and refused to return to England to shoot her scenes -- as a result, the role was re-cast with Glynis Johns, and became something of a breakthrough for her, while Bergner didn't return to movies until 1952.After the war she took up an international stage career again and occasionally appeared in German films. Bergner was nominated for a Best Actress Oscar for her work in Escape Me Never (1935), which was also a stage vehicle of hers. She appeared in only one Hollywood production, the unsuccessful Paris Calling (1941) with Randolph Scott; her last film was the German The Pentecost Outing (1979).

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: She was a Bronze Medalist graduate from the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts, meanwhile debuting onstage at age 19. She was outstanding character player in both classic and modern plays on London's West End, and occasionally appeared on Broadway. She entered films in 1931, and worked in Hollywood from 1939-46. For her work in Saratoga Trunk she received a Best Supporting Actress Oscar nomination. While remaining a prominent stage actress, she continued appearing in films intermittently until the early '80s. In recognition of her long, distinguished career, in 1960 she was made a Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire.

Trivia: A gold medalist at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts, Griffith Jones was still an RADA undergrad when he made his professional bow in 1930. Jones went on to play leading roles in everything from Shakespeare to Grand Guignol; he spent several seasons in the late 1950s touring as Archie Rice in John Osborne's The Entertainer. In films sporadically from 1932 to 1968, Jones was always welcome on-screen, but seldom given the sort of roles worthy of his talents. At age 65, Jones launched a seven-year tenure with the Royal Shakespeare Company. He had a field day in the RSC's marathon staging of Nicholas Nickleby, expertly essaying no fewer than seven roles within a space of eight hours. Griffith Jones is the father of actors Gemma and Nicholas Jones.

Trivia: British leading lady Joan Gardner began supplementing her stage income with film roles in 1932, showing up in such quickies as Men of Tomorrow (1932) and Wedding Rehearsal (1932). Looking smashing in period costumes, Gardner was seen in the larger-budgeted Catherine the Great (1934) and The Private Life of Don Juan (1934). Perhaps her best screen assignment was as the lady friend of Roland Young in the 1937 fantasy The Man Who Could Work Miracles (1937). Joan Gardner retired from films in 1939 upon marrying producer/director Zoltan Korda.

Trivia: Emaciated British character actor Gibb McLaughlin spent years as a music hall monologist, telling morbid jokes about his many imagined illnesses. McLaughlin also performed a "protean act," playing all the roles with rapid costume changes. Making his film debut in 1921, the prune-visaged McLaughlin showed up in comic supporting roles for the next 36 years. Gibb McLaughlin's larger screen assignments included such roles as the Duke of York in Nell Gwynne (1926), the pretentious French executioner in Private Life of Henry VIII (1933), and sour-pussed Sowerberry the undertaker in Oliver Twist (1948).

Trivia: Even when he wasn't dressed in period costume or contemporary cutaway and ascot, British actor Lawrence Hanray exuded dignity and breeding. In films from 1932's Wedding Rehearsal, Hanray was especially busy in producer Alexander Korda's lavish historic dramas. He was seen as Archbishop Cranmer in Private Life of Henry VIII (1933) and essayed equally prominent roles in Catherine the Great (1934), Rembrandt (1936), and several other Korda productions. Lawrence Hanray remained active well into the WW II years, when he was well into his seventies.

Trivia: British actor/playwright Allan Jeayes made his first screen appearance as the cuckolded Sir William Hamilton in the 1918 historical drama Nelson. Jeayes then returned to the stage, where he remained until the talkie era. From 1930 to 1962, with rare exceptions, the actor projected what film historian Leslie Halliwell once described as a "dignified, heavy presence." Allan Jeayes was particularly busy in the films of producer Alexander Korda, playing important roles in The Scarlet Pimpernel (1934), Rembrandt (1936), Elephant Boy (1938), and especially The Four Feathers (1939) and Thief of Baghdad (1940).

Trivia: American actor Douglas Fairbanks Sr., instilled with a love of dramatics by his Shakespearean-scholar father, was never fully satisfied with theatrical work. A born athlete and extrovert, Fairbanks felt the borders of the stage were much too confining, even when his theatrical work allowed him to tour the world. The wide-open spaces of the motion picture industry were more his style, and in 1915 Fairbanks jumped at the chance to act in the film version of the old stage perennial The Lamb. Fairbanks became the top moneymaker for the Triangle Film Company, starring in an average of 10 pictures a year for a weekly salary of $2000. He specialized in comedies--not the slapstick variety, but free-wheeling farces in which he usually played a wealthy young man thirsting for adventure. Fairbanks was a savvy businessman, and in 1919 he reasoned that he could have more control--and a larger slice of the profits -- if he produced as well as starred in his pictures. Working in concert with his actress-wife Mary Pickford (a star in her own right, billed as "America's Sweetheart"), his best friend Charlie Chaplin, and pioneer director D. W. Griffith, Fairbanks formed a new film company, United Artists. The notion of actors making their own movies led one film executive to wail, "The lunatics have taken over the asylum!", but Fairbanks' studio was a sound investment, and soon other actors were dabbling in the production end of the business. Still most successful in contemporary comedies in 1920, Fairbanks decided to try a momentary change of pace, starring in the swashbuckling The Mark of Zorro (1920). The public was enthralled, and for the balance of his silent career Fairbanks specialized in lavish costume epics with plenty of fast-moving stunt work and derring-do. While several of these films still hold their fascination today, notably The Thief of Baghdad (1924) and The Black Pirate (1926), some historians argue that Fairbanks' formerly breezy approach to moviemaking became ponderous, weighed down in too much spectacle for the Fairbanks personality to fully shine. When talkies came, Fairbanks wasn't intimidated, since he was stage-trained and had a robust speaking voice; unfortunately, his first talking picture, 1929's Taming of the Shrew (in which he co-starred with Mary Pickford), was an expensive failure. Fairbanks' talking pictures failed to click at the box office; even the best of them, such as Mr. Robinson Crusoe (1932), seemed outdated rehashes of his earlier silent successes. Fairbanks' last film, the British-made Private Life of Don Juan (1934), unflatteringly revealed his advanced years and his flagging energy. Marital difficulties, unwise investments and health problems curtailed his previously flamboyant lifestyle considerably, though he managed to stave off several takeover bids for United Artists and retained the respect of his contemporaries. Fairbanks died in his sleep, not long after he'd announced plans to come out of retirement. He was survived by his actor son Douglas Fairbanks Jr., who'd inherited much of his dad's professional panache and who after his father's death began a successful career in film swashbucklers on his own.

Trivia: An elderly supporting player from England, dignified-looking Arnold Lucy claimed to have performed more than 1,200 times at London's fabled West End prior to making his screen debut in the early 1910s. In Hollywood from around 1918, Lucy usually portrayed clergymen or valets and can be seen today as one of the café patrons bothering Mary Duncan's waitress in City Girl (1930); as a professor in All Quiet on the Western Front (1930), and as one of Fredric March's dinner guests in Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1932).