Night Editor

William Gargan (Actor) .. Tony Cochrane

Born: July 17, 1905
Died: February 16, 1979

Trivia: Actor William Gargan began his career in 1924, shortly after leaving high school, and made it to Broadway within a year. In 1932 he won great acclaim for his work in the play The Animal Kingdom, leading to an invitation from Hollywood where he made his film debut in 1932. During the '30s he played high-energy, gregarious leads in many "B"-movies and second leads in major films; later he moved into character roles. For his work in They Knew What They Wanted (1940), he received a "Best Supporting Actor" Oscar nomination. He made few films after 1948, but from 1949 to 1951 he starred in the title role of the TV series Martin Kane, Private Eye then reprised the role in 1957 in The New Adventures of Martin Kane. He was stricken by cancer of the larynx, and in 1960 his voice box was removed in surgery, ending his career. He learned esophageal speech then taught this method for the American Cancer Society; the same group enlisted him as an anti-smoking campaigner. Two years after losing his speech, he gave his final performance, portraying a mute clown on TV in King of Diamonds. He authored an autobiography, Why Me? (1969), recounting his struggle with cancer. His brother was actor Edward Gargan.

Janis Carter (Actor) .. Jill Merrill

Born: October 10, 1917
Died: July 30, 1994

Trivia: Tall, outgoing American actress Janis Carter had initially planned to become a concert pianist, but switched her interests to opera while attending Western Reserve University. She worked steadily on Broadway in such musicals as DuBarry Was a Lady and Panama Hattie, the latter musical winning her a 20th Century-Fox contract. Curiously, Janis sang only in her first film, Cadet Girl. Thereafter, she was shunted off to comedy-relief and "other woman" roles. Her best screen performance was as the hard-boiled anti-heroine in the Columbia noir programmer Framed (1947). Janis Carter and the movie industry parted company in 1952, after which she focused her energies upon television; from 1954 through 1956, Janis and Bud Collyer co-hosted the daytime quiz show Feather Your Nest.

Jeff Donnell (Actor) .. Martha Cochrane

Born: July 10, 1921
Died: April 11, 1988

Trivia: Miss Jeff Donnell, as she was often billed, was signed by Columbia Pictures almost immediately after her graduation from Yale Drama School. Though likeable and talented enough for leading roles, the toothy, frizzy-haired Ms. Donnell was most often seen as the heroine's best friend or as kooky comedy relief. Columbia certainly kept her busy during her ten-year stay at that studio, casting her in such "A" pictures as My Sister Eileen (1942) and In a Lonely Place (1952) and "B"s like The Boogie Man Will Get You (1942) and Thief of Damascus (1952); she is particularly amusing in the latter film as Scheherezade, garrulously insisting upon telling her Arabian Nights stories to a villainous caliph whether he likes it or not. From 1954 through 1956, Jeff was married to another longtime Columbia contractee, Aldo Ray. On television, Jeff spent four years on The George Gobel Show as Gobel's wife, "Spooky Old Alice." Jeff Donnell's last regular TV work was the recurring role of Sheila Fields on the daytime soap opera General Hospital.

Frank Wilcox (Actor) .. Douglas Loring

Born: March 13, 1907
Died: March 03, 1974

Trivia: American actor Frank Wilcox had intended to follow his father's footsteps in the medical profession, but financial and personal circumstances dictated a redirection of goals. He joined the Resident Theater in Kansas City in the late '20s, spending several seasons in leading man roles. In 1934, Wilcox visited his father in California, and there he became involved with further stage work, first with his own acting troupe and then with the Pasadena Playhouse. Shortly afterward, Wilcox was signed to a contract at Warner Bros., where he spent the next few years in a wide range of character parts, often cast as crooked bankers, shifty attorneys, and that old standy, the Fellow Who Doesn't Get the Girl. Historian Leslie Haliwell has suggested that Wilcox often played multiple roles in these Warners films, though existing records don't bear this out. Frank Wilcox was still working into the 1960s; his most popular latter-day role was as Mr. Brewster, the charming banker who woos and wins Cousin Pearl Bodine (Bea Benaderet) during the inaugural 1962-1963 season of TV's The Beverly Hillbillies.

Coulter Irwin (Actor) .. Johnny

Charles D. Brown (Actor) .. Crane Stewart

Born: July 01, 1887
Died: November 25, 1948

Trivia: With two solid decades of stage experience to his credit, Charles D. Brown made his talking-picture bow in 1929's The Dance of Life. At first, Brown's bland features and flat voice made him difficult to cast, but by the time he'd reached his fifties, he was very much in demand for authoritative roles. Brown was frequently cast as a detective, though his unruffled demeanor made him a valuable "surprise" killer in more than one murder mystery. Charles D. Brown died in 1948, not long after completing his role in RKO's Follow Me Quietly (1950).

Paul E. Burns (Actor) .. Ole Strom

Born: January 26, 1881
Died: May 17, 1967

Trivia: Wizened character actor Paul E. Burns tended to play mousey professional men in contemporary films and unshaven layabouts in period pictures. Bob Hope fans will recall Burns' con brio portrayal of boozy desert rat Ebeneezer Hawkins in Hope's Son of Paleface (1952), perhaps his best screen role. The general run of Burns' screen assignments can be summed up by two roles at both ends of his career spectrum: he played "Loafer" in D.W. Griffith's Abraham Lincoln (1930) and "Bum in Park" in Barefoot in the Park (1967).

Harry Shannon (Actor) .. Capt. Lawrence

Born: June 13, 1890
Died: July 27, 1964

Trivia: A stagestruck 15-year-old Michigan farm boy, Harry Shannon succumbed to the lure of greasepaint upon joining a traveling repertory troupe. Developing into a first-rate musical comedy performer, Shannon went on to work in virtually all branches of live entertainment, including tent shows, vaudeville, and Broadway. By the 1930s, Shannon was a member of Joseph Schildkraut's Hollywood Theater Guild, which led to film assignments. Though he was busiest playing Irish cops and Western sheriffs, Harry Shannon is best remembered as Charles Foster Kane's alcoholic father ("What that kid needs is a good thrashin'!") in Orson Welles' masterpiece Citizen Kane (1941).

Robert Stevens (Actor) .. Doc Cochrane

Born: January 01, 1914
Died: January 01, 1981

Roy Gordon (Actor) .. Benjamin Merrill

Born: January 15, 1896
Died: October 12, 1978

Trivia: American actor and drama coach Roy Gordon made his first film appearance in 1938. A bit player for most of his Hollywood career, Gordon was at his best as corporate-executive types. He also played many a college dean, banker and military officer. Late Late Show habitues will remember Roy Gordon for his poignant cameo as doomed passenger Isidore Straus in Titanic (1953).

Michael Chapin (Actor) .. Doc as a Boy

Born: January 01, 1937

Robert Emmett Keane (Actor) .. Max

Born: March 04, 1883
Died: July 02, 1981

Trivia: The embodiment of businesslike dignity, actor Robert Emmett Keane was active in films from his 1929 debut in the talkie short Gossip through the 1956 second feature When Gangland Strikes. Because of his distinguished, above-reproach demeanor, Keane was often effectively cast as confidence men, shady attorneys and mystery murderers: after all, if he can convince the gullible folks people on-screen that he's honest, it's likely the audience will fall for the same line. Keane is warmly remembered by Laurel and Hardy fans for his roles in three of the team's 20th Century-Fox films of the '40s, playing con artists in two of them (A-Haunting We Will Go and Jitterbugs). In the early '50s, Keane played Captain Brackett in the national touring company of Rodgers and Hammerstein's musical triumph South Pacific. In private life, Robert Emmett Keane was the husband of Claire Whitney.

Anthony Caruso (Actor) .. Tusco

Born: April 07, 1916
Died: April 04, 2003

Trivia: American-born Anthony Caruso decided early in his showbiz career to cash in on his last name by becoming a singer. Though he enjoyed some success in this field, Caruso had better luck securing acting roles. Typecast as a villain from his first film, Johnny Apollo (1940), onward, he remained a reliable screen menace until the 1980s. Usually cast as an Italian (he was Louis Chiavelli in 1950's The Asphalt Jungle), he has also played his share of Greeks, Spaniards, Slavs, and Indian chiefs. He was occasionally afforded an opportunity to essay sympathetic characters on the various TV religious anthologies of the 1960s and 1970s, notably This Is the Life. In 1976, Anthony Caruso enjoyed one of his biggest and most prominent screen roles in Zebra Force.On April 4, 2003 Anthony Caruso died following an extended illness in Brentwood, CA. He was 86.

Edward Keane (Actor) .. Chief of Police Burnes

Born: May 24, 1884
Died: October 12, 1959

Trivia: American actor Edward Keane was eminently suitable for roles requiring tuxedos and military uniforms. From his first screen appearance in 1921 to his last in 1952, Keane exuded the dignity and assurance of a self-made man of wealth or a briskly authoritative Armed Services officer. Fortunately his acting fee was modest, enabling Keane to add class to even the cheapest of poverty-row "B"s. Generations of Marx Bros. fans will remember Edward Keane as the ship's captain (he's the one who heaps praise upon the three bearded Russian aviators) in A Night at the Opera (1935).

Jack Davis (Actor) .. District Attorney Halloran

Died: January 01, 1968

Lou Lubin (Actor) .. Necktie

Born: November 09, 1895

Trivia: Diminutive character actor Lou Lubin enjoyed a career of about a dozen years in movies and early television, as well as radio work. As is the case with most character players, he usually got small roles in big pictures and more substantial roles in small-scale productions. Lubin's short stature and distinctly urban accent made him ideal for playing henchmen and other shady, disreputable characters, although he also turned up on the side of the angels from time to time -- his most memorable part was in Val Lewton's production of The Seventh Victim (1943), as a seedy private eye who loses his life trying to do something decent and then turns up as a corpse on a subway. That same year, he was also given a fair amount of screen time in William Wellman's Lady of Burlesque as Moey the candy butcher. And in 1945, he was seen in Max Nosseck's Dillinger as the luckless waiter who gets on the wrong side of Lawrence Tierney's John Dillinger and receives savage vengeance for his trouble. Lubin's had been out of pictures for 20 years at the time of his death in 1973, at age 77.

Charles Marsh (Actor) .. Swanson

Born: January 01, 1893
Died: January 01, 1953

John Tyrrell (Actor) .. Street Sweeper Driver

Born: December 07, 1902
Died: September 19, 1949

Trivia: In show business from the age of 16, John Tyrrell spent ten years as a vaudeville headliner, playing straight man in the comedy team of Tyrrell and Mack. When vaudeville died, Tyrrell tried his luck as a single, taking acting lessons and spending two seasons in stock in Connecticut to learn the rudiments of role-playing. In 1936, he was signed to a contract by Columbia Pictures, where he remained until his death in 1949. He played bits in Columbia's A-product and juicy supporting roles in the studio's serials, horror flicks, and B-grade detective series. John Tyrrell is best known to contemporary audiences for his many appearances in Columbia's two-reel comedy product, sharing screen space with such funsters as Andy Clyde, Buster Keaton, and especially the Three Stooges.

Jimmy Lloyd (Actor) .. Clerk

Born: January 01, 1919
Died: August 25, 1988

Trivia: American actor Jimmy Lloyd was but one of many handsome contract players who did what he was told and was seldom given a chance to shine. Lloyd was allowed to act rather than just pose as Pvt. Spencer in United Artists' The Story of GI Joe (1944), but most of his appearances during his long contract with Columbia Pictures ranged from "who's he?" to "ho hum." The actor had small roles in such Columbia A-pictures as Gallant Journey (1944), Down to Earth (1947) and Walk a Crooked Mile (1948), and slightly better opportunities in the studio's B-musicals and westerns. But Jimmy Lloyd was considered so far down on the Columbia totem pole that the studio had no compunction about casting him in Hokus Pokus (1949), a Three Stooges two-reeler in which he had all of one scene.

Murray Leonard (Actor) .. Proprietor

Born: January 01, 1897
Died: January 01, 1970

Douglas Wood (Actor) .. Bank Manager

Born: January 01, 1880
Died: January 13, 1966

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.

Ronnie Ralph (Actor) .. Small Boy

Born: September 23, 1933

William Kahn (Actor) .. Newsboy

Joe Palma (Actor) .. Newsboy

Born: June 05, 1904
Died: April 23, 1989

Trivia: Onscreen from 1938, balding American comedian Joe Palma (sometimes billed Joseph Palma) became a fixture in Columbia Pictures short subjects, earning a reported 55 dollars a day supporting everybody from "Woo-Woo" Hugh Herbert to Vera Vague to the Three Stooges. Along with Johnny Kascier and the veteran Al Thompson, Palma played bit parts and did stunt work in virtually all the Stooges comedies of the 1940s and early '50s. When Shemp Howard died suddenly of a heart attack in November 1955, Palma doubled him in four comedies before producer/director Jules White finally settled on Joe Besser as the third Stooge. The studio kept up the charade by filming Palma, as Shemp, from the back or having him carry heavy loads of props that completely obscured his face. Joe Palma outlasted the Columbia short subject department, retiring from screen work in 1965.

Emmett Vogan (Actor) .. Coroner

Born: September 27, 1893
Died: October 06, 1964

Trivia: Character actor Emmett Vogan appeared in films from 1934 through 1956. A peppery gentleman with steel-rimmed glasses and an executive air, Vogan appeared in hundreds of films in a variety of small "take charge" roles. Evidently he had a few friends in the casting department of Universal Pictures, inasmuch as he showed up with regularity in that studio's comedies, serials and B-westerns. Comedy fans will recognize Emmett Vogan as the engineer partner of nominal leading man Charles Lang in W.C. Fields' Never Give a Sucker an Even Break (1941), and as the prosecuting attorney in the flashback sequences of Laurel and Hardy's The Bullfighters (1945).

Johnny Calkins (Actor) .. Boy

Born: August 06, 1916
Died: January 01, 1963

Donald Kerr (Actor) .. Reporter

Born: January 01, 1891
Died: January 25, 1977

Trivia: Character actor Donald Kerr showed up whenever a gumchewing Runyonesque type (often a reporter or process server) was called for. A bit actor even in two-reelers and "B" pictures, Kerr was one of those vaguely familiar faces whom audiences would immediately recognize, ask each other "Who is that?", then return to the film, by which time Kerr had scooted the scene. The actor's first recorded film appearance was in 1933's Carnival Lady. Twenty-two years later, Donald Kerr concluded his career in the same anonymity with which he began it in 1956's Yaqui Drums.

Betty Hill (Actor) .. Elaine

Frank Dae (Actor) .. Butler

Born: May 15, 1882
Died: August 29, 1959

Trivia: A gray-haired, distinguished looking actor from the legitimate stage, Frank Dae usually played pompous judges, police chiefs, and senators. Busiest in the 1940s, when he appeared in literally hundreds of films (often unbilled), Dae's career lasted well into the '50s and also included some television work.

Herman Marks (Actor) .. Man

Frank McLure (Actor) .. Man

Cy Malis (Actor) .. Man

Born: January 01, 1907
Died: January 01, 1971

Harry Tyler (Actor) .. Bartender

Born: January 01, 1888
Died: September 15, 1961

Trivia: American actor Harry Tyler wasn't really as old as the hills when he started his film career in 1929; in fact, he was barely 40. Still, Tyler's wizened, gimlet-eyed face was his fortune, and he spent most of his movie years playing variations of the Spry Old Timer. Tyler began his stage career as a boy soprano in 1901, under the aegis of producer Flo Ziegfeld and Ziegfeld's wife Anna Held. He married Gladys Crolius in 1910, and for the next twelve years they toured vaudeville in a precursor to Burns and Allen's smart guy/dumb dora act. Returning to the legitimate stage in 1925, Tyler journeyed to Hollywood when talking pictures took hold four years later. His inaugural screen appearance was a recreation of his stage role in The Shannons on Broadway. Harry Tyler played bits and featured roles as janitors, sign painters, philandering businessmen, frontier farmers and accident victims from 1929 until his farewell appearance in John Ford's The Last Hurrah (1958).

Charles Wagenheim (Actor) .. Phillips

Born: January 01, 1895
Died: March 06, 1979

Trivia: Diminutive, frequently mustached character actor Charles Wagenheim made the transition from stage to screen in or around 1940. Wagenheim's most memorable role was that of "The Runt" in Meet Boston Blackie (1941), a part taken over by George E. Stone in the subsequent "Boston Blackie" B-films. Generally cast in unsavory bit parts, Wagenheim's on-screen perfidy extended from Hitchcock's Foreign Correspondent (1940) to George Stevens' Diary of Anne Frank (1959), in which, uncredited, he played the sneak thief who nearly gave away the hiding place of the Frank family. Wagenheim kept his hand in the business into the 1970s in films like The Missouri Breaks (1976). In 1979, 83-year-old Charles Wagenheim was bludgeoned to death by an intruder in his Hollywood apartment, five days before another veteran actor, Victor Kilian, met the same grisly fate.

Jack Frack (Actor) .. Reporter

Wally Rose (Actor) .. Photographer

Born: May 18, 1911

Eddy Chandler (Actor) .. Dickstein

Born: March 12, 1894
Died: March 23, 1948

Trivia: Stocky character actor Eddy Chandler's movie career stretched from 1915 to 1947. In 1930, Chandler was afforded a large (if uncredited) role as Blondell, partner in crime of villain Ralf Harolde, in the RKO musical extravaganza Dixiana. Thereafter, he made do with bit parts, usually playing cops or military officers. His brief appearance in Frank Capra's It Happened One Night as the bus driver who begins singing "The Man on a Flying Trapeze"--and plows his bus into a ditch as a result--assured him choice cameos in all future Capra productions. Chandler can also be seen as the Hospital Sergeant in 1939's Gone with the Wind. One of Eddy Chandler's few billed roles was Lewis in Monogram's Charlie Chan in the Secret Service (1944).

Vernon Dent (Actor) .. Fat Man

Born: February 16, 1895
Died: November 05, 1963

Trivia: Actor Vernon Dent launched his career in stock companies and as one-third of a singing cabaret trio. Silent comedian Hank Mann, impressed by Dent's girth (250 pounds) and comic know-how, helped Vernon enter films in 1919. Dent starred in a 2-reel series at the Pacific Film Company, then settled in at Mack Sennett studios as a supporting player, generally cast as a heavy. During his Sennett years, Dent was most often teamed with pasty-faced comedian Harry Langdon, who became his lifelong friend and co-worker. Remaining with Sennett until the producer closed down his studio in 1933, Dent moved to Educational Pictures, where he was afforded equal billing with Harry Langdon; and when Langdon moved to Columbia Pictures in 1934, Dent followed, remaining a mainstay of the Columbia 2-reel stock company until 1953. Here he was featured with such comic luminaries as Andy Clyde, Buster Keaton, Hugh Herbert, Vera Vague, and especially the Three Stooges. Among Dent's dozens of talkie feature-film credits were W.C. Fields' Million Dollar Legs (1932) and You're Telling Me (1934); in one of his rare feature starring roles, Dent played a boisterous, wife-beating sailor in the 1932 "B" Dragnet Patrol. Well-connected politically in the Los Angeles area, Dent supplemented his acting income by running the concession stand at Westlake Park. Vernon Dent retired in the mid-1950s, due to total blindness brought about by diabetes; the ever-upbeat actor was so well-adjusted to his handicap that many of Dent's close friends were unaware that he was blind.

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