Trivia: The star of both the 1920 and 1922 editions of the Ziegfeld Follies, blonde Mary Eaton was Florenz Ziegfeld's backup in case his biggest star, Marilyn Miller, proved too recalcitrant. Eaton later replaced Miller as Eddie Cantor's leading lady in the phenomenally successful Kid Boots (1923) and again in 1927 in Sunny. A natural for talking picture stardom, Eaton was teamed with aging Broadway juvenile Oscar Shaw in the Marx Brothers' The Cocoanuts (1929). Due to the enduring popularity of the Marxes, she remains one of the more visible of the early talkie stars. Sadly, Eaton, like old rival Marilyn Miller, failed to make much of an impact in motion pictures. Her only starring vehicle, Glorifying the American Girl (1929), about the travails of a Ziegfeld beauty, was certainly typecasting of the highest order. Although Eaton possessed a pleasing if limited soprano, the unrelentingly downbeat and morose musical proved a notorious dud. Described by a modern historian as "the Follies in purgatory," Glorifying the American Girl was the first East Coast talkie to be filmed partially outdoors and to guarantee healthy box-office returns, Paramount peppered the show with such guest stars as Eddie Cantor, Rudy Vallee, and Helen Morgan. Yet despite all this Broadway luster, the film was considered a jinx, and Mary Eaton's screen career stopped dead in its tracks. Married and divorced from screen director Millard Webb and entertainer Eddie Laughton, her death in 1948 was attributed to a heart attack.

Trivia: After a tentative movie debut in the New York-filmed 1929 musical Glorifying the American Girl, stately character actress Sarah Edwards settled in Hollywood for keeps in 1935. Another of those performers who evidently jumped directly from birth to old age, Edwards portrayed many a kindly grandmother, imperious dowager, hardy pioneer wife, ill-tempered teacher and strict governess. She played peripheral roles in films like The Great Ziegfeld (1936) and Shadow of the Doubt (1942), and enjoyed larger assignments in films like Hal Roach's Dudes are Pretty People (1942, as "The Colonel") and Frank Capra's It's a Wonderful Life (1946). Sarah Edwards is not related to the 1980s TV personality of the same name.

Trivia: The daughter of a rural Illinois farmer and schoolteacher, Helen Morgan moved to Chicago at an early age, where she was a cracker-packager at Nabisco, a manicurist, and a ribbon counter clerk. After taking singing lessons, she became a Chicago cabaret singer at age 18. Two years later, she was appearing in Broadway's Ziegfeld Follies, and studying music at the Metropolitan Opera in her off-hours; she also toured extensively in vaudeville. Many influential producers felt that Morgan was not "acceptable" for the Big Time: She had a deep, throaty voice, a sad-eyed expression, and a large bosom, all of which were not fashionable in the roaring '20s. But her soulful renditions of "torch songs" were much beloved by Chicago's gangster contingent, who repeatedly bankrolled Morgan's many efforts to open her own nightclub -- efforts which usually came acropper at the hands of the Prohibition agents. Her official "mainstream" stardom began with the 1925 edition of George White's Scandals. Two years later, she created the role of the tragic Julie in Show Boat, introducing such song hits as "Can't Help Lovin' Dat Man" and "Bill." She was equally successful in the 1929 Kern-Hammerstein production Sweet Adeline. Though at a career high point in 1930, personal problems caused her to lose several potential jobs, but in 1936 she staged a brief comeback in the film version of Show Boat. On the verge of launching a singing engagement at Chicago's Loop Theater, Helen Morgan died at the age of 41. Ann Blyth starred as Helen in the 1957 biopic The Helen Morgan Story.

Trivia: Everyone is fond of quoting Jerome Kern's famous assessment that "Irving Berlin has no place in American music. He is American music." Remarkably, this tribute was made in the mid-1930s, at a point in time when Berlin had already been writing songs for nearly three decades, and still had three more decades' activity ahead of him. Born in a Russian Jewish ghetto to a cantor and his wife, Berlin was five when he and his family emigrated to America. Growing up on New York's Lower East Side, young Berlin sang for pennies on the streets, then moved up the performing scale to become a singing waiter. Though he never learned to read music, Berlin had taught himself piano sufficiently enough to write his first song, "Marie of Sunny Italy," in 1907; his first hit was 1911's "Alexander's Ragtime Band." Because he was only able to compose his songs in the key of F sharp major, he had a special key-transposing piano built to order. Berlin contributed songs to several editions of The Ziegfeld Follies (the 1919 edition featured his "A Pretty Girl is Like a Melody"), and to dozens of Broadway musicals. Unlike such composers as Jerome Kern and Rodgers and Hammerstein, Berlin wrote his songs independently of the libretto; as a result, it is possible to compile a list of Berlin's hits without knowing, or caring, what shows they were written for (he would not compose a genuine "integrated" musical--with songs specifically written to advance the plot--until 1945's Annie Get Your Gun). So prolific and successful was Berlin that some of his rivals circulated the rumor that he was not the author of his songs, but that in fact Berlin was exploiting an anonymous, underpaid black composer whom he kept hidden somewhere in Harlem! Berlin's association with movies began literally at the dawn of the talkie era: his "Blue Skies" was performed by Al Jolson in The Jazz Singer (1927). The first of his Broadway musicals to be adapted for films (and the only one without a hit song) was the 1929 Marx Bros. vehicle The Cocoanuts. Berlin wrote both the score and the original story for Douglas Fairbanks Sr.'s Reaching for the Moon (1931), but when the producers decided to cut all but one of the songs before the film's release, the experience soured Berlin to the extent that he would not work in Hollywood again for another three years. Fortunately for us all, he returned to pen the tunes for such films as Top Hat (1935), Follow the Fleet (1936), On the Avenue (1936), Second Fiddle (1939), Easter Parade (1948), and of course Holiday Inn (1942), whence came the composer's most popular song, the Oscar-winning "White Christmas." Though Berlin's life story (his escape from Russia, his rise to fame, the tragic death of his first wife, his later elopement with a WASP heiress, etc.) had enough drama for ten films, he steadfastly refused to allow a biopic to be filmed. As compensation, Hollywood turned out several "catalogue" musicals in which Berlin's previously written songs were presented chronologically to reflect the social and political changes in 20th-century American society: Alexander's Ragtime Band (1938), Blue Skies (1946), There's No Business Like Show Business (1954). Berlin himself appeared on camera to sing (more or less) his own "Oh, How I Hate to Get Up in the Morning," in This is the Army (1943), a film which also featured Kate Smith singing God Bless America, Berlin's favorite song--and the one for which he never earned a penny (he donated all royalties to the Boy Scouts of America). Berlin's last film work was his title song for 1957's Sayonara; five years later, he retired from Broadway with the disappointing Mr. President. Despite his hermit-like existence in his later years, Berlin continued to govern the activities of his own music-publishing company (formed in 1919) with an iron hand. In 1961, he briefly emerged from his cocoon to unsuccessfully sue the publishers of Mad magazine for printing parody lyrics to several of his more popular works. Twenty-five years later, he showed up in Washington DC to accept the Medal of Liberty from President Reagan. Irving Berlin's last public appearance was at a star-studded celebration given in honor of his 100th birthday.

Trivia: The son of a famed humorist, screenwriter Ring Lardner, Jr. (born Ringgold Wilmer Lardner, Jr.) started out as a reporter for the New York Daily Mirror. Prior to that, he had briefly attended Princeton. He eventually became a publicist for David Selznick in Hollywood and after that worked uncredited as a script doctor before becoming a full-fledged screenwriter working alone or in collaboration. Lardner shared an Oscar in 1942 for Woman of the Year and his career looked quite promising until he refused to cooperate with the witch-hunts of the House Un-American Activities Committee and became one of the Hollywood Ten. For his refusal, Lardner spent a year in prison and then was blacklisted until the mid '60s. Though officially banned from Hollywood, Lardner continued working under pseudonyms and also worked uncredited. Lardner made a big comeback in 1970 when he wrote the script for M*A*S*H.

Trivia: He won five gold medals as a swimmer at the 1924 and 1928 Olympics, setting many free-style records. Weissmuller appeared in several sports shorts, then was hired by MGM to play Tarzan onscreen. Beginning in 1932, he starred in 12 "Tarzan" adventures, meanwhile doing almost no other film work. In the late '40s he quit "Tarzan" and began starring in a new series, "Jungle Jim," while occasionally appearing in other films through the mid '50s, after which he retired from acting. He was married six times. His stormy marriage to actress Lupe Velez (1933-38) received much coverage in scandal sheets. He authored an autobiography, Water, World and Weissmuller (1967).