Trivia: Born Edward Flanagan, O'Keefe was a lithe, brash, charming, tall, rugged lead actor. The son of vaudevillians, he began appearing onstage in his parents' act while still a toddler. By age 16 he was writing scripts for "Our Gang" comedy shorts. He attended some college and did more work on vaudeville before entering films in the early '30s, appearing in bit roles in more than 50 films under the name Bud Flanagan. His work in a small role in the film Saratoga (1937) impressed Clark Gable, who recommended that he be cast in leads. MGM agreed, so he changed his name to Dennis O'Keefe and went on to play leads in numerous films, beginning with Bad Man of Brimstone (1938). Besides many light action-oriented films, he also appeared in numerous '40s comedies, and later specialized in tough-guy parts. Later in his career he directed a film or two and also wrote mystery stories. In the late '50s O'Keefe starred in the short-lived TV series "The Dennis O'Keefe Show." He was in only two films in the '60s. He died at 60 of lung cancer. His widow is actress Steffi Duna.

Trivia: Born Marie Marguerita Guadalupe Teresa Estela Bolado Castilla y O'Donnell, she began dancing professionally at age nine, receiving coaching from Eduardo Cansino, Rita Hayworth's father. Her uncle was Xavier Cugat, and she appeared with his band in Mexican nightclubs and traveled with them to New York; as their dancer, she helped the band in its triumphant introduction of the rumba to America. She began appearing on Broadway and in films in 1934. She danced in two or three of her films, but otherwise was usually cast as a tragic character. Somewhat busy as a screen actress from 1934-44, her film appearances afterwards were sporadic; altogether, she appeared in only 15 films. From 1937-40 Margo was married to actor Francis Lederer. From 1945 she was married to actor Eddie Albert; she was the mother of actor Edward Albert. In 1974 she was appointed Commissioner of Social Services for Los Angeles.

Trivia: The hauntingly beautiful devil worshiper in Val Lewton's The Seventh Victim (1943), Texas-born, Costa Rica-reared Jean Brooks began her professional career singing at New York's Waldorf-Astoria Hotel. She was discovered there, or so the story goes, by Erich Von Stroheim, who secured the former Ruby Kelly a stint as the nominal leading lady in Obeah (1935), a very low-budget independent thriller dealing with voodoo curses. In order not to be confused with Ruby Keeler, the novice actress billed herself Jeanne Kelly. She was Jeanne Kelly again opposite Von Stroheim in the equally obscure The Crime of Dr. Crespi (1935) -- which, according to Von Stroheim himself, was also the "crime of the screenwriter and director" -- while under contract to Universal 1940-1941. That studio cast her, briefly, as one of Ming the Merciless' handmaidens in the second Flash Gordon chapterplay, Flash Gordon Conquers the Universe (1940), and as the leading lady in the all-star "super serial" The Riders of Death Valley (1941).Having married tyro screenwriter Richard Brooks and changed her name to Jean Brooks, the still novice actress had much better luck at RKO, where she would appear in five of the studio's popular Falcon thrillers and as the nightclub chanteuse in the atmospheric The Leopard Man (1943). As the cynical Kiki, Brooks quite innocently causes all the ensuing mayhem when a leopard used in her act (and which she leads around on a leash) escapes. Producer Val Lewton obviously liked what he saw and cast Jean Brooks in the relatively small but pivotal and quite unforgettable role as the suicidal Jacqueline Gibson in The Seventh Victim. Caught up in a satanic cult, the morbid Jacqueline finally kills herself with the noose she had left hanging in her room for that very purpose.RKO's resident neurotic, as film historian Doug McClelland has called her, Jean Brooks should in a perfect world have gone on to true stardom after two such eye-opening performances. A bitter and very public divorce from Brooks and rumored alcoholism prevented that, however, and her remaining films were potboilers. Leaving Hollywood after 1948's Women in the Night, the actress' subsequent life remained a mystery for years, to the point, in fact, that as late as 1990, a fan posted a "wanted" ad in a Hollywood trade paper. As more recent research has revealed, however, following her brief fling with stardom Jean Brooks married a printer for the San Francisco Examiner and worked for a while as a solicitor of classified ads for the same daily. Her death in November 1963 was given as cirrhosis of the liver.Although she appeared only fleetingly in what at the time were dismissed as mere programmers, Jean Brooks' haunting face, her large, soulful eyes, and her Cleopatra wig (in The Seventh Victim) remain some of the more startling impressions of World War II Hollywood. In many ways, her paranoid and bewildered Jacqueline Gibson presages Mia Farrow's equally ill-fated heroine in Rosemary's Baby. That Brooks' later life was bedeviled by alcoholism and near total oblivion only adds to the poignancy of her best-remembered performance.

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

Trivia: Character actor James Bell has appeared in many films during his 40-year film career. He was usually cast as a sympathetic character. The Virginia-born Bell first attended the Virginia Polytechnic Institute before making his theatrical debut in 1921. Eleven years later he made his film debut in I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang. Most of the films he appeared in were made during the '40s and '50s.

Trivia: Born in Milwaukee, Abner Biberman migrated to Philadelphia, where after a he launched his acting career at the Hedgerow Theatre. Biberman wrote magazine articles and taught acting classes while establishing himself as both an actor and director on Broadway. His shifty eyes and disreputable appearance enabled Biberman to play villains of all nations: an Italian gangster in His Girl Friday (1940) an East Indian fanatic in Gunga Din (1939), a hostile Native American in any number of films. From the mid-1940s onward, Biberman was drama coach at Universal Pictures, which led to his first film directorial assignment, The Looters (1955). While Abner Biberman's theatrical films were mostly routine melodramas, his TV work embraced such prestige programs as The Twilight Zone, Ben Casey and Ironside. Abner Biberman was the husband of actress Joanna Barnes.

Trivia: Though he rose to movie fame as Chito Jose Gonzalez Bustamente Rafferty, the heavily accented Irish-Mexican saddle-pal of RKO western star Tim Holt, actor Richard Martin was neither Irish nor Mexican. Born in Washington State, Martin grew up in a predominantly Mexican neighborhood in West Hollywood where he became adept at imitating the Latino speech patterns of his playmates. Signed to an RKO contract in 1943, he created the Chito Rafferty character in the big-budget war picture Bombardier. He went on to comical-sidekick assignments opposite such cowboy heroes as James Warren and Robert Mitchum, then was dropped by RKO in 1945 when the studio temporarily disbanded its "B"-western unit. Martin briefly ran a Hollywood restaurant before returning to films as the all-American leading man of the Universal serial The Mysterious Mr. M (1946). He came back to RKO in 1947, reviving Chito Rafferty in the studio's Tim Holt western series, which lasted until 1952. Typecast in Hispanic roles, Richard Martin had trouble finding work after the cessation of the Holt series, so he bade adios to Hollywood and became a successful insurance salesman.

Trivia: Stage actor Ben Bard resettled in Hollywood upon his marriage to serial queen Ruth Roland. In films from 1927, Bard at first specialized in slimy "underworld" roles. Among his early talkie appearances was The Bat Whispers (1930), in which, as "The Unknown," he tied up all the film's loose plot ends. Over at MGM, he played "Sharlie," the erstwhile straight man for radio's Baron Munchausen (Jack Pearl), in Meet the Baron (1933) and Hollywood Party (1934). He then left films for nearly a decade, making his living as an acting teacher and vocal coach. Ben Bard returned to films in 1943 as a member of RKO producer Val Lewton's stock company, essaying substantial roles in Lewton's Leopard Man (1943), The Ghost Ship (1943) and Youth Runs Wild (1944).

Trivia: Anglo/Swiss leading lady Rita Corday came to America through the auspices of an RKO Radio film contract in 1943. Sensing that she'd eventually disappear without a trace if she continued appearing in "B"s like The Falcon Strikes Back (1943) and Dick Tracy vs. Cueball (1946), Rita re-invented herself as "Paule Croset" in 1947. When her career failed to soar, she tried another moniker, Paula Corday, which is how she was billed in her final film, The French Line (1956). A few scattered TV appearances later, Croset retired to devote her time to her husband, independent film producer Harold Nebenzal.

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

Trivia: American actor and (sometimes) screenwriter William Halligan first appeared before the cameras in 1930. Halligan enjoyed a brief flurry of prominent film roles until 1932, then he returned to the stage. He came back in the 1940s in small parts, mostly at RKO and Paramount. The next time the ubiquitous Til the Clouds Roll By (1946) shows up on television, sharp-eyed viewers should try to spot William Halligan as Captain Andy in the opening Show Boat medley.

Trivia: In films from 1936, American actor Russell Wade enjoyed a brief burst of prominence when he was signed to an RKO contract in 1942. Wade is best known for his appearances in the eerie Val Lewton productions The Ghost Ship (1943) and The Body Snatcher (1945). After the war, he faded from the screen with a few minor roles. After 1948, Russell Wade concentrated on stage and occasional television work.

Trivia: Seemingly placed on this earth to play hatchet-faced busybodies and spinsters, American actress Ottola Nesmith made her first film appearance in 1915's Still Waters. After a handful of subsequent films, Nesmith returned to the stage, then came back to Hollywood in 1935, where she remained until her retirement in 1965. Her screen roles include Lady Jane in Becky Sharp (1935), Mrs. Robinson in My Name Is Julia Ross (1946), and Mrs. Tugham in Cluny Brown (1946), as well as scores of anonymous nurses, governesses, maids, matrons, and senior-citizen-home residents. Ottola Nesmith's last appearance was in the Natalie Wood starrer Inside Daisy Clover (1967).

Trivia: With his silvery hair and dignified bearing, American actor John Dilson was a natural for "executive" roles. In films from 1935, Dilson was usually seen playing doctors, lawyers and newspaper editors. Occasionally, however, he played against type as sarcastic working stiffs, as witness his bit as an unemployment-office clerk in The Monster and the Girl (1941). John Dilson's larger screen roles can be found in Republic serials like Robinson Crusoe on Clipper Island (1936), and Dick Tracy (1937) and in such two-reel efforts as MGM's "Crime Does Not Pay" series.

Trivia: The sister of silent screen star Katherine MacDonald and a former photographer's model, blonde Mary MacLaren had danced in the Broadway revue The Passing Show of 1914 before making her screen debut in 1916. A favorite of pioneering woman director Lois Weber, MacLaren starred as the poor working girl in Shoes (1916) and was Marie Walcamp's maid in the anti-abortion drama Where Are My Children (1916). For another early woman director, Ida May Park, MacLaren played an actress betrayed by a Broadway wolf and reduced to living in squalor in the evocative Bread (1918) and she was a regal Anne of Austria in Fairbanks' The Three Musketeers (1921). Like most of her contemporaries, MacLaren's career waned in the 1920s and she was reduced to minor roles after the changeover to sound. After playing scores of maids, nurses and dowagers, MacLaren left films around 1948 to travel with her husband, a British military officer. Sadly, when she resurfaced in the 1970s, a newspaper reporter discovered her living in abject poverty in her once palatial Hollywood home. MacLaren's tragic story was widely reported and in her final years she became a popular guest at various silent screen revivals.

Trivia: Mexican-born utility actor Joe Dominguez claimed to have entered films in 1913, and to have appeared in over 300 pictures. Primarily a bit player, Dominguez usually showed up in Westerns, serials, and historical films with South-of-the-Border settings. Among Joe Dominguez' larger roles were Gonzalez in Fritz Lang's Rancho Notorious (1952) and the Grandfather in I Love You, Alice B. Toklas (1970), his last film.

Trivia: A tough-talking character actress from Missouri, Betty Roadman usually played prison matrons (Trade Winds, 1938 and Passport to Destiny, 1944) but was also effective in Westerns, i.e. as "Buckskin" Liz, the owner of a beleaguered stagecoach in Return of the Durango Kid (1944). Roadman became a special favorite of producer Val Lewton, who cast her as Jane Randolph's cleaning woman in Cat People (1942), Margo's mother in The Leopard Man (1943), and other colorful bit roles. Roadman ended her screen career in 1947.

Trivia: Satanic-featured British actor Brandon Hurst was once singled out by a prominent film historian as one of the five finest villains of the silent screen. He started out as a Philology student, gravitating to the stage in the 1880s. He was 50 years old at the time of his first film appearance in Via Wireless (1916), and 54 when he portrayed the first in his gallery of memorable screen heavies, Sir George Carewe in the 1920 Barrymore version of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Other reprobates in Hurst's cinematic repertoire included the sadistic Jehan in The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1923), the wicked Caliph in The Thief of Baghdad (1924), the diabolical court jester in The Man Who Laughs (1928) and the insidious Merlin in A Connecticut Yankee (1931). Most of his talkie appearances were in such minor roles as condescending butlers and grouchy coroners. Brandon Hurst continued to pop up briefly in films like The Princess and the Pirate (1944) and House of Frankenstein (1945) until his death at the age of 80.

Trivia: A mustachioed supporting player from Russia, Jack Chefe (sometimes credited as Chefé) played exactly what he looked and sounded like: headwaiters. That was also his occupation when not appearing in films, of which he did literally hundreds between 1932 and 1959, serving such stars as Carole Lombard (My Man Godfrey, 1936), Jeanette MacDonald (Bitter Sweet, 1940), Bob Hope (My Favorite Brunette, 1947), and even Dick Tracy (in the 1945 RKO feature film). Once in a while, Chefe managed to escape typecasting, playing one of the legionnaires in Laurel and Hardy's Flying Deuces (1939) and a croupier in The Big Sleep (1946).

Trivia: A tough-looking actor from Chicago who was onscreen from the early 1910s, Sidney D'Albrook could play Native Americans as well as boxers, gangsters, crooked aristocrats, and the occasional lawman. D'Albrook, who sometimes spelled his first name "Sydney," later portrayed Thomas in Cecil B. DeMille's King of Kings (1927). After the changeover to sound, D'Albrook slipped into bit parts, more often than not unbilled: as one of the trustees in You Can't Take It With You (1938), "man in store" in Mrs. Miniver (1942), a reporter in The Perils of Pauline (1947), and a waiter in Julia Misbehaves (1948) -- his final film.