Trivia: The son of a British vicar, Michael Goodliffe began his acting career at the Stratford Shakespeare Festival. His theatrical activities were put on hold during WWII, when he served five years as a POW. Picking up where he left off in 1948, he entered films with The Small Back Room, then spent the next three decades playing a vast array of military officers, diplomats, and businessmen. His costume roles included Robert Walpole in Disney's Rob Roy (1953), Count de Dunois in Quentin Durward (1954), and Charles Gill in The Trial of Oscar Wilde (1960). Though never a star in films, he enjoyed leading man status on British television, notably in the TV series Sam (1973-1975). Michael Goodliffe was 62 when he committed suicide by jumping from a hospital window.

Trivia: Billed by some historians as "the Maltese Menace" due to his land of birth and his occasional villain roles, actor Nigel Stock moved early in life from his native Malta to England, whence he began his stage career in 1931 as a child performer. In films since 1938's Lancashire Luck, Stock appeared in such major British releases as Brighton Rock (1946), The Dam Busters (1955) Damn the Defiant (1962) and Cromwell (1969). One of his last performances was a character part in the Spielberg-produced Young Sherlock Holmes (1986). Though possibly not intended, his appearance was something of an in-joke; Nigel Stock was at that time best known for his continuing performance as Dr. Watson in a BBC-TV series of Sherlock Holmes dramas.

Trivia: Long before her "formal" professional stage bow in 1957 with the Frinton Summer Theatre, London-born Jane Asher was a busy child actress, appearing in such films as Crash of Silence (1952), Dance Little Lady (1955) and The Creeping Unknown (1956). Thus, when Jane made her London stage debut in Will You Walk a Little Faster, she already had a decade's worth of credits. Once we saw her in the role of the egotistical Annie in 1966's Alfie, we knew that juvenile actress Jane Asher was lost to us forever. Her major film appearances since that time have included The Winter's Tale (1968), Deep End (1971), and Dreamchild (1985), in which she played the mother of Lewis Carroll's Alice. On television, Jane was seen as Jane Seymour in The Six Wives of Henry VIII (1971) and as a regular on the British weeklies Wish Me Luck (1989-90), Eats for Treats (1991) and The Choir (1995). Romantically linked with Beatle Paul McCartney in the mid-1960s, Jane Asher is (at last report) the wife of cartoonist Gerald Scarfe.

Trivia: The brother of British leading man Mark Dignam, Basil Dignam spent most of his time before the cameras in small but pivotal roles. From 1952's Murder in the Cathedral onward, Dignam, a former lumberjack, popped up frequently as barristers, politicians and military officers. His aura of brusque professionalism made Dignam a valuable foil in British comedies of the 1950s and 1960s, notably several of the Carry On series. Habitues of the Shock Theatre TV programs of the early 1960s may recall Dignam as "The Admiral" in 1960's Gorgo, while Shakespeare scholars will remember the actor for his portrayal of Polonius in the 1969 Nicol Williamson version of Hamlet. Basil Dignam was the husband of actress Mona Washbourne.

Trivia: Lancashire-born character actor Frank Atkinson appeared in at least 130 films in the 33 years between the advent of sound in 1930 and his death in 1963. His work extended to both sides of the Atlantic -- although he worked primarily in his native England, he did go over to Hollywood in the mid-1930's, where he seemed to keep busy at Fox. He was often in roles too small to be credited, but that didn't stop him from doing a memorable turn (or two) in pictures. Tall and slender, and with gaunt facial features that lent themselves to looks of eccentricity, and with a highly cultured speaking voice, he could melt unobtrusively into a scene, as an anonymous bit-player, or could, with the utterance of a few words or a look, transform himself into a wryly comedic presence -- he played everything from jailers, guards, garage attendants, and soldiers to upper-class twits, and, in a manner unique to his era, sometimes got into some gender-bending portrayals. His most interesting attributes were shown off in a pair of Raoul Walsh-directed features: Sailor's Luck (1933), starring James Dunn and Sally Eilers, in which Atkinson plays an overtly gay swimming pool attendant in an important scene in the middle of the picture; and in Me And My Gal (1932), an excellent romantic comedy/thriller starring Spencer Tracy and Joan Bennett, in which he turns in a brief (but wonderfully rewarding) comedic tour-de-force as the funniest of a trio of effete, drunken waterfront tavern patrons, debating the matter of the type of fish with which one of them has been assaulted. His roles were usually not named, but Atkinson was highly regarded enough so that in The Green Cockatoo, he gets some memorable lines as a wry-toned butler named Provero, whose name becomes a comical issue. Atkinson also wrote screenplays and scripts for various British films in the 1930's, in genres ranging from light comedy to thrillers. Toward the end of his career, he also worked extensively in British television, on series such as Z-Cars and The Saint, and in 1963, the year of his death -- at age 69 -- he was in three television episodes as well as chalking up an uncredit appearance in Murder At the Gallop. In more recent years, thanks to the activity of various researches and scholars, and revivals of Fox's pre-Code features, especially Sailor's Luck, Atkinson has been mentioned in articles and books dealing with gay images and personae in Hollywood films.