Trivia: The quintessential tough guy, Humphrey Bogart remains one of Hollywood's most enduring legends and one of the most beloved stars of all time. While a major celebrity during his own lifetime, Bogart's appeal has grown almost exponentially in the years following his death, and his inimitable onscreen persona -- hard-bitten, cynical, and enigmatic -- continues to cast a monumental shadow over the motion picture landscape. Sensitive yet masculine, cavalier yet heroic, his ambiguities and contradictions combined to create a larger-than-life image which remains the archetype of the contemporary antihero. Humphrey DeForest Bogart was born December 25, 1899, in New York City. Upon expulsion from Andover, Massachusetts' Phillips Academy, he joined the U.S. Navy during World War I, serving as a ship's gunner. While roughhousing on the vessel's wooden stairway, he tripped and fell, a splinter becoming lodged in his upper lip; the result was a scar as well as partial paralysis of the lip, resulting in the tight-set mouth and lisp that became among his most distinctive onscreen qualities. (For years his injuries were attributed to wounds suffered in battle, although the splinter story is now more commonly accepted.) After the war, Bogart returned to New York to accept a position on Broadway as a theatrical manager; beginning in 1920, he also started appearing onstage, but earned little notice within the performing community. In the late '20s, Bogart followed a few actor friends who had decided to relocate to Hollywood. He made his first film appearance opposite Helen Hayes in the 1928 short The Dancing Town, followed by the 1930 feature Up the River, which cast him as a hard-bitten prisoner. Warner Bros. soon signed him to a 550-dollars-a-week contract, and over the next five years he appeared in dozens of motion pictures, emerging as the perfect heavy in films like 1936's The Petrified Forest, 1937's Dead End, and 1939's The Roaring Twenties. The 1939 tearjerker Dark Victory, on the other hand, offered Bogart the opportunity to break out of his gangster stereotype, and he delivered with a strong performance indicative of his true range and depth as a performer. The year 1941 proved to be Bogart's breakthrough year, as his recent success brought him to the attention of Raoul Walsh for the acclaimed High Sierra. He was then recruited by first-time director John Huston, who cast him in the adaptation of Dashiell Hammett's The Maltese Falcon; as gumshoe Sam Spade, Bogart enjoyed one of his most legendary roles, achieving true stardom and establishing the archetype for all hardboiled heroes to follow. A year later he accepted a lead in Michael Curtiz's romantic drama Casablanca. The end result was one of the most beloved films in the Hollywood canon, garnering Bogart his first Academy Award nomination as well as an Oscar win in the Best Picture category. Bogart then teamed with director Howard Hawks for his 1944 adaptation of Ernest Hemingway's To Have and Have Not, appearing for the first time opposite actress Lauren Bacall. Their onscreen chemistry was electric, and by the time they reunited two years later in Hawks' masterful film noir The Big Sleep, they had also married in real life. Subsequent pairings in 1947's Dark Passage and 1948's Key Largo cemented the Bogey and Bacall pairing as one of the screen's most legendary romances. His other key relationship remained his frequent collaboration with Huston, who helmed 1948's superb The Treasure of the Sierra Madre. In Huston, Bogart found a director sympathetic to his tough-as-nails persona who was also capable of subverting that image. He often cast the actor against type, to stunning effect; under Huston's sure hand, he won his lone Oscar in 1951's The African Queen.Bogart's other pivotal director of the period was Nicholas Ray, who helmed 1949's Knock on Any Door and 1950's brilliant In a Lonely Place for the star's production company Santana. After reuniting with Huston in 1953's Beat the Devil, Bogart mounted three wildly different back-to-back 1954 efforts -- Joseph L. Mankiewicz's tearful The Barefoot Contessa, Billy Wilder's romantic comedy Sabrina, and Edward Dmytryk's historical drama The Caine Mutiny -- which revealed new, unseen dimensions to his talents. His subsequent work was similarly diffuse, ranging in tone from the grim 1955 thriller The Desperate Hours to the comedy We're No Angels. After completing the 1956 boxing drama The Harder They Fall, Bogart was forced to undergo cancer surgery and died in his sleep on January 14, 1957.

Trivia: London-born actress/director/screenwriter Ida Lupino came from a family of performers. She played small parts in Hollywood films through the 1930s until she starred opposite Humphrey Bogart in High Sierra (1941), which led to bigger roles in films of the '40s. Early on, she appeared in Peter Ibbetson (1935), Anything Goes (1936), Artists and Models (1937), The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (1939), and The Light That Failed (1939), among others. Later, she appeared in Ladies in Retirement (1941), The Sea Wolf (1941), Life Begins at Eight-Thirty (1942), and Forever and a Day (1943), and continued performing on into the 1960s, but not in major films. Starting with Not Wanted (1949), which she also co-wrote, she became the only female movie director of her time. She specialized in dramatic and suspense films, including Never Fear (1949), The Hitch-Hiker (1953), The Bigamist (1953), and the comedy The Trouble with Angels (1966). She also directed episodes of many television series, including The Untouchables and The Fugitive.

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: Ann Sheridan was born Clara Lou Sheridan, the name under which she was billed in 1934 and part of 1935. At 18 she won a "Search for Beauty" contest, and was rewarded with a bit part in a film by that name (1934). Signed to a contract, she appeared in small roles in more than 20 films throughout the next two years. She changed her first name and, in 1936, switched studios to Warner Bros., which launched a publicity campaign hyping her as the sexy "Oomph Girl." Sheridan went on to a very busy career in better roles, usually cast as a wise, practical girl; her work in King's Row (1942) best demonstrated her acting ability and opened the door to a wider variety of parts. She remained popular and busy through the early '50s, when available roles began drying up for her; by the mid '50s her screen career was over. She later starred in the TV soap opera "Another World" and on "live" TV dramatic shows, and also worked in stock. At the time of her death from cancer she was starring in the TV series Pistols 'n' Petticoats. She was married three times: to actors Edward Norris, George Brent, and Scott McKay.

Trivia: A former vocalist with the Ted Weems Orchestra, Gale Page was signed to a Warner Bros. contract in 1938. Most of her roles were nondescript leading ladies in such films as Crime School (1938) and Indianapolis Speedway (1939). She was given better career breaks in Four Daughters (1938), in which she and the three Lane sisters (Rosemary, Priscilla, and Lola) played the musically gifted offspring of Claude Rains, and in Knute Rockne, All-American (1940), as Rockne's wife. Gale Page retired from films in 1949, emerging from private life to make one last appearance in 1954's About Mrs. Leslie.

Trivia: Wisconsinite John Litel was a graduate of the University of Pennsylvania. When World War I broke out in Europe, Litel didn't feel like waiting until America became officially involved and thus joined the French army, serving valiantly for three years. Returning to America, Litel studied at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts and entered into the peripatetic world of touring stock companies. His first film was the 1929 talkie The Sleeping Porch, which starred top-hatted comedian Raymond Griffith. He settled in Hollywood for keeps in 1937, spending the next three decades portraying a vast array of lawyers, judges, corporate criminals, military officers, and even a lead or two. Litel was a regular in two separate "B"-picture series, playing the respective fathers of Bonita Granville and James Lydon in the Nancy Drew and Henry Aldrich series. On television, John Litel was appropriately ulcerated as the boss of Bob Cummings on the 1953 sitcom My Hero.

Trivia: Educated at California's Harvard Military academy and USC, Roscoe Karns was acting from age 15 with Marjorie Rambeau's stock company. By 1922, he was playing leads at LA's Morosco theatre, which led to film work at the Christie comedy studios. He showed up in several silent features, including the historic part-talkie The Jazz Singer (1927) and the very first Academy Award winner, Wings (1927). In the early talkie era, Karns returned to the stage, then made a movie comeback playing fast-lipped reporters and press agents, most often at Columbia studios. He was awarded strong supporting roles in such Columbias as It Happened One Night (1934) ("Shapely's my name, and shapely's the way I like 'em"), Twentieth Century (1934) (working with his idol, John Barrymore) and His Girl Friday (1939); he also starred in a brace of Columbia 2-reelers, Black Eyes and Blues and Half Shot at Sunrise (both 1941). His film assignments dwindling in the late 1940s, Karns wrote a letter to the DuMont TV network, asking if they had any work handy. The result was a five-year starring stint on Rocky King, Detective, one of the most popular weekly series of the early 1950s. Karns' last TV assignment was the role of the crusty Admiral Walter Shafer on the Jackie Cooper sitcom Hennessey (1959-62). Roscoe Karns was the father of actor/recording executive Todd Karns, who starred in TV's first filmed comedy series, Jackson and Jill (1949).

Trivia: New Jersey-born Henry O'Neill was a year into his college education when he dropped out to join a traveling theatrical troupe. His career interrupted by WWI, O'Neill returned to the stage in 1919, where his prematurely grey hair and dignified demeanor assured him authoritative roles as lawyers, doctors, and business executives (though his first stage success was as the rough-and-tumble Paddy in Eugene O'Neill's The Hairy Ape). In films from 1933, O'Neill spent the better part of his movie career at Warner Bros. and MGM, usually playing parts requiring kindliness and understanding, but he was equally as effective in villainous assignments. Age and illness required Henry O'Neill to cut down on his film commitments in the 1950s, though he frequently showed up on the many TV anthology series of the era.

Trivia: Average in looks but above average in talent, New York native George Tobias launched his acting career at his hometown's Pasadena Playhouse. He then spent several years with the Provincetown Players before moving on to Broadway and, ultimately, Hollywood. Entering films in 1939, Tobias' career shifted into first when he was signed by Warner Bros., where he played everything from good-hearted truck drivers to shifty-eyed bandits. Tobias achieved international fame in the 1960s by virtue of his weekly appearances as long-suffering neighbor Abner Kravitz on the TV sitcom Bewitched; he'd previously been a regular on the obscure Canadian adventure series Hudson's Bay. Though he frequently portrayed browbeaten husbands, George Tobias was a lifelong bachelor.

Trivia: American actor Charles Halton was forced to quit school at age 14 to help support his family. When his boss learned that young Halton was interested in the arts, he financed the boy's training at the New York Academy of Dramatic Arts. For the next three decades, Halton appeared in every aspect of "live" performing; in the '20s, he became a special favorite of playwright George S. Kaufman, who cast Halton in one of his most famous roles as movie mogul Herman Glogauer in Once in a Lifetime. Appearing in Dodsworth on Broadway with Walter Huston, Halton was brought to Hollywood to recreate his role in the film version. Though he'd occasionally return to the stage, Halton put down roots in Hollywood, where his rimless spectacles and snapping-turtle features enabled him to play innumerable "nemesis" roles. He could usually be seen as a grasping attorney, a rent-increasing landlord or a dictatorial office manager. While many of these characterizations were two-dimensional, Halton was capable of portraying believable human beings with the help of the right director; such a director was Ernst Lubitsch, who cast Halton as the long-suffered Polish stage manager in To Be or Not to Be (1942). Alfred Hitchcock likewise drew a flesh and blood portrayal from Halton, casting the actor as the small-town court clerk who reveals that Robert Montgomery and Carole Lombard are not legally married in Mr. and Mrs. Smith (1942). Charles Halton retired from Hollywood after completing his work on Friendly Persuasion in 1956; he died three years later of hepatitis.

Trivia: American actress Joyce Compton was born into a traveling family; she received her schooling bit by bit in classrooms from Texas to Toronto. In the company of her parents, Compton made the Hollywood casting-office rounds in the mid-1920s, finally landing a role in What Fools Men (1925). In 1926 she was designated a Wampas Baby Star (a publicity ploy created by the Western Association of Motion Picture Advertisers), in the company of such future luminaries as Mary Astor, Joan Crawford, Dolores Del Rio, Janet Gaynor and Fay Wray. Compton's career never quite reached the heights of these contemporaries; small and delicate, she was advised by her parents not to go out for large roles for fear of endangering her health. When talkies came in, she cornered the market in squeaky-voiced dumb blondes, often applying her natural Southern accent for full comic effect. She worked frequently in two-reel comedies with such funsters as Clark and McCullough, Walter Catlett and Charley Chase. Compton's feature appearances were confined to supporting roles as waitresses, good-time girls and ditzy Southern belles. Occasionally a big part would come her way, and she'd make the most of it; her best role of the 1930s was nightclub singer Dixie Belle Lee in The Awful Truth, whose striptease number "Gone with the Wind" is later hilariously imitated by the film's star, Irene Dunne. Among Compton's favorite films was Sky Murder (1939) an MGM "Nick Carter" mystery in which she played a deceptively dim-witted female private eye. She married once, very briefly, in 1956; she lived in her well-appointed California home with her parents until their deaths. Retiring from the screen in 1961, Compton worked from time to time as a private nurse, preferring to spend her spare hours painting and designing clothes.

Trivia: Trained for an industrial career but sidetracked into showbiz by a few seasons at Pasadena Playhouse, "Mr. Average Man" utility player John Ridgely spent most of his Hollywood years at Warner Bros. From his first film Submarine D-1 (1937), Ridgely was one of the studio's most reliable and ubiquitous supporting players, portraying first-reel murder victims, last-reel "surprise" killers, best friends, policemen, day laborers, and military officers. One of his largest film roles was the commanding officer in Howard Hawks' Air Force (1943), in which he was billed over the more famous John Garfield. His indeterminate features could also convey menace, as witness his portrayal of blackmailing gangsters Eddie Mars in Hawks' The Big Sleep (1946). Freelancing after 1948, John Ridgely continued to essay general-purpose parts until he left films in 1953; thereafter he worked in summer-theater productions and television until his death from a heart attack at the age of 58.

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: When actor Charles C. Wilson wasn't portraying a police chief onscreen, he was likely to be cast as a newspaper editor. The definitive Wilson performance in this vein was as Joe Gordon, reporter Clark Gable's apoplectic city editor in the 1934 multi-award winner It Happened One Night. Like many easily typecast actors, Wilson was usually consigned to one-scene (and often one-line) bits, making the sort of instant impression that hundreds of scripted words could not adequately convey. Shortly before his death in 1948, Charles C. Wilson could once more be seen at the editor's desk of a big-city newspaper -- this time as the boss of those erstwhile newshounds the Three Stooges in the two-reel comedy Crime on Their Hands (1948).

Trivia: In films from 1935, American actor Norman Willis was almost invariably cast as a villain. With his eternal half-sneer, pencil mustache, and nasal, insinuating voice, Willis was a convincing menace in Westerns, serials, and detective melodramas. One of his most typical roles was Spider Webb (no kidding) in the 1937 serial Tim Tyler's Luck. He also showed up in several short subjects, including the Three Stooges' Out West (1947), Our Gang's Little Miss Pinkerton (1943), and a handful of MGM's Crime Does Not Pay entries. Active until 1957, Norman Willis occasionally billed himself as Jack Norman.

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: Stocky character actor Eddy Chandler's movie career stretched from 1915 to 1947. In 1930, Chandler was afforded a large (if uncredited) role as Blondell, partner in crime of villain Ralf Harolde, in the RKO musical extravaganza Dixiana. Thereafter, he made do with bit parts, usually playing cops or military officers. His brief appearance in Frank Capra's It Happened One Night as the bus driver who begins singing "The Man on a Flying Trapeze"--and plows his bus into a ditch as a result--assured him choice cameos in all future Capra productions. Chandler can also be seen as the Hospital Sergeant in 1939's Gone with the Wind. One of Eddy Chandler's few billed roles was Lewis in Monogram's Charlie Chan in the Secret Service (1944).

Trivia: Supporting actor Pedro Regas appeared in Hollywood features for over 50 years. A native of Greece, he got his start on the stage. In film, he usually played foreigners. His brother, George Regas, is also an actor.

Trivia: American actor Frank Faylen was born into a vaudeville act; as an infant, he was carried on stage by his parents, the song-and-dance team Ruf and Clark. Traveling with his parents from one engagement to another, Faylen somehow managed to complete his education at St. Joseph's Prep School in Kirkwood, Missouri. Turning pro at age 18, Faylen worked on stage until getting a Hollywood screen test in 1936. For the next nine years, Faylen played a succession of bit and minor roles, mostly for Warner Bros.; of these minuscule parts he would later say, "If you sneezed, you missed me." Better parts came his way during a brief stay at Hal Roach Studios in 1942 and 1943, but Faylen's breakthrough came at Paramount in 1945, where he was cast as Bim, the chillingly cynical male nurse at Bellevue's alcoholic ward in the Oscar-winning The Lost Weekend. Though the part lasted all of four minutes' screen time, Faylen was so effective in this unpleasant role that he became entrenched as a sadistic bully or cool villain in his subsequent films. TV fans remember Faylen best for his more benign but still snarly role as grocery store proprietor Herbert T. Gillis on the 1959 sitcom Dobie Gillis. For the next four years, Faylen gained nationwide fame for such catch-phrases as "I was in World War II--the big one--with the good conduct medal!", and, in reference to his screen son Dobie Gillis, "I gotta kill that boy someday. I just gotta." Faylen worked sporadically in TV and films after Dobie Gillis was canceled in 1963, receiving critical plaudits for his small role as an Irish stage manager in the 1968 Barbra Streisand starrer Funny Girl. The actor also made an encore appearance as Herbert T. Gillis in a Dobie Gillis TV special of the 1970s, where his "good conduct medal" line received an ovation from the studio audience. Faylen was married to Carol Hughes, an actress best-recalled for her role as Dale Arden in the 1939 serial Flash Gordon Conquers the Universe, and was the father of another actress, also named Carol.

Trivia: Hearty character actor Ralph Sanford made his first screen appearances at the Flatbush studios of Vitaphone Pictures. From 1933 to 1937, Sanford was Vitaphone's resident Edgar Kennedy type, menacing such two-reel stars as Shemp Howard, Roscoe Ates, and even Bob Hope. He moved to Hollywood in 1937, where, after playing several bit roles, he became a semi-regular with Paramount's Pine-Thomas unit with meaty supporting roles in such films as Wildcat (1942) and The Wrecking Crew (1943). He also continued playing featured roles at other studios, usually as a dimwitted gangster or flustered desk sergeant. One of his largest assignments was in Laurel and Hardy's The Bullfighters (1945), in which he plays vengeance-seeking Richard K. Muldoon, who threatens at every opportunity to (literally) skin Stan and Ollie alive; curiously, he receives no screen credit, despite the fact that his character motivates the entire plot line. Busy throughout the 1950s, Ralph Sanford was a familiar presence on TV, playing one-shot roles on such series as Superman and Leave It to Beaver and essaying the semi-regular part of Jim "Dog" Kelly on the weekly Western Wyatt Earp (1955-1961).

Trivia: Also billed as Saul Gorse and Sol Gorss, this busy character actor/stunt man entered films in 1933. Gorss spent the better part of his career at Warner Bros., playing muscular utility roles and doubling for the studio's male stars. He forsook Hollywood for war service in 1943, then returned to films, once more cast in minor roles in westerns and crime pictures. One of Saul Gorss' most distinguished credits of the 1950s was The Thing, in which he was one of the stunt performers and coordinators.

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).

Trivia: Albert Hill Jr. was the son of stage actor Al Hill (not to be confused with the Hollywood character actor of the same name). The younger Hill's screen credits were limited to two variations on the same basic role. He was seen as Rod, one of the residents of Boys' Town (1938), then as Pete, an inmate of Boys' Reformatory (1939).

Trivia: A former boxer, Charles Sullivan turned to acting in 1925. Sullivan menaced such comedians as Harold Lloyd and Laurel and Hardy before concentrating on feature-film work. When he wasn't playing thugs (Public Enemy, 1931), he could be seen as a sailor (King Kong, 1933). Most of the time, Charles Sullivan was cast as chauffeurs, right up to his retirement in 1958.

Trivia: The brother of country/western singer Roy Acuff, actor Eddie Acuff drifted to Hollywood in the early 1930s, where he almost immediately secured day-player work at Warner Bros. studios. From his 1934 debut in Here Comes the Navy onward, Acuff showed up in film after film as reporters, photographers, delivery men, sailors, shop clerks, and the occasional western comical sidekick. Acuff's most memorable acting stint occured after actor Irving Bacon left Columbia's Blondie series. From 1946 through 1949, Eddie Acuff made nine Blondie appearances as the hapless postman who was forever being knocked down by the eternally late-for-work Dagwood Bumstead (Arthur Lake).

Trivia: A former professional baseball player, Pat Flaherty was seen in quite a few baseball pictures after his 1934 screen debut. Flaherty can be seen in roles both large and small in Death on the Diamond (1934), Pride of the Yankees (1942), It Happened in Flatbush (1942), The Stratton Story (1949, as the Western All-Stars coach), The Jackie Robinson Story (1950) and The Winning Team (1952, as legendary umpire Bill Klem). In 1948's Babe Ruth Story, Flaherty not only essayed the role of Bill Corrigan, but also served as the film's technical advisor. Outside the realm of baseball, he was usually cast in blunt, muscle-bound roles, notably Fredric March's taciturn male nurse "Cuddles" in A Star is Born (1937). One of Pat Flaherty's most unusual assignments was Wheeler and Woolsey's Off Again, On Again (1937), in which, upon finding his wife (Patricia Wilder) in a compromising position with Bert Wheeler, he doesn't pummel the hapless Wheeler as expected, but instead meekly apologizes for his wife's flirtatiousness!

Trivia: Mike Lally started in Hollywood as an assistant director in the early 1930s. Soon, however, Lally was steadily employed as a stunt man, doubling for such Warner Bros. stars as James Cagney and Pat O'Brien. He also played innumerable bit roles as reporters, court stenographers, cops and hangers-on. Active until 1982, Mike Lally was frequently seen in functionary roles on TV's Columbo.

Trivia: American actor Charles Sherlock made his first film in 1935 and his last in 1952. Limited to bit roles, Sherlock showed up as reporters, photographers, longshoremen, cabbies, and doctors. Befitting his name, he also appeared as cops in such films as My Buddy (1944), In Society (1944), and The Turning Point (1952). Charles Sherlock enjoyed a rare credited role, again as a cop, in the 1945 Charlie Chan entry The Scarlet Clue.

Trivia: Silent film star Frank Mayo was in movies as early as 1913 when he began a long association with the World Film Company of New Jersey; later he was most closely linked with Universal Pictures. Equally impressive in a dinner jacket or rugged outdoor garb, Mayo was a dependable strong-and-stalwart hero in such Hollywood films as The Brute Breaker (19), Afraid to Fight (22) and Souls for Sale (23). Toward the end of the silent era, Mayo married actress Dagmar Godowsky, whose star began ascending even as her husband's eclipsed; the marriage was annulled in 1928. Confined to bit and extra roles in the 1930s and 1940s, Frank Mayo was frequently hired by producer Jack Warner and director Cecil B. DeMille, both of whom regularly employed the faded stars of the silent years; Mayo's final appearance was in DeMille's Samson and Delilah (49).

Trivia: American actress and former first runner-up in 1938's Miss America pageant, actress Claire James appeared in several programmers during the '40s and '50s, sometimes under the pseudonym Carol Stevens.

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

Trivia: Affectionately described by film historian William K. Everson as "That lovable old wreck of a busybody," actress Vera Lewis was indeed quite lovable in person, even though most of her screen characters were sharp-tongued and spiteful in the extreme. Lewis first appeared in films in 1915, playing bits in such historical spectacles as D.W. Griffith's Birth of a Nation (1915) and Intolerance (1916) and the privately-funded Argonauts of California. By the 1920s, she was well-established in such venomous characterizations as the remonstrative stepmother in the 1926 Colleen Moore starrer Ella Cinders. She continued playing small-town snoops, gimlet-eyed landladies, irksome relatives and snobbish society doyennes well into the talkie era. Even when unbilled, Lewis was unforgettable: in 1933's King Kong, she's the outraged theater patron who mercilessly browbeats an usher upon finding out that the mighty Kong will be appearing in person instead of on film. When all is said and done, Vera Lewis was never better than when she was playing a gorgon-like mother-in-law, as witness her work as Mrs. Nesselrode in W.C. Fields' Man on the Flying Trapeze (1935) and as Andy Clyde's vituperative mom-by-marriage in the 1947 2-reeler Wife to Spare.

Trivia: American actor Frank Wilcox had intended to follow his father's footsteps in the medical profession, but financial and personal circumstances dictated a redirection of goals. He joined the Resident Theater in Kansas City in the late '20s, spending several seasons in leading man roles. In 1934, Wilcox visited his father in California, and there he became involved with further stage work, first with his own acting troupe and then with the Pasadena Playhouse. Shortly afterward, Wilcox was signed to a contract at Warner Bros., where he spent the next few years in a wide range of character parts, often cast as crooked bankers, shifty attorneys, and that old standy, the Fellow Who Doesn't Get the Girl. Historian Leslie Haliwell has suggested that Wilcox often played multiple roles in these Warners films, though existing records don't bear this out. Frank Wilcox was still working into the 1960s; his most popular latter-day role was as Mr. Brewster, the charming banker who woos and wins Cousin Pearl Bodine (Bea Benaderet) during the inaugural 1962-1963 season of TV's The Beverly Hillbillies.

Trivia: A tough-looking younger supporting player from New York, J. Anthony Hughes (the "J" stood for "Joseph") usually played reporters, cops (often on motorcycles), prison inmates, and various less-than-desirable members of the underworld. He also turned up as one of Mrs. O'Leary's sons in In Old Chicago (1937), Captain Williams in Abbott & Costello's Buck Privates (1941), and the owner of the Dirty Dog saloon in Alias Jesse James (1959), his final credited film. Hughes' death in 1970 was attributed to alcohol and barbiturate poisoning.

Trivia: Bald-domed, prominently chinned American character actor Joe Devlin was seen in bits in major films, and as a less-costly Jack Oakie type in minor pictures. Devlin usually played two-bit crooks and sarcastic tradesmen in his 1940s appearances. The actor's uncanny resemblance to Benito Mussolini resulted in numerous "shock of recognition" cameos during the war years, as well as full-fledged Mussolini imitations in two Hal Roach "streamliners," The Devil With Hitler (1942) and That Nazty Nuisance (1943). In 1950, Joe Devlin was cast as Sam Catchem in a TV series based on Chester Gould's comic-strip cop Dick Tracy.

Trivia: William Haade spent most of his movie career playing the very worst kind of bully--the kind that has the physical training to back up his bullying. His first feature-film assignment was as the arrogant, drunken professional boxer who is knocked out by bellhop Wayne Morris in Kid Galahad (37). In many of his western appearances, Haade was known to temper villainy with an unexpected sense of humor; in one Republic western, he spews forth hilarious one-liners while hacking his victims to death with a knife! William Haade also proved an excellent menace to timorous comedians like Laurel and Hardy and Abbott and Costello; in fact, his last film appearance was in Abbott and Costello Meet the Keystone Kops (55).

Trivia: Silent film leading man Jack Mower was at his most effective when cast in outgoing, athletic roles. Never a great actor, he was competent in displaying such qualities as dependability and honesty. His best known silent role was as the motorcycle cop who is spectacularly killed by reckless driver Leatrice Joy in Cecil B. DeMille's Manslaughter (1922). Talkies reduced Jack Mower to bit parts, but he was frequently given work by directors whom he'd befriended in his days of prominence; Mower's last film was John Ford's The Long Gray Line (1955).

Trivia: American jack-of-all-trades Carl Harbaugh did just about everything in motion pictures except cater the lunches on location. As an actor, Harbaugh was seen in such roles as Escamillo in the Theda Bara version of Carmen (1915). His directorial credits include the 1917 adaptation of Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter. Concentrating more and more on comedy as the twenties wore on, Harbaugh wrote scenarios and dreamed up gags for Mack Sennett, Hal Roach, Harold Lloyd, Buster Keaton, Laurel & Hardy and many others, keeping his hand in acting as a supporting player. He was famous for his tendency to rely on outlandish comedy props to get his characters in and out of trouble. Carl Harbaugh returned to acting full-time in the early 1940s.

Trivia: Muscle-bound Mexican-born character actor Max Wagner kept busy in films from 1931 to 1957. Seldom given a line to speak, Wagner showed up in innumerable small roles as thugs, sailors, bodyguards, cabbies, and moving men. In one of his better-known assignments, he played an actor pretending to be the gangster character played by Barton MacLaine in the film-within-a-film segment in Bullets or Ballots (1936). Max Wagner's thick Latino accent served him well in such brief roles as the bull-farm attendant in Laurel and Hardy's The Bullfighters (1945).

Trivia: In films from 1936, Dorothy Vaughan spent the next 14 years playing scores of bits and featured roles. Vaughan was at one time or another practically everyone's "mom" or "grandma," devoting the rest of the time to playing nurses, maids, governesses, and charwomen. In Westerns, she could be seen playing such no-nonsense matriarchs as the Commodore in Trail to San Antone (1947). From 1939 to 1942, Dorothy Vaughan was a regular in The Glove Slingers, a two-reel comedy series produced at Columbia.

Trivia: American small-part player Billy Wayne was active from 1935 to 1955. Wayne spent most of his film career at Universal, with a few side trips to Fox and Paramount. He was often cast as a chauffeur, usually an all-knowing or sarcastic one. Billy Wayne also played more than his share of cabbies, sailors, reporters, photographers, and assistant directors (vide W.C. Fields' Never Give a Sucker an Even Break).

Trivia: Actor Matt McHugh was born into a show business family, joining his parents, his brother Frank, and his sister Kitty in the family stock company as soon as he learned to talk. Matt came to Hollywood to repeat his stage role in the 1931 film adaptation of Elmer Rice's Broadway hit Street Scene. He continued to have sizeable film assignments for the next few years (notably the bourgeois Italian bridegroom Francesco in Laurel and Hardy's The Devil's Brother [1933]) before settling into bits and minor roles. A dead ringer for his more famous brother Frank McHugh, Matt projected an abrasive, sardonic screen image; as such, he was utilized in such rough-edged roles as cab drivers, bartenders and mechanics. Matt McHugh's best screen opportunities in the '40s came with his supporting roles in the 2-reel comedy output of Columbia Pictures; he appeared in the short comedies of Andy Clyde, Hugh Herbert, Walter Catlett, The Three Stooges and many others, most often cast as a lazy or caustic brother-in-law.

Trivia: Stately stage leading man Howard C. Hickman entered films through the auspices of producer Thomas H. Ince. Hickman starred as Count Ferdinand, the Messianic protagonist of Ince's Civilization (1916). He co-starred with his actress wife Bessie Barriscale in several productions before returning to the theatre. In the talkie era, he accepted innumerable featured and bit roles as doctors, judges, ministers, senators, and executives. Generations of filmgoers will remember Howard Hickman for his brief appearance as John Wilkes, father of Ashley Wilkes and father-in-law of Melanie Hamilton, in Gone with the Wind (1939).

Trivia: Virile, dignified Canadian actor Wilfred Lucas was a stage veteran when he joined the Biograph movie company in 1907. He played a variety of leading roles in the films of D.W. Griffith, including the title character in Griffith's two-reel adaptation of Enoch Arden. Occasionally turning director himself, Lucas was especially busy in this capacity at the Keystone studios of Mack Sennett. During the 1920s, Lucas played several character roles in major productions and also kept busy as a director and screenwriter. In the talkie era, Wilfred Lucas played innumerable bit parts at Warner Bros., Hal Roach Studios and Paramount; he could occasionally be seen in sizeable roles in such films as Laurel and Hardy's Pardon Us (1931) and A Chump at Oxford (1940), and director James Cruze's I Cover the Waterfront (1933).

Trivia: The son of a patent medicine manufacturer, American actor Alan Hale chose a theatrical career at a time when, according to his son Alan Hale Jr., boarding houses would post signs reading "No Dogs or Actors Allowed." Undaunted, Hale spent several years on stage after graduating from Philadelphia University, entering films as a slapstick comedian for Philly's Lubin Co. in 1911. Bolstering his acting income with odd jobs as a newspaperman and itinerant inventor (at one point he considered becoming an osteopath!), Hale finally enjoyed a measure of security as a much-in-demand character actor in the 1920s, usually as hard-hearted villains. One of his more benign roles was as Little John in Douglas Fairbanks' Robin Hood (1922), a role he would repeat opposite Errol Flynn in 1938 and John Derek in 1950. Talkies made Hale more popular than ever, especially in his many roles as Irishmen, blusterers and "best pals" for Warner Bros. Throughout his career, Hale never lost his love for inventing things, and reportedly patented or financed items as commonplace as auto brakes and as esoteric as greaseless potato chips. Alan Hale contracted pneumonia and died while working on the Warner Bros. western Montana (1950), which starred Hale's perennial screen cohort Errol Flynn.

Trivia: American vaudevillian Eddie Fetherstone (sometimes spelled Fetherston) started popping up in films around 1925. A perfect "working-stiff" type (he usually wore cap and overalls on screen), Fetherstone became a favorite of star comedian Harold Lloyd, appearing in the Lloyd talkies Movie Crazy (1932), Cat's Paw (1934) and The Milky Way (1936). Elsewhere, Fetherston played dozens of bit roles as reporters, cabbies and crooks. Larger roles came his way in such "B"'s as Republic's Sky Bandits and in the two-reel efforts of The Three Stooges, Buster Keaton and Harry Langdon at Columbia. Eddie Fetherstone can currently be seen on TV on an annual basis, playing a bank teller in Frank Capra's It's a Wonderful Life (1946).