Deadline at Dawn

Bill Williams (Actor) .. Alex Winkley

Born: September 21, 1992
Died: September 21, 1992
Birthplace: Brooklyn, New York, United States

Trivia: Educated at the Pratt Institute, Brooklyn-born Bill Williams broke into performing as a professional swimmer. Williams went on to work as a singer/actor in regional stock and vaudeville before making his film bow in 1943. After World War II service, he was signed by RKO Radio Pictures, which gave him the star buildup with such 1946 releases as Till the End of Time and Deadline at Dawn. Also in 1946, he wed another RKO contractee, Barbara Hale, with whom he co-starred in A Likely Story (1948) and Clay Pigeon (1949). His film career on the wane in the early 1950s, Williams signed up to star in the weekly TV western The Adventures of Kit Carson, which ran from 1952 to 1955. After the cancellation of Kit Carson, he remained active in television starring opposite Betty White in the 1955 sitcom Date with the Angels and showing off his athletic and aquatic prowess in the 1960 Sea Hunt clone Assignment: Underwater. He stayed active into the 1980s, playing rugged character roles. Bill Williams was the father of actor William Katt, star of the 1980s adventure weekly The Greatest American Hero.

Susan Hayward (Actor) .. June Goth

Born: June 30, 1918
Died: March 14, 1975
Birthplace: Brooklyn, New York, United States

Trivia: Energetic red-haired leading lady Susan Hayward (born Edythe Marrener) specialized in portraying gutsy women who rebound from adversity. She began working as a photographer's model while still in high school, and when open auditions were held in 1937 for the role of Scarlett O'Hara in Gone With the Wind, she arrived in Hollywood with scores of other actresses. Unlike most of the others, however, she managed to become a contract player. Her roles were initially discouragingly small, although she gradually work her way up to stardom. For her role in Smash-Up: The Story of a Woman (1947) -- the first in which she played a strong-willed, courageous woman -- Hayward received the first of her five Oscar nominations; the others were for performances in My Foolish Heart (1950), With a Song in My Heart (1952), I'll Cry Tomorrow (1956), and I Want to Live (1958), winning for the latter. Although the actress maintained her star status through the late '50s, the early '60s saw her in several unmemorable tearjerkers, and although she formally retired from films in 1964, that retirement was not a permanent one - as she later returned to the screen for a few more roles including parts in a couple of telemovies and one theatrical feature during the early 1970s. Her ten-year marriage to actor Jess Barker ended in 1954 with a bitter child-custody battle, and she died in 1975 after a two-year struggle with a brain tumor, one of several cast and crew members from 1956's The Conqueror to be stricken with cancer later in life.

Paul Lukas (Actor) .. Gus Hoffman

Born: May 26, 1887
Died: August 15, 1971

Trivia: Lukas trained for the stage at the Hungarian Actors Academy, and in 1916 he debuted on the Budapest stage. He soon became a local matinee idol, having appeared in many plays and films. He became well-known throughout Central Europe, and Max Reinhardt had him guest-star in Berlin and Vienna productions in the '20s. In 1927 Adolph Zukor brought him to the U.S., and from 1928 he made his career playing Continental Europeans in Hollywood films. At first he portrayed smooth, suave seducers; as age caught up with him he moved into villainous roles, and often played Nazis. His greatest acting triumph, however, came in an anti-Nazi role -- one of his few sympathetic parts at the time -- in Lillian Hellman's Watch on the Rhine on Broadway (1941); he reprised the role in the play's film version (1943), for which he won the Best Actor Oscar and New York Film Critics Award. He continued appearing in occasional films throughout the rest of his life, usually playing sympathetic old men.

Joseph Calleia (Actor) .. Val Bartelli

Born: August 14, 1897
Died: October 31, 1975

Trivia: Maltese-born character actor Joseph Calleila first came to prominence as a concert singer in England and Europe. He made his screen bow in 1935's Public Hero Number 1, playing the first of many gangsters. Usually a villain, Calleila often leavened his screen perfidy with a subtle sense of humor, notably as the masked bandit who motivates the plot of the Mae West/W.C. Fields comedy My Little Chickadee (1940). In 1936, Calleila tried his hand at screenwriting with Robin Hood of El Dorado (1936), a fanciful western based on the criminal career of Joaquin Murietta. Joseph Calleila delivered some of his best and most varied screen performances in the last years of his film career, especially as the kindly Mexican priest in Disney's The Littlest Outlaw (1955) and the weary border-town detective in Orson Welles' Touch of Evil (1958).

Osa Massen (Actor) .. Helen Robinson

Born: January 13, 1914
Died: January 02, 2006

Trivia: Although never a major star, Danish-born actress Osa Massen made an impact in such 1940s melodramas as A Woman's Face (1941), in which she engages in an outright catfight with heroine Joan Crawford, and the noir thriller Deadline at Dawn (1946), as a woman with something to hide. Trained as a newspaper photographer, Massen (born Aase Madsen) was persuaded by Danish director Alice O'Fredericks to make her acting debut in Kidnapped (1935), a comedy starring Denmark's answer to Shirley Temple, and although Osa had designs on a career as a film cutter, she agreed to appear in a second Danish film, the seemingly lost Bag Københavns Kulisser (1935). A screen test for 20th Century Fox led to a Hollywood contract. Director Edward H. Griffith cast her as a Dutch-Polynesian femme fatale in Honeymoon in Bali (1939), which several reviewers thought she stole outright from nominal stars Madeleine Carroll and Fred MacMurray. Switching to Warner Bros., Massen appeared mainly in potboilers, her best assignment coming on loan to MGM in the aforementioned A Woman's Face, a remake of a Swedish melodrama that had starred Ingrid Bergman, with whom Massen was often compared. Playing leading roles in low-budget productions and supporting parts in Grade-A films, Osa, as many critics pointed out, always made her moments count. She scored as a mystery woman murdered on a train in Background to Danger (1943), a rather fanciful espionage thriller starring George Raft. Deadline at Dawn (1946), in which she played Paul Lukas' daughter, was one of the first true film noirs and Massen was again singled out by several critics. After being continually confused with Ona Munson and Hungarian import Ilona Massey, co-star Gene Raymond persuaded her to change her name to Stefanie Paull for Million Dollar Weekend (1948). She was back to Osa Massen in Rocketship X-M (1950), an early sci-fi thriller and perhaps her best-remembered film. Divorced from Alan Hersholt, the son of character actor Jean Hersholt, Massen was widowed by her second husband, a Beverly Hills physician, in 1953. At that point, she concentrated on television guest roles. After appearing in shows ranging from Perry Mason to Wagon Train, Massen made her final screen appearance in Outcasts of the City (1958), a love story set in Germany and one of the last films released by Republic Pictures. Divorced from her third husband, a Hollywood dentist, she faded completely from public view.

Lola Lane (Actor) .. Edna Bartelli

Born: January 01, 1909
Died: June 22, 1981

Trivia: Born Dorothy Mullican, she was playing piano at age twelve in cinemas as accompaniment to silent films. She studied at a music conservatory for two years, then went to New York with her sister Leota; they appeared in the Gus Edwards vaudeville revue and debuted on Broadway in Greenwich Village Follies. In 1928 Lola starred opposite George Jessel in Broadway's War Song, after which she was signed to a film contract by Fox; she debuted onscreen in Speakeasy (1929). Until the late '30s she appeared as brassy leads, mostly in minor productions; she became more successful with a string of films in which she was cast with her sisters Priscilla and Rosemary Lane. She retired from the screen in 1946. She was married five times; her husbands included actor Lew Ayres and directors Alexander Hall and Roland West.

Jerome Cowan (Actor) .. Lester Brady

Born: October 06, 1897
Died: January 24, 1972

Trivia: From vaudeville and stock companies, actor Jerome Cowan graduated to Broadway in the now-forgotten farce We've Gotta Have Money. While starring in the 1935 Broadway hit Boy Meets Girl, Cowan was spotted by movie producer Sam Goldwyn, who cast Cowan as a sensitive Irish rebel in 1936's Beloved Enemy. Most of Cowan's subsequent films found him playing glib lawyers, shifty business executives and jilted suitors. A longtime resident at Warner Bros., the pencil-mustached Cowan appeared in several substantial character parts from 1940 through 1949, notably the doomed private eye Miles Archer in The Maltese Falcon. Warners gave Cowan the opportunity to be a romantic leading man in two "B" films, Crime By Night (42) and Find the Blackmailer (43). As the years rolled on, Cowan's air of slightly unscrupulous urbanity gave way to respectability, and in this vein he was ideally suited for the role of Dagwood Bumstead's new boss Mr. Radcliffe in several installments of Columbia's Blondie series; he also scored in such flustered roles as the hapless district attorney in Miracle on 34th Street. Cowan briefly left Hollywood in 1950 to pursue more worthwhile roles on stage and TV; he starred in the Broadway play My Three Angels and was top-billed on the 1951 TV series Not for Publication. In his fifties and sixties, Cowan continued essaying roles calling for easily deflated dignity (e.g. The Three Stooges' Have Rocket Will Travel [59] and Jerry Lewis' Visit to a Small Planet [60]) and made regular supporting appearances on several TV series, among them Valiant Lady, The Tab Hunter Show, Many Happy Returns and Tycoon.

Marvin Miller (Actor) .. Sleepy Parsons

Born: July 18, 1913
Died: February 08, 1985

Trivia: Blessed with a mellifluous speaking voice, Marvin Miller went into radio straight out of college; he appeared in more West Coast-based network programs than can possibly be catalogued here. In films, the heavyset Miller was often cast as a villain, usually oriental (e.g., Blood on the Sun). He is perhaps best remembered by mystery buffs as crime boss Morris Carnovsky's sadistic henchman in the 1947 Humphrey Bogart vehicle Dead Reckoning. Miller continued as both a seen and unseen actor into the 1970s, recording several long-playing albums in which he read classic poetry and literature, and providing voice-overs for the cartoon output of the Disney and UPA studios. Miller's best-known TV role was as Michael Anthony, secretary to the "late, fabulously wealthy John Beresford Tipton" on TV's The Millionaire. From 1955 through 1960, Miller, as Anthony, handed out one million-dollar check per week to unsuspecting fictional recipients; the series brought Miller headaches as well as stardom, inasmuch as he was bombarded with thousands of requests from real-life millionaire wannabes who had trouble separating fact from fiction. Like his voice-artist colleague, Paul Frees (who was the voice of Millionaire's John Beresford Tipton), Marvin Miller eventually grew very rich -- and very corpulent -- on residuals for his extensive TV and commercial work.

Roman Bohnen (Actor) .. Collarless Man

Born: November 24, 1894
Died: February 24, 1949

Trivia: Roman Bohnen studied at the prestigious Munich Business School, then completed his education in his home state at the University of Minnesota. Rechannelled into an acting career, Bohnen worked in many a Broadway and Theatre Guild production before being brought to films by producer Walter Wanger in 1938. Generally cast as rheumy-eyed, defeated old men, Bohnen was brilliant as the pathetic Candy in Of Mice and Men (1939) and the disastrously well-intentioned prison warden in Brute Force (1947). His other screen roles included the title character's father in Song of Bernadette (1943), Captain Ernst Roehm in The Hitler Gang (1944) and Pat Denny in The Best Years of Our Lives. A co-founder of the politically controversial Actors Lab, Roman Bohnen died on stage while appearing in the Lab's production Distant Isle.

Steven Geray (Actor) .. Man with Gloves

Born: November 10, 1899
Died: December 26, 1973

Trivia: Czech character actor Steven Geray was for many years a member in good standing of the Hungarian National Theater. He launched his English-speaking film career in Britain in 1935, then moved to the U.S. in 1941. His roles ranged from sinister to sympathetic, from "A" productions like Gilda (1946) to potboilers like El Paso (1949). He flourished during the war years, enjoying top billing in the moody little romantic melodrama So Dark the Night (1946), and also attracting critical praise for his portrayal of Dirk Stroeve in The Moon and Sixpence (1942). Many of Geray's film appearances in the 1950s were unbilled; when he was given screen credit, it was usually as "Steve Geray." Geray's busy career in film and television continued into the 1960s. Steven Geray worked until he had obviously depleted his physical strength; it was somewhat sad to watch the ailing Geray struggle through the western horror pic Jesse James Meets Frankenstein's Daughter (1965).

Joe Sawyer (Actor) .. Babe Dooley

Born: January 01, 1905
Died: April 21, 1982

Trivia: Beefy, puffy-faced Canadian actor Joseph Sawyer spent his first years in films (the early- to mid-'30s) acting under his family name of Sauer. Before he developed his comic skills, Sawyer was often seen in roles calling for casual menace, such as the grinning gunman who introduces "Duke Mantee, the well-known killer" in The Petrified Forest (1936). While under contract to Hal Roach studios in the 1940s, Sawyer starred in several of Roach's "streamliners," films that ran approximately 45 minutes each. He co-starred with William Tracy in a series of films about a GI with a photographic memory and his bewildered topkick: Titles included Tanks a Million (1941), Fall In (1942), and Yanks Ahoy (1943) (he later reprised this role in a brace of B-pictures produced by Hal Roach Jr. for Lippert Films in 1951). A second "streamliner" series, concerning the misadventures of a pair of nouveau riche cabdrivers, teamed Sawyer with another Roach contractee, William Bendix. Baby boomers will remember Joe Sawyer for his 164-episode stint as tough but soft-hearted cavalry sergeant Biff O'Hara on the '50s TV series Rin Tin Tin.

Constance Worth (Actor) .. Mrs. Raymond

Born: January 01, 1912
Died: October 18, 1963

Trivia: A child actress in the 1920s, Australia-born Constance Worth re-emerged as an ash-blonde leading lady in the early '30s. Worth worked mainly in such B-films as Columbia's Crime Doctor and Boston Blackie entries. During one of her many stopovers at Republic, she did damsel-in-distress duty in the 1943 serial G-Men vs. the Black Dragon. She retired in 1949. At one time, Constance Worth was married to film star George Brent.

Joseph Crehan (Actor) .. Lt. Kane

Born: July 12, 1886
Died: April 15, 1966

Trivia: American actor Joseph Crehan bore an uncanny resemblance to Ulysses S. Grant and appeared as Grant in a number of historical features, notably They Died With Their Boots On (1941) and The Adventures of Mark Twain (1944). Appearing in hundreds of other films as well, the short, snappish actor's field-commander personality assured him authoritative roles as police chiefs, small-town mayors and newspaper editors. Because he never looked young, Joseph Crehan played essentially the same types of roles throughout his screen career, even up until 1961's Judgment at Nuremberg. Perhaps Joseph Crehan's oddest appearance is in a film he never made; in West Side Story (1961), it is Crehan's face that appears on those ubiquitous political campaign posters in the opening Jets vs. Sharks sequences.

Jason Robards Sr. (Actor) .. Policeman

Born: December 31, 1892
Died: April 04, 1963

Trivia: He studied theater at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts. After establishing himself prominently on the American stage, he began appearing in silents beginning with The Gilded Lily (1921). He appeared in more than 100 films, the last of which was the Elvis Presley vehicle Wild in the Country (1961). He starred in a number of silents, often as a clean-living rural hero; in the sound era he began playing character roles, almost always as an arch villain. Due to a serious eye infection, he was absent from the big screen in the '50s. He was the father of actor Jason Robards, with whom he appeared on Broadway in 1958 in The Disenchanted.

Joan Barton (Actor) .. One-legged Man

Born: January 01, 1924
Died: January 01, 1977

Sammy Blum (Actor) .. Sam, Taxi Driver

Emory Parnell (Actor) .. Capt. Bender

Born: January 01, 1894
Died: June 22, 1979

Trivia: Trained at Iowa's Morningside College for a career as a musician, American actor Emory Parnell spent his earliest performing years as a concert violinist. He worked the Chautauqua and Lyceum tent circuits for a decade before leaving the road in 1930. For the next few seasons, Parnell acted and narrated in commercial and industrial films produced in Detroit. Determining that the oppurtunities and renumeration were better in Hollywood, Emory and his actress wife Effie boarded the Super Chief and headed for California. Endowed with a ruddy Irish countenance and perpetual air of frustration, Parnell immediately landed a string of character roles as cops, small town business owners, fathers-in-law and landlords (though his very first film part in Bing Crosby's Dr. Rhythm [1938] was cut out before release). In roles both large and small, Parnell became an inescapable presence in B-films of the '40s; one of his better showings was in the A-picture Louisiana Purchase, in which, as a Paramount movie executive, he sings an opening song about avoiding libel suits! Parnell was a regular in Universal's Ma and Pa Kettle film series (1949-55), playing small town entrepreneur Billy Reed; on TV, the actor appeared as William Bendix' factory foreman The Life of Riley (1952-58). Emory Parnell's last public appearance was in 1974, when he, his wife Effie, and several other hale-and-hearty residents of the Motion Picture Country Home and Hospital were interviewed by Tom Snyder.

Lee Phelps (Actor) .. Philosophical Policeman

Born: January 01, 1894
Died: March 19, 1953

Trivia: Lee Phelps was a longtime resident of Culver City, California, the home of several film studios, including MGM and Hal Roach. Whenever the call went out for street extras, Phelps was always available; his Irish face and shiny pate can be easily spotted in such silent 2-reelers as Laurel and Hardy's Putting Pants on Phillip. Phelps was active in films from 1921 through 1953, often in anonymous bit or atmosphere parts, usually playing a cop or a delivery man. Lee Phelps has found his way into several TV movie-compilation specials thanks to his participation in two famous films of the early '30s: Phelps played the cowering speakeasy owner slapped around by Jimmy Cagney in The Public Enemy (1931), and also portrayed the waterfront waiter to whom Greta Garbo delivers her first talking-picture line ("Gif me a viskey, baby...etc.") in Anna Christie (1930).

Ernie Adams (Actor) .. Waiter

Born: June 18, 1885

Larry McGrath (Actor) .. Whispering Man

Born: January 01, 1889
Died: January 01, 1960

Connie Conrad (Actor) .. Mrs. Bender

Carl Faulkner (Actor) .. Policeman Drawing Diagram

Dorothy Curtis (Actor) .. Giddy Woman

Mike Pat Donovan (Actor) .. Sweating Trickster

Fred Aldrich (Actor) .. Beefy Guest

Born: January 01, 1904
Died: January 01, 1979

Pearl Varvell (Actor) .. Woman

John Ince (Actor) .. Elderly Sleeper

Born: January 01, 1877
Died: April 10, 1947

Trivia: John Ince was the older brother of producer/directors Tom Ince and Ralph Ince. Like his siblings, John was a stage actor from childhood. Despite his huge, fleshy frame, Ince found work as a leading man when entered films in 1913; he also directed and scripted several of his own vehicles. Concentrating almost exclusively on directing from 1915 through 1928, Ince returned before the cameras as a character actor in the early years of the talkies. While many of assignments were bit roles, John Ince could always be counted on to make his scenes important; he was quite memorable as Major Bowes clone "Colonel Crowe" in the 1935 Buster Keaton two-reeler Grand Slam Opera, and as the real-life Monogram producer Sam Katzman (whom Ince resembled not in the slightest) in the Bela Lugosi chiller Voodoo Man (1944).

Billy Wayne (Actor) .. Billy White

Born: February 12, 1897

Trivia: American small-part player Billy Wayne was active from 1935 to 1955. Wayne spent most of his film career at Universal, with a few side trips to Fox and Paramount. He was often cast as a chauffeur, usually an all-knowing or sarcastic one. Billy Wayne also played more than his share of cabbies, sailors, reporters, photographers, and assistant directors (vide W.C. Fields' Never Give a Sucker an Even Break).

Jack Kenney (Actor) .. Headwaiter

Born: December 05, 1902

Edmund Glover (Actor) .. Taxi Driver

Born: January 01, 1910
Died: January 01, 1978

Al Eben (Actor) .. Taxi Driver

Born: March 11, 1918

Betty Gillette (Actor) .. Woman with Dog

Annelle Hayes (Actor) .. Society Woman

Larry Wheat (Actor) .. Derelict

Born: October 20, 1876

Shimen Ruskin (Actor) .. Sam

Born: February 25, 1907
Died: April 23, 1976

Trivia: A wild-haired character comedian from Poland, Shimen Ruskin popped up in scores of Hollywood films and television shows from 1938-1975. Having begun his screen career playing bits and performing odd jobs in Yiddish-language films made in New York, Ruskin turned to acting full-time in the 1940s, usually playing excitable types such as headwaiters, bartenders, store keepers, haberdashery salesmen, and the like. Late in life, he appeared as Meyer, the waiter on the short-lived television series The Corner Bar (1972-1973) and played Mordcha in the screen version of Fiddler on the Roof (1971).

Myrna Dell (Actor) .. Hatcheck Girl

Born: March 05, 1924

Trivia: American leading lady Myrna Dell came to Hollywood in 1944 by way of an RKO Radio contract. After serving her apprenticeship in westerns and 2-reel comedies, she was promoted to femme fatale roles in features like Step By Step. She later worked for Paramount (The Furies), Warner Bros. (several films, including Girl from Jones Beach) and even Monogram, where she played straight to the Bowery Boys in Here Come the Marines (1952). Active in the early days of television, Dell showed up periodically as "The Empress" on the Dan Duryea adventure series China Smith (1952-55). Long retired, Myrna Dell returned before the cameras for a small role in Billy Wilder's Buddy Buddy (1981).

George Tyne (Actor) .. Ray

Born: August 06, 1917

Trivia: American actor/director George Tyne began his performing career under his own name, Martin "Buddy" Yarus, in films as varied as Errol Flynn's Objective Burma (1945) and Laurel and Hardy's Dancing Masters (1943). Under the new soubriquet George Tyne, the actor had sizable roles in a multitude of films from 1946 to the late '70s. One of his better parts during this period was as Pfc. Harris in the splashy John Wayne war epic Sands of Iwo Jima (1949); he could also be seen in Thieves' Highway (1949), No Way Out (1950), Marlowe (1969) and I Will, I Will...For Now (1976). Turning increasingly to TV directing in the '60s, George Tyne worked extensively behind the camera on such situation comedies as The Ghost and Mrs. Muir (1968-70), Love American Style (1969-72) and Sanford and Son (1972-77).

Larry Thompson (Actor) .. Drunk

Edward Gargan (Actor) .. Bouncer

Born: July 17, 1902

Edgar Caldwell (Actor) .. Dancer

Florence Pepper (Actor) .. Dancing Girl

Dorothy Granger (Actor) .. Ticket Girl

Born: November 21, 1914
Died: January 04, 1995

Trivia: A beauty-contest winner at age 13, Dorothy Granger went on to perform in vaudeville with her large and talented family. Granger made her film bow in 1929's Words and Music, and the following year landed a contract with comedy producer Hal Roach. Working with such masters as Harry Langdon, Laurel & Hardy and Charley Chase, she sharpened her own comic skills to perfection, enabling her to assume the unofficial title of "Queen of the Short Subjects." During her long association with two-reelers, she appeared with the likes of W.C. Fields (The Dentist), the Three Stooges (Punch Drunks), Walter Catlett, Edgar Kennedy, Hugh Herbert and a host of others. She also appeared sporadically in features, playing everything from full leads to one-line bits. A favorite of director Mitchell Leisen, Granger essayed amusing cameos in such Leisen productions as Take a Letter, Darling (1942) and Lady in the Dark (1944). George Cukor wanted to cast Granger in the important role of Belle Watling in Gone with the Wind (1939), but producer David O. Selznick decided to go with Ona Munson, who had more "name" value. Granger is most fondly remembered for her appearances in RKO's long-running (1935-51) Leon Errol short-subject series, in which she was usually cast as Leon's highly suspicious spouse. She retired from films in 1963, keeping busy by helping her husband manage a successful Los Angeles upholstery store. Dorothy Granger made her last public appearance in 1993 at the Screen Actors Guild's 50th anniversary celebration.

Eddy Chandler (Actor) .. Policeman

Born: March 12, 1894
Died: March 23, 1948

Trivia: Stocky character actor Eddy Chandler's movie career stretched from 1915 to 1947. In 1930, Chandler was afforded a large (if uncredited) role as Blondell, partner in crime of villain Ralf Harolde, in the RKO musical extravaganza Dixiana. Thereafter, he made do with bit parts, usually playing cops or military officers. His brief appearance in Frank Capra's It Happened One Night as the bus driver who begins singing "The Man on a Flying Trapeze"--and plows his bus into a ditch as a result--assured him choice cameos in all future Capra productions. Chandler can also be seen as the Hospital Sergeant in 1939's Gone with the Wind. One of Eddy Chandler's few billed roles was Lewis in Monogram's Charlie Chan in the Secret Service (1944).

Philip Morris (Actor) .. Policeman

Born: January 20, 1893
Died: December 18, 1949

Trivia: It is perhaps superfluous to note that actor Philip Morris was no relation to the cigarette-manufacturing family of the same name. In films from 1935 to 1948, Morris was generally cast as a cop, doorman, cabbie, or truck driver. He can be glimpsed near the end of The Magnificent Ambersons (1942) as the traffic cop investigating George Minafer's auto accident, and in High, Wide and Handsome (1937) as one of the sweating teamsters. One of Philip Morris' few screen characters to be given a name was Howard Ross in the 1948 Western Whirlwind Raiders.

Phil Warren (Actor) .. Jerry Robinson

Philip Warren (Actor) .. Jerry Robinson

John Elliott (Actor) .. Sleepy Man

Born: July 05, 1876
Died: December 12, 1956

Trivia: A distinguished gray-haired stage actor, John Elliott appeared sporadically in films from around 1920. But Elliott became truly visible after the advent of sound, when he found his niche in B-Westerns. As versatile as they come, he could play the heroine's harassed father with as much conviction as he would "boss heavies." Doctors, lawyers, assayers, prospectors, clergymen -- John Elliott played them all in a screen career that lasted until 1956, the year of his death. His final screen appearance was in Perils of the Wilderness (1956) which, coincidentally, was the second-to-last action serial produced in the United States.

Louis Quince (Actor) .. Markey

Alan Ward (Actor) .. Yerkes

Born: December 12, 1945

Earl Hodgins (Actor) .. Barker

Born: January 01, 1899
Died: April 14, 1964

Trivia: Actor Earle Hodgins has been characterized by more than one western-film historian as a grizzled, bucolic Bob Hope type. Usually cast as snake-oil salesmen, Hodgins would brighten up his "B"-western scenes with a snappy stream of patter, leavened by magnificently unfunny wisecracks ("This remedy will give ya a complexion like a peach, fuzz 'n' all..."). When the low-budget western market died in the 1950s, Hodgins continued unabated on such TV series as The Roy Rogers Show and Annie Oakley. He also made appearances in such "A" films as East of Eden (55), typically cast as carnival hucksters and rural sharpsters. In 1961, Earle Hodgins was cast in the recurring role of wizened handyman Lonesome on the TV sitcom Guestward Ho!

Dick Rush (Actor) .. Policeman

Trivia: Not to be confused with director Richard Rush, portly, raspy-voiced American character actor Dick Rush was in films from 1920 until the early '40s. Rush was generally a comedy foil, most memorably for Harold Lloyd. Little Rascals devotees will remember Rush as the side-show impresario in Arbor Day (1936), who shows up at the end of the picture to whisk midget George and Olive Brasno away from their forced participation in a grade-school assembly show. Otherwise, he played a variety of cops, guards, mob leaders, and train conductors. Dick Rush spent his last active years as a featured player at RKO Radio.

Armand 'Curly' Wright (Actor) .. Fruit Peddler

Born: June 05, 1886
Died: March 28, 1965

Trivia: A busy presence in Hollywood films of the 1930s and 1940s, Sicilian-born Armand "Curly" Wright's hairdo resembled that of Larry Fine. Rarely billed, Wright (born Rao) seems to have been called in whenever a producer needed an excitable fruit peddler, hot dog or news vendor, or Italian barber. Onscreen in America from around 1932, Wright seems to have retired in the late '40s.

John Barton (Actor) .. One-legged Man

Dick Elliott (Actor) .. Chap

Born: April 30, 1886
Died: December 22, 1961

Trivia: Short, portly, and possessed of a high-pitched laugh that cuts through the air like a buzzsaw, Massachussetts-born Dick Elliott had been on stage for nearly thirty before making his screen bow in 1933. Elliott was a frequent visitor to Broadway, enjoying a substantial run in the marathon hit Abie's Irish Rose. Physically and vocally unchanged from his first screen appearance in the '30s to his last in 1961, Elliott was most generally cast in peripheral roles designed to annoy the film's principal characters with his laughing jags or his obtrusive behavior; in this capacity, he appeared as drunken conventioneers, loud-mouthed theatre audience members, and "helpful" pedestrians. Elliott also excelled playing small-scale authority figures, such as stage managers, truant officers and rural judges. Still acting into his mid 70s, Dick Elliott appeared regularly as the mayor of Mayberry on the first season of The Andy Griffith Show, and was frequently cast as a department-store Santa in the Yuletide programs of such comics as Jack Benny and Red Skelton.

Al Bridge (Actor) .. Detective Smiley

Born: February 26, 1891
Died: December 27, 1957

Trivia: In films from 1931, Alan Bridge was always immediately recognizable thanks to his gravel voice, unkempt moustache and sour-persimmon disposition. Bridge spent a lot of time in westerns, playing crooked sheriffs and two-bit political hacks; he showed up in so many Hopalong Cassidy westerns that he was practically a series regular. From 1940's Christmas in July onward, the actor was one of the most ubiquitous members of writer/director Preston Sturges' "stock company." He was at his very best as "The Mister," a vicious chain-gang overseer, in Sturges' Sullivan's Travels, and as the political-machine boss in the director's Hail the Conquering Hero, shining brightly in an extremely lengthy single-take scene with blustery Raymond Walburn. Alan Bridge also essayed amusing characterizations in Sturges' Sin of Harold Diddlebock (1946), Unfaithfully Yours (1948, as the house detective) and the director's final American film, The Beautiful Blonde From Bashful Bend (1949).

Earle Hodgins (Actor) .. Barker

Born: October 06, 1893

Walter Soderling (Actor) .. Husband

Born: April 13, 1872
Died: April 10, 1948

Trivia: Walter Soderling never evinced an interest in drama while attending the University of Chicago, Northwestern, or Harvard. After graduation, however, Soderling plunged into the theater world with a vengeance, chalking up credits with Chicago's Dearborn and Hopkins stock companies before making his turn-of-the-century Broadway debut. He came to films late in life -- to be exact, he was 63 -- but made up for lost time by working steadily in Hollywood until his death in 1948. Playing characters with names like Old Muck, Abner Thriffle, and Grumpy Andrews, the balding, pickle-pussed Walter Soderling was one of filmdom's foremost grouches.

Virginia Farmer (Actor) .. Janitress

Born: January 01, 1897
Died: January 01, 1988

Trivia: Virginia Farmer made many Hollywood features during the '40s. In the 1930s, she founded the Los Angeles branch of the Federal Theater Project. During the late 1940s her career was ruined after she was deemed a hostile witness by the House Un-American Activities Committee. Many years later Farmer taught at the L.A. Actors Studio.

Alan Bridge (Actor) .. Detective Smiley

Born: February 26, 1891

Ralph Dunn (Actor) .. Capt. Dill

Born: January 01, 1902
Died: February 19, 1968

Trivia: Ralph Dunn used his burly body and rich, theatrical voice to good effect in hundreds of minor feature-film roles and supporting appearances in two-reel comedies. He came to Hollywood during the early talkie era, beginning his film career with 1932's The Crowd Roars. A huge man with a withering glare, Dunn was an ideal "opposite" for short, bumbling comedians like Lou Costello in the 1944 Abbott and Costello comedy In Society, Dunn plays the weeping pedestrian who explains that he doesn't want to go to Beagle Street because that's where a two-ton safe fell on his head and killed him. A frequent visitor to the Columbia short subjects unit, Dunn shows up in the Three Stooges comedy Mummie's Dummies as the ancient Egyptian swindled at the Stooges' used chariot lot. Ralph Dunn kept busy into the '60s, appearing in such TV series as Kitty Foyle and such films as Black Like Me (1964).

Jack Cheatham (Actor) .. Policeman

Born: January 01, 1894
Died: January 01, 1971

Frank Meredith (Actor) .. Policeman

Roger Creed (Actor) .. Policeman

Jerry Frank (Actor) .. Waiter

Billy Bletcher (Actor) .. Waiter

Born: September 24, 1894

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.

Ernie S. Adams (Actor) .. Waiter

Born: June 18, 1885
Died: November 26, 1947

Trivia: Scratch a sniveling prison "stoolie" or cowardly henchman and if he were not Paul Guilfoyle or George Chandler, he would be the diminutive Ernie S. Adams, a ubiquitous presence in scores of Hollywood films of the 1930s and '40s. Surprisingly, the weasel-looking Adams had begun his professional career in musical comedy -- appearing on Broadway in such shows as Jerome Kern's Toot Toot (1918) -- prior to entering films around 1919. A list of typical Adams characters basically tells the story: "The Rat" (Jewels of Desire, 1927), "Johnny Behind the 8-Ball" (The Storm, 1930), "Lefty" (Trail's End, 1935), "Jimmy the Weasel" (Stars Over Arizona, 1937), "Snicker Joe" (West of Carson City, 1940), "Willie the Weasel" (Return of the Ape Man, 1944) and, of course "Fink" (San Quentin, 1937). The result, needless to say, is that you didn't quite trust him even when playing a decent guy, as in the 1943 Columbia serial The Phantom. One of the busiest players in the '40s, the sad-faced, little actor worked right up until his death in 1947. His final four films were released posthumously.

Tom Quinn (Actor) .. Counterman

Born: April 28, 1934

Peter Breck (Actor) .. Counterman

Born: March 13, 1929
Died: February 06, 2012

Trivia: Not to be confused with the 1940s bit player of the same name, American leading man Peter Breck was the son of a bandleader. Majoring in drama and minoring in psychology at the University of Houston, Breck went the regional-theater route until selected by Robert Mitchum for a role in Mitchum's Thunder Road (1958). He paid a few further dues on network television, showing up now and then as Doc Holiday on the weekly Western Maverick. In 1959, Breck starred in his own sagebrush series, Black Saddle, in which he played gunslinger-turned-lawyer Clay Culhane. When the series was dropped after one season, he accepted a few low-paying theater assignments, making ends meet with whatever odd jobs came along. His tenacity paid off when, in 1969, Breck was cast as firebrand "number two son" Nick Barkeley on The Big Valley, which ran for four years. A decade later, he appeared in still another Western, playing a megalomaniac miner in the serialized Secret Empire. Peter Breck has devoted considerable time to teaching drama in Vancouver, British Columbia.

Jack Daley (Actor) .. Snoring Man

Eddie Hart (Actor) .. Policeman

William Challee (Actor) .. Ray

Born: January 01, 1912
Died: March 18, 1989

Trivia: Originally intending to become a journalist, William Challee abandoned this dream when he began appearing in Chicago-based theatrical productions. Challee's Broadway career reached its peak in the late '30s with Wonder Boy. In films from 1943, he was usually seen as well-dressed gangsters, pushy reporters, and grim military officers. William Challee's later credits included such roles as Nicholas Duprea in the Jack Nicholson starrer Five Easy Pieces.

8:00 pm - 9:50 pm, Thursday, December 4 on WSKY Movies! (4.3)