The Snake Pit

Olivia De Havilland (Actor) .. Virginia Stuart Cunningham

Born: July 01, 1916
Birthplace: Tokyo, Japan

Trivia: Born in Japan to a British patent attorney and his actress wife, Olivia de Havilland succumbed to the lure of Thespis while attending high school in Los Gatos, CA, where she played Hermia in an amateur production of A Midsummer Night's Dream. The older sister of actress Joan Fontaine, de Havilland was spotted by famed director Max Reinhardt, who cast her in his legendary Hollywood Bowl production of the play. This led to her part in the Warner Bros. film adaptation of Midsummer in 1935, and being signed to a long-term contract wiht the company. Considering herself a classical actress, de Havilland tried to refuse the traditional ingenue roles offered her by the studio, which countered by telling her she'd be ruined in Hollywood if she didn't cooperate. Loaned out to David O. Selznick, de Havilland played Melanie Hamilton in Gone With the Wind (1939), earning an Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actress in the process. Although she didn't come out on top that year, she would later win two Best Actress Oscars, the first for 1946's To Each His Own, and then again for 1949's The Heiress. De Havilland also made news when she sued Warner Bros. for extending her seven-year contract by tacking on the months she'd been on suspension for refusing to take a part. The actress spent three long years off the screen, but she ultimately won her case, and the "De Havilland Law," as it would become known, effectively destroyed the studios' ability to virtually enslave their contractees by unfairly extending their contract time. After completing The Heiress, de Havilland spent several years on Broadway, cutting down her subsequent film appearances to approximately one per year. In 1955, she moved to France with her second husband, Paris Match editor Pierre Galante; she later recalled her Paris years with the semiautobiographical Every Frenchman Has One. De Havilland showed up in a brace of profitable fading-star horror films in the '60s: Lady in a Cage (1964) and Hush ... Hush, Sweet Charlotte (1965), in which she replaced Joan Crawford. During the next decade, she appeared in a number of TV productions and in such all-star film efforts as Airport '77 (1977) and The Swarm (1978). After a number of TV appearances (if not always starring roles) in the '80s, de Havilland once more found herself in the limelight in 1989, on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of Gone With the Wind. As one of the only surviving stars from this film, she was much sought after for interviews and reminiscences, but graciously refused almost every request.

Mark Stevens (Actor) .. Robert Cunningham

Born: December 13, 1916
Died: September 15, 1994

Trivia: After studying to become a painter, Mark Stevens became active in Canadian theatrical work. He then launched a radio career as an announcer at a small station in Akron, Ohio. In 1944, Stevens was brought to Hollywood by Warner Bros., where he was billed as Stephen Richards. He graduated to top billing in RKO's From This Day Forward (1945), playing a returning war hero making an uneasy adjustment to civilian life. Critics panned the film but praised Stevens, who was then snatched up by 20th Century-Fox for a series of plum starring roles, including songwriter Joe E. Howard in the 1947 musical biopic I Wonder Who's Kissing Her Now? and the husband of mental patient Olivia De Havilland in The Snake Pit (1949). When it seemed as though his film career had ground to a halt, Stevens moved to television, where in 1953 he became the fourth actor to essay the role of detective Martin Kane. The following year, he succeeded Pat McVey in the part of crusading journalist Steve Wilson on the weekly TVer Big Town. During both of his TV-series stints, Stevens publicly derided the quality of the material he'd been handed, demanding full script control and the opportunity to direct. Upon returning to the Big Screen, Stevens produced and directed a brace of serviceable programmers: Cry Vengeance (1954) and Timetable (1956). After closing out his Hollywood career in 1964, Mark Stevens repaired to Europe, where he directed his last film to date, the German-Spanish co-production Sunscorched (1966).

Leo Genn (Actor) .. Dr. Mark Kik

Born: August 09, 1905
Died: January 26, 1978

Trivia: Smooth, refined British star Leo Genn is known for his relaxed charm and "black velvet" voice. Before becoming an actor, he received a law degree at Cambridge and worked as a barrister in the early '20s. In 1930 he debuted onstage; for several years he continued earning money with legal services, meanwhile gaining experience in both plays and films. In 1939 he finally gave up the law to make his Broadway debut. He served with the Royal Artillery during World War II; in 1943 he was promoted to lieutenant colonel, and in 1945 he was awarded the Croix de Guerre. On several occasions during the war he was granted leave to appear in films. At war's end he became one of Britain's investigators of war crimes at the Belsen concentration camp and went on to be an assistant prosecutor for the Belsen trial. After his small but noteworthy role as the Constable of France in Laurence Olivier's film Henry V (1944), he was invited to the U.S., where he had a great theatrical triumph in the 1946 Broadway production of Lillian Hellman's Another Part of the Forest. His stage and screen career flourished afterwards in both the U.S. and England. Onscreen he was usually cast in smart, likable, subtle character leads and supporting roles. For his portrayal of Gaius Petronius, Nero's counselor, in Quo Vadis (1951), he received a "Best Supporting Actor" Oscar nomination.

Celeste Holm (Actor) .. Grace

Born: April 29, 1917
Died: July 15, 2012
Birthplace: New York, New York, United States

Trivia: American actress Celeste Holm made her first stage appearance in 1936 with a Pennsylvania stock company. Sophisticated and poised beyond her years, Holm was cast shortly afterward in a touring company of the ultra-chic Clare Boothe Luce comedy The Women, then played New York in such high-profile productions as The Time of Your Life. Rodgers and Hammerstein cast her as soubrette Ado Annie in Oklahoma! in 1943; both the production itself and Annie's show-stopping song "I Cain't Say No" affirmed Holm's future stardom. Following her film debut in Three Little Girls in Blue (1946), she was cast by her studio, 20th Century-Fox, in the role of the love-starved fashion editor in the prestige feature Gentlemen's Agreement (1947), for which she won an Academy Award. The important role of Bette Davis' understanding friend in another Oscar-winner, All About Eve (1950), has immortalized Holm amongst the film cultists. Stage, nightclub and television assignments followed (she starred in the short-lived 1950s sitcom Honestly, Celeste), and from the late 1950s onward, Holm was more at home on stage than in films. Her performance in the touring company of Mame won Holm the Sara Siddons Award -- coincidentally the same award presented to the title character at the beginning of All About Eve. Always choosy about her roles, Holm remained active through the early 2000s whenever a good part struck her fancy; one of her most frequently rebroadcast assignments was as a custody court judge in an early-1980s episode of Archie Bunker's Place and she appeared in several episodes of Touched By an Angel. She died in 2012 at the age of 95.

Glenn Langan (Actor) .. Dr. Terry

Born: July 08, 1917
Died: January 19, 1991

Trivia: American leading man Glenn Langan caught the eye of Hollywood after appearing opposite Luise Rainer in a 1942 Broadway revival of A Kiss for Cinderella. Signed by 20th Century-Fox, Langan was personally groomed for stardom by studio head Darryl F. Zanuck. Despite good roles in such Fox films as Margie (1946), Dragonwyck (1946), Forever Amber (1947) and The Snake Pit (1949), Langan never really became a public favorite. Free-lancing in minor films throughout the 1950s, Langan slipped into the realm of Pop Culture by virtue of his performance in the title role of the estimable The Amazing Colossal Man (1957). From 1949 onward, Glenn Langan was the husband of film actress Adele Jergens.

Helen Craig (Actor) .. Miss Davis

Born: January 01, 1911
Died: January 01, 1986

Trivia: American character actress Helen Craig worked steadily in films, early television, and on stage. She started out in San Antonio, Texas and then received formal dramatic training from such teachers as Dame May Whitty. In 1936, after touring with different theater groups, she debuted in New York. While there she met and married John Beal; they were together for nearly half a century.

Leif Erickson (Actor) .. Gordon

Born: October 27, 1911
Died: January 29, 1986

Trivia: Born William Anderson, this brawny, blond second lead had the looks of a Viking god. He worked as a band vocalist and trombone player, then gained a small amount of stage experience before debuting onscreen in a bit part (as a corpse) in Wanderer of the Wasteland (1935). Billed by Paramount as Glenn Erickson, he began his screen career as a leading man in Westerns. Because of his Nordic looks he was renamed Leif Erikson, which he later changed to Erickson. He played intelligent but unexciting second leads and supporting parts in many films. Erickson took four years off to serve in World War II and was twice wounded. He made few films after 1965 and retired from the screen after 1977. Also working on Broadway and in TV plays, he played the patriarch Big John Cannon in the TV series High Chaparral (1967-1971). From 1934 to 1942, he was married to actress Frances Farmer, with whom he co-starred in Ride a Crooked Mile (1938); later, he was briefly married to actress Margaret Hayes (aka Dana Dale).

Beulah Bondi (Actor) .. Mrs. Greer

Born: May 03, 1888
Died: January 11, 1981

Trivia: American actress Beulah Bondi entered the theatre at age 7, playing the male role of Little Lord Fauntleroy; it would be her last role "in drag" and one of the very few times that she'd play a character her own age. Upon graduation from Valparaiso University, she joined a stock company, working throughout the US until her 1925 Broadway debut in Wild Birds. Even in her late twenties and early thirties, Bondi specialized in playing mothers, grandmothers and society dowagers. She made her first film, Street Scene, in 1931, concentrating on movies thereafter. She is best known to modern film fans for her role as James Stewart's mother in the Christmastime favorite It's a Wonderful Life (1946). It was but one of several occasions (among them Vivacious Lady [1938] and Mr. Smith Goes to Washington [1939]) that the actress played Stewart's mother; as late as 1971, Bondi was essaying the same role in the short-lived sitcom The Jimmy Stewart Show. Even after her "official" screen retirement - her last film was Tammy and the Doctor (1963), in which, not surprisingly, she played a wealthy old invalid - Bondi kept herself open for television roles, including an Emmy-winning 1977 performance on the dramatic TV series The Waltons.

Lee Patrick (Actor) .. Asylum Inmate

Born: November 22, 1906
Died: November 21, 1982

Trivia: At age 13 she debuted on Broadway and went on to do much work onstage. She appeared in one film in 1929, then went back to Broadway and was not in another film until 1937; after that she was in numerous movies, usually in character roles but occasionally playing leads. In the '50s she costarred in such TV series as Topper and Mr. Adams and Eve. After retiring from the screen in 1964 she returned once more: she portrayed Sam Spade's secretary Effie in The Black Bird (1975), a comic remake of The Maltese Falcon; she had played Effie in the 1941 Humphrey Bogart version.

Isabel Jewell (Actor) .. Asylum Inmate

Born: July 19, 1907
Died: April 05, 1972

Trivia: Born and raised on a Wyoming ranch, American actress Isabel Jewell would only rarely be called upon to play a "Western" type during her career. For the most part, Isabel -- who made her screen debut in Blessed Event (1932) -- was typecast as a gum-chewing, brassy urban blonde, or as an empty-headed gun moll. Jewell's three best remembered film performances were in Tale of Two Cities (1935), where she was atypically cast as the pathetic seamstress who is sentenced to the guillotine; Lost Horizon (1937), as the consumptive prostitute who finds a new lease on life when she is whisked away to the land of Shangri-La; and Gone with the Wind (1939), where she appears briefly as "poor white trash" Emmy Slattery. In 1946, Isabel finally got to show off the riding skills she'd accumulated in her youth in Wyoming when she was cast as female gunslinger Belle Starr in Badman's Territory. Denied starring roles because of her height (she was well under five feet), Isabel Jewell worked as a supporting player in films until the '50s and in television until the '60s.

Victoria Horne (Actor) .. Asylum Inmate

Born: January 01, 1920
Died: October 10, 2003

Tamara Shayne (Actor) .. Asylum Inmate

Born: January 01, 1902
Died: January 01, 1983

Grace Poggi (Actor) .. Asylum Inmate

Howard Freeman (Actor) .. Dr. Curtis

Born: December 09, 1899
Died: December 11, 1967

Trivia: Portly American character actor Howard Freeman was the archetypal small-town banker or businessman. With his impeccably groomed pencil mustache, finicky manners and eternal air of condescension, Freeman was ideal for such roles as bank president J. P. Norton in Laurel and Hardy's Air Raid Wardens--and equally ideal for the injuries and indignities heaped upon him by the two comedians in their efforts to administer emergency first aid. Air Raid Wardens was made in 1943, Freeman's first year in pictures after several seasons on stage. He quickly found his niche in authoritative roles, even playing a few bureaucratic Nazis during the war years: Freeman portrays a fussy Heinrich Himmler, casually targeting the Czech village of Lidice for extermination in Hitler's Madmen (1943). After nearly two decades in Hollywood, Freeman resettled in New York, remaining available for stage and TV work. One of Howard Freeman's last roles was as a peace-loving police captain mistaken for a slave-driving martinet in a 1963 episode of Car 54, Where are You?

Natalie Schafer (Actor) .. Mrs. Stuart

Born: November 05, 1912
Died: April 10, 1991

Trivia: Though born in New York, actress Natalie Schafer built her stage reputation upon playing British aristocrats. She entered films in 1944, co-starring with Lana Turner and Robert Walker in Marriage Is a Private Affair. Her most famous role was as social butterfly Lovey Howell on the zany TV sitcom Gilligan's Island, a part she essayed from 1964 through 1967, then reprised in the many Gilligan TV-movie and cartoon sequels of the 1970s and 1980s. From 1934 through 1942, Natalie Schafer was the wife of actor Louis Calhern.

Ruth Donnelly (Actor) .. Ruth

Born: May 17, 1896
Died: November 17, 1982

Trivia: The daughter of a New Jersey newspaper reporter/ critic/ editor, Ruth Donnelly made her first stage appearance at 17, in the chorus of the touring show The Quaker Girl. Shortly afterward, she essayed the first of hundreds of comedy roles in a theatrical piece called Margie Pepper. Her Broadway debut occurred in 1914's A Scrap of Paper, which brought her to the attention of showman George M. Cohan, who cast Ruth in choice comic-relief roles for the next five years. Her first film was 1927's Rubber Heels, but Ruth didn't pursue a Hollywood career until the Wall Street crash reduced her opportunities in "live" theatre. From 1932's Blessed Event onward, Ruth was one of Tinseltown's favorite wisecracking matrons, brightening many a sagging scene in such films as Wonder Bar (1934), Mr. Deeds Goes to Town (1936) and Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939). She was proudest of her performance as a lively middle-aged nun in Leo McCarey's The Bells of St. Mary's; unfortunately, most of that performance ended up on the cutting-room floor. Closing out her film career with Autumn Leaves (1956) and her stage career with The Riot Act (1963), Ruth Donnelly retired to a Manhattan residential hotel, politely but firmly refusing all offers to appear in TV commercials and soap operas.

Katherine Locke (Actor) .. Margaret

Born: June 24, 1916
Died: September 12, 1995

Trivia: Katherine Locke achieved most of her fame on Broadway; during the late '30s she was among the Great White Way's brightest lights. Locke also occasionally dabbled in films during the '40s and '50s. Born in Russia but raised in the U.S. on the East Coast, she was originally groomed to be a concert pianist at New York's Damrosch Academy. Locke, however, rebelled against her family's wishes and ran off to Southern California to join the Potboilers, a vibrant group of young actors in Los Angeles. While learning to act on stage, Locke occasionally obtained bit movie roles. She won her first major film role in the crime drama Straight from the Shoulder (1938).

Frank Conroy (Actor) .. Dr. Jonathan Gifford

Born: October 14, 1890
Died: February 24, 1964

Trivia: The embodiment of corporate dignity, British actor Frank Conroy nonetheless gave the impression of being a long-trusted executive who was about to abscond with the company funds. During his Broadway career, Conroy frequently achieved above-the-title billing; he never quite managed this in Hollywood, but neither was he ever without work. Conroy made his first film, Royal Family of Broadway, in 1930; uncharacteristically, he plays the ardent suitor of the leading lady (Ina Claire), and very nearly wins the lady before she decides that her stage career comes first. Conroy's respectable veneer allowed him to play many a "hidden killer" in movie mysteries like Charlie Chan in Egypt (1935). He left films periodically for more varied assignments on stage; in 1939, he originated the role of dying millionaire Horace Giddens in Lillian Hellmans The Little Foxes. Returning to Hollywood in the 1940s, it was back to authoritative villainy, notably his role in The Ox-Bow Incident as a martinet ex-military officer who rigidly supervises a lynching, then kills himself when he realizes he's executed three innocent men. More benign roles came Conroy's way in All My Sons (1948), in which he plays an industrialist serving a prison sentence while the guilty man (Edward G. Robinson) walks free; and in Day the Earth Stood Still (1951), wherein Conroy has a lengthy unbilled role as the American diplomat who listens to the demands of outer-space visitor Michael Rennie. Frank Conroy remained a top character player until his retirement in 1960, usually honored with "guest star" billing on the many TV anthologies of the era.

Minna Gombell (Actor) .. Miss Hart

Born: May 28, 1892
Died: April 14, 1973

Trivia: During her twenty-one year Hollywood career, Minna Gombell was also billed as Winifred Lee and Nancy Carter. By any name, Gombell was usually typecast in brittle, hollow-eyed, hard-boiled character parts. Devoted Late Late Show fans will recall Gombell as one of the secondary murder victims in The Thin Man (1934), as Mrs. Oliver Hardy in Block-Heads (1938), as the Queen of the Beggars in The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1939), and as clubfooted Joan Leslie's mother in High Sierra (1941). In 1935, Minna Gombell was afforded top billing in the above-average Monogram domestic drama Women Must Dress.

June Storey (Actor) .. Miss Bixby, the Ward Nurse

Born: April 20, 1918
Died: December 18, 1991

Trivia: Blonde, dimpled, and vivacious, June Storey became the perfect leading lady for cowboy troubadour Gene Autry, opposite whom she starred in no less than ten singing Westerns. In the U.S. since the age of five, the Canadian-born starlet was awarded a screen test with Fox (soon to become 20th Century Fox) in 1934, courtesy of an uncle's friendship with production head Winfield Sheehan. Despite a highly inadequate performance, Sheehan liked her pluck and Storey was awarded a player's contract. She didn't do much actual screen work, however, but spent most of her time at Fox studying acting with Florence Enright and taking dancing lessons from Rita Hayworth's father, Eduardo Cansino. A small role as a German girl in Henry King's In Old Chicago (1938) got the attention of low-budget concern Republic Pictures, who saw in the winsome Storey the perfect foil for Gene Autry, the company's biggest draw at the time.Under term contract with Republic from April 21, 1939, through October 20, 1940, Storey managed to squeeze in ten Westerns with Autry and five additional films before the contract was terminated by mutual agreement. In many ways she was the perfect leading lady for Autry: very agreeable to look upon, competent as a performer by then, and willing to work long, hard hours on location. Often there was not even a dressing room available for the heroine; she later stated, "...and I'd have to find a secluded canyon to change into my cowgirl clothes." The films themselves -- from Home on the Range (1939) to Ride, Tenderfoot, Ride (1940) -- included some of Autry's most genial, and Storey became very popular with the genre's target audience of rural moviegoers. But like most performers, she eventually found B-Westerns too limiting, and apart from Columbia's Song of the Prairie (1945), she never did another.Returning to Fox in the late '40s, Storey appeared in non-Western programmers and retired to marry an Oregon rancher. Divorced and the survivor of a near-fatal car accident, she later took up nursing, re-married, and became active in charity work. In her final years, a much heavier but still sparkling June Storey became a treasured guest speaker at various nostalgia and B-Western fairs.

Ann Doran (Actor) .. Valerie

Born: July 28, 1911
Died: September 19, 2000
Birthplace: Amarillo, Texas

Trivia: A sadly neglected supporting actress, Ann Doran played everything from Charley Chase's foil in Columbia two-reelers of the late '30s to James Dean's mother in Rebel Without a Cause (1955) and also guest starred in such television shows as Superman, Petticoat Junction, Bewitched, and The A Team. A former child model and the daughter of silent screen actress Rose Allen (1885-1977), Doran made her screen bow in Douglas Fairbanks' Robin Hood (1922) but then spent the next 12 years or so getting herself an education. She returned to films in 1934 and joined the Columbia short subject department two years later. While with Columbia, Doran worked on all of Frank Capra's films save Lost Horizon (1937) and she later toiled for both Paramount and Warner Bros., often receiving fine reviews but always missing out on the one role that may have made her a star. Appearing in more than 500 films and television shows (her own count), Doran worked well into the 1980s, often unbilled but always a noticeable presence.

Damian O'Flynn (Actor) .. Mr. Stuart

Born: January 29, 1907

Trivia: American general purpose actor Damian O'Flynn made his first screen appearance in 1937's Marked Woman. O'Flynn went on to freelance at Warner Bros., RKO, Paramount, Monogram, and other studios, usually in secondary roles, but occasionally playing leads. While serving in WWII, he appeared along with several other actors-in-uniform in 20th Century Fox's Winged Victory, billed as Corporal Damian O'Flynn. A veteran of many a big-screen Western, he appeared regularly in the mid-'50s TV series Wyatt Earp as Doc Goodfellow. Damian O'Flynn remained active until 1964.

Lora Lee Michel (Actor) .. Virginia at Age 6

Esther Somers (Actor) .. Nurse Vance

Jacqueline de Wit (Actor) .. Celia Sommerville

Born: January 01, 1916

Trivia: Statuesque, brunette American actress Jacqueline De Wit built her reputation in icy "other woman" roles. Active from the early 1940s, DeWit accepted assignments at practically every studio from MGM to Monogram. She holds the distinction of being the only film actress ever to play the wife of comedian Bud Abbott (in the 1946 Abbott and Costello vehicle Little Giant). She also essayed featured roles in "A" pictures like The Snake Pit (1948), Carrie (1952, as the title character's sister), Tea and Sympathy (1956) and The Toy Tiger (1956), her characters becoming less truculent and more maternal as the years rolled on. After several years' inactivity, Jacqueline DeWit briefly returned before the cameras in 1966 and 1967, with supporting parts in theatrical features and guest shots on TV.

Betsy Blair (Actor) .. Hester

Born: December 11, 1923
Died: March 13, 2009

Trivia: Most casual film fans know one of two facts about stage and film actress Betsy Blair. (1): She was the first wife of musical comedy star Gene Kelly. (2): She played the homely blind date of Ernest Borgnine in Marty (1955). Less well known is the fact that Ms. Blair had quite an active personal and professional life after both Gene and Marty. Responding to praise from European critics to her Marty performance, Betsy relocated on the Continent, appearing in such Italian films as The Outcry (1957) and Senilita (1961). She also took as her second husband director Karel Reisz, of Saturday Night and Sunday Morning and Morgan fame. In later years, Betsy Blair returned to the screen following a long absence, opposite Tom Berenger and Debra Winger, in the Joe Eszterhas- scripted Betrayed (1988), It marked one of her final screen performances. She died in 2009 at age 86.

Lela Bliss (Actor) .. Miss Greene

Born: January 01, 1895
Died: January 01, 1980

Virginia Brissac (Actor) .. Miss Seiffert

Born: January 01, 1890
Died: January 01, 1979

Trivia: Stern-visaged American actress Virginia Brissac was a well-established stage actress in the early part of the 20th century. For several seasons in the 1920s, she headed a travelling stock company bearing her name. Once Brissac settled down in Hollywood in 1935, she carved a niche in authoritative parts, spending the next twenty years playing a steady stream of schoolteachers, college deans, duennas and society matrons. Once in a while, Virginia Brissac was allowed to "cut loose" with a raving melodramatic part: in Bob Hope's The Ghost Breakers, she dons a coat of blackface makeup and screams with spine-tingling conviction as the bewitched mother of zombie Noble Johnson.

Queenie Smith (Actor) .. Lola

Born: January 01, 1897
Died: August 05, 1978

Trivia: Pixieish stage and screen soubrette Queenie Smith was a Broadway favorite in the 1920s, most notably as star of the 1925 George Gershwin musical Tip Toes (1925). She came to films in the mid-1930s, playing virtually the same role in two period musicals, the 1935 Bing Crosby/W.C. Fields concoction Mississippi and the 1936 version of Jerome Kern and Oscar Hammerstein's Show Boat. As her youthful rambunctiousness matured into middle-aged feistiness, Queenie was seen in dozens of tiny roles, usually cast as a nosy neighbor, landlady, housekeeper or (in later years) retirement-home resident. In 1970, she and nonagenarian actor Burt Mustin were teamed as a long-married couple on the TV comedy-sketch series The Funny Side. One of the last and best of Queenie Smith's film roles was the scatological scrabble player in the 1978 Goldie Hawn-Chevy Chase vehicle Foul Play (1978).

Mae Marsh (Actor) .. Tommy's Mother

Born: November 09, 1895
Died: February 13, 1968

Trivia: American actress Mae Marsh was the daughter of an auditor for the Santa Fe railroad - and as such, she and her family moved around quite a bit during Marsh's childhood. After her father died and her stepfather was killed in the San Francisco earthquake, she was taken to Los Angeles by her great aunt, a one-time chorus girl who'd become a New York actress. Marsh followed her aunt's footsteps by securing film work with Mack Sennett and D.W. Griffith; it was Griffith, the foremost film director of the early silent period, who first spotted potential in young Miss Marsh. The actress got her first big break appearing as a stone-age maiden in Man's Genesis (1911), after Mary Pickford refused to play the part because it called for bare legs. Specializing in dramatic and tragic roles, Marsh appeared in innumerable Griffith-directed short films, reaching a career high point as the Little Sister in the director's Civil War epic, The Birth of A Nation (1915). She made such an impression in this demanding role that famed American poet Vachel Lindsay was moved to write a long, elaborate poem in the actress' honor. Marsh's career went on a downhill slide in the '20s due to poor management and second-rate films, but she managed to score a personal triumph as the long-suffering heroine of the 1931 talkie tear-jerker Over the Hill. She retired to married life, returning sporadically to films - out of boredom - as a bit actress, notably in the big-budget westerns of director John Ford (a longtime Marsh fan). When asked in the '60s why she didn't lobby for larger roles, Mae Marsh replied simply that "I didn't care to get up every morning at five o'clock to be at the studio by seven."

Ashley Cowan (Actor) .. Young Man

Born: January 26, 1921

Sally Shepherd (Actor) .. Nurse

Geraldine Garrick (Actor) .. Patient

Therese Lyon (Actor) .. Patient

Born: January 01, 1887
Died: January 01, 1975

Sylvia Andrew (Actor) .. Patient

Jeri Jordan (Actor) .. Patient

Marie Blake (Actor) .. Patient

Born: August 21, 1896
Died: January 14, 1978

Trivia: Born Edith Blossom MacDonald, Marie Blake started out as a child performer in vaudeville, singing with her younger sisters Jeanette and Elsie. In 1926, Marie married song-and-dance man Clarence Rock, forming an act that endured into the 1930s. When vaudeville died, Marie and Clarence went "legit" in straight drama. While playing a consumptive prostitute in the Los Angeles company of Dead End, Marie was spotted by an MGM talent agent. Since sister Jeanette was already an established MGM star, the studio decided to avoid accusations of nepotism by changing Marie's last name to Blake. Never a leading lady, Marie remained a reliable member of MGM's featured-player stable for nearly ten years. She played hospital receptionist Sally in 13 of the studio's Dr. Kildare entries, and also showed up in such short subjects as Our Gang's Alfalfa's Aunt (1940). Loaned out to RKO in 1944, she enjoyed one of her meatiest roles as Harold Peary's vis-a-vis in Gildersleeve's Ghost. From 1957 onward, Blake acted under her married name, Blossom Rock (her husband, who'd retired from show business to work as night manager of the Beverly Hilton, died in 1960). Marie Blake/Blossom Rock's last major assignment was as Grandmama in the TV series The Addams Family (1965-66).

Ellen Lowe (Actor) .. Patient

Minerva Urecal (Actor) .. Patient

Born: January 01, 1894
Died: January 01, 1966

Trivia: Actress Minerva Urecal claimed that her last name was an amalgam of her family home town of Eureka, California. True or not, Urecal would spend the balance of her life in California, specifically Hollywood. Making the transition from stage to screen in 1934, Ms. Urecal appeared in innumerable bits, usually as cleaning women, shopkeepers and hatchet-faced landladies. In B-pictures and 2-reelers of the 1940s, she established herself as a less expensive Marjorie Main type; her range now encompassed society dowagers (see the East Side Kids' Mr. Muggs Steps Out) and Mrs. Danvers-like housekeepers (see Bela Lugosi's The Ape Man). With the emergence of television, Minerva Urecal entered the "guest star" phase of her career. She achieved top billing in the 1958 TV sitcom Tugboat Annie, and replaced Hope Emerson as Mother for the 1959-60 season of the weekly detective series Peter Gunn. Minerva Urecal was active up until the early '60s, when she enjoyed some of the most sizeable roles of her career, notably the easily offended Swedish cook in Mr. Hobbs Takes a Vacation (1962) and the town harridan who is turned to stone in Seven Faces of Dr. Lao (1964).

Barbara Pepper (Actor) .. Patient

Born: May 31, 1915
Died: July 18, 1969

Trivia: A specialist in hard-boiled dame roles, Barbara Pepper made her first film appearances as a Goldwyn Girl; she was prominent among the nubile slaves who were garbed only in floor-length blonde wigs in Goldwyn's Roman Scandals (1933). Pepper's one shot at stardom came in King Vidor's Our Daily Bread, in which she played the sluttish vamp who led hero Tom Keene astray; unfortunately, the film was not successful enough, nor her performance convincing enough, to lead to larger parts. She spent the next 30 years in supporting roles and bits, most often playing brassy goodtime girls. A radical weight gain in the 1950s compelled Pepper to alter her screen image; she quickly became adept at portraying obnoxious middle-aged tourists, snoopy next-door neighbors, belligerent landladies, and the like. Pepper's best friend in Hollywood was Lucille Ball, another alumna of the Goldwyn Girl ranks. At one point in 1951,Pepper was a candidate for the role of Ethel Mertz on I Love Lucy. In her last decade, Barbara Pepper gained a whole new crop of fans thanks to her recurring appearances as Doris Ziffel on the TV sitcom Green Acres.

Jan Clayton (Actor) .. Singing Inmate

Born: August 26, 1917
Died: August 23, 1983

Helen Servis (Actor) .. Miss Servis

Celia Lovsky (Actor) .. Gertrude

Born: February 21, 1897
Died: October 12, 1979
Birthplace: Vienna

Trivia: Trained at the Royal Academy of Arts and Music in Vienna, Celia Lovsky gained popularity on the Austrian and German stage in the 1920s. When Hitler assumed power in 1933, Lovsky left for France in the company of her then-husband, actor Peter Lorre. Resettling in Hollywood in 1935, she put her career on hold during her marriage to Lorre, returning to films after their divorce (they remained friends and confidants until Lorre's death in 1964). From 1947 until her retirement in the 1960s, Lovsky was most often seen in maternal roles: George Sanders' mother in Death of a Scoundrel (1956), James Cagney's mother in Man of 1000 Faces (1957), Sal Mineo's mother in The Gene Krupa Story (1959), and so on. Star Trek devotees will remember Celia Lovsky as the Queen of Vulcana in the 1967 episode "Amok Time."

Lester Sharpe (Actor) .. Doctor Somer

Born: January 01, 1894
Died: January 01, 1962

Mary Treen (Actor) .. Nurse

Born: March 27, 1907
Died: July 20, 1989

Trivia: Trained as a dancer, Mary Treen spent the late '20s-early '30s as a leading lady in vaudeville, light opera, and musical comedy. After a handful of Vitaphone short subjects, Treen was signed to a Warner Bros. contract in 1934. She spent the bulk of her film career playing wisecracking clerks and telephone operators, or essaying "heroine's best friend" roles. Her movie assignment was the Tillie the Toiler-type role especially written for her in Paramount's I Love a Soldier (1944), though her many fans would probably nominate her performance as Cousin Tilly in the ubiquitous It's a Wonderful Life (1946). On television, Treen was a regular on the 1954 sitcom Willy, and later played Hilda the maid on The Joey Bishop Show (1962-1965). Mary Treen's final appearance before the cameras was in the 1983 made-for-TV movie Wait Till Your Mother Gets Home!

Victoria Albright (Actor) .. Virginia at Age 2

Dorothy Neumann (Actor) .. Miss Neumann

Born: January 26, 1914
Died: May 23, 1994

Trivia: American character actress Dorothy Neumann was long a stage performer before making her film bow in 1948's Sorry, Wrong Number. She spent the next two decades in small roles, usually playing clerks, domestics, ladies' club chairpersons and grandmothers. One of Ms. Neumann's best remembered assignments was her uncredited role in The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951), as the suspicious housekeeper of Einstein-like scientist Sam Jaffe, who is confronted in Jaffe's den by benevolent space alien Michael Rennie. Frequently on television, Dorothy Neumann was seen in the regular role of Miss Mittelman on the now-forgotten 1965 sitcom Hank.

Grayce Hampton (Actor) .. Countess

Born: January 01, 1875
Died: January 01, 1963

Syd Saylor (Actor) .. Visor

Born: March 24, 1895
Died: December 21, 1962

Trivia: Scrawny supporting actor Syd Saylor managed to parlay a single comic shtick -- bobbing his adam's apple -- into a four-decade career. He starred in several silent two-reel comedies from 1926 through 1927, then settled into character parts. During the late '30s and early '40s, Saylor frequently found himself in B-Westerns as the comical sidekick for many a six-gun hero, though he seldom lasted very long in any one series. Syd Saylor was still plugging away into the 1950s, playing "old-timer" bits in such films as Cheaper by the Dozen (1950) and Jackpot (1950), and such TV series as Burns and Allen and Alfred Hitchcock Presents.

Marion Marshall (Actor) .. Young girl

Born: January 01, 1930

3:25 pm - 5:45 pm, Thursday, January 1 on WNYW Movies! (5.2)