Trivia: In an industry of prima donnas, actress Barbara Stanwyck was universally recognized as a consummate professional; a supremely versatile performer, her strong screen presence established her as a favorite of directors, including Cecil B. De Mille, Fritz Lang, and Frank Capra. Born Ruby Stevens July 16, 1907, in Brooklyn, NY, she was left orphaned at the age of four and raised by her showgirl sister. Upon quitting school a decade later, she began dancing in local speakeasies and at the age of 15 became a Ziegfeld chorus girl. In 1926, Stanwyck made her Broadway debut in The Noose, becoming a major stage star in her next production, Burlesque. MGM requested a screen test, but she rejected the offer. She did, however, agree to a supporting role in 1927's Broadway Nights, and after completing her stage run in 1929 appeared in the drama The Locked Door. With her husband, comedian Frank Fay, Stanwyck traveled to Hollywood. After unsuccessfully testing at Warner Bros., she appeared in Columbia's low-budget Mexicali Rose, followed in 1930 by Capra's Ladies of Leisure, the picture which shot her to stardom. A long-term Columbia contract was the result, and the studio soon loaned Stanwyck to Warners for 1931's Illicit. It was a hit, as was the follow-up Ten Cents a Dance. Reviewers were quite taken with her, and with a series of successful pictures under her belt, she sued Columbia for a bigger salary; a deal was struck to share her with Warners, and she split her time between the two studios for pictures including Miracle Woman, Night Nurse, and Forbidden, a major hit which established her among the most popular actresses in Hollywood. Over the course of films like 1932's Shopworn, Ladies They Talk About, and Baby Face, Stanwyck developed an image as a working girl, tough-minded and often amoral, rarely meeting a happy ending; melodramas including 1934's Gambling Lady and the following year's The Woman in Red further established the persona, and in Red Salute she even appeared as a student flirting with communism. Signing with RKO, Stanwyck starred as Annie Oakley; however, her contract with the studio was non-exclusive, and she also entered into a series of multi-picture deals with the likes of Fox (1936's A Message to Garcia) and MGM (His Brother's Wife, co-starring Robert Taylor, whom she later married).For 1937's Stella Dallas, Stanwyck scored the first of four Academy Award nominations. Refusing to be typecast, she then starred in a screwball comedy, Breakfast for Two, followed respectively by the downcast 1938 drama Always Goodbye and the caper comedy The Mad Miss Manton. After the 1939 De Mille Western Union Pacific, she co-starred with William Holden in Golden Boy, and with Henry Fonda she starred in Preston Sturges' outstanding The Lady Eve. For the 1941 Howard Hawks comedy Ball of Fire, Stanwyck earned her second Oscar nomination. Another superior film, Capra's Meet John Doe, completed a very successful year. Drama was the order of the day for the next few years, as she starred in pictures like The Gay Sisters and The Great Man's Lady. In 1944, she delivered perhaps her most stunning performance in Billy Wilder's classic noir Double Indemnity. Stanwyck's stunning turn as a femme fatale secured her a third Oscar bid and helped make her, according to the IRS, the highest-paid woman in America. It also won her roles in several of the decade's other great film noirs, including 1946's The Strange Love of Martha Ivers and 1949's The File on Thelma Jordon. In between, Stanwyck also starred in the 1948 thriller Sorry, Wrong Number, her final Academy Award-nominated performance. The 1950s, however, were far less kind, and strong roles came her way with increasing rarity. With Anthony Mann she made The Furies and with Lang she appeared opposite Marilyn Monroe in 1952's Clash by Night, but much of her material found her typecast -- in 1953's All I Desire, she portrayed a heartbroken mother not far removed from the far superior Stella Dallas, while in 1954's Blowing Wild she was yet another tough-as-nails, independent woman. Outside of the all-star Executive Suite, Stanwyck did not appear in another major hit; she let her hair go gray, further reducing her chances of winning plum parts, and found herself cast in a series of low-budget Westerns. Only Samuel Fuller's 1957 picture Forty Guns, a film much revered by the Cahiers du Cinema staff, was of any particular notice. It was also her last film for five years. In 1960, she turned to television to host The Barbara Stanwyck Show, winning an Emmy for her work.Stanwyck returned to cinemas in 1962, portraying a lesbian madam in the controversial Walk on the Wild Side. Two years later, she co-starred with Elvis Presley in Roustabout. That same year, she appeared in the thriller The Night Walker, and with that, her feature career was over. After rejecting a role in Hush...Hush, Sweet Charlotte, she returned to television to star in the long-running Western series The Big Valley, earning another Emmy for her performance as the matriarch of a frontier family. Upon the show's conclusion, Stanwyck made a TV movie, The House That Would Not Die. She then appeared in two more, 1971's A Taste of Evil and 1973's The Letters, before vanishing from the public eye for the remainder of the decade. In 1981, she was awarded an honorary Oscar; two years later, she was also the recipient of a Lincoln Center Life Achievement Award. Also in 1983, Stanwyck returned to television to co-star in the popular miniseries The Thorn Birds. Two years later, she headlined The Colbys, a spin-off of the hugely successful nighttime soap opera Dynasty. It was her last project before retiring. Stanwyck died January 20, 1990.

Trivia: From his late teens to his late 20s, Ralph Bellamy worked with 15 different traveling stock companies, not just as an actor but also as a director, producer, set designer, and prop handler. In 1927 he started his own company, the Ralph Bellamy Players. He debuted on Broadway in 1929, then broke into films in 1931. He went on to play leads in dozens of B-movies; he also played the title role in the "Ellery Queen" series. For his work in The Awful Truth (1937) he received an Oscar nomination, playing the "other man" who loses the girl to the hero; he was soon typecast in this sort of role in sophisticated comedies. After 1945 his film work was highly sporadic as he changed his focus to the stage, going on to play leads in many Broadway productions; for his portrayal of FDR in Sunrise at Campobello (1958) he won a Tony Award and the New York Drama Critics Award. From 1940-60 he served on the State of California Arts Commission. From 1952-64 he was the president of Actors' Equity. In 1986 he was awarded an honorary Oscar "for his unique artistry and his distinguished service to the profession of acting." He authored an autobiography, When the Smoke Hits the Fan (1979).

Trivia: Stage actress Dorothy Peterson made her screen debut in 1930's Mothers Cry, a lachrymose domestic drama that required the 29-year-old actress to age nearly three decades in the course of the film. Mothers Cry instantly typecast Peterson in careworn maternal roles, which she continued to essay for the rest of her career. Most of her subsequent film assignments were supporting roles like Mrs. Hawkins in Treasure Island (1934); often as not she received no screen credit, not even for her touching cameo in 1943's Air Force. In 1942, she briefly replaced Olive Blakeney as Mrs. Aldrich in the comedy series entry Henry Aldrich for President. Her last screen appearance was as Shirley Temple's mother in That Hagen Girl (1947). Dorothy Peterson remained active on the New York TV and theatrical scene until the early '60s.

Trivia: Born in Italy, Henry Armetta stowed away on an American-bound boat in 1902. While employed as a pants-presser at New York's Lambs Club, Armetta befriended Broadway star Raymond Hitchcock, who secured Armetta a small role in his stage play A Yankee Consul. A resident of Hollywood from 1923, the hunch-shouldered, mustachioed Armetta gained fame in the 1930s in innumerable roles as excited, gesticulating Italians. Often cast as barbers or restaurateurs, Armetta was so popular that he was frequently awarded with extraneous bit roles that were specially written for him (vide 1933's Lady for a Day). Laurel and Hardy fans will remember Armetta as the flustered innkeeper who is kept awake nights trying to emulate Laurel's "kneesie-earsie-nosie" game in The Devil's Brother (1933). In the late 1930s, Armetta was briefly starred in a series of auto-racing films, bearing titles like Road Demon and Speed to Burn. He also headlined several short-subject series, notably RKO's "Nick and Tony" comedies of the early 1930s. Henry Armetta died of a sudden heart attack shortly after completing his scenes in 20th Century-Fox's A Bell for Adano (1945).

Trivia: American character actor Thomas Jefferson was a member of D.W. Griffith's stock company and played leading roles in a number of silent films during the 'teens.

Trivia: American actress Charlotte Henry played leading juvenile roles in many films during the early to mid-'30s and later played leads in numerous B movies through the early '40s. The Brooklyn-born-and-raised Henry made her stage debut at age five. She debuted on Broadway in 1930 and later that year appeared in her first film On Your Back. She got her first starring role in 1933's all-star version of Alice in Wonderland. Henry retired from films in 1942.

Trivia: Having been born at Stratford-on-Avon, Halliwell Hobbes would have been remiss if he hadn't given acting a try. On stage from 1898, the imposing, sturdily built Hobbes appeared opposite such immortals as Mrs. Patrick Campbell and Ellen Terry. His first U.S. appearance was in the 1923 Broadway staging of Molnar's The Swan. He made the first of his over 150 films in 1929. Hobbes was most often seen as a diplomatic butler, in films ranging from Here Comes Mr. Jordan (1941) to the East Side Kids' Million Dollar Kid (1943) (in which he was billed as Holliwell Hobbs!). Other notable screen appearances in Halliwell Hobbes' resume include the role of General Carew in the 1931 version of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde and as the "fugitive" iceman, Mr. DePinna, in You Can't Take It With You (1938).

Trivia: The daughter of a stage actress, Helen Parrish began appearing in silent films as a child. In the early '30s, she was briefly a member of Hal Roach's Our Gang. Parrish went on to inspire hisses as Deanna Durbin's spiteful nemesis in such films as Three Smart Girls Grow Up (1939) and First Love (1939). She began playing adult roles at Universal and RKO in 1940 before her career went into a slow decline at Monogram. For many years the wife of People Are Funny and You Bet Your Life producer John Guedel, Helen Parrish died of cancer at the age of 34. Her older brother was juvenile star-turned-editor-turned-director Robert Parrish.

Trivia: A one-time child actor for John Ford, Robert Parrish returned as a bit player and later assistant editor and sound editor under Ford in the '30s, and worked under Ford during his time in the navy during World War II, as an editor on several documentaries. He shared an Oscar in 1947 for his editing of the drama Body and Soul, and moved into directing in 1951 with the fascinating film noir Cry Danger. Other highlights of his career include The Wonderful Country (1959), Up from the Beach (1965), a sort-of sequel to The Longest Day, and Journey to the Far Side of the Sun (1969), a fascinating and underrated science-fiction film. Since the mid '60s, he has worked largely in Europe and in the '80s turned toward the documentary field. His final film Mississippi Blues (1983), which he made in conjunction with Bertrand Tavernier, ranks among his most notable entries from this period. In Hollywood from the mid-'teens until his death in 1995, Parrish possessed a unique perspective on Hollywood history, and among his colleagues he was renowned for telling fascinating stories and anecdotes, many of which he put into two books, Growing Up in Hollywood and Hollywood Doesn't Live Here Anymore.

Trivia: A Hollywood child actor from 1927, Dick Winslow showed up in dozen of early talkies as page boys, messenger boys, and office boys. One of Winslow's few "named" roles was Joe Harper in the 1930 version of Tom Sawyer. Adept at several musical instruments, Winslow graced many a film of the 1940s and 1950s, playing everything from picnic accordion players to cocktail pianists. The apotheosis of this stage of Winslow's career was his one-man band in 1965's Do Not Disturb. A veteran of 60 years in the business, Dick Winslow made his last screen appearance as "the Old Man" in 1988's Fatal Judgment.

Trivia: Veteran British stage actor and director Claude King made his first film in 1923, playing Lord Charles Chetwyn in the historical drama Six Days. Brought to America by MGM, the most "British" of Hollywood's studios, King essayed aristocratic roles in such films as Lon Chaney's London After Midnight (1927) and Mr. Wu (1928). One of his earliest talkie assignments was the plum role of Sir John Petrie in Paramount's The Mysterious Dr. Fu Manchu. He spent the 1930s as in general-purpose "English gentleman" assignment. Curiously, some of his better roles, notably General Fletcher in Bonnie Scotland (1935) and the Hollywood producer who reacts in mute astonishment as Janet Gaynor launches into a Garbo imitation in A Star is Born (1937), were unbilled. Claude King ended his Hollywood career where it began, at MGM.

Trivia: Onscreen from 1925, bespectacled supporting actor Robert Graves (not to be confused with the belletrist and historian of the same name) usually played officious types, often in Westerns. Demoted to bit roles after the changeover to sound, Graves -- who numbered fluency in French among his accomplishments -- often portrayed headwaiters, doormen, ship's captains (piloting the near empty "Ile de France" across the Atlantic in The King and the Chorus Girl, 1937), and of course chefs.

Trivia: Rotund, squeaky-voiced American actor Harry Holman forsook vaudeville and the legitimate stage for films in 1929. For the next 18 years, Holman played a vast array of mayors, justices of the peace, attorneys, millionaires and sugar daddies. Sometimes he had no professional designation at all, and was simply a "Jolly Fat Man" (as he was billed in 1935's Dante's Inferno). Equally busy in short subjects as in features, Holman is best remembered by Three Stooges fans as the first of many wealthy professors who tried to turn the Stooges into gentlemen in Hoi Polloi (1935). A fixture of Frank Capra films, Harry Holman showed up as the high school principal in Capra's Yuletide perennial It's a Wonderful Life.

Trivia: British stage actor/director/writer Wilfred Noy made his screen directorial debut with 1913's Behind the Scenes. In the early '20s, Noy began accepting character roles in Hollywood. He tended to play doctors in silent films, and butlers in talkies. Retiring from acting in 1932, Wilfred Noy directed one final feature, the British quota quickie Well Done, Henry, in 1936; he also logged several credits as a producer and screenwriter.