Trivia: A lovable star with a vivacious personality, mesmerizing smile, and big blue eyes, Joan Blondell, the daughter of stage comic Eddie Blondell (one of the original Katzenjammer Kids), spent her childhood touring the world with her vaudevillian parents and appearing with them in shows. She joined a stock company at age 17, then came to New York after winning a Miss Dallas beauty contest. She then appeared in several Broadway productions and in the Ziegfield Follies before being paired with another unknown, actor James Cagney, in the stage musical Penny Arcade; a year later this became the film Sinners Holiday, propelling her to stardom. Blondell spent eight years under contract with Warner Bros., where she was cast as dizzy blondes and wisecracking gold-diggers. She generally appeared in comedies and musicals and was paired ten times on the screen with actor Dick Powell, to whom she was married from 1936-45. Through the '30s and '40s she continued to play cynical, wisecracking girls with hearts of gold appearing in as many as ten films a year during the '30s. In the '50s she left films for the stage, but then came back to do more mature character parts. Blondell is the author of a roman a clef novel titled Center Door Fancy (1972) and was also married to producer Mike Todd (1947-50).

Trivia: He trained for the stage at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art; in 1908 he made his London debut, and four years later debuted in New York. Remaining in the U.S., he served with the American Army in World War One. He appeared in two silent films in the '20s, but remained primarily a stage actor. With the advent of the sound era, however, he began his screen career in earnest in 1929. He played character comedy parts in many films over the next two decades, usually cast as whimsical, bemused types. He is perhaps best remembered for playing the title role in Topper (1937) and its sequels.

Trivia: Of Polish and Norwegian descent, Carole Landis moved with her mother and siblings from Wisconsin to California, where at age seven she made her inauspicious stage debut in an amateur talent show. Within five years, Carole began winning beauty contests. In high school, she was only interested in athletics, organizing a girl's football team which was dissolved by the principal on the grounds that it was "unladylike." Married at 15 and separated a few weeks later, Carole dropped out of school to pursue an acting career. She was principal singer and star hula dancer at the Royal Hawaiian club in San Francisco. Entering films in 1937 as a bit actress, Carole played a thankless leading role in the 1939 serial Daredevils of the Red Circle. Later that year, she was selected to play the prehistoric heroine of Hal Roach's One Million BC; according to Roach, she won the role on the basis of her athletic prowess and running ability. Signed at Roach, Carole was dubbed "The Ping Girl" in the studio's publicity, appearing in comedy leads in Turnabout, Road Show, and Topper Returns (all 1941). In 1941, half of Carole's Roach contract was purchased by 20th Century-Fox. She received good reviews for her performances in such Fox films as I Wake Up Screaming (1941), Orchestra Wives (1942) and My Gal Sal (1942). In 1942, Carole joined Martha Raye, Kay Francis and Mitzi Mayfair for a Hollywood Victory Committee tour of the British isles. She wrote a book on the subject of this tour, Four Jills in A Jeep, which in 1944 was filmed by Fox with the four actresses starring. Carole was one of the most tireless performers on the USO circuit, at one point contracting malaria but insisting upon maintaining her hectic schedule. On the home front, she was a principal fundraiser for the American Cancer Society. After briefly appearing in a 1945 Broadway musical, Carole returned to films, but her star had eclipsed and she had to make do with B pictures. In 1948, Carole Landis committed suicide.

Trivia: The daughter of a circus clown, American actress Billie Burke became a musical comedy star in the early 1900s under the aegis of two powerful Broadway producers: Charles K. Frohman and Florenz Ziegfeld. Burke's career soared after her marriage to Ziegfeld, which was both a blessing and a curse in that some newspaper critics, assuming she wouldn't have reached the heights without her husband's patronage, gave her some pretty rough reviews. Actually, she had a very pleasant singing voice and ingratiating personality, not to mention natural comic gift that transferred well to the screen for her film debut in Peggy (1915). She had no qualms about adjusting to characters roles upon reaching 40, but she was devoted to the stage and didn't intend to revive her film career - until the crippling debts left behind by Ziegfeld after his death in 1932 forced her to return full-time to Hollywood. At first concentrating on drama, Burke found that her true strength lay in comedy, particularly in portraying fey, birdbrained society ladies. She worked most often at MGM during the sound era, with rewarding side trips to Hal Roach studios, where she appeared as Mrs. Topper in the three Topper fantasy films, played Oliver Hardy's wife in Zenobia (1939) and earned an academy award nomination for her performance in Merrily We Live (1938). A tireless trouper, Burke appeared in virtually every sort of film, from rugged westerns like Sgt. Rutledge (1960) to a pair of surprisingly good two-reel comedies for Columbia Pictures in the late 1940s. If she had done nothing else worthwhile in her seven-decade career, Burke would forever be remembered for her lighthearted portrayal of Glinda the Good Witch in the matchless The Wizard of Oz (1939). In addition to her many film portrayals, Burke was herself portrayed in two filmed biographies of Flo Ziegfeld: Myrna Loy played her in The Great Ziegfeld (1936), while Samantha Eggar took the role in the TV-movie Ziegfeld: The Man and His Women (1978).

Trivia: Born Edward Flanagan, O'Keefe was a lithe, brash, charming, tall, rugged lead actor. The son of vaudevillians, he began appearing onstage in his parents' act while still a toddler. By age 16 he was writing scripts for "Our Gang" comedy shorts. He attended some college and did more work on vaudeville before entering films in the early '30s, appearing in bit roles in more than 50 films under the name Bud Flanagan. His work in a small role in the film Saratoga (1937) impressed Clark Gable, who recommended that he be cast in leads. MGM agreed, so he changed his name to Dennis O'Keefe and went on to play leads in numerous films, beginning with Bad Man of Brimstone (1938). Besides many light action-oriented films, he also appeared in numerous '40s comedies, and later specialized in tough-guy parts. Later in his career he directed a film or two and also wrote mystery stories. In the late '50s O'Keefe starred in the short-lived TV series "The Dennis O'Keefe Show." He was in only two films in the '60s. He died at 60 of lung cancer. His widow is actress Steffi Duna.

Trivia: Patsy Kelly was a dumpy, big-eyed comedic actress with Brooklyn manners and accent. Having studied dance since childhood and also developed into a skilled comedienne, she was very popular in Broadway musicals of the early '30s such as Earl Carroll's Sketches and Wonder Bar, opposite Al Jolson in the latter. In 1933 Hal Roach brought her to Hollywood to replace ZaSu Pitts as Thelma Todd's costar in a popular series of two-reel comedies. Over the next decade she sustained a busy screen career, often playing the deadpan, wisecracking friend of the heroine in comedies and musicals; occasionally she played leads, as well. She retired after 1943, reportedly because of a drinking problem. Later she worked on radio and TV and performed with close friend Tallulah Bankhead in the play Dear Charles, at Bankhead's kind invitation. In the '60s she returned occasionally to films in supporting roles. In 1971 she scored a major success as the costar (a tap-dancing maid) of the Broadway revival of No No Nanette, for which she won a Tony Award; she went on to perform in the Broadway revival of Irene.

Trivia: H.B. Warner was the son of Charles Warner and the grandson of James Warner, both prominent British stage actors. A tentative stab at studying medicine was abandoned when the younger Warner took drama lessons in Paris and Italy, then joined his father's stock company. After touring the British empire, Warner made his first American stage appearance in 1905. A leading man in his younger days, Warner starred in the first stage and screen versions of that hardy perennial The Ghost Breaker. His most celebrated silent film role was as Christ in Cecil B. DeMille's The King of Kings (1927). Though Warner sometimes complained that this most daunting of portrayals ruined his career, in point of fact he remained extremely busy as a character actor in the 1930s and 1940s. A favorite of director Frank Capra, Warner appeared as Chang in Lost Horizon (1937) (for which he was Oscar-nominated) and as old man Gower in the Christmas perennial It's a Wonderful Life (1946). Warner also played Inspector Nielsen in several of the Bulldog Drummond B-pictures of the 1930s, and had a cameo as one of Gloria Swanson's "waxworks" in Sunset Boulevard. H.B. Warner's final screen appearance was in DeMille's 1956 remake of The Ten Commandments.

Trivia: African American comic actor Eddie Anderson was born into a show-business family: his father was a minstrel performer, and his mother a circus tightrope walker. Anderson entered show business at 14, teaming with his brother Cornelius in a song-and-dance act. His movie career began with a lengthy uncredited part as Lowell Sherman's valet in 1932's What Price Hollywood? The best of his earliest film assignments was the part of Noah in the 1936 cinemazation of Marc Connelly's all-black Broadway production The Green Pastures. On Easter Day of 1937, Anderson was engaged to play a one-shot role as a railway porter nicknamed Rochester on radio's The Jack Benny Program. Response was so overwhelmingly positive to Anderson's sandpaper voice and razor-sharp comic timing that the actor was hired as a regular on Benny's program, cast as Jack's know-it-all butler; it was an association which would last until Benny's death in 1974. In addition to his weekly radio duties, Anderson was co-starred with Benny in such films as Man About Town (1939), Buck Benny Rides Again (1940) Love Thy Neighbor (1941) and The Meanest Man in the World (1942); he also continued in the Rochester role on Benny's TV series, which ran until 1965. Outside of his work with Benny, Anderson played various tremulous chauffeurs and handymen in many other films, sometimes in a stereotypical fashion, but nearly always on equal footing with his white co-stars; indeed, his relationship with his screen "boss" Dennis O'Keefe in 1945's Brewster's Millions was so casual that the film was banned in lily-white Mississippi. In 1943, Anderson was afforded top billing in the MGM musical Cabin in the Sky, sharing screen time with such stellar black talent as Lena Horne, Ethel Waters, Rex Ingram and Louis Armstrong. One of the wealthiest black entertainers in the business, Anderson enhanced his film, radio and TV earnings with shrewd real estate investment. He suffered a stroke in the early 1960s which forced him to cut down his activities, though he was always available to work with Jack Benny in the latter's television specials. A prized "social awareness" moment occurred on a Benny special of the late 1960s when Jack invited "Rochester" to portray his servant once more. "But, boss," Eddie Anderson raspily responded, "we don't do that any more!"

Trivia: Born in England, George Zucco launched his theatrical career in Canada in 1908. During his first decade as a performer, Zucco toured in American vaudeville with his wife, Frances, in a sketch entitled "The Suffragette." He established himself as a leading actor in England in the 1920s, entering films with 1931's The Dreyfus Case. Zucco returned to the U.S. in 1935 to play Disraeli opposite Helen Hayes in Victoria Regina. He came to Hollywood to re-create his stage role in the film version of Autumn Crocus (1937), remaining to play mostly minor roles for the next two years. He finally found his villainous niche in the role of the erudite but deadly Professor Moriarity in 1939's The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes. Throughout the 1940s, Zucco apparently took every role that was offered him, playing mad scientists, master criminals, and occasional red herrings in films ranging from Universal's The Mad Ghoul (1943) to PRC's Fog Island (1945). He played the fanatical Egyptian priest Anhodeb in 1940's The Mummy's Hand, and, though supposedly killed in that film, showed up none the worse for wear in the 1942 sequel The Mummy's Tomb. His quirkiest horror role was as a gas station attendant who doubled as a kidnapper and voodoo drum-thumper in Monogram's incredible Voodoo Man (1944). When not scaring the daylights out of his audience, Zucco could be found playing roles requiring quiet whimsy, notably the detective in Lured (1947) and the judge in Let's Dance (1950). After completing his final, unbilled film assignment in David and Bathsheba (1951), George Zucco completely disappeared from view; seriously ill for many years, he died in a Hollywood sanitarium at the age of 74.

Trivia: Vaudeville, stock and Broadway actor Donald MacBride made his Hollywood debut in the 1938 Marx Brothers farce Room Service, reprising his stage role as explosive hotel manager Wagner ("Jumping Butterballs!!!") His previous film appearances had been lensed in his native New York, first at the Vitagraph studios in Flatbush, where he showed up in the Mr. and Mrs. Sidney Drew comedies of the 1910s. During the early talkie years, MacBride showed up in several one- and two-reelers, providing support to such Manhattan-based talent as Burns & Allen, Bob Hope and Shemp Howard. After Room Service, the bulldog-visaged MacBride was prominently cast in picture after picture, usually as a flustered detective. He was teamed with Alan Mowbray in a brace of 1940 RKO "B"s about a pair of shoestring theatrical producers, and was featured in four of Abbott and Costello's comedies. Among the actor's rare noncomic roles were the dying gangster boss in High Sierra (1941) and the dour insurance executive in The Killers (1946). MacBride's television work includes a season as dizzy Marie Wilson's long-suffering employer on the early-1950s TV sitcom My Friend Irma. Donald MacBride's last film role was as Tom Ewell's backslapping boss in the 1955 Billy Wilder comedy The Seven-Year Itch.

Trivia: After establishing herself on the Italian stage, actress Rafaela Ottiano came to American films in 1924. During the talkie era, Ottiano specialized in sinister, spiteful characterizations. As aging trollop Russian Rita in She Done Him Wrong (1933), she meets her well-deserved end at the hands of Mae West, while in The Devil Doll (1935), she makes clear her plans to exploit her scientist husband's "miniaturization" process by hissing malevolently, "We'll make the whole world small!!!!" A somewhat more benign Rafaela Ottiano can be seen in Grand Hotel (1932), in which she plays the overprotective maidservant of ballerina Greta Garbo, and Curly Top (1935), in which her sour severity melts when exposed to the relentless cheeriness of Shirley Temple.

Trivia: American actor Trevor Bardette could truly say that he died for a living. In the course of a film career spanning three decades, the mustachioed, granite-featured Bardette was "killed off" over 40 times as a screen villain. Entering movies in 1936 after abandoning a planned mechanical engineering career for the Broadway stage, Bardette was most often seen as a rustler, gangster, wartime collaborator and murderous backwoodsman. His screen skullduggery carried over into TV; one of Bardette's best remembered video performances was as a "human bomb" on an early episode of Superman. Perhaps being something of a reprobate came naturally to Trevor Bardette -- or so he himself would claim in later years when relating a story of how, as a child, he'd won ten dollars writing an essay on "the evils of tobacco," only to be caught smoking behind the barn shortly afterward.

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).

Trivia: Australian-born actor George Lloyd spoke without a trace of accent of any kind in his hundreds of movie appearances. Lloyd's mashed-in mug and caterpillar eyebrows were put to best use in roles calling for roughneck sarcasm. He was often seen as second-string gangsters, escape-prone convicts, acerbic garage mechanics and (especially) temperamental moving men. George Lloyd's film career began in the mid-1930s and petered out by the beginning of the TV era.

Trivia: Billed as Duke York Jr. when he entered films in 1933, this muscular actor essayed such action-oriented roles as King Kala in Flash Gordon (1936). By the 1940s, York had found his particular niche as a second-string Lon Chaney Jr. He was a mainstay at Columbia's short-subject unit in the 1940s, playing the various hunchbacks, werewolves, goons, and Frankensteins who menaced such comedians as the Three Stooges, El Brendel, and Andy Clyde. One of his rare roles out of makeup was in the Stooges' 1943 comedy Higher Than a Kite, which revealed that York wasn't quite as adept at handling dialogue as he was at grunting and growling. Though Duke York committed suicide in 1952, he kept appearing in Columbia's two-reelers and Westerns through the magic of stock footage until the mid-'50s.