Trivia: The son a well-to-do British Army captain who died in the battle of Gallipoli in 1915, David Niven was shipped off to a succession of boarding schools by his stepfather, who didn't care much for the boy. Young Niven hated the experience and was a poor student, but his late father's reputation helped him get admitted to the Royal Military College at Sandhurst, and he was later commissioned as a second lieutenant in the Highland Light Infantry. Rakishly handsome and naturally charming, Lt. Niven met a number of high society members while stationed in Malta, and, through their auspices, made several important contacts while attending parties. Although he later claimed to have been nothing more than a wastrel-like "professional guest" at this stage of his life, Niven was actually excellent company, a superb raconteur, and a loyal friend, and he paid back his social obligations by giving lavish parties of his own once he become famous. Niven also insisted that he fell into acting without any prior interest, although he had done amateur theatricals in college.Following his military discharge, Niven wandered the world working odd jobs ranging from a lumberjack to a gunnery instructor for Cuban revolutionaries to (by his own account) a petty thief. He became a Hollywood extra in 1935, and eventually came to the attention of producer Samuel Goldwyn, who had been building up a stable of attractive young contract players. Having made his speaking debut in Without Regret (1935), Niven quickly learned how to successfully get through a movie scene. After several secondary roles for Goldwyn, he was loaned out for a lead role in the 20th Century Fox feature Thank You, Jeeves (1936). The actor formed lasting friendships with several members of Hollywood's British community -- notably Errol Flynn, with whom he briefly lived -- and was quite popular with the American-born contingent as well, especially the ladies.Although he worked steadily in the '30s, it was usually in support of bigger stars; he was seldom permitted to carry a film by himself, except for such modest productions as Dinner at the Ritz (1937) and Raffles (1939). Anxious to do something more substantial than act during World War II, Niven re-entered the British service as a Lieutenant Colonel, where he served nobly, if not spectacularly. (His batman, or valet, during the war was a Pvt. Peter Ustinov, himself an actor of no mean talent.) Married by the end of the war, Niven went back to films but found that he still wasn't getting any important roles; despite ten years experience, he was considered too "lightweight" to be a major name. His life momentarily shattered by the accidental death of his wife in 1946, Niven's spirit was restored by his second marriage to Swedish model Hjordis Tersmeden, his wife of 37 years until the actor's death. Once again, Niven took a self-deprecating attitude towards his domestic life, claiming to be a poor husband and worse father, but despite the time spent away from his family, they cherished his concern and affection for them.After his Goldwyn contract ended in 1949, Niven marked time with inconsequential movies before joining Dick Powell, Charles Boyer, and Ida Lupino to form Four Star, a television production company. Niven was finally able to choose strong dramatic roles for himself, becoming one of TV's first and most prolific stars, although his public still preferred him as a light comedian. The actor's film career also took an upswing in the '50s with starring performances in the controversial The Moon Is Blue (1953) -- a harmless concoction which was denied a Production Code seal because the word "virgin" was bandied about -- and the mammoth Around the World in 80 Days (1956), in which Niven played his most famous role, erudite 19th century globetrotter Phileas Fogg. When Laurence Olivier dropped out of the 1958 film Separate Tables, Niven stepped in to play an elderly, disgraced British military man. Although he was as flippant about the part as usual -- telling an interviewer, "They gave me very good lines and then cut to Deborah Kerr while I was saying them" -- he won an Oscar for this performance. Niven continued his career as a high-priced, A-list actor into the '60s, returning to television in the stylish "caper" series The Rogues in 1964. He revisited his hobby of writing in the early '70s; an earlier novel, Round the Ragged Rocks, didn't sell very well, but gave him pleasure while working on it. But two breezy autobiographies did better: The Moon's a Balloon (1972) and Bring on the Empty Horse (1975). Working alone, without help of a ghostwriter (as opposed to many celebrity authors), Niven was able to entertainingly transfer his charm and wit to the printed page (even if he seldom let the facts impede his storytelling). In 1982, Niven discovered he was suffering from a neurological illness commonly known as Lou Gehrig's disease, which would prove fatal within a year. Courageously keeping up a front with his friends and the public, Niven continued making media appearances, although he was obviously deteriorating. While appearing in his last film, Curse of the Pink Panther (1983), the actor's speech became so slurred due to his illness that his lines were later dubbed by impressionist Rich Little. Refusing all artificial life-support systems, Niven died in his Switzerland home later that year. While his career produced a relatively small legacy of worthwhile films, and despite his own public attitude that his life had been something of an elaborate fraud, Niven left behind countless friends and family members who adored him. Indeed, journalists sent out to "dig up dirt" following the actor's death came back amazed (and perhaps secretly pleased) that not one person could find anything bad to say about David Niven.

Trivia: Immensely popular through-out the Spanish-speaking world and hailed as both Mexico's greatest clown and the Spanish Charlie Chaplin. Born Mario Moreno Reyes, he got his start as a tent-show song-and-dance man. Cantinflas became an acrobat and bull-ring clown (the clown who distracts the bull when the bullfighter gets in trouble). After appearing in unambitious Mexican comedies beginning in 1936, his first Hollywood film was Mike Todd's Around the World in 80 Days (1956), which earned him an international reputation for his performance as Passepartout. As his fame increased, Hollywood created a vehicle for him, the critical and commercial failure Pepe (1960), after which he returned to making Mexican films.

Trivia: A dancer, singer, highly regarded actress and metaphysical time traveler, Shirley MacLaine is certainly among Hollywood's most unique stars. Born Shirley MacLane Beaty on April 24, 1934 in Richmond, Virginia, MacLaine was the daughter of drama coach and former actress Kathlyn MacLean Beaty and Ira O. Beaty, a professor of psychology and philosophy. Her younger brother, Warren Beatty, also grew up to be an important Hollywood figure as an actor/director/ producer and screenwriter. MacLaine's mother, who gave up her own dreams of stardom for her young family, greatly motivated her daughter to become an actress and dancer. MacLaine took dance lessons from age two, first performed publicly at age four, and at 16 went to New York, making her Broadway debut as a chorus girl in Me and Juliet (1953). When not scrambling for theatrical work, MacLaine worked as a model. Interestingly, MacLaine's big break was the result of another actress's bad luck. In 1954, MacLaine was understudying Broadway actress Carol Haney The Pajama Game when Haney fractured her ankle. MacLaine replaced her and was spotted and offered a movie contract by producer Hal Wallis. With her auburn hair cut impishly short, the young actress made her film debut in Hitchock's black comedy The Trouble With Harry (1955). Later that year, she co-starred opposite Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis in the comedy Artists and Models. In her next feature, Around the World in 80 Days (1956), she appeared as an Indian princess. MacLaine earned her first Oscar nomination for her portrayal of a pathetic tart who shocks a conservative town by showing up on the arm of young war hero Frank Sinatra in Some Came Running (1959). She then got the opportunity to show off her long legs and dancing talents in Can-Can (1960). Prior to that, she appeared with Rat Packers Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Sammy Davis Jr. and Peter Lawford in Oceans Eleven (1960). MacLaine, the only female member of the famed group, would later recount her experiences with them in her seventh book My Lucky Stars. In 1960, she won her second Oscar nomination for Billy Wilder's comedy/drama The Apartment, and a third nomination for Irma La Douce (1963). MacLaine's career was in high gear during the '60s, with her appearing in everything from dramas to madcap comedies to musicals such as What a Way to Go! (1964) and Bob Fosse's Sweet Charity! (1969). In addition to her screen work, she actively participated in Robert Kennedy's 1968 presidential campaign and served as a Democratic Convention delegate. She was similarly involved in George McGovern's 1972 campaign. Bored by sitting around on movie sets all day awaiting her scenes, MacLaine started writing down her thoughts and was thus inspired to add writing to her list of talents. She published her first book, Don't Fall Off the Mountain in 1970. She next tried her hand at series television in 1971, starring in the comedy Shirley's World (1971-72) as a globe-trotting photographer. The role reflected her real-life reputation as a world traveler, and these experiences resulted in her second book Don't Fall Off the Mountain and the documentary The Other Half of the Sky -- A China Memoir (1975) which she scripted, produced and co-directed with Claudia Weill. MacLaine returned to Broadway in 1976 with a spectacular one-woman show A Gypsy in My Soul, and the following year entered a new phase in her career playing a middle-aged former ballerina who regrets leaving dance to live a middle-class life in The Turning Point. MacLaine was memorable starring as a lonely political wife opposite Peter Sellers' simple-minded gardener in Being There (1979), but did not again attract too much attention until she played the over-protective, eccentric widow Aurora Greenway in James L. Brooks' Terms of Endearment (1983), a role that finally won MacLaine an Academy Award. That same year, she published the candid Out on a Limb, bravely risking public ridicule by describing her experiences and theories concerning out-of-body travel and reincarnation. MacLaine's film appearances were sporadic through the mid '80s, although she did appear in a few television specials. In 1988, she came back strong with three great roles in Madame Sousatzka (1988), Steel Magnolias (1989) and particularly Postcards from the Edge (1990), in which she played a fading star clinging to her own career while helping her daughter Meryl Streep, a drug addicted, self-destructive actress. Through the '90s, MacLaine specialized in playing rather crusty and strong-willed eccentrics, such as her title character in the 1994 comedy Guarding Tess. In 1997, MacLaine stole scenes as a wise grande dame who helps pregnant, homeless Ricki Lake in Mrs. Winterbourne, and the same year revived Aurora Greenway in The Evening Star, the critically maligned sequel to Terms of Endearment.MacLaine's onscreen performances were few and far between in the first half of the next decade, but in 2005 she returned in relatively full force, appearing in three features. She took on a pair of grandmother roles in the comedy-dramas In Her Shoes and Rumor Has It..., and was a perfect fit for the part of Endora in the bigscreen take on the classic sitcom Bewitched. In the coming years, McLaine would continue to give critically acclaimed performances in movies like Coco Chanel, Valentine's Day, and Bernie.For a long time, MacLaine did seminars on her books, but in the mid '90s stopped giving talks, claiming she did not want "to be anyone's guru." She does, however, continue writing and remains a popular writer.

Trivia: Professionally, British actor Robert Newton was two people: The wry, sensitive, often subtle performer seen in such plays as Noel Coward's Private Lives and such films as This Happy Breed (1944), and the eye-rolling, chop-licking ham in such roles as Bill Sykes in Oliver Twist (1948) and Long John Silver (arr! arr!) in Treasure Island (1950). Born into a gifted family -- his mother was a writer, his father and his siblings painters -- Newton made his professional debut when he was 15 with the British Repertory Company. Before he was 25, Newton had toured the world as an actor and stage manager, making his Broadway bow when he replaced Laurence Olivier in Private Lives. There was little of Olivier (except perhaps the older Olivier) in most of Newton's movie roles; despite his wide actor's range, he seemed happiest tearing a passion to tatters in such films as Jamaica Inn (1939), Blackbeard the Pirate (1952) and The Beachcomber (1954). Ripe though his acting could be, it was clear Newton knew his audience. From 1947 through 1951 he was one of Britain's top ten moneymaking film stars, so who were the critics to tell him what to do? Newton's final film role was the dogged Inspector Fix in the blockbuster Around the World in 80 Days (1956). Less than one month after completing Around the World in 80 Days, Robert Newton died of a heart attack in the arms of his wife.

Trivia: With his passionate, deep-set eyes, classical features, and ultra-suave manner, it is small wonder that French actor Charles Boyer was known as one of the great cinematic lovers. During the 1920s, Boyer made a few nondescript silent films but was primarily a theatrical actor. From 1929-31 he made an unsuccessful attempt to make it in Hollywood, before returning to Europe until 1934 when his films began to win public favor. He became a true star with Garden of Allah (1936), and went on to play opposite the most alluring actresses of the '30s and '40s, including Ingrid Bergman and Greta Garbo. During World War II, he became active in encouraging French-American relations and established the French Research Foundation, for which he was awarded a special Academy Award in 1942 for "progressive cultural achievement" (he was nominated as an actor four times but never won). Later Boyer became an American citizen and went on to play more mature roles, including the occasional stage appearance (notably in Shaw's Don Juan in Hell). With actors Dick Powell and David Niven, Boyer co-founded Four Star Television in 1951, starring in many of the company's TV productions during the '50s and '60s. His career tapered off after the suicide of his 21-year-old son in 1965, after which he mostly made European films, though he returned to America to appear as the ancient High Lama in the musical remake of Lost Horizon (1973). He won the New York Film Critics Circle Award for his work in Stavisky, his final performance. Two days after his wife of forty-plus years, actress Patricia Peterson, died of cancer in 1978, he took his own life with an overdose of Seconal.

Trivia: One of comedian Joe E. Brown's proudest claims was that he was perhaps the only kid whose parents encouraged him to run away with the circus. In 1902, the 10-year-old Brown joined a circus tumbling act called the Five Marvellous Ashtons, with whom he started his vaudeville career. He toured in burlesque in an acrobatic act, and also briefly played semi-professional baseball. His avid interest in baseball inaugurated a lifelong association with that sport which would included his participation in the National Vaudeville Artists ballteam, his part-ownership of the minor league Kansas City Blues, and his providing pregame "color" for the televised New York Yankees games of the 1950s (Joe's son Joe L. became manager of the Pittsburgh Pirates in 1955). On the verge of his leaving vaudeville for Broadway in 1919, Joe discovered that Actors' Equity had called a strike; with very little hesitation, he grabbed a sign and joined the picket line. In 1920, Brown finally made it to Broadway as a comedian in the all-star review Jim Jam Jems. He went on to star in such New York productions as Captain Jinks and Twinkle Twinkle. In 1928, he began his movie career, uncharacteristically appearing in turgid melodramas until he was signed by Warner Bros. in 1929. In his popular Warners vehicles, Brown alternated between playing naive young men who made good despite impossible odds, or brash braggarts who had to be taken down a peg or two. His trademark was his huge mouth, cavernous grin, and drawn-out yell. Joe's best films were those in which he was permitted to display his athletic prowess, such as his "baseball trilogy" Fireman Save My Child (1932), Elmer the Great (1933) and Alibi Ike (1935). Personally selected by Max Reinhardt to play Flute in the lavish Warners adaptation of Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream (1935), Brown easily stole the show from such formidable competition as James Cagney, Olivia de Havilland, Victor Jory, and Mickey Rooney. During his Warner years, Brown and his wife began sponsoring promising college athletes: among Joe's proteges were UCLA football star (and later producer) Mike Frankovitch, and Olympic contestant (and future politician) Ralph Metcalfe. After ending his Warners contract in 1936, Brown starred in a series of largely disappointing low-budget comedies for independent producer David Loew. By the early 1940s, Brown's pictures were strictly in the "B" category, though some of them, notably his brace of co-starring assignments with comedienne Judy Canova, had glimmers of the old Brown magic. He worked tirelessly entertaining troops in all corners of the world during World War II; their enthusiastic response enabled Brown to overcome the death of his son, Captain Donald Evans Brown, in a training accident. After the war, Brown devoted most of his energies to stage work, notably in the road companies of Harvey and Show Boat (he would repeat his interpretation of Captain Andy in the 1951 MGM film version of Show Boat). He added television to his long list of accomplishments in the 1950s and 1960s. Most of Joe E. Brown's final film appearances were cameo roles, with the outstanding exception of his portrayal of daffy millionaire Osgood Fielding in Some Like It Hot (1959), wherein Joe, after discovering that his "girlfriend" Jack Lemmon was actually a man, brought down the house by uttering the film's classic punchline: "Well, nobody's perfect."

Trivia: Though best known to modern filmgoers as a horror star, cadaverous John Carradine was, in his prime, one of the most versatile character actors on the silver screen. The son of a journalist father and physician mother, Carradine was given an expensive education in Philadelphia and New York. Upon graduating from the Graphic Arts School, he intended to make his living as a painter and sculptor, but in 1923 he was sidetracked into acting. Working for a series of low-paying stock companies throughout the 1920s, he made ends meet as a quick-sketch portrait painter and scenic designer. He came to Hollywood in 1930, where his extensive talents and eccentric behavior almost immediately brought him to the attention of casting directors. He played a dizzying variety of distinctive bit parts -- a huntsman in Bride of Frankenstein (1935), a crowd agitator in Les Miserables (1935) -- before he was signed to a 20th Century Fox contract in 1936. His first major role was the sadistic prison guard in John Ford's Prisoner of Shark Island (1936), which launched a long and fruitful association with Ford, culminating in such memorable screen characterizations as the gentleman gambler in Stagecoach (1939) and Preacher Casy ("I lost the callin'!") in The Grapes of Wrath (1940). Usually typecast as a villain, Carradine occasionally surprised his followers with non-villainous roles like the philosophical cab driver in Alexander's Ragtime Band (1938) and Abraham Lincoln in Of Human Hearts (1938). Throughout his Hollywood years, Carradine's first love remained the theater; to fund his various stage projects (which included his own Shakespearean troupe), he had no qualms about accepting film work in the lowest of low-budget productions. Ironically, it was in one of these Poverty Row cheapies, PRC's Bluebeard (1944), that the actor delivered what many consider his finest performance. Though he occasionally appeared in an A-picture in the 1950s and 1960s (The Ten Commandments, Cheyenne Autumn), Carradine was pretty much consigned to cheapies during those decades, including such horror epics as The Black Sleep (1956), The Unearthly (1957), and the notorious Billy the Kid Meets Dracula (1966). He also appeared in innumerable television programs, among them Twilight Zone, The Munsters, Thriller, and The Red Skelton Show, and from 1962 to 1964 enjoyed a long Broadway run as courtesan-procurer Lycus in A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum. Though painfully crippled by arthritis in his last years, Carradine never stopped working, showing up in films ranging from Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex But Were Afraid to Ask (1972) to Peggy Sue Got Married (1984). Married four times, John Carradine was the father of actors David, Keith, Robert, and Bruce Carradine.

Trivia: American actor Charles Coburn had already put in nearly forty years as a stage actor, producer, and director (specializing in Shakespeare) before making his screen debut at age 61 in Of Human Hearts (1938). At home in any kind of film, Coburn was most popular in comedies, and in 1943 won an Academy Award for his role in The More the Merrier as the bombastic but likable business executive forced by the wartime housing shortage to share a Washington D.C. apartment with Jean Arthur and Joel McCrea. Coburn continued playing variations on his elderly scalawag character (he was the living image of the Monopoly-board millionaire) throughout the late 1940s and 1950s, most notably as Marilyn Monroe's erstwhile "sugar daddy" in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1953). The actor also kept busy on stage, touring with the Theatre Guild as Falstaff in Merry Wives of Windsor and supervising the annual Mohawk Drama Festival at Schenectady's Union College, which he'd founded in 1934. Moving into television work with the enthusiasm of a novice, the octogenarian Coburn continued acting right up to his death. Coburn's last appearance, one week before his passing, was as Grandpa Vanderhoff in an Indianapolis summer-stock production of You Can't Take It With You.

Trivia: Born to middle-class British parents (his father was an import merchant), actor Ronald Colman was raised to be as much a gentleman as any "high born" Englishman, and strove to maintain that standard both on and off screen all his life. Acting was merely a hobby to Colman while he attended the Hadley School at Littlehampton, Sussex, but after a few years' drudgery as a bookkeeper with the British Steamship Company, the theatre seemed a more alluring (if not more lucrative) life's goal. After a brief service in WWI (during which he was wounded and then discharged), Colman eventually went into acting full-time, making his debut in a tiny role in the play The Maharanee of Arakan (1916). A subsequent better role in a production of Damaged Goods led to Colman's being hired to star in a two-reel film drama, The Live Wire. The film was never released, which is why Colman's "official" debut is often listed as his first feature film The Toilers (1919). The money wasn't good in the British film industry of the period--in fact it was a step away from starvation wages - so Colman arrived in New York City with about $37 to his name, making his American movie debut in Handcuffs or Kisses? (1920). His next film was also his Big Break: The White Sister (1923), directed in Italy by Henry King, in which Colman was co-starred opposite prestigious actress Lillian Gish. The association with King and Gish was Colman's entry into Hollywood, and by 1925 he'd begun his nine-year association with producer Sam Goldwyn. Most of Colman's silent films were lush romantic costume dramas, in which he usually co-starred with the lovely Vilma Banky. This sort of glorious nonsense was rendered anachronistic by the advent of talking pictures, but Goldwyn wisely cast Colman in a sophisticated up-to-date adventure, Bulldog Drummond (1929), for the actor's talkie debut. Colman scored an instant hit with his beautifully modulated voice and his roguishly elegant manner, and was one of the biggest and most popular screen personalities of the 1930s. A falling out with Goldwyn in 1934 prompted Colman to avoid long-term contracts for the rest of his career. As good as his pre-1935 films were, Colman was even more effective as a free-lancer in such films as Tale of Two Cities (1935), Lost Horizon (1937), The Prisoner of Zenda (1937), The Light That Failed (1939) and Talk of the Town (1942). The actor also began a fruitful radio career during this period, first as host of an intellectual celebrity round-robin discussion weekly The Circle in 1939; ten years later, he and his actress wife Benita Hume starred in a witty and well-written sitcom about a college professor and his spouse, The Halls of Ivy, which became a TV series in 1954. Perhaps the most famous of Colman's radio appearance were those he made on The Jack Benny Program as Jack's long-suffering next door neighbor. Colman won an Academy Award for his atypical performance in A Double Life (1947) as an emotionally disturbed actor who becomes so wrapped up in his roles that he commits murder. Curtailing his film activities in the 1950s, Colman planned to write his autobiography, but was prevented from doing so by ill health -- and in part by his reluctance to speak badly of anyone. Colman died shortly after completing his final film role as the Spirit of Man in The Story of Mankind (1957), a laughably wretched extravaganza from which Colman managed to emerge with his dignity and reputation intact.

Trivia: Carol was born Maryse Mourer, the name she used early in her stage career. After some experience on the French stage she debuted onscreen in 1943, working her way up to starring roles by 1948. A voluptuous blonde, she was France's biggest box-office attraction in the early fifties, occasionally appearing semi-nude onscreen. With the rise of Brigitte Bardot she was overshadowed as a sex symbol and her career declined in the late '50s. Carol attempted without success to revive her popularity in international films, but died of a heart attack at 45. She was married to director Christian-Jacque, who directed some of her most memorable films.

Trivia: British actor Melville Cooper was 18 when he made his first stage appearance at Stratford-on-Avon. He settled in the U.S. in 1934, after making an excellent impression in the Alexander Korda-produced film The Private Life of Don Juan. The Pickwick-like Cooper was generally cast as snobbish, ineffectual society types or confidence tricksters; occasionally, as in 1939's The Sun Never Sets, he was given a chance at a more heroic role. Among Cooper's most famous screen portrayals were the Sheriff of Nottingham in The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938), the amorous Reverend Collins (altered to "Mr. Collins" to avoid censor problems) in Pride and Prejudice (1940), and the officious wedding-rehearsal supervisor in Father of the Bride (1950). Retiring from films in 1958, Melville Cooper returned to the stage, where he essayed such roles as Reverend Chasuble in The Importance of Being Earnest.

Trivia: Noel Coward was among the most innovative and influential figures to emerge from the theatrical world during the 20th century. A playwright, director, and actor as well as a songwriter, filmmaker, and novelist, his witty, urbane stage productions forever altered the perceptions long inherent in theater dialogue by shifting away from declamatory tones to a more natural, conversational approach, making them ideal for later film adaptations. Born December 16, 1899, in Middlesex, England, Coward was the product of a musical family; his grandfather was the organist at the Crystal Palace, while his father was a piano tuner. He began his professional career as a child actor, and in 1913, while traveling with a production of Hannele, he met a girl named Gertrude Lawrence who would continue to exert a profound influence over his life and career, becoming both the inspiration behind and the star of many of his greatest works. After appearing in 1918 in the D.W. Griffith film Hearts of the World, Coward began writing plays and eventually turned to songwriting. In 1923, his "Parisian Pierrot" was performed by Lawrence in the revue London Calling!, becoming his first hit, and a year later his drug-addiction drama The Vortex was a controversial smash before moving to Broadway. Within a year, Coward had another revue, On With the Dance, running in London simultaneously with a pair of comedies, Hay Fever and Fallen Angels. His record of three concurrent productions was not broken until half a century later by Andrew Lloyd Webber. With his sudden rise to success came immense pressure, however, and at the age of 27, Coward suffered a nervous breakdown; to make matters worse, neither critics nor audiences reacted favorably to productions of his Home Chat and Sirocco. For the duration of the 1920s, his career continued to see-saw between bouquets and brickbats, but in 1929 Coward mounted his most mature production yet with Bitter Sweet, a quasi-Viennese operetta which launched the song "I'll See You Again." The 1930 Private Lives, a romantic comedy written in honor of Lawrence, further established his newfound mastery, and with the 1931 historical epic Cavalcade and its song "Twentieth Century Blues", his position as a talent of international renown was assured.Coward next turned to the comedy Design for Living, a project written for Broadway in honor of his friends the Lunts. The musical revue Words and Music (famed for the hit "Mad About the Boy") and the operetta Conversation Piece followed before he co-starred with Lawrence in Tonight at 8:30. Despite the subsequent success of Present Laughter and The Happy Breed, Coward's interests began moving away from the stage as he began writing short stories, as well as an autobiography, Present Indicative. With the outbreak of World War II, he found himself recruited for intelligence work in Paris as well as for a number of troop-concert tours, but he still found time to write the hugely successful Blithe Spirit. In 1942, he and filmmaker David Lean collaborated on the motion picture In Which We Serve, which Coward both co-directed and starred in; for his efforts, he was honored with a special Academy Award.At the conclusion of the war, Coward relocated to Jamaica, where he adapted a number of his stage works for the silver screen; of particular note is 1945's masterful Brief Encounter, directed by Lean and based on a section of Tonight at 8:30. Other Coward films included 1945's Blithe Spirit, 1950's The Astonished Heart, and 1952's Tonight at 8:30. By the early '50s, his style of theatrical writing was considered somewhat outmoded, although a production of the new Relative Values was a success in London's West End. However, the early years of the decade were largely fraught with tragedy when both Lawrence and his longtime manager, Charles Cochran, suddenly died. Coward then mounted a triumphant cabaret tour of Paris, where he performed to enthusiastic audiences. He subsequently took the show to Las Vegas, and his American success was documented on the 1955 LP Noel Coward at Las Vegas. He even starred in a series of specials for CBS television.In the 1960s, Coward experienced a renaissance throughout the British theatrical community which culminated in a National Theatre revival of Hay Fever which he directed. Among his other stage productions of the period were Nude With Violin and A Song at Twilight. In the last years of his life, Coward appeared in a number of films, typically in cameo roles which satirized his own image as a fey, genteel Englishman. His 70th birthday was honored by a week of stage, screen, and television revivals of his work which he himself jokingly dubbed "Holy Week." On March 26, 1973, Coward suffered a fatal heart attack on the grounds of his Jamaican estate; he was 74 years old.

Trivia: Scottish actor Finlay Currie's pre-theatrical occupations included choirmaster and organist. He entered show business at the turn of the century as a musical performer, billed as "Harry Calvo, the double-voiced vocalist." For ten years, Currie toured Australia as principal comedian in Sir Benjamin Fuller's acting troupe. He returned to the London stage in 1930, where over the next three decades he would appear in such hits as The Last Mile and Death of a Salesman. In films from 1932, Currie's most memorable screen role was as the surly convict Magwitch in Great Expectations (1946). He spent much of the early 1950s in Hollywood, playing such forceful character roles as St. Peter in Quo Vadis (1951) and the mysterious Mr. Shunderson in People Will Talk (1951). Still in harness into the mid-1960s, Finlay Currie was at one juncture the oldest working actor in Great Britain.

Trivia: The last in a long line of British actors, Reginald Denny left school at 16 to enter the family trade. His first important assignment was the role of Prince Danilo in a travelling company of The Merry Widow. He first came to the U.S. in a 1912 production of Quaker Girl, then returned to England to star in musical productions. After World War I service as a Lieutenant in the 112th squadron of the British Flying Corps, Denny appeared in several Broadway productions and made his film bow at the New Jersey-based world film studios. Hired on the basis of his finely tuned physiques, Denny starred in Universal's boxing short-subject series The Leather Pushers before being promoted to features. During the 1920s, Denny was one of Universal's most popular stars, headlining a series of frothy domestic comedies, most of which co-starred Laura LaPlante and were directed by William A. Seiter. In talkies, Denny's British accent made it difficult for him to continue in the "all-American" roles he'd been playing at Universal, but he continued to flourish as a character actor, showing up in everything from Romeo and Juliet (1936) to Abbott and Costello Meet Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1937). He also played the "silly ass" second lead of Algy in several Bulldog Drummond "B" pictures. Since his World War I experience, Denny remained active in aviation; he was a pioneer in the field of radio-controlled aircraft. In fact, the U.S. Navy prototype radio aircraft TDD was named in his honor (the initials stood for Target Drone Denny). A busy actor on films and television into the 1960s, Reginald Denny returned to Broadway in 1958 to replace Robert Coote as Col. Pickering in My Fair Lady.

Trivia: Andy Devine was born in Kingman, Arizona, where his father ran a hotel. During his youth, Devine was a self-confessed hellraiser, and stories of his rowdy antics are still part of Kingman folklore (though they've undoubtedly improved in the telling). His trademarked ratchety voice was the result of a childhood accident, when he fell while carrying a stick in his mouth, resulting in permanent vocal-chord injuries. A star football player at Santa Clara University, Andy decided to break into movies in 1926; he was almost immediately cast in Universal's two-reel series The Collegians. When talkies came, Devine was convinced that his voice was unsuitable for the microphone. He reportedly became so despondent at one point that he attempted to commit suicide by asphyxiation, only to discover that his landlady had turned off the gas! Devine needn't have worried; his voice became his greatest asset, and from 1930 until his retirement, he was very much in demand for bucolic comedy roles. In 1937 he became a regular on Jack Benny's radio program, his howl of "Hiya, Buck!" becoming a national catchphrase. During the late 1940s and early 1950s, he was a popular comedy sidekick in the western films of Roy Rogers. Later film assignments included his atypical performance as a corrupt Kansas City cop in Jack Webb's Pete Kelly's Blues (1955). Most baby boomers retain fond memories of Devine's TV appearances as Jingles Jones on the long-running western series Wild Bill Hickock, and as host of the Saturday morning kid's program Andy's Gang. In his later years, Devine cut down his performing activities, preferring to stay on his Van Nuys (California) ranch with his wife and children. Made a very wealthy man thanks to real estate investments, Andy Devine abandoned moviemaking in 1970, resurfacing only to provide voices for a brace of Disney cartoon features; he remained active in civic and charitable affairs, at one juncture serving as honorary mayor of Van Nuys.

Trivia: At the peak of her career in the 1930s, Marlene Dietrich was the screen's highest-paid actress; moreover, she was also the very essence of cinematic eroticism, a beguiling creature whose almost supernatural allure established her among film's most enduring icons. While immensely sensual, Dietrich's persona was also strangely androgynous; her fondness for masculine attire -- suits, top hats, and the like -- not only spawned a fashion craze, it also created an added dimension of sexual ambiguity which served to make her even more magnetic. Born Maria Magdalena Dietrich outside of Berlin on December 27, 1901, she was the daughter of a Royal Prussian Police lieutenant. As a child, she studied the violin, and later tenured at the Deutsche Theaterschule. She made her film debut with a brief role in 1923's Der Kleine Napoleon, followed by a more substantial performance in Tragodie der Liebe; she later married the picture's casting director, Rudolf Sieber. After a series of other tiny roles, including an appearance in G.W. Pabst's 1924 effort Die Freudlose Gasse, Dietrich briefly retired; by 1926, however, she was back onscreen in Manion Lescaut, later followed by Alexander Korda's Madame Wuenscht Keine Kinder. After returning to the stage, Dietrich resumed her film career, typically cast as a coquettish socialite; still, she remained better known as a live performer, enjoying great success singing the songs of Mischa Spoliansky in a popular revue. Then, according to legend, director Josef von Sternberg claimed to have discovered her appearing in the cabaret Zwei Kravatten, and cast her in his 1930 film Der Blaue Engel; even before the picture premiered, von Sternberg offered a rough cut to his American studio Paramount, who signed her for Morocco, where she played a cabaret singer romancing both Adolph Menjou and Gary Cooper. Both films premiered in New York almost simultaneously, and overnight Dietrich was a star. Paramount signed her to a more long-term contract, at a cost of 125,000 dollars per film and with von Sternberg, who had become her lover, in the director's seat of each. The studio, in an unprecedented five-million-dollar publicity blitz, marketed her as a rival to Greta Garbo's supremacy; upon learning that Garbo was starring as Mata Hari, Paramount cast Dietrich as a spy in 1931's Dishonored in response. The follow-up, 1932's Shanghai Express, was Dietrich and von Sternberg's biggest American success. With Cary Grant, she then starred in Blonde Venus, but when the picture did not meet studio expectations, Paramount decided to separate the star from her director. Not only their working relationship was in a state of flux -- von Sternberg's wife unsuccessfully sued Dietrich (who had left her husband behind in Germany) for "alienation of affection" and libel. For Rouben Mamoulian, she starred in 1933's The Song of Songs amidst a flurry of rumors that she was on the verge of returning to Germany - no less than Adolf Hitler himself had ordered her to come back. However, Dietrich remained in the States, and her films were consequently banned in her homeland. Instead, she played Catherine the Grea in von Sternberg's 1934 epic The Scarlet Empress; it was a financial disaster, as was their follow-up, the lavish The Devil Is a Woman. In its wake, von Sternberg announced he had taken Dietrich as far as he could, and begged off of future projects. A much-relieved Paramount set about finding her projects which would be more marketable, if less opulent. The first was the 1936 romantic comedy Desire, directed by Ernst Lubitsch. It was a hit, with all indications pointing to comedy as the best direction for Dietrich's career to take. Again with Lubitsch, she began work on I Loved a Soldier, but after a few days, production was halted after she refused to continue following a number of changes to the script. Instead, Dietrich next starred in the Technicolor remake of The Garden of Allah, followed by Korda's Knight Without Armour. Reuniting with Lubitsch, she headlined 1937's Angel, but again actress and director frequently feuded. Her offscreen reputation continued to worsen when it was revealed that director Mitchell Leisen had refused to work with her on French Without Tears. Combined with diminishing box-office returns, Paramount agreed to buy Dietrich out of her remaining contract. She remained a critical favorite, but audiences clearly did not like her. A number of projects were rumored to be under consideration, but she did not appear again in films for over two years. For less than 50,000 dollars, Dietrich agreed to co-star with James Stewart in the 1939 Western satire Destry Rides Again. The picture was a surprise smash, and with her career seemingly resuscitated, Universal signed her to a contract. The follow-up, 1940's Seven Sinners, was also a hit, but Rene Clair's 1941 effort The Flame of New Orleans lacked distinction. A series of disappointments -- The Lady Is Willing, The Spoilers, and Pittsburgh -- followed in 1942, with Dietrich reportedly so disheartened with her work that she considered retirement. Instead, she mounted a series of lengthy tours entertaining wartime troops before returning to films in 1944's Follow the Boys, followed by Kismet. She and Jean Gabin were next scheduled to star in Marcel Carne's Les Portes de la Nuit, but both stars balked at their roles and exited the project; the media was incensed -- at the time, Carne was the most highly respected director in French cinema -- and when Dietrich and Gabin both agreed to appear in 1946's Martin Roumagnac, reviews were unkind. She starred in Golden Earrings, followed in 1948 by Billy Wilder's A Foreign Affair. When her daughter gave birth to a child soon after, Dietrich was declared "the world's most glamorous grandmother." Although her box-office stature had long remained diminished, Dietrich was still, irrefutably, a star; for all of her notorious behavior and apparent disinterest in filmmaking, she needed Hollywood as badly as it needed her -- the studios wanted her fame, and she wanted their hefty paychecks. For Alfred Hitchcock, Dietrich starred in 1950's Stage Fright and a year later reunited with Stewart in No Highway in the Sky. Fritz Lang's Rancho Notorious followed in 1952, but it was to be Dietrich's final film for over four years. A cameo in Around the World in 80 Days announced her return to movies, with starring turns in The Monte Carlo Story and Witness for the Prosecution arriving a year later. After briefly appearing in Orson Welles' masterful Touch of Evil in 1958, Dietrich again disappeared from screens for a three-year stretch, resurfacing in 1961's Judgment at Nuremberg. The 1964 feature Paris When It Sizzles was Dietrich's final movie appearance for over a decade. Instead she toured the world, even scoring a major European hit single with "Where Have All the Flowers Gone?" As the years went on, however, a long-standing bout with drinking continued to accelerate, and she often appeared inebriated during performances; after falling off of the stage and suffering a compound fracture of the leg, she retired from the cabaret circuit, making one last film, 1978's Schoener Gigolo, Armer Gigolo. A brief return to music was announced, but outside of a few performances, Dietrich was largely inactive from the early '80s on. In 1984, she agreed to produce a documentary portrait, Marlene, and while submitting to recorded interviews, she demanded not to be photographed. In a final nod to Garbo, she spent the last decade of her life in almost total seclusion in her Paris apartment and was bed-ridden throughout the majority of her final years; Dietrich died on May 6, 1992. She was 90.

Trivia: On stage from the age of 10 (in a production of Pinkie and the Fairies), British actress Hermione Gingold studied for her craft under famed instructor Rosinna Filippi. Gingold's subsequent stage career was almost exclusively devoted to the classics, particularly Shakespeare. Nearing 40, Gingold switched professional gears to become a singing comedienne, appearing in such West End revues as Sweet and Low, Sweeter and Lower and Sweetest and Lowest. Appearing on Broadway in the 1952 edition of John Murray Anderson's Almanac, Gingold held off making any American films (though she'd been in British pictures since 1934), until she was flattered by produced Mike Todd into playing a cameo role as a London tart in Todd's cinema spectacular Around the World in 80 Days (1956). Delightfully inhibited and doggedly aristocratic all at once, Gingold continued her U.S. film career in a number of eccentric roles; in Gigi (1958), she shared the poignant song "I Remember it Well" with Maurice Chevalier. The actress also blessed American TV with her talents; in a 1960 Mother's Day special she portrayed the mother of The Three Stooges! Gracing such films as Bell, Book and Candle (1962), The Music Man (1962) and even Munster Go Home (1965) with her regally ribald presence, Hermione Gingold was still at her post in the '70s, as sparkling as ever in the otherwise forgettable A Little Night Music (1976).

Trivia: One of the theatre's greatest legends, Sir John Gielgud spent almost 80 of the 96 years of his life appearing in countless plays that saw him portray every major Shakespearean role. The last surviving member of a generation of classical actors that included Laurence Olivier, Peggy Ashcroft, and Ralph Richardson, Gielgud worked up to a month before his death, performing in over 50 films and numerous television productions when he wasn't busy with his stage work.The grandnephew of famed stage actress Ellen Terry, Gielgud was born in London on August 14, 1904. He received his education at Westminster School and would have studied to be an architect had he not rebelled against his parents by announcing his plans to be an actor. Persuading his parents to let him train at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts, Gielgud promised them that if he had failed to make a stage career by the age of 25, he would become an architect. As it turned out, Gielgud was playing Hamlet by the time he was 26, having made his stage debut eight years earlier at the Old Vic. His reputation was made in 1924, when he played Romeo to rave reviews; in addition to Hamlet, roles in plays by Chekov and Ibsen followed, and in 1928, Gielgud traveled to the U.S. for the first time to play the Grand Duke Alexander in The Patriot. The epitome of the kind of old-school Englishness associated with the Victorian theatre, he went on to break theatre box office records when he brought his Hamlet to Broadway in the 1930s.Gielgud began appearing on the big screen in the 1920s, and over the course of the next seven decades, he lent his name to films of every imaginable genre and level of quality. In addition to starring in a number of film adaptations of Shakespeare, he could be seen in projects as disparate as Orson Welles' Chimes at Midnight (1967), the 1977 porn extravaganza Caligula, and Peter Greenaway's Prospero's Books (1991), in which he was able to fulfill a lifelong dream by playing the role of the Shakespearean patriarch Prospero.In 1981, Gielgud was awarded his only Oscar for his portrayal of Dudley Moore's butler in Arthur; he reprised the role for the film's 1988 sequel, despite the fact that the character had died. Gielgud continued to appear onscreen until the year preceding his death, making enthusiastically-received turns in Shine (1996), in which he played pianist David Helfgott's mentor; Al Pacino's Looking for Richard (1996); and Shekhar Kapur's Elizabeth (1998), in which he made a brief appearance as the Pope.Gielgud also did notable work on television, particularly in Brideshead Revisited (1981), which cast him as a stodgily eccentric patriarch, and Merlin (1998), a lavish and well-received take on Arthurian legend. He wrote several books as well, including an autobiography entitled Early Stages. Gielgud was knighted in 1953 and was honored on his 90th birthday with the decision to rename the West End's Globe Theatre as the Gielgud Theatre. He died on May 21, 2000, at the age of 96, having spent the last 25 years of his life with his partner, Martin Hensler.

Trivia: British actor Sir Cedric Hardwicke's physician father was resistant to his son's chosen profession; nonetheless, the elder Hardwicke paid Cedric's way through the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts. The actor was fortunate enough to form a lasting friendship with playwright George Bernard Shaw, who felt that Hardwicke was the finest actor in the world (Shaw's other favorites were the Four Marx Brothers). Working in Shavian plays like Heartbreak House, Major Barbara and The Apple Cart throughout most of the 1920s and 1930s in England, Hardwicke proved that he was no one-writer actor with such roles as Captain Andy in the London production of the American musical Show Boat. After making his first film The Dreyfus Case in 1931, Hardwicke worked with distinction in both British and American films, though his earliest attempts at becoming a Broadway favorite were disappointments. Knighted for his acting in 1934, Hardwicke's Hollywood career ran the gamut from prestige items like Wilson (1944), in which he played Henry Cabot Lodge, to low-budget gangster epics like Baby Face Nelson (1957), where he brought a certain degree of tattered dignity to the role of a drunken gangland doctor. As proficient at directing as he was at acting, Hardwicke unfortunately was less successful as a businessman. Always a step away from his creditors, he found himself taking more and more journeyman assignments as he got older. Better things came his way with a successful run in the 1960 Broadway play A Majority of One and several tours with Charles Laughton, Agnes Moorehead and Charles Boyer in the "reader's theatre" staging of Shaw's Don Juan in Hell. A talented writer, Hardwicke wrote two autobiographies, the last of these published in 1961 as A Victorian in Orbit. It was here that he wittily but ruefully observed that "God felt sorry for actors, so he gave them a place in the sun and a swimming pool. The price they had to pay was to surrender their talent."

Trivia: British actor Trevor Howard trained at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, and while there he made his London stage debut in 1934; however, his subsequent work onstage gained little attention until the mid-'40s. While fighting World War II with the Royal Artillery, he was injured and discharged. Howard made his feature film debut in 1944; soon he attained star status as the result of playing the romantic lead in David Lean's Brief Encounter (1945). Thus began a long and consistently successful film career. At first, Howard was cast in romantic leads, but then began playing more heroic leads before eventually moving into character roles. Regardless of his role, he was known as a consistent, polished actor with an understated, true-to-life style. At first appearing exclusively in British films, he began appearing occasionally in Hollywood productions in the mid-'50s. For his performance as the father in Sons and Lovers (1960) he received a Best Actor Oscar nomination. He was married to actress Helen Cherry, with whom he appeared in A Soldier for Christmas (1944).

Trivia: Throaty-voiced, kittenish leading lady Glynis Johns was the daughter of British stage actor Mervyn Johns; she was born while her father and concert-pianist mother were on a tour of South Africa. Enrolled in the London ballet school at age 6, Johns had by age 10 progressed to the point that she was certified to teach ballet. At 12, she made her stage debut in the role of Napoleon's daughter in Saint Helena; at 13, she was cast in the pivotal role of the spiteful schoolgirl in the London production of Lillian Hellman's The Children's Hour. This led to her first film, 1937's South Riding, in which she played another petulant, foot-stamping adolescent. Johns graduated to coquettish leading roles in the 1940s, most famously as the alluring mermaid in Miranda (1946). Her best-known Hollywood assignments include the roles of Maid Jean in Danny Kaye's The Court Jester (1956) and the suffragette Mrs. Banks in Disney's Mary Poppins (1964) (Johns was the only cast member to have the foresight to demand a portion of the royalties for the Poppins soundtrack record). In 1963, she starred in Glynis, a lukewarm TV comedy/mystery series. Eight years later, she won a Tony award for her performance in Broadway's A Little Night Music. Still active into the 1990s, Glynis Johns was recently seen as a belligerent in-law in The Ref (1994) and as a deliciously dotty aunt in While You Were Sleeping (1995).

Trivia: Although his career lacked the resilience of Charlie Chaplin and Laurel and Hardy, Buster Keaton may well have been the most gifted comedian to emerge from the cinema's silent era. And while his skills as a gag writer and physical comic were remarkable, Keaton was one clown whose understanding of the film medium was just as great as his talent for taking a pratfall. Keaton, however, had a roller-coaster career in which he fell just as far as he rose, though he was fortunate enough to enjoy a comeback in the later years of his life. Joseph Frank Keaton was born on October 4, 1895, to Joseph Hallie Keaton and Myra Cutler Keaton, a pair of vaudeville performers. Spending his childhood on the road with his family, he earned the nickname Buster at the age of six months; as legend has it, after the young Keaton fell down a flight of steps at a theater, a magician on the bill, Harry Houdini, said to the lad's father, "What a buster your kid took!" The name stuck, and, by the age of three, the youngster was appearing as part of his parents act whenever they could evade child labor laws. In vaudeville, Keaton developed remarkable talents as an acrobatic comedian with a superb sense of timing, and became a rising star by his teens. His father, however, had developed a serious drinking problem, which strained his relationship with his son and caused serious problems with their very physical stage act, which, in early 1917, Buster left. He appeared in a Broadway comic revue later that year, but the key to Keaton's future came when he met a fellow vaudeville comedian. Roscoe "Fatty" Arbuckle was starring in a low-budget two-reel screen comedy, The Butcher Boy, and invited Keaton to play a small role in the picture. The two hit it off and became a successful onscreen team, starring in a long string of comic hits. Fascinated by the medium of film, Keaton soon began writing their pictures, and assisted in directing them; Keaton was soon starring in his own films, as well, though he and Arbuckle remained lifelong close friends. Keaton developed a distinctive comic style which merged slapstick with a sophisticated sense of visual absurdity, and often included gags which made the most of the film medium, involving props, sets, and visual trickery that would have been impossible on the vaudeville stage. Keaton also developed his personal visual trademark, an unsmiling deadpan demeanor which made his epic-scale gags even funnier. Beginning with his first solo short subjects in 1920, The High Sign and One Week, Keaton became a major star, and after a series of successful two-reelers, including Cops and The Balloonatic, Keaton moved up to feature-length comedies in 1923 with the farcical The Three Ages. Keaton reached the peak of his craft with the features which followed, including Sherlock Jr., Seven Chances, The Navigator, Steamboat Bill, Jr., and the Civil War comedy The General, now universally regarded as Keaton's masterpiece. Independent producer Joseph M. Schenck was the man behind Fatty Arbuckle's comedies when Keaton came aboard, and they continued to work together when Keaton struck out on his own. Schenck believed in the comic's talent and allowed him to work without interference, resulting in a string of creative and popular triumphs. Then, in 1928 -- and with Keaton's approval -- Schenck sold his contract to the biggest studio in Hollywood, Metro Goldwyn Mayer. While Keaton's first vehicle for MGM, The Cameraman, was up to his usual high standards, he chafed at the studio's interference and insistence that the filmmaker work within the same boundaries as its other employees. With outside writers and directors controlling Keaton with a strong hand, his work suffered tremendously. Coupled with a crumbling marriage (to Natalie Talmadge, whom he wed in 1920), Keaton began to drink heavily. With the advent of sound, MGM seemed to have even less of an idea of what to do with the actor/director, and starred him in a series of second-rate comedies with Jimmy Durante, whose broad style did not mesh well with Keaton. By 1934, Keaton had hit bottom -- MGM fired him, declaring him unreliable after he refused to work on scripts he felt were inferior. His marriage to Talmadge had ended, and he impulsively (and while drunk) married Mae Scriven, a union that would last only three years. The IRS sued him for 28,000 dollars in back taxes. And his alcoholism had become so destructive that he was committed to a sanitarium, where he was placed in a straight jacket. Keaton eventually got his drinking problem under control, but his career in Hollywood was in dire straits. He starred in a series of low-budget short subjects for the tiny Educational Pictures and later Columbia Pictures, none of which made much of an impression. Keaton also appeared on-stage in touring productions of such comedies as The Gorilla, and, ironically, found himself employed as a gag writer and director at MGM, albeit at a fraction of his former salary. He also appeared in a few European comedies, where audiences held him in greater regard than in the U.S. But that began to change in 1949, when a cover story in Life magazine on great clowns of the silent movies reminded audiences of his comic legacy. Keaton began making guest appearances on television shows, and the now sober star made his way back into supporting roles in major movies (most notably Around the World in 80 Days and Charlie Chaplin's Limelight). In 1957, Keaton sold the rights to his life story to Paramount Pictures, who hired him as a technical advisor for The Buster Keaton Story. While the film was a severe disappointment (and had little to do with the facts of his life), the financial windfall was enough for Keaton to buy a new house, where he and his third wife, Eleanor Norris (whom Keaton wed in 1940), lived for the rest of their lives. Keaton found himself in increasing demand in the '60s, appearing in several of American International Pictures' "Beach" musicals (in which he was allowed to work up his own gags) and a number of television ad campaigns. He also starred in a short film created by playwright Samuel Beckett, appearing in a loving tribute to his silent films, The Railrodder, and landed a memorable role in A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum. Sadly, Keaton's second wave of success came to an end on February 1, 1966, when he lost a lengthy battle with lung cancer.

Trivia: Ex-nightclub chorine Evelyn Keyes was 18 when she was put under contract by Hollywood producer/director Cecil B. DeMille. Keyes played passive roles in DeMille's The Buccaneer (1938) and Union Pacific (1939) and a handful of Paramount "B"s. Her best opportunity came from outside the DeMille fold, when she was cast as the eternally jilted Suellen O'Hara in Gone With the Wind (1939). In 1940, she signed with Columbia, where she was featured in a handful of interesting "B"s like Boris Karlof's Before I Hang (1940) and Peter Lorre's Face Behind the Mask (1941, in which Keyes was terrific in a brief role as a blind girl). She was promoted to "A" leads with Here Comes Mr. Jordan (1941), and with 1947's Mating of Millie she finally got a film vehicle all her own. She also played the Ruby Keeler counterpart (named Julie Benson) in Columbia's The Jolson Story (1946). Like many 1940s leading ladies, Keyes found the going rough in the 1950s, save for a few worthwhile (if fleeting) parts such as Tom Ewell's vacationing wife in The Seven Year Itch (1955). She retired in 1956, making an unexpected return before the cameras in a brace of late-1980s Gothic melodramas. In sum total, Keyes' screen career was dwarfed by her colorful private life. Her four husbands included directors Charles Vidor and John Huston, and bandleader Artie Shaw. In 1971 she turned to writing. Her first book was a novel, I Am as Billboard; she followed this with two very candid autobiographies, Scarlet O'Hara's Younger Sister (1977) and I'll Think About That Tomorrow (1991). Keyes died in July 2008 of uterine cancer

Trivia: Easily recognizable for her trademark long cigarette holder, short black hair, and close-fitting cap, Beatrice Lillie was once hailed as "the toast of two continents," but especially loved in Great Britain where she was the most popular comedian of her era. Lillie was born in Canada and originally performed with her sister and mother in the Lillie Trio. She came to London in 1914 and soon became a popular part of Andre Charlot's revues. In 1927, Lillie debuted on Broadway and became best known for starring in This Year of Grace which her friend, Noel Coward, wrote just for her. She first appeared in film in Stage Stars on Stage (1925). Following WWII, Lillie hosted her own radio show and occasionally embarked upon world tours.

Trivia: With the possible exception of Edward G. Robinson, no actor has so often been the target of impressionists as the inimitable, Hungarian-born Peter Lorre. Leaving his family home at the age of 17, Lorre sought out work as an actor, toiling as a bank clerk during down periods. He went the starving-artist route in Switzerland and Austria before settling in Germany, where he became a favorite of playwright Bertolt Brecht. For most of his first seven years as a professional actor, Lorre employed his familiar repertoire of wide eyes, toothy grin, and nasal voice to invoke laughs rather than shudders. In fact, he was appearing in a stage comedy at the same time that he was filming his breakthrough picture M (1931), in which he was cast as a sniveling child murderer. When Hitler ascended to power in 1933, Lorre fled to Paris, and then to London, where he appeared in his first English-language film, Hitchcock's The Man Who Knew Too Much (1934). Although the monolingual Lorre had to learn his lines phonetically for Hitchcock, he picked up English fairly rapidly, and, by 1935, was well equipped both vocally and psychologically to take on Hollywood. On the strength of M, Lorre was initially cast in roles calling for varying degrees of madness, such as the love-obsessed surgeon in Mad Love (1935) and the existentialist killer in Crime and Punishment (1935). Signed to a 20th Century Fox contract in 1936, Lorre asked for and received a chance to play a good guy for a change. He starred in eight installments of the Mr. Moto series, playing an ever-polite (albeit well versed in karate) Japanese detective. When the series folded in 1939, Lorre freelanced in villainous roles at several studios. While under contract to Warner Bros., Lorre played effeminate thief Joel Cairo in The Maltese Falcon (1941), launching an unofficial series of Warner films in which Lorre was teamed with his Falcon co-star Sidney Greenstreet. During this period, Lorre's co-workers either adored or reviled him for his wicked sense of humor and bizarre on-set behavior. As far as director Jean Negulesco was concerned, Lorre was the finest actor in Hollywood; Negulesco fought bitterly with the studio brass for permission to cast Lorre as the sympathetic leading man in The Mask of Dimitrios (1946), in which the diminutive actor gave one of his finest and subtlest performances. In 1951, Lorre briefly returned to Germany, where he directed and starred in the intriguing (if not wholly successful) postwar psychological drama The Lost One. The '50s were a particularly busy time for Lorre; he performed frequently on such live television anthologies as Climax; guested on comedy and variety shows; and continued to appear in character parts in films. He remained a popular commodity into the '60s, especially after co-starring with the likes of Vincent Price, Boris Karloff, and Basil Rathbone in a series of tongue-in-cheek Edgar Allan Poe adaptations for filmmaker Roger Corman. Lorre's last film, completed just a few months before his fatal heart attack in 1964, was Jerry Lewis' The Patsy, in which, ironically, the dourly demonic Lorre played a director of comedy films.

Trivia: The son of a California judge, Edmund Lowe attended Santa Clara University. He worked briefly as a teacher before joining a Los Angeles stock company. Lowe made both his Broadway and movie debut in 1917. Seemingly born to wear tuxedos and dinner jackets, Lowe became a popular leading man on both stage and screen. His career went off into a new direction when he was cast against type as the brawling, swearing Sergeant Quirt in the 1927 film version of What Price Glory. This led to several reteamings with his Glory co-star Victor McLaglen, nearly always portraying those friendly enemies Quirt and Flagg, forever spouting dialogue of the "Sez you? Sez me!" variety. In 1956, Lowe and McLaglen were teamed for the last time in the all-star Around the World In 80 Days. Lowe remained in demand for leading character roles into the 1940s, including the father of the title character in Dillinger, where he was billed over the film's ostensible star Lawrence Tierney. On TV, Lowe played two-fisted reporter David Chase on the 1951-52 series Front Page Detective. The actor was married three times; his second wife was Lilyan Tashman, who died in 1934. Edmund Lowe's final film was 1960's Heller in Pink Tights; halfway through shooting, Lowe fell seriously ill and had to be doubled in long and medium shots by actor Bernard Nedell.

Trivia: A boy soldier during the Boer War, British actor Victor McLaglen later worked as a prizefighter (once losing to Jack Johnson in six rounds) and a vaudeville and circus performer. He served in World War I as a captain with the Irish Fusiliers and as provost marshal of Baghdad. In the early '20s he broke into British films. He soon moved to Hollywood, where he got lead and supporting roles; his basic screen persona was that of a large, brutish, but soft-hearted man of action. He appeared in many John Ford films, often as a military man. McLaglen made the transition to sound successfully, and for his work in Ford's The Informer (1935), he won the Best Actor Oscar. He remained a busy screen actor until the late '50s. Five of his brothers were also film actors: Arthur, Clifford, Cyril, Kenneth, and Leopold. He was the father of director Andrew V. McLaglen.

Trivia: An authentic cowboy from the age of 15, Timothy McCoy moved to a large Wyoming ranch next to a Sioux Indian reservation after some college studies; he became an authority on Indian languages, customs, and folk history, and mastered Indian sign language. He served in World War I, and was then appointed Indian Agent for his territory. In 1922, he was employed as a technical advisor and co-ordinator of Indian extras for the film The Covered Wagon (1923); McCoy may also have done some trick riding for the film. He later he resigned his government post, having been offered a key supporting role in the western The Thundering Herd (1925). MGM signed him to a film contract in 1925; he was to star in westerns and action movies based on historical anecdotes of the American frontier. By the early '30s he was among the most popular western stars; he always appeared dresed in black, with an oversized white Stetson hat and a pearl-handled gun. McCoy interrupted his screen career in 1935 to travel with the Ringling Brothers circus. In 1938 he started his own Wild West show, but it was unsuccessful. He returned to the screen in 1940, and for two years he co-starred in the low-budget Rough Rider western series; the series ended when Buck Jones, another of its stars, died in a fire. He served in World War II (in which he was awarded the Bronze Star), then retired to his ranch; from 1949, however, he worked on TV and in occasional film cameo roles. He won an Emmy for his TV program The Tim McCoy Show. Until 1976 McCoy continued working 300 days a year as the headliner of Tommy Scott's Country Music Circus. In 1974 he was inducted into the Cowboy Hall of Fame. He authored an autobiography (assisted by his son Ronald), Tim McCoy Remembers the West (1977).

Trivia: Though typecast as a dull-witted brute, Austrian-born Mike Mazurki was the holder of a Bachelor of Arts degree from Manhattan College. During the 1930s, he was a professional football and basketball player, as well as a heavyweight wrestler. His clock-stopping facial features enabled Mazurki to pick up bit and supporting roles in such films as The Shanghai Gesture (1941) and Dr.Renault's Secret (1943). Larger parts came his way after his indelible portrayal of psychotic brute Moose Malloy in 1944's Murder My Sweet. His trademarked slurred speech was reportedly the result of an injury to his Adam's apple, incurred during his wrestling days. While villainy was his bread and butter, Mazurki enjoyed working with comedians like Jerry Lewis and Lou Costello; he was particularly fond of the latter because the diminutive Costello treated him with dignity and respect, defending big Mike against people who treated the hulking actor like a big dumb lug. Mazurki's many TV appearances included a regular role on the short-lived 1971 sitcom The Chicago Teddy Bears. In 1976, Mike Mazurki was effectively cast as a kindly trapper in the family-oriented "four-waller" Challenge to Be Free, which ended up a cash cow for the veteran actor.

Trivia: Born in a British seaside resort town, John Mills was the son of a mathematics teacher father. Mills' mother worked as a theatrical box office manager, and it was this world, rather than his father's academic milieu, which most attracted young Mills. After brief employment as a clerk in a corn merchant's office, Mills moved to London, where he enrolled at Zelia Raye's Dancing School. His first professional job was as a chorus dancer in The Five O'Clock Revue in 1929. Making as many contacts as possible, Mills was able to secure work on the legitimate stage, and in 1932 appeared in his first film, the Jessie Matthews vehicle The Midshipmaid. Learning his craft in "quota quickies," Mills rose to leading man in such prestige productions as Brown on Resolution (1935), Tudor Rose (1936), and The Green Cockatoo (1938). In 1939, he appeared in his first American film, Goodbye Mr. Chips, playing student Peter Colley. He starred in a number of morale-boosting World War II films, usually playing the personification of the calm, resourceful young British military officer; any chance for a real life career in uniform, however, was scuttled by Mills' duodenal ulcer. After the war, he starred in such international hits as Great Expectations (1946), Scott of the Antarctic (1949), Hobson's Choice (1954), and Above Us the Waves (1955). In 1970, Mills won a long overdue Oscar for his performance as the village idiot in Ryan's Daughter (1970), directed (as were several of Mills' earlier films) by David Lean. His Broadway work has included Ross, a 1961 dramatization of the life of T.E. Lawrence. In 1966, Mills directed Sky West and Crooked (aka Gypsy Girl), which starred his daughter, Hayley Mills, and was written by his wife, Mary Hayley Bell (Mills' other daughter, Juliet, is likewise an actress of note). One year later, he made his American series-TV debut as British attorney Dundee in the weekly Western Dundee and the Culhane. In 1977, John Mills was made a knight of the British Empire; his very full life, both offscreen and on, was summed up three years later in his autobiography Up in the Clouds, Gentlemen, Please.

Trivia: Born to a non-theatrical British family, Alan Mowbray was in his later years vague concerning the exact date that he took to the stage. In some accounts, he was touring the provinces before joining the British Navy in World War I; in others, he turned to acting after the war, purportedly because he was broke and had no discernible "practical" skills. No matter when he began, Mowbray climbed relatively quickly to Broadway and London stardom, spending several seasons on the road with the Theater Guild; his favorite stage parts were those conceived by Bernard Shaw and Noel Coward. Turning to films in the early talkie era, Mowbray received good notices for his portrayal of George Washington in 1931's Alexander Hamilton (a characterization he'd repeat along more comic lines for the 1945 musical Where Do We Go From Here?). He also had the distinction of appearing with three of the screen's Sherlock Holmeses: Clive Brook (Sherlock Holmes [1932]), Reginald Owen (A Study in Scarlet [1933], in which Mowbray played Lestrade), and Basil Rathbone (Terror by Night [1946]). John Ford fans will remember Mowbray's brace of appearances as alcoholic ham actors in My Darling Clementine (1946) and Wagonmaster (1950). Lovers of film comedies might recall Mowbray's turns as the long-suffering butler in the first two Topper films and as "the Devil Himself" (as he was billed) in the 1942 Hal Roach streamliner The Devil With Hitler. And there was one bona fide romantic lead (in Technicolor yet), opposite Miriam Hopkins in Becky Sharp (1935). Otherwise, Mowbray was shown to best advantage in his many "pompous blowhard" roles, and in his frequent appearances as the "surprise" killer in murder mysteries (Charlie Chan in London, The Case Against Mrs. Ames, Abbott and Costello Meet the Killer: Boris Karloff, and so many others). In his off hours, Mowbray was a member of several acting fraternities, and also of the Royal Geographic Society. One of Alan Mowbray's favorite roles was as the softhearted con man protagonist in the TV series Colonel Humphrey Flack, which ran on the Dumont network in 1953, then as a syndicated series in 1958.

Trivia: A charming, rotund, portly, double-chinned character actor of British and American stage and screen, Robert Morley tended to be cast in jovial or pompous comedic roles. He was educated in England, Germany, France, and Italy, intending to go into diplomacy. He switched to acting and studied theater at London's Royal Academy of Dramatic Art. Morley debuted on the London stage in 1929, and on Broadway in 1938 when he reprised his London performance in the title role of Oscar Wilde. Also in 1938, he debuted onscreen in the Hollywood film Marie Antoinette, portraying the feeble-minded Louis XVI opposite Norma Shearer; for that performance he received a Best Supporting Actor Oscar nomination. He went on to play supporting roles in many films on both sides of the Atlantic. He was also a playwright; one of his plays, Edward My Son (written with Noel Langley), became a film in 1949. He was frequently seen as a witty, erudite guest on TV talk shows, and he was the TV commercial spokesman for British Airways.

Trivia: The parents of American actor Jack Oakie had hopes that their son would enter the business world, but a spell as telephone clerk in a brokerage house convinced Oakie to look elsewhere for a career. After appearing at an amateur show staged by Wall Street executives for the Cardiac Society, Oakie was encouraged by the show's director to give acting his full attention. Oakie's professional debut was in the chorus of the 1922 George M. Cohan musical Little Nellie Kelly. Several Broadway productions later, Oakie travelled westward to try his luck in films, the first of which was Finders Keepers. Transferring without a hitch to talkies, Oakie found himself much in demand, usually playing a dimwitted braggart (with one of the best "double takes" in the business) who somehow made good and got the girl before fadeout time. By the late 1930s Oakie's career had gone into decline. The experience humbled the bombastic comedian and convinced him take a new approach to his career. After his unforgettable Mussolini take-off in Chaplin's The Great Dictator (1940), Oakie entered a new movie phase as second lead and character actor, which sustained him through many a musical comedy of the 1940s. And when called upon to do so, he could still carry a picture with finesse, as witness the 1945 fantasy That's the Spirit. Stage and TV work took up much of his time in the 1950s and 1960s, with occasional choice character parts in such films as The Rat Race (1960) and Lover Come Back (1962). Unpredictable in his likes and dislikes, Oakie was the sort of fellow who brusquely shooed away autograph seekers, but who also visited ailing comedian Stan Laurel, a man Oakie barely knew, to brighten up Stan's hospital stay at a time when some of Laurel's "close" pals didn't want to show up. Just before his death, Jack Oakie committed his memories to a sometimes fanciful but always entertaining biography, Jack Oakie's Double Takes, which was published posthumously by Jack's widow, actress Victoria Horne.

Trivia: Raft spent his childhood in the tough Hell's Kitchen area of New York, then left home at 13. He went on to be a prizefighter, ballroom dancer, and taxi-driver, meanwhile maintaining close contacts with New York's gangster underworld. He eventually made it to Broadway, then went to Hollywood in the late '20s. At first considered a Valentino-like romantic lead, Raft soon discovered his forte in gangster roles. He was the actor most responsible for creating the '30s cinema image of gangster-as-hero, particularly after his portrayal of coin-flipping Guido Rinaldo in Scarface (1932). He was highly successful for almost two decades, but then bad casting diminished his popularity. By the early '50s he was acting in European films in a vain attempt to regain critical respect, but he was unsuccessful. He starred in the mid-'50s TV series "I Am the Law," a failure that seriously hurt his financial status. In 1959 a Havana casino he owned was closed by the Castro government, further damaging his revenues; meanwhile, he owed a great deal to the U.S. government in back taxes. In the mid '60s he was denied entry into England (where he managed a high-class gambling club) due to his underworld associations. Most of his film appearances after 1960 were cameos. He was portrayed by Ray Danton in the biopic The George Raft Story (1961).

Trivia: Born Luis Antonio Damaso De Alonso, this Mexican-born Latin lover appeared in silent and sound films. He trained to be a bullfighter (his father's profession) but gave it up for acting after his family moved to the U.S. At age 13 he debuted onscreen as an extra; he made his screen acting debut seven years later in The Plastic Age (1925). In the mid '20s he frequently played dashing romantic leading men, notably in Camille (1927) opposite Norma Talmadge. In the sound era he played leads and then later character and supporting roles in many films; he continued working until the late '70s. He was married to actress Constance Bennett.

Trivia: Born in New York City to parents of Cuban extraction, American actor Cesar Romero studied for his craft at Collegiate and Riverdale Country schools. After a brief career as a ballroom dancer, the tall, sleekly handsome Romero made his Broadway debut in the 1927 production Lady Do. He received several Hollywood offers after his appearance in the Preston Sturges play Strictly Dishonorable, but didn't step before the cameras until 1933 for his first film The Shadow Laughs (later biographies would claim that Romero's movie bow was in The Thin Man [1934], in which he was typecast as a callow gigolo). Long associated with 20th Century-Fox, Romero occasionally cashed in on his heritage to play Latin Lover types, but was more at home with characters of indeterminate nationalities, usually playing breezily comic second leads (whenever Romero received third billing, chances were he wasn't going to get the girl). Cheerfully plunging into the Hollywood social scene, Romero became one of the community's most eligible bachelors; while linked romantically with many top female stars, he chose never to marry, insisting to his dying day that he had no regrets over his confirmed bachelorhood. While he played a variety of film roles, Romero is best remembered as "The Cisco Kid" in a brief series of Fox programmers filmed between 1939 and 1940, though in truth his was a surprisingly humorless, sullen Cisco, with little of the rogueish charm that Duncan Renaldo brought to the role on television. The actor's favorite movie role, and indeed one of his best performances, was as Cortez in the 1947 20th Century-Fox spectacular The Captain From Castile. When his Fox contract ended in 1950, Romero was wealthy enough to retire, but the acting bug had never left his system; he continued to star throughout the 1950s in cheap B pictures, always giving his best no matter how seedy his surroundings. In 1953 Romero starred in a 39-week TV espionage series "Passport to Danger," which he cheerfully admitted to taking on because of a fat profits-percentage deal. TV fans of the 1960s most closely associate Romero with the role of the white-faced "Joker" on the "Batman" series. While Romero was willing to shed his inhibitions in this villainous characterization, he refused to shave his trademark moustache, compelling the makeup folks to slap the clown white over the 'stache as well (you can still see the outline in the closeups). As elegant and affluent-looking as ever, Romero signed on for the recurring role of Peter Stavros in the late-1980s nighttime soap opera "Falcon Crest." In the early 1990s, he showed up as host of a series of classic 1940s romantic films on cable's American Movie Classics. Romero died of a blood clot on New Year's Day, 1994, at the age of 86.

Trivia: Whether he was called "The Voice," "Ol' Blue Eyes," or "The Chairman of the Board," Frank Sinatra's nicknames all conveyed the adulation and respect reserved for a man who was commonly thought of as the best American popular singer of the 20th century. Sinatra's voice, whether manifested in song or spoken word, caressed the ears of many a listener for more than five decades. Sinatra's legacy -- countless songs and more than 70 films -- continue to ensure him the kind of popularity that has reached beyond the grave to elevate him past the status of mere icon to that of cultural institution.Born Francis Albert Sinatra on December 12, 1915, Sinatra grew up poor in Hoboken, NJ. After working for a newspaper, he organized the Hoboken Four, a singing group. He got his first break when he won first prize on radio's "Major Bowes Amateur Hour," and went on to perform in nightclubs and on radio. Sinatra then landed the job of vocalist with the Harry James band, and later switched to Tommy Dorsey Orchestra. It was during his tenure with Dorsey's group that Sinatra made his first two films in uncredited roles as a singer in the bands in Las Vegas Nights (1941) and Ship Ahoy (1942). In 1942, Sinatra's attempt to become a solo artist met with great success, especially in the hearts, minds, and ears of many American women and girls, who flocked to his performances with a fervor that would be replicated two decades later with the arrival of the Beatles. Soon, Sinatra was the "dream-date" idol of millions of American girls and, for several years, was enormously popular on-stage in addition to other venues, including radio, records, and nightclubs. To complement his popularity as a singer, Sinatra began acting, playing in a number of light musical films throughout the '40s. His first real acting role came in Higher and Higher (1943); other notable movies from this period in his career included Take Me out to the Ballgame (1949), co-starring Gene Kelly and Esther Williams, and On the Town, also made in 1949 and co-starring Kelly, who co-directed the picture with Stanley Donen. Sinatra suffered a career setback in 1952 when his vocal cords hemorrhaged and he was dropped by MCA, the monolithic talent agency. Having established a shaky screen career, he fought back and landed the role of Angelo Maggio in From Here to Eternity (1953) after begging Columbia for the part and then agreeing to take it for a mere 8,000 dollars. His performance won him the 1954 Best Supporting Actor Oscar and a Golden Globe, and, in the process, resuscitated his faltering career. Sinatra appeared in several more movies in the '50s, receiving a 1956 Best Actor Oscar nomination and a British Academy Award (BAFTA) for his portrayal of a drug addict in The Man with the Golden Arm (1955). In addition, he took home a Golden Globe for his performance in Pal Joey (1957). Soon Sinatra was back on top as a performer, earning the nickname "The Chairman of the Board." Sinatra continued to do frequent film work, making a screen appearance with his Rat Pack colleagues Dean Martin, Sammy Davis Jr., Peter Lawford, and Joey Bishop in Ocean's Eleven (1960). Most notably, Sinatra gave a subtle, troubled portrayal of the haunted Captain Bennett Marco in John Frankenheimer's Cold War classic The Manchurian Candidate. His last role was as an aging detective in The First Deadly Sin (1980). Sinatra also appeared on various television shows during the '80s and went on to have hit records as late as the early '90s. His four wives included actresses Ava Gardner and Mia Farrow, and he fathered actor/singers Frank Sinatra Jr. and Nancy Sinatra, as well as another daughter, Tina. Sinatra died of a heart attack on May 14, 1998, in Los Angeles. He is buried in Palm Springs, CA.

Trivia: Hollywood has seen the coming and going of many comic geniuses, but only a select few have been as universally beloved as gentle, low-key Red Skelton and his cavalcade of characters that included the clown Freddie the Freeloader, the goofy Clem Kadiddlehopper, and his seagulls Gertrude and Heathcliffe. That many of his best characters were clowns comes as no surprise for Skelton's father was a circus clown who died two months before Skelton was born Bernard Richard Skelton in Vincennes, IN. Skelton's mother was a charwoman and barely earned enough for them to get by. They were so poor that the comedian began singing for pennies on the street when he was only seven. At age ten, Skelton quit school and joined a traveling medicine show. He gained further experience on the burlesque and vaudeville circuits and on showboats. He became a standup comic in the early '30s, playing one-night gigs in small nightclubs.His big break came after he developed a mimed donut-dunking routine that led to his employment at the Paramount Theater and then to a successful radio career and a long-running show during which he developed most of his characters. Skelton made his screen debut playing Itchy Falkner in Having a Wonderful Time (1938). He billed himself as Richard "Red" Skelton. Contracted to MGM during the '40s and '50s, Skelton played character roles and the occasional lead in numerous films, many of which were musicals and comedies. In 1951, Skelton launched a variety show that would alternately air on CBS and NBC until 1971. It was there that Skelton developed his characters and gained his most devoted following. Each show would begin with Skelton holding an unlit cigar and offering a warm greeting and doing a brief monologue; it would also contain a "silent spot" in which Skelton demonstrated his mastery of pantomime. All of the characters he created on radio made regular appearances, as did a brand new one, Freddy the Freeloader, a silent clown who could be as pathetic as he was funny. Musical accompaniment was provided by David Rose and his orchestra. Rose had been with Skelton since his radio days. From the series' beginning to its end, Skelton would finish his show with a heartfelt "Good night and God Bless." Throughout the program's long, extraordinarily successful (it was never out of the Top Ten in the Nielsen ratings-run), Skelton occasionally appeared in feature films. In 1953, he played a rare dramatic role in The Clown, which was a remake of The Champ. Skelton had his final starring role in Public Pigeon No. One (1957). After that he made cameos and guest star appearances in films such Those Magnificent Men in Their Flying Machines (1965). In addition to performing, Skelton excelled at several other interests. That he was a renowned oil painter of clowns is well known, but he also designed dishes and was an expert at creating bonsai trees. Skelton also composed about 8,000 songs, including the theme for the film Made in Paris (1966). For his lifetime of contributions in entertainment he was awarded an honorary Doctorate of Literature from Emerson College of Boston, a Doctor of Human Letters from Vincennes University, and a doctorate of Theater Arts at Indiana State University. Skelton was a 33rd Degree Mason, the order's highest possible level. He also frequently contributed to children's charities. Though no longer a regular in films and television, Skelton continued performing live until his death from pneumonia at age 84.

Trivia: The son of a British army colonel, actor Ronald Squire attending Wellington College and the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art. He first appeared on stage in 1909 in a provincial production of An Englishman's Home, which was transferred to London the following year. A charter member of the Liverpool Repertory, Squire appeared in everything from Shaw to Barrie. He made his first New York appearance in 1917's Gambler's All. Turning producer in the mid 1920s, Squire continued his London career into the late '40s, and also toured in Blithe Spirit and While the Sun Shines. After his 1934 film bow, Culver settled into smug, self-important comedy roles along the lines of American actor Fred Clark. Loyal to the Mother Country, Ronald Squire made few films for US consumption; the few exceptions included No Highway in the Sky (1951) My Cousin Rachel (1952), Around the World in 80 Days and Count Your Blessings (1958) -- all Hollywood-financed films lensed in England and Europe.

Trivia: On the British stage from the age of 15, Basil Sydney first toured the U.S. in 1914, just before his army service in World War I. During the postwar years, Sydney established himself as a dependable leading man, rising to matinee idol status with the London stage hit Romance. It was this property which also launched his screen career in 1920. Though he spent most of the 1930s in America, Sydney avoided film work in Hollywood because the producers would not honor his request that he only appear in movie versions of Shakespeare and Shaw. He resettled in England in the early '40s, where he appeared in such roles as Rufio in the 1945 filmization of Shaw's Caesar and Cleopatra, Claudius in Laurence Olivier's 1948 film version of Hamlet, and Captain Smollett in Walt Disney's British-filmed Treasure Island (1950). In 1956, Basil Sydney, together with several of his fellow British thespians, played an amusing cameo in Mike Todd's all-star Around the World in 80 Days.

Trivia: Ava Gardner began her career first as a model, then as a contract player at MGM, where her gawky, unsophisticated demeanor was totally made over by the studio into an image of inaccessible glamour. Gardner toiled in tiny bit roles, finally getting a worthwhile one on loan-out to Universal in The Killers (1946). MGM was never very comfortable with the bad-girl persona she displayed so well in this film, and, thus, most of her starring appearances at her home studio were relatively sympathetic roles in The Hucksters (1947) and Show Boat (1951). Her cinema reputation as The World's Most Beautiful Animal (in the words of a '50s publicity campaign) was once again manifested in loan-out movies like Pandora and the Flying Dutchman (1951) and The Snows of Kilimanjaro (1952). MGM eventually came to terms with the elements that made Gardner popular, notably in the gutsy Mogambo (1953), in which she made an excellent partner to the equally earthy Clark Gable. Director George Cukor was much taken by Gardner and cast the actress in her best and most complex MGM role in Bhowani Junction (1956), in which she was torn not only by love but also clashing East Indian cultural values. Gardner was equally well served in The Barefoot Contessa (1954), which, in many ways, was a replay of her own rags-to-riches personal story. The actress was cast in some of her best parts during the '60s, notably in Seven Days in May and Night of the Iguana (both 1964), but the pace of her jet-setting lifestyle and increasing personal problems began to show. With roles and public appearances steadily decreasing, she died on January 25, 1990. She was married and divorced three times -- to Mickey Rooney, Frank Sinatra, and Artie Shaw.

Trivia: For almost 40 years, from the end of the 1930s to the mid-'70s, Richard Wattis enjoyed a reputation as one of England's more reliable character actors, and -- in British films, at least -- developed something akin to star power in non-starring roles. Born in 1912, as a young man he managed to avoid potential futures in both electric contracting and chartered accountancy, instead becoming an acting student in his twenties. His stage career began in the second half of the 1930s, and in between acting and sometimes producing in repertory companies, Wattis became part of that rarified group of British actors who appeared on the BBC's pre-World War II television broadcasts. He made his big-screen debut with a role in the 1939 feature A Yank at Oxford, but spent the most of the six years that followed serving in uniform. It was after World War II that Wattis came to the attention of critics, directors, and producers for his comic timing and projection, and began getting cast in the kinds of screen and stage roles for which he would ultimately become famous, as pompous, dry, deadpan authority figures, snooping civil servants, and other comical pests. Beginning with Frank Launder and Sidney Gilliat's The Happiest Days of Your Life (1950), his roles and billing got bigger, and he was cast to perfection as Manton Bassett in the "St. Trinian's" films of Launder and Gilliat. Wattis became so well liked by audiences in those kinds of parts -- as annoying government officials, in particular -- that producers would see to it, if his part was big enough, that he was mentioned on posters and lobby cards. He remained very busy in films right up until the time of his death in the mid-'70s.

Trivia: Round-faced, heavily eye-browed British character-player Ronald Adam was the son of actors Blake Adam and Mona Robin. Even while pursuing his own career, Adam had time to participate in two World Wars; he spent much of World War I as a POW, while in World War II he successfully campaigned for an officer's commission despite his age. Often seen playing stern officials, Adam made his first film, The Drum in 1938, and his last, Song of Norway, in 1970. In addition to his many stage and screen appearances, Ronald Adam was also a fairly productive playwright.

Trivia: Though often cast as a Japanese or Chinese character, LA-born actor Philip Ahn was of Korean extraction. In films from 1936, Ahn spent the war years portraying dozens of heartless Japanese spies and military officers; ironically, the actor's father was a Korean diplomat who died in a Japanese concentration camp. After the war, Ahn was occasionally permitted to play a sympathetic role, minus stereotypical accent and mannerisms; cast as a lab technician in 1950's The Big Hangover, he has almost as much screen time as nominal star Van Johnson. One of his most substantial roles was as Chinese businessman Po Chang, foster father of young Caucasian tycoon Frank Garlund (Charles Quinlivan) on the brief 1960 TV weekly The Garlund Touch. At the time of his death from lung cancer at age 66, Philip Ahn was best known to American TV addicts as Master Kan on the TV series Kung Fu.

Trivia: Onscreen from 1912, Australian-born Frank Baker was the brother of that country's foremost silent-screen action hero, Snowy Baker. Like Snowy, Frank settled in Hollywood in the 1920s and embarked on a long career as a stuntman and bit player. Rarely onscreen for more than minutes, Baker later portrayed Major Martling in the 1935 serial The New Adventures of Tarzan, George Davis in Clark Gable's Parnell (1937), Lord Dunstable in That Forsyte Woman (1949), and even General Robert E. Lee in Run of the Arrow (1957). Retiring in the mid-'60s, Frank Baker spent his final years at the Motion Picture Country House and Hospital. He died in 1980 at the age of 88.

Trivia: Originally aiming for a military career, London-born Patrick Cargill attended Sandhurst, then spent several years as an officer in the Indian Army. Upon his return to England, Cargill shifted his sights toward the stage, making his London theatrical debut in the 1953 revue High Spirits. In films from 1952, Cargill is most fondly remembered by 1960s moviegoers as the prickly Scotland Yard investigator in the Beatles' Help! (1965) and as the gentleman's gentleman with "consummation on the brain" in Chaplin's A Countess From Hong Kong (1967). He also helped launch the chucklesome Carry On film series by co-writing Ring for Catty, the novel upon which Carry On, Nurse (1958) was based. An inescapable presence on British television, Patrick Cargill co-produced the comedy series Ooh La La and starred in Father Dear Father (1968-1973, 1977) and The Many Wives of Patrick (1977-1978).

Trivia: Amapola Del Vando appeared in many Hollywood films between the 1930s and late 1960s. A native of Spain, she immigrated to California at age nine and started out working in local theaters during the late '20s. After appearing in a few films during the early '30s, Del Vando also began working for Central Casting where she was instrumental in promoting Latino actors. Later she became a technical adviser and specialist in Latin American music for the major studios. During the 1950s Del Vando appeared in a few television shows ranging from I Love Lucy to Fiesta Kitchen.

Trivia: In Hollywood from 1941, British actor Leslie Dennison played scores of military officers, secret service agents, and Scotland Yard detectives, often merely as part of the wartime ambience but well remembered for playing the detective tracking down Bela Lugosi's ghoul in The Return of the Vampire and as Alan-a-Dale in Bandits of Sherwood Forest (1946). Denison, who also did voice-over work, retired in the '60s.

Trivia: A former stockbroker, British actor Walter Fitzgerald was in his late 20s when he began his theatrical training at RADA. Fitzgerald made his professional stage bow in 1922 and his first film appearance in 1930. His best-remembered movie roles include Simon Fury in Blanche Fury (1946), Dr. Fenton in The Fallen Idol (1949) and Squire Trelawny in Treasure Island (1950). Walter Fitzgerald made his final film appearance in the opening scenes of Damn the Defiant (1961), as the admiral who listens to--and then disregards--ship's captain Alec Guinness's complaints about maritime cruelty.

Trivia: In films from 1932, American actor/stunt man Chuck Hamilton was a handy fellow to have around in slapstick comedies, tense cop melodramas and swashbucklers. Hamilton showed up in the faintly fascistic law-and-order epic Beast of the City (1932), the picaresque Harold Lloyd comedy Professor Beware (1938), and the flamboyant Errol Flynn adventure Against All Flags (1952). When not doubling for the leading players, he could be seen in minor roles as policemen, reporters, chauffeurs, stevedores and hoodlum. From time to time, Chuck Hamilton showed up in Native American garb, as he did in DeMille's Northwest Mounted Police (1940).

Trivia: In films from 1934, chubby Welsh character actor Roddy Hughes seemed like a Dickens character come to life. Accordingly, Hughes appeared as Short in The Old Curiosity Shop (1934), Tim Linkinwatter in Nicholas Nickelby (1947) and Old Fezziweg in the 1951 Alastair Sim version of A Christmas Carol. He also proved an eminently deflatable authority figure in low comedies of the "Old Mother Riley" variety. In his sixties, Roddy Hughes tended to play phlegmatic old-school-tie clubmen in such films as Around the World in 80 Days (1956) and The Sea Wife (1957).

Trivia: One of the busiest members of Hollywood's British colony, actor Walter Kingsford inaugurated his stage career in London. Seldom a leading man (he wasn't tall enough), the august Kingsford provided support for such theatrical giants as John Barrymore, Ethel Barrymore, and Fay Bainter. His first American film was 1934's The Pursuit of Happiness, a Revolutionary-era comedy in which Kingsford had appeared on Broadway. Most of the actor's film characters were unsympathetic; he had the air of a disgraced aristocrat who'd been caught misappropriating trust funds or selling government secrets. Often appearing in brief, uncredited roles, Kingsford enjoyed good billing and steady work as Dr. Walter Carew, the snobbish, ultra-conservative head of Blair General Hospital in MGM's Dr. Kildare series. As Hollywood began turning out fewer and fewer films in the '50s, Walter Kingsford secured steady work in television: In the pilot film of Amos 'n' Andy, Kingsford has the first line in the first scene as a rare-coin assessor.

Trivia: A stage actor from 1906, Frederick Leister was well into his fifties when he made his first screen appearance in 1937. For the next quarter century, the distinguished, orotund Leister enlivened British films with his own brand of unassailable dignity. His more memorable screen assignments include the "downsized" auditor-turned-racetrack cashier in The Hundred Pound Window (1943) and the snobbish patriarch in 1945's The Randolph Family (aka Dear Octopus). Frederick Leister's last screen role was the judge in the prologue of the 1961 suspense melodrama The Naked Edge.

Trivia: Though he was the personification of the cruel, calculating Japanese military officer in many a wartime propaganda film, Richard Loo was actually born in Hawaii of Chinese parents. The holder of a Business Studies degree from the University of California, Loo ran a successful importing firm until his assets were wiped out in the 1929 stock market crash. He launched his acting career in 1931, first in California-based stock companies, then in films, beginning with Frank Capra's Dirigible (1931). His movie career picked up momentum after the attack on Pearl Harbor, with villainous roles in such films as Wake Island (1942) and The Purple Heart (1944). In all, Richard Loo toted up some 200 film appearances in his five-decade career.

Trivia: Born John Mulhall, he sang with a traveling show as a boy and later toured in stock and vaudeville. He moved to New York to study art, and while there appeared in several silent films. In 1914 he moved to Los Angeles and soon became a leading man in films, starring in numerous productions opposite major actresses; for a time he earned $3000 a week, but lost his considerable fortune in the first year of the Great Depression. In the early sound era he continued to play leads for a time, mostly in routine films and serials; in the mid '30s he moved into supporting roles, and continued a fairly steady screen career through the mid '40s, after which he appeared in only a few more films.

Trivia: The son of British stage actor Willard Shine, Bill Shine first trod the boards at age six, playing the Stork in the pantomime Princess Posey. At fifteen, Shine made his first London stage appearance, and at eighteen was seen in the first of many films, Under the Greenwood Tree. Most often cast as an upper-class twit, Shine has also shown up in many a one-scene movie assignment as various reporters, commissioners, ticket sellers and executives. While seldom rising above the featured cast in films, Bill Shine achieved star status in the role of Conn in the 1950 production The Shaugran.

Trivia: Beginning his stage career in his native Holland in 1927, Phil Van Zandt moved to America shortly afterward, continuing to make theatrical appearances into the late '30s. From his first film (Those High Gray Walls [1939]) onward, the versatile Van Zandt was typed as "everyday" characters whenever he chose not to wear his mustache; with the 'stache, however, his face took on a sinister shade, and he found himself playing such cinematic reprobates as evil caliphs, shady attorneys, and heartless Nazis. Because of deliberately shadowy photography, the audience barely saw Van Zandt's face at all in one of his best roles, as the Henry Luce-like magazine editor Rawlston in Orson Welles' Citizen Kane (1941). Though many of his feature-film assignments were bits, Van Zandt was permitted generous screen time in his many appearances in two-reel comedies. Beginning with the Gus Schilling/Dick Lane vehicle Pardon My Terror (1946), Van Zandt was a fixture at the Columbia Pictures short subjects unit, usually playing crooks and mad scientists at odds with the Three Stooges. He established his own acting school in Hollywood in the 1950s, though this and other ventures ultimately failed. Philip Van Zandt died of a drug overdose at the age of 54.

Trivia: American actor Dick Wessel had a face like a Mack Truck bulldog and a screen personality to match. After several years on stage, Wessel began showing up in Hollywood extra roles around 1933; he is fleetingly visible in the Marx Brothers' Duck Soup (1933), Laurel and Hardy's Bonnie Scotland (1935), and the Columbia "screwball" comedy She Couldn't Take It (1935). The size of his roles increased in the '40s; perhaps his best feature-film showing was as the eponymous bald-domed master criminal in Dick Tracy vs. Cueball (1946). He was a valuable member of Columbia Pictures' short subject stock company, playing a variety of bank robbers, wrestlers, jealous husbands and lazy brother-in-laws. Among his more memorable 2-reel appearances were as lovestruck boxer "Chopper" in The Three Stooges' Fright Night (1947), Andy Clyde's invention-happy brother-in-law in Eight Ball Andy (1948), and Hugh Herbert's overly sensitive strongman neighbor in Hot Heir (1947). Wessel was shown to good (if unbilled) advantage as a handlebar-mustached railroad engineer in the superspectacular Around the World in 80 Days (1956), and had a regular role as Carney on the 1959 TV adventure series Riverboat. Dick Wessel's farewell screen appearance was as a harried delivery man in Disney's The Ugly Dachshund (1965).