The House on 92nd Street

William Eythe (Actor) .. Bill Dietrich

Born: April 07, 1918
Died: January 26, 1957

Trivia: During World War II, "victory casting" referred to the practice of placing draft-proof male actors in the plum roles that would normally have gone to Hollywood's top leading men, most of whom were in uniform. Though some of the "4-F" male stars were inadequate substitutes for the old favorites, a few were better-than-average performers. One of the best of the "victory" bunch was handsome, outgoing William Eythe, who signed with 20th Century-Fox in 1943. Eythe was excellent in his first film, The Ox-Bow Incident, as the conscience-stricken son of martinet lynch-mob leader Frank Conroy, and was no less impressive in such subsequent films as Song of Bernadette (1944), Wilson (1944), Wing and a Prayer (1944) and House on 92nd Street (1946). But once the war ended, Eythe seemed to lack the staying power that would have permitted him to compete on equal footing with such returning stars as Tyrone Power and James Stewart; he gradually left films to concentrate on theatre work. William Eythe died of hepatitis at the age of 38.

Lloyd Nolan (Actor) .. Inspector George A. Briggs

Born: August 11, 1902
Died: September 27, 1985

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.

Signe Hasso (Actor) .. Elsa Gebhardt

Born: August 15, 1915
Died: June 07, 2002
Birthplace: Stockholm

Trivia: Born Signe Larsson, she was billed "Signe Lars" in Sweden. She began working on the Swedish stage at age 13, and by her late teens was appearing in Swedish films, in which she was active in starring roles until 1940. At the outbreak of World War Two she emigrated to the U.S., going on to appear as strong-willed leads in Hollywood films of the '40s; she became an American citizen in 1948. Hasso worked on stage, screen, and TV in both the U.S. and Europe. Later, she was most active as a guest-star in TV dramas. She has also been a successful professional writer, having written many articles, short stories and books published in Sweden. She also writes music and lyrics in English, German, and Swedish. One of her English lyric credits is the album Scandinavian Folk Songs Sung & Swung (by singers Alice Babs and Svend Asmussen), which was honored as "Best European Recording Achievement of the Year." In 1972 the King of Sweden awarded her The Royal Order of Vasa, with the rank of Knight First Class -- the equivalent of the English knighthood.

Gene Lockhart (Actor) .. Charles Ogden Roper

Born: July 18, 1891
Died: March 31, 1957

Trivia: Canadian-born Gene Lockhart made his first stage appearance at age 6; as a teenager, he appeared in comedy sketches with another fledgling performer, Beatrice Lillie. Lockhart's first Broadway production was 1916's Riviera. His later credits on the Great White Way included Eugene O'Neill's Ah, Wilderness and Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesmen, in which Lockhart replaced Lee J. Cobb in the role of Willy Loman. In between acting assignments, Lockhart taught stage technique at the Juilliard School of Music. A prolific writer, Lockhart turned out a number of magazine articles and song lyrics, and contributed several routines to the Broadway revue Bunk of 1926, in which he also starred. After a false start in 1922, Lockhart launched his film career in 1934. His most familiar screen characterization was that of the cowardly criminal who cringed and snivelled upon being caught; he also showed up in several historical films as small-town stuffed shirts and bigoted disbelievers in scientific progress. When not trafficking in petty villainy, Lockhart was quite adept at roles calling for whimsy and confusion, notably Bob Cratchit in the 1938 version of A Christmas Carol and the beleaguered judge in A Miracle on 34th Street (1947). Extending his activities to television, Lockhart starred in the 1955 "dramedy" series His Honor, Homer Bell. Gene Lockhart was the husband of character actress Kathleen Lockhart, the father of leading lady June Lockhart, and the grandfather of 1980s ingenue Anne Lockhart.

Leo G. Carroll (Actor) .. Col. Hammersohn

Born: October 25, 1892
Died: October 16, 1972
Birthplace: Weedon, England

Trivia: Leo G. Carroll was the son of an Irish-born British military officer. The younger Carroll had intended to follow in his father's footsteps, but his World War I experiences discouraged him from pursuing a military career. On the British stage from the age of sixteen, Carroll settled in the U.S. in 1924, playing such plum theatrical roles as the title character in The Late George Apley. In films from 1934, Carroll often portrayed shy, self-effacing Britishers who, in "Uriah-Heep" fashion, used their humility to hide a larcenous or homicidal streak. Reportedly Alfred Hitchcock's favorite actor, Carroll was seen in half a dozen Hithcock films, notably Spellbound (1946) (as the scheming psychiatrist) and North by Northwest (1959) (as the dry-witted CIA agent). A "method actor" before the term was invented, Carroll was known to immerse himself in his roles, frequently confounding strangers by approaching them "in character." Leo G. Carroll was always a welcome presence on American television, starring as Topper in the "ghostly" sitcom of the same name, and co-starring as Father Fitzgibbons in Going My Way (1962) and Alexander Waverly on The Man From UNCLE (1964-68).

Lydia St. Clair (Actor) .. Johanna Schmedt

William Post Jr. (Actor) .. Walker

Trivia: Actor William A. Post Jr. appeared in many films of the '30s, '40s, and '50s. He has also worked on Broadway and frequently appeared on daytime and nighttime television.

Harry Bellaver (Actor) .. Max Coburg

Born: February 12, 1905
Died: August 08, 1993

Trivia: Though born in the Midwest, character actor Harry Bellaver spent the better part of his screen career playing New York- or Brooklyn-bred cops, cabbies, doormen and petty thieves. His four-decade career began with MGM's Another Thin Man (1939), and ended when he retired after 1980's Hero at Large. An inescapable guest-star presence on 1950s and 1960s television, Harry Bellaver also played Sergeant Frank Arcaro on the weekly New York-filmed cop series The Naked City (1959-63).

Bruno Wick (Actor) .. Adolphe Lange

Harro Meller (Actor) .. Conrad Arnulf

Born: January 01, 1906
Died: January 01, 1963

Charles Wagenheim (Actor) .. Gus Huzmann

Born: January 01, 1895
Died: March 06, 1979

Trivia: Diminutive, frequently mustached character actor Charles Wagenheim made the transition from stage to screen in or around 1940. Wagenheim's most memorable role was that of "The Runt" in Meet Boston Blackie (1941), a part taken over by George E. Stone in the subsequent "Boston Blackie" B-films. Generally cast in unsavory bit parts, Wagenheim's on-screen perfidy extended from Hitchcock's Foreign Correspondent (1940) to George Stevens' Diary of Anne Frank (1959), in which, uncredited, he played the sneak thief who nearly gave away the hiding place of the Frank family. Wagenheim kept his hand in the business into the 1970s in films like The Missouri Breaks (1976). In 1979, 83-year-old Charles Wagenheim was bludgeoned to death by an intruder in his Hollywood apartment, five days before another veteran actor, Victor Kilian, met the same grisly fate.

Alfred Linder (Actor) .. Adolph Klaen

Born: January 01, 1901
Died: January 01, 1957

Renee Carson (Actor) .. Luise Vadja

John Mckee (Actor) .. Dr. Arthur C. Appleton

Born: December 30, 1916

Edwin Jerome (Actor) .. Major General

Born: January 01, 1883
Died: January 01, 1959

Elisabeth Neumann (Actor) .. Freda Kassel

George Shelton (Actor) .. Jackson

Alfred Zeisler (Actor) .. Col. Strassen

Rusty Lane (Actor) .. Admiral

Died: January 01, 1986

Trivia: Actor Rusty Lane appeared in films from the mid '40s through the mid '60s.

Salo Douday (Actor) .. Franz Von Wirt

Paul Ford (Actor) .. Sergeant

Born: November 02, 1901
Died: April 14, 1976

Trivia: After having drifted from job to job--with a wife and five children in tow--Baltimore native Paul Ford decided in his late 30s to give acting a try. He worked with the Depression-era W.P.A. agency in a puppet show project and also wrote shows for the Federal Theatre; his biggest break came when he and his co-workers staged a puppet production for the 1939 New York World's Fair. Radio, stage and film work followed, but Ford wouldn't truly hit the big time until 1955, when he was engaged to play the apoplectic Colonel Hall on Phil Silvers' situation comedy You'll Never Get Rich. For four seasons, TV fans were regaled by the efforts of conniving Sgt. Bilko (Silvers) and long-suffering Col. Hall to outsmart one another. During this period, Ford worked steadily in the theatre, recreating his popular stage role as Colonel Purdy in Teahouse for the August Moon when the play was committed to film in 1955. After Phil Silvers' series was cancelled, Ford continued his stage and screen career, scoring a major success in 1965 in the play Never Too Late, in which he played a fiftyish husband who discovered that his middle-aged wife was pregnant. Never Too Late was filmed in 1967, with Ford once again in the starring role; five years and many lucrative acting assignments later, Paul Ford retired.

William Adams (Actor) .. Customs Officer

Tom Brown (Actor) .. Intern

Born: January 16, 1913
Died: June 03, 1990

Trivia: Tom Brown was the "boy next door" type in many films, playing ideal, clean-cut, all-Americans youths in many films of the '30s. The son of vaudevillian Harry Brown and musical comedy star Marie (Francis) Brown, he was on radio and stage from infancy, Broadway from age nine. Brown began appearing in silent movies at age ten in 1923. Pleasantly baby-faced, in the thirties he acquired his typecast image, playing students, sons, sweethearts, military cadets, brothers. His first talkie was The Lady Lies (1929), playing Walter Huston's son; he appeared in more than 100 other films. After service in World War Two (as a paratrooper), he attempted to shed his image by playing heavies, without much success; his career was further derailed when he was called up for service in Korea, from where he returned as a lieutenant colonel. After that Brown did little film work but became a familiar face on TV; now bald-headed, he had continuing roles on the TV series Gunsmoke (as rancher Ed O'Conner) and on the soap operas General Hospital (as Al Weeks) and Days of Our Lives (as Nathan Curtis).

Bruce Fernald (Actor) .. FBI Agent

Jay Wesley (Actor) .. FBI Agent

Benjamin Burroughs (Actor) .. Aide

Douglas Rutherford (Actor) .. Colonel

Frieda Altman (Actor) .. Saboteur

William Beach (Actor) .. Saboteur

Hamilton Benz (Actor) .. Saboteur

Henry Cordy (Actor) .. Saboteur

Mita Cordy (Actor) .. Saboteur

James J. Coyle (Actor) .. Saboteur

Hans Hansen (Actor) .. Saboteur

Kenneth Konopka (Actor) .. Saboteur

Scott Moore (Actor) .. Saboteur

Born: January 01, 1888
Died: January 01, 1967

Delmar Nuetzman (Actor) .. Saboteur

John Zak (Actor) .. Saboteur

Gertrude Wottitz (Actor) .. Saboteur

Bernard Lenrow (Actor) .. Saboteur

George Brandt (Actor) .. German Man

Yoshita Tagawa (Actor) .. Japanese Man

Sheila Bromley (Actor) .. Customer

Born: October 31, 1911

Trivia: A one-time Miss California, American actress Sheila Bromley came to films relatively late; she was 26 when she appeared in her first movie, Idol of the Crowds (1937). While she had several short-term starlet contracts over the years, principally at Columbia, Fox and Warner Bros., Bromley's credits are hard to trace, simply because she spent so much time not being Sheila Bromley. At various points in her career she billed herself as Sheila Manners, Sheila Mannors and Sheila Fulton, seldom rising above B-picture status under any of those names. On TV, she was a regular on the popular sitcom I Married Joan (1952-55), billed again as Sheila Bromley. After nearly twenty years in such disposable second features as Torture Ship (1939), Calling Philo Vance (1940), Time to Kill (1942) and Young Jesse James (1950), "Sheila Bromley/Manners/Mannors/Fulton" retired, returning several years later for small roles in major 1960s productions like Judgment at Nuremberg (1961) and Hotel (1966). In 1965, Sheila Bromley had a continuing featured role on the NBC TV daytime drama Morning Star.

Elmer Brown (Actor) .. Scientist

Jack Cherry (Actor) .. Scientist

Victor Sutherland (Actor) .. Toll Guard

Born: January 01, 1888
Died: January 01, 1968

Stanley Tackney (Actor) .. Instructor

Robert Culler (Actor) .. Trainee

Vincent Gardenia (Actor) .. Trainee

Born: January 07, 1920
Died: December 09, 1992
Birthplace: Naples

Trivia: During the '70s and '80s Vincent Gardenia was one of the most familiar character actors in film, television, and on the Broadway stage. Though viewers may not always have remembered his name, his sad eyes, hawk-nosed Italian-American face, short, stocky build, and distinctive often booming Brooklyn-accented voice and exaggerated gestures made him instantly recognizable. Gardenia was born Vincent Scognamiglio in Naples, Italy, but he was raised in New York from the age of two. Once in the Big Apple, his father founded an Italian-language theater troupe and it is with them that Gardenia learned his craft. When he was 14, Gardenia dropped out of school to become a full-time actor with the company. He was in the army during WWII; after his discharge he returned to work in his father's theater and in other Italian-American productions. Though he had played a bit part in the 1945 film The House on 92nd Street, Gardenia did not launch his real film career until he was in his mid-thirties and played his first major role in The Cop Hater (1958). Though most often cast as Italian-Americans or in simple ethnic roles, Gardenia was a versatile actor who could easily switch from comedic to dramatic roles in films of widely varying quality. Some of his best-known roles include that of a bartender in 1961 in The Hustler, and Dutch Schnell in Bang the Drum Slowly (1973) opposite Robert De Niro. The latter garnered Gardenia his first Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actor. Gardenia's second nomination came in 1987 for his memorable portrayal of Cher's father in Moonstruck. The character actor was 70 when he played his final role in the Joe Pesci vehicle The Super (1991). Gardenia's considerable television work includes the soap opera Edge of Night, a regular role on All in the Family (during the 1973-1974 season), the short-lived series Breaking Away (1980-1981), and a semi-regular role on L.A. Law in 1990. He has also made numerous guest appearances. Gardenia died of heart failure in 1992 at the age of 70.

Carl Benson (Actor) .. Trainee

Frank Richards (Actor) .. Trainee

Born: September 15, 1909
Died: April 15, 1992

Trivia: A stage actor from 1938, American-born Frank Richards made his earliest recorded-film appearance in 1940. Generally cast as stubble-chinned heavies and slick gangsters, he also served as an "art director" for the 1946 Western Rustler's Roundup. More notable among his 200 or so on-camera television credits was his bad-guy role on the 1951 Superman episode "A Night of Terror." Richards' last film was John Cassavetes' A Woman Under the Influence in 1974. He died in 1992.

Ellsworth Glath (Actor) .. Trainee

Edward Michaels (Actor) .. Trainee

Harrison Scott (Actor) .. Trainee

Anna Marie Hornemann (Actor) .. Trainee

Sara Strengell (Actor) .. Trainee

Eugene Stuckmann (Actor) .. Trainee

Marriott Wilson (Actor) .. Trainee

Frank Kreig (Actor) .. Travel Agent

Antonio J. Pires (Actor) .. Watchmaker

Danny Leone (Actor) .. Delivery Boy

E. G. Marshall (Actor) .. Attendant at Morgue

Born: June 08, 1914
Died: August 24, 1998

Trivia: Actor E. G. Marshall started out on radio in his native Minnesota, then headed for New York and Broadway. After several years' solid stage service, Marshall began accepting small roles in such films as 13 Rue Madeline (1945) and Call Northside 777 (1947). A mainstay of television's so-called Golden Age, Marshall excelled in incisive, authoritative roles. Long before winning two Emmy awards for his portrayal of lawyer Lawrence Preston on TV's The Defenders (1961-65), Marshall was associated with fictional jurisprudence as the military prosecutor in The Caine Mutiny (1954) and as Juror #4 in Twelve Angry Men (1957). In contrast to his businesslike demeanor, Marshall is one of Hollywood's most notorious pranksters; he was never more impish than when he ad-libbed profanities and nonsequiturs while his lips were hidden by a surgical mask in the 1969-73 TV series The Bold Ones. The best of E.G. Marshall's work of the 1970s and 1980s includes the role of the straying husband in Woody Allen's Interiors (1977), the U.S. President in Superman II (1978) and General Eisenhower in the 1985 TV miniseries War and Remembrance. Continuing to flourish into the 1990s, Marshall was seen in the 1993 TV adaptation of Stephen King's The Tommyknockers, and was cast as Arthur Thurmond on the 1994 medical series Chicago Hope. Radio fans will remember E.G. Marshall as the unctuous host ("Pleasant dreeeaaammms") of the 1970s anthology The CBS Radio Mystery Theatre.

J. Edgar Hoover (Actor) .. Himself

Baron von Genin (Actor) .. Himself

Hans Thomson (Actor) .. Himself

Edgar Dearing (Actor) .. Cop

Born: May 04, 1893
Died: August 17, 1974

Trivia: Edgar Dearing was a full-time Los Angeles motorcycle cop in the '20s when he began accepting small roles in the 2-reel comedies of Hal Roach. These roles hardly constituted a stretch, since he was often cast as a motorcycle cop, principally because he supplied his own uniform and cycle; the best-remembered of these "performances" was in Laurel and Hardy's Two Tars (1928). Hal Roach cameraman George Stevens liked Dearing's work, and saw to it that the policeman-cum-actor was prominently featured in Stevens' RKO Wheeler & Woolsey features Kentucky Kernels (1934) and The Nitwits (1935). When he moved into acting full-time in the '30s, Dearing was still primarily confined to law-enforcement bit roles, though he achieved fourth billing as a tough drill sergeant in the Spencer Tracy/Franchot Tone feature They Gave Him a Gun (1937). Dearing's performing weight was most effectively felt in the Abbott and Costello features of the '40s, where he provided a formidable authority-figure foe for the simpering antics of Lou Costello (notably in the "Go Ahead and Sing" routine in 1944's In Society). Dearing also showed up in a number of '40s 2-reelers; he was particularly amusing as strong man Hercules Jones (a "Charles Atlas" takeoff) in the 1948 Sterling Holloway short Man or Mouse? Edgar Dearing's last screen assignment was a prominent role as townsman Mr. Gorman in Walt Disney's Pollyanna (1960).

John R. McKee (Actor) .. Dr. Arthur C. Appleton

Trivia: American movie stunt man John McKee began accepting acting roles somewhere around 1945. Though his name is not listed in The Baseball Encyclopedia, we can safely assume that McKee had some pro baseball experience of some sort. He was seen as a ballplayer in such films as It Happens Every Spring (1949), Three Little Words (1950), Angels in the Outfield (1951), Pride of St. Louis (1952), The Big Leaguer (1953) and The Kid From Left Field (1953). As late as 1978 he was still in uniform, playing Ralph Houk in the made-for-TV One in a Million: The Ron LeFlore Story. John McKee was also on call for military-officer roles, notably in the war films The Gallant Hours (1960) and McArthur (1976).

12:05 am - 02:00 am, Monday, December 15 on WNYW Movies! (5.2)