Trivia: Actor, screenwriter, and producer Stan Laurel was born to British stage performers. He started acting on stage in his mid-teens in music halls and theaters before touring the U.S. in 1910 and 1912 as Charlie Chaplin's understudy. He remained in the States to perform in vaudeville and, in 1917, supplemented his stage work by appearing as clownish misfit types in comedy shorts often spoofing dramatic films of the period. One of these was a two-reeler called Lucky Dog (1918), in which he appeared totally by accident with Oliver Hardy. The two would not appear together again until 1926, when they both found themselves working for comedy producer Hal Roach. Laurel, who had been hired by Roach as a gagman/director, was persuaded to appear in front of the camera and, thus, auspiciously again with Hardy. It soon became obvious that the two men had a certain comic onscreen chemistry, and they ended up starring together as an incredibly popular comedy team in more fifty films in the 1930s and early '40s, with their 1932 three-reeler The Music Box winning an Oscar for Best Short Subject. Laurel, the creative member of the team, had numerous run-ins with producer Roach; the actor wanted the team's films to aspire to the higher quality productions of their contemporaries, while Roach was firmly content with maintaining a low-budget norm. Laurel had a few short-lived victories, serving as producer on the team's Our Relations (1936) and Way out West (1937). The team left Roach in 1940 to seek more artistic control over their work, but were given even less at Fox and MGM. In the late '40s and early '50s, they enjoyed touring English music halls while continuing to make films. After Hardy's death in 1957, Laurel stopped performing but kept active. He died from a heart attack in 1965.

Trivia: Unlike his future screen partner Stan Laurel, American comedian Oliver Hardy did not come from a show business family. His father was a lawyer who died when Hardy was ten; his mother was a hotel owner in both his native Georgia and in Florida. The young Hardy became fascinated with show business through the stories spun by the performers who stayed at his mother's hotel, and at age eight he ran away to join a minstrel troupe. Possessing a beautiful singing voice, Hardy studied music for a while, but quickly became bored with the regimen; the same boredom applied to his years at Georgia Military College (late in life, Hardy claimed to have briefly studied law at the University of Georgia, but chances are that he never got any farther than filling out an application). Heavy-set and athletic, Hardy seemed more interested in sports than in anything else; while still a teenager, he umpired local baseball games, putting on such an intuitively comic display of histrionics that he invariably reduced the fans to laughter. In 1910, he opened the first movie theater in Milledgeville, Georgia, and as a result became intrigued with the possibilities of film acting. Traveling to Jacksonville, Florida in 1913, he secured work at the Lubin Film Company, where thanks to his 250-pound frame he was often cast as a comic villain. From 1915-25, Hardy appeared in support of such comedians as Billy West (the famous Chaplin imitator), Jimmy Aubrey, Larry Semon (Hardy played the Tin Woodman in Semon's 1925 version of The Wizard of Oz), and Bobby Ray. An established "heavy" by 1926, Hardy signed with the Hal Roach studios, providing support to such headliners as Our Gang and Charley Chase. With the rest of the Roach stock company, Hardy appeared in the Comedy All-Stars series, where he was frequently directed by fellow Roach contractee Stan Laurel (with whom Hardy had briefly appeared on-screen in the independently produced 1918 two-reeler Lucky Dog). At this point, Laurel was more interested in writing and directing than performing, but was lured back before the cameras by a hefty salary increase. Almost inadvertently, Laurel began sharing screen time with Hardy in such All-Stars shorts as Slipping Wives (1927), Duck Soup (1927) and With Love and Hisses (1927). Roach's supervising director Leo McCarey, noticing how well the pair worked together, began teaming them deliberately, which led to the inauguration of the "Laurel and Hardy" series in late 1927. At first, the comedians indulged in the cliched fat-and-skinny routines, with Laurel the fall guy for the bullying Hardy. Gradually the comedians developed the multidimensional screen characters with which we're so familiar today. The corpulent Hardy was the pompous know-it-all, whose arrogance and stubbornness always got him in trouble; the frail Stan was the blank-faced man-child, whose carelessness and inability to grasp an intelligent thought prompted impatience from his partner. Underlining all this was the genuine affection the characters held for each other, emphasized by Hardy's courtly insistence upon introducing Stan as "my friend, Mr. Laurel." Gradually Hardy adopted the gestures and traits that rounded out the "Ollie" character: The tie-twiddle, the graceful panache with which he performed such simple tasks as ringing doorbells and signing hotel registers, and the "camera look," in which he stared directly at the camera in frustration or amazement over Laurel's stupidity. Fortunately Laurel and Hardy's voices matched their characters perfectly, so they were able to make a successful transition to sound, going on to greater popularity than before. Sound added even more ingredients to Hardy's comic repertoire, not the least of which were such catch-phrases as "Why don't you do something to help me?" and "Here's another nice mess you've gotten me into." Laurel and Hardy graduated from two-reelers to feature films with 1931's Pardon Us, though they continued to make features and shorts simultaneously until 1935. While Laurel preferred to burn the midnight oil as a writer and film editor, Hardy stopped performing each day at quitting time. He occupied his leisure time with his many hobbies, including cardplaying, cooking, gardening, and especially golf. The team nearly broke up in 1939, not because of any animosity between them but because of Stan's contract dispute with Hal Roach. While this was being settled, Hardy starred solo in Zenobia (1939), a pleasant but undistinguished comedy about a southern doctor who tends to a sick elephant. Laurel and Hardy reteamed in late 1939 for two more Roach features and for the Boris Morros/RKO production The Flying Deuces (1939). Leaving Roach in 1940, the team performed with the USO and the Hollywood Victory Caravan, then signed to make features at 20th Century-Fox and MGM. The resultant eight films, produced between 1941 and 1945, suffered from too much studio interference and too little creative input from Laurel and Hardy, and as such are but pale shadows of their best work at Roach. In 1947, the team was booked for the first of several music hall tours of Europe and the British Isles, which were resounding successes and drew gigantic crowds wherever Stan and Ollie went. Upon returning to the States, Hardy soloed again in a benefit stage production of What Price Glory directed by John Ford. In 1949, he played a substantial supporting role in The Fighting Kentuckian, which starred his friend John Wayne; as a favor to another friend, Bing Crosby, Hardy showed up in a comic cameo in 1950's Riding High. Back with Laurel, Hardy appeared in the French-made comedy Atoll K (1951), an unmitigated disaster that unfortunately brought the screen career of Laurel and Hardy to a close. After more music hall touring abroad, the team enjoyed a resurgence of popularity in the U.S. thanks to constant showings of their old movies on television. Laurel and Hardy were on the verge of starring in a series of TV comedy specials when Stan Laurel suffered a stroke. While he was convalescing, Hardy endured a heart attack, and was ordered by his doctor to lose a great deal of weight. In 1956, Hardy was felled a massive stroke that rendered him completely inactive; he held on, tended day and night by his wife Lucille, until he died in August of 1957. Ironically, Oliver Hardys passing occurred at the same time that he and Stan Laurel were being reassessed by fans and critics as the greatest comedy team of all time.

Trivia: Born Henry Kleinbach, the name under which he appeared until 1936, Brandon was a tall man with black curly hair; he occasionally played the handsome lead but was more often typecast to play villains. As the latter, he appeared as white, Indian, German, and Asian men. Brandon's film career began with Babes in Toyland (1934) and went on to span fifty years. He played villains whom the audiences loved to hate in serials in the '30s and '40s, such as the Cobra in Jungle Jim, the mastermind criminal Blackstone in Secret Agent X-9, Captain Lasca in Buck Rogers Conquers the Universe (1939), and a sinister Oriental in Drums of Fu Manchu. Brandon played Indian chiefs no fewer than 26 times, notably in two John Ford westerns. He had occasional leading roles on New York stage, such as in a 1949 revival of Medea in which he played a virile Jason opposite Judith Anderson.

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: A theatrical performer from the 1880s, Florence Roberts was able to convey extreme youth on-stage even in her forties and fifties. At 42, Roberts played Bo Peep in the Victor Herbert musical Babes in Toyland; and at 50, she played the vampish title role in Sappho, repeating this portrayal on film in 1912. Her Hollywood career began in earnest in the talkie era. Her characterizations ranged from snooty dowagers to downtrodden pensioners. Among her more famous 1930s film roles were Widow Peep in the Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy version of Babes in Toyland (1934), the title character's mother in The Life of Emile Zola (1937), and Mrs. Bowling Green in Abe Lincoln Illinois (1940). She also appeared as the cantankerous, outspoken Granny Jones in 20th Century Fox's Jones Family series (1936-1940). Florence Roberts was married to actor Walter Gale.

Trivia: The career of American comic actor Billy Bletcher stretched from the silent era through the late 1960s. He began performing in vaudeville at age 19 and began his screen career at the Vitagraph Studios, Brooklyn in 1913. While there, he sometimes directed John Bunny comedies. He and his wife Arline came to Hollywood in 1917 where he became a stock comic for Mack Sennett's troupe and played in many two-reelers. Bletcher's career didn't really take off until the early 1920s when he teamed up with Billy Gilbert. Together they appeared in a number of Hal Roach two-reelers. Bletcher later appeared as Spanky's father in the "Our Gang" shorts. He also provided voices for Disney cartoon characters and in features such as The Wizard of Oz (as a Munchkin). Bletcher also did voiceovers on television. His last film appearance was in 1969.

Trivia: Diminutive American actor Angelo Rossitto was a fixture in American movies for more than 50 years, usually in highly visible supporting and extra roles. Born Angelo Salvatore Rossitto, he entered movies in his teens during the height of the silent era, making his first known appearance in The Beloved Rogue, starring John Barrymore, in 1926. Standing less than four feet tall, with dark hair and a grim visage, and billed at various times as Little Angie, Little Mo, and Little Angelo, Rossitto was a natural for pygmies and circus dwarves, often of a sinister appearing nature; his presence could help "dress" a carnival set or the setting for a fantasy film. He played the dwarf Angeleno in Tod Browning's Freaks at MGM, a pygmy in Cecil B. DeMille's The Sign of the Cross at Paramount, and one of the Three Little Pigs in the Laurel & Hardy-starring vehicle Babes in Toyland. Off camera, he was also a stand-in for Shirley Temple in several of her films. Rossitto didn't become a well-known figure, even among movie cultists, until he went to work for Monogram Pictures during the early '40s, in a series of low-budget horror films and horror film spoofs starring Bela Lugosi, often cast in tandem with the Hungarian-born actor as a kind of double act. His presence added to the bizarre, threatening nature of the films and he became as well known to fans of these low-budget movies as Lugosi, George Zucco, or any of the other credited stars. His role in the first of those Monogram productions with Lugosi, Spooks Run Wild, also starring the East Side Kids, deliberately played off of Lugosi's and Rossitto's sinister seeming images. In between his Poverty Row Monogram productions, the actor fit in small parts at Universal, including Preston Sturges' The Sin of Harold Diddlebock, and he was one of the jesters tormenting the blinded Samson in DeMille's Samson and Delilah. Rossitto, along with his younger contemporaries Jerry Maren, Frank Delfino, and Billy Curtis, was one of Hollywood's busier little people in the years after World War II. Rossitto can be spotted in carnival scenes in Carousel, appeared as the smallest of the "Moon Men" in the low-budget Jungle Jim movie Jungle Moon Men, and played the leader of the aliens in the late-'50s sci-fi satire Invasion of the Saucer Men. Many of Rossitto's appearances were in roles without character names, constituting highly specialized, uncredited (but highly visible) extra work, and he may have been in as many as 200 movies.On television in the late '60s and early '70s, he portrayed a life-sized puppet in the series H.R. Pufnstuf and played a hat in Lidsville. Rossitto was a sideshow huckster in the cheap cult horror movie Dracula Vs. Frankenstein, and as late as the mid-'80s was seen in a small role in Something Wicked This Way Comes and in the featured role of the Master-Blaster in Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome. Although work in 200 movies and television shows sounds like a lot, most of those appearances involved only a single day's or a single week's work, rather than full-time employment. He made his regular living from the 1930s through the 1960s at a newsstand in Hollywood just outside the gate of one of the studios; he joked that when he was needed for a film, they would simply pass the word directly to him on the street and he would report.

Trivia: The son of a Naval officer, American actor Johnny Downs was hired as one of Hal Roach's "Our Gang" kids in 1923. Alternately playing heroes and bullies, Downs stayed with the short-subject series until 1927, appearing in twenty-four two-reelers. He honed his dancing and singing skills on the vaudeville stage, working prominently on Broadway until returning to Hollywood in 1934. Downs became a fixture of the "college musical" movie cycle of the late '30s, usually cast as a team captain or a cheerleader. He returned briefly to Hal Roach to star in a 45-minute "streamlined" feature, All American Co-Ed (1941), shortly before his movie career began to decline. Working in vaudeville, summer stock, and one solid Broadway hit (Are You With It), Downs made a short-lived movie comeback in supporting roles and bit parts in the early '50s. Johnny Downs' biggest break in these years came via television, where he launched a long-running career as a San Diego TV host and kiddie show star.

Trivia: When Scotty Beckett was three years old, his father was hospitalized in Los Angeles. During a visit, Beckett entertained his convalescing dad by singing several songs. A Hollywood casting director overheard the boy and suggested to his parents that Beckett had movie potential. The wide-eyed, tousle-haired youngster made his screen debut opposite Ann Harding and Clive Brook in 1933's Gallant Lady. In 1934, he was signed by Hal Roach for the Our Gang series; in the 13 two-reelers produced between 1934 and 1935, Beckett appeared as the best pal and severest critic of rotund Gang star Spanky McFarland. This stint led to such choice feature-film assignments as Anthony Adverse (1936) (in which Beckett played the out-of-wedlock son of Fredric March and Olivia De Havilland), Marie Antoinette (1938) (as the Dauphin) and My Favorite Wife (1940) (as one of the two kids of Cary Grant and his long-lost wife Irene Dunne). In 1939, Beckett briefly returned to the Our Gang fold, playing "Alfalfa" Switzer's brainy Cousin Wilbur in a brace of one-reelers. Beckett was frequently called upon for "the leading man as a child" roles, playing youthful versions of Louis Hayward in My Son, My Son (1940), Don Ameche in Heaven Can Wait (1943), and Jon Hall in Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves (1940). As he matured, Beckett was often cast as obnoxious younger brothers, notably in the 1943 Broadway play Slightly Married and the 1948 Jane Powell vehicle A Date with Judy (playing the sibling of none other than Elizabeth Taylor). On radio, Beckett played Junior Riley in the popular William Bendix sitcom The Life of Riley, and on television he was seen as Cadet Winky in the early sci-fi series Rocky Jones, Space Ranger. Scotty Beckett's last film was 1956's Three For Jamie Dawn.

Trivia: By the time she first appeared as Grandma Walton in 1971, American actress Ellen Corby had been playing elderly characters for nearly thirty years--and she herself was still only in her fifties. The daughter of Danish immigrants, Ellen Hansen was born in Wisconsin and raised in Philadelphia; she moved to Hollywood in 1933 after winning several amateur talent shows. Her starring career consisted of tiny parts in low-budget Poverty Row quickies; to make a living, Ellen became a script girl (the production person responsible for maintaining a film's continuity for the benefit of the film editor), working first at RKO and then at Hal Roach studios, where she met and married cameraman Francis Corby. The marriage didn't last, though Ellen retained the last name of Corby professionally. While still a script girl, Ellen began studying at the Actors Lab, then in 1944 decided to return to acting full time. She played several movie bit roles, mostly as servants, neurotics, and busybodies, before earning an Oscar nomination for the role of Trina the maid in I Remember Mama (1948). Her career fluctuated between bits and supporting parts until 1971, when she was cast as Grandma Walton in the CBS movie special The Homecoming. This one-shot evolved into the dramatic series The Waltons in 1972, with Ms. Corby continuing as Grandma. The role earned Ellen a "Best Supporting Actress" Emmy award in 1973, and she remained with the series until suffering a debilitating stroke in 1976. After a year's recuperation, Ellen returned to The Waltons, valiantly carrying on until the series' 1980 cancellation, despite the severe speech and movement restrictions imposed by her illness. Happily, Ellen Corby endured, and was back as Grandma in the Waltons reunion special of the early '90s.

Trivia: The "blonde bombshell" among the Our Gang kids, Jean Darling spent two years with the group from 1927-1929. She later played the young Jane Eyre ([1934] Virginia Bruce starred as the adult Jane), after which she retired from film. Surprisingly, the former moppet star became a competent Broadway ingenue and originated the role of Carrie Pipperidge in the original 1945 Broadway production of Carousel. Her final screen appearance was in 2013's The Butler's Tale, a short, silent film that made reference to Darling's beginnings in the industry. She died in 2015, at age 93.

Trivia: American actress Alice Lake starred in a number of silent Hollywood films. She launched her career working in comedy shorts for Mack Sennett and frequently co-starred with Fatty Arbuckle. By the '20s, Lake had begun starring in Metro features as well as those of other studios. Though a hard-working actress, she never did become a major star and during the sound-era was relegated to playing small roles in "B" films. She is said to have had one brown eye and one gray eye, something that never showed up in black-and-white films.