Trivia: The daughter of a journalist and the niece of former U.S. Postmaster General James Farley, Penny Singleton spent a good portion of her childhood singing "illustrated" songs at Philadelphia movie theaters. After briefly attending Columbia University, Singleton -- billed under her given name, Dorothy McNulty -- made her Broadway debut as the energy-charged soubrette in the popular 1927 musical Good News. She repeated this vivacious performance in the 1930 film version, then settled into "other woman" and gold digger parts, the best of which was in 1936's After the Thin Man. Upon her marriage to dentist Lawrence Singleton, Singleton changed her professional name. When Shirley Deane was unable to play the title role in Columbia's 1938 filmization of Chic Young's comic strip Blondie, Singleton dyed her hair blonde to qualify for the part. She ended up starring in 28 Blondie B-pictures between 1928 and 1950, with Arthur Lake co-starring as hubby Dagwood Bumstead. During this period, she married for the second time to Blondie producer Robert Sparks. When Blondie folded, Singleton returned to the nightclub singing and dancing work that she'd been doing in the mid-'30s. As an officer in the American Guild of Variety Artists (AGVA), Singleton lobbied for better and more equitable treatment of professional chorus dancers, a stance that earned her several powerful enemies in management (and the Mob). Inactive as a performer for several years, Singleton returned to acting in the early '60s, playing a supporting part in The Best Man (1964) and providing the voice of Jane Jetson on the prime-time animated TV series The Jetsons. Penny Singleton later revived her Jane Jetson characterization for several theatrical and made-for-TV animated features, and also appeared in a cameo role on the weekly Angela Lansbury series Murder She Wrote.

Trivia: Truly a single-note man, American actor Arthur Lake spent most of his adult life portraying only one screen role: Dagwood Bumstead. The son of circus acrobats and the brother of character actress Florence Lake (famed for her ongoing portrayal of Mrs. Edgar Kennedy in nearly 100 two-reel comedies), Lake began his professional career as one of the "Fox Kiddies" in a series of silent-film takeoffs of famous fairy tales, featuring casts comprised completely of children. Lake graduated to a succession of collegiate and office boy roles in feature films, gaining a degree of stardom in the late 1920s and early 1930s after appearing in the title role of Harold Teen (1928). The actor's high-pitched voice and Mama's boy features were amusing for a while, but audiences became bored with Lake by 1934, and the actor found himself shunted to supporting parts and bits. An amusing role as a flustered bellboy in Topper (1937) rejuvenated his career, but Lake's comeback wouldn't be complete until Columbia Pictures cast him as woebegone suburbanite Dagwood Bumstead in Blondie (1938), based on Chic Young's internationally popular comic strip. The strip's characterizations were altered to fit the personalities of Lake and his costar Penny Singleton; in the films, Dagwood was the dope and Blondie the brains of the family, precisely the opposite of the comic-strip situation. A few scattered "straight" performances aside, Lake was nothing other than Dagwood in films from 1938 through 1950; he not only starred in 28 "Blondie" pictures, but repeated the role on radio and starred in an unsuccessful 1954 TV series based on the property. Not at all the blithering idiot that he played on screen, Lake was a sagacious businessman in real life, his wise investments increasing the fortune he'd already accumulated by playing Dagwood -- and also bolstering the moneys inherited by his socialite wife, Patricia Van Cleve. Though he often remarked that it would be wonderful to play Dagwood forever, Lake parted company with the role in the mid-1950s; when another Blondie TV series appeared briefly in 1968, it starred Will Hutchins. Appearing publicly only rarely in the 1960s and 1970s (usually in summer theatres and revivals of 1920s musicals like No, No Nanette), Lake retired before his 70th birthday, a far more prosperous and secure man than his alter ego Dagwood Bumstead -- who's still being fired regularly by boss Mr. Dithers in the funny papers - ever would be.

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.

Trivia: Hugh Herbert was a stage and vaudeville performer and playwright before coming to Hollywood as a dialogue director in the early talkie era. Signed as an actor at RKO Radio, Herbert played a variety of comic and noncomic roles in films like Hook Line and Sinker (1930), Danger Lights (1931) and Friends and Lovers (1931). His forte turned out to be comedy, as witness his sidesplitting performances as an arm-wrestling prime minister in Million Dollar Legs (1932) and an aphorism-spouting Chinaman in Diplomaniacs (1933). During his long association with Warner Bros. in the mid-1930s, Herbert developed his familiar half-in-the-bag screen persona, complete with fluttering, hand-clapping gestures and his trademarked cries of "woo woo!" and "oh, wunnerful, wunnerful." In the opinion of several film buffs, the quintessential Hugh Herbert performance can be found in the 1936 Warners musical Colleen (1936). At Universal in the 1940s, Herbert starred in a string of "B" comedies, one of which, There's One Born Every Minute (1942), represented the screen debut of Elizabeth Taylor; he was also a stitch as the resourceful detective in Olsen and Johnson's Hellzapoppin' (1941). From 1943 through 1952, Herbert starred in 23 two-reelers at Columbia Pictures, which were popular at the time but in retrospect represent a low point for the actor. Columbia director Edward Bernds has observed that Herbert considered these shorts beneath his talents, which may account for his listless performance in most of them. Throughout his Columbia stay, Herbert made scattered feature-film appearances, the best of which was in Preston Sturges' The Beautiful Blonde of Bashful Bend (1949). Hugh Herbert died a of heart attack shortly after completing his final Columbia short, A Gink at the Sink (1952); he was preceded in death by his brother, movie bit player Tom Herbert.

Trivia: A child model from age two, Larry Simms was discovered by a Hollywood talent scout when he appeared in a 1937 Saturday Evening Post advertisement. The three-year-old, curly haired Simms made his screen debut as the infant son of Jimmy Stewart and Rose Stradner in MGM's The Last Gangster. He was then hired by Columbia to play Baby Dumpling in the 1938 cinemadaptation of Chic Young's comic strip Blondie. Simms remained with the Blondie series until its cessation in 1950, billed onscreen as Baby Dumpling until his character name was formalized as Alexander Bumstead. During this period, he also made a few "outside" appearances in films like Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939) and Madame Bovary (1949). Though his career as a child star was a pleasant experience (and, at 750 dollars per week, a lucrative one), Simms wasn't all that interested in acting; the technical end of moviemaking was more fascinating to him. In 1950, he quit show business to join the Navy, then studied aeronautical engineering at California Polytech. Larry Simms was then hired as an engineer at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, where he remained until his retirement.

Trivia: American actor Clarence Kolb came to prominence in the very early 1900s, as one half of the stage comedy team of Kolb and Dill. Kolb and his partner Max Dill were Dutch-dialect comics, their act patterned after the more famous Weber and Fields. The team supplemented their stage appearances with a brief series of short film comedies, released between 1916 and 1917. It wasn't until Kolb struck out on his own that he developed his familiar screen persona of the bullying, excitable business tycoon with the requisite heart of gold. Playing virtually the same part in virtually the same clothes in film after film, Kolb continued his patented characterization in the role of Mr. Honeywell on the popular '50s TV sitcom My Little Margie. Clarence Kolb's final screen appearance was in Man of 1000 Faces (1957), the screen biography of Lon Chaney Sr. For this guest appearance, Kolb decked himself out in his old Dutch vaudeville costume and false beard and played "himself," while character actor Danny Beck portrayed Kolb's stage cohort Max Dill(who'd died in 1949).

Trivia: Child actor Danny Mummert made his screen debut in 1938 as pesky neighbor kid Alvin Fuddle in the first Blondie picture. Mummert literally grew up before the audience's eyes in the Blondie series, essaying Alvin in virtually all the series' entries including the last, 1950's Beware of Blondie. He made a few side trips to other films in the 1940s, notably as Donna Reed's younger brother in the 1946 Capra classic It's a Wonderful Life. After the cessation of the Blondie series, Danny Mummert showed up in a handful of teenaged roles, retiring from films after his appearance in 1952's Member of the Wedding.

Trivia: The brother of country/western singer Roy Acuff, actor Eddie Acuff drifted to Hollywood in the early 1930s, where he almost immediately secured day-player work at Warner Bros. studios. From his 1934 debut in Here Comes the Navy onward, Acuff showed up in film after film as reporters, photographers, delivery men, sailors, shop clerks, and the occasional western comical sidekick. Acuff's most memorable acting stint occured after actor Irving Bacon left Columbia's Blondie series. From 1946 through 1949, Eddie Acuff made nine Blondie appearances as the hapless postman who was forever being knocked down by the eternally late-for-work Dagwood Bumstead (Arthur Lake).

Trivia: Kernan Cripps was recruited from the Broadway stage to play Trask in the early talkie melodrama Alibi (1929). This proved to be Cripps' most extensive screen role; thereafter, he was consigned to bits and minor roles, usually as muscle-bound cops, bodyguards and bartenders. Looking quite comfortable in uniform, he essayed such roles as the umpire in the baseball comedy Ladies Day (1943) and the train conductor in the noir classic Double Indemnity (1944). Kernan Cripps also proved to be a handy man to have around in such action-packed fare as the Republic serial Federal Operator 99.

Trivia: After attending Boston College, Fred F. Sears entered the regional-theatre talent pool as an actor, director and producer. Sears created the famed Little Theatre of Memphis and taught dramatic arts at Southwestern University before being hired by Columbia Pictures as a dialogue coach in 1947. He played supporting parts in several Columbia features before being promoted to director on the studio's Charles Starrett "B" western series. Sears remained at Columbia for the rest of his career, generally working with the ultra-economical Sam Katzman unit. His output consisted of westerns, crime dramas, low-budget musicals (Rock Around the Clock, Cha-Cha-Cha Boom!) and science-fiction flicks. Most observers consider Earth vs. the Flying Saucers (1956) as Sears' finest effort, though credit for most of that film's success must go to special- effects wizard Ray Harryhausen. Fred F. Sears also directed several half-hour playlets for Columbia's TV subsidiary Screen Gems, sometimes lensing as many as three episodes of three different series simultaneously!

Trivia: Although he played bit roles in films in the late silent era, tall, gangly character actor Boyd Davis spent the 1930s almost exclusively on the stage. He was back in Hollywood with a vengeance in the '40s, appearing in hundreds of bit roles, mostly as men of power and distinction -- judges, military officers, college professors, and the like. Davis' last film was the 1953 Western Born to the Saddle, in which he once again played a judge.

Trivia: Actress Mary Emery may best be remembered for playing Ricky Ricardo' mother on I Love Lucy. Born in Mexico but reared in Texas, Emery started out playing bit parts and then became a frequent participant in LA theater. She was also a Spanish dancer. In the mid-1950s, she started appearing regularly on television. During her long career, Emery also billed herself as Amora Emery and Mary Harrison.

Trivia: Baby boomers will recall silver-maned actor William Forrest as Major Swanson, the brusque but fair-minded commander of Fort Apache in the 1950s TV series The Adventures of Rin Tin Tin. This character was but one of many military officers portrayed by the prolific Forrest since the late 1930s. Most of his film appearances were fleeting, and few were billed, but Forrest managed to pack more authority into 30 seconds' film time than many bigger stars were able to manage in an hour and a half. Outside of Rin Tin Tin, William Forrest is probably most familiar as the sinister fifth-columnist Martin Crane in the 1943 Republic serial The Masked Marvel.