Trivia: He made his stage debut at age 17 and appeared in a film the following year. He later starred in many Hollywood silents and early talkies; in Howard Hughes' Hell's Angels (1930), he piloted his own plane and shot some of the airborne scenes. Lyon married actress Bebe Daniels in 1930, and in the late '30s the two of them moved to England; there they became popular in vaudeville and on radio, and also appeared in a few films. During World War Two he was a pilot with the British Royal Air Force. After the War he was an executive talent director for Fox; later he headed his own London-based talent agency. According to some sources, he discovered Marilyn Monroe and gave her her screen name. After his wife died in 1971, he married actress Marian Nixon, one of his former costars, and they moved back to the U.S. In 1977 he was awarded the Order of the British Empire for his World War Two record. He was the father of actor Richard Lyon.

Trivia: Jean Harlow, with her soft come-hither body, platinum blonde hair, and keen sense of humor, is recognized as one of the most gifted and blatantly sensual stars of the 1930s. Harlow endured much pain during her 26 years. Born Harlean Carpenter in Kansas City, she was the daughter of Jean Harlow Carpenter (whose name the actress appropriated for the marquee), the complex, often oppressive force behind her daughter's sudden rise to fame. When she was only 16, the young Harlow eloped with a businessman and moved to Los Angeles, where she began appearing as an extra in silent films. She was particularly noticed for her appearance in a 1929 Laurel and Hardy short Double Whoopee. That year she also played a small role opposite reigning sex symbol Clara Bow in The Saturday Night Kid. In 1930, Harlow got her first real break from Howard Hughes, who cast her in his World War I drama Hell's Angels after he found the film's original star Greta Nissen's Swedish accent incomprehensibly thick. It was in this film that she uttered the immortal words "Would you be shocked if I changed into something more comfortable?" Harlow's wise-cracking presence in the film soon attracted much attention, and Hughes sent her out on a publicity tour and loaned her to other studios. In 1931 she appeared in six films; while her performances were often panned by critics and audiences were initially shocked by her almost lurid onscreen sexuality, she gradually began to develop a following. She achieved real fame in 1932 when MGM bought her contract and decided to give her more substantial parts. In films such as Red-Headed Woman and Red Dust (both 1932) Harlow demonstrated that she was not only extremely sexy and funny, she was also a first-rate actress; by the year's end she was a bonafide star playing opposite some of the industry's most popular men, including Clark Gable and Spencer Tracy. Unfortunately, as her professional career flourished, her personal life began to deteriorate, beginning with the alleged suicide of her second husband Paul Bern. Though there was a subsequent scandal surrounding his demise, it did not impact Harlow's popularity. Later she ended up briefly married to cinematographer Harold Rosson, and then had a long engagement with MGM star William Powell. While filming Saratoga in 1937, Harlow suddenly fell ill; ten days later, on June 7, she died at age 26. During her reign, Harlow had starred in less than twenty films. At the time of her death, no details as to why she died were released, but several years later it was revealed that Harlow had suffered from kidney disease most of her life, and that she died of acute uremic poisoning. Her life has been chronicled in several biographies and two subsequent movies, both named Harlow.

Trivia: American actor John Darrow played leading roles in "B" movies of the '30s. He got his start working in summer stock and by age 20 was appearing in silent films.

Trivia: In films from 1929 to 1943, character actor Lucien Prival was able to parlay his vocal and physical resemblance to Erich von Stroheim into a sizeable screen career. Prival was at his most Stroheim-like in war films, notably Hell's Angels (1930), in which his Baron Von Kranz both set the plot in motion and brought things to a conclusion. He went on to play Teutonic menaces in films ranging from Sherlock Holmes (1932) and Return of Chandu (1934). Horror fans will remember Lucien Prival as the ill-tempered butler in James Whale's The Bride of Frankenstein (1935).

Trivia: A rather reserved beauty who at one time was publicized as "the Green-Eyed Goddess of Hollywood," Jane Winton turned up in films in the mid-'20s, usually playing patrician girls but once in a while showing up among the working stiffs as well. She was beautiful and regal as Donna Beatrice in Don Juan (1926), vying for the favors of John Barrymore with the likes of Mary Astor and June Marlowe, and an extremely seductive model, long blonde wig and all, opposite Clive Brook's artist in Why Girl Leaves Home (1926). Also fondly remembered are Winton's rather unsuccessful attempts to offer George O'Brien a manicure in the classic Sunrise (1927), a brief scene but well executed by both. Despite a small but showy part in Hell's Angels (1930), the advent of sound did her no favors, and Winton was later one of the many fading Hollywood stars vainly attempting to start afresh in England. She was at one time married to screenwriter Charles Kenyon.

Trivia: Blunt, burly American actor William B. Davidson was equally at home playing gangster bosses, business executives, butlers and military officials. In films since 1914, Davidson seemed to be in every other Warner Bros. picture made between 1930 and 1935, often as a Goliath authority figure against such pint-sized Davids as James Cagney and Edward G. Robinson. In the early '40s, Davidson was a fixture of Universal's Abbott and Costello comedies, appearing in In the Navy (1941), Keep 'Em Flying (1941) and In Society (1944). In Abbott & Costello's Hold That Ghost (1941), Davidson shows up as Moose Matson, the dying gangster who sets the whole plot in motion. An avid golfer, William B. Davidson frequently appeared in the all-star instructional shorts of the '30s starring legendary golf pro Bobby Jones.

Trivia: In films from 1915 to 1948, British stage veteran Wyndham Standing's heyday was in the silent era. During this time, Standing appeared in stiff-collar, stuffed-shirt roles in films like The Dark Angel and The Unchastened Woman (both 1925). His early-talkie credits include the squadron leader in Hell's Angels (1931) and Captain Pyke in A Study in Scarlet (1933). Thereafter, Standing showed up in such one-scene bits as King Oscar in Madame Curie (1943); he was also one of several silent-screen veterans appearing as U.S. senators in Capra's Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939). Wyndham Standing was the brother of actors Sir Guy Standing and Herbert Standing.

Trivia: From the musical-comedy stage, German actress Lena Malena was imported to Hollywood with some fanfare by Cecil B. DeMille in 1928, where she starred in the intriguing but apparently lost Diamond Handcuffs (1928), about a South African gem that brings misfortune for its owner. The melodrama, scripted by Willis Goldbeck and Carey Wilson, was actually three stories with Malena as the continuing character of Musa. In the third and final story, Musa is a cabaret dancer in a Negro speakeasy and Malena apparently played the sequence in blackface. Sadly, her remaining Hollywood films failed to match this fascinating debut.

Trivia: Although she later professed to have preferred her stay with Columbia Pictures, Marian Marsh did her best work at Warner Bros., not only in her star-making turn opposite John Barrymore inSvengali (1931), but also with Warren William in the wry, unfairly neglected Beauty and the Boss (1932). A beauty contest winner of German descent, Marsh (born Violet Krauth) began her film career in 1930 through her sister Jeanne Morgan, a former Ziegfeld girl turned movie starlet. Howard Hughes gave her the moniker "Marilyn Morgan" and assigned her a brief but attention-grabbing turn in the aviation melodrama Hell's Angels (1930). Although little more than a walk-on role, it led to her being voted a 1931 Wampas Baby Star and securing the contract with Warner Bros.The studio changed her name to Marian Marsh, in honor, it was said at the time, of silent-era actress Mae Marsh, and launched her as Trilby in Svengali , Warner Bros.' screen version of Gerald du Maurier's Victorian novel about a villainous mesmerist and his innocent victim. (Despite updated versions of the story years later, Marsh remained the quintessential screen Trilby in the wonderfully florid melodrama.) Although not quite as powerful, Warners' follow-up, The Mad Genius (1931) -- again opposite Barrymore at the zenith of his powers -- also proved quite popular. Marsh was perfectly cast as the once-timid stenographer who proves eminently capable of taking care of herself in Beauty and the Boss (1932), a typical pre-Production Code comedy drama. The pace at Warner Bros. was hectic and Marsh happily left in favor of the smaller Columbia Pictures, where, she later explained, she was treated with all the trappings of stardom. Some of her films there were, indeed, worth the effort, including The Black Room (1935) opposite Boris Karloff and Crime and Punishment (1935) as Sonya opposite Peter Lorre's Raskolnikov. She may have been slightly miscast in the latter, but Josef von Sternberg's direction easily overcame this minor flaw and she emerged unscathed. The actress was not so lucky with such subsequent fare as Republic's Prison Nurse (1938), directed by that old hack James Cruze; Monogram's Murder by Invitation (1941); and, her final film in 1942, PRC's House of Errors, all low-rent programmers and hardly worth her while. Twice elected honorary mayor of her small San Fernando Valley community of Chatsworth, Marsh left Hollywood behind with hardly a backward glance, retiring at the age of 30. She was widowed in 1984 by her second husband, Clifford Henderson (an aviation pioneer and the founder of Palm Desert) but remained the energetic president of Desert Beautiful, a Coachella Valley preservation society. Retaining only good memories of her past screen career, the former actress spoke with admiration of the legendary Barrymore, who, in Marsh's eyes, could do no wrong. "He was always so helpful and so inspiring to me," she stated in a later interview.

Trivia: Nora Cecil's earliest known screen credit was 1918's Prunella. Chances are Cecil played then what she'd play in most of her talkie efforts: the tight-lipped, sternly reproving old biddy. She made a good living essaying dozens of battle-ax mothers-in-law, welfare workers, landladies, schoolmistresses and maiden aunts. One of her largest parts was boarding-house keeper Mrs. Wendelschaffer in W.C. Fields' The Old Fashioned Way (1934). Nora Cecil also served as an excellent foil for screen comedians as varied as Laurel and Hardy (1932's Pack Up Your Troubles) and Will Rogers (1933's Dr. Bull).

Trivia: A blossoming student athlete in his home town of Dallas, James Hall left home at the age of 14 to join a theatrical company. Four years later he put his career on hold to serve as an artilleryman in World War I. Thriving as a musical performer in the 1920s, the boyish, ingratiating Hall was signed to a Paramount movie contract by studio executive Jesse Lasky. A moderate successful silent film leading man, Hall's greatest role came with the talkies, when he was co-starred with Ben Lyon and Jean Harlow in Howard Hughes' aviation epic Hell's Angels (1930). Within two years, however, James Hall was out of films completely; he died in 1940, three months shy of his 40th birthday.

Trivia: Known as one of the film industry's most daring stunt pilots, Frank Clarke, part Irish and Cherokee, grew up on a ranch near Fresno, CA. But instead of becoming a rodeo cowboy, Clarke caught the aviation fever and became a student of the "grand old man" of movie stunt pilots, Al Wilson. Like Wilson, the handsome Clarke briefly became a star in his own right headlining the 1928 serial The Eagle of the Night. But although a distinct presence onscreen (one columnist declared Clarke "satanically good-looking"), the neophyte thespian proved rather wooden, and although he would play several minor roles in the future, he ultimately made his mark as a stuntman, technical advisor, and even second unit cameraman on a host of films with flying scenes ranging from the Laurel and Hardy comedy Flying Deuces (1939) to such WWII melodramas as Dive Bomber (1941), often in partnership with another veteran pilot, Frank Tomick. Like so many of his generation of barnstorming pilots, Clarke perished in a crash, in his case in a surplus BT-15 above Lake Isabella, CA, in June of 1948. Longtime friend, actor Richard Arlen, delivered the eulogy at Clarke's funeral.

Trivia: Granite-faced, mustachioed American character actor Pat Harmon began his film career in 1922. A comedy "regular," Harmon was closely associated with Harold Lloyd in the 1920s, playing the juicy role of the college football coach in The Freshman (1925). During the talkie era, he worked with The Marx Brothers in Monkey Business (1931, as the harried passport official) and Laurel & Hardy (as the tongue-twisting conductor in 1929's Berth Marks and the field officer in 1932's Pack Up Your Troubles). In addition, Pat Harmon worked steadily at Paramount and MGM as Wallace Beery's double.

Trivia: A young German stage actor, Werner Klingler used the moniker Warner Klinger when appearing in such Hollywood films as The Case of Lena Smith (1929) and as a captured German soldier in Journey's End (1930). Returning to Germany that same year, Klingler embarked on a long career as a director of lightweight entertainment that survived the Nazi era and included a rather anti-British depiction of Titanic (1943), several Edgar Wallace potboilers, and the 1962 remake of Das Testament Des Dr. Mabuse.

Trivia: In films from 1918, dark, mustachioed Harry Semels was a reliable serial villain for Pathe and other studios. Semels spent the 1920s menacing the heroes and heroines of such chapter plays as Hurricane Hutch, Pirate Gold, Plunder, and Play Ball; he even found time to spoof his screen image in the serial parody Bound and Gagged (1919). Active in talkies until his death in 1946, Semels played mostly bit roles, usually as excitable foreigners. During this period, Harry Semels was also a fixture of Columbia Pictures' two-reel comedy unit, in support of such funmakers as Andy Clyde, Buster Keaton, Monty Collins, Tom Kennedy, Gus Schilling, Dick Lane, and especially the Three Stooges: He made seven appearances with the last-named team, most memorably as the prosecuting attorney ("Whooo killed Kirk Robin?") in Disorder in the Court (1936).

Trivia: Not to be confused with the present-day film editor of the same name, British actor Pat Somerset had been in the military before making his film bow in the Eve two-reel comedy series of 1918. With his performance in 1928's Hangman's House, Somerset became a "regular" in the non-Western films of director John Ford. His army experience served him well when he was called upon to play British-India officers in such films as Bonnie Scotland (1935) and Wee Willie Winkie (1937). Active in films until 1937, Pat Somerset was one of the charter members (and charter officers) of the Screen Actors Guild.