Trivia: The son of a San Francisco shoe factory owner, American actor Lloyd Nolan made it clear early on that he had no intention of entering the family business. Nolan developed an interest in acting while in college, at the expense of his education -- it took him five years to get through Santa Clara College, and he flunked out of Stanford, all because of time spent in amateur theatricals. Attempting a "joe job" on a freighter, Nolan gave it up when the freighter burned to the waterline. In 1927, he began studying at the Pasadena Playhouse, living on the inheritance left him by his father. Stock company work followed, and in 1933 Nolan scored a Broadway hit as vengeful small-town dentist Biff Grimes in One Sunday Afternoon (a role played in three film versions by Gary Cooper, James Cagney, and Dennis Morgan, respectively -- but never by Nolan). Nolan's first film was Stolen Harmony (1935); his breezy urban manner and Gaelic charm saved the actor from being confined to the bad guy parts he played so well, and by 1940 Nolan was, if not a star, certainly one of Hollywood's most versatile second-echelon leading men. As film historian William K. Everson has pointed out, the secret to Nolan's success was his integrity -- the audience respected his characters, even when he was the most cold-blooded of villains. The closest Nolan got to film stardom was a series of B detective films made at 20th Century-Fox from 1940 to 1942, in which he played private eye Michael Shayne -- a "hard-boiled dick" character long before Humphrey Bogart popularized this type as Sam Spade. Nolan was willing to tackle any sort of acting, from movies to stage to radio, and ultimately television, where he starred as detective Martin Kane in 1951; later TV stints would include a season as an IRS investigator in the syndicated Special Agent 7 (1958), and three years as grumpy-growley Dr. Chegley on the Diahann Carroll sitcom Julia (1969-1971). In 1953, Nolan originated the role of the paranoid Captain Queeg in the Broadway play The Caine Mutiny Court Martial, wherein he'd emerge from a pleasant backstage nap to play some of the most gut-wrenching "character deterioration" scenes ever written. Never your typical Hollywood celebrity, Nolan publicly acknowledged that he and his wife had an autistic son, proudly proclaiming each bit of intellectual or social progress the boy would make -- this at a time when many image-conscious movie star-parents barely admitted even having children, normal or otherwise. Well liked by his peers, Nolan was famous (in an affectionate manner) for having a photographic memory for lines but an appallingly bad attention span in real life; at times he was unable to give directions to his own home, and when he did so the directions might be three different things to three different people. A thorough professional to the last, Nolan continued acting in sizeable roles into the 1980s; he was terrific as Maureen O'Sullivan's irascible stage-star husband in Woody Allen's Hannah and Her Sisters (1986). Lloyd Nolan's last performance was as an aging soap opera star on an episode of the TV series Murder She Wrote; star Angela Lansbury, fiercely protective of an old friend and grand trouper, saw to it that Nolan's twilight-years reliance upon cue cards was cleverly written into the plot line of the episode.

Trivia: Of Polish and Norwegian descent, Carole Landis moved with her mother and siblings from Wisconsin to California, where at age seven she made her inauspicious stage debut in an amateur talent show. Within five years, Carole began winning beauty contests. In high school, she was only interested in athletics, organizing a girl's football team which was dissolved by the principal on the grounds that it was "unladylike." Married at 15 and separated a few weeks later, Carole dropped out of school to pursue an acting career. She was principal singer and star hula dancer at the Royal Hawaiian club in San Francisco. Entering films in 1937 as a bit actress, Carole played a thankless leading role in the 1939 serial Daredevils of the Red Circle. Later that year, she was selected to play the prehistoric heroine of Hal Roach's One Million BC; according to Roach, she won the role on the basis of her athletic prowess and running ability. Signed at Roach, Carole was dubbed "The Ping Girl" in the studio's publicity, appearing in comedy leads in Turnabout, Road Show, and Topper Returns (all 1941). In 1941, half of Carole's Roach contract was purchased by 20th Century-Fox. She received good reviews for her performances in such Fox films as I Wake Up Screaming (1941), Orchestra Wives (1942) and My Gal Sal (1942). In 1942, Carole joined Martha Raye, Kay Francis and Mitzi Mayfair for a Hollywood Victory Committee tour of the British isles. She wrote a book on the subject of this tour, Four Jills in A Jeep, which in 1944 was filmed by Fox with the four actresses starring. Carole was one of the most tireless performers on the USO circuit, at one point contracting malaria but insisting upon maintaining her hectic schedule. On the home front, she was a principal fundraiser for the American Cancer Society. After briefly appearing in a 1945 Broadway musical, Carole returned to films, but her star had eclipsed and she had to make do with B pictures. In 1948, Carole Landis committed suicide.

Trivia: American actor William Frawley had hopes of becoming a newspaperman but was sidetracked by a series of meat-and-potatoes jobs. At 21, he found himself in the chorus of a musical comedy in Chicago; his mother forced him to quit, but Frawley had already gotten greasepaint in his veins. Forming a vaudeville act with his brother Paul, Frawley hit the show-business trail; several partners later (including his wife Louise), Frawley was a headliner and in later years laid claim to having introduced the beer-hall chestnut "Melancholy Baby." Entering films in the early 1930s (he'd made a few desultory silent-movie appearances), Frawley became typecast as irascible, pugnacious Irishmen, not much of a stretch from his off-camera personality. Though he worked steadily into the late 1940s, Frawley's drinking got the better of him, and by 1951 most producers found him virtually unemployable. Not so Desi Arnaz, who cast Frawley as neighbor Fred Mertz on the I Love Lucy TV series when Gale Gordon proved unavailable. Frawley promised to stay away from the booze during filming, and in turn Arnaz promised to give Frawley time off whenever the New York Yankees were in the World Series (a rabid baseball fan, Frawley not only appeared in a half dozen baseball films, but also was one of the investors of the minor-league Hollywood Stars ball team). Frawley played Fred Mertz until the last I Love Lucy episode was filmed in 1960, then moved on to a five-year assignment as Bub, chief cook and bottle-washer to son-in-law Fred MacMurray's all male household on My Three Sons.

Trivia: Born to a middle-class Irish family and educated at the Marlborough Street Training College, 19-year-old Sara Allgood joined the Irish National Theatre Society, obtaining her first speaking role in a 1903 production of W.B. Yeats' The King's Threshold. She became a member of Dublin's Abbey Theatre in 1904; within a few years she was lauded as Ireland's foremost actress. While touring Australia in 1918, she made her film bow in Just Peggy. She didn't like the experience, and it would be eleven years before she would face the cameras again, this time in the role of Anna Ondra's mother in Blackmail (1929), Alfred Hitchcock's (and the British film industry's) first talkie. One year later, Hitchcock cast Sara in the demanding title role in the cinematic adaptation of Sean O'Casey's Juno and the Paycock, a role she had created on stage with the Abbey Players in 1924. After a decade of worthwhile stage assignments and forgettable film roles, Sara came to Hollywood in 1940, where she was cast by John Ford in a strong role in the Oscar-winning How Green Was My Valley (1941). This led to a long-term contract with 20th Century-Fox, which was financially satisfying but dramatically unrewarding; after years of incisive, commanding stage roles, Sara was compelled to play cliched Irish mothers and servants. Sara Allgood's final screen appearance was in Fox's Cheaper By the Dozen (1950), in which she received prominent billing--and approximately five lines of dialogue.

Trivia: Forever remembered by film buffs as the man who brought King Kong to New York, American actor Robert Armstrong was a law student at the University of Washington in Seattle when he dropped out in favor of a vaudeville tour. Learning by doing, Armstrong worked his way up to "leading man" roles in a New York stock company run by veteran character man Jimmy Gleason. Gleason's play Iz Zat So? led to a film contract for Armstrong, whose first picture was The Main Event (1927). The actor's stage training served him well during Hollywood's switchover to sound, and he appeared with frequency in the early talkie years, at one point costarring with Broadway legend Fanny Brice in My Man (1930). An expert at playing sports and showbiz promoters, Armstrong was a natural for the role of the enthusiastic but foolhardy Carl Denham in King Kong (1933). Armstrong enjoyed some of the best dialogue of his career as he coerced erstwhile actress Fay Wray to go with him to Skull Island to seek out "money, adventure, the thrill of a lifetime", and as he egged on his crew to explore the domain of 50-foot ape Kong. And of course, Armstrong was allowed to speak the final lines of this imperishable classic: "It wasn't the planes...It was beauty killed the beast." Armstrong played Carl Denham again in a sequel, Son of Kong (1933), and later played Denham in everything but name as a shoestring theatrical promoter in Mighty Joe Young (1949), wherein he brought a nice giant gorilla into civilization. Always in demand as a character actor, Armstrong continued to make films in the 1940s; he had the rare distinction of playing an American military officer in Around the World (1943), a Nazi agent in My Favorite Spy (1942), and a Japanese general in Blood on the Sun (1945)! In the 1950s and 1960s, Armstrong was a fixture on TV cop and adventure programs. Perhaps the most characteristic moment in Armstrong's TV career was during a sketch on The Red Skelton Show, in which Red took one look at Armstrong and ad-libbed "Say, did you ever get that monkey off that building?"

Trivia: American actress Jane Darwell was the daughter of a Missouri railroad executive. Despite her father's disapproval, she spent most of her youth acting in circuses, opera troupes and stock companies, making her film debut in 1912. Even in her early thirties, Darwell specialized in formidable "grande dame" roles, usually society matrons or strict maiden aunts. Making an easy transition to talking pictures, Darwell worked primarily in small character parts (notably as governesses and housekeepers in the films of Shirley Temple) until 1939, when her role as the James Brothers' mother in Jesse James began a new career direction--now she was most often cast as indomitable frontierswomen, unbending in the face of hardship and adversity. It was this quality that led Darwell to be cast in her favorite role as Ma Joad in The Grapes of Wrath (1940), for which she won an Oscar. Darwell continued to work until illness crept upon her in the late 1950s. Even so, Darwell managed to essay a handful of memorable parts on TV and in movies into the 1960s; her last film role was as the "Bird Woman" in Disney's Mary Poppins (1964).

Trivia: Actor George Holmes appeared in many films between 1942 and the mid '80s.

Trivia: When Scotty Beckett was three years old, his father was hospitalized in Los Angeles. During a visit, Beckett entertained his convalescing dad by singing several songs. A Hollywood casting director overheard the boy and suggested to his parents that Beckett had movie potential. The wide-eyed, tousle-haired youngster made his screen debut opposite Ann Harding and Clive Brook in 1933's Gallant Lady. In 1934, he was signed by Hal Roach for the Our Gang series; in the 13 two-reelers produced between 1934 and 1935, Beckett appeared as the best pal and severest critic of rotund Gang star Spanky McFarland. This stint led to such choice feature-film assignments as Anthony Adverse (1936) (in which Beckett played the out-of-wedlock son of Fredric March and Olivia De Havilland), Marie Antoinette (1938) (as the Dauphin) and My Favorite Wife (1940) (as one of the two kids of Cary Grant and his long-lost wife Irene Dunne). In 1939, Beckett briefly returned to the Our Gang fold, playing "Alfalfa" Switzer's brainy Cousin Wilbur in a brace of one-reelers. Beckett was frequently called upon for "the leading man as a child" roles, playing youthful versions of Louis Hayward in My Son, My Son (1940), Don Ameche in Heaven Can Wait (1943), and Jon Hall in Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves (1940). As he matured, Beckett was often cast as obnoxious younger brothers, notably in the 1943 Broadway play Slightly Married and the 1948 Jane Powell vehicle A Date with Judy (playing the sibling of none other than Elizabeth Taylor). On radio, Beckett played Junior Riley in the popular William Bendix sitcom The Life of Riley, and on television he was seen as Cadet Winky in the early sci-fi series Rocky Jones, Space Ranger. Scotty Beckett's last film was 1956's Three For Jamie Dawn.

Trivia: The son of veteran stage actor Joseph Allen, Joseph Allen Jr. appeared with the South Shore Players of Long Island, NY, prior to entering films in 1937 under the name of Allen Brook. He was Joseph Allen Jr. from 1939 on, usually playing "the Other Man." Allen later appeared regularly on television.

Trivia: American actor James Burke not only had the Irish face and brogueish voice of a New York detective, but even his name conjured up images of a big-city flatfoot. In Columbia's Ellery Queen series of the late 1930s and early 1940s, Burke was cast exquisitely to type as the thick-eared Sergeant Velie, who referred to the erudite Queen as "Maestro." Burke also showed up as a rural law enforcement officer in such films as Nightmare Alley (1947), in which he has a fine scene as a flint-hearted sheriff moved to tears by the persuasive patter of carnival barker Tyrone Power. One of the best of James Burke's non-cop performances was as westerner Charlie Ruggles' rambunctious, handlebar-mustached "pardner" in Ruggles of Red Gap (135), wherein Burke and Ruggles engage in an impromptu game of piggyback on the streets of Paris.

Trivia: Roger Imhof began his performing career with a circus, then went on to tour in vaudeville with his wife Marcelle Coreine. An established stage performer, Imhof made his first film appearance in 1930. While under contract to Fox, he showed up in several films starring his friend Will Rogers. Elsewhere, he was generally cast as tight-lipped military officers or domineering fathers. In 1940's Little Old New York, he had a cute opening bit as millionaire-to-be John Jacob Astor. Roger Imhof remained in films until 1945.

Trivia: Actor Matt McHugh was born into a show business family, joining his parents, his brother Frank, and his sister Kitty in the family stock company as soon as he learned to talk. Matt came to Hollywood to repeat his stage role in the 1931 film adaptation of Elmer Rice's Broadway hit Street Scene. He continued to have sizeable film assignments for the next few years (notably the bourgeois Italian bridegroom Francesco in Laurel and Hardy's The Devil's Brother [1933]) before settling into bits and minor roles. A dead ringer for his more famous brother Frank McHugh, Matt projected an abrasive, sardonic screen image; as such, he was utilized in such rough-edged roles as cab drivers, bartenders and mechanics. Matt McHugh's best screen opportunities in the '40s came with his supporting roles in the 2-reel comedy output of Columbia Pictures; he appeared in the short comedies of Andy Clyde, Hugh Herbert, Walter Catlett, The Three Stooges and many others, most often cast as a lazy or caustic brother-in-law.

Trivia: The quintessential "Big Boss" heavy in B-Westerns, with or without a mustache, LeRoy Mason entered films in the mid-'20s as Roy Mason, playing mostly juveniles. After the advent of talkies, he was usually on the wrong side of the law, appearing opposite nearly every Western star on the Hollywood prairie, a career that included quite a few action serials as well. By the 1940s, he had become one of the busiest character actors in Hollywood, switching from 20th Century Fox to Republic and back again with seemingly little time to recuperate. In 1943, he signed a "term player" contract with Republic and became busier than ever. The hectic schedule took an awful toll, however, when he suffered a fatal heart attack on the set of the 1947 Monte Hale Western California Firebrand. Mason was married to Rita Carewe, who briefly billed herself Rita Mason, a former actress and the daughter of silent screen director Edwin Carewe.

Trivia: A former professional baseball player, Pat Flaherty was seen in quite a few baseball pictures after his 1934 screen debut. Flaherty can be seen in roles both large and small in Death on the Diamond (1934), Pride of the Yankees (1942), It Happened in Flatbush (1942), The Stratton Story (1949, as the Western All-Stars coach), The Jackie Robinson Story (1950) and The Winning Team (1952, as legendary umpire Bill Klem). In 1948's Babe Ruth Story, Flaherty not only essayed the role of Bill Corrigan, but also served as the film's technical advisor. Outside the realm of baseball, he was usually cast in blunt, muscle-bound roles, notably Fredric March's taciturn male nurse "Cuddles" in A Star is Born (1937). One of Pat Flaherty's most unusual assignments was Wheeler and Woolsey's Off Again, On Again (1937), in which, upon finding his wife (Patricia Wilder) in a compromising position with Bert Wheeler, he doesn't pummel the hapless Wheeler as expected, but instead meekly apologizes for his wife's flirtatiousness!

Trivia: A University of Florida football star, Dale Van Sickel entered films in the very early '30s as an extra. Playing hundreds of bit parts at almost every studio in Hollywood, Van Sickel earned his true fame as one of Republic Pictures' famous stuntmen, specializing in fisticuffs and car stunts. He appeared in nearly all the studio's serials in the 1940s, including The Tiger Woman (1944), The Purple Monster Strikes (1945), and The Black Widow (1947), almost always playing several bit roles as well. Often the studio cast their leading men because of their resemblance to Van Sickel and the other members of the serial stunt fraternity that included Tom Steele, Dave Sharpe, and Ted Mapes. A founding member and the first president of the Stuntmen's Association of Motion Pictures, Van Sickel later performed in innumerable television shows as well as such diverse feature films as Spartacus (1960), It's a Mad Mad Mad Mad World (1963), and The Love Bug (1969).

Trivia: American actor Jed Prouty got his first taste of show business as a teenaged performer at Austin Stone's Museum (a sort of flea circus-variety show concern) in his native Boston. Working for years as a vaudeville song and dance man, Prouty made it to Broadway in 1921, appearing occasionally in silent films. The actor was prominently cast as a stuttering actor's agent Uncle Jed in his first talking picture, the Oscar-winning Broadway Melody (1929), though he found it expedient to drop the stammer for his subsequent films. Most often in bits and character roles in A-pictures -- as, for example, the unctuous columnist in A Star is Born (1937) -- Prouty was firmly in the lead in the Jones Family series of B-comedies filmed by 20th Century-Fox. Prouty played the Jones paterfamilias, with Spring Byington as his wife, in nearly all seventeen pictures in the Jones series. Jed Prouty is also familiar to Alice Faye fans for his antic appearance in Ms. Faye's Hollywood Cavalcade (1939), wherein he was made up to resemble silent comedian Ford Sterling for the film's slapstick chase sequences.

Trivia: Actor Robert Emmett Homans seemingly had the map of Ireland stamped on his craggy face. As a result, Homans spent the better part of his film career playing law enforcement officers of all varieties, from humble patrolmen to detective chiefs. After a lengthy stage career, Homans entered films in 1923. A break from his usual microscopic film assignments occured in Public Enemy (1931), where Homans is given an opportunity to deliver reams of exposition (with a pronounced brogue) during a funeral sequence. And in the 1942 Universal horror programmer Night Monster, Robert Emmett Homans is alotted a sizeable role as the ulcerated detective investigating the supernatural goings-on at the home of seemingly helpless invalid Ralph Morgan.

Trivia: Diminutive Scottish stage and screen actress Mary Gordon was seemingly placed on this earth to play care-worn mothers, charwomen and housekeepers. In films from the silent area (watch for her towards the end of the 1928 Joan Crawford feature Our Dancing Daughters), Gordon played roles ranging from silent one-scene bits to full-featured support. She frequently acted with Laurel and Hardy, most prominently as the stern Scots innkeeper Mrs. Bickerdyke in 1935's Bonnie Scotland. Gordon was also a favorite of director John Ford, portraying Irish, Scottish, Welsh and Englishwomen with equal aplomb (and sometimes with the same accent). She was the screen mother of actors as diverse as Jimmy Cagney, Leo Gorcey and Lou Costello; she parodied this grey-haired matriarch image in Olsen and Johnson's See My Lawyer (1945), wherein her tearful court testimony on behalf of her son (Ed Brophy) is accompanied by a live violinist. Mary Gordon is most fondly remembered by film buffs for her recurring role as housekeeper Mrs. Hudson in the Sherlock Holmes films of 1939-46 starring Basil Rathbone and Nigel Bruce, a role she carried over to the Holmes radio series of the '40s.

Trivia: Band singer Vivian Blaine was signed by 20th Century-Fox in 1942 as yet another of that studio's potential Betty Grable replacements. Vivian was given a major boost when assigned the female lead in the Laurel and Hardy comedy Jitterbugs (1943), which showcased her talents in three well-mounted production numbers. She went on to bigger and better screen assignments in such lavish Fox musicals as Something for the Boys (1944), State Fair (1945) and Three Little Girls in Blue (1947). She left Fox in 1947 to pursue a nightclub career, which turned into a nightmarish experience when she was booed off the stage by fanatical fans of her opening act, Martin and Lewis. Vivian survived this setback by creating the role of Miss Adelaide in the blockbuster 1950 Broadway musical Guys and Dolls, repeating this triumph in the London production and the 1955 film version. In 1951, Vivian co-starred with Pinky Lee on the popular musical comedy TV series Those Two. Active in film character roles into the 1980s, Vivian Blaine also played a recurring part on the satirical TV soap opera Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman (1976-77).