Trivia: During the second half of the 1930s, Freddie Bartholomew epitomized the British male child star, professional and well-mannered to a fault, and was the second most popular child actor in movies after Shirley Temple. His own life, however, was nearly as troubled and, in some respects, more so, as those of many of the characters that he played. The son of an alcoholic mother who gave him up to her sister, he thrived in the home and care of his aunt (and adopted mother) Cissy and became a professional actor at the age of three. He'd already made two British feature films, Fascination (1930) and Lily Christine (1932), when MGM brought him to America in 1934 for its lavishly produced adaptation of Charles Dickens' David Copperfield. This became his first American starring vehicle and, although critics of the era weren't universally taken with his performance, thinking it too simpering and passive, albeit professional, audiences loved him in the movie. Over the next five years, Bartholomew made an array of solid, often inspired dramatic films, usually in period settings, playing alongside some of the biggest stars in the history of cinema, including Greta Garbo, Lionel Barrymore, and Spencer Tracy. David O. Selznick, who had cast him in David Copperfield, made him the star of his first independent production, an adaptation of the book Little Lord Fauntleroy, which came to define Bartholomew's screen persona. The quality of his movies peaked with Captains Courageous and Kidnapped, but there were fine films around these, including an excellent adaptation of Tom Brown's Schooldays in 1940, made at RKO, during which Bartholomew first met and became friends with a young New York-born actor named James Lydon. Although Bartholomew was perfect for the role of Tom Brown, he couldn't play it because he wasn't under contract to RKO and Lydon was, but the fact that he was cast in the secondary part of Ned East didn't stop him from becoming a close friend of Lydon's and vice versa. The decade of the 1940s was far less kind to Bartholomew, beginning with a change in audience taste: the coming of World War II reduced the appeal of the kind of costume films in which Bartholomew did his best work. Americans' associations with England shifted, from a fixation on its history and stories out of antiquity, to images of a country fending off Hitler's air force; Bartholomew and his image suddenly seemed quaintly irrelevant. Additionally, although he remained a skilled actor, he was less appealing on screen as a teenager than he had been as a boy. As his audience shrank, the kinds of movies that Bartholomew was offered also declined; he spent the early '40s at Columbia making low-budget, quickly shot B-movie dramas like Cadets on Parade and Naval Academy, both with James Lydon, and by 1943, he was starring with ex-members of the Dead End Kids in a 70-minute action-thriller called Junior Army. Against this backdrop, a series of personal tragedies ensued: after Bartholomew became famous, his birth mother, who had been out of his life materially and legally since before his third birthday, was persuaded by people she met in the course of drinking her way through the lower depths of British society to go to court several times, both in England and America, to try and seize a piece of his earnings for herself; he was protected by the so-called "Coogan Law," which was supposed to prevent parents from stealing the earnings of child performers, but every time she filed suit, he was forced to expend money from the trust fund defending against her, and after a half-dozen or more times, his trust was very much depleted; in 1944, at the age of 20, Bartholomew was drafted into the U.S. Army Air Force, assigned as an aircraft mechanic, and while doing repairs that year on a bomber engine, he fell from a scaffold and broke his back. He spent a year in traction at a G.I. hospital and was given a medical discharge in 1945, seemingly recovered; unknown to himself and all but a tiny handful of those closest to him, however, he had been damaged psychologically by the injury and the recovery period. He tried to resume his career with the low-budget PRC feature The Town Went Wild, never realizing that he was deeply mentally ill. When that film failed to revive his movie career he turned to the stage, and his one effort at performing in a play, in Los Angeles, was ignored by everyone but the critics, who hated it; his mental condition was exacerbated by the tone and venom of their reviews. Worse still, he ended up marrying the publicist for the production, a Russian immigrant who was trying to escape deportation and needed the protection of the American citizenship that Bartholomew had been granted through his military service. At one point, with all but a tiny bit of his money spent, the couple was living in a car parked on the streets of Brooklyn. It was in those bad years that he made another attempt at film work, playing himself in Sepia Cinderella in 1947. At the outset of the 1950s, he finally began to put his life back together, getting treatment for his condition and getting a job at Benton & Bowles, one of the top advertising agencies in New York, as a producer and director of television soap operas (in those days, the sponsors had a very direct hand in the actual making of the soaps). He also made one final big-screen appearance, portraying a priest in Edgar G. Ulmer's St. Benny the Dip, a strange, whimsical drama shot on the Lower East Side of New York. His life took another upswing when he divorced his first wife once he was on his feet again financially. Bartholomew later married and had a family, divorced, went through a bout of alcoholism, beat that, and married a third time. The marriage to his third wife, Elizabeth, lasted for the rest of his life. In his final years, Bartholomew could finally enjoy thinking about his movie career, something that he'd been unable to do for decades. He'd remained friends with James Lydon even in the bad years, and in his sixties he started to see old friends such as Jackie Cooper, Gene Reynolds, and Jane Withers again. Suffering from emphysema, he retired from television work in 1991, but that same year Bartholomew did a segment as a host and narrator in a cable television special on the history of MGM. It was the world's last look at the former top child star -- he died in early 1992 -- and, ironically enough, by that time even his British accent, so much a part of his image as a boy, was long gone.

Trivia: It is possible that when actor Guy Kibbee portrayed newspaper editor Webb in the 1940 film version of Our Town, he harked back to his own father's experiences as a news journalist. The cherubic, pop-eyed Kibbee first performed on Mississippi riverboats as a teenager, then matriculated to the legitimate stage. The 1930 Broadway play Torch Song was the production that brought Kibbee the Hollywood offers. From 1931 onward, Kibbee was one of the mainstays of the Warner Bros. stock companies, specializing in dumb politicos (The Dark Horse [1932]), sugar daddies (42nd Street [1933]) and the occasional straight, near-heroic role (Captain Blood [1935]). In 1934, Kibbee enjoyed one of his rare leading roles, essaying the title character in Babbitt (1934), a role he seemed born to play. During the 1940s, Kibbee headlined the Scattergood Baines B-picture series at RKO. He retired in 1949, after completing his scenes in John Ford's Three Godfathers. Kibbee was the brother of small-part play Milton Kibbee, and the father of Charles Kibbee, City University of New York chancellor.

Trivia: Actor C. Aubrey Smith was, so far as many American moviegoers were concerned, the very personification of the British Empire. Even so, when young English journalist Alistair Cooke first travelled to Hollywood in the early 1930s to interview Smith, it was not to discuss the actor's four decades in show business, but to wax nostalgic on his athletic career. The son of a London surgeon, Smith played soccer for the Corinthians and cricket for Cambridge. For four years, "Round the Corner Smith" (so named because of his unique playing style) was captain of the Sussex County Cricket Club, playing championship matches throughout the Empire. When time came to choose a "real" vocation, Smith dallied with the notion of following in his dad's footsteps, then worked as a teacher and stockbroker. In 1892, at the age of 29, he finally decided to become an actor (not without family disapproval!), launching his stage career with the A. B. Tappings Stock Company. He made his London debut in 1895, and the following year scored his first significant success as Black Michael in The Prisoner of Zenda; also in 1896, he married Isobel May Wood, a union that endured for over fifty years. His subsequent stage triumphs included Shaw's Pygmalion, in which he succeeded Sir Herbert Beerbohm-Tree as Professor Henry Higgins. Despite the theatrical community's disdainful attitude towards the "flickers", Smith enthusiastically launched his film career in 1914. He was one of the co-founders of the short-lived but energetic Minerva Film Company, and by 1915 had begun making movies in America. It was his 1928 stage hit Bachelor Father that led to Smith's phenomenally successful career in talking pictures. For 18 years, he was perhaps Hollywood's favorite "professional Englishmen." He was at his best in martinet military roles, most memorably in a brace of 1939 productions: The Sun Never Sets, in which he used a wall-sized map to dutifully mark off the far-flung locations where his progeny were serving the Empire, and The Four Feathers, wherein he encapsulated his generation by crustily declaring "War was war in my day, sir!" Other notable roles in the Smith canon included Jane's father in Tarzan the Ape Man (1932), a close-minded aristocrat who turns out to be an out-of-work actor in Bombshell (1933), the intensely loyal Colonel Zapt in The Prisoner of Zenda (1937) and an outraged murder-victim-to-be in Ten Little Indians (1945). Smith briefly returned to the stage in 1941, and throughout the war years could be seen in roles ranging from single-scene cameos (The Adventures of Mark Twain, Unconquered) to full leads (1945's Scotland Yard Inspector). A recipient of the Order of the British Empire in 1938, he was knighted by King George VI in 1944, largely because of the positive image of Mother England that the actor invariably projected. The undisputed leader of Tinseltown's "British Colony," Smith also organized the Hollywood Cricket Club, taking great pride in the fact that he hadn't missed a weekend match for nearly sixty years. Sir C. Aubrey Smith was still in harness when he died of pneumonia at the age of 85; his last film appearance as Mr. Lawrence in Little Women was released posthumously in 1949.

Trivia: Like his fellow character actors C. Aubrey Smith and Sir Guy Standing, the dignified Henry Stephenson was seemingly born with a relief map of the British Empire chiseled on his countenance. Born in the British West Indies, Stephenson was educated at England's Rugby College. He turned to acting in his twenties, touring the provinces before settling into leading roles in London and New York. Though he made a smattering of silent film appearances, Stephenson's movie career did not really begin until 1932, with his supporting appearance in The Animal Kingdom. Virtually always cast as an aristocrat or man of means, Stephenson essayed such roles as Mr. Laurence in Little Women (1933), Sir Joseph Banks in Mutiny on the Bounty (1935), the Duke of Norfolk in The Prince and the Pauper, and Count Matthieu de Lesseps in Suez (1938). Henry Stephenson acted in films until his mid-seventies; his last film assignments included the part of Mr. Brownlow in the David Lean-directed Oliver Twist (1948).

Trivia: A versatile American screen actor and former juvenile star who made up in energy what he lacked in height, Mickey Rooney was born Joe Yule Jr. on September 23, 1920, in Brooklyn, NY. The son of vaudevillians, Rooney first became a part of the family act when he was 15-months-old, and was eventually on-stage singing, dancing, mimicking, and telling jokes. He debuted onscreen at the age of six in the silent short Not to Be Trusted (1926), playing a cigar-smoking midget. His next film was the feature-length Orchids and Ermine (1927). Over the next six years, he starred in more than 50 two-reel comedies as Mickey McGuire (a name he legally adopted), a series based upon a popular comic strip, "Toonerville Folks." In 1932, he changed his name to "Mickey" Rooney when he began to appear in small roles in feature films. He was signed by MGM in 1934 and gave one of the most memorable juvenile performances in film history as Puck in A Midsummer Night's Dream (1935). A turning point in Rooney's career came with his 1937 appearance as Andy Hardy, the wise-cracking son of a small-town judge, in the B-movie A Family Affair. The film proved to be such a success that it led to a string of 15 more Andy Hardy pictures over the next twenty years. The films were sentimental light comedies that celebrated small-town domestic contentment and simple pleasures, and the character became the one with which the actor became most identified. Rooney went on to a memorable role in Boys Town (1938) and several high-energy musicals with Judy Garland. Added to his Andy Hardy work, these performances caused his popularity to skyrocket, and, by 1939, he was America's biggest box-office attraction. Rooney was awarded a special Oscar (along with Deanna Durbin) in 1939 for his "significant contribution in bringing to the screen the spirit and personification of youth, and, as a juvenile player, setting a high standard of ability and achievement." His popularity peaked in the early '40s with his appearances in such films as The Human Comedy (1943) and National Velvet (1944), the latter with a young Elizabeth Taylor. After his World War II service and subsequent military discharge, however, his drawing power as a star decreased dramatically, and was never recovered; suddenly he seemed only acceptable as a juvenile, not a grown man. In the late '40s Rooney formed his own production company, but it was a financial disaster and he went broke. To pay off his debts, he was obliged to take a number of low-quality roles. By the mid-'50s, though, he had reinvented himself as an adult character actor, starring in a number of good films, including the title role in Baby Face Nelson (1957). Rooney continued to perform in both film, television, stage, and even dinner theater productions over the next four decades, and debuted on Broadway in 1979 with Sugar Babies. Although his screen work was relatively erratic during the '90s, he managed to lend his talents to diverse fare, appearing in both Babe: Pig in the City (1998) and the independent Animals (And the Tollkeeper) (1997). In 2006 Rooney was back on the big screen in the comedy hit A Night at the Museum, with a slew of subsequent roles on low-budget fare preceding an appearance in 2011's The Muppets. That same year, Rooney made headlines when he testified before Congress on the issue of elder abuse, and revealing himself as one of many seniors who had been victimized as a result of their age. Rooney continued working until his death in 2014 at age 93.During the course of his career, Rooney received two Best Actor and two Best Supporting Actor Oscar nominations, the last of which for his work in 1979's The Black Stallion. He also won a Golden Globe for the 1981 TV movie Bill. In 1983, while undergoing a well-publicized conversion to Christianity, he was awarded a special Lifetime Achievement Oscar "in recognition of his 60 years of versatility in a variety of memorable film performances." Rooney published his autobiography, Life Is Too Short, in 1991. His eight wives included actresses Ava Gardner and Martha Vickers.

Trivia: Juvenile actor Jackie Searl began performing on local Los Angeles radio at the age of 3. Jackie came to film prominence in the early-talkie era, nearly always playing a nasty, phlegmatic brat, none more nasty or phlegmatic than Sidney Sawyer in 1930's Tom Sawyer and 1931's Huckleberry Finn. In response to overwhelming demand from his fans, Searl was teamed with his female counterpart, hoydenish young Jane Withers, in three mid-1930s films. However, the anticipated sparks never flew on screen, possibly because Searl and Withers, both pleasant and well-behaved in real life, got along too well offscreen. Even at the height of his popularity, Searl (and his family) never pocketed more than $4000 a year; thus, he sought out other forms of employment after serving in World War II. He made a brief comeback as a film character actor in 1948 before disappearing for nearly a decade into the "civilian" world. In the early 1960s, Jack Searl (Jackie no more), his trademarked weaselly facial features augmented by a stubbly chin and bald dome, enjoyed a flurry of activity as a supporting villain on TV westerns, cop shows and situation comedies.

Trivia: Gray-haired and dignified, Reginald Barlow was a busy presence in Hollywood films of the 1930s. Having toured with a minstrel group from the age of nine, Barlow later served in no less than three wars, including World War I, during which he was made a colonel. Returning to acting in 1916, Barlow appeared in a few silent films, most prominently perhaps the low-budget Love's Flame (1920), for which he billed himself "Colonel Reginald Barlow." Turning to films permanently after the changeover to sound, the now veteran performer usually played men of means, military officers, senators, and bankers -- turning up as a chaplain in Ann Vickers (1933), the Duke of Newcastle in Last of the Mohicans (1936), the sheriff in Tower of London (1939), and the professor ostracizing mad scientist George Zucco in The Mad Monster (1942).

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: Born in Wales, E. E. Clive studied for a medical career before switching his field of endeavor to acting at age 22. Touring the provinces for a decade, Clive became an expert at virtually every sort of regional dialect in the British Isles. He moved to the U.S. in 1912, where after working in the Orpheum vaudeville circuit he set up his own stock company in Boston. By the 1920s, his company was operating in Hollywood; among his repertory players were such up-and-comers as Rosalind Russell. He made his film debut as a rural police officer in 1933's The Invisible Man, then spent the next seven years showing up in wry bit roles as burgomeisters, butlers, reporters, aristocrats, shopkeepers and cabbies. Though he seldom settled down too long in any one characterization, E. E. Clive was a semi-regular as Tenny the Butler in Paramount's Bulldog Drummond "B" series.

Trivia: Distinguished British actress Constance Collier began her career as a chorus dancer at the turn of the century. She established herself not only as a leading actress, but as a playwright, producer, director and acting coach. Her film career began with D.W. Griffith's Intolerance (1916); for the next four decades, she would occasionally visit Hollywood's shooting stages, though the theater remained her first choice. Of her talkie appearances, Ms. Collier is perhaps best remembered as the "den mother" of the all-female theatrical boarding house in 1937's Stage Door. All told, Constance Collier devoted over sixty years of her life to the theater and film arts.

Trivia: With the body of a scarecrow, the contemptuous stare of a house detective, and the voice of an air-raid siren, Irish-born Una O'Connor was one of filmdom's most unforgettable character actresses. Beginning her career with Dublin's Abbey Players and extending her activities to the London's West End and Broadway, O'Connor was cast as the socially conscious housekeeper in Noel Coward's 1932 London production Cavalcade; it was this role which brought her to Hollywood in 1933. She rapidly became a favorite of two prominent directors, James Whale and John Ford, neither of whom were inclined to ask her to tone down her film performances. For Whale, O'Connor screeched her way through two major 1930s horror films, The Invisible Man (1933) and The Bride of Frankenstein (1935); for Ford, O'Connor played the grieving mother of martyred IRA activist Wallace Ford in The Informer (1935) and Mrs. Grogan in The Plough and the Stars (1936). For those detractors who believe that O'Connor never gave a subtle, controlled performance in her life, refer to Lubitsch's Cluny Brown (1946), wherein Ms. O'Connor spoke not a single word as the glowering mother of upper-class twit Richard Haydn. Fourteen years after portraying Charles Laughton's overprotective mother in This Land Is Mine (1943), Una O'Connor once more appeared opposite Laughton in 1957's Witness for the Prosecution, playing a hard-of-hearing housekeeper; it was her last screen performance.

Trivia: One of Hollywood's great dowagers, long under contract to MGM, May Beatty, from New Zealand, rarely had more than a few moments to make her presence felt. But felt it was, from a silent bit in Dinner at Eight (1933) to the inquisitive Lady Handel in the thriller I Wake Up Screaming (1941).

Trivia: Born in the waning months of the Civil War, Jessie Ralph made her stage debut with a Providence, RI, stock company in 1880. Her extensive Broadway experience ranged from Shakespearean classics to George M. Cohan musicals. She had appeared in films as early as 1915, but did not become a permanent Hollywood resident until 1933. For the most part, Ralph was cast as kindly grandmas, sagacious maids, and stern but loving governesses; her finest screen performances included Peggoty in 1934's David Copperfield and a benign sorceress in 1940's The Blue Bird. Her gift for exuding imperious abrasiveness was amply demonstrated in such films as After the Thin Man (1936), and W.C. Fields' The Bank Dick (1940), appearing in the latter as Fields' gorgon mother-in-law, Mrs. Hermisillio Brunch. Jessie Ralph retired in 1941 after enduring a leg amputation.

Trivia: Stout, bushy-eyebrowed British actor Lionel Belmore capped a lengthy theatrical career with his entry into Hollywood films at the dawn of the talkie era. He was most often cast as innkeepers and burgomeisters, generally appearing in films set in England and Europe. Belmore was an off-and-on regular in Universal's Frankenstein films, appearing as the huffy-puffy mayor in the original Frankenstein (1931) and later showing up on the village council in Son of Frankenstein (1939) and Ghost of Frankenstein (1942). (He was killed off in Son, but reappeared in the same role in Ghost as though nothing had happened). The actor also came in handy in Warner Bros.' Errol Flynn swashbucklers, notably Prince and the Pauper (1936) and The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938). Belmore's oddest part was also one of his shortest. Though given good billing in Laurel and Hardy's Bonnie Scotland (1935) -- and made the subject of several lengthy write-ups in the film's promotional material -- Lionel Belmore's role as a blacksmith was cut down to a single gag, wherein he taps out the Laurel and Hardy theme song on his anvil!

Trivia: Born in New York and raised in England, character actor Gilbert Emery thrived as a stage actor, director and playwright on both sides of the Atlantic in the teens and twenties. In British films from 1929, Emery made his American movie debut (and his talkie debut as well) in Behind That Curtain (1929). Briefly parting company with Hollywood in 1932 and 1933 to concentrate on stage work, he returned to films on a permanent basis in 1934. His better-known roles include the pipe-smoking police inspector in Dracula's Daughter (1936), Mae West's business manager in Goin' to Town (1937), Thomas Jefferson in The Remarkable Andrew (1942) and the self-effacing Mr. Cliveden-Banks in Between Two Worlds (1944). As a screenwriter, he worked on such films as Cuban Love Song (1931), Mata Hari (1932) and Gallant Lady (1934). Gilbert Emery's credits are sometimes combined with those of American bit player Gilbert C. Emery, who died in 1934.

Trivia: One of the busiest members of Hollywood's British colony, actor Walter Kingsford inaugurated his stage career in London. Seldom a leading man (he wasn't tall enough), the august Kingsford provided support for such theatrical giants as John Barrymore, Ethel Barrymore, and Fay Bainter. His first American film was 1934's The Pursuit of Happiness, a Revolutionary-era comedy in which Kingsford had appeared on Broadway. Most of the actor's film characters were unsympathetic; he had the air of a disgraced aristocrat who'd been caught misappropriating trust funds or selling government secrets. Often appearing in brief, uncredited roles, Kingsford enjoyed good billing and steady work as Dr. Walter Carew, the snobbish, ultra-conservative head of Blair General Hospital in MGM's Dr. Kildare series. As Hollywood began turning out fewer and fewer films in the '50s, Walter Kingsford secured steady work in television: In the pilot film of Amos 'n' Andy, Kingsford has the first line in the first scene as a rare-coin assessor.

Trivia: The daughter of the judge of England's Leicester County Court Circuit, blonde leading lady Virginia Field was educated on the Continent. Her first stage appearance was in a Viennese production of All's Well That Ends Well. After some 40 appearances in British films, Field was brought to Hollywood to appear in David O. Selznick's Little Lord Fauntleroy (1936)--and, according to Field, to spend much of her offscreen time fending off the amorous advances of Mr. Selznick. At 20th Century-Fox in the late 1930s, Field was a fixture of that studio's Mr. Moto detective series, playing roles ranging from imperiled heroines to slinky villainesses. She came into her own in Hollywood with a series of wise-lipped "other woman" roles in films like Ladies in Love (1936), The Perfect Marriage (1946) and Dream Girl (1948). As delightfully outspoken in real life as she was within the confines her film characters, Field was a favorite interview subject of the 1960s and 1970s, regaling film buffs with the warts-and-all lowdown on such icons as Vivien Leigh and Loretta Young. In addition to her movie work, Field was active on Broadway in such productions as The Doughgirls and Light Up the Sky. Virginia Fields' three husbands included actors Paul Douglas and Willard Parker.

Trivia: Veteran British stage actor Lawrence Grant entered films in 1918, when his marked resemblance to Germany's Kaiser Wilhelm made him a "natural" for such epics as To Hell with the Kaiser. An acknowledged expert in American Indian lore, Grant also took time in 1918 to produce an experimental color film about Native Americans. Sound proved no obstacle to Grant's film career, as he proved in his first talkie role, the scurrilous Dr. Lakington in Bulldog Drummond (1929). He later appeared with his Drummond co-star Ronald Colman in such films as The Unholy Garden (1931) and Lost Horizon (1937). Usually a villain, Grant enjoyed a sizeable sympathetic role as Sir Lionel Barton, the luckless aristocrat tortured to death by the insidious Boris Karloff, in The Mask of Fu Manchu (1932). Active until 1945, Lawrence Grant could be seen in minor roles (often unbilled) in such horror efforts as Ghost of Frankenstein (1942) and The Living Ghost (1944).

Trivia: Busy in films from 1921 to 1949, actress Tempe Pigott was generally cast as gabby cockneys. In the talkie era, she could usually be found playing drunken harridans or slovenly slum landladies. Her larger roles include the excitable Mrs. Hawkins in Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1931) and the long-suffering Mrs. Hudson in the 1933 Sherlock Holmes opus A Study in Scarlet (1933). Though her role as Dwight Frye's hateful Auntie Glutz was unfortunately cut from Bride of Frankenstein (1935), Tempe Pigott was well represented in other Universal horror films, notably Murders in the Rue Morgue (1932) and Werewolf of London (1935).

Trivia: British actress Eily Malyon enjoyed a lucrative Hollywood screen career playing scores of no-nonsense schoolteachers, maids, governesses and maiden aunts. Ideally suited for costume pieces, she was seen in two major Dickens adaptations of the 1930s, playing Sarah Pocket in Great Expectations (1934) and Mrs. Cruncher in Tale of Two Cities (1935). She was also appropriately sinister as Mrs. Barryman in Hound of the Baskervilles (1939) and Mrs. Sketcher in Jane Eyre (1943). Eily Malyon's most hissable screen role was maiden Aunt Demetria Riffle in 1939's On Borrowed Time; Aunt Demetria's onerous Victorianism proved so distasteful to Julian Northrup(Lionel Barrymore) and his grandson Pud (Bob Watson) that they literally chose to die rather than submit to her whims.

Trivia: Dolores Costello was a delicate blonde beauty who projected patrician poise as a lead actress. The daughter of stage-screen matinee idol Maurice Costello, she and her sister (actress Helene Costello) began appearing as children in Vitagraph films that starred their father. As a teenager, Costello became a model for top New York illustrators, then began playing bit roles at age 17 in East Coast productions. She and her sister formed a successful dance duet on the New York stage in the George White Scandals of 1924, leading to the two of them being signed to film contracts by Warner Bros. Her career moved slowly at first, but took off as a sudden star after her appearance opposite John Barrymore in The Sea Beast (1926), a romanticized adaptation of Moby Dick; she and Barrymore were married in 1928. She went on to be one of the leading stars of the late '20s and early '30s, making the transition into the talkies but retiring from films in 1932 to have two children (one of whom was future actor John Barrymore, Jr.). After she and Barrymore Sr. split up, she returned to the screen in mature roles, notably as Freddie Bartholomew's mother in Little Lord Fauntelroy (1936) and as Isabel Amberson, Tim Holt's mother and Joseph Cotten's love, in Orson Welles' The Magnificent Ambersons (1942). She retired from the screen permanently in 1943.

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.