White Heat

James Cagney (Actor) .. Arthur Cody Jarrett

Born: July 17, 1899
Died: March 30, 1986
Birthplace: New York, New York, United States

Trivia: With his raspy voice, and staccato vocal inflections James Cagney was one of the brightest stars in American cinema history. The son of an Irish father and a Norwegian mother who lived and worked in New York's Lower Eastside, Cagney did a variety of odd jobs to help support his family, including working as a waiter, and a poolroom racker, and even a female impersonator in a Yorkville revue. This humble beginning led to joining the chorus in the Broadway show Pitter-Patter, followed by a vaudeville tour with his wife Francis. By 1925, Cagney had begun to play Broadway leads; he was particularly successful in the musical Penny Arcade, which lead him to be cast in the Hollywood version, renamed Sinner's Holiday (1930). Within a year, Cagney had been signed by Warner Bros., where, in his fifth movie role, he played the ruthless gangster in Public Enemy, the 1931 film that made him a star. Cagney was a small, rather plain looking man, and had few of the external qualities usually associated with the traditional Hollywood leading man during the '30s. Yet, inside, he was a dynamo, able to project a contentious and arrogant confidence that made him the ideal Hollywood tough guy, the role in which he is best remembered. Of Cagney's energetic acting style, Will Rogers once said, "Every time I see him work, it looks to me like a bunch of firecrackers going off all at once." But Cagney was not content to simply play one type of role, and soon proved his range and versatility by appearing in musicals (Yankee Doodle Dandy [1942], for which he won an Oscar for his portrayal of George M. Cohen); Shakespearean drama (as Bottom in A Midsummer Night's Dream [1935]); and satire (as a gung-ho American businessman in One, Two, Three[1961]). Cagney even tried directing with Short Cut to Hell a remake of This Gun for Hire, but it was not a commercial success. He retired afterward -- publishing his autobiography, Cagney by Cagney in 1975 -- although continued to receive respect and adulation from his peers and the public. Fifteen years after retiring, Cagney was the first actor to receive the American Film Institute's Life Achievement Award. In 1980, he earned a similar award from Kennedy Center. And, in 1984, he received the U.S. government's highest civilian honor, the Medal of Freedom. Already suffering from diabetes, circulatory problems, and recurring strokes, Cagney's health began rapidly deteriorating in retirement. Although he had been refusing movie offers for years, his doctors finally convinced him that a little work would do him good. He made his critically acclaimed 1981 comeback playing a small, but crucial role in Milos Forman's Ragtime. This encouraged the aging actor to appear as a grumpy ex-prizefighter in a television movie Terrible Joe Moran in 1984. It was his final film; two years later, Cagney died of a heart attack on his isolated farm in upstate New York. At his funeral, longtime friend and colleague President Ronald Reagan delivered the eulogy, noting that "America lost one of her finest artists."

Virginia Mayo (Actor) .. Verna Jarrett

Born: November 30, 1920
Died: January 17, 2005

Trivia: Radiantly beautiful blonde actress Virginia Mayo was a chorus dancer when she began her film career as a bit player in 1942. She rose to face as Danny Kaye's leading lady in a series of splashy Technicolor musicals produced by Samuel Goldwyn. Though never regarded as a great actress, she was disturbingly convincing as Dana Andrews' faithless wife in Goldwyn's The Best Years of Our Lives (1946) and as James Cagney's sluttish gun moll in White Heat (1949). In the late 1940s and early 1950s, Mayo was one of the most popular female stars at Warner Bros., appearing in musicals, melodramas and westerns. Many of her characters were so outre that one wonders whether Mayo was having some sport with us: her turn as Jack Palance's paramour in The Silver Chalice (1955) and as Cleopatra in the guilty pleasure The Story of Mankind (1957) immediately come to mind. And it is Mayo who, in Warners' King Richard and the Crusaders (1955), utters the immortal high-camp line "Fight, fight, fight! That's all you ever do, Dick Plantagenet!" When her film career faltered in the 1960s, Mayo turned to stage work on the touring-company and dinner-theatre circuit; more recently, she has been a frequent interview subject on TV documentaries dealing with the old Hollywood studio system. Virginia Mayo is the widow of actor Michael O'Shea.

Edmond O'Brien (Actor) .. Hank Fallon/Vic Pardo

Born: September 10, 1915
Died: May 09, 1985
Birthplace: New York, New York, United States

Trivia: Reportedly a neighbor of Harry Houdini while growing up in the Bronx, American actor Edmond O'Brien decided to emulate Houdini by becoming a magician himself. The demonstrative skills gleaned from this experience enabled O'Brien to move into acting while attending high school. After majoring in drama at Columbia University, he made his first Broadway appearance at age 21 in Daughters of Atrus. O'Brien's mature features and deep, commanding voice allowed him to play characters far older than himself, and it looked as though he was going to become one of Broadway's premiere character actors. Yet when he was signed for film work by RKO in 1939, the studio somehow thought he was potential leading man material -- perhaps as a result of his powerful stage performance as young Marc Antony in Orson Welles' modern dress version of Julius Caesar. As Gringoire the poet in The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1939), O'Brien was a bit callow and overemphatic, but he did manage to walk off with the heroine (Maureen O'Hara) at the end of the film. O'Brien's subsequent film roles weren't quite as substantial, though he was shown to excellent comic advantage in the Moss Hart all-serviceman play Winged Victory, in a role he repeated in the 1944 film version while simultaneously serving in World War II (he was billed as "Sergeant Edmond O'Brien"). Older and stockier when he returned to Hollywood after the war, O'Brien was able to secure meaty leading parts in such "films noir" as The Killers (1946), The Web (1947) and White Heat (1949). In the classic melodrama D.O.A. (1950), O'Brien enjoyed one of the great moments in "noir" history when, as a man dying of poison, he staggered into a police station at the start of the film and gasped "I want to report a murder...mine." As one of many top-rank stars of 1954's The Barefoot Contessa, O'Brien breathed so much credibility into the stock part of a Hollywood press agent that he won an Academy Award. On radio, the actor originated the title role in the long-running insurance-investigator series "Yours Truly, Johnny Dollar" in 1950. On TV, O'Brien played a Broadway star turned private eye in the 1959 syndicated weekly "Johnny Midnight," though the producers refused to cast him unless he went on a crash vegetarian diet. Plagued by sporadic illnesses throughout his life, O'Brien suffered a heart seizure in 1961 while on location in the Arabian desert to play the Lowell Thomas counterpart in Lawrence of Arabia, compelling the studio to replace him with Arthur Kennedy. O'Brien recovered sufficiently in 1962 to take the lead in a TV lawyer series, "Sam Benedict;" another TV stint took place three years later in "The Long Hot Summer." The actor's career prospered for the next decade, but by 1975 illness had begun to encroach upon his ability to perform; he didn't yet know it, but he was in the first stages of Alzheimer's Disease. Edmond O'Brien dropped out of sight completely during the next decade, suffering the ignominity of having his "death" reported by tabloids several times during this period. The real thing mercifully claimed the tragically enfeebled O'Brien in 1985.

Margaret Wycherly (Actor) .. Ma Jarrett

Born: October 26, 1881
Died: June 06, 1956

Trivia: On-stage from 1898, British actress Margaret Wycherly toured in English repertory and American stock before making her Broadway premiere. Her biggest commercial stage success was Tobacco Road, but the role which made her a star was the low-born, smarter-than-she-seems phony spirtualist in The Thirteenth Chair, a murder mystery written for the actress by Bayard Veiller. Wycherly re-created the role in a 1919 silent film, then ten years later remade it as a talking picture. Despite the histrionics of Bela Lugosi as a police inspector, Wycherly dominated the 1929 Thirteenth Chair, playing each significant moment full-out, but without the artificiality which afflicated the rest of the cast. She remained active on stage and TV and in films (her last was Olivier's Richard III) for the rest of her life, but Margaret Wycherly would be memorable if only for two of her film appearances: As Gary Cooper's weary backwoods mother in Sergeant York (1941), for which she was Oscar-nominated, and as a far more malevolent parent, James Cagney's gangster "Ma" in White Heat. Though she was killed off midway in this film, audiences had no trouble remembering the hatchet-hard face and marrow-chilling voice of Margaret Wycherly just before the final fadeout, as Cagney blew himself up while screaming "Made it, Ma! Top of the World!"

Steve Cochran (Actor) .. Big Ed Somers

Born: May 25, 1917
Died: June 16, 1965

Trivia: The son of a California lumberman, actor Steve Cohran spent his youth in Laramie, Wyoming, where he graduated from the University of Wyoming in 1939. After learning his craft at the Barter Theatre and the Carmel (California) Shakespeare Festival, he went on to work at Detroit's Federal Theatre, and was co-starred in the touring companies of Without Love and My Sister Eileen before his Broadway debut in the eight-performance flop Hickory Stick. During the war, Cochran directed Army camp shows. From 1945 through 1948, he was under contract to Sam Goldwyn, mostly playing secondary roles as gangsters. He left Hollywood to co-star with Mae West in Catherine Was Great and Diamond Lil; perhaps as a reward for not being acted off the stage by the formidable West, Cochran was signed by Warner Bros., where from 1949 through 1952 he was seen in rugged leading roles. In 1953, Cochran formed his own production company, Robert Alexander Productions, but he would not be seen in another film until 1956's Come Next Spring, which he produced for Republic Studios. He then headed for Europe, where he was given a starring assignment in Michelangelo Antonioni's The Outcry. In 1965, after several years of unimpressive movie and TV appearances, Cochran revived his production company and headed for Central and South America to scout locations. He hired three women, ages 14 through 25, to work as assistants, then headed for Costa Rica aboard his forty-foot yacht. On June 25, 1965, the yacht drifted into Port Champerico, Guatemala; on board were the three very distraught women--and the body of Steve Cochran, who had died some ten days earlier of a lung affection. Steve Cochran's last film project, Tell Me in the Sunlight (which he had produced, directed, written, scored and starred in back in 1964), was reedited and released posthumously.

John Archer (Actor) .. Phillip Evans

Born: May 08, 1915

Wally Cassel (Actor) .. Giovanni Cotton Valetti

Fred Clark (Actor) .. Daniel Winston

Born: March 09, 1914
Died: December 05, 1968

Trivia: American actor Fred Clark embarked upon his lifelong career immediately upon graduation from Stanford University. With his lantern jaw, bald pate and ulcerated disposition, Clark knew he'd never be a leading man and wisely opted for character work. After several years on stage, during which time he was briefly married to musical comedy actress Benay Venuta, Clark made his movie debut in Ride the Pink Horse (1947), playing one of his few out-and-out villains. The actor's knowing portrayal of a callous movie producer in Sunset Boulevard (1949) led to his being typecast as blunt, sometimes shady executives. Clark's widest public recognition occurred in 1951 when he was cast as next-door neighbor Harry Morton on TV's Burns and Allen Show; when Clark insisted upon a larger salary, producer-star George Burns literally replaced him on the air with actor Larry Keating. Dividing his time between films and television for the rest of his career, Clark earned latter-day fame in the 1960s as star of a series of regionally distributed potato chip commercials. Though most of his fans prefer to remember the disappointing Otto Preminger farce Skiddoo (1968) as Fred Clark's screen farewell, the truth is that Clark's last performance was in I Sailed to Tahiti with an All-Girl Crew (1969).

Ford Rainey (Actor) .. Zuckie Hommell

Born: August 08, 1908
Died: July 25, 2005
Birthplace: Mountain Home, Idaho

Trivia: In films since 1949's White Heat, American actor Ford Rainey most often played judges, doctors and police officials. Rainey's weekly TV roles included small-town newspaper editor Lloyd Ramsey in Window on Main Street (1961), research director Dr. Barnett in Search (1972) James Barrett in The Manhunter (1974) and Jim in The Bionic Woman (1975). Undoubtedly his most rewarding TV-series assignment was The Richard Boone Show (1963), in which, as a member of Boone's "repertory company," he was allowed to essay a different role each week. When last we saw Ford Rainey, he was playing a big-time counterfeiter on Wiseguy (1987).

Fred Coby (Actor) .. Happy Taylor

Born: March 01, 1916
Died: September 27, 1970

Trivia: Lithe, dark-haired Fred Coby (born Frederick G. Beckner Jr.) turned into freakish Rondo Hatton in the 1946 horror melodrama The Brute Man, a chiller so tasteless and badly made that Universal sold it outright to Poverty Row company PRC. Coby stayed with PRC for Don Ricardo Returns (1946), a Zorro rip-off written by actor Duncan Renaldo and based on Johnston McCulley, the creator of the original. Although handsome -- Coby's slight resemblance to Tyrone Power may have won him the role in the first place -- Don Ricardo was too cheaply made to have any impact on the moviegoing audience. He spent the remainder of his career as a stunt performer and bit player.

G. Pat Collins (Actor) .. Herbert, the Reader

Born: December 16, 1895
Died: August 05, 1959

Trivia: After making his screen bow in 1928's The Racket, craggy-faced character actor G. Pat Collins could usually be found on the wrong side of the law. Collins may hold the record for prison-picture appearances, showing up behind bars in such efforts as I Am a Fugitive (1932) 20,000 Years in Sing Sing (1932), Hold Em Jail (1932) and Triple Trouble (1950), among many others. James Cagney fans will recall Collins as "The Reader," whose lip-reading skills set the stage for the "bust-out" scene in Cagney's White Heat (1949). Towards the end of his life, G. Pat Collins "went straight" cinematically, playing a number of military roles in westerns and war pictures.

Mickey Knox (Actor) .. Het Kohler

Born: January 01, 1922
Died: November 15, 2013

Trivia: Debuting in 1946's Killer McCoy, powerfully built American actor Mickey Knox flourished in the late '40s in hoodlum and hardguy parts. He was one of juvenile delinquent John Derek's cronies in Knock on Any Door (1949), a gambler in Any Number Can Play (1949) and a mob boss' henchman (named Angles) in the Bowery Boys' Angels in Disguise (1949). Knox was showered with critical approval for his role as the Pacific Kid, a small-time punk with big-time aspirations in the 1950 B-picture Western Pacific Agent; so sociopathic was Knox's character that at one point he tried to bump off his own father (Morris Carnovsky). For obscure reasons (possibly political), Knox dropped out of Hollywood in the early '50s, resurfacing a decade later in Italy. Active in European-filmed productions into the '80s, Knox was cast in A View From the Bridge (1961), Reds (1981) Inchon (1982) and Bolero. Knox also occupied his time as a screenwriter: it was he who wrote the English adaptation of Sergio Leone's The Good, the Bad and the Ugly (1968).

Paul Guilfoyle (Actor) .. Roy Parker

Born: July 14, 1902
Died: June 27, 1961

Trivia: American actor Paul Guilfoyle was a familiar Broadway presence in the years 1928 through 1934, most often seen in musicals and comedies. Switching his activities to filmmaking in 1935, Guilfoyle continued playing comedy relief roles, often as the best friend and severest critic of the hero. In the 1940s, Guilfoyle began settling into villainy; his furtive features made him the "perfect" gangland hanger-on or snivelling stoolie. In this latter characterization, Guilfoyle was most memorable as the prison informer who is "ventilated" by James Cagney in White Heat (1949) and as the communist party flunkey who is deep-sixed by cell leader Thomas Gomez in I Married a Communist (1949). In the 1950s, Guilfoyle turned to directing, helming such programmers as Captain Scarface (1953) and Tess of the Storm Country (1961). Paul Guilfoyle's son, also named Paul, went on to become an actor, as well.

Robert Osterloh (Actor) .. Tommy Ryley

Born: May 31, 1918

Trivia: After his 1948 film debut in Columbia's The Dark Past, American general purpose actor Robert Osterloh was signed to a Warner Bros. contract. During his Warners tenure, Osterloh was spotted in such fleeting roles as the prisoner whose mail is censored into oblivion in the 1949 James Cagney classic White Heat (1949). He then went into his "officer" period, wearing many uniforms and bearing several ranks over the next decade. Among Robert Osterloh's 1950s film assignments were Major White in The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951), Colonel Robert E. Lee in Seven Angry Men (1955) and Lieutenant Claybourn in I Bury the Living (1958).

Ian Macdonald (Actor) .. Bo Creel

Born: June 28, 1914

Trivia: Flint-eyed American character actor Ian MacDonald began appearing in films in 1941. The war interrupted MacDonald's screen career, but he was back at his post in 1947. Nearly always a villain on-screen, his most celebrated role was Frank Miller, the vindictive gunman who motivates the plot of High Noon (1952). Likewise memorable were his portrayals of Bo Creel in White Heat (1949) and Geronimo in Taza, Son of Cochise (1954). In films until 1959, Ian MacDonald also occasionally dabbled in screenwriting.

Ray Montgomery (Actor) .. Ernie Trent

Born: January 01, 1920

Trivia: Ray Montgomery was a gifted character actor who spent his early career trapped behind a too-attractive face, which got him through the studio door in the days just before World War II, but limited him to callow, handsome supporting roles. Born in 1922, Montgomery joined Warner Bros. in 1941 and spent the next two years working in short-subjects and playing small, uncredited parts in feature films, including All Through The Night, Larceny, Inc., Air Force, and Action In The North Atlantic -- in all of which he was overshadowed by lead players such as Humphrey Bogart, Edward G. Robinson, and John Garfield, and the veteran character actors in supporting roles (including Alan Hale, William Demarest, Frank McHugh, Barton McLane, and Edward Brophy) at every turn. And even in The Hard Way as Jimmy Gilpin, he was overshadowed (along with everyone else) by Ida Lupino. Montgomery went into uniform in 1943 and didn't return to the screen until three years later, when he resumed his career precisely where he left off, playing a string of uncredited roles. He got what should have been his breakthrough in 1948 with Bretaigne Windust's comedy June Bride, and his first really visible supporting role -- but again, he was lost amid the presence of such players as Robert Montgomery and Bette Davis and a screwball-comedy story-line. It was back to uncredited parts for the next few years, until the advent of dramatic television. In the early 1950s, after establishing himself on the small-screen as a quick study and a good actor, Montgomery finally got co-starring status in the syndicated television series Ramar of the Jungle, playing Professor Howard Ogden, friend and colleague of the Jon Hall's title-character in the children's adventure series. The show was rerun on local television stations continuously into the 1960s. By then, Montgomery had long since moved on to more interesting parts and performances in a multitude of dramatic series and feature films. He proved much better with edgy character roles and outright bad guys than he had ever been at playing good natured background figures -- viewers of The Adventures of Superman (which has been in reruns longer than even Ramar), in particular, may know Montgomery best for two 1956 episodes, his grinning, casual villainy in the episode "Jolly Roger" and his sadistic brutality in "Dagger Island", where his character convincingly turns on his own relatives (as well as a hapless Jimmy Olsen). He could do comedy as well as drama, and was seen in multiple episodes of The Lone Ranger, The Gale Storm Show, and Lassie, in between movie stints that usually had him in taciturn roles, such as Bombers B-52 (1957) and A Gathering of Eagles (1963). During the 1960s, the now-balding, white-haired Montgomery was perhaps most visible in police-oriented parts, as a tough old NYPD detective in Don Siegel's Madigan (1968) and as an equally crusty (but sensitive) LAPD lieutenant in the Dragnet episode "Community Relations: DR-17". Montgomery's last screen appearance was in the series Hunter -- following his retirement from acting, he opened a notably successful California real estate agency.

Jim Toney (Actor) .. Brakeman

Born: January 01, 1883
Died: January 01, 1973

Leo Cleary (Actor) .. Fireman

Murray Leonard (Actor) .. Engineer

Born: January 01, 1897
Died: January 01, 1970

Terry O'Sullivan (Actor) .. Radio Announcer

Born: July 07, 1915

Marshall Bradford (Actor) .. Chief of Police

Born: January 01, 1895
Died: January 01, 1971

Milton Parsons (Actor) .. Willie Rolf, the Stoolie

Born: May 19, 1907
Died: May 15, 1980

Trivia: Bald, cadaverous, hollow-eyed, doom-voiced actor Milton Parsons began appearing in films in the late 1930s. In an era wherein being typecast in Hollywood assured an actor a steady paycheck, Parsons fattened his bank account by playing dozens of undertakers and morticians. He was also an effective psychotic type, most notably as the lead in 1942's The Hidden Hand. Parsons entered the "film noir" hall of fame in the tiny role of the jury foreman in 1947's They Won't Believe Me; the film's unforgettable final image was a screen-filling close-up of Parsons, gloomily intoning an all-too-late "Not Guilty." Active into the 1970s, Parsons showed up in TV series ranging from Twilight Zone to The Dick Van Dyke Show, his morbid appearance enhanced by the addition of a satanic goatee. Even in his last roles, Milton Parsons adhered strictly to type; in the 1976 TV movie Griffin and Phoenix, for example, he portrayed a guest lecturer at a support group for terminally ill cancer victims.

John Pickard (Actor) .. Government Agent

Born: June 25, 1913

Eddie Phillips (Actor) .. Government Agent

Born: August 14, 1899
Died: February 22, 1965

Trivia: Looking far younger than he really was, Eddie Phillips co-starred with Dorothy Gulliver and George J. Lewis in Universal's two-reel varsity comedies The Collegians (1926-1929). Set in fictional Calford College but filmed at U.S.C., The Collegians took the characters through four years of fun-filled, if less than scholarly, adventures, a sort of comedic Beverly Hills 90210. Phillips, whose character was the most accident-prone of the trio, was actually a fine dramatic actor who had begun his screen career in 1921, playing Mary Pickford's ill-fated brother in The Love Light, a fine melodrama directed by Pickford's friend, the writer Frances Marion. The Collegians series culminated in the feature comedy College Love (1929), which was released in Movietone. Sound had an ill effect on Phillips' status in Hollywood and he spent the remainder of his career on Poverty Row, usually playing thugs and henchmen in scores of B-movies and serials. He was killed when hit by a car near his home in North Hollywood, CA.

Robert Foulk (Actor) .. Guard at Plant

Born: January 01, 1908
Died: January 01, 1989

Trivia: Starting his Hollywood career in or around 1951, American actor Robert Foulk was alternately passive and authoritative in such westerns as Last of the Badmen (1957), The Tall Stranger (1957), The Left-Handed Gun (1958) and Cast a Long Shadow (1958). He remained a frontiersmen for his year-long stint as bartender Joe Kingston on the Joel McCrea TV shoot-em-up Wichita Town (1959) (though he reverted to modern garb as the Anderson family's next-door neighbor in the '50s sitcom Father Knows Best). In non-westerns, Foulk usually played professional men, often uniformed. Some of his parts were fleeting enough not to have any designation but "character bit" (vide The Love Bug [1968]), but otherwise there was no question Foulk was in charge: as a doctor in Tammy and the Doctor (1963), a police official in Bunny O'Hare (1971) or a railroad conductor in Emperor of the North (1973). Robert Foulk was given extensive screen time in the Bowery Boys' Hold That Hypnotist (1957), as the title character; and in Robin and the Seven Hoods (1964), playing straight as Sheriff Glick opposite such "Merrie Men" as Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin Sammy Davis Jr. and Bing Crosby.

Jim Thorpe (Actor) .. Convict

Born: January 01, 1887
Died: January 01, 1953
Birthplace: Oklahoma

Eddie Foster (Actor) .. Nat Lefeld

Born: August 04, 1906
Died: January 18, 1989

Trivia: A rakish-looking, often mustachioed bit-part player, Eddie Foster (born Eddie Eleck) could play any nationality -- including Mexican (Men of the Night, 1934) and Egyptian (The Mummy's Hand, 1940) -- but was almost exclusively cast as thugs. Onscreen from 1932, Foster appeared in a total of ten serials, including Queen of the Jungle (1935), Mandrake the Magician (1939), and Captain Video (1951). He continued his skullduggery well into the television era and became a regular on Commando Cody: Skymaster of the Universe (1953).

Lee Phelps (Actor) .. Tower Guard

Born: January 01, 1894
Died: March 19, 1953

Trivia: Lee Phelps was a longtime resident of Culver City, California, the home of several film studios, including MGM and Hal Roach. Whenever the call went out for street extras, Phelps was always available; his Irish face and shiny pate can be easily spotted in such silent 2-reelers as Laurel and Hardy's Putting Pants on Phillip. Phelps was active in films from 1921 through 1953, often in anonymous bit or atmosphere parts, usually playing a cop or a delivery man. Lee Phelps has found his way into several TV movie-compilation specials thanks to his participation in two famous films of the early '30s: Phelps played the cowering speakeasy owner slapped around by Jimmy Cagney in The Public Enemy (1931), and also portrayed the waterfront waiter to whom Greta Garbo delivers her first talking-picture line ("Gif me a viskey, baby...etc.") in Anna Christie (1930).

Perry Ivins (Actor) .. Simpson, the Prison Doctor

Born: November 19, 1894
Died: August 22, 1963

Trivia: A slightly built, often mustachioed, supporting actor who usually played professional men (dentists, fingerprint experts, druggists, bookkeepers, etc.), Perry Ivins had been in the original 1924 production of Eugene O'Neill's Desire Under the Elms. He entered films as a dialogue director in 1929 (The Love Parade [1929], The Benson Murder Case [1930]) before embarking on a long career as a bit part player. Among Ivins' more notable roles were the copy editor in Mystery of the Wax Museum (1933), the assistant home secretary in Charlie Chan in London, and the mysterious but ultimately benign Crenshaw in the serial Devil Dogs of the Air (1937). Ivins' acting career lasted well into the television era and included guest roles on such programs as Gunsmoke and Perry Mason.

Nolan Leary (Actor) .. Gas Station Owner

Born: January 01, 1888
Died: January 01, 1987

Trivia: American actor/playwright Nolan Leary made his stage debut in 1911; 60 years later, he was still appearing in small film and TV roles. From 1943 onward, Leary showed up in some 150 movies, mostly in bit roles. One of his juicier screen assignments was as the deaf-mute father of Lon Chaney James Cagney in Man of 1000 Faces (1958). In 1974, Nolan Leary showed up briefly as Ted Baxter's prodigal father on The Mary Tyler Moore Show.

Grandon Rhodes (Actor) .. Psychiatrist

Born: January 01, 1904
Died: January 01, 1987

Trivia: Actor Grandon Rhodes worked steadily on stage, television, and in over 40 films during his four-decade career. On television, he had recurring roles on Bonanza (as a doctor) and Perry Mason.

John McGuire (Actor) .. Psychiatrist

Born: January 01, 1911
Died: January 01, 1980

Harry Lauter (Actor) .. Radio Patrolman, Car A

Born: January 01, 1914
Died: October 30, 1990

Trivia: General purpose actor Harry Lauter began showing up in films around 1948. Long associated with Columbia Pictures, Lauter appeared in featured roles in such major releases as The Big Heat (1953), Hellcats of the Navy (1957) and The Last Hurrah (1958). He also acted in the studio's "B"-western and horror product. Making occasional visits to Republic, Lauter starred in three serials: Canadian Mounties vs. the Atomic Invaders (1953), Trader Tom of the China Seas (1954) and King of the Carnival (1956), Republic's final chapter play. On TV, he co-starred with Preston Foster in Waterfront (1954) and was second-billed as Ranger Clay Morgan in Tales of the Texas Rangers (1955-59). After appearing in Escape from the Planet of the Apes (1971), Harry Lauter retired from acting to concentrate on painting and managing his art and antique gallery.

Ray Bennett (Actor) .. Guard

Born: March 21, 1895

Harry Strang (Actor) .. Guard

Born: December 13, 1892
Died: April 10, 1972

Trivia: Working in virtual anonymity throughout his film career, the sharp-featured, gangly character actor Harry Strang was seldom seen in a feature film role of consequence. From 1930 through 1959, Strang concentrated on such sidelines characters as soldiers, sentries, beat cops and store clerks. He was given more to do and say in 2-reel comedies, notably in the output of RKO Radio Pictures, where he appeared frequently in the comedies of Leon Errol and Edgar Kennedy. Harry Strang will be remembered by Laurel and Hardy fans for his role as a desk clerk in Block-Heads (1938), in which he was not once but twice clobbered in the face by an errant football.

Jack Worth (Actor) .. Guard

Bob Fowke (Actor) .. Guard

Art Foster (Actor) .. Guard

Arthur Miles (Actor) .. Guard

Sid Melton (Actor) .. Russell Hughes

Born: May 23, 1920

Trivia: Diminutive, jug-eared comic actor Sid Melton cut his acting teeth in the touring companies of such Broadway hits as See My Lawyer and Three Men on a Horse. Though he once listed his film debut as being 1945's Model Wife, Melton showed up onscreen as early as 1942, playing one of the students in Blondie Goes to College. Mostly showing up in bits and minor roles in big-studio features, Melton enjoyed starring assignments at bargain-basement Lippert Studios, notably the 1951 "sleeper" The Steel Helmet. His film career extended into the 1970s, when he was seen in a sizeable role in the Diana Ross starrer Lady Sings the Blues (1975). Sid Melton's TV credits include the cult-favorite roles of Ichabod Mudd ("with two D's!") on Captain Midnight and nightclub owner Charley Halper on The Danny Thomas Show.

Fern Eggen (Actor) .. Margaret Baxter

Sherry Hall (Actor) .. Clerk

Born: August 08, 1892

Trivia: American actor Sherry Hall popped up in innumerable bit roles between 1932 and 1951. Hall was typically cast as reporters, bartenders, court clerks, and occasional pianists. He was particularly busy at 20th Century-Fox in the 1940s, nearly always in microscopic parts. Sherry Hall's larger screen assignments included the "TV Scientist" in Dick Tracy Returns (1938), Robert Buelle in The Shadow Returns (1946), John Gilvray in The Prowler (1951), and Mr. Manners in The Well, a 1951 film populated almost exclusively by small-part players.

Garrett Craig (Actor) .. Ted Clark

Larry McGrath (Actor) .. Clocker

Born: January 01, 1889
Died: January 01, 1960

George Spaulding (Actor) .. Judge

Born: January 01, 1881
Died: January 01, 1959

Buddy Gorman (Actor) .. Popcorn Vendor

Trivia: Slight, squeaky-voiced American actor Buddy Gorman was able to play juvenile roles well into his 30s. Gorman was generally seen as a newsboy, caddy or telegram messenger. He appeared in a remarkable number of musicals (though he never sang), including Higher and Higher (1943), Meet Me in St. Louis (1944), Jolson Story (1946) and It's a Great Feeling (1949). Buddy Gorman is best remembered today for his 19 appearances in the East Side Kids and Bowery Boys films, wherein he was usually cast as "Butch."

Claudia Barrett (Actor) .. Cashier

Trivia: Claudia Barrett was a very busy actress on television and in B-movies of the 1950s. Alas, she is remembered best today for the one leading role that she would likely wish viewers could forget, as the heroine in Phil Tucker's notorious low-budget sci-fi thriller Robot Monster (1953). Born Imagene Williams in Los Angeles, she grew up in Sherman Oaks and trained at the Pasadena Playhouse during the 1940s. She was spotted by a Warner Bros. talent scout who signed her up and changed her name to Claudia Barrett, and her screen career began well enough at Warner Bros. with a small, uncredited role in Raoul Walsh's classic thriller White Heat (1949), starring James Cagney. She played small roles in a string of subsequent pictures, and then started freelancing, which resulted in her getting a few larger parts at Republic Pictures during the waning days of the B-studio's production history. It was in 1953 that Barrett was contracted to play the female lead in Phil Tucker's alien invasion fantasy Robot Monster, playing opposite young leading man George Nader as the hero, and George Barrows as "Ro-Man," an invader from outer space (essentially a man in a gorilla suit with a diving helmet). Shot in less than a week, from a script that reads as though it didn't take much longer than that to write, and on a budget of less than $30,000, Robot Monster was a notoriously bad movie in the judgment of nearly all viewers and critics. It ended up becoming a kind of camp classic, grouped with such so-bad-they're-entertaining pictures as Plan 9 From Outer Space, although in the 1960s and early '70s, before such ironic sensibilities took hold on programmers, it was frequently shown as a straight horror/sci-fi film, in the company of perfectly respectable entries in the field such as Kronos and Invisible Invaders.Robot Monster was also Barrett's next-to-last feature film. She turned to television around this same time and became a downright ubiquitous presence on the small-screen, primarily (though not entirely) in westerns. She could be seen in episodes of The Cisco Kid, Hopalong Cassidy, The Lone Ranger, Wild Bill Hickok, and The Roy Rogers Show, as well as the later wave of somewhat more mature oaters such as Death Valley Days, Tales of Wells Fargo, Shotgun Slade, and Trackdown. Her most accessible television work, however, was in a pair of episodes of The Abbott & Costello Show, which were seen in syndication for close to 30 years and have been reissued twice on DVD, as well as VHS. Barrett gave up acting in the early '60s and subsequently went to work for the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. She has busied herself as a successful artist since the 1980s. As most of the 1950s Republic library has disappeared from distribution, and her work as Warner Bros. was confined to small roles, Barrett's most widely seen role in the twenty-first century remains that of Alice, the petulant, headstrong heroine in Robot Monster.

De Forrest Lawrence (Actor) .. Jim Donovan

George Taylor (Actor) .. Police Surgeon

Stanton Herzog (Actor) .. Accountant

Carl Harbaugh (Actor) .. Foreman

Born: January 01, 1885
Died: January 01, 1960

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.

Wally Cassell (Actor) .. Giovanni Cotton Valetti

Born: March 03, 1912

Trivia: In films from 1943, pugnacious American character actor Wally Cassell was afforded star billing for the first time in The Story of GI Joe (1945). As Private Dondaro, Cassell spent half of his time searching for his ethnic roots in war-torn Italy, and the other half seeking out wine, women and more wine. His other war-related filmic efforts included Sands of Iwo Jima (1949) and Flying Leathernecks (1951). He later appeared in westerns, then worked steadily during the late-1950s gangster-movie cycle, playing such raffish characters as Cherry Nose in I Mobster (1959). Wally Cassell was married to musical performer Marcy Maguire.

John M. Pickard (Actor) .. Government Agent

Born: June 25, 1913
Died: August 04, 1993

Trivia: A graduate of the Nashville Conservatory and the model for U.S. Navy recruiting posters, John Pickard entered films in 1946 following a four-year stint in the navy. Pickard played supporting roles in scores of Westerns and action dramas before reaching stardom as Captain Shank of the U. S. Cavalry on the NBC television Western series Boots and Saddles. Filmed entirely on location at Kanab, UT, the series enjoyed a two-season run (1957-1958) and also featured Gardner McKay as Lieutenant Kelly. Pickard earned a second stab at small-screen stardom in Gunslinger (1961) and played supporting roles in nearly every other popular television drama, from Gunsmoke to Simon and Simon. He was tragically killed by a rampant bull while vacationing on a family farm in his home state of Tennessee.

Joel Allen (Actor) .. Operative

John Butler (Actor) .. Man

Born: January 01, 1883
Died: January 01, 1967

11:40 pm - 02:10 am, Thursday, November 6 on WNYW Movies! (5.2)