Trivia: The daughter of a boat manufacturer and a concert pianist, American actress Irene Dunne began voice training lessons before the age of thirteen. Dunne's diligence won her a scholarship to the Chicago Musical College, but her dreams of a career with New York City's Metropolitan opera faded when she failed the audition. Still, there was an outlet for her talents in musical comedy, which she began in a touring company of the popular stage production Irene. After her Broadway debut in 1923, Dunne was able to secure leading roles in several musicals, and marry Francis J. Griffin, a New York dentist, with whom she remained married until his death in 1965. In 1929, Dunne was cast as Magnolia in the Chicago company production of Show Boat; her superlative performance led to a movie contract with RKO, where after a few inconsequential programmers like Leathernecking (1930), she became one of the top dramatic stars at that studio. In Ann Vickers (1933), she plays a lady doctor who undergoes an illegal abortion, and in The Age of Innocence (1934), Dunne played the same role reprised by Michelle Pfeiffer in the 1994 remake of that film. Dunne was finally permitted to show off her singing talents in Sweet Adeline (1935), and in 1936 Universal Pictures cast her in her stage role as Magnolia in the studio's definitive film version of Show Boat (1936). After Show Boat, Dunne entered the second phase of her movie career as a comedienne, contributing hilarious performances to such screwball farces as Theodora Goes Wild (1936), The Awful Truth (1937), and My Favorite Wife (1940). It was back to dramatic roles in the early 1940s, and as age crept up on Dunne, she made a seamless transition to starring character roles in such films as Anna and the King of Siam (1946) and Life with Father (1947). Approaching fifty, Dunne retained her classically beautiful features and; in fact, Hollywood makeup artists were compelled to draw lines on her face and fit her with heavy body suits for her "aged" roles in I Remember Mama (1948) and The Mudlark (1950). Upon completion of It Grows on Trees (1952), Dunne retired from films, though she remained active on television, notably in such Catholic-oriented programs as The Christophers. In recognition of her charitable work and interest in conservative political causes, Dunne was appointed by President Eisenhower as one of five alternative delegates to the United Nations in 1957.

Trivia: British-born actor Cary Grant (born Archibald Leach) escaped his humble Bristol environs and unstable home life by joining an acrobatic troupe, where he became a stilt-walker. Numerous odd jobs kept him going until he tried acting, and, after moving to the United States, he managed to lose his accent, developing a clipped mid-Atlantic speaking style uniquely his own. After acting in Broadway musicals, Grant was signed in 1932 by Paramount Pictures to be built into leading-man material. His real name would never do for marquees, so the studio took the first initials of their top star Gary Cooper, reversed them, then filled in the "C" and "G" to come up with Cary Grant. After a year of nondescript roles, Grant was selected by Mae West to be her leading man in She Done Him Wrong (1933) and I'm No Angel(1934). A bit stiff-necked but undeniably sexy, Grant vaulted to stardom, though Paramount continued wasting his potential in second rate films. Free at last from his Paramount obligations in 1935, Grant vowed never to be strictly bound to any one studio again, so he signed a dual contract with Columbia and RKO that allowed him to choose any "outside" roles he pleased. Sylvia Scarlett (1936) was the first film to fully demonstrate Grant's inspired comic flair, which would be utilized to the utmost in such knee-slappers as The Awful Truth (1937), Bringing Up Baby (1938), His Girl Friday (1939), and The Bachelor and the Bobby Soxer (1947). (Only in Arsenic and Old Lace [1941] did he overplay his hand and lapse into mugging.) The actor was also accomplished at straight drama, as evidenced in Only Angels Have Wings (1939), Destination Tokyo (1942), Crisis (1950), and in his favorite role as an irresponsible cockney in None but the Lonely Heart (1942), for which Grant was nominated for an Oscar -- he didn't win, although he was awarded a special Oscar for career achievement in 1970. Off-stage, most of Grant's co-workers had nothing but praise for his craftsmanship and willingness to work with co-stars rather than at them. Among Grant's yea-sayers was director Alfred Hitchcock, who cast the actor in three of his best films, most notably the quintessential Hitchcock thriller North by Northwest (1959). Seemingly growing handsomer and more charming as he got older, Grant retained his stardom into the 1960s, enriching himself with lucrative percentage-of-profits deals on such box-office hits as Operation Petticoat (1959) and Charade (1964). Upon completing Walk, Don't Run in 1966, Grant decided he was through with filmmaking -- and he meant it. Devoting his remaining years to an executive position at a major cosmetics firm, Grant never appeared on a TV talk show and seldom granted newspaper interviews. In the 1980s, however, he became restless, and decided to embark on a nationwide lecture tour, confining himself exclusively to small towns in which the residents might otherwise never have the chance to see a Hollywood superstar in person. It was while preparing to lecture in Davenport, IA, that the 82-year-old Cary Grant suffered a sudden and fatal stroke in 1986.

Trivia: Born Randolph Crane, this virile, weathered, prototypical cowboy star with a gallant manner and slight Southern accent enlisted for service in the U.S. Army during World War I at age 19. After returning home he got a degree in engineering, then joined the Pasadena Community Playhouse. While golfing, Scott met millionaire filmmaker Howard Hughes, who helped him enter films as a bit player. In the mid '30s he began landing better roles, both as a romantic lead and as a costar. Later he became a Western star, and from the late '40s to the '50s he starred exclusively in big-budget color Westerns (39 altogether). From 1950-53 he was one of the top ten box-office attractions. Later in the '50s he played the aging cowboy hero in a series of B-Westerns directed by Budd Boetticher for Ranown, an independent production company. He retired from the screen in the early '60s. Having invested in oil wells, real estate, and securities, he was worth between $50-$100 million.

Trivia: Slim, sloe-eyed, dark-haired actress Gail Patrick was once the 21-year-old Dean of women students at her alma mater of Howard College, and briefly studied law at University of Alabama. She was brought to Paramount during that studio's nationwide contest to find an actress to play "the Panther Woman" in Island of Lost Souls (1932). Patrick lost this role to Kathleen Burke, but won a Paramount contract, and co-starred in the studio's horror film follow-up to Island of Lost Souls, 1933's Murders in the Zoo. She played several leading roles -- including a lady lawyer in Disbarred (1939) -- but was more effective as a villainess or "other woman"; her elegant truculence was one of the highlights of the 1936 screwball comedy My Man Godfrey. Patrick's third husband was Thomas Cornwall Jackson, literary agent of Perry Mason creator Erle Stanley Gardner. Retired from acting since 1948, Patrick and her husband co-produced the popular Perry Mason TV series, which ran from 1957 through 1966. She made a brief return to acting as a judge in the final Mason episode, which also featured Erle Stanley Gardner himself in a bit role. After her 1969 divorce from Jackson, Patrick attempted to revive Paul Mason for television in 1973, but Monte Markham proved an inadequate substitute for Raymond Burr. Gail Patrick Jackson died of leukemia in 1980.

Trivia: American actress Ann Shoemaker was 19 years old when she made her Broadway bow in Nobody's Widow. Shoemaker's subsequent stage credits ranged from the Eugene O'Neill efforts The Great God Brown and Ah, Wilderness! to the mid-'60s musical comedy Half a Sixpence. In films from 1931, she was ideally cast in dowager roles, notably Sara Roosevelt, FDR's mother, in Sunrise at Campobello (1960). She made her last appearance as a cynical nun in Billy Wilder's The Fortune Cookie (1966). Ann Shoemaker was the widow of British actor Henry Stephenson.

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: Vaudeville, stock and Broadway actor Donald MacBride made his Hollywood debut in the 1938 Marx Brothers farce Room Service, reprising his stage role as explosive hotel manager Wagner ("Jumping Butterballs!!!") His previous film appearances had been lensed in his native New York, first at the Vitagraph studios in Flatbush, where he showed up in the Mr. and Mrs. Sidney Drew comedies of the 1910s. During the early talkie years, MacBride showed up in several one- and two-reelers, providing support to such Manhattan-based talent as Burns & Allen, Bob Hope and Shemp Howard. After Room Service, the bulldog-visaged MacBride was prominently cast in picture after picture, usually as a flustered detective. He was teamed with Alan Mowbray in a brace of 1940 RKO "B"s about a pair of shoestring theatrical producers, and was featured in four of Abbott and Costello's comedies. Among the actor's rare noncomic roles were the dying gangster boss in High Sierra (1941) and the dour insurance executive in The Killers (1946). MacBride's television work includes a season as dizzy Marie Wilson's long-suffering employer on the early-1950s TV sitcom My Friend Irma. Donald MacBride's last film role was as Tom Ewell's backslapping boss in the 1955 Billy Wilder comedy The Seven-Year Itch.

Trivia: Owl-faced Granville Bates began scowling his way through films in 1929. At one juncture in the mid-1930s, it was virtually impossible not to see Bates on screen; between 1936 and 1939, he appeared in 46 films-an average of 11 per year! Most often cast as dyspeptic grandpops and truculent storekeepers, he was particularly well-served in two of director Garson Kanin's RKO productions. In 1939's The Great Man Votes, Bates played the corrupt, bird-brained incumbent mayor; and in 1940's My Favorite Wife he was seen as the bewildered judge. Granville Bates continued working right up to his fatal heart attack in the summer of 1940.

Trivia: A distinguished stage actor from Ireland, gray-haired Brandon Tynan appeared in the odd film during the silent era -- including the starring role in Success (1923), a drama about a famous Shakespearean actor who succumbs to alcoholism -- but was rather more visible onstage until 1937, when he relocated to Hollywood. As a Hollywood character actor, Tynan played John Redmond in the controversial Parnell (1937) (and, that same year, was Captain Cobb in the equally maligned Sh The Octopus), the mayor in The Girl and the Mob (1939), James Ellison's lawyer in a RKO "B" Almost a Gentleman and, also for RKO, one of the Bohemians in Lucky Partners (1940). Tynan was the husband of American stage (and later television) actress Lily Cahill (1886-1955).

Trivia: Born in Odessa, Ukraine Leon Belasco was prepared for a musical career at various seats of learning in Japan and Manchuria. For several years, Belasco was first violinist for the Tokyo Symphony, and later led his own orchestra. Though he made his first film in 1926, his Hollywood career proper didn't begin until 1939. Together with Leonid Kinsky and Mischa Auer, Belasco was one of filmdom's favorite comic Russians, usually cast as an excitable musician, choreographer or aesthete. He also registered well in sinister roles, especially in World War II and Cold War espionagers. On radio, Leon Belasco was heard as larcenous informant Pagan Zeldschmidt on The Man Called X; his best-known TV role was Appopoplous the landlord in My Sister Eileen (1960).

Trivia: Supporting actor Murray Alper's earliest screen credit was 1930's The Royal Family of Broadway. For the next 35 years, Alper was an inescapable movie presence, playing dozens of cab drivers, bookies, cops and GIs. One of his few credited appearances in an "A" picture was in The Maltese Falcon; he plays the friendly cabbie who drives Sam Spade (Humphrey Bogart) on a mid-film wild goose chase. Frequently seen in comedies, Alper showed up in eight Bowery Boys farces of the 1940s and 1950s, and was prominently featured in the Three Stooges' Trick Dicks (1953) and The Outlaws is Coming (1965, as Chief Crazy Horse!). One of Murray Alper's least characteristic roles was the judo instructor in Jerry Lewis' The Nutty Professor (1963).

Trivia: Bostonian Cyril Ring certainly had the pedigree for a successful show business career; he was the brother of stage luminary Blanche Ring and the less famous but equally busy actress Frances Ring. And Cyril certainly had the right connections: he was the brother-in-law of stage comedian Charles Winninger (Blanche's husband) and film star Thomas Meighan (Frances' husband). All Cyril Ring lacked was talent. He managed to coast as actor on his family ties and his rakish good looks, but his range never matured beyond a tiny handful of by-rote mannerisms and facial expressions. In the early '20s, Ring was briefly married to musical comedy star Charlotte Greenwood. Reasonably busy as a silent-film western villain, Ring was cast as the caddish Harvey Yates in the Marx Bros.' 1929 film debut The Cocoanuts. The subsequent reviews bent over backward to condemn Ring's performance as the stiffest and most amateurish of the year -- and thus his fate was sealed. For the rest of his movie career, Ring would be confined to microscopic bit parts and extra roles, with the occasional supporting parts in 2-reel comedies (he's the fugitive crook who demands a shave from W.C. Fields in 1933's The Barber Shop). One of the few features in which he had more than five lines was RKO's 1945 mystery-comedy Having Wonderful Crime; perhaps significantly, his sister Blanche Ring topped the film's supporting cast. Cyril Ring's last recorded credits occured in 1947, after which he dropped from public view until his obituary was published in the trades twenty years later.

Trivia: A handsome, mustachioed bit player from England, long in Hollywood, Clive Morgan played Tarzan's evil cousin in the 1929 Universal serial Tarzan the Tiger (1929). Roles thereafter were miniscule, often military officers, doormen, sales clerks, and others. Morgan's screen career lasted well into the 1960s.

Trivia: American actress Jean Acker acquired more notoriety for being the estranged wife of Rudolph Valentino than she did as a leading actress. According to Tinseltown legend, she married him in 1919 while he was still an unknown. She left him on their wedding night and the marriage was apparently never consummated. Still Valentino was rumored to have begged for Acker to return. She never did and in 1921 filed for a legal separation. In 1924, Acker had the gall to use the name Mrs. Rudolph Valentino as a screen credit.

Trivia: American character actor Frank Marlowe left the stage for the screen in 1934. For the next 25 years, Marlowe showed up in countless bits and minor roles, often in the films of 20th Century-Fox. He played such peripheral roles as gas station attendants, cabdrivers, reporters, photographers, servicemen and murder victims (for some reason, he made a great corpse). As anonymous as ever, Frank Marlowe made his final appearance as a barfly in 1957's Rockabilly Baby.

Trivia: For two decades, the diminutive American actor ChesterClute played a seemingly endless series of harassed clerks, testy druggists, milquetoast husbands, easily distracted laboratory assistants and dishevelled streetcar passengers. A New York-based stage actor, Clute began his movie career at the Astoria studios in Long Island, appearing in several early-talkie short subjects. He moved to the West Coast in the mid '30s, remaining there until his final film appearance in Colorado Territory (1952). While Chester Clute seldom had more than two or three lines of dialogue in feature films, he continued throughout his career to be well-served in short subjects, most notably as Vera Vague's wimpish suitor in the 1947 Columbia 2-reeler Cupid Goes Nuts.

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!

Trivia: Cyrus W. Kendall was eight years old when he made his acting debut at the fabled Pasadena Playhouse. As an adult, the portly Kendall became a charter member of the Playhouse's Eighteen Actors Inc., acting in and/or directing over 100 theatrical productions. In films from 1936, he was usually typecast as an abrasive, cigar-chomping detective, gangster or machine politician. He showed up in roles both large and small in feature films, and was prominently cast in several of MGM's Crime Does Not Pay short subjects. Typical Kendall assignments of the 1940s included Jumbo Madigan in Alias Boston Blackie (1941) and "Honest" John Travers in Outlaw Trail (1944). Remaining active into the early years of live television, Cyrus W. Kendall essayed several guest spots on the 1949 quiz show/anthology Armchair Detective, and co-starred with Robert Bice, Spencer Chan and Herb Ellis on the Hollywood-based ABC weekly Mysteries of Chinatown (1949-50).

Trivia: Pat West spent many years in American vaudeville in a song-and-snappy-patter act with his wife, Lucille. In films from 1929, West could be seen in innumerable bit parts (usually bartenders) in both features and short subjects. He was something of a regular in the films of Howard Hawks, attaining billing as Warden Cooley in Hawks' His Girl Friday (1940), and he also showed up in several Preston Sturges films. Pat West can be seen in the opening reels of The Bank Dick as the assistant movie director who hires Egbert Souse (W.C. Fields) to replace inebriated director A. Pismo Clam (Jack Norton).

Trivia: Snake-eyed, mustachioed character actor Frank Ellis seldom rose above the "member of the posse" status in "B" westerns. Once in a while, he was allowed to say things like "Now here's my plan" and "Let's get outta here," but generally he stood by waiting for the Big Boss (usually someone like Harry Woods or Wheeler Oakman) to do his thinking for him. Ellis reportedly began making films around 1920; he remained in the business at least until the 1954 Allan Dwan-directed western Silver Lode. Frank Ellis has been erroneously credited with several policeman roles in the films of Laurel and Hardy, due to his resemblance to another bit player named Charles McMurphy.

Trivia: Enjoying a stage, screen, and television career that lasted almost seven decades, former child actress Edna Holland (often billed Edna M. Holland) appeared on stage under the management of the legendary David Belasco -- just like Mary Pickford, whom Holland followed into films in 1915. Cast as "The Other Woman," Holland menaced Pickford's rival Mary Miles Minter in Always in the Way (1915) and was equally intolerant of Hazel Dawn in The Feud Girl (1916), Marjorie Rambeau in Mary Moreland (1917), and Ruth Stonehouse in The Masked Rider (1919). The latter was a blood-and-thunder serial in 15 chapters and Holland played Juanita, scheming with arch villain Paul Panzer against the lissome Miss Stonehouse. By 1920, she was billing herself the rather formidable Mrs. E.M. Holland and returned to the stage. Surprisingly, Holland was back in films by the late '30s, now mostly playing professional women, such as teachers, nurses or secretaries. Making her television debut on the Lone Ranger program in 1949, Holland went on to appear on such popular shows as Lassie, Annie Oakley and The Andy Griffith Show. She retired after a bit part in Inside Daisy Clover (1965) and died from a ruptured aneurysm in 1982.

Trivia: Horace McMahon dabbled in professional and semi-professional acting while attending Fordham University Law School, continuing to do so while holding down a day job as a newspaper reporter. He made acting his full-time vocation after his first Broadway appearance in 1931. In films from 1937, the growly, jowly MacMahon was initially typed in gangster roles. After scoring a personal success as Lieutenant Monaghan in the 1949 Broadway play Detective Story, MacMahon repeated the role in the 1951 film version -- and thereafter was pigeonholed in "cop" roles. Before beginning his five-year (1958-63) tenure as Lieutenant Mike Parker on the TV series The Naked City, MacMahon had been a semi-regular on Martin Kane (1950, as the newsstand owner who stocked nothing but the sponsor's cigarette) and Make Room for Daddy (1953, as Danny Thomas' agent). His last weekly TV assignment was as Hank McClure, police contact for public relations man Craig Stevens, in the short-lived Mr. Broadway. Having been born near Norwalk, Connecticut, Horace McMahon spent his retirement years in that community with his wife, former actress Louise Campbell.

Trivia: Bubbles Noisom and his siblings, Pluma DeVonne and Derry Dee, turn up in bit parts in several late silents and a few early talkies. Noisom himself later became the more mature George Noisom and played a series of telegram delivery boys, elevator operators, and cabbies. He was little more than an extra, but a recognizable one with his round face and blond hair combed straight back.