Trivia: At first acting under her given name of Lorraine Gettman, blonde film actress Leslie Brooks began appearing in movie bit roles in 1941. When her Warner Bros. contract was sold to Columbia, Brooks started landing more sizeable parts in such programs as Nine Girls (1944) and Cover Girl (1944). She was also seen to good advantage in Columbia's series films (The Whistler, Crime Doctor, et al.). Leslie Brooks retired from films in 1949.

Trivia: Born John Paige, this versatile leading man of many '40s B-movies and musicals attended West Point before dropping out to work as a radio singer and announcer. In 1931 he began appearing in film shorts, billed as David Carlyle. In the mid '30s he began appearing in features, changing his name to Robert Paige in 1938; by the early '40s he was a busy leading man, appearing in every genre of film. He was onscreen infrequently after 1949, but did much work on TV; besides acting in TV productions (he was a regular on the series Run Buddy Run), he also worked as a quiz-show host and Los Angeles newscaster. He finished his career as a public relations executive in Hollywood.

Trivia: Born in Colorado and raised in Oregon, actor Walter Sande was a music student from age six. He dropped out of college to organize his own band, then for many years served as musical director for the West Coast Fox Theater chain. In 1937, Sande entered films with a small role in Goldwyn Follies (1938). He fluctuated thereafter between bits in films like Citizen Kane (1941), in which he played one of the many reporters, and supporting roles in films like To Have and Have Not (1944), in which he portrayed the defaulting customer who is punched out by a boat-renting Humphrey Bogart. On television, Walter Sande played Horatio Bullwinkle on Tugboat Annie (1958) and Papa Holstrum on The Farmer's Daughter (1963-1966).

Trivia: Sharp-featured character actor James Griffith set out in life to be a professional musician. He eased into acting instead, working the little-theatre route in his hometown of Los Angeles. In 1939, Griffith appeared in his first professional production, They Can't Get You Down. Following World War II service, he made his first film, Black Ice (1946). Steadily employed in westerns, James Griffith was generally cast as an outlaw, save for a few comparative good-guy assignments such as Sheriff Pat Garrett in The Law vs. Billy the Kid (1954).

Trivia: A former manager for Woolworths, Michael Whalen performed as a radio and vaudeville singer before entering films in 1935. For many years, Whalen was an all-purpose leading man at 20th Century Fox; perhaps his best assignment during this period was Coppy, the nominal romantic lead in John Ford's Wee Willie Winkie (1937). By the 1940s, Whalen had settled into character parts, mostly at Columbia. He was last seen onscreen in an uncredited role as a minister in Elmer Gantry (1960). Michael Whalen was the brother of New York's official "greeter" Grover Whalen.

Trivia: An RKO starlet of the early 1940s, Mildred Coles ran the gamut from playing such "fallen" girls as the title role in Play Girl (1940) and a dysfunctional wife in the exploitation classic Bob and Sally (1948), to appearing as Allan "Rocky" Lane's leading lady in three Republic Westerns (1948). A typical road-show spectacular in which Coles' and Rick Jason's baby is born syphilitic, the aforementioned Bob and Sally became one of the highlights of a career that was decidedly on the wane. Coles appeared in a couple of bit roles at Warner Bros. before calling it quits in 1949, but Bob and Sally kept her name on theater marquees for decades.

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.

Trivia: Six-foot-tall American actor Rory Mallinson launched his screen career at the end of WW II. Mallinson was signed to a Warner Bros. contract in 1945, making his first appearance in Price of the Marines. In 1947, he began free-lancing at Republic, Columbia and other "B"-picture mills. One of his larger roles was Hodge in the 1952 Columbia serial Blackhawk. Rory Mallinson made his last film in 1963.