Trivia: Born in Ranelagh, Ireland, near Dublin, Maureen O'Hara was trained at the Abbey Theatre School and appeared on radio as a young girl before making her stage debut with the Abbey Players in the mid-'30s. She went to London in 1938, and made her first important screen appearance that same year in the Charles Laughton/Erich Pommer-produced drama Jamaica Inn, directed by Alfred Hitchcock. She was brought to Hollywood with Laughton's help and co-starred with him in the celebrated costume drama The Hunchback of Notre Dame, which established O'Hara as a major new leading lady. Although she appeared in dramas such as How Green Was My Valley with Walter Pidgeon, The Fallen Sparrow opposite John Garfield, and This Land Is Mine with Laughton, it was in Hollywood's swashbucklers that O'Hara became most popular and familiar. Beginning with The Black Swan opposite Tyrone Power in 1942, she always seemed to be fighting (or romancing) pirates, especially once Technicolor became standard for such films. Her red hair photographed exceptionally well, and, with her extraordinary good looks, she exuded a robust sexuality that made her one of the most popular actresses of the late '40s and early '50s.O'Hara was also a good sport, willing to play scenes that demanded a lot of her physically, which directors and producers appreciated. The Spanish Main, Sinbad the Sailor, and Against All Flags (the latter starring Errol Flynn) were among her most popular action films of the '40s. During this period, the actress also starred as young Natalie Wood's beautiful, strong-willed mother in the classic holiday fantasy Miracle on 34th Street and as John Wayne's estranged wife in the John Ford cavalry drama Rio Grande. O'Hara became Wayne's most popular leading lady, most notably in Ford's The Quiet Man, but her career was interrupted during the late '50s when she sued the scandal magazine Confidential. It picked up again in 1960, when she did one of her occasional offbeat projects, the satire Our Man in Havana, based on a Graham Greene novel and starring Alec Guinness. O'Hara moved into more distinctly maternal roles during the '60s, playing the mother of Hayley Mills in Disney's popular The Parent Trap. She also starred with Wayne in the comedy Western McLintock!, and with James Stewart in the The Rare Breed, both directed by Andrew V. McLaglen. Following her last film with Wayne, Big Jake, and a 1973 television adaptation of John Steinbeck's The Red Pony, O'Hara went into retirement, although returned to the screen in 1991 to play John Candy's overbearing mother in the comedy Only the Lonely, and later appeared in a handful of TV movies. In 2014, she received an Honorary Academy Award, despite having never been nominated for one previously. O'Hara died the following year, at age 95.

Trivia: Tortured but brilliant British actor Charles Laughton's unique performances made him a compelling performer both on stage and in film. After starting his career as an hotel manager, Laughton switched to acting. His performances in London's West End plays brought him early acclaim, which eventually led him to the Old Vic, Broadway and Hollywood. When he repeated his stage success in The Private Life of Henry VIII for Alexander Korda on film in 1933, he won a "Best Actor" Oscar. Known both for his fascination with the darker side of human behavior and for his comic touch, Laughton should be watched as a frightening Nero in Sign of the Cross (1932), the triumphant employee in If I Had a Million (1932), the evil doctor in Island of Lost Souls (1932), the incestuous father in The Barretts of Wimpole Street (1934), the irrepressible Ruggles in Ruggles of Red Gap (1935), the overbearing Captain Bligh in Mutiny on the Bounty (1935), which garnered him another Oscar nomination, and the haunted hunchback in The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1939), with a very young Maureen O'Hara. During the war years, he played some light roles in Tales of Manhattan (1942), Forever and a Day (1943) and The Canterville Ghost (1944), among others. By the late '40s, Laughton sought greater challenges and returned to the stage in The Life of Galileo, which he translated from Bertolt Brecht's original and co-directed. As stage director and/or performer, he made Don Juan in Hell in 1951, John Brown's Body in 1953, The Caine Mutiny Court Martial in 1954, and Shaw's Major Barbara in 1956, all in New York. When he returned to England in 1959, he appeared in Stratford-upon-Avon productions of A Midsummer Night's Dream, and King Lear. Later film appearances include O. Henry's Full House (1952), Hobson's Choice (1954), Witness for the Prosecution (1957) (which gave him another Oscar nomination), Spartacus (1960) and Advise and Consent (1962). Laughton was married from 1929 to his death to actress Elsa Lanchester, with whom he occasionally appeared. His direction of the film The Night of the Hunter (1955) is critically acclaimed.

Trivia: Oxford-educated Leslie Banks embarked upon a stage career at London's Vaudeville Theatre in 1911. During combat in World War I, Banks' face was scarred and partially paralyzed. Returning to the theater at war's end, Banks was able to use his disfigurement to his advantage, favoring the unblemished side of his face when playing comedy, then conversely utilizing his "marked" side when essaying villains. Some of his more celebrated stage roles included Captain Hook in Peter Pan, Petruchio in Taming of the Shrew, the capricious title character in Springtime for Henry, and the kindly, doddering lead in the original 1938 staging of Goodbye Mr. Chips. He also distinguished himself as a theatrical producer and director. Banks entered films in 1932, starring as diabolical "people hunter" Count Zaroff in The Most Dangerous Game (1932). Leslie Banks continued making occasional film appearances until 1950, most notably as the reluctant hero of Hitchcock's 1934 version of The Man Who Knew Too Much, and the Chorus in Olivier's brilliant Henry V (1945).

Trivia: He escaped working in the impoverished mining town of his youth when he won scholarships to a Swiss school and Oxford. In 1927 he debuted onstage in both London and New York, and by the early '30s he was among the most well-respected leading men of his day; meanwhile he branched out into playwrighting and direcing. The best known of his plays is The Corn is Green (1938), which won the New York Drama Critics Award as best foreign play in 1941. He authored the autobiographies George (1961) and Emlyn (1973). He debuted onscreen in 1932 and for a decade he was very busy in films; after 1942 his film work was sporadic.

Trivia: Professionally, British actor Robert Newton was two people: The wry, sensitive, often subtle performer seen in such plays as Noel Coward's Private Lives and such films as This Happy Breed (1944), and the eye-rolling, chop-licking ham in such roles as Bill Sykes in Oliver Twist (1948) and Long John Silver (arr! arr!) in Treasure Island (1950). Born into a gifted family -- his mother was a writer, his father and his siblings painters -- Newton made his professional debut when he was 15 with the British Repertory Company. Before he was 25, Newton had toured the world as an actor and stage manager, making his Broadway bow when he replaced Laurence Olivier in Private Lives. There was little of Olivier (except perhaps the older Olivier) in most of Newton's movie roles; despite his wide actor's range, he seemed happiest tearing a passion to tatters in such films as Jamaica Inn (1939), Blackbeard the Pirate (1952) and The Beachcomber (1954). Ripe though his acting could be, it was clear Newton knew his audience. From 1947 through 1951 he was one of Britain's top ten moneymaking film stars, so who were the critics to tell him what to do? Newton's final film role was the dogged Inspector Fix in the blockbuster Around the World in 80 Days (1956). Less than one month after completing Around the World in 80 Days, Robert Newton died of a heart attack in the arms of his wife.

Trivia: Upon graduation from the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art (he'd been a medical student before deciding upon an acting career), Welsh-born Mervyn Johns spent several years as a touring actor in England, Australia and South Africa. He made his first film appearance in 1934. Significant credits in Johns' film manifest include the roles of the confused "throughline" character Walter Craig in the nightmarish multistoried Dead of Night; Bob Cratchit in the 1951 Alastair Sim version of A Christmas Carol; Friar Lawrence in the 1954 filmization of Romeo and Juliet; and Captain Peleg in John Huston's Moby Dick (1956). The husband of concert pianist Alys Maude Steele-Payne and the father of actress Glynis Johns, Mervyn Johns had been widowed for several years when he wed his second wife, actress Diana Churchill.

Trivia: Actor Basil Radford was on the British stage from 1922 in twittish, tweedy comedy roles. His first film appearance was in 1929's Barnum Was Right. International fame came Radford's way when he and Naunton Wayne originated the roles of cricket-obsessed Charters and Caldicott in Alfred Hitchcock's The Lady Vanishes (1938). Radford and Wayne continued to play these roles (or facsimiles thereof) in such films as Night Train (1940), Crooks Tour (1941), Next of Kin (1942), Millions Like Us (1945), and Dead of Night (1945). They were supposed to revive Charters and Caldicott once more for Sir Carol Reed's The Third Man (1949), but their roles were streamlined into a solo part for Wilfred Hyde-White. The best of Radford's later roles included the blindsided British bureaucrat in Tight Little Island (1948). Basil Radford died of a heart attack at age 55, shortly after co-starring in White Corridors (1951).

Trivia: British actor John Longden played the hero in a number of silent films during the late '20s and into the '30s. He later became a noted character actor. Before becoming an actor, Longden, a native of the West Indies, worked as a mining engineer.

Trivia: In films from 1930, Scottish character-actor Hay Petrie usually showed up in eccentric bit roles. Petrie's larger film assignments included the unspeakable Quilp in The Old Curiosity Shop (1936) and the mentally defective John Aloysius Evan in 21 Days Together (1937). Many consider his portrayal of the MacLaggan in The Ghost Goes West (1936) to be the actor's finest hour and a half. Active until his death, Hay Petrie's last role of note was Uncle Pumblechook in Great Expectations (1946).

Trivia: Character actor Aubrey Mather launched his stage career in 1905, touring the British provinces until his 1909 London debut in Brewster's Millions. Ten years later, Mather made his first Broadway appearance in Luck of the Navy. In British films from 1931, he essayed such supporting roles as Corin in As You Like It. Moving to Hollywood in 1940, he worked with regularity at 20th Century-Fox, playing roles like Colonel Dent in Jane Eyre (1943), the Scotland Yard chief inspector in The Lodger (1944), and, best of all, mild-mannered Nazi spy Mr. Fortune in Careful Soft Shoulders (1942). Other assignments included Professor Peagram, one of the "seven dwarfs" in Goldwyn's Ball of Fire (1941), and James Forsyte in That Forsyte Woman (1949). Like his fellow Britons Arthur Treacher and Charles Coleman, Aubrey Mather is fondly remembered for his butler roles, notably Merriman in the British The Importance of Being Earnest (1952).

Trivia: British character actress and comedienne Marie Ault is best remembered for her fingernail-on-the-chalkboard portrayal of Rummy Mitchens in 1941's Major Barbara. In addition to appearing in feature films, Ault also played on the British stage. She was born Mary Cragg.

Trivia: A virile romantic lead in his turn-of-the-century stage performances, British actor O. B. Clarence settled for what one writer characterized as "benevolent, doddering" roles in films. On screen from 1914, Clarence played dozens of benign old duffers, usually wearing a working-class cloth cap. He also showed up in clerical roles, playing vicars and ministers in such productions as Pygmalion (1937) and Uncle Silas (1947). The most celebrated of his 1940s film assignments was his brief turn as The Aged Parent in Great Expectations (1946). One of O. B. Clarence's least characteristic "appearances" was in a film in which he never appeared on screen: in Dead Eyes of London (1940), Clarence's voice was heard whenever villain Bela Lugosi adopted the disguise of the kindly operator of a home for the blind.

Trivia: Despite hailing from San Francisco, dark-haired Robert A'Dair (sometimes given as Robert Adair) spent his screen career playing English military personnel, bobbies, butlers, footmen, and so on. A'Dair played the cockroach racing Captain Hardy in the 1930 Hollywood screen version of the anti-war play Journey's End (1930), the highlight of a long screen career spent mostly in small supporting roles.