Trivia: Dame Anna Neagle was a theatrical and cinematic institution in England, and one of the most popular screen actresses of the mid-20th century. As the wife of producer/director Herbert Wilcox, she was also personally close to the centers of power in 1930s British cinema. Born Florence Marjorie Robertson at Forest Gate (near London) in 1904 to a merchant navy captain and his wife, Neagle took up dancing as a child. As early as age 13, she was getting offers of professional engagements, and made her formal debut when she was 20 as a member of the chorus in two 1925 Charlot revues. She moved up the pecking order of theaters and productions, emerging in London in the work of producer Charles B. Cochran as a Cochran Young Lady, and graduated from dancer to actress in 1929. Using the name Anna Neagle (the surname from her mother's family), she played opposite Jack Buchanan in Stand Up and Sing, which ended up running a then huge 604 performances. Photographing extremely well, Neagle was a natural for the screen, and following two minor film appearances early in the sound era, she won the lead in Goodnight Vienna (1932), produced and directed by Herbert Wilcox. After her starring role in The Flag Lieutenant that same year, directed by (and starring) Henry Edwards, she worked exclusively under Wilcox's direction in film for the remainder of her career. It was a winning and happy partnership, yielding an enviable string of popular dramas -- both contemporary (Bitter Sweet) and period (Nell Gwyn) -- that endeared Neagle to British filmgoers throughout the 1930s and '40s. She also proved her stagecraft in 1934, when she took on the roles of Rosalind in As You Like It and Olivia in Twelfth Night; working under director Robert Atkins, she earned critical accolades in both productions, despite the fact that she had never before done any Shakespeare. Neagle's career during the '30s was concentrated on the screen, however, and she moved from success to success, reaching the pinnacle of her film career portraying Queen Victoria in a pair of historical epics. The first of these, Victoria the Great (1937), shot in color, enjoyed an unprecedented run of nearly a year in London, and, along with its companion film, Sixty Glorious Years (a reference to Victoria's reign that, as it turned out, very nearly could have applied equally well to Neagle's own career), proved unusually popular in America, as well. At the same time that those movies were spreading an image of Neagle (under heavy makeup to portray her character's aging) as the renowned British queen, she was delighting audiences in London with her portrayal of the title role in Peter Pan. The two Queen Victoria biographies were successful enough to get Wilcox and Neagle a contract with RKO Radio Pictures, and they moved to Hollywood at the end of the '30s. There they made a trio of notable screen versions of musicals -- Irene, No, No, Nanette, and Sunny -- as well as the biographical drama Nurse Edith Cavell. Their professional relationship was transposed to the personal in 1943, when Neagle and Wilcox returned to England and were married. They resumed their screen work after World War II, and, over the next five years, enjoyed a string of movie successes that made their money almost exclusively in England: I Live in Grosvenor Square, Piccadilly Incident, The Courtneys of Curzon Street, Spring in Park Lane, Elizabeth of Ladymead, and Maytime in Mayfair, most of which starred Michael Wilding, a promising young leading man who achieved stardom working opposite Neagle. In 1950, she broke with her string of light romantic comedies by playing the title role in Odette, a serious, fact-based drama about a woman who sacrifices her life as a spy for the British during World War II; it, too, was a success and only added to Neagle's professional renown. She played Florence Nightingale in The Lady With a Lamp (1951) and returned to theatrical work in 1953 with The Glorious Days, which had a run of 476 performances, a major success by the standard of the day. Neagle's fortunes declined during the mid-'50s, along with the popularity of her films, although she did enjoy some success as a producer in her own right with a trio of movies starring Frankie Vaughan. Her career in the early '60s was blighted by Wilcox's bankruptcy in 1964, but she made a comeback the following year in the West End musical Charlie Girl, which ran for six years and 2,047 performances. It was casting from life, with Neagle playing the role of a former Cochran Young Lady who marries a peer of the realm. It earned the actress an entry in the Guinness Book of World Records for her enduring popularity and was a fitting capstone to the first 40 years of her career, though she continued working for another two decades. During the show's six-year run, Neagle was made a Dame of the British Empire in 1970 in recognition of her work. Two years after Charlie Girl -- which she also brought to Australia and New Zealand -- Neagle was asked to appear in a revival of No, No, Nanette, which she'd done onscreen three decades earlier. Replacing Celia Johnson in The Dame of Sark, she was again on-stage in 1975, and the year after her husband's death in 1977, she was acting in Most Gracious Lady, which was written for the Silver Jubilee of Queen Elizabeth II. Neagle was still working in 1986, just a few weeks before her death at the age of 81.

Trivia: Throughout much of his screen career, actor George Sanders was the very personification of cynicism, an elegantly dissolute figure whose distinct brand of anomie distinguished dozens of films during a career spanning nearly four decades. Born in St. Petersburg on July 3, 1906, Sanders and his family fled to the U.K. during the Revolution, and he was later educated at Brighton College. After first pursuing a career in the textile industry, Sanders briefly flirted with a South American tobacco venture; when it failed, he returned to Britain with seemingly no other options outside of a stage career. After a series of small theatrical roles, in 1934 he appeared in Noel Coward's Conversation Piece; the performance led to his film debut in 1936's Find the Lady, followed by a starring role in Strange Cargo. After a series of other undistinguished projects, Sanders appeared briefly in William Cameron Menzies' influential science fiction epic Things to Come. In 1937, he traveled to Hollywood, where a small but effective role in Lloyd's of London resulted in a long-term contract with 20th Century Fox. A number of lead roles in projects followed, including Love Is News and The Lady Escapes, before Fox and RKO cut a deal to allow him to star as the Leslie Charteris adventurer the Saint in a pair of back-to-back 1939 features, The Saint Strikes Back and The Saint in London. The series remained Sanders' primary focus for the next two years, and in total he starred in five Saint pictures, culminating in 1941's The Saint at Palm Springs. Sandwiched in between were a variety of other projects, including performances in a pair of 1940 Alfred Hitchcock thrillers, Foreign Correspondent and the Best Picture Oscar-winner Rebecca.After co-starring with Ingrid Bergman in 1941's Rage in Heaven, Sanders began work on another adventure series, playing a suave investigator dubbed the Falcon; after debuting the character in The Gay Falcon, he starred in three more entries -- A Date With the Falcon, The Falcon Takes Over, and The Falcon's Brother -- before turning over the role to his real-life brother, Tom Conway. Through his work in Julien Duvivier's Tales of Manhattan, Sanders began to earn notice as a more serious actor, and his lead performance in a 1943 adaptation of the W. Somerset Maugham novel The Moon and Sixpence established him among the Hollywood elite. He then appeared as an evil privateer in the Tyrone Power swashbuckler The Black Swan, followed by Jean Renoir's This Land Is Mine. A pair of excellent John Brahm thrillers, 1944's The Lodger and 1945's Hangover Square, helped bring Sanders' contract with Fox to its close.With his portrayal of the world-weary Lord Henry Wooten in 1945's The Portrait of Dorian Gray, Sanders essayed the first of the rakish, cynical performances which would typify the balance of his career; while occasionally playing more sympathetic roles in pictures like The Strange Affair of Uncle Harry and The Ghost and Mrs. Muir, he was primarily cast as a malcontent, winning a Best Supporting Actor Oscar for his venomous turn in 1951's All About Eve. The award brought Sanders such high-profile projects as 1951's I Can Get It for You Wholesale, 1952's Ivanhoe, and Roberto Rossellini's 1953 effort Viaggio in Italia. However, his star waned, and the musical Call Me Madam, opposite Ethel Merman, was his last major performance. A series of historical pieces followed, and late in the decade he hosted a television series, The George Sanders Mystery Theater. In 1960, he also published an autobiography, Memoirs of a Professional Cad.Sanders spent virtually all of the 1960s appearing in little-seen, low-budget foreign productions. Exceptions to the rule included the 1962 Disney adventure In Search of the Castaways, the 1964 Blake Edwards Pink Panther comedy A Shot in the Dark, and 1967's animated Disney fable The Jungle Book, in which he voiced the character of Shere Khan the Tiger. After appearing on Broadway in the title role of The Man Who Came to Dinner, Sanders appeared in John Huston's 1970 thriller The Kremlin Letter, an indication of a career upswing; however, the only offers which came his way were low-rent horror pictures like 1972's Doomwatch and 1973's Psychomania. Prior to the release of the latter, Sanders killed himself on August 25, 1972, by overdosing on sleeping pills while staying in a Costa Brava hotel; his suicide note read, "Dear World, I am leaving you because I am bored." He was 66 years old.

Trivia: "Horse faced" was the usual capsule assessment given American actress Edna May Oliver - a gross disservice to her talent and accomplishments. A descendant of President John Quincy Adams, she aspired to a career in opera, and at 16 her uncle secured her a job with a light opera company. Her voice was damaged from overuse and exposure to bad weather, so Oliver turned her energies to acting. Stock company work began in 1911, and even as a teenager she lanternlike facial features assured her older character roles. Her 1916 Broadway debut led to a string of small and unsatisfying roles, until fortune smiled upon her with a supporting part as a servant in Owen Davis' Icebound. Davis' play won the 1923 Pulitzer Prize, thrusting everyone involved into the spotlight. Oliver was hired to repeat her Icebound duties for the film cameras in 1924, and though not technically her film debut, she would always list Icebound as her starting point in cinema. Solid roles in the Broadway productions The Cradle Snatchers, Strike Up the Band and the immortal Show Boat kept Oliver busy during the '20s, culminating in a contract with RKO Radio Studios. RKO thrust her into anything and everything, from Wheeler and Woolsey comedies to the Oscar-winning Cimarron (1931). The best testament to her popularity in films were the Edna May Oliver caricatures (complete with "Oh, reaaallly" voice imitation) that popped up with regularity in animated cartoons of the '30s. Oliver worked for virtually all the big studios in the '30s, at one point starring briefly in the Hildegarde Withers mystery series, a role she seemed born to play. Evidently, producers loved to put her angular frame in period costumes, as witness her marvelous roles in David Copperfield (1934), Tale of Two Cities (1935), Romeo and Juliet (1936) and Drums Along the Mohawk (1939). By 1940, Edna May Oliver was a law unto herself (even dictating what hours she would and wouldn't work) and filmakers wisely allowed her to use all the acting tricks at her disposal, from her famous loud sniff of distaste to her low, claxonish voice. After a long intestinal illness, Edna May Oliver died in 1942 on her 59th birthday; ironically, her last screen role had been as an infuriatingly healthy hypochondriac in Lydia (1941).

Trivia: According to her own account, actress ZaSu Pitts was given her curious cognomen because she was named for two aunts, Eliza and Susan. Born in Kansas, Pitts moved with her family to California, where at age 19 she began her film career. Her first starring role was as an ugly duckling who finds true love in 1919's Better Times. Her calculated vagueness and fluttery hand gestures earned Pitts comedy roles from the outset, but director Erich Von Stroheim saw dramatic potential in the young actress. He cast her as the grasping, money-mad wife in his masterpiece Greed (1924), and she rose to the occasion with a searing performance. Except for a couple of later collaborations with Von Stroheim, Pitts returned to predominately comic assignments after Greed. One exception was her portrayal of Lew Ayres' ailing mother in the Oscar-winning All Quiet on the Western Front (1930), a brilliant piece of work that unfortunately fell victim to the editors' scissors when a preview audience, conditioned to Pitts' comedy roles, broke out in loud laughter when she came onscreen (she was replaced by Beryl Mercer in the domestic version of All Quiet, though reportedly her scenes were retained for some European versions). Established as a top character comedian by the '30s (her oft-imitated catchphrase was "Oh, dear, oh my!"), Pitts co-starred with Thelma Todd in a series of Hal Roach two-reelers, was top-billed in such feature programmers as Out All Night (1933) and The Plot Thickens (1935), and showed up in select character roles in A-pictures. During the '40s and '50s, she toured in Ramshackle Inn, a play written especially for her by George Batson. From 1956 through 1960, Pitts played Elvira "Nugey" Nugent on the popular Gale Storm TV sitcom Oh, Susanna. ZaSu Pitts died in 1963, shortly after completing her final film appearance in It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World (1963) and just a few days after her last TV guest assignment on Burke's Law.

Trivia: Born Mary Robison. In her late teens she moved to the U.S. with no intention of becoming an actress; a few years later she became a widow, and in 1884 she took up acting to support her three children. She played both leads and supporting roles on the road and on Broadway, and over several decades she became highly respected as a character actress. From 1914-19 she appeared in a few silent films (sometimes billed as Mrs. Stuart Robson), then returned to the screen for good in 1926 and fourished in the subsequent sound era. She was usually cast as crusty, gruff, domineering society matrons or grandmothers. For her portrayal of Damon Runyon's Apple Annie in Frank Capra's Lady for a Day (1933), one of her rare starring roles, she received a Best Actress Oscar nomination. Ultimately she appeared in more than 60 films, the last of which was released the year of her death.

Trivia: H.B. Warner was the son of Charles Warner and the grandson of James Warner, both prominent British stage actors. A tentative stab at studying medicine was abandoned when the younger Warner took drama lessons in Paris and Italy, then joined his father's stock company. After touring the British empire, Warner made his first American stage appearance in 1905. A leading man in his younger days, Warner starred in the first stage and screen versions of that hardy perennial The Ghost Breaker. His most celebrated silent film role was as Christ in Cecil B. DeMille's The King of Kings (1927). Though Warner sometimes complained that this most daunting of portrayals ruined his career, in point of fact he remained extremely busy as a character actor in the 1930s and 1940s. A favorite of director Frank Capra, Warner appeared as Chang in Lost Horizon (1937) (for which he was Oscar-nominated) and as old man Gower in the Christmas perennial It's a Wonderful Life (1946). Warner also played Inspector Nielsen in several of the Bulldog Drummond B-pictures of the 1930s, and had a cameo as one of Gloria Swanson's "waxworks" in Sunset Boulevard. H.B. Warner's final screen appearance was in DeMille's 1956 remake of The Ten Commandments.

Trivia: The daughter of Will Rogers, actress Mary Rogers was so anxious to succeed on her own without her dad's help or influence that she billed herself as Mary Howard, and for several years managed to hide her lineage from prospective employees. In films from 1933, she never quite achieved stardom, but she managed to work steadily in features and short subjects. Her screen roles ranged from the heroine in the wacky Olsen and Johnson starrer All Over Town (1937) to Ann Rutledge in Abe Lincoln in Illinois (1940). She also appeared in such Broadway productions as On to Fortune and Crime Marches On. Mary Howard retired to private life at the age of 29 and died in the summer of 2009 at age 94.

Trivia: Born in London and educated at Sussex' Hurstpierpont College, actor Robert Coote can be described as Britain's Ralph Bellamy. After making his film debut in the Gracie Fields vehicle Sally in Our Alley (1931) and spending several years on the London stage, the gangly, mustached Coote settled in Hollywood, where in film after film he played stuffed-shirt aristocrats, snooty military officers and clueless young twits who never got the girl. Coote interrupted his film career for World War II service as a squadron leader with the Canadian Air Force, then returned to supporting roles in such films as The Ghost and Mrs. Muir (1947) and Forever Amber (1948). In 1956, Coote was cast as Col. Pickering in the long-running Broadway musical My Fair Lady; eight years later he appeared in the weekly TV series The Rogues, generally carrying the series' plotlines when the "official" stars--David Niven, Charles Boyer and Gig Young--were indisposed. Robert Coote's last film appearance was as one of the theatrical critics dispatched by looney Shakespearean actor Vincent Price in Theatre of Blood.

Trivia: Of Russian descent, actor Martin Kosleck established himself on the Berlin stage under the guidance of Max Reinhardt, fleeing Germany shortly before Hitler came to power. Virtually never anything other than a villain on screen, Kosleck proved an excellent low-priced substitute for Peter Lorre in roles calling for skulking menace (1946's Pursuit to Algiers), implicit sexual depravity (1941's The Mad Doctor, as Basil Rathbone's "good friend") and outright bug-eyed lunacy (1945's House of Horrors). The role with which Kosleck was most closely associated was Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels, a part he played to chilling perfection in such films as Confessions of a Nazi Spy (1939), The Hitler Gang (1944) and Hitler (1962). Martin Kosleck was careful to invest his interpretation of Goebbels with no redeeming qualities whatsoever, explaining "I wanted people to hate me as much as I hated the character I was playing."

Trivia: Polish-born actor Lionel Royce made his American screen bow in 1937. A Teutonic-villain assignment in 1939's Confessions of a Nazi Spy typecast Royce for the rest of his Hollywood career. Among many other assignments, the actor proved to be a memorable menace for Bob Hope in Road to Zanzibar (1941) and My Favorite Blonde (1942). Fans of Republic serials will remember Royce for his dual characterization of a kindly Sultan and the despicable Baron Von Rommer in Secret Service in Darkest Africa (1943). Lionel Royce died while on a U.S.O. tour of the Philippines in 1946.

Trivia: A serious-looking teenage actor of the 1930s, dark-haired Jimmy Butler earned good roles in such seminal dramas as Only Yesterday (1933), Manhattan Melodrama (1934), and Stella Dallas ([1938] as the grownup Con Morrison). Military Academy (1940) foreshadowed his eventual tour of duty in World War II. Sadly, he became one of a handful of Hollywood actors killed in action.

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: With his piercing eyes and shock of white hair, Fritz Leiber seemed every inch the priests, professors, musical professors and religious fanatics that he was frequently called upon to play in films. A highly respected Shakespearean actor, Leiber made his film bow in 1916, playing Mercutio in the Francis X. Bushman version of Romeo and Juliet. His many silent-era portrayals included Caesar in Theda Bara's 1917 Cleopatra and Solomon in the mammoth 1921 Betty Blythe vehicle Solomon and Sheba. He thrived as a character actor in talkies, usually in historical roles; one of his larger assignments of the 1940s was as Franz Liszt in the Claude Rains remake of The Phantom of the Opera (1943). Fritz Leiber was the father of the famous science-fiction author of the same name.

Trivia: Born in New York and raised in England, character actor Gilbert Emery thrived as a stage actor, director and playwright on both sides of the Atlantic in the teens and twenties. In British films from 1929, Emery made his American movie debut (and his talkie debut as well) in Behind That Curtain (1929). Briefly parting company with Hollywood in 1932 and 1933 to concentrate on stage work, he returned to films on a permanent basis in 1934. His better-known roles include the pipe-smoking police inspector in Dracula's Daughter (1936), Mae West's business manager in Goin' to Town (1937), Thomas Jefferson in The Remarkable Andrew (1942) and the self-effacing Mr. Cliveden-Banks in Between Two Worlds (1944). As a screenwriter, he worked on such films as Cuban Love Song (1931), Mata Hari (1932) and Gallant Lady (1934). Gilbert Emery's credits are sometimes combined with those of American bit player Gilbert C. Emery, who died in 1934.

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: Mountainous American actor Bert Roach reportedly launched his film career at the Keystone Studios in 1914. The porcine Mr. Roach remained in comedy during his years of comparative prominence in the '20s, providing jovial support to the romantic leads in such films as Tin Hats (1927). In talkies, Roach occasionally enjoyed a substantial role, notably as Leon Waycoff's whining roomate in Murders in the Rue Morgue (1932). In general, Bert Roach's talkie career consisted of featured and bit parts, often as a sentimental inebriate (e.g. 1932's Night World and 1934's The Thin Man).

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: Czechoslovakian stage actor and director Egon Brecher was brought to Hollywood in 1929 to appear in foreign-language versions of American films. Briefly a fixture of mid-1930s horror films, Brecher could be seen in The Black Cat (1934) and Mark of the Vampire (1935). In 1935's Werewolf of London, it is Brecher's duty (in the role of a Himalayan priest) to intone the venerable "There are some things it is better not to bother with!" He worked steadily in the espionage films of the 1940s, his Slavic accent well-suited to both noble and villainous roles. One of Egon Brecher's largest screen roles was in Columbia's So Dark the Night, a 1946 film peopled almost exclusively by dependable European character actors.

Trivia: Satanic-featured Austrian actor/director Gustav von Seyffertitz not only looked like a villain, but with that three-barrelled name he sounded like one -- even in silent pictures. After a lengthy stage career in both Germany and New York, Seyffertitz began appearing in World War One films as the very embodiment of the "Hideous Hun" -- America's notion of the merciless, atrocity-happy German military officer. Allegedly to avoid persecution from the anti-German organizations of the era, Seyffertitz changed his professional name to G. Butler Cloneblough -- a monicker so satiric in its timbre that one can't help that the "rechristening" was the concoction of a clever press agent. Returning to his own name after the war, Seyffertitz remained busy as a "villain of all nations:" He was British criminal mastermind Moriarty in John Barrymore's Sherlock Holmes (1922), a torturer for the Borgias in Barrymore's Don Juan (1926), and the evil American backwoods farmer Grimes in Mary Pickford's Sparrows (1926). Nearly always a supporting actor, Seyffertitz was given his full head with a mad-scientist leading role in the 1927 horror flick The Wizard. Offscreen, Seyffertitz was a kindly, temperate man, patient enough to direct Vitagraph star Alice Calhoun in three back-to-back vehicles in 1921: Princess Jones, Closed Doors and Peggy Puts It Over. In talking pictures, Seyffertitz' deep, warm voice somewhat mitigated his horrific demeanor. Though few of his talkie roles were billed, Gustav von Seyffertitz made the most of such parts as the High Priest in the 1935 version of She and the pontificating court psychiatrist in Capra's Mr. Deeds Goes to Town (1936).

Trivia: Launching his theatrical career in his native Germany, actor/director Frank Reicher worked in London before coming to the US in 1899. His entree into the movies was as co-director of the 1915 production The Clue; he continued to direct in Hollywood before returning to the stage in 1921. At the dawn of the talkie era, Reicher was brought back to California to direct German-language versions of American films. For his acting bow before the microphones, Reicher was cast in the title role of Napoleon's Barber (1928) a Fox Movietone two-reeler which represented the first talkie for director John Ford. Reicher specialized at this time in humorless, wizened authority figures: college professors, doctors, scientists, cabinet ministers. In 1933 he was cast as Captain Engelhorn in the classic adventure fantasy King Kong; director Ernest Schoedsack later characterized Reicher as "the best actor we had" in a cast which included Robert Armstrong, Bruce Cabot and Fay Wray. He repeated the Engelhorn role, with a modicum of uncharacteristic humor added, in Son of Kong (1933). The remainder of Reicher's film career was devoted to brief character roles, often as murder victims. He was killed off at least twice by Boris Karloff (Invisible Ray [1936] and House of Frankenstein [1944]), and was strangled by Lon Chaney Jr. at the very beginning of The Mummy's Ghost (1944) (When Chaney inadvertently cut off his air during the feigned strangulation, Reicher subjected the star to a scorching reprimand, reducing Chaney to a quivering mass of meek apologies). During the war, Reicher's Teutonic name and bearing came in handy for the many anti-Nazi films of the era, notably To Be or Not to Be (1942) and Mission to Moscow (1944). In 1946, Reicher had one of his largest parts in years as the general factotum to hypnotist Edmund Lowe in The Strange Mr. Gregory (1946); that the part may have been written for the venerable actor is evidenced by the fact that his character name was Reicher. Frank Reicher retired in 1951; he died fourteen years later, at age 90.

Trivia: Born in England but raised in Germany, Henry Victor began his film career in 1916. During the silent era, the tall, muscular Victor played leads in such literary adaptations as Portrait of Dorian Gray (1917) and She (1925). When talkies came in, Victor's thick Teutonic accent precluded future leading roles, though he enjoyed a substantial career as a character actor, specializing in brutish Nazis during WWII. Henry Victor's best-known talkie roles include the sadistic strong-man Hercules in 1932's Freaks and the beleaguered Nazi adjutant Schultz in the Ernst Lubitsch classic To Be or Not to Be (1942).