Trivia: British-born actor Cary Grant (born Archibald Leach) escaped his humble Bristol environs and unstable home life by joining an acrobatic troupe, where he became a stilt-walker. Numerous odd jobs kept him going until he tried acting, and, after moving to the United States, he managed to lose his accent, developing a clipped mid-Atlantic speaking style uniquely his own. After acting in Broadway musicals, Grant was signed in 1932 by Paramount Pictures to be built into leading-man material. His real name would never do for marquees, so the studio took the first initials of their top star Gary Cooper, reversed them, then filled in the "C" and "G" to come up with Cary Grant. After a year of nondescript roles, Grant was selected by Mae West to be her leading man in She Done Him Wrong (1933) and I'm No Angel(1934). A bit stiff-necked but undeniably sexy, Grant vaulted to stardom, though Paramount continued wasting his potential in second rate films. Free at last from his Paramount obligations in 1935, Grant vowed never to be strictly bound to any one studio again, so he signed a dual contract with Columbia and RKO that allowed him to choose any "outside" roles he pleased. Sylvia Scarlett (1936) was the first film to fully demonstrate Grant's inspired comic flair, which would be utilized to the utmost in such knee-slappers as The Awful Truth (1937), Bringing Up Baby (1938), His Girl Friday (1939), and The Bachelor and the Bobby Soxer (1947). (Only in Arsenic and Old Lace [1941] did he overplay his hand and lapse into mugging.) The actor was also accomplished at straight drama, as evidenced in Only Angels Have Wings (1939), Destination Tokyo (1942), Crisis (1950), and in his favorite role as an irresponsible cockney in None but the Lonely Heart (1942), for which Grant was nominated for an Oscar -- he didn't win, although he was awarded a special Oscar for career achievement in 1970. Off-stage, most of Grant's co-workers had nothing but praise for his craftsmanship and willingness to work with co-stars rather than at them. Among Grant's yea-sayers was director Alfred Hitchcock, who cast the actor in three of his best films, most notably the quintessential Hitchcock thriller North by Northwest (1959). Seemingly growing handsomer and more charming as he got older, Grant retained his stardom into the 1960s, enriching himself with lucrative percentage-of-profits deals on such box-office hits as Operation Petticoat (1959) and Charade (1964). Upon completing Walk, Don't Run in 1966, Grant decided he was through with filmmaking -- and he meant it. Devoting his remaining years to an executive position at a major cosmetics firm, Grant never appeared on a TV talk show and seldom granted newspaper interviews. In the 1980s, however, he became restless, and decided to embark on a nationwide lecture tour, confining himself exclusively to small towns in which the residents might otherwise never have the chance to see a Hollywood superstar in person. It was while preparing to lecture in Davenport, IA, that the 82-year-old Cary Grant suffered a sudden and fatal stroke in 1986.

Trivia: In step with Fred Astaire, Ginger Rogers was one half of the most legendary dancing team in film history; she was also a successful dramatic actress, even winning a Best Actress Oscar. Born Virginia McMath on July 16, 1911, in Independence, MO, as a toddler, she relocated to Hollywood with her newly divorced mother, herself a screenwriter. At the age of six, Rogers was offered a movie contract, but her mother turned it down. The family later moved to Fort Worth, where she first began appearing in area plays and musical revues. Upon winning a Charleston contest in 1926, Rogers' mother declared her ready for a professional career, and she began working the vaudeville circuit, fronting an act dubbed "Ginger and the Redheads." After marrying husband Jack Pepper in 1928, the act became "Ginger and Pepper." She soon traveled to New York as a singer with Paul Ash & His Orchestra, and upon filming the Rudy Vallee short Campus Sweethearts, she won a role in the 1929 Broadway production Top Speed.On Broadway, Rogers earned strong critical notice as well as the attention of Paramount, who cast her in 1930's Young Man of Manhattan, becoming typecast as a quick-witted flapper. Back on Broadway, she and Ethel Merman starred in Girl Crazy. Upon signing a contract with Paramount, she worked at their Astoria studio by day and returned to the stage in the evenings; under these hectic conditions she appeared in a number of films, including The Sap From Syracuse, Queen High, and Honor Among Lovers. Rogers subsequently asked to be freed of her contract, but soon signed with RKO. When her Broadway run ended, she went back to Hollywood, starring in 1931's The Tip-Off and The Suicide Fleet. When 1932's Carnival Boat failed to attract any interest, RKO dropped her and she freelanced around town, co-starring with Joe E. Brown in the comedy The Tenderfoot, followed by a thriller, The Thirteenth Guest, for Monogram. Finally, the classic 1933 musical 42nd Street poised her on the brink of stardom, and she next appeared in Warner Bros.' Gold Diggers of 1933.Rogers then returned to RKO, where she starred in Professional Sweetheart; the picture performed well enough to land her a long-term contract, and features like A Shriek in the Night and Sitting Pretty followed. RKO then cast her in the musical Flying Down to Rio, starring Delores Del Rio; however, the film was stolen by movie newcomer Astaire, fresh from Broadway. He and Rogers did not reunite until 1934's The Gay Divorcee, a major hit. Rogers resisted typecasting as strictly a musical star, and she followed with the drama Romance in Manhattan. Still, the returns from 1935's Roberta, another musical venture with Astaire, made it perfectly clear what kinds of films audiences expected Rogers to make, and although she continued tackling dramatic roles when the opportunity existed, she rose to major stardom alongside Astaire in classics like Top Hat, 1936's Follow the Fleet, Swing Time, and Shall We Dance? Even without Astaire, Rogers found success in musical vehicles, and in 1937 she and Katharine Hepburn teamed brilliantly in Stage Door.After 1938's Carefree, Rogers and Astaire combined for one final film, the following year's The Story of Vernon and Irene Castle, before splitting. She still harbored the desire to pursue a dramatic career, but first starred in an excellent comedy, Bachelor Mother. In 1940, Rogers starred as the titular Kitty Foyle, winning an Academy Award for her performance. She next appeared in the 1941 Garson Kanin comedy Tom, Dick and Harry. After starring opposite Henry Fonda in an episode of Tales of Manhattan, she signed a three-picture deal with Paramount expressly to star in the 1944 musical hit Lady in the Dark. There she also appeared in Billy Wilder's The Major and the Minor and Leo McCarey's Once Upon a Honeymoon. Rogers then made a series of films of little distinction, including 1945's Weekend at the Waldorf (for which she earned close to 300,000 dollars, making her one of the highest-paid women in America), the following year's Magnificent Doll, and the 1947 screwball comedy It Had to Be You. Rogers then signed with the short-lived production company Enterprise, but did not find a project which suited her. Instead, for MGM she and Astaire reunited for 1949's The Barkleys of Broadway, their first color collaboration. The film proved highly successful, and rekindled her sagging career. She then starred in a pair of Warner Bros. pictures, the 1950 romance Perfect Strangers and the social drama Storm Warning. After 1951's The Groom Wore Spurs, Rogers starred in a trio of 1952 Fox comedies -- We're Not Married, Monkey Business, and Dreamboat -- which effectively halted whatever momentum her reunion with Astaire had generated, a situation remedied by neither the 1953 comedy Forever Female nor by the next year's murder mystery Black Widow. In Britain, she filmed Beautiful Stranger, followed by 1955's lively Tight Spot. With 1957's farcical Oh, Men! Oh, Women!, Rogers' Hollywood career was essentially finished, and she subsequently appeared in stock productions of Bell, Book and Candle, The Unsinkable Molly Brown, and Annie Get Your Gun.In 1959, Rogers traveled to Britain to star in a television musical, Carissima. A few years later, she starred in a triumphant TV special, and also garnered good notices, taking over for Carol Channing in Hello, Dolly! She also starred in Mame in London's West End, earning over 250,000 pounds for her work -- the highest sum ever paid a performer by the London theatrical community. In 1965, Rogers entered an agreement with the Jamaican government to produce films in the Caribbean; however, shooting there was a disaster, and the only completed film to emerge from the debacle was released as Quick, Let's Get Married. That same year, she also starred as Harlow, her final screen performance. By the 1970s, Rogers was regularly touring with a nightclub act, and in 1980 headlined Radio City Music Hall. A tour of Anything Goes was among her last major performances. In 1991, she published an autobiography, Ginger: My Story. Rogers died April 25, 1995.

Trivia: The most endlessly talked-about and mythologized figure in Hollywood history, Marilyn Monroe remains the ultimate superstar, her rise and fall the stuff that both dreams and nightmares are made of. Innocent, vulnerable, and impossibly alluring, she defined the very essence of screen sexuality. Rising from pin-up girl to international superstar, she was a gifted comedienne whom the camera adored, a luminous and incomparably magnetic screen presence. In short, she had it all, yet her career and life came crashing to a tragic halt, a Cinderella story gone horribly wrong; dead before her time -- her fragile beauty trapped in amber, impervious to the ravages of age -- Monroe endures as the movies' greatest and most beloved icon, a legend eclipsing all others. Born Norma Jean Mortensen (later Baker) on June 1, 1926, in Los Angeles, she was seemingly destined for a life of tragedy: Her mother spent the majority of her life institutionalized, she was raised in an endless succession of orphanages and foster homes, and she was raped at the age of eight. By 1942, she was married to one Jim Dougherty, subsequently dropping out of school to work in an aircraft production plant; within a year she attempted suicide. When Dougherty entered the military, Baker bleached her hair and began modeling. By 1946, the year of the couple's divorce, she was accredited to a top agency, and her image regularly appeared in national publications. Her photos piqued the interest of the eccentric billionaire Howard Hughes, who scheduled her for a screen test at RKO; however, 20th Century Fox beat him to the punch, and soon she was on their payroll at 125 dollars a week.Rechristened Marilyn Monroe, she began studying at the Actors' Lab in Hollywood; however, when virtually nothing but a bit role in the juvenile delinquent picture The Dangerous Years came of her Fox contract, she signed to Columbia in 1948, where she was tutored by drama coach Natasha Lytess. There she starred in Ladies of the Chorus before they too dropped her. After briefly appearing in the 1949 Marx Brothers comedy Love Happy, she earned her first real recognition for her turn as a crooked lawyer's mistress in the 1950 John Huston thriller The Asphalt Jungle. Good notices helped Monroe win a small role in the classic All About Eve, but she otherwise continued to languish relatively unnoticed in bit parts. While she was now back in the Fox stable, studio chief Darryl F. Zanuck failed to recognize her potential, and simply mandated that she appear in any picture in need of a sexy, dumb blonde. In 1952, RKO borrowed Monroe for a lead role in the Barbara Stanwyck picture Clash by Night. The performance brought her significant exposure, which was followed by the publication of a series of nude photos she had posed for two years prior. The resulting scandal made her a celebrity, and seemingly overnight she was the talk of Hollywood. Zanuck quickly cast her as a psychotic babysitter in a quickie project titled Don't Bother to Knock, and after a series of minor roles in other similarly ill-suited vehicles, Monroe starred in 1953's Niagara, which took full advantage of her sexuality to portray her as a sultry femme fatale. However, lighter, more comedic fare was Monroe's strong suit, as evidenced by her breakout performance in the Howard Hawks musical Gentlemen Prefer Blondes. Like its follow-up How to Marry a Millionaire (just the second film shot in the new CinemaScope process), the picture was among the year's top-grossing ventures, and her newfound stardom was cemented. After starring in the 1954 Western River of No Return, Monroe continued to make headlines by marrying New York Yankees baseball great Joe DiMaggio. She also made a much-publicized appearance singing for American troops in Korea, and -- in a telling sign of things to come -- created a flap by failing to show up on the set of the movie The Girl in Pink Tights. As far back as 1952, Monroe had earned a reputation for her late on-set arrivals, but The Girl in Pink Tights was the first project she boycotted outright on the weakness of the material. The studio suspended her, and only after agreeing to instead star in the musical There's No Business Like Show Business did she return to work. After starring in the 1955 Billy Wilder comedy The Seven Year Itch, Monroe again caused a stir, this time for refusing the lead in How to Be Very, Very Popular. In response, she fled to New York to study under Lee Strasburg at the Actors' Studio in an attempt to forever rid herself of the dumb blonde stereotype. In New York, Monroe met playwright Arthur Miller, whom she wed following the disintegration of her marriage to DiMaggio. In the meantime, her relationship with Fox executives continued to sour, but after pressure from stockholders -- and in light of her own financial difficulties -- she was signed to a new, non-exclusive seven-year deal which not only bumped her salary to 100,000 dollars per film, but also allowed her approval of directors. For her first film under the new contract, Monroe delivered her most accomplished performance to date in Joshua Logan's 1956 adaptation of the William Inge Broadway hit Bus Stop. She then starred opposite Laurence Olivier in 1957's The Prince and the Showgirl. Two years later, she co-starred in Wilder's classic Some Like It Hot, her most popular film yet. However, despite her success, Monroe's life was in disarray -- her marriage to Miller was crumbling, and her long-standing reliance on alcohol and drugs continued to grow more and more serious. After starring in George Cukor's Let's Make Love with Yves Montand, Monroe began work on the Miller-penned The Misfits; the film was her final completed project, as she frequently clashed with director John Huston and co-stars Clark Gable and Montgomery Clift, often failed to appear on-set, and was hospitalized several times for depression. In light of her erratic behavior on the set of the follow-up, the ironically titled Something's Got to Give, she was fired 32 days into production and slapped with a lawsuit. Just two months later, on August 5, 1962, Monroe was dead. The official cause was an overdose of barbiturates, although the truth will likely never be revealed. Her alleged affairs with President John F. Kennedy and his brother, Robert, have been the focus of much speculation regarding the events leading to her demise, but many decades later fact and fantasy are virtually impossible to separate. In death, as in life, the legend of Marilyn Monroe continues to grow beyond all expectation.

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

Trivia: It's quite possible that Hugh Marlowe might have been limited to film comedy roles had he retained his given name of Hugh Herbert Hipple, but it's not likely that he would have garnered many laughs. A radio announcer and stage performer, Marlowe had a brief leading-man filing in the late 1930s, but was more effective from the mid-1940s onward as a second lead and character actor. His stiff, humorless demeanor served him well in many second parts at 20th Century-Fox in the 1950s. Director Howard Hawks cleverly exploited Marlowe's solemnity by casting the actor as foil to the childish antics of "fountain of youth" partaker Cary Grant in Monkey Business (1952). Marlowe also showed up in several science fiction films, notably The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951), Earth vs. the Flying Saucers (1956) and World Without End (1956), wherein his somber approach lent a measure of credence to the proceedings. On television, Hugh Marlowe played Ellery Queen (a role he'd previously essayed on radio) in a 1954 syndicated series, and was the last of four actors to portray Jim Matthews on the NBC daytime drama Another World.

Trivia: Already a character player in his 30s, American actor Robert Cornwaithe was frequently called upon to play scientific and learned types in such films as War of the Worlds (1953) and The Forbin Project (1971). He was also busy on TV, portraying lawyers, officials and the like on such series as The Andy Griffith Show, Batman (in the "Archer" episode with Art Carney), Gidget, Laverne and Shirley and The Munsters. Cornwaithe earned his niche in the Science Fiction Film Hall of Fame for his performance in The Thing (1951); grayed up, bearded, and looking suspiciously Russian, the actor played the foolhardy Professor Carrington, whose insipidly idealistic efforts to communicate with the extraterrestrial "Thing" nearly gets him killed. In honor of this performance, Robert Cornwaithe was cast as a similar well-meaning scientist in "Mant," the giant-insect film within a film in Joe Dante's Matinee (1993), wherein Cornwaithe shared screen time with two equally uncredited horror-film icons, William Schallert and Kevin McCarthy.

Trivia: A master purveyor of smug, condescending character roles, Minnesota-born Larry Keating was the nephew of heavyweight boxing champ Tommy Burns. Keating built his acting reputation in radio, as master of ceremonies for such variety series as The Fitch Bandwagon and as narrator of the long-running This is Your FBI. He began his film career in 1949, generally playing curt doctors or no-nonsense business executives; one of his more warmhearted characterizations was as a blind attorney in 1951's Bright Victory. In 1953, Keating replaced Fred Clark as acerbic next door neighbor Harry Morton on the popular TV sitcom The George Burns and Gracie Allen Show. He continued in this vein in 1961 as Wilbur Post's pompous neighbor Roger Addison in the George Burns-produced Mister Ed. Larry Keating remained with this last-named series until his death from leukemia at the age of 64.

Trivia: From 1939 until his death in 1960, gangly, balding Douglas Spencer could be spotted in unbilled film roles as doctors and reporters. By the early '50s, Spencer had graduated to supporting parts, often in films with a science fiction or fantasy theme. One of his lengthier assignments was Simms, the seance-busting reporter in Houdini (1953). Douglas Spencer's best-ever film role was bespectacled reporter Ned "Scotty" Scott in the 1951 sci-fi classic The Thing, wherein he closed the film with the immortal cautionary words "Keep watching the skies!"

Trivia: American actress Esther Dale concentrated her cinematic efforts on portraying warm-hearted aunts, mothers, nurses, neighbors and shopkeepers--though there were a few domineering dowagers along the way. She began her career on a semi-professional basis with a New England stock troupe operated by her husband, Arthur Beckhard. Esther was the resident character actress in stage productions of the late '20s and early '30s featuring such stars-to-be as Henry Fonda and Margaret Sullavan. She first appeared before the cameras in 1934's Crime Without Passion, filmed in Long Island. Esther then moved to Hollywood, where she popped up with increasing frequency in such films as The Awful Truth (1937) (as Ralph Bellamy's mother), Back Street (1941), Margie (1946) and The Egg and I (1947). Her participation in the last-named film led to a semi-regular stint in Universal's Ma and Pa Kettle series as the Kettles' neighbor Birdie Hicks. Esther Dale's last film, made one year before her death, was the John Wayne vehicle North to Alaska (1960), in which she had one scene as "Woman at Picnic."

Trivia: Whether in vaudeville, burlesque, "legit" theatre or radio, Emmet "Pop" Lynn played variations on the toothless-old-reprobate roles that brought him screen fame. Though he'd made a tentative foray into films as a teenager in 1913, Lynn truly came into his own after 1940, playing the cantankerous sidekick to such western heroes as Don Barry and Allan "Rocky" Lane. In non-westerns, he could usually be spotted as a janitor, night watchman or rural rustic. He enjoyed a longtime association with Columbia Pictures' short-subject unit, where he was harmoniously teamed with such comics as Andy Clyde and Slim Summerville. Emmet Lynn made his final screen appearance as a downtrodden Hebrew peasant in DeMille's The Ten Commandments (1956).

Trivia: American actor George Eldredge began surfacing in films around 1936. A general hanger-on in the Universal horror product of the 1940s, Eldredge appeared in such roles as the village constable in Ghost of Frankenstein (1942) and the DA in Calling Dr. Death (1943). His bland, malleable facial features enabled him to play everything from tanktown sheriffs to Nazi spies. Devotees of the "exploitation" films of the 1940s will remember Eldredge best as Dan Blake in the anti-syphilis tract Mom and Dad (1949). George Eldredge was once again in uniform as a small-town police chief in his final film, Hitchcock's Psycho (1960)

Trivia: Though no relation to comedian Chester Conklin, Charles "Heinie" Conklin spent his early film years at Chester's alma mater, Mack Sennett's Keystone studios; in later years, Heinie claimed to be one of the original Keystone Kops. Heinie's silent-screen makeup consisted of heavy eyebrow lining and a thinnish, upside-down, painted-on variation of Kaiser Wilhelm's moustache. In areas where anti-German sentiments still ran high during the post-World War 1 era, Conklin was billed on screen as Charlie Lynn. One of Conklin's first talkie appearances was as the addled military hospital patient in All Quiet on the Western Front (1930). He spent most of his sound career in microscopic bit roles, often appearing at Columbia studios in support of such 2-reeler stars as The Three Stooges, Andy Clyde, Hugh Herbert and Harry Langdon. Significantly, Heinie Conklin's last billed performance was in 1955's Abbott and Costello Meet the Keystone Kops.

Trivia: The inimitable American actress Kathleen Freeman has been convulsing film audiences with portrayals of dowdy, sharp-tongued matrons since she was in her 20s. After stage work, Freeman began taking bit roles in major-studio features in 1948, seldom getting screen credit but always making a positive impression. The best of her earliest roles was in Singin' in the Rain (1952); Freeman played long-suffering vocal coach Phoebe Dinsmore, whose Herculean efforts to get dumb movie star Jean Hagen to grasp the proper enunciation of the phrase "I can't staaaand him" proved uproariously futile. Often cast as domestics, Freeman had a year's run in 1953 as the "spooked" maid on the ghostly TV sitcom Topper. Freeman was a particular favorite of comedian Jerry Lewis, who cast the actress in showy (and billed!) roles in such farces as The Errand Boy (1961), The Nutty Professor (1963) and Who's Got the Action?. As Nurse Higgins in Lewis' Disorderly Orderly (1964), Freeman weeps quietly as Jerry meekly scrapes oatmeal off her face and babbles "Oh, Nurse Higgins...you're all full of...stuff." Lewis so trusted Freeman's acting instincts that he sent her to the set of director William Wyler's The Collector (1965) in order to help build up the confidence of Wyler's nervous young leading lady Samantha Eggar. Throughout the '70s and '80s, Freeman took occasional "sabbaticals" from her movie and TV assignments to do stage work, enjoying a lengthy run in a Chicago production of Ira Levin's Deathtrap. Like many character actors of the '50s, Kathleen Freeman is frequently called upon to buoy the projects of baby-boomer directors: she was recently seen as an hysterical Julia Child clone in Joe Dante's Gremlins 2: The New Batch (1990).

Trivia: Olan Soule was so familiar as a character actor in movies and television during the 1950s and 1960s -- and right into the 1980s -- that audiences could be forgiven for not even reckoning with his 25-year career on radio. Soule was born in 1909 in La Harpe, Illinois, to a family that reportedly could trace its ancestry back to three passengers on the Mayflower. He began acting in tent shows in his teens, and made his first appearance on radio in 1926. With his rich, expressive voice -- which frequently seemed to belong to characters that audiences thought of as more physically imposing than the slightly built, 135-pound actor -- he quickly found himself in demand for a multitude of roles. Soule ultimately became closely associated with two series, spending more than a decade on the radio soap opera Bachelor's Children, and a nine-year run on The First Nighter, starting in the 1940s. He made the jump to television in 1949, but even in the visual medium his voice was initially part of his fortune -- one of his early movie assignments was as the narrator of the feature film Beyond The Forest (1949), starring Bette Davis. And many of those early on-screen assignments in features were uncredited, such as his appearance as Mr. Krull in Robert Wise's The Day The Earth Stood Still (1951). Still, Soule did attract attention, with his signature thin physique and the fact that he seemed to show up dozens of times a year, all over television and in movies. By the start of the 1960s, he'd amassed literally hundreds of screen appearances, making him one of the most recognizable character actors of the time period.One producer who took full advantage of Soule's skills early and often was Jack Webb, himself a radio veteran, who cast him in well over two dozen episodes of the original in 1950s Dragnet television series, principally in the recurring role of Ray Pinker. When Webb revived Dragnet in the second half of the 1960s, Soule was no less active, showing up at least a half dozen times each season, often in the role of police-lab scientist Ray Murray. Soule's studious, cerebral portrayal of Murray was reminiscent of the lab technician portrayed by Webb himself in He Walked By Night, the movie that led Webb to create Dragnet in the first place. In between those assignments, Soule appeared in dozens of features and was seen on the small screen in everything from Bonanza and Petticoat Junction to My Three Sons and the Herschel Bernardi series Arnie. Later in his career, Soule returned to his roots, lending his vocal talent to the animated series Super Friends.

Trivia: The son of actors Harry Carey and Olive Golden, Harry Carey Jr. never answered to "Harry" or "Junior"; to his friends, family and film buffs, he was always "Dobe" Carey. Raised on his father's California ranch, the younger Carey spent his first six adult years in the Navy. While it is commonly assumed that he made his film debut under the direction of his dad's longtime friend John Ford, Carey in fact was first seen in a fleeting bit in 1946's Rolling Home, directed by William Berke. It wasn't until his third film, Three Godfathers (dedicated to the memory of his father) that Carey worked with Ford. Honoring his promise to Harry Sr. that he'd "look after" Dobe, Ford saw to it that the younger Carey was given a starring assignment (along with another of the director's proteges, Ben Johnson), in Wagonmaster (1950). Though he handled this assignment nicely, exuding an appealing earnest boyishness, Carey wasn't quite ready for stardom so far as the Hollywood "higher-ups" were concerned, so he settled for supporting roles, mostly in westerns. John Ford continued to use Carey whenever possible; in 1955's The Long Gray Line, the actor has a few brief scenes as West Point undergraduate Dwight D. Eisenhower. Carey was also featured on the "Spin and Marty" segments of Walt Disney's daily TVer The Mickey Mouse Club (1955-59). In later years, Carey's weather-beaten face was seen in choice character assignments in films ranging from The Whales of August (1987) to Back to the Future III (1990); he was also hired by such John Ford aficionados as Peter Bogdanovich, who cast Carey as an old wrangler named Dobie (what else?) in Nickelodeon (1976), and as an ageing bike-gang member named Red in Mask (1985). In 1994, Harry Carey Jr. published his autobiography, Company of Heroes. Carey died of natural causes at age 91 in late December 2012.

Trivia: Although she was perhaps less popular and well-known than her younger sister Constance Binney, Faire Binney's career lasted longer -- two years, to be exact, until 1925. She appeared mostly in programmers such as The Sporting Life (1918) with Constance and Here Comes the Bride (1919) with John Barrymore. Surprisingly, she returned in a few supporting roles in the early '50s after the death of her second husband.

Trivia: Corpulent, booming-voiced actor Paul Maxey, in films from 1941, was given sizeable roles (in every sense of the word) in such "B" pictures as Sky Dragon (1949) and The Narrow Margin (1952), often cast as an obstreperous villain. After appearing as composer Victor Herbert in MGM's Jerome Kern biopic Till the Clouds Roll By (1946), he was kept "on call" at MGM for uncredited character parts in such major productions as An American in Paris (1951), Singin' in the Rain (1952), The Bad and the Beautiful (1952) and It's Always Fair Weather (1955). Active until 1962, Paul Maxey is best-remembered by 1950s TV addicts as the irascible Mayor Peoples on the Jackie Cooper sit-com The People's Choice (1955-58).

Trivia: In films from 1937, silver-haired American actor Forbes Murray could be described as a less-costly Claude Rains. Murray lent his middle-aged dignity to such serials as The Spider's Web (1938), Mandrake the Magician (1940), Lone Ranger (1938), Perils of Nyoka (1942), Manhunt of Mystery Island (1945), and Radar Patrol vs. Spy King (1950). He also showed up in quite a few comedies, notably as the bank president who finances the college education of Laurel and Hardy ("Diamonds in the rough," as he describes them) in A Chump at Oxford (1940). Forbes Murray was active at least until 1955.

Trivia: A veteran of vaudeville and Broadway, Harry Seymour came to films with extensive credits as a composer and musical-comedy star. Unfortunately, Seymour made his movie debut in 1925, at the height of the silent era. When talkies came in, he was frequently employed as a dialogue director with the Warner Bros. B-unit. From 1932 to 1958, Harry Seymour also essayed bit roles at Warners and 20th Century Fox, most often playing pianists (Irish Eyes Are Smiling, Rhapsody in Blue, A Ticket to Tomahawk, etc.).

Trivia: Not to be confused with the later 20th Century-Fox contract player of the same name, silent screen actor Harry Carter had appeared in repertory with Mrs. Fiske and directed The Red Mill for Broadway impresario Charles Frohman prior to entering films with Universal in 1914. Often cast as a smooth villain, the dark-haired Carter made serials something of a specialty, menacing future director Robert Z. Leonard in The Master Key (1914); playing the title menace in The Gray Ghost (1917); and acting supercilious towards Big Top performers Eddie Polo and Eileen Sedgwick in Lure of the Circus (1918). In addition to his serial work, Carter played General Von Kluck in the infamous propaganda piece The Kaiser, the Beast of Berlin (1918). It was back to chapterplays in the 1920s, where he menaced Claire Anderson and Grace Darmond in two very low-budget examples of the genre: The Fatal Sign (1920) and The Hope Diamond Mystery (1921).

Trivia: Born in San Francisco, Jerry Paris was a graduate of New York University and UCLA, and joined the Actors Studio after serving in the navy during World War II. His earliest stage performances were in productions of Medea, Anna Christie, and The Front Page. He entered films in 1950, and his early screen credits include Outrage, Cyrano de Bergerac, The Wild One, The Caine Mutiny, Marty, and The Naked and the Dead. Paris was also a regular on the series The Untouchables from 1959 thru 1961 in the role of G-man Martin Flaherty. In 1961, he joined the cast of The Dick Van Dyke Show as Jerry Helper, the next door neighbor to Rob and Laura Petrie. During the early run of the show, Paris began pestering producer Carl Reiner for a chance to direct, and was given his opportunity in 1962 with the classic episode "It May Look Like a Walnut," a comic take on science fiction chillers that was highlighted by the spectacle of costar Mary Tyler Moore sliding out of a closet filled with 1100 pounds of walnuts. Paris became a regular director on the show and won and Emmy in 1964 for his work. He subsequently went into feature filmmaking, including Viva Max and The Star-Spangled Girl, before returning to television, directing the pilot episode of Love American Style. He directed 35 episodes of The Odd Couple, and later spent a decade as producer and director of Happy Days, as well as directing the pilot episode of Laverne and Shirley. Paris created the character of Mork, played by Robin Williams, who was later spun off into the series Mork and Mindy. Paris returned to feature filmmaking in the late '80s with Police Academy 2 and Police Academy 3. He died in 1993 after a long struggle with cancer.

Trivia: From 1930 to 1934, American actress Ruth Warren was a contractee at Fox Studios. A slight woman with wide eyes and pursed lips, Warren essayed sizeable character roles in such Fox films as Lightnin' (1930), Six Cylinder Love (1931), and Zoo in Budapest (1933). She played bit roles from 1935 until her retirement in 1958. Laurel and Hardy buffs will remember Ruth Warren as the gossip-dispensing Mrs. Addlequist in Our Relations (1936).

Trivia: Isabel Withers entered films as an ingénue in 1916. Wither's movie career proper began in the talkie era, when she established herself as a character actress. For nearly 25, years she could be seen filling such small functionary roles as maids, nurses, and secretaries. An occasional visitor to Columbia pictures, Isabel Withers co-starred with such two-reel comics as Andy Clyde and Hugh Herbert, and was cast as Harriet Woodley in the valedictory Blondie entry Beware of Blondie (1950).

Trivia: Olive Carey began her long career acting in silent films under the name Olive Golden. She made her film debut in 1913 with The Sorrowful Shore. She later became one of D.W. Griffith's original stock players. Golden married cowboy star Harry Carey in 1916 and went on to play the female lead in many of his silent westerns. She is said to have had a role in helping illustrious director John Ford get his start; she even worked as his manager. From the '30s through 1947, she was semi-retired, but following her husband's death in 1947, she staged a comeback using her married name. She is best remembered for appearing opposite John Wayne in The Searchers and The Alamo.

Trivia: One of the most prolific of the "Who IS that?"school of character actors, Dabbs Greer has been playing small-town doctors, bankers, merchants, druggists, mayors and ministers since at least 1950. His purse-lipped countenance and Midwestern twang was equally effective in taciturn villainous roles. Essentially a bit player in films of the 1950s (Diplomatic Courier, Deadline USA, Living It Up), Greer was given more screen time than usual as a New York detective in House of Wax (1953), while his surface normality served as excellent contrast to the extraterrestrial goings-on in Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956) and It! The Terror from Beyond Space. A television actor since the dawn of the cathode-tube era, Greer has shown up in hundreds of TV supporting roles, including the "origin" episode of the original Superman series, in which he played the dangling dirigible worker rescued in mid-air by the Man of Steel. Greer also played the recurring roles of storekeeper Mr. Jones on Gunsmoke (1955-60) and Reverend Robert Alden on Little House on the Prairie (1974-83). Showing no signs of slowing down, Dabbs Greer continued accepting roles in such films as Two Moon Junction (1988) and Pacific Heights (1990) into the '90s. He died following a battle with kidney and heart disease, on April 28, 2007, not quite a month after his 90th birthday.

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.

Trivia: American character actor Robert Nichols appeared in numerous Hollywood and British films during the 1950s. He was particularly prolific during the 1950s. Nichols has also worked on stage and in television.

Trivia: Actress Mary Field kept her private life such a well-guarded secret that not even her most devoted fans (including several film historians who've attempted to write biographies of the actress) have ever been able to find out anything about her background. So far as anyone can ascertain, she entered films around 1937; her first important assignment was the dual role of the mothers of the title characters in The Prince and the Pauper (1937). Viewers may not know the name but they have seen the face: too thin and sharp-featured to be beautiful, too soft and kindly to be regarded as homely. Mary Field is the actress who played Huntz Hall's sister in the 1941 Universal serial Sea Raiders; the spinsterish sponsor of Danny Kaye's doctoral thesis in A Song of Born (1947); the nice lady standing in Macy's "Santa Claus" line with the little Dutch girl in Miracle on 34th Street (1947); the long-suffering music teacher in Cheaper by the Dozen (1950); and Harold Peary's bespectacled vis-a-vis in The Great Gildersleeve (1942)--to name just four films among hundreds.

Trivia: Originally billed as Gil Stratton Jr., this slight, apple-cheeked "juvenile" performer was barely out of his teens when he created the role of Bud Hooper in the 1941 Broadway musical Best Foot Forward. Stratton continued toting up stage and radio credits in New York until his 1943 film debut in Girl Crazy. His subsequent screen roles included Cookie, the stuttering narrator of Stalag 17 (1953), and pint-sized cyclist Mousie in The Wild One (1953). On television, he played the anemic collegiate Junior Jackson in the 1954 sitcom That's My Boy. That same year, he launched what would turn out to be a 20-year run as a top sportscaster at L.A.'s CBS TV affiliate KNXT. In his last few films, notably Mae West's Sextette (1977), he was cast as "himself." Gil Stratton retired to Hawaii in 1984, where for many years, he owned and maintained a radio station. He died of congestive heart failure in 2008.

Trivia: American movie stunt man John McKee began accepting acting roles somewhere around 1945. Though his name is not listed in The Baseball Encyclopedia, we can safely assume that McKee had some pro baseball experience of some sort. He was seen as a ballplayer in such films as It Happens Every Spring (1949), Three Little Words (1950), Angels in the Outfield (1951), Pride of St. Louis (1952), The Big Leaguer (1953) and The Kid From Left Field (1953). As late as 1978 he was still in uniform, playing Ralph Houk in the made-for-TV One in a Million: The Ron LeFlore Story. John McKee was also on call for military-officer roles, notably in the war films The Gallant Hours (1960) and McArthur (1976).