Trivia: Canadian actress/singer Deanna Durbin learned at a very early age that she was blessed with a strong and surprisingly mature set of vocal chords. After studying with coach Andres de Segurola, Durbin set her sights on an operatic career, but was sidetracked into films with a 1936 MGM short subject, Every Sunday. This one-reeler was designed as an audition for both Durbin and her equally youthful co-star Judy Garland; MGM decided to go with Durbin and drop Garland, but by a front-office fluke the opposite happened and it was Durbin who found herself on the outside looking in. But MGM's loss was Universal's gain. That studio, threatened with receivership due to severe losses, decided to gamble on her potential. Under the guiding influence of Universal executive Joseph Pasternak, Durbin was cast in a series of expensive, carefully crafted musicals, beginning in 1936 with Three Smart Girls. This and subsequent films--notably One Hundred Men and a Girl (1937) -- craftily exploited Durbin's remarkable operatic voice, but at the same time cast her as a "regular kid" who was refreshingly free of diva-like behavior. The strategy worked, and Durbin almost single-handedly saved Universal from oblivion; she was awarded a 1938 special Oscar "for bringing to the screen the spirit and personification of youth," and when she received her first screen kiss (from Robert Stack) in First Love (1939), the event knocked the European crisis off the front pages. Durbin remained popular throughout the first years of the 1940s, but when the box-office receipts began to flag, Universal attempted to alter Durbin's screen image with such heavy dramas as The Amazing Mrs. Holliday (1942) and Christmas Holiday (1944); unfortunately, these films failed to make the turnstiles click. In 1945, Durbin had her best "grown up" role in the murder mystery Lady on a Train (1945), which allowed her to dress a bit more glamorously than in previous appearances. By this time, however, Durbin was tired of filmmaking, and began exhibiting a conspicuous lack of interest in performing. After For the Love of Mary (1948), Durbin retired, escaping to France with her third husband, Lady on a Train director Charles David. She so thoroughly disappeared from public view that rumors persisted she had died. Actually, as one writer has pointed out, the "Deanna Durbin" that fans had known and loved had died, to be replaced by a fabulously wealthy matron who had absolutely no interest in the past. Though she lived in comfortable anonymity for her last five decades, Durbin retained her fervent fan following and gained a whole new following thanks to exposure of the vintage Durbin films on cable TV and video. She died in 2013 at the age of 91.

Trivia: Tortured but brilliant British actor Charles Laughton's unique performances made him a compelling performer both on stage and in film. After starting his career as an hotel manager, Laughton switched to acting. His performances in London's West End plays brought him early acclaim, which eventually led him to the Old Vic, Broadway and Hollywood. When he repeated his stage success in The Private Life of Henry VIII for Alexander Korda on film in 1933, he won a "Best Actor" Oscar. Known both for his fascination with the darker side of human behavior and for his comic touch, Laughton should be watched as a frightening Nero in Sign of the Cross (1932), the triumphant employee in If I Had a Million (1932), the evil doctor in Island of Lost Souls (1932), the incestuous father in The Barretts of Wimpole Street (1934), the irrepressible Ruggles in Ruggles of Red Gap (1935), the overbearing Captain Bligh in Mutiny on the Bounty (1935), which garnered him another Oscar nomination, and the haunted hunchback in The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1939), with a very young Maureen O'Hara. During the war years, he played some light roles in Tales of Manhattan (1942), Forever and a Day (1943) and The Canterville Ghost (1944), among others. By the late '40s, Laughton sought greater challenges and returned to the stage in The Life of Galileo, which he translated from Bertolt Brecht's original and co-directed. As stage director and/or performer, he made Don Juan in Hell in 1951, John Brown's Body in 1953, The Caine Mutiny Court Martial in 1954, and Shaw's Major Barbara in 1956, all in New York. When he returned to England in 1959, he appeared in Stratford-upon-Avon productions of A Midsummer Night's Dream, and King Lear. Later film appearances include O. Henry's Full House (1952), Hobson's Choice (1954), Witness for the Prosecution (1957) (which gave him another Oscar nomination), Spartacus (1960) and Advise and Consent (1962). Laughton was married from 1929 to his death to actress Elsa Lanchester, with whom he occasionally appeared. His direction of the film The Night of the Hunter (1955) is critically acclaimed.

Trivia: He began acting while a college student, then became president of his school's Dramatic Club. In 1927 Tone began his professional stage career in stock, then soon made it to Broadway. He began appearing in films in 1932, going on to a busy screen career in which he was typecast as a debonair, tuxedo-wearing playboy or successful man-about-town. For his work in Mutiny on the Bounty (1935) he received a Best Actor Oscar nomination. In the early '50s he gave up films to return to the stage; after appearing in an off-Broadway prouction of Uncle Vanya he returned to film in the play's screen version (1958), which he co-produced, co-directed, and starred in. He appeared in a handful of films in the '60s; meanwhile, onstage he got good reviews for his performance in the New York revival of Strange Interlude. In the mid '60s he costarred in the TV series "Ben Casey." He was married four times; his wives included actresses Joan Crawford, Jean Wallace, Barbara Payton, and Dolores Dorn-Heft.

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: A protégé of musical comedy star Beatrice Lillie in his native England, actor Stanley Ridges made his London stage debut in O' Boy. He went on to star as a romantic lead in several Broadway plays, and was cast in a similar capacity in his first film, the New York-lensed Crime of Passion (1934). Thereafter, the grey-templed Ridges excelled in dignified, underplayed, and distinctly non-British character roles. His best film assignments included the schizophrenic professor-turned-criminal in Black Friday (1940) (it would be unfair to say that he "stole" the picture from official star Boris Karloff, but he did have the best part), and the treacherous Professor Seletzky in Ernst Lubitsch's matchless black comedy To Be or Not to Be (1942). One of Stanley Ridges' last movie performances was as the kindly mentor of young doctor Sidney Poitier in the race-relations melodrama No Way Out (1950).

Trivia: For nearly two decades in Hollywood, Scottish-born actor Donald Meek lived up to his name by portraying a series of tremulous, shaky-voiced sycophants and milquetoasts -- though he was equally effective (if not more so) as nail-hard businessmen, autocratic schoolmasters, stern judges, compassionate doctors, small-town Babbitts, and at least one Nazi spy! An actor since the age of eight, Meek joined an acrobatic troupe, which brought him to America in his teens. At 18 Meek joined the American military and was sent to fight in the Spanish-American War. He contracted yellow fever, which caused him to lose his hair -- and in so doing, secured his future as a character actor. Meek made his film bow in 1928; in the early talkie era, he starred with John Hamilton in a series of New York-filmed short subjects based on the works of mystery writer S. S. Van Dyne. Relocating to Hollywood in 1933, Meek immediately found steady work in supporting roles. So popular did Meek become within the next five years that director Frank Capra, who'd never worked with the actor before, insisted that the gratuitous role of Mr. Poppins be specially written for Meek in the film version of You Can't Take It With You (1938) (oddly, this first association with Capra would be the last). Meek died in 1946, while working in director William Wellman's Magic Town; his completed footage remained in the film, though he was certainly conspicuous by his absence during most of the proceedings.

Trivia: American actor Charles Halton was forced to quit school at age 14 to help support his family. When his boss learned that young Halton was interested in the arts, he financed the boy's training at the New York Academy of Dramatic Arts. For the next three decades, Halton appeared in every aspect of "live" performing; in the '20s, he became a special favorite of playwright George S. Kaufman, who cast Halton in one of his most famous roles as movie mogul Herman Glogauer in Once in a Lifetime. Appearing in Dodsworth on Broadway with Walter Huston, Halton was brought to Hollywood to recreate his role in the film version. Though he'd occasionally return to the stage, Halton put down roots in Hollywood, where his rimless spectacles and snapping-turtle features enabled him to play innumerable "nemesis" roles. He could usually be seen as a grasping attorney, a rent-increasing landlord or a dictatorial office manager. While many of these characterizations were two-dimensional, Halton was capable of portraying believable human beings with the help of the right director; such a director was Ernst Lubitsch, who cast Halton as the long-suffered Polish stage manager in To Be or Not to Be (1942). Alfred Hitchcock likewise drew a flesh and blood portrayal from Halton, casting the actor as the small-town court clerk who reveals that Robert Montgomery and Carole Lombard are not legally married in Mr. and Mrs. Smith (1942). Charles Halton retired from Hollywood after completing his work on Friendly Persuasion in 1956; he died three years later of hepatitis.

Trivia: Actor Douglas Wood was the son of 19th century stage actress Ida Jeffreys. After a long stage career of his own, Wood entered films in 1934. His screen roles were plentiful but usually small; most often he could be found playing a judge or city official. He also came in handy as a red herring murder suspect in the many murder mysteries churned out by Hollywood in the war years. Douglas Wood remained active in films until 1956.

Trivia: "Miss Missouri of 1937" and a New York model voted "one of the five women in America with the best-dressed hair" by stylist Monsieur Leon (the other four were Claudette Colbert, Kathryn Grayson, Gertrude Lawrence, and Norma Shearer), blonde Helen Bennett appeared on Broadway in Dream Girl prior to playing "Madame Mysterious" in the 1945 Universal serial The Royal Mounted Rides Again. Bennett did two additional serials, Lost City of the Jungle and The Scarlet Horseman (both 1946), but played the female lead in neither. She later worked mostly on the radio but returned to the screen twice, in On the Threshold of Space (1956) and Return to Peyton Place (1961). Bennett was a founding member of the Pacific Pioneer Broadcasters.