Trivia: Lending his mellifluous voice and regal mien to more than 100 films, British actor James Mason built a long career playing assorted villains, military men, and rather dubious romantic leads. Born the son of a wool merchant in the British mill town of Huddersfield, Mason excelled in school and earned a degree in architecture from Cambridge in 1931. Having acted in several school plays, however, he thought he had a better shot at earning a living as an actor rather than an architect during the Great Depression. Mason won his first professional role in The Rascal and made his debut in London's West End theater world in 1933 with Gallows Glorious. A year after he joined London's Old Vic theater, he made his screen debut in Late Extra in 1935. Mason became a regular British screen presence in late '30s "quota quickies," including The High Command (1937). The actor made a career and personal breakthrough, however, with I Met a Murderer (1939). Along with co-writing, co-producing, and starring in the film, he also wound up marrying his leading lady, Pamela Kellino, in 1940. Mason became Britain's biggest screen star a few years later with his performance as the sadistic title character in the Gainsborough Studios melodrama The Man in Grey (1943). He cemented his fame as the cruel romantic leads women loved in the critically weak, but highly popular, Gainsborough costume dramas Fanny by Gaslight (1944) and The Wicked Lady (1945), finally achieving international stardom for his charismatic performance as Ann Todd's cane-wielding mentor in the well-received The Seventh Veil (1946). Rather than immediately going to Hollywood, however, Mason remained in England. Revealing that he could be more than just brutal leading men in weepy potboilers, he added an artistic as well as popular triumph to his credits with Carol Reed's Odd Man Out (1947). Starring Mason as a doomed IRA leader hunted by the police, Odd Man Out garnered international raves, and he often cited it as his favorite among his many films.After co-starring in the British drama The Upturned Glass (1947), the Masons headed to Hollywood in 1947. Spurning a long-term studio contract, Mason became one of Hollywood's busiest free agents. Anxious not to be typecast, he bucked his image as the irresistible sadist by playing trapped wife Barbara Bel Geddes' kind boss in Max Ophüls' Caught and appearing as Gustave Flaubert in Vincente Minnelli's version of Madame Bovary (both 1949). Mason returned to roguish form (albeit tempered by sympathy) with his second Ophüls film, The Reckless Moment. Along with two superb turns as wily, disillusioned German Field Marshal Rommel in The Desert Fox (1951) and The Desert Rats (1953), Mason also engaged in a glorious Technicolor romance with Ava Gardner in Pandora and the Flying Dutchman (1951) and played the villain in the swashbuckler The Prisoner of Zenda (1952). Calling on his suave intelligence, Mason starred as cool butler-turned-spy Cicero in what he considered his best Hollywood film, the espionage thriller 5 Fingers (1952). The actor played the treasonous Brutus in the director's excellent Shakespeare-adaptation Julius Caesar in 1953.Mason stepped behind the camera as director for the first and only time with the subsequent short film The Child (1954), featuring his wife and daughter Portland Mason. Returning to Hollywood acting, Mason garnered numerous accolades for George Cukor's lavish 1954 remake of A Star Is Born. 1954 proved to be a banner year for the actor, as his artistic triumph in A Star Is Born was accompanied by the popular screen version of Jules Verne's 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea (1954), featuring Mason as megalomaniac submarine skipper Captain Nemo. Bolstered by these successes, he used his clout to produce and star in Nicholas Ray's groundbreaking family drama Bigger Than Life (1956). Bigger Than Life was one of the first Hollywood movies to examine prescription drug abuse, but proved box-office poison. Soured on producing, Mason focused solely on acting for the latter half of the decade, working in Island in the Sun (1957), Cry Terror! (1958), Journey to the Center of the Earth (1959), and, most notably, North by Northwest (1959).Edging away from Hollywood, Mason took a supporting role in the British drama The Trials of Oscar Wilde in 1960. Having retained his British citizenship during his years in America, he left Hollywood permanently two years later, relocating to Switzerland with his family. After the move, Mason took on the challenge of playing agonized pedophile Humbert Humbert in Stanley Kubrick's 1962 adaptation of Vladimir Nabokov's novel Lolita. Whether duping clueless mother Shelley Winters into marriage, lusting after her teenage daughter Sue Lyon, or helplessly pursuing rival pervert Peter Sellers, Mason's Humbert was as much broken victim as scheming predator, injecting uneasy emotion into the difficult role. Despite appearing in such dubious fare as Genghis Khan (1965) and The Yin and Yang of Dr. Go (1971), Mason continued to resist typecasting with his strong turn as a lecherous friend in The Pumpkin Eater (1964), and distinguished himself in such films as Anthony Mann's sword-and-sandal epic The Fall of the Roman Empire (1964) and the adaptation of Lord Jim in 1965. Showing his facility with lighter films, Mason earned a Best Supporting Actor Oscar nomination for his performance as ugly duckling Lynn Redgrave's older sugar daddy in the romantic comedy Georgy Girl (1966). Beginning a collaboration that would last until the end of his career, Mason followed that film with his first for director Sidney Lumet, playing a George Smiley-esque British spy in the exemplary John Le Carré adaptation The Deadly Affair (1967). Amid all this work, Mason met his second wife Clarissa Kaye on the set of Michael Powell's Australian romp Age of Consent (1969) and married her in 1971. With Kaye putting Mason ahead of her career, the actor maintained his prolific pace, starring in the skillful murder mystery The Last of Sheila (1973), playing Magwitch in a TV version of Great Expectations in 1974, appearing as an estate patriarch in the humid potboiler Mandingo (1975), a Cuban minister in the pre-Holocaust drama Voyage of the Damned (1976), and a weathered German colonel in Sam Peckinpah's only war film, Cross of Iron (1976). Mason's inimitable air of gravitas suited the role of Joseph of Arimathea in the made-for-TV film Jesus of Nazareth (1977), and enhanced the humor of his appearance as the God-like Mr. Jordan in Warren Beatty's highly popular romantic fantasy Heaven Can Wait (1978). Rarely turning down jobs even as he approached age 70, Mason joined fellow éminence grises Laurence Olivier and Gregory Peck in the Nazi cloning thriller The Boys From Brazil (1978), was Dr. Watson to Christopher Plummer's Sherlock Holmes in Murder by Decree (1979), and played a sinister antiquarian in the TV vampire yarn Salem's Lot the same year. Mason managed to find the time to write and publish his autobiography Before I Forget in 1981. The following year, he earned some of the best reviews of his career -- and his final Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actor -- for his subtle, nuanced performance as Paul Newman's harsh courtroom adversary in Lumet's sterling legal drama The Verdict. Mason suffered a fatal heart attack at his Swiss home in July 1984 at the age of 75.

Trivia: The title of actress Joan Bennett's 1970 autobiography is The Bennett Playbill, in reference to the fact that she came from an old and well-established theatrical family: her father was stage star Richard Bennett and her sisters were screen actresses Constance and Barbara Bennett. Though she made an appearance as a child in one of her father's films, Joan Bennett did not originally intend to pursue acting as a profession. Honoring her wishes, her father bundled her off to finishing school in Versailles. Alas, her impulsive first marriage at 16 ended in divorce, leaving her a single mother in dire need of an immediate source of income. Thus it was that she became a professional actress, making her first Broadway appearance in her father's vehicle, Jarnegan (1928). In 1929, she began her film career in the low-budget effort Power, then co-starred with Ronald Colman in Bulldog Drummond. She was inexperienced and awkward and she knew it, but Bennett applied herself to her craft and improved rapidly; by the early '30s she was a busy and popular ingénue, appearing in such enjoyable programmers as Me and My Gal (1932) and important A-pictures like Little Women (1933) (as Amy). During this period she briefly married again to writer/producer Gene Markey. It was her third husband, producer Walter Wanger, who made the decision that changed the direction of her career: in Wanger's Trade Winds (1938), Bennett was obliged to dye her blonde hair black for plot purposes. Audiences approved of this change, and Bennett thrived throughout the next decade in a wide variety of "dark" roles befitting her brunette status. She was especially effective in a series of melodramas directed by Fritz Lang: Man Hunt (1941), The Woman in the Window (1944), Scarlet Street (1945), and The Secret Beyond the Door (1948). In 1950, she switched professional gears again, abandoning femme-fatale roles for the part of Spencer Tracy's ever-patient spouse in Father of the Bride (1950). Though her personal life was turbulent in the early '50s -- her husband Walter Wanger allegedly shot and wounded agent Jennings Lang, claiming that Lang was trying to steal his wife -- Bennett's professional life continued unabated on both stage and screen. Her television work included the 1959 sitcom Too Young to Go Steady and the "gothic" soap opera Dark Shadows (1965-1971). In failing health, Joan Bennett spent her last years in retirement with her fourth husband, media critic David Wilde.

Trivia: Born Geraldine Stroock, she first appeared onstage (in a musical) at age 17, then worked in summer stock and toured with the Theater Guild in a repertory of Shakespeare productions; she later studied at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts. An intense, pretty, petite brunette, she went to Hollywood in 1947 after being signed by Warner Brothers; there she was proclaimed as a "new Hepburn" with an electrifying screen presence. Her career, however, never lived up to its promise. The quality of her pictures was low (in most of them she played ingenues), so she accepted an offer by director William Dieterle to appear in an Italian film, Volcano (1950); the film performed badly at the box office, but Brooks remained in Europe to make a few more movies. After returning to the U.S., she largely abandoned her film career in favor of TV and the stage; she received a Tony nomination for her performance in the play Brightower (1970) and several Emmy nominations for her work on TV. Later she became a skilled nature photographer; in 1975 she published Swan Watch, a book of her bird photographs with accompanying text written by her second husband, novelist-screenwriter Budd Schulberg. She died of cancer at age 51 in 1977.

Trivia: New Jersey-born Henry O'Neill was a year into his college education when he dropped out to join a traveling theatrical troupe. His career interrupted by WWI, O'Neill returned to the stage in 1919, where his prematurely grey hair and dignified demeanor assured him authoritative roles as lawyers, doctors, and business executives (though his first stage success was as the rough-and-tumble Paddy in Eugene O'Neill's The Hairy Ape). In films from 1933, O'Neill spent the better part of his movie career at Warner Bros. and MGM, usually playing parts requiring kindliness and understanding, but he was equally as effective in villainous assignments. Age and illness required Henry O'Neill to cut down on his film commitments in the 1950s, though he frequently showed up on the many TV anthology series of the era.

Trivia: American actor Shepperd Strudwick (born and occasionally credited as John Sheppard studied drama at the University of North Carolina, not far from his home town of Hillsboro. Strudwick was a member of the University's Carolina Playmakers, which boasted such alumni as Kay Kyser, Andy Griffith, George Grizzard and Sidney Blackmer. After a few years in outdoor drama productions and regional theatre, Strudwick headed for Broadway in the early '30s; the actor's more celebrated New York stage credits included the 1932 Pulitzer Prize winner Both Your Houses near the beginning of his career and Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? near the end. In 1940, Strudwick was signed for films, but the producers of his first picture, Congo Maisie (1940), found the actor's name too stiff and formal for romnatic leading roles; thus, Shepperd Strudwick spent most of the '40s acting under the cognomen John Shepperd. Outside of the lead in 20th Century-Fox's The Loves of Edgar Allan Poe, John Shepperd/Shepperd Strudwick didn't exactly set the world ablaze as a movie star, so he went back to the stage, returning to Hollywood in the late '40s under his real name. Strudwick wasn't leading man material, but he was superb in roles calling for a blend of dignity and intensity. Arguably the best of his many film roles was as the guilt-ridden doctor and erstwhile assassin in the Oscar-winning All the King's Men (1949). In addition, Strudwick was a regular on two popular video soap operas, Love of Life and Another World. Shepperd Strudwick continued contributing first-rate characterizations to TV, movie and stage productions into the '70s; one of his last theatrical roles of note was as the ill-fated Cmdr. Lloyd Bucher in a dramatization of the "Pueblo" incident.

Trivia: Tall, silver-maned character actor Roy Roberts began his film career as a 20th Century-Fox contractee in 1943. Nearly always cast in roles of well-tailored authority, Roberts was most effective when conveying smug villainy. As a hotel desk clerk in Gentleman's Agreement (1947), he suavely but smarmily refused to allow Jews to check into his establishment; nineteen years later, Roberts was back behind the desk and up to his old tricks, patronizingly barring a black couple from signing the register in Hotel (1966). As the forties drew to a close, Roberts figured into two of the key film noirs of the era; he was the carnival owner who opined that down-at-heels Tyrone Power had sunk so low because "he reached too high" at the end of Nightmare Alley (1947), while in 1948's He Walked By Night, Roberts enjoyed one of his few sympathetic roles as a psycho-hunting plainclothesman. And in the 3-D classic House of Wax, Roberts played the crooked business partner of Vincent Price, whose impulsive decision to burn down Price's wax museum has horrible consequences. With the role of bombastic Captain Huxley on the popular Gale Storm TV series Oh, Susanna (1956-1960), Gordon inaugurated his dignified-foil period. He later played long-suffering executive types on The Beverly Hillbillies, Petticoat Junction and The Lucy Show. Roy Roberts last appeared on screen as the mayor in Roman Polanski's Chinatown (1974).

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).

Trivia: Brassy, bleached-blonde Claire Carleton was a reliable supporting actress on Broadway, in films and on TV for nearly thirty years. Carleton's New York stage credits include The Body Beautiful, 20th Century and The Women. In films, she was usually cast as"B"-girls, strippers, gum-chewing manicurists and divorce correspondents: her character names were generally along the lines of Mamie, Tessie, Nellie or simply "The Blonde." She was afforded leading roles in the two-reelers of such comedians as The Three Stooges and Leon Errol, entering into the slapstick proceedings with relish and abandon: in the 1946 Columbia short Headin' for a Weddin', Carleton has a light bulb broken in her mouth, and in the final scene engages in a knock-down, drag-out fight with star Vera Vague. A frequent TV performer, Claire Carleton co-starred as Mickey Rooney's mother (she was eight years older than he!) in the 1955 sitcom Hey, Mulligan!, and played Alice Purdy on the 1958 western Cimarron City.

Trivia: Stage actor Peter Brocco made his first film appearance in 1932's The Devil and Deep. He then left films to tour in theatrical productions in Italy, Spain and Switzerland. Returning to Hollywood in 1947, Brocco could be seen in dozens of minor and supporting roles, usually playing petty crooks, shifty foreign agents, pathetic winos and suspicious store clerks. His larger screen roles included Ramon in Spartacus (1960), The General in The Balcony (1963), Dr. Wu in Our Man Flint (1963), and the leading character in the Cincinnati-filmed black comedy Homebodies (1974). The addition of a fuzzy, careless goatee in his later years enabled Brocco to portray generic oldsters in such films as One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1977), The One and Only(1977), Throw Momma From the Train (1989) and War of the Roses (1983). In 1983, Peter Brocco was one of many veterans of the Twilight Zone TV series of the 1950s and 1960s to be affectionately cast in a cameo role in Twilight Zone: The Movie (1983).

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.

Trivia: American actress Ann Shoemaker was 19 years old when she made her Broadway bow in Nobody's Widow. Shoemaker's subsequent stage credits ranged from the Eugene O'Neill efforts The Great God Brown and Ah, Wilderness! to the mid-'60s musical comedy Half a Sixpence. In films from 1931, she was ideally cast in dowager roles, notably Sara Roosevelt, FDR's mother, in Sunrise at Campobello (1960). She made her last appearance as a cynical nun in Billy Wilder's The Fortune Cookie (1966). Ann Shoemaker was the widow of British actor Henry Stephenson.

Trivia: Slight, squeaky-voiced American actor Buddy Gorman was able to play juvenile roles well into his 30s. Gorman was generally seen as a newsboy, caddy or telegram messenger. He appeared in a remarkable number of musicals (though he never sang), including Higher and Higher (1943), Meet Me in St. Louis (1944), Jolson Story (1946) and It's a Great Feeling (1949). Buddy Gorman is best remembered today for his 19 appearances in the East Side Kids and Bowery Boys films, wherein he was usually cast as "Butch."

Trivia: Kentucky-born Louis Mason enjoyed a long stage and screen career playing a vast array of rustic characters. In films from 1933, Mason could often as not be found portraying feuding hillbillies, backwood preachers, moonshiners and other assorted rubes. When he was given a character name, it was usually along the lines of Elmo and Lem. An off-and-on member of John Fords stock company, Mason showed up in Ford's Judge Priest (1934), Steamboat Round the Bend (1935) and Young Mr. Lincoln (1939), among others. Louis Mason remained active at least until 1953.

Trivia: Best remembered for playing Mrs. MacGillicuddy, Lucy's mother, on the I Love Lucy television show, prim-looking Kathryn Card had primarily been a radio actress prior to entering films in 1945. In addition to her many screen roles, Card also appeared in guest-starring roles on such television series as The Lone Ranger, Perry Mason, Alfred Hitchcock Presents, and Rawhide.

Trivia: Vaudeville and stage performer Pat O'Malley was a mere lad of seventeen (or thereabouts) when he inaugurated his film career at the Edison company in 1907. A dependable "collar-ad" leading man possessed of an athlete's physique, O'Malley rose to stardom at the Kalem Studios during the teens. From 1918 to 1927, O'Malley hopscotched around Hollywood, appearing at Universal, First National, Vitagraph and Paramount; he starred in war films (Heart of Humanity [1918]), westerns (The Virginian [1922]) and adaptations of bestsellers (Brothers Under the Skin [1922]). His talkie debut in 1929's Alibi would seem to have heralded a thriving sound career, but O'Malley had aged rather suddenly, and could no longer pass as a romantic lead. He worked in some 400 films in bits and supporting roles, frequently showing up in "reunion" films in the company of his fellow silent screen veterans (Hollywood Boulevard [1936], and A Little Bit of Heaven [1941]). O'Malley remained "on call" into the early '60s for such TV shows as The Twilight Zone and such films as The Days of Wine and Roses (1962). Pat O'Malley's film credits are often confused with those of Irish comedian/dialectian J. Pat O'Malley (1901-1985) and Australian performer John P. O'Malley (1916-1959).

Trivia: In Hollywood from 1931 to 1950, American actor Charles Jordan kept busy in a vast array of minor roles and walk-ons. Jordan's characters were frequently named "Shorty;" they ranged from gangsters to reporters to bartenders to jury foremen. In producer Val Lewton's Cat People (1942), Jordan plays the bus driver who figures into one of the film's most memorable "sudden shock" vignettes. Charles Jordan spent most of the 1940s at Warner Bros., Columbia, and Monogram, appearing in substantial roles in two of Monogram's "Charlie Chan" entries.

Trivia: The son of the Los Angeles Times' drama editor, William Schallert was, along with Sydney Chaplin, one of the co-founders of Hollywood's highly regarded Circle Theatre troupe. Sent to Great Britain on a Fulbright Fellowship to study British repertory theatre, Schallert guest-lectured at Oxford on several occasion before heading home. A character actor of almost intimidating versatility, Schallert began his long film and TV career in 1951. While he appeared in films of every variety, Schallert was most closely associated with the many doctors (mad or otherwise), lab technicians and scientific experts that he played in such science fiction endeavors as The Man From Planet X (1951), Gog (1954), Them! (1954) The Incredible Shrinking Man (1957) and The Monolith Monsters (1959). Director Joe Dante paid homage to Schallert's prolific horror-flick work by casting the actor in his Matinee, where he played yet another dabbler in Things Man Is Not Meant to Know in the film-within-a-film "Mant." Schallert's hundreds television credits could fill a book in themselves; the Nickelodeon cable network once tried to put together a montage of the actor's guest star appearances, touching only the tip of the iceberg. He was a regular on such series as Dobie Gillis (as literature teacher Mr. Pomfrit, who always dismissed his class as though announcing the beginning of the Indy 500), Get Smart (as a senile 97-year-old Navy admiral), The Nancy Drew Mysteries (as Nancy's attorney father) The New Gidget (as Gidget's professor father) The Nancy Walker Show, Little Women and Santa Barbara. His most famous TV role was as Patty Lane's ever-patient newspaper-editor dad on The Patty Duke Show, which ran from 1963 through 1966; over twenty years later, Mr. Schallert and Ms. Duke were touchingly reunited--again as father and daughter--on an episode of The Torkelsons (1991-92). William Schallert once served as president of the Screen Actors' Guild, a position later held...by Patty Duke. Shallert continued acting until the early 2010s; he died in 2016, at age 93.

Trivia: American actor Robert Gordon was a leading man in many Hollywood silent films. He was studying to be an engineer when bitten by the acting bug in 1917. He left films in the late '20s to enter the real estate industry.

Trivia: Although he played bit roles in films in the late silent era, tall, gangly character actor Boyd Davis spent the 1930s almost exclusively on the stage. He was back in Hollywood with a vengeance in the '40s, appearing in hundreds of bit roles, mostly as men of power and distinction -- judges, military officers, college professors, and the like. Davis' last film was the 1953 Western Born to the Saddle, in which he once again played a judge.

Trivia: American actress Dorothy Phillips played leads in numerous Hollywood silent films and was once known as "the Kid Nazimova" because she was so good at imitating the star. Phillips was born Dorothy Gwendolyn Strible in Baltimore. She frequently worked in films directed by her husband, Alan Holubar. After the mid-'20s, her film appearances became sporadic and considerably smaller.

Trivia: In films from 1941, American character actor Norman Leavitt spent much of his career in uncredited bits and supporting roles. Leavitt can briefly be seen in such "A" pictures of the 1940s and 1950s as The Inspector General (1949) and Harvey (1950). His larger roles include Folsom in the 1960 budget western Young Jesse James. Three Stooges fans will immediately recognize Norman Leavitt from The Three Stooges in Orbit (1962), in which he player scientist Emil Sitka's sinister butler--who turned out to be a spy from Mars!

Trivia: Actor Harry Harvey Sr. started out in minstrel shows and burlesque. His prolific work in Midwestern stock companies led to film assignments, beginning at RKO in 1934. Harvey's avuncular appearance (he looked like every stage doorman named Pop who ever existed) won him featured roles in mainstream films and comic-relief and sheriff parts in B-westerns. His best known "prestige" film assignment was the role of New York Yankees manager Joe McCarthy in the 1942 Lou Gehrig biopic Pride of the Yankees. Remaining active into the TV era, Harry Harvey Sr. had continuing roles on two series, The Roy Rogers Show and It's a Man's World, and showed up with regularity on such video sagebrushers as Cheyenne and Bonanza.