Trivia: One of the cinema's most enduring actors, Henry Fonda enjoyed a highly successful career spanning close to a half century. Most often in association with director John Ford, he starred in many of the finest films of Hollywood's golden era. Born May 16, 1905, in Grand Island, NE, Fonda majored in journalism in college, and worked as an office boy before pursuing an interest in acting. He began his amateur career with the Omaha Community Playhouse, often performing with the mother of Marlon Brando. Upon becoming a professional performer in 1928, Fonda traveled east, tenuring with the Provincetown Players before signing on with the University Players Guild, a New England-based ensemble including up-and-comers like James Stewart, Margaret Sullavan, and Joshua Logan. Fonda's first Broadway appearance followed with 1929's The Game of Life and Death. He also worked in stock, and even served as a set designer. In 1931, Fonda and Sullavan were married, and the following year he appeared in I Loved You Wednesday. The couple divorced in 1933, and Fonda's big break soon followed in New Faces of '34. A leading role in The Farmer Takes a Wife was next, and when 20th Century Fox bought the film rights, they recruited him to reprise his performance opposite Janet Gaynor, resulting in his 1935 screen debut. Fonda and Gaynor were slated to reunite in the follow-up, Way Down East, but when she fell ill Rochelle Hudson stepped in. In 1936 he starred in The Trail of the Lonesome Pine (the first outdoor Technicolor production), the performance which forever defined his onscreen persona: Intense, insistent, and unflappable, he was also extraordinarily adaptable, and so virtually impossible to miscast. He next co-starred with Sullavan in The Moon's Our Home, followed by Wings of the Morning (another Technicolor milestone, this one the first British feature of its kind). For the great Fritz Lang, Fonda starred in 1937's You Only Live Once, and the following year co-starred with Bette Davis in William Wyler's much-celebrated Jezebel. His next critical success came as the titular Young Mr. Lincoln, a 1939 biopic directed by John Ford. The film was not a commercial sensation, but soon after Fonda and Ford reunited for Drums Along the Mohawk, a tremendous success. Ford then tapped him to star as Tom Joad in the 1940 adaptation of John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath, a casting decision which even Steinbeck himself wholeheartedly supported. However, 20th Century Fox's Darryl Zanuck wanted Tyrone Power for the role, and only agreed to assign Fonda if the actor signed a long-term contract. Fonda signed, and Zanuck vowed to make him the studio's top star -- it didn't happen, however, and despite the success of The Grapes of Wrath (for which he scored his first Best Actor Academy Award nomination), his tenure at Fox was largely unhappy and unproductive.The best of Fonda's follow-up vehicles was the 1941 Preston Sturges comedy The Lady Eve, made at Paramount on loan from Fox; his co-star, Barbara Stanwyck, also appeared with him in You Belong to Me. After a number of disappointing projects, Fox finally assigned him to a classic, William Wellman's 1943 Western The Ox-Bow Incident. Studio executives reportedly hated the film, however, until it won a number of awards. After starring in The Immortal Sergeant, Fonda joined the navy to battle in World War II. Upon his return, he still owed Fox three films, beginning with Ford's great 1946 Western My Darling Clementine. At RKO he starred in 1947's The Long Night, followed by Fox's Daisy Kenyon. Again at RKO, he headlined Ford's The Fugitive, finally fulfilling his studio obligations with Ford's Fort Apache, his first unsympathetic character. Fonda refused to sign a new contract and effectively left film work for the next seven years, returning to Broadway for lengthy runs in Mister Roberts, Point of No Return, and The Caine Mutiny Court Martial. Outside of cameo roles in a handful of pictures, Fonda did not fully return to films until he agreed to reprise his performance in the 1955 screen adaptation of Mister Roberts, one of the year's biggest hits. Clearly, he had been greatly missed during his stage exile, and offers flooded in. First there was 1956's War and Peace, followed by Alfred Hitchcock's The Wrong Man. In 1957, Fonda produced as well as starred in the Sidney Lumet classic Twelve Angry Men, but despite a flurry of critical acclaim the film was a financial disaster. In 1958, after reteaming with Lumet on Stage Struck, Fonda returned to Broadway to star in Two for the Seesaw, and over the years to come he alternated between projects on the screen (The Man Who Understood Women, Advise and Consent, The Longest Day) with work on-stage (Silent Night, Lonely Night, Critic's Choice, Gift of Time). From 1959 to 1961, he also starred in a well-received television series, The Deputy.By the mid-'60s, Fonda's frequent absences from the cinema had severely hampered his ability to carry a film. Of his many pictures from the period, only 1965's The Battle of the Bulge performed respectably at the box office. After 1967's Welcome to Hard Times also met with audience resistance, Fonda returned to television to star in the Western Stranger on the Run. After appearing in the 1968 Don Siegel thriller Madigan, he next starred opposite Lucille Ball in Yours, Mine and Ours, a well-received comedy. Fonda next filmed Sergio Leone's Once Upon a Time in the West; while regarded as a classic, the actor so loathed the experience that he refused to ever discuss the project again. With his old friend, James Stewart, he starred in The Cheyenne Social Club before agreeing to a second TV series, the police drama Smith, in 1971. That same year, he was cast to appear as Paul Newman's father in Sometimes a Great Notion.After a pair of TV movies, 1973's The Red Pony and The Alpha Stone, Fonda began a series of European productions which included the disastrous Ash Wednesday and Il Mio Nome è Nessuno. He did not fare much better upon returning to Hollywood; after rejecting Network (the role which won Peter Finch an Oscar), Fonda instead appeared in the Sensurround war epic Midway, followed by The Great Smokey Roadblock. More TV projects followed, including the miniseries Roots -- The Next Generation. Between 1978 and 1979, he also appeared in three consecutive disaster movies: The Swarm, City on Fire, and Meteor. Better received was Billy Wilder's 1978 film Fedora. A year later, he also co-starred with his son, Peter Fonda, in Wanda Nevada. His final project was the 1981 drama On Golden Pond, a film co-starring and initiated by his daughter, Jane Fonda; as an aging professor in the twilight of his years, he finally won the Best Actor Oscar so long due him. Sadly, Fonda was hospitalized at the time of the Oscar ceremony, and died just months later on August 12, 1982.

Trivia: A former accountant for the Gulf Oil Company, Dana Andrews made his stage debut with the prestigious Pasadena Playhouse in 1935. Signed to a joint film contract by Sam Goldwyn and 20th Century Fox in 1940, Andrews bided his time in supporting roles until the wartime shortage of leading men promoted him to stardom. His matter-of-fact, dead pan acting style was perfectly suited to such roles as the innocent lynching victim in The Ox-Bow Incident (1943) and laconic city detective Mark McPherson in Laura (1944). For reasons unknown, Andrews often found himself cast as aviators: he was the downed bomber pilot in The Purple Heart (1944), the ex-flyboy who has trouble adjusting to civilian life in The Best Years of Our Lives (1946), and the foredoomed airliner skipper in Zero Hour (1957), The Crowded Sky (1960), and Airport 1975 (1974). His limited acting range proved a drawback in the 1950s, and by the next decade he was largely confined to character roles, albeit good ones. From 1963 to 1965, Andrews was president of the Screen Actors Guild, where among other things he bemoaned Hollywood's obsession with nudity and sordidness (little suspecting that the worst was yet to come!). An ongoing drinking problem seriously curtailed his capability to perform, and on a couple of occasions nearly cost him his life on the highway; in 1972, he went public with his alcoholism in a series of well-distributed public service announcements, designed to encourage other chronic drinkers to seek professional help. In addition to his film work, Andrews also starred or co-starred in several TV series (Bright Promise, American Girls, and Falcon Crest) and essayed such TV-movie roles as General George C. Marshall in Ike (1979). Dana Andrews made his final screen appearance in Peter Bogdanovich's Saint Jack.

Trivia: Earthy and at times exuberant, Anthony Quinn was one of Hollywood's more colorful personalities. Though he played many important roles over the course of his 60-year career, Quinn's signature character was Zorba, a zesty Greek peasant who teaches a stuffy British writer to find joy in the subtle intricacies of everyday life in Zorba the Greek (1964), which Quinn also produced. The role won him an Oscar nomination and he reprised variations of Zorba in several subsequent roles. Although he made a convincing Greek, Quinn was actually of Irish-Mexican extraction. He was born Antonio Rudolfo Oaxaca Quinn in Chihuahua, Mexico, on April 21, 1915, but raised in the U.S. Before becoming an actor, Quinn had been a prizefighter and a painter. He launched his film career playing character roles in several 1936 films, including Parole (his debut) and The Milky Way, after a brief stint in the theater. In 1937, he married director Cecil B. DeMille's daughter Katherine De Mille, but this did nothing to further his career and Quinn remained relegated to playing "ethnic" villains in Paramount films through the 1940s. By 1947, he was a veteran of over 50 films and had played everything from Indians, Mafia dons, Hawaiian chiefs, Chinese guerrillas, and comical Arab sheiks, but he was still not a major star. So he returned to the theater, where for three years he found success on Broadway in such roles as Stanley Kowalski in A Streetcar Named Desire. Upon his return to the screen in the early '50s, Quinn was cast in a series of B-adventures like Mask of the Avenger (1951). He got one of his big breaks playing opposite Marlon Brando in Elia Kazan's Viva Zapata! (1952). His supporting role as Zapata's brother won Quinn his first Oscar and after that, Quinn was given larger roles in a variety of features. He went to Italy in 1953 and appeared in several films, turning in one of his best performances as a dim-witted, thuggish, and volatile strongman in Federico Fellini's La Strada (1954). Quinn won his second Best Supporting Actor Oscar portraying the painter Gaugin in Vincente Minnelli's Lust for Life (1956). The following year, he received another Oscar nomination for George Cukor's Wild Is the Wind. During the '50s, Quinn specialized in tough, macho roles, but as the decade ended, he allowed his age to show. His formerly trim physique filled out, his hair grayed, and his once smooth, swarthy face weathered into an appealing series of crags and crinkles. His careworn demeanor made him an ideal ex-boxer in Requiem for a Heavyweight and a natural for the villainous Bedouin he played in Lawrence of Arabia (both 1962). The success of Zorba the Greek in 1964 was the highwater mark of Quinn's career during the '60s -- it offered him another Oscar nomination -- and as the decade progressed, the quality of his film work noticeably diminished. The 1970s offered little change and Quinn became known as a ham, albeit a well-respected one. In 1971, he starred in the short-lived television drama Man in the City. His subsequent television appearances were sporadic, though in 1994, he became a semi-regular guest (playing Zeus) on the syndicated Hercules series. Though his film career slowed considerably during the 1990s, Quinn continued to work steadily, appearing in films as diverse as Jungle Fever (1991), Last Action Hero (1993), and A Walk in the Clouds (1995). In his personal life, Quinn proved as volatile and passionate as his screen persona. He divorced his wife Katherine, with whom he had three children, in 1956. The following year he embarked on a tempestuous 31-year marriage to costume designer Iolanda Quinn. The union crumbled in 1993 when Quinn had an affair with his secretary that resulted in a baby; the two shared a second child in 1996. In total, Quinn has fathered 13 children and has had three known mistresses. He and Iolanda engaged in a public and very bitter divorce in 1997 in which she and one of Quinn's sons, Danny Quinn, alleged that the actor had severely beaten and abused Iolanda for many years. Quinn denied the allegations, claiming that his ex-wife was lying in order to win a larger settlement and part of Quinn's priceless art collection. When not acting or engaging in well-publicized court battles, Quinn continued to paint and became a well-known artist. He also wrote and co-wrote two memoirs, The Original Sin (1972) and One Man Tango (1997). In the latter, Quinn is candid and apologetic about some of his past's darker moments. Shortly after completing his final film role in Avenging Angelo (2001), Anthony Quinn died of respiratory failure in Boston, MA. He was 86.

Trivia: Like her contemporaries Lynn Bari and Veda Ann Borg, blonde actress Mary Beth Hughes seldom rose above "starlet" or "second-echelon star" status, even though she worked steadily and enjoyed a loyal fan following. Encouraged to pursue a theatrical career by her grandmother, a onetime actress, Hughes went from stage to films in 1938. From 1940 through 1943, Hughes was part of the "B" stable at 20th Century-Fox, playing both good and bad girls in the popular Michael Shayne series with Lloyd Nolan, and going through the usual "other woman" paces in films like Orchestra Wives (1942). She is billed second in the moody western The Ox-Bow Incident (1943), but her role is utterly expendable; in fact, she has fewer lines than George Meeker, the unbilled actor playing her husband. While her film career never really went anywhere, Hughes remained in the public eye through her many cheesecake photos in movie-oriented magazines of the era. In the mid-1950s, Hughes gave up films in favor of work as a nightclub singer/musician and television actress; she was often cast as nagging wife Clara Appleby on TV's The Red Skelton Show, possibly because she was one of the few actresses whom Skelton couldn't break up. Mary Beth Hughes briefly returned to filmmaking in the mid-1970s, playing character roles in such drive-in fare as The Working Girls (1974) and How's Your Love Life? (1977).

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

Trivia: One of the most prolific actors in television history -- with starring roles in 11 different television series under his belt -- Harry Morgan is most closely identified with his portrayal of Colonel Sherman Potter on M*A*S*H (1975-83). But his credits go back to the 1930s, embracing theater and film as well as the small screen. Born Harry Bratsberg in Detroit, Michigan, in 1915, he made his Broadway debut with the Group Theatre in 1937 as Pepper White in the original production of Golden Boy, alongside Luther Adler, Phoebe Brand, Howard Da Silva, Lee J. Cobb, Morris Carnovsky, Frances Farmer, Elia Kazan, John Garfield, Martin Ritt, and Roman Bohnen. His subsequence stage appearances between 1939 and 1941 comprised a string of failures -- most notably Clifford Odets' Night Music, directed by Harold Clurman; and Robert Ardrey's Thunder Rock, directed by Elia Kazan -- before he turned to film work. Changing his name to Henry Morgan, he appeared in small roles in The Shores of Tripoli, The Loves of Edgar Allen Poe, and Orchestra Wives, all from 1942. Over the next two years, he essayed supporting roles in everything from war movies to Westerns, where he showed an ability to dominate the screen with his voice and his eyes. Speaking softly, Morgan could quietly command a scene, even working alongside Henry Fonda in the most important of those early pictures, The Ox-Bow Incident (1943). Over the years following World War II, Morgan played ever-larger roles marked by their deceptive intensity. And even when he couldn't use his voice in a role, such as that of the mute and sinister Bill Womack in The Big Clock (1948), he was still able to make his presence felt in every one of his scenes with his eyes and his body movements. He was in a lot of important pictures during this period, including major studio productions such as All My Sons (1948), Down to the Sea in Ships (1949), and Madame Bovary (1949). He also appeared in independent films, most notably The Well (1951) and High Noon (1952). One of the more important of those roles was his portrayal of a professional killer in Appointment With Danger (1951), in which he worked alongside fellow actor Jack Webb for the first time. Morgan also passed through the stock company of director Anthony Mann, working in a brace of notable outdoor pictures across the 1950s. It was during the mid-1950s, as he began making regular appearances on television, that he was obliged to change his professional name to Harry Morgan (and, sometimes, Henry "Harry" Morgan), owing to confusion with another performer named Henry Morgan, who had already established himself on the small screen and done some movie acting as well. And it was at this time that Morgan, now billed as Harry Morgan, got his first successful television series, December Bride, which ran for five seasons and yielded a spin-off, Pete and Gladys. Morgan continued to appear in movies, increasingly in wry, comedic roles, most notably Support Your Local Sheriff (1969), but it was the small screen where his activity was concentrated throughout the 1960s.In 1966, Jack Webb, who had become an actor, director, and producer over the previous 15 years, decided to revive the series Dragnet and brought Morgan aboard to play the partner of Webb's Sgt. Joe Friday. As Officer Bill Gannon, Morgan provided a wonderful foil for the deadpan, no-nonsense Friday, emphasizing the natural flair for comic eccentricity that Morgan had shown across the previous 25 years. The series ran for four seasons, and Morgan reprised the role in the 1987 Dragnet feature film. He remained a busy actor going into the 1970s, when true stardom beckoned unexpectedly. In 1974, word got out that McLean Stevenson was planning on leaving the successful series M*A*S*H, and the producers were in the market for a replacement in the role of the military hospital's commanding officer. Morgan did a one-shot appearance as a comically deranged commanding general and earned the spot as Stevenson's replacement. Morgan worked periodically in the two decades following the series' cancellation in 1983, before retiring after 1999. He died in 2011 at age 96.

Trivia: American actress Jane Darwell was the daughter of a Missouri railroad executive. Despite her father's disapproval, she spent most of her youth acting in circuses, opera troupes and stock companies, making her film debut in 1912. Even in her early thirties, Darwell specialized in formidable "grande dame" roles, usually society matrons or strict maiden aunts. Making an easy transition to talking pictures, Darwell worked primarily in small character parts (notably as governesses and housekeepers in the films of Shirley Temple) until 1939, when her role as the James Brothers' mother in Jesse James began a new career direction--now she was most often cast as indomitable frontierswomen, unbending in the face of hardship and adversity. It was this quality that led Darwell to be cast in her favorite role as Ma Joad in The Grapes of Wrath (1940), for which she won an Oscar. Darwell continued to work until illness crept upon her in the late 1950s. Even so, Darwell managed to essay a handful of memorable parts on TV and in movies into the 1960s; her last film role was as the "Bird Woman" in Disney's Mary Poppins (1964).

Trivia: Harry Davenport was descended from a long and illustrious line of stage actors who could trace their heritage to famed 18th-century Irish thespian Jack Johnson. Davenport made his own stage bow at the age of five, racking up a list of theatrical credits that eventually would fill two pages of Equity magazine. He started his film career at the age of 48, co-starring with Rose Tapley as "Mr. and Mrs. Jarr" in a series of silent comedy shorts. He also directed several silent features in the pre-World War I era. Most of his film activity was in the sound era, with such rich characterizations as Dr. Mead in Gone With the Wind (1939) and Louis XI in The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1939) to his credit. He also essayed a few leading film roles, notably as a lovable hermit in the 1946 PRC programmer The Enchanted Forest. At the time of his final screen performance in Frank Capra's Riding High (1950), much was made in the press of the fact that this film represented Davenport's seventy-eighth year in show business. Married twice, Harry Davenport was the father of actors Arthur Rankin and Dorothy Davenport.

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

Trivia: After attending City College of New York, Marc Lawrence studied acting with Eva Le Gallienne. Among the many stage productions in which Lawrence appeared were Sour Mountain and Waiting for Lefty. First signed for films by Columbia in 1932, Lawrence's scarred face and growly voice made him indispensable for gangster parts, though he generally displayed an intelligence far higher than the average goon or gunman. Though usually limited to villainy, Lawrence was not always confined to urban roles, as witness his successful portrayals of a mountaineer in Shepherd of the Hills (1942) and a western saddle tramp in The Ox-Bow Incident (1943). The actor's own favorite role was Corio in 1947's Captain from Castille. During the House UnAmerican Activities Committee investigations of the 1950s, Lawrence reluctantly offered testimony implicating several of his coworkers as alleged communist sympathizers; the experience virtually destroyed his American career and left him embittered and defensive (he would always refuse to be interviewed by historians of the "Blacklist" era, referring to them as "ghouls"). Lawrence was forced to seek out work in Europe, where he'd emerge in the early 1960s as a director of crime films and spaghetti westerns. Back in the U.S. in the 1980s, Lawrence made several TV appearances and showed up in such films as The Big Easy (1987) and Newsies (1992), typecast once more as gangsters. In 1993, Lawrence privately published his memoirs, in which for the first time in print he addressed his dark days as an HUAC "friendly witness."

Trivia: New Jersey-born Victor Kilian drove a laundry truck before joining a New England repertory company when he was 18. His first break on Broadway came with the original 1924 production of Eugene O'Neill's Desire Under the Elms. After making a few scattered appearance in East Coast-produced films, Kilian launched his Hollywood career in 1936. Often cast as a brutish villain (notably "Pap" in the 1939 version of Huckleberry Finn) Kilian duked it out with some of moviedom's most famous leading men; while participating in a fight scene with John Wayne in 1942's Reap the Wild Wind, Kilian suffered an injury that resulted in the loss of an eye. Victimized by the Blacklist in the 1950s, Kilian returned to TV and film work in the 1970s. Fans of the TV serial satire Mary Hartman Mary Hartman will have a hard time forgetting Kilian as Mary's grandpa, a.k.a. "The Fernwood Flasher." In March of 1979, Victor Kilian was murdered in his apartment by intruders, a scant few days after a similar incident which culminated in the death of another veteran character actor, Charles Wagenheim.

Trivia: When American actor Paul Hurst became the comedy sidekick in the Monte Hale western series at Republic in the early '50s, he came by the work naturally; he had been born and bred on California's Miller and Lux Ranch. While in his teens, Hurst attained his first theatre job as a scenery painter in San Francisco, making his on-stage debut at age 19. In 1911, Hurst ventured into western films, wearing three hats as a writer, director and actor. He worked ceaselessly in character roles throughout the '20s, '30s and '40s, most often in comedy parts as dim-witted police officers and muscle-headed athletes. He also showed up in leading roles in 2-reelers, notably as a punchdrunk trainer in Columbia's Glove Slingers series. On at least two memorable occasions, Hurst eschewed comedy for villainy: in 1943's The Ox-Bow Incident, he's the lynch-mob member who ghoulishly reminds the victims what's in store for them by grabbing his collar and making choking sounds. And in Gone with the Wind, Hurst is Hell personified as the Yankee deserter and would-be rapist whom Scarlet O'Hara (Vivien Leigh) shoots in the face at point blank range. Paul Hurst kept busy into the early '50s; at the age of 65, he ended his career and his life in suicide.

Trivia: Born in the Arizona Territory to Mexican parents, Chris-Pin Martin developed a reputation as a laughgetter at an early age. He made his earliest film appearance in 1911, playing an Indian. During his heyday of the 1930s and 1940s, Martin earned his salary perpetuating a stereotype that nowadays would be the ultimate in political incorrectness: the lazy, dull-witted Hispanic comic foil. Chris-Pin Martin appeared in several Cisco Kid programmers, playing sidekick Pancho (sometimes named Gorditor) to such screen Ciscos as Warner Baxter, Cesar Romero, Gilbert Roland and Duncan Renaldo.

Trivia: Tall, handsome, wavy-haired character actor George Meeker was never in the upper echelons of Hollywood stardom; off-camera, however, he was highly regarded and much sought after -- as an expert polo player. Meeker switched from stage to screen in the silent era, playing leading roles in such important features as Four Sons (1928). In talkies, Meeker seemingly took every part that was tossed his way, from full secondary leads to one-line bits. In his larger roles, Meeker was frequently cast as a caddish "other man," a spineless wastrel who might be (but seldom was) the mystery killer, or the respectable businessman who's actually a conniving crook. He showed up frequently in the films of Humphrey Bogart, most memorably as the white-suited gent in Casablanca (1942) who turns to Bogart after the arrest of Peter Lorre and sneers "When they come to get me, Rick, I hope you'll be more of a help." Other significant George Meeker credits include the role of Robespierre in Marie Antoinette (1938) (cut down to a sniff and a single line -- "Guilty!" -- in the final release print), the supercilious dude who wins Mary Beth Hughes away from Henry Fonda in The Ox-Bow Incident (1943), and the smarmy would-be bridegroom of heiress Dorothy Lamour in The Road to Rio (1947).

Trivia: With her scrawny body and puckered-persimmon face, Almira Sessions successfully pursued a six-decade acting career. Born into a socially prominent Washington family, Sessions almost immediately followed her "coming out" as a debutante with her first stage appearance, playing a sultan's wizened, ugly wife in The Sultan of Sulu. She briefly sang comic songs in cabarets before pursuing a New York stage career. In 1940, she traveled to Hollywood to play Cobina of Brenda and Cobina, an uproariously if cruelly caricatured brace of man-hungry spinsters who appeared regularly on Bob Hope's radio show (Elvia Allman was Brenda). Sessions' first film was the 1940 Judy Garland vehicle Little Nellie Kelly. Until her retirement in 1971, she played dozens of housekeepers, gossips, landladies, schoolmarms, maiden aunts, and retirement-home residents. Usually appearing in bits and minor roles, Almira Sessions was always given a few moments to shine onscreen, notably as an outraged in-law in Chaplin's Monsieur Verdoux (1947), the flustered high school teacher in the observatory scene in Rebel Without a Cause (1955), and the hero's inquisitive neighbor in Willard (1971).

Trivia: A kindergarten teacher in her native Cleveland, Margaret Hamilton began her acting career there in community theatre and with the prestigious Cleveland Playhouse. In 1933, Hamilton was invited to repeat her stage role of the sarcastic daughter-in-law in the Broadway play Another Language for the MGM film version. Though only in her early '30s, the gloriously unpretty Hamilton subsequently played dozens of busybodies, gossips, old maids, and housekeepers in films bearing such titles as Hat, Coat and Glove (1934), Way Down East (1935) and These Three (1936). She proved an excellent foil for such comedians as W.C. Fields (in 1940's My Little Chickadee) and Harold Lloyd (in 1946's The Sin of Harold Diddlebock). Her most famous film assignment was the dual role of Elvira Gulch and the Wicked Witch of the West in the imperishable 1939 gem The Wizard of Oz -- a role which nearly cost her her life when her green copper makeup caught fire during one of her "disappearance" scenes. She played several smaller but no less impressive roles at 20th Century-Fox, including the first-scene plot motivator in People Will Talk (1951) and Carrie Nation in Wabash Avenue (1950). She alternated her film work with stage assignments in the 1950s and 1960s, frequently returning to her home base at the Cleveland Playhouse. Achieving "icon" status in the 1970s by virtue of The Wizard of Oz, Hamilton sometimes found herself being cast for "camp" effect (e.g. Robert Altman's Brewster McCloud), but also enjoyed some of her best-ever parts, including the role of professorial occult expert in the 1972 TV movie The Night Strangler. Despite her menacing demeanor, Hamilton was a gentle, soft-spoken woman; she was especially fond of children, and showed up regularly on such PBS programs as Sesame Street and Mister Rogers. In the 1970s, Margaret Hamilton added another sharply etched portrayal to her gallery of characters as general-store proprietor Cora on a popular series of Maxwell House coffee commercials -- one of which ran during a telecast of The Wizard of Oz!

Trivia: Dick Rich's film career extended from 1937 to 1957. Rich spent much of the early '40s as a 20th Century Fox contractee, playing such roles as the fatally impulsive Deputy Mapes in The Ox-Bow Incident. Later in the decade, he showed up in MGM's short-subject product, playing brutish bad guys in everything from the Crime Does Not Pay series to the Our Gang one-reelers. He retained his association with MGM into the 1950s, essaying small roles in such films as Seven Brides for Seven Brothers (1954) and Jailhouse Rock (1957). Even after closing out his film career, Dick Rich remained active on television, making five appearances on the prime-time Western Gunsmoke.

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

Trivia: Actor Stanley Andrews moved from the stage to the movies in the mid 1930s, where at first he was typed in steadfast, authoritative roles. The tall, mustachioed Adrews became familiar to regular moviegoers in a string of performances as ship's captains, doctors, executives, military officials and construction supervisors. By the early 1950s, Andrews had broadened his range to include grizzled old western prospectors and ageing sheriffs. This led to his most lasting contribution to the entertainment world: the role of the Old Ranger on the long-running syndicated TV series Death Valley Days. Beginning in 1952, Andrews introduced each DVD episode, doing double duty as commercial pitchman for 20 Mule Team Borax; he also became a goodwill ambassador for the program and its sponsor, showing up at county fairs, supermarket openings and charity telethons. Stanley Andrews continued to portray the Old Ranger until 1963, when the US Borax company decided to alter its corporate image with a younger spokesperson -- a 51-year-old "sprout" named Ronald Reagan.

Trivia: Oklahoma-born William Benedict is fondly remembered by fans for his shock of unkempt blond hair; ironically, he lost his first job at a bank because he refused to use a comb. Stagestruck at an early age, the skinny, ever-boyish Benedict took dancing lessons while in high school and appeared in amateur theatricals. After phoning a 20th Century-Fox talent scout, the 17-year-old Benedict hitchhiked to Hollywood and won a film contract (if for no other reason than nerve and persistence). He appeared in the first of his many office-boy roles in his debut film, $10 Raise (1935), and spent the next four decades popping up in bits as bellboys, caddies, hillbillies, delivery men and Western Union messengers. He portrayed so many of the latter, in fact, that Western Union paid tribute to Benedict by giving him his own official uniform -- an honor bestowed on only one other actor, Benedict's lifelong friend Frank Coghlan Jr. (the two actors costarred in the 1941 serial The Adventures of Captain Marvel). In 1939, Benedict played a bicycle messenger in the Little Tough Guys film Call a Messenger; four years later he appeared with another branch of the Little Tough Guys clan, the East Side Kids, in Ghosts on the Loose. He remained with the Kids as "Skinny," then stayed on when the East Siders transformed into the Bowery Boys in 1946. As "Whitey," Benedict was the oldest member of the team, a fact occasionally alluded to in the dialogue -- though Leo Gorcey, two months younger than Benedict, was firmly in charge of the bunch. Benedict left the Bowery Boys in 1951, gradually easing out of acting; for several years, he worked as an assistant designer of miniature sets for movie special-effects sequences. He returned to performing in the 1960s, still playing the newsboy and delivery man roles he'd done as a youth. Film and TV fans of the 1970s might recall Billy Benedict as a world-weary croupier in the early scenes of The Sting (1973), and in the regular role of Toby the Informant on the 1975 TV series The Blue Knight.

Trivia: Hollywood has had its share of actors who specialized in horror films and horrific roles, but none had so horrific or tragic a personal story as Rondo Hatton. A fixture in B-movies of varying quality from 1943 until his death early in 1946, Hatton was a victim of the glandular disorder Acromegalia. Often caused by a benign brain tumor, the disease results in the pituitary gland running out of control and secreting excess growth hormone. In victims who have not yet reached adulthood, the result is giantism (as in the case of Andre Rene Roussimoff, better known as Andre the Giant); in adults, the effect is an enlarging of the forehead, mouth, jaw, fingers, joints, and feet, and a coarsening of the skin. Ironically, Hatton had been considered an extremely handsome young man in high school, according to those who knew him in his early life. Press releases in the mid-'40s claimed that his condition was partly the result of his having been gassed on a battlefield during World War I. He came to Hollywood around the time that sound came in, his features already showing some signs of distortion. His earliest known film appearance was in Hell Harbor, a South Seas action-adventure yarn filmed in 1930 by director Henry King, as a burly waterfront tavern keeper -- some of that footage later reappeared in several subsequent movies, including Wolves of the Sea. His work up until the mid-'40s was primarily in silent bit parts, although his appearance in the 1944 Bob Hope comedy The Princess and the Pirate offered a glimpse of the direction his career would soon take as he portrayed "the gorilla man." In 1944, Hatton, his features now completely distorted by his worsening disease, signed with Universal Pictures and made his first appearance for the studio in the Sherlock Holmes movie The Pearl of Death, portraying a mute, hulking back-breaker called the Hoxton Creeper working in the service of arch-villain Giles Conover (Miles Mander). His performance, mute and menacing, was the most memorable part of the movie (one of the better entries in the Basil Rathbone/Nigel Bruce Sherlock Holmes series) and over the next year and a half, Hatton repeated his role in four more Universal films. These were all prominent supporting roles except for the last of them, The Brute Man, where he was the star. Ironically, its plot, about a handsome college athlete scarred and turned into a monster by an accident, was almost a burlesque of Hatton's own life story. Alas, by the time it was completed, Hatton's health was failing and it wasn't until eight months after his death that the movie opened in theaters; by then, a nervous Universal had sold the film to the Poverty Row outfit Producers Releasing Corporation rather than issue it directly. Rondo Hatton was never more than a cult horror star in his own time, but during the 1960s and 1970s, with the booming interest in Universal's classic horror movies, he began attracting the interest of scholars and horror movie buffs.

Trivia: Wizened character actor Paul E. Burns tended to play mousey professional men in contemporary films and unshaven layabouts in period pictures. Bob Hope fans will recall Burns' con brio portrayal of boozy desert rat Ebeneezer Hawkins in Hope's Son of Paleface (1952), perhaps his best screen role. The general run of Burns' screen assignments can be summed up by two roles at both ends of his career spectrum: he played "Loafer" in D.W. Griffith's Abraham Lincoln (1930) and "Bum in Park" in Barefoot in the Park (1967).

Trivia: Although a strong presence in the (still extant) Oscar Micheaux drama Symbol of the Unconquered (1920), gaunt-looking African-American performer Leigh Whipper had to wait 23 years for a second screen role truly worthy of his not inconsiderable talents, that of the preacher Sparks in The Ox-Bow Incident. Whipper, who has been credited with being the first black member of Actors Equity and the founder of the Negro Actors Guild, had done much better on Broadway, where he starred in the 1929 revival of Porgy, wrote and starred in the short-lived Yeah Man (1932), and originated the part of Crooks in Of Mice and Men (1937), a role that he re-created in the 1939 screen version. Arguably the finest African-American actor of his generation -- and one of the finest performers in the history of American theater -- Leigh Whipper was awarded the prestigious Oscar Micheaux Award in 1974. In the 1990s, The Philadelphia International Film Festival instituted an award in his honor.

Trivia: Australian-born actor George Lloyd spoke without a trace of accent of any kind in his hundreds of movie appearances. Lloyd's mashed-in mug and caterpillar eyebrows were put to best use in roles calling for roughneck sarcasm. He was often seen as second-string gangsters, escape-prone convicts, acerbic garage mechanics and (especially) temperamental moving men. George Lloyd's film career began in the mid-1930s and petered out by the beginning of the TV era.

Trivia: Comic actor George Chandler entered the University of Illinois after World War I service, paying for his education by playing in an orchestra. He continued moonlighting in the entertainment world in the early 1920s, working as an insurance salesman by day and performing at night. By the end of the decade he was a seasoned vaudevillian, touring with a one-man-band act called "George Chandler, the Musical Nut." He began making films in 1927, appearing almost exclusively in comedies; perhaps his best-known appearance of the early 1930s was as W.C.Fields' prodigal son Chester in the 1932 2-reeler The Fatal Glass of Beer. Chandler became something of a good-luck charm for director William Wellman, who cast the actor in comedy bits in many of his films; Wellman reserved a juicy supporting role for Chandler as Ginger Rogers' no-good husband in Roxie Hart (1942). In all, Chandler made some 330 movie appearances. In the early 1950s, Chandler served two years as president of the Screen Actors Guild, ruffling the hair of many prestigious stars and producers with his strongly held political views. From 1958 through 1959, George Chandler was featured as Uncle Petrie on the Lassie TV series, and in 1961 he starred in a CBS sitcom that he'd helped develop, Ichabod and Me.

Trivia: From his first film, Don Quickshot of the Rio Grande (1923), to his last, Fancy Pants (1950) American supporting player Hank Bell specialized in westerns. While still relatively young, Bell adopted the "grizzled old desert rat" characterization, that sustained him throughout his career, simply by removing his teeth and growing a thick, inverted handlebar mustache. Though occasionally given lines to speak, he was usually consigned to "atmosphere roles:" if you'll look closely at the jury in the Three Stooges 2-reeler Disorder in the Court, you'll see Bell in the top row on the left, making swimming motions when Curly douses the jurors with a fire hose. A fixture of "B"-pictures, Hank Bell occasionally surfaced in "A" films like Abraham Lincoln (1930), Trail of the Lonesome Pine (1936), The Plainsman (1936), Geronimo (1939) and My Little Chickadee (1940).

Trivia: A New Year's baby, actor Willard Robertson grew up in Texas, where he became a successful lawyer. Reportedly he was offered an opportunity to become a federal judge, but he turned it down because of a sudden interest in acting. Since he looked the part of a prosperous attorney, however, Robertson frequently found himself playing a member of the very profession he'd left behind. The actor also showed up as sheriffs, mayors, city councilmen and stern father figures during his quarter-centry film career. While Preston Sturges buffs pinpoint Robertson's flamboyant defense attorney in Remember the Night? (1940) as his best performance, the actor is equally fondly recalled for his portrayal of Jackie Cooper's outwardly stern, inwardly loving father in Skippy (1931) and Sooky (1931). By the mid '40s, Willard Robertson's roles were usually of one scene's duration or less, but he still carried plenty of authority, notably as the sheriff in the grim The Ox-Bow Incident (1943); Robertson's icy remonstration to a lynch mob, "The Lord better have mercy on you...you won't get it from me," still chills the blood after fifty years.

Trivia: A former jockey and vaudeville comic, Walter Robbins reportedly entered films with Vitagraph as early as 1911. By the 1920s, he was playing supporting roles in low-budget Westerns and continued to appear in films until at least 1943. Rarely billed, Robbins became one of Hollywood's best "teamsters," driving teams of horses in numerous low-budget Westerns as well as major releases such as Saratoga (1937) and The Ox-Bow Incident (1943).

Trivia: A burly, curly haired supporting actor from Sweden, Minnesota-reared C.E. Anderson acted under several monikers, including Charles E. Anderson, Charles Anderson, Cap Anderson, and Captain C.E. Anderson. Having earned the title of captain in the Spanish-American war, Anderson, according to his official studio bio, "entered films in 191 through demand for military men in pictures at that time." The hulking actor (reportedly 6'3" and weighing in at 225 pounds) enjoyed his greatest success in the 1920s, where he menaced such Western stars as Tom Mix and Jack Hoxie. Rarely billed in the sound era, Anderson appeared in such major Westerns as The Ox-Bow Incident (1942) and My Darling Clementine (1946).

Trivia: In films from at least 1918, when he billed himself "Texas Cooper," this busy bit-part player/B-Western extra looked for all the world like "Buffalo" Bill Cody, whom he finally got to play in his last film, the Lash LaRue Western King of the Bullwhip (1951). Hardly ever receiving onscreen billing, Cooper appeared in literally hundreds of B-Westerns -- genre historian Les Adams has counted 116 appearances in Westerns and serials in the sound era alone -- -- usually just hanging around in the background. If a group of spectators gathered to watch a shootout in the street, a saloon girl's performance, or a skirmish outside the sheriff's office, Cooper was almost always included, easily spotted by his long white hair and florid mustache. Few knew him by name, but almost every kid in the audience cheered when he appeared. His wife Nona was reputedly one of the Munchkins in The Wizard of Oz.

Trivia: Moonfaced American actor Frank Orth came to films from vaudeville, where he was usually co-billed with wife Ann Codee. Orth and Codee continued appearing together in a series of two-reel comedies in the early '30s, before he graduated to features with 1935's The Unwelcome Stranger. From that point until his retirement in 1959, Orth usually found himself behind a counter in his film appearances, playing scores of pharmacists, grocery clerks and bartenders. He had a semi-recurring role as Mike Ryan in MGM's Dr. Kildare series, and was featured as a long-suffering small town cop in Warners' Nancy Drew films. Orth was an apparent favorite of the casting department at 20th Century-Fox, where he received many of his credited screen roles. From 1951 through 1953, Frank Orth was costarred as Lieutenant Farraday on the Boston Blackie TV series.