Trivia: Paris-born actress Claudette Colbert was brought to New York at the age of seven by her banker father. She planned an art career after high school graduation, studying at the Art Student's League. Attending a party with actress Anne Morrison, the 18-year-old was offered a three-line bit in Morrison's new play The Wild Westcotts. That ended her art aspirations, and Colbert embarked on a stage career in 1925, scoring her first big critical success in the 1926 Broadway production of The Barker, in which she played a duplicitous snake charmer. One year later, the actress made her first film at Long Island's Astoria studio, For the Love of Mike (1927), but the film was unsuccessful and she enjoyed neither the experience nor her young director, Frank Capra. So back she went to Broadway, returning to films during the talkie revolution in The Hole in the Wall (1929), which was also the movie-speaking debut of Edward G. Robinson. Once again, Colbert disliked film acting; but audiences responded to her beauty and cultured voice, so she forsook the stage for Hollywood. Colbert's popularity (and salary) skyrocketed after she was cast as "the wickedest woman in history," Nero's unscrupulous wife Poppaea, in the Biblical epic The Sign of the Cross (1932). Colbert expanded her range as a street-smart smuggler's daughter in I Cover the Waterfront and in the pioneering screwball comedy Three-Cornered Moon (both 1933), but it was for a role she nearly refused that the actress secured her box-office stature. Virtually every other actress in Hollywood had turned down the role of spoiled heiress Ellie Andrews in Columbia's It Happened One Night (1934), and when director Frank Capra approached an unenthusiastic Colbert, she wearily agreed to appear in the film on the conditions that she be paid twice her normal salary and that the film be completed before she was scheduled to go on vacation in four weeks. Colbert considered the experience one of the worst in her life -- until the 1935 Academy Awards ceremony, in which It Happened One Night won in virtually all major categories, including a Best Actress Oscar for her. Colbert spent the next decade alternating between comedy and drama, frequently in the company of her most popular co-star, Fred MacMurray. She gained a reputation of giving 110 percent of her energies while acting, which compensated for her occasional imperviousness and her insistence that only one side of her face be photographed (which frequently necessitated redesigning movie sets just to accommodate her phobia about her "bad side"). Colbert remained a top money-making star until her last big hit, The Egg and I (1947), after which she lost some footing, partly because of producers' unwillingness to meet her demands that (under doctor's orders) she could only film a short time each day (her doctor was her husband). She hoped to jump-start her career in the role of Margo Channing in All About Eve, but those plans were squelched when she injured her back and had to relinquish the character to Bette Davis. Traveling the usual "fading star" route, Colbert made films in Europe and a budget Western in the U.S. before returning triumphantly to Broadway, first in 1956's Janus, then in the long-running 1958 comedy Marriage Go Round. The actress also appeared on television, although reportedly had trouble adjusting to live productions. In 1961, she returned to Hollywood as Troy Donahue's mother in Parrish. It would be her last film appearance until the 1987 TV movie, The Two Mrs. Grenvilles -- in which she far outclassed her material. Still a prominent figure in the Hollywood hierarchy, Colbert retired to her lavish home in California, where she frequently entertained her old friends Ronald and Nancy Reagan. Claudette Colbert died in 1996 in Bridgetown, Barbados, at the age of 92.

Trivia: American actor Melvyn Douglas began his stage career shortly after being mustered out of World War I Army service. Douglas secured a position with the Owens Repertory Company, making his debut in a production of Merchant of Venice. He spent the first part of the 1920s touring with Owens Repertory and with the Jessie Bonstelle Company, reaching Broadway in the 1928 drama A Free Soul. Brought to Hollywood in the early talkie "gold rush" for stage-trained actors, Douglas made his film bow in 1931's Tonight or Never. With The Old Dark House (1932), the actor established his standard screen character: a charming, blase young socialite who could exhibit great courage and loyalty when those attributes were called upon. After a brief return to Broadway in 1933, Douglas returned to films in 1935, signing a joint contract with Columbia and MGM. Most often appearing in sophisticated comedies, Douglas was one of the busiest stars in Hollywood, playing in as many as eight films per year. One of the actor's better roles was a supporting one: as Cary Grant's beleaguered lawyer and business adviser in Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House (1947), who spends most of the film trying to keep Grant from spending himself into bankruptcy. Douglas found movie roles scarce in the early 1950s thanks to the "Red Scare." The actor was married to Congresswoman Helen Gahagan, the woman labeled by Richard Nixon as the "pink lady" friendly to communism. The more rabid anti-communists in Washington went after Douglas himself, suggesting that because he was Jewish and had changed his name for professional reasons, he was automatically politically suspect. Douglas began recovering his career with a 1950s detective program, Hollywood Off-Beat - ironically playing a disbarred lawyer trying to regain his reputation. He headed back to Broadway, gaining high critical praise for his "emergence" as a topnotch character actor (his prior stage and film credits were virtually ignored). Some of Douglas' stage triumphs included Inherit the Wind (replacing Paul Muni in the Clarence Darrow part) and The Best Man (which had a character based on Richard Nixon) Douglas' long-overdue Academy Award was bestowed upon the actor for his role as Paul Newman's dying father in Hud (1963); other highlights of Douglas' final Hollywood days included I Never Sang for My Father (1971) and Being There (1979), the latter film winning the actor his second Oscar. Melvyn Douglas died at age 80, just before the release of his final film, Ghost Story (1981).

Trivia: Chicago-born Robert Young carried his inbred "never give up" work ethic into his training at the Pasadena Playhouse. After a few movie-extra roles, he was signed by MGM to play a bit part as Helen Hayes' son in 1931's Sin of Madelon Claudet. At the request of MGM head Irving Thalberg, Young's role was expanded during shooting, thus the young actor was launched on the road to stardom (his first-released film was the Charlie Chan epic Black Camel [1931], which he made while on loan to Fox Studios). Young appeared in as many as nine films per year in the 1930s, usually showing up in bon vivant roles. Alfred Hitchcock sensed a darker side to Young's ebullient nature, and accordingly cast the actor as a likeable American who turns out to be a cold-blooded spy in 1936's The Secret Agent. Some of Young's best film work was in the 1940s, with such roles as the facially disfigured war veteran in The Enchanted Cottage (1945) and the no-good philanderer in They Won't Believe Me (1947). In 1949, Young launched the radio sitcom Father Knows Best, starring as insurance salesman/paterfamilias Jim Anderson (it was his third weekly radio series). The series' title was originally ironic in that Anderson was perhaps one of the most stupidly stubborn of radio dads. By the time Father Knows Best became a TV series in 1954, Young had refined his Jim Anderson characterization into the soul of sagacity. Young became a millionaire thanks to his part-ownership of Father Knows Best, which, despite a shaky beginning, ran successfully until 1960 (less popular was his 1961 TV dramedy Window on Main Street, which barely lasted a full season). His second successful series was Marcus Welby, M.D. (1968-1973). Young's later TV work has included one-shot revivals of Father Knows Best and Marcus Welby, and the well-received 1986 TV-movie Mercy or Murder, in which Young essayed the role of a real-life pensioner who killed his wife rather than allow her to endure a painful, lingering illness. Young passed away from respiratory failure at his Westlake Village, CA, home at the age of 91.

Trivia: Demure, soulful-eyed actress Mona Barrie was born in England and educated in Australia. She worked steadily on stage in both her native and adopted country before coming to America with a Fox Studios contract in 1933. Not quite charismatic enough to become a star, Mona prospered as a second lead, frequently cast as a woman of mystery or a wronged wife. She also displayed an unsuspected flair for deadpan comedy in her virtually wordless portrayal of a haughty movie queen in W.C. Fields' Never Give a Sucker an Even Break (1941). Mona Barrie's final film was the 1953 western Thunder in the Sun.

Trivia: Bowman attended the American Academy of Dramatic Arts and began a career as a stage actor and radio singer in the '30s. Beginning with his debut in Internes Can't Take Money (1937), he spent seven years playing second leads, often as a playboy thanks to his suave, elegant style and dapper, handsome looks. Bowman hit his stride in the mid '40s, notably in Smash-Up (1947) opposite Susan Hayward. Never a major star, he began concentrating more on his stage work in the late '40s. He briefly starred in the TV series The Adventures of Ellery Queen (1950-51). After the mid '50s Bowman retired from the screen (except for a role in Youngblood Hawke in 1964), after which he went on to become the radio and TV consultant for the Republican Senatorial and Congressional Committee in Washington and later for Bethlehem Steel, coaching politicians and businessmen in speaking and on-camera techniques.

Trivia: In films from 1919, Dutch vaudeville comic George Davis played one of the featured clowns in Lon Chaney's He Who Gets Slapped (1924) and was also in Buster Keaton's Sherlock, Jr. that same year. In the sound era, Davis specialized in playing waiters but would also turn up as bus drivers, counter men, and circus performers, often assuming a French accent. When told that Davis' business as a hotel porter included carrying Greta Garbo's bags, the soviet envoy opined: "That's no business. That's social injustice." "Depends on the tip," replied Davis. He continued to play often humorous bits well into the '50s, appearing in such television shows as Cisco Kid and Perry Mason. The veteran performer died of cancer at the Motion Picture Country House and Hospital.

Trivia: Diminutive, raspy-voiced German actor Fritz Feld first gained prominence as an assistant to Austrian impresario Max Reinhardt. Feld came to the U.S. in 1923 in the touring company of Reinhardt's The Miracle. Once he reached California, Feld formed the Hollywood Playhouse in partnership with Joseph Schildkraut; here he staged hundreds of productions featuring up-and-coming L.A. talent, including his future wife, actress Virginia Christine. In films on a sporadic basis since the 1920s, Feld began working onscreen regularly around 1936, eventually toting up over 400 movie appearances (not to mention his more than 700 TV stints and 1000-plus radio programs). He was cast as Viennese psychiatrists, Italian duellists, Teutonic movie directors, Russian orchestra leaders, and French maitre d's. It was in 1947's If You Knew Susie that Feld developed his signature "schtick": the sharp "Pop!" sound effect created by smacking his open mouth with the flattened palm of his hand. In the 1960s and 1970s, Feld was a favorite of moviemakers who'd grown up watching his vintage screen appearances; he was virtually a regular at the Disney studios, appeared in many of Jerry Lewis' projects, was given fourth billing in Gene Wilder's The World's Greatest Lover (1977), and was seen in Mel Brooks' Silent Movie (1976) (where his trademarked "Pop!" was conveyed via subtitle) and The History of the World, Part One (1981) (as the head waiter at the Last Supper). Among Fritz Feld's least characteristic screen appearances were his performance as a hearty Northwoods trapper in the 1976 "four-waller" Challenge to Be Free and his poignant cameo as the alcoholic who offers down-and-out Faye Dunaway a match in Barfly (1987).

Trivia: Born in Germany, Anders was billed under his given name of Rudolph Amendt when he made his American screen bow in Stamboul Quest (1934). He became "Robert O. Davis" for such roles as Franz Joseph in Champagne Waltz (1937) and "His Excellency" in the 1941 serial King of the Texas Rangers. During the war years, when character actors with Germanic names became bankable commodities, he settled upon "Rudolph Anders," and remained so until his retirement in 1964. Anders flourished in sinister roles, often playing Nazis or communist spies. In the early 1950s, he was seen as Teutonic scientists in the sci-fiers Phantom from Space (1953) and The Snow Creature (1954). And on TV, he played Dr. Von Meter on the kiddie serial Space Patrol. Rudolph Anders was back at work for Der Fatherland as a Nazi doctor in his final film, 36 Hours (1964).

Trivia: Czechoslovakian stage actor and director Egon Brecher was brought to Hollywood in 1929 to appear in foreign-language versions of American films. Briefly a fixture of mid-1930s horror films, Brecher could be seen in The Black Cat (1934) and Mark of the Vampire (1935). In 1935's Werewolf of London, it is Brecher's duty (in the role of a Himalayan priest) to intone the venerable "There are some things it is better not to bother with!" He worked steadily in the espionage films of the 1940s, his Slavic accent well-suited to both noble and villainous roles. One of Egon Brecher's largest screen roles was in Columbia's So Dark the Night, a 1946 film peopled almost exclusively by dependable European character actors.

Trivia: Presenting himself as a real-life Italian baron, Gennaro Curci arrived in Hollywood along with his wife Elvira Curci (1900-1984). Both Curcis appeared as Hollywood dress extras, the imposing-looking Gennaro often as a major domo or maître d'. In the romantic comedy I Met Him in Paris (1937), Curci -- the very picture of a proper waiter -- has a memorable encounter with Claudette Colbert's New York fashion designer. Curci: "You have the ask to wish for you me pleasure?" Colbert: "I have the ask to wish for you me pleasure?" Curci: "Yes! I am the waiter speaking who American. Okey dokey?"

Trivia: Many research sources arbitrarily begin the list of French actor Eugene Borden's films in 1936. In fact, Borden first showed up on screen as early as 1917. Seldom afforded billing, the actor was nonetheless instantly recognizable in his many appearances as headwaiters, porters, pursers and coachmen. Along with several other stalwart European character actors, Borden was cast in a sizeable role in the above-average Columbia "B" So Dark the Night (1946). Musical buffs will recall Eugene Borden as Gene Kelly and Oscar Levant's landlord in An American in Paris (1951).

Trivia: Born in Puerto Rico, actor Alberto Morin received his education in France. While in that country he worked briefly for Pathe Freres, a major film distribution firm, then studied theatre at the Escuela de Mimica in Mexico. Upon the advent of talking pictures, Morin was signed by Fox Pictures to make Spanish-language films for the South American market. He remained in Hollywood as a character actor, seldom getting much of a part but nearly always making an impression in his few seconds of screen time. Morin also worked steadily in radio and on such TV weeklies as Dobie Gillis and Mr. Roberts, sometimes billed as Albert Morin. During his five decades in Hollywood, Alberto Morin contributed uncredited performances in several of Tinseltown's most laudable achievements: he played Rene Picard in the Bazaar sequence in Gone With the Wind (1939), was a French military officer at Rick's Cafe Americain in Casablanca (1942), and showed up as a boat skipper in Key Largo (1947).

Trivia: A debonair, mustachioed supporting actor from France, Jean De Briac played prominent roles in the silent era -- Fred Thomson's fisherman brother in Mary Pickford's The Love Light (1921), the notorious "The Knifer" in Clara Bow's Parisian Love (1925), the stage director in Greta Garbo's The Divine Woman (1928) -- but mainly bit parts thereafter. De Briac, whose career continued well into the '50s, even turned up in a 1949 episode of television's The Lone Ranger.

Trivia: By rights, B-movie director Charles Haas should have a cult following, as the maker of such delightfully trashy films as Girls' Town, The Beat Generation, The Big Operator, and Platinum High School. For devotees of the cheap, the lurid, and the tawdry in Hollywood cinema, Haas has a solid record of achievement -- "psychotronic" movie buffs can count many a moment of delight in Haas' output. Yet he doesn't enjoy any reputation, and is something of a cipher in the world of B-movies. Part of this may be the result of Haas' lack of a real "style." In terms of pacing and exposition, the movies for which he is most famous don't unfold so much as they careen along like cars in an auto race (or, in their wildest sequences, like cars in a demolition derby); but that's an essential attribute of the movies themselves. If a film such as Girls' Town were paced more like "normal," mainstream films, it would run the risk of allowing audiences to stop and think about the absurdity of well-endowed 26-year-old Mamie van Doren playing a juvenile offender, or the ridiculousness of 34-year-old Mel Torme as a punk car thief, and there would go whatever willing suspension of disbelief the movie engendered in the first place; thus, their breakneck pacing and lack of dramatic subtlety is intrinsic to their existence as well as their allure. Part of the appeal of Haas' work and career is that it takes a certain kind of director, fearless or perhaps shameless, to go forward with casting like that in Girls' Town. Aficionados of such films should love the director for his sheer audacity. Haas' lack of reputation may also be a result of the unorthodox way in which he became a director, moving up from bit actor to assistant director to writer/producer in feature films, and then jumping into the then-new medium of television before returning to features. Indeed, Haas may well have been among the very first directors to make the jump from television to feature films. Born in Chicago in 1913, the Harvard-educated Haas went out to Hollywood after graduation, where he landed some work as an extra at Universal. He appeared in a small role in one Paramount release, Wesley Ruggles' comedy I Met Him in Paris (1937), starring Claudette Colbert, but he was principally based at Universal and, by 1937, had become an assistant director at the studio. He soon shifted his career to the making of documentaries and industrial films, experience which served him well during World War II -- he spent the war working in the U.S. Army Signal Corps, making training films. Haas returned to Universal after the war and his first credit was as the associate producer on the low-budget thriller Her Adventurous Night, directed by John Rawlins. He was soon elevated to producer and writer on Frank Borzage's film noir Moonrise (1948), a major production at the time (but which also proved a commercial disappointment). Following its release, Haas returned to making industrial films, and then went to work in television. At the time, the new medium had precious little experienced talent to draw on, and Haas moved up to the director's chair in short order. It was from there, working on such series as Broken Arrow (based on the 1950 feature film starring James Stewart), that he returned to movies as a director, turning in a pair of good little B-Westerns, Showdown at Abilene and Star in the Dust, both in 1956. The latter was particularly important, beyond its merits as a movie, for bringing Haas into the orbit of producer Albert Zugsmith. In 1959, Haas' film career took a sharp upward leap when he began directing a series of movies for Zugsmith. The producer had enjoyed a massive hit with High School Confidential (1958), an exploitation movie dealing with high school students and drugs that was directed by Jack Arnold; but he'd subsequently lost the services of Arnold and, instead, engaged Haas to direct the follow-up movies: Girls Town, Platinum High School, The Big Operator, and -- the most delightfully sleazy of them all -- The Beat Generation. The latter movie had absolutely nothing to do with William Burroughs, Neal Cassidy, Jack Kerouac, et al.; rather, its plot concerned a hunt by the police for a serial rapist who, as it turns out, spends his time in a Southern California beatnik community. It is to Haas' credit that he could transform material like this into a finished film; most directors of the period might well have balked at the project after reading the script. Haas wasn't Jack Arnold's equal -- none of the movies that he made for Zugsmith have the smoothness or the mix of good acting and terrible lines that Arnold made so spellbinding in High School Confidential -- but he also often had far worse scripts to deal with than Arnold did, as well as poorer overall casts to work with; but he persevered to get those pictures made, to the delight of B-movie and exploitation film buffs for decades since. Indeed, among creators of 1950s screen iconography, Haas could take credit for directing most of the movies on which Mamie van Doren's lingering reputation as a screen sex-goddess is based. He gave up making features after 1960 and returned to television, where he directed pilots for Universal and episodes of G.E. Theatre, The Man From U.N.C.L.E. at MGM, and several notable installments of The Outer Limits for United Artists, including "Cold Hands, Warm Heart," starring William Shatner and Geraldine Brooks, and "Keeper of the Purple Twilight," starring Warren Stevens and Robert Webber. The director was sometimes billed as Charles F. Haas in some of his credits. He retired after the 1960s, and should not be confused with the screenwriter/actor of the same name whose career is associated with the movies Tex, Tron, Gremlins 2, and Matinee.

Trivia: European character actor George Sorel made his first American film appearance in 1936. Usually showing up unbilled as gendarmes and maître d's, Sorel was afforded rare screen billing for his one scene and one line as Walter Woolf King's valet in Laurel and Hardy's Swiss Miss (1938). He flourished during WWII thanks to his rather shifty, sinister features, which permitted him to play many a Nazi or collaborator. One of George Sorel's most extensive assignments was in the 1946 Universal serial Lost City of the Jungle; when the serial's principal heavy, Lionel Atwill, died during production, Sorel was called in to double for Atwill in several transitional scenes.