Trivia: The son of a traveling British civil servant, Edmund Gwenn was ordered to leave his home at age 17 when he announced his intention to become an actor. Working throughout the British empire in a variety of theatrical troupes, Gwenn finally settled in London in 1902 when he was personally selected by playwright George Bernard Shaw for a role in Shaw's Man and Superman. Thanks to Shaw's sponsorship, Gwenn rapidly established himself as one of London's foremost character stars, his career interrupted only by military service during World War I. Gwenn's film career, officially launched in 1916, took a back seat to his theatrical work for most of his life; still, he was a favorite of both American and British audiences for his portrayals of blustery old men, both comic and villainous. At age 71, Gwenn was cast as Kris Kringle, a lovable old eccentric who imagined that he was Santa Claus, in the comedy classic Miracle on 34th Street (1947); his brilliant portrayal was honored with an Academy Award and transformed the veteran actor into an "overnight" movie star. Edmund Gwenn died shortly after making his final film, an oddball Mexican comedy titled The Rocket From Calabuch (1958); one of his surviving family members his cousin Cecil Kellaway, was a respected character actor in his own right.

Trivia: The only child of a very young married couple, American actress Janet Leigh spent her childhood moving from town to town due to her father's changing jobs. A bright child who skipped several grades in school, Leigh took music and dancing lessons, making her public debut at age 10 as a baton twirler for a marching band. Her favorite times were the afternoons spent at the local movie house, which she referred to as her "babysitter." In 1946, Leigh's mother was working at a ski lodge where actress Norma Shearer was vacationing; impressed by a photograph of Leigh, Shearer arranged for the girl (whose prior acting experience consisted of a college play) to be signed with the MCA talent agency. One year later Leigh was at MGM, playing the ingenue in the 1947 film Romance of Rosy Ridge. The actress became one of the busiest contractees at the studio, building her following with solid performances in such films as Little Women (1949), The Doctor and the Girl (1950), and Scaramouche (1952) -- and catching the eye of RKO Radio's owner Howard Hughes, who hoped that her several RKO appearances (on loan from MGM) would lead to something substantial in private life. Instead, Leigh married Tony Curtis (her second husband), and the pair became the darlings of fan magazines and columnists, as well as occasional co-stars (Houdini [1953], The Vikings [1958], Who Was That Lady? [1960]). Even as this "perfect" Hollywood marriage deteriorated, Leigh's career prospered. Among her significant roles in the '60s were that of Frank Sinatra's enigmatic lady friend in The Manchurian Candidate (1962), Paul Newman's ex-wife in Harper (1966), and, of course, the unfortunate embezzler in Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho (1960), who met her demise in the nude (actually covered by a moleskin) and covered with blood (actually chocolate sauce, which photographed better) in the legendary "shower scene." In the '80s, Leigh curtailed her film and TV appearances, though her extended legacy as both the star/victim of Psycho and the mother of actress Jamie Lee Curtis still found her a notable place in the world of cinema even if her career was no longer "officially" active.

Trivia: American actor Tom Drake inaugurated his acting career in 1938 with Clean Beds, a Broadway-bound play that closed out of town. A revived Clean Beds in 1939 brought Drake to the attention of MGM, who only half-heartedly promoted the actor, usually casting him in bits or secondary roles. His chance at stardom in White Cliffs of Dover (1944) was squelched when Drake's scenes were cut from that still-overlong wartime drama. A better opportunity came in the role of Judy Garland's "boy next door" vis-a-vis in Meet Me in St. Louis (1944); this was followed by an even meatier part in The Green Years (1946), in which Drake managed to keep his head above water despite such formidable supporting acting talent as Hume Cronyn, Charles Coburn, Jessica Tandy and Gladys Cooper. Unfortunately, the good roles began diminishing shortly afterward; Drake's performance as Richard Rodgers in Words and Music (1948) was knocked out of the box by Mickey Rooney's tyro interpretation of Lorenz Hart, while in Mr. Belvedere Goes to College (1949) everybody in the cast - including Shirley Temple - played second fiddle to Clifton Webb. Never able to fulfill his potential, Drake continued into the '70s playing subordinate roles in 'A' pictures, the occasional lead in low-budget films, and secondary TV parts in such productions as Marcus Welby MD and The Return of Joe Forrester. A classic example of how talented people could fall between the tracks of the studio contract system, Tom Drake spent his final years supplementing his performing income with a job as a used car salesman.

Trivia: If Donald Crisp had any peer as an actor, it was probably his fellow Scotsman Finlay Currie, who made a virtual star career (albeit mostly in England) playing the same kind of dour roles that Crisp often essayed -- but even that only overlapped with one aspect of Crisp's career. An Oscar-winning character actor whose career spanned three generations, from the 1910s to the 1960s, Crisp was also unique as a director and, before that, an assistant and colleague to such figures as D.W. Griffith -- and none of those activities even touched upon his most influential role in the movie business. Donald Crisp was born in Abberfeldy, Scotland, in 1880, and was educated at Oxford. He served as a trooper in the 10th Hussars in the Boer War, which allowed him to cross paths with a young Winston Churchill, before emigrating to the United States in 1906. While on the boat coming over, he chanced to sing in a ship's concert and impressed John C. Fisher, an opera impresario, sufficiently to offer him a job with his company as both a member of the chorus and a handyman. It was while touring with the company in the United States and Cuba that Crisp became interested in theater. By the end of the first decade of the 20th century, he was working as a stage manager for George M. Cohan, and soon after that he met D.W. Griffith, a former stage actor who had developed a yen for making movies; Crisp accompanied the legendary director to Hollywood in 1912. After serving as Griffith's assistant and watching him work, Crisp -- who portrayed General Ulysses S. Grant in The Birth of a Nation -- became a director in his own right. He later told an interviewer that he gave up directing because he wearied of being forced to do favors for studio production chiefs by employing their relatives in his films, so he returned to acting. In between working for Griffith and producers such as William H. Clune, Crisp managed to return to England to serve in army intelligence during the First World War. After returning to Hollywood, he went to work for Adolph Zukor at his Famous Players company in 1919, which was later to become Paramount Pictures; Zukor employed Crisp as an executive, charged with setting up the studio's operations in Europe. He later worked as a director for Douglas Fairbanks Sr. on such movies as Son of Zorro. Crisp's most visible role to the public during the silent era, however, may well have come right after his military service, as the brutal villain in Griffith's Broken Blossoms (1919). With the advent of sound, Crisp moved into acting entirely, and across the 1930s and '40s he essayed a wide range of roles, most memorably as the taciturn but loving father in John Ford's How Green Was My Valley (1941) (for which he won the Best Supporting Actor Academy Award), one of the put-upon crew in Frank Lloyd's Mutiny on the Bounty (1935), and Doctor Kenneth in William Wyler's Wuthering Heights (1939). Crisp was equally good in lovable or sinister roles; during the same period in which he was playing charming old codgers in National Velvet and Lassie Come Home, he was also memorable as Commander Beach, the tormented presumptive grandfather to Gail Russell's Stella Meredith in Lewis Allen's The Uninvited (1944), who dies at the hands of the vengeful spirit of his own daughter. All of this activity, which included as many as nine movies in a single year, didn't prevent Crisp from contributing to the war effort, once the Second World War came along -- by then, he held the rank of colonel in the U.S. Army reserves. What few people outside of the movie community realized during this period was that, beyond his work as an actor, Crisp was also one of the most influential people in Hollywood, wielding more power than most directors and even more than many producers (most of whom were, in the end, just hired executives). He was one of Hollywood's gatekeepers, one of the responsible adults who worked to make the business side of the industry work while stars of the era paraded their egos and vices before the cameras. Specifically, Crisp's long experience as not only an actor but also as a director and a production and studio executive made him ideal as an advisor to Bank of America -- one of the leading sources of working capital for the movie business (whose life-blood was loans) -- on which movies to make. He was on the bank's advisory board for decades, including a stint as its chairman, and had the ear of its directors, and many of the major movies financed by the bank in the 1930s and '40s got their most important approval from Crisp. He was also, not surprisingly, one of the more well-off members of the acting community, his banker's sobriety and clear-headedness allowing Crisp to make good investments, especially in real estate, across the decades that paid off well for him and his wife of 25 years, screenwriter Jane Murfin. Crisp continued acting right up through 1960 and Walt Disney's Pollyanna (he'd worked for Mary Pickford, who'd played in and produced the silent version of the same story 45 years earlier), mostly because he liked to work. Crisp passed away in 1974 at the ripe old age of 93, one of the most revered and beloved senior members of the acting community.

Trivia: Few of the performers in director John Ford's How Green Was My Valley (1941) were as qualified to appear in the film as Rhys Williams. Born in Wales and intimately familiar from childhood with that region's various coal-mining communities, the balding, pug-nosed Williams was brought to Hollywood to work as technical director and dialect coach for Ford's film. The director was so impressed by Williams that he cast the actor in the important role of Welsh prize fighter Dai Bando. Accruing further acting experience in summer stock, Rhys Williams became a full-time Hollywood character player, appearing in such films as Mrs. Miniver (1942), The Spiral Staircase (1946), The Inspector General (1949), and Our Man Flint (1966).

Trivia: British actor Reginald Owen was a graduate of Sir Herbert Beerbohm Tree's Academy of Dramatic Arts. He made his stage bow in 1905, remaining a highly-regarded leading man in London for nearly two decades before traversing the Atlantic to make his Broadway premiere in The Swan. His film career commenced with The Letter (1929), and for the next forty years Owen was one of Hollywood's favorite Englishmen, playing everything from elegant aristocrats to seedy villains. Modern viewers are treated to Owen at his hammy best each Christmas when local TV stations run MGM's 1938 version of The Christmas Carol. As Ebeneezer Scrooge, Owen was a last-minute replacement for an ailing Lionel Barrymore, but no one in the audience felt the loss as they watched Owen go through his lovably cantankerous paces. Reginald Owen's film career flourished into the 1960s and 1970s. He was particularly amusing and appropriately bombastic as Admiral Boom, the cannon-happy eccentric neighbor in Disney's Mary Poppins (1964).

Trivia: Reversing the usual procedure, Scottish actor Edmund Breon began his film career in Hollywood in 1928, then returned to the British Isles in 1932. Breon was most often seen in self-effacing roles, usually military in nature. He was cast as Lt. Bathurst in The Dawn Patrol (1930), Colonel Morgan in Goodbye, Mr. Chips (1939), and General Huddleston in Gaslight (1944). Among Edmund Breon's late-'40s assignments was the role of Julian Emery in the Sherlock Holmes opus Dressed to Kill (1946), an indication perhaps that the part had been slated for the real Gilbert Emery, a British actor who, like Breon, specialized in humble, passive characterizations.

Trivia: Though no one in his family had ever pursued a theatrical career (one of his more illustrious relatives was British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain), Alan Napier was stagestruck from childhood. After graduating from Clifton College, the tall, booming-voiced Napier studied at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, then was engaged by the Oxford Players, where he worked with such raw young talent as John Gielgud and Robert Morley. He continued working with the cream of Britain's acting crop during his ten years (1929-1939) on the West End stages. Napier came to New York in 1940 to co-star with Gladys George in Lady in Waiting. Though his film career had begun in England in the 1930s, Napier had very little success before the cameras until he arrived in Hollywood in 1941. He essayed dignified, sometimes waspish roles of all sizes in such films as Cat People (1942), The Uninvited (1943), and House of Horror (1946); among his off-the-beaten-track assignments were the bizarre High Priest in Orson Welles' Macbeth (1948) and a most elegant Captain Kidd in the 1950 Donald O'Connor vehicle Double Crossbones. In 1966, Alan Napier was cast as Bruce Wayne's faithful butler, Alfred, on the smash-hit TV series Batman, a role he played until the series' cancellation in 1968. Alan Napier's career extended into the 1980s, with TV roles in such miniseries as QB VII and such weeklies as The Paper Chase.

Trivia: British actor Hughie Green made his feature film debut at age 15 in Midshipman Easy (1935). Later that year, he appeared in Radio Pirates. His film career ended when he reached adulthood. During the '50s and '60s, Green was a television game show host. He returned to movies in 1978 with a role in the forgettable sex comedy What's Up Superdoc?

Trivia: Despite his Irish background, no one could play the typical British gentleman, or gentleman's gentleman, better than Lumsden Hare. There was definitely something aristocratic about the erect, dignified 6'1" Hare, who played the Prince Regent in The House of Rothschild (1934) and the King of Sweden in Cardinal Richelieu (1935), not to mention countless military officers, doctors, and lawyers. A leading man in his younger days to Ethel Barrymore, Maude Adams, Nance O'Neil, and Maxine Elliott, Hare made his screen debut, as F. Lumsden Hare, in 1916 and continued to mix film with Broadway appearances through the 1920s. Relocating to Hollywood after the changeover to sound, Hare became one of the era's busiest, and finest, character actors, appearing in hundreds of film and television roles until his retirement in 1960.

Trivia: Was known as Tom Jones of the Philippines after he became a singing sensation in the 1970s. Titled as the Jukebox King of Philippines for selling 34 gold and platinum certified records overall. Moved to the United States in the late 1970s where he co-owned four gas stations and was also into the real estate business. Managed a million dollar restaurant named Palm Plaza in the United States. Ran for Senate of the Philippines during the 2007 Philippine general election but lost. Is a member of the Iglesia ni Cristo church.

Trivia: Short, stout Scottish actor David Thursby came to Hollywood at the dawn of the talkie era. Thursby was indispensable to American films with British settings like Werewolf of London and Mutiny on the Bounty (both 1935). He spent much of his career at 20th Century Fox, generally in unbilled cameos. Often as not, he was cast as a London bobby (vide the 1951 Fred Astaire musical Royal Wedding, in which he was briefly permitted to sing). David Thursby remained active until the mid-60s.

Trivia: Bespectacled, dignified British stage actor Frederick Worlock came to Hollywood in 1938. During the war years, Worlock played many professorial roles, some benign, some villainous. A semi-regular in Universal's Sherlock Holmes series, he essayed such parts as Geoffrey Musgrave in Sherlock Holmes Faces Death (1943). Active until 1966, Frederick Worlock's final assignments included a voice-over in the Disney cartoon feature 101 Dalmations (1961).

Trivia: Courageous, silken haired, brown-eyed American actor of Scottish heritage with distinctive blaze on face, Lassie remains one of the best known and most beloved figures in cinema. Lassie made her screen debut in 1943 in Lassie Come Home, an adaptation of Eric Knight's novel. There her onscreen heroism, unusual intelligence and selfless devotion to her masters made her an instant star -- an unusual feat for a dog. It is probably one of Hollywood's worst-kept secrets, that Lassie, in her many incarnations, has always been played by a male dog. The first "Lassie" was played by a smart and attractive collie named Pal; he was chosen from 300 candidates. The producers chose a male to play her because traditionally male dogs are more attractive; they are also slightly less intelligent, but the trainer compensated for that on the set. Since then, all subsequent Lassies have been descendants of Pal. And though he and his sons and daughters have whelped many a purebred pup, only very few have been able to play the part as one of the requirements is the white blaze on the face. Following the success of Lassie's screen debut, Pal and four of his descendents played in six more sequels until 1951. In 1947, there was a Lassie radio show on ABC in which the original Pal provided the barking on the air; all of his other doggy vocalizations were performed by a human. In 1954 the first televised version of Lassie appeared. It ran, in different incarnations (including an animated series) until 1975. The courageous canine also appeared briefly in a syndicated TV series in the 1980s. In 1963, four episodes from the current Lassie television series were combined to make the feature film, Lassie's Greatest Adventure. In 1978, yet another Lassie feature appeared, the big-budget The Magic of Lassie, starring James Stewart. While promoting the film in New York, the dog star had a private suite at the posh Plaza Hotel. In 1994, Lassie appeared in another feature film simply titled Lassie.