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: Educated at the University of Kentucky and the University of Indiana, Marjorie Weaver was a band singer, model, and stock-company actress before making her first film appearance in Transatlantic Merry-Go-Round. From 1936 to 1942, Weaver was under contract to 20th Century-Fox, where she played any number of nice but no-nonsense leading ladies. Her co-stars during this period ranged from Henry Fonda to the Ritz Brothers. Her most notable assignment was the role of Mary Todd in John Ford's Young Mr. Lincoln (1939). After serving as Lloyd Nolan's vis-a-vis in the first two "Michael Shayne" B mysteries, Marjorie Weaver free-lanced; she made her last starring appearance at Republic in 1945, re-emerging seven years later to play an unbilled supporting role in Fox's We're Not Married.

Trivia: Chiselled-featured leading man Henry Wilcoxon was born in the West Indies to British parents. He cut his theatrical teeth with the prestigious Birmingham Repertory Theater, then went on to play several leads in London. While starring in the stage play Eight Bells, Wilcoxon was selected to play Marc Antony in Cecil B. DeMille's Cleopatra (1934). Thus began a 25-year association with DeMille, during which time Wilcoxon functioned as actor, casting director, associate producer, producer, and close friend. When asked by interviewer Leonard Maltin about his experiences with C.B., Wilcoxon replied genially, "Does your tape last about ten hours?" Outside of the DeMille orbit, Henry Wilcoxon played leading and character parts in such films as The Last of the Mohicans (1936), If I Were King (1938), Tarzan Finds a Son (1939), Mrs. Miniver (1942) (as the jingoistic minister), A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court (1949), The War Lord (1965), and FIST (1978); he also worked extensively in television, guest starring on such programs as I Spy and Marcus Welby, M.D..

Trivia: American leading man Richard Derr made his first film appearances as a 20th Century-Fox contractee in 1941 and 1942. Physically indistinguishable from most others of his ilk, Derr nonetheless was an above-average actor, as he occasionally proved in such films as When Worlds Collide (1951). In 1957, Derr was cast as Lamont Cranston in the New Orleans-filmed pilot episode for the TV version of radio's The Shadow; the series didn't sell, but the pilot was released theatrically as Invisible Avenger. Richard Derr spent the 1970s and 1980s as a utility character man in films like The Drowning Pool (1975) and American Gigolo (1980).

Trivia: Not to be confused with the popular radio commentator of the same name, American stage actor Paul Harvey made his first film in 1917. Harvey appeared in a variety of character roles, ranging from Sheiks (Kid Millions [34]) to Gangsters (Alibi Ike [35]) before settling into his particular niche as one of Hollywood's favorite blowhard executives. Looking for all the world like one of those old comic-strip bosses who literally blew their tops (toupee and all), Harvey was a pompous target ripe for puncturing by such irreverent comics as Groucho Marx (in A Night in Casablanca [46]) and such down-to-earth types as Doris Day (April in Paris [54]). Paul Harvey's final film role was a typically imperious one in DeMille's The Ten Commandments (55); Harvey died of thrombosis shortly after finishing this assignment.

Trivia: The younger brother of actress Jobyna Howland, Olin Howland established himself on Broadway in musical comedy. The actor made his film debut in 1918, but didn't really launch his Hollywood career until the talkie era. Generally cast as rustic characters, Howland could be sly or slow-witted, depending on the demands of the role. He showed up in scores of Warner Bros. films in the 1930s and 1940s, most amusingly as the remonstrative Dr. Croker (sic) in The Case of the Lucky Legs (1934). A favorite of producer David O. Selznick, Howland played the laconic baggage man in Nothing Sacred (1937), the grim, hickory-stick wielding schoolmaster in The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1938) and an expansive Yankee businessman in Gone with the Wind (1939). During the 1940s, he could often as not be found at Republic, appearing in that studio's westerns and hillbilly musicals. One of his best screen assignments of the 1950s was the old derelict who kept shouting "Make me sergeant in charge of booze!" in the classic sci-fier Them (1954). Howland made several TV guest appearances in the 1950s, and played the recurring role of Swifty on the weekly Circus Boy (1956). In the latter stages of his career, Olin Howland billed himself as Olin Howlin; he made his final appearance in 1958, as the first victim of The Blob.

Trivia: Effervescent little Billy Bevan commenced his stage career in his native Australia, after briefly attending the University of Sydney. A veteran of the famous Pollard Opera Company, Bevan came to the U.S. in 1917, where he found work as a supporting comic at L-KO studios. He was promoted to stardom in 1920 when he joined up with Mack Sennett's "fun factory." Adopting a bushy moustache and an air of quizzical determination, Bevan became one of Sennett's top stars, appearing opposite such stalwart laughmakers as Andy Clyde, Vernon Dent and Madelyn Hurlock in such belly-laugh bonanzas as Ice Cold Cocos (1925), Circus Today (1926) and Wandering Willies (1926). While many of Bevan's comedies are hampered by too-mechanical gags and awkward camera tricks, he was funny and endearing enough to earn laughs without the benefit of Sennett gimmickry. He was particularly effective in a series of "tired businessman" two-reelers, in which the laughs came from the situations and the characterizations rather than slapstick pure and simple. Bevan continued to work sporadically for Sennett into the talkie era, but was busier as a supporting actor in feature films like Cavalcade (1933), The Lost Patrol (1934) and Dracula's Daughter (1936). He was frequently cast in bit parts as London "bobbies," messenger boys and bartenders; one of his more rewarding talkie roles was the uncle of plumbing trainee Jennifer Jones (!) in Ernst Lubitsch's Cluny Brown (1946). Among Billy Bevan's final screen assignments was the part of Will Scarlet in 1950's Rogues of Sherwood Forest.

Trivia: The embodiment of businesslike dignity, actor Robert Emmett Keane was active in films from his 1929 debut in the talkie short Gossip through the 1956 second feature When Gangland Strikes. Because of his distinguished, above-reproach demeanor, Keane was often effectively cast as confidence men, shady attorneys and mystery murderers: after all, if he can convince the gullible folks people on-screen that he's honest, it's likely the audience will fall for the same line. Keane is warmly remembered by Laurel and Hardy fans for his roles in three of the team's 20th Century-Fox films of the '40s, playing con artists in two of them (A-Haunting We Will Go and Jitterbugs). In the early '50s, Keane played Captain Brackett in the national touring company of Rodgers and Hammerstein's musical triumph South Pacific. In private life, Robert Emmett Keane was the husband of Claire Whitney.

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: American actor Jeff Corey forsook a job as sewing-machine salesman for the less stable world of New York theatre in the 1930s. The 26-year-old Corey was regarded as a valuable character-actor commodity when he arrived in Hollywood in 1940. Perhaps the best of his many early unbilled appearances was in the Kay Kyser film You'll Find Out (40), in which Corey, playing a game-show contestant (conveniently named Jeff Corey), was required to sing a song while stuffing his mouth full of crackers. The actor was busiest during the "film noir" mid-to-late 1940s, playing several weasely villain roles; it is hard to forget the image of Corey, in the role of a slimy stoolie in Burt Lancaster's Brute Force, being tied to the front of a truck and pushed directly into a hail of police bullets. Corey's film career ended abruptly in 1952 when he was unfairly blacklisted for his left-leaning political beliefs. To keep food on the table, Corey became an acting coach, eventually running one of the top training schools in the business (among his more famous pupils was Jack Nicholson). He was permitted to return to films in the 1960s, essaying such roles as a wild-eyed wino in Lady in a Cage (64), the louse who kills Kim Darby's father in True Grit (68), and a sympathetic sheriff in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (68). In addition to his film work, Jeff Corey has acted in and directed numerous TV series; he was seen as a regular on the 1985 Robert Blake series Hell Town and the 1986 Earl Hamner Jr. production Morningstar/Eveningstar. The following decade found Corey appearing in such films as Sinatra (1992), Beethoven's 2nd (1993) and the action thriller Surviving the Game (1994). Shortly after suffering a fall at his Malibu home in August of 2002, Corey died in Santa Monica due to complications resulting from the accident. He was 88.

Trivia: Mainly remembered for offering younger brother John Ford his first opportunities in the movie business, Francis Ford (born Feeney) was a touring company actor before entering films with Thomas Edison in 1907. In the early 1910s, he served a tumultuous apprenticeship as a director/star for producer Thomas Ince -- who in typical Ince fashion presented many of Ford's accomplishments as his own -- before moving over to Carl Laemmle's Universal in 1913. A true auteur, Ford would direct, write, and star in his own Westerns and serials, often opposite Grace Cunard, the studio's top action heroine. Contrary to popular belief they never married, but their onscreen partnership resulted in such popular action serials as Lucille Love -- Girl of Mystery (1914), The Broken Coin (1915), and The Adventures of Peg o' the Ring (1916). Both Ford's and Cunard's careers declined in the 1920s, with Ford directing mostly poverty row productions. He kept working in films as a supporting actor through the early '50s, mainly due to the influence of John, who often made Francis Ford and Victor McLaglen supply the corny Irish humor for which he exhibited a lifelong fondness. Francis Ford's son, Philip Ford, also became a director of Westerns, and also like his father, mainly of the poverty row variety.

Trivia: Malone was born Dorothy Maloney, under which name she appeared in her earliest films. She began modeling in childhood and also frequently acted in school plays. While performing in a college play at age 18 she was spotted by a talent agent and soon signed to a film contract by RKO. After playing bits in several films she switched studios in 1945 and gradually got better roles; usually she played standard pretty-girl leads. In the mid '50s she began to gain attention as a serious actress. For her portrayal of a frustrated nymphomaniac in Written on the Wind (1956) she won a Best Supporting Actress Oscar; however, few of her later roles were rewarding, and she made few films after 1964. She costarred in the TV series Peyton Place. She continued appearing in occasional films through the '80s. From 1959-64 she was married to actor Jacques Bergerac.