High Wall

Robert Taylor (Actor) .. Steven Kenet

Born: August 05, 1911
Died: June 08, 1969
Birthplace: Filley, Nebraska

Trivia: Robert Taylor's cumbersome given name, Spangler Arlington Brugh, can be blamed on his father, a Nebraska doctor. As a high schooler, Taylor participated on the track team, won oratory awards, and played the cello (his first love) in the school band. Attending Pomona College to study music, Taylor became involved in student theatricals, where his uncommonly good looks assured him leading roles. Spotted by an MGM talent scout, the 23-year-old Taylor was signed to a contract with that studio -- though his first film, Handy Andy (1934), would be a loanout to Fox. Taylor was given an extended, publicly distributed "screen test" when he starred in the MGM "Crime Does Not Pay" short, playing a handsome gangster who tries to avoid arrest by purposely disfiguring his face with acid. It was another loanout, to Universal for Magnificent Obsession (1935), that truly put Taylor in the matinee-idol category. Too "pretty" to be taken seriously by the critics, Taylor had to endure some humiliating reviews during his first years in films; even when delivering a perfectly acceptable performance as Armand in Camille (1936), Taylor was damned with faint praise, reviewers commenting on how "surprised" they were that he could act. Nobody liked Taylor but his public and his coworkers, who were impressed by his cooperation and his willingness to give 110 percent of himself and his time on the set. Though never a great actor, Taylor was capable of being a very good one, as even a casual glance at Johnny Eager (1942) and Bataan (1942) will confirm. Taylor's contributions to the war effort included service as an Air Force flight instructor and his narration of the 1944 documentary The Fighting Lady. His film career in eclipse during the 1950s, Taylor starred for three years in the popular weekly police series Robert Taylor's Detectives (1959-1962); and when his friend, Ronald Reagan, opted for a full-time political career in 1965, Taylor succeeded Reagan as host/narrator of the Western anthology Death Valley Days. Robert Taylor was married twice, to actresses Barbara Stanwyck (they remained good friends long after the divorce) and Ursula Theiss.

Audrey Totter (Actor) .. Dr. Ann Lorrison

Born: December 20, 1917
Died: December 12, 2013

Trivia: An actress since high school, Audrey Totter was by 1939 a well-established radio performer. Signed to an MGM contract in 1945, Totter played brittle, no-nonsense leading ladies and femme fatales in such films as The Postman Always Rings Twice (1946) and Lady in the Lake (1946). During her MGM years, Totter starred in the radio sitcom Meet Millie, but was contractually prevented from appearing in the TV version (she was replaced by Eleana Verdugo). As her film career waned, Totter agreed to sign on as a regular on the 1958 TV Western Cimarron City. In 1962, Audrey Totter co-starred with Stanley Holloway in the weekly sitcom Our Man Higgins; ten years later, she came out of retirement to play a recurring role on still another TV series, Medical Center. Her final acting role was on a 1987 episode of Murder, She Wrote. Totter died in 2013, just days before her 96th birthday.

H. B. Warner (Actor) .. Mr. Slocum

Born: October 26, 1876
Died: December 21, 1958

Trivia: H.B. Warner was the son of Charles Warner and the grandson of James Warner, both prominent British stage actors. A tentative stab at studying medicine was abandoned when the younger Warner took drama lessons in Paris and Italy, then joined his father's stock company. After touring the British empire, Warner made his first American stage appearance in 1905. A leading man in his younger days, Warner starred in the first stage and screen versions of that hardy perennial The Ghost Breaker. His most celebrated silent film role was as Christ in Cecil B. DeMille's The King of Kings (1927). Though Warner sometimes complained that this most daunting of portrayals ruined his career, in point of fact he remained extremely busy as a character actor in the 1930s and 1940s. A favorite of director Frank Capra, Warner appeared as Chang in Lost Horizon (1937) (for which he was Oscar-nominated) and as old man Gower in the Christmas perennial It's a Wonderful Life (1946). Warner also played Inspector Nielsen in several of the Bulldog Drummond B-pictures of the 1930s, and had a cameo as one of Gloria Swanson's "waxworks" in Sunset Boulevard. H.B. Warner's final screen appearance was in DeMille's 1956 remake of The Ten Commandments.

Herbert Marshall (Actor) .. Willard I. Whitcombe

Born: May 23, 1890
Died: January 22, 1966

Trivia: British actor Herbert Marshall was born to a theatrical family, but initially had no intentions of a stage career himself. After graduating from St. Mary's College in Harrow, Marshall became an accounting clerk, turning to acting only when his job failed to interest him. With an equal lack of enthusiasm, Marshall joined a stock company in Brighton, making his stage debut in 1911; he ascended to stardom two years later in the evergreen stage farce, Brewster's Millions. Enlisting in the British Expeditionary Forces during World War I, Marshall was severely wounded and his leg was amputated. While this might normally have signalled the end of a theatrical career, Marshall was outfitted with a prosthesis and determined to make something of himself as an actor; he played a vast array of roles, his physical handicap slowing him down not one iota. In tandem with his first wife, actress Edna Best, Marshall worked on stage in a series of domestic comedies and dramas, then entered motion pictures with Mumsie (1927). His first talking film was the 1929 version of Somerset Maugham's The Letter, which he would eventually film twice, the first time in the role of the heroine's illicit lover, the second time (in 1940) as the cuckolded husband. With Ernst Lubitsch's frothy film Trouble in Paradise (1932), Marshall became a popular romantic lead. Easing gracefully into character parts, the actor continued working into the 1960s; he is probably best remembered for his portrayal of author Somerset Maugham in two separate films based on Maugham's works, The Moon and Sixpence (1942) and The Razor's Edge (1946). Alfred Hitchcock, who'd directed Marshall twice in films, showed the actor to good advantage on the Hitchcock TV series of the 1950s, casting Marshall in one episode as a washed-up matinee idol who wins a stage role on the basis of a totally fabricated life story. Marshall hardly needed to embroider on his real story of his life: he was married five times, and despite his gentlemanly demeanor managed to make occasional headlines thanks to his rambunctious social activities.

Dorothy Patrick (Actor) .. Helen Kenet

Born: January 01, 1921
Died: May 31, 1987

Trivia: She was billing herself under her given name of Dorothy Davis when she made a name for herself as the "Chesterfield Girl." The well-proportioned young photographer's model won a Gateway to Hollywood contest in 1939, but opted instead for a marriage to star hockey player Lynn Patrick. When she finally did begin making films in 1946, the blonde beauty had changed her professional and personal name to Dorothy Patrick. After a brief flurry of stardom in such Republic programmers as Blonde Bandit (1949) and Destination Big House (1950), Dorothy Patrick settled into decorative walk-on roles in major releases like The Bad and the Beautiful (1952) and Singin' in the Rain (1952), before retiring in the late '50s.

Warner Anderson (Actor) .. Dr. George Poward

Born: March 10, 1911
Died: August 26, 1976

Trivia: Warner Anderson claimed that he made his first film appearance as a four-year-old juvenile actor in a 1915 Charles Ray vehicle. His first stage credit, Maytime, came two years later. During his early adulthood, Anderson worked as a straight man in vaudeville and burlesque. In the 1940s, he came to prominence as announcer for radio's Bell Telephone Hour. While most of his film roles were supporting, Anderson was starred in the early special-effects-fest Destination Moon. Warner Anderson's TV credits include a four-year run as Lt. Ben Guthrie on Lineup (aka San Francisco Beat) in the mid-1950s, and a lengthy tenure as newspaper editor Matthew Swain on the 1960s nighttime serial Peyton Place.

Moroni Olsen (Actor) .. Dr. Phillip Dunlap

Born: July 27, 1889
Died: November 22, 1954

Trivia: Born and educated in Utah, tall, piercing-eyed actor Moroni Olsen learned how to entertain an audience as a Chautaqua tent-show performer. In the 1920s, he organized the Moroni Olsen Players, one of the most prestigious touring stock companies in the business. After several successful seasons on Broadway, Olsen came to films in the role of Porthos in the 1935 version of The Three Musketeers. Though many of his subsequent roles were not on this plateau, Olsen nearly always transcended his material: In the otherwise middling Wheeler and Woolsey comedy Mummy's Boys (1936), for example, Olsen all but ignites the screen with his terrifying portrayal of a lunatic. Thanks to his aristocratic bearing and classically trained voice, Olsen was often called upon to play famous historical personages: he was Buffalo Bill in Annie Oakley (1935), Robert E. Lee in Santa Fe Trail (1940), and Sam Houston in Lone Star (1952). Throughout his Hollywood career, Moroni Olsen was active as a director and performer with the Pasadena Playhouse, and was the guiding creative force behind Hollywood's annual Pilgrimage Play.

John Ridgely (Actor) .. David Wallace

Born: September 06, 1909
Died: January 18, 1968

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

Morris Ankrum (Actor) .. Dr. Stanley Griffin

Born: August 28, 1897
Died: September 02, 1964

Trivia: American actor Morris Ankrum graduated from the University of Southern California with a law degree, then went on to an associate professorship in economics at the University of California at Berkeley. Here he founded a collegiate little theatre, eventually turning his hobby into a vocation as a teacher and director at the Pasadena Playhouse. (He was much admired by his students, including such future luminaries as Robert Preston and Raymond Burr.) Having already changed his name from Nussbaum to Ankrum for professional reasons, Ankrum was compelled to undergo another name change when he signed a Paramount Pictures contract in the 1930s; in his first films, he was billing as Stephen Morris. Reverting to Morris Ankrum in 1939, the sharp-featured, heavily eyebrowed actor flourished in strong character roles, usually of a villainous nature, throughout the 1940s. By the 1950s, Ankrum had more or less settled into "authority" roles in science-fiction films and TV programs. Among his best known credits in this genre were Rocketship X-M (1950), Red Planet Mars (1952), Flight to Mars (1952), Invaders From Mars (1953) (do we detect a subtle pattern here?), Earth Vs. the Flying Saucers (1956) and From the Earth to the Moon (1958). The fact that Morris Ankrum played innumerable Army generals was fondly invoked in director Joe Dante's 1993 comedy Matinee: the military officer played by Kevin McCarthy in the film-within-a-film Mant is named General Ankrum.

Elisabeth Risdon (Actor) .. Mrs. Kenet

Born: April 26, 1887

Vince Barnett (Actor) .. Henry Cronner

Born: July 04, 1902
Died: August 10, 1977

Trivia: Vince Barnett was the son of Luke Barnett, a well-known comedian who specialized in insulting and pulling practical jokes on his audiences (Luke's professional nickname was "Old Man Ribber"). Vince remained in the family business by hiring himself out to Hollywood parties, where he would insult the guests in a thick German accent, spill the soup and drop the trays--all to the great delight of hosts who enjoyed watching their friends squirm and mutter "Who hired that jerk?" The diminutive, chrome-domed Barnett also appeared in the 1926 edition of Earl Carroll's Vanities. He began appearing in films in 1930, playing hundreds of comedy bits and supporting parts until retiring in 1975. Among Vince Barnett's more sizeable screen roles was the moronic, illiterate gangster "secretary" in Scarface (1931).

Jonathan Hale (Actor) .. Emory Garrison

Born: January 01, 1891
Died: February 28, 1966

Trivia: Once Canadian-born actor Jonathan Hale became well known for his portrayal of well-to-do businessmen, he was fond of telling the story of how he'd almost been a man of wealth in real life--except for an improvident financial decision by his father. A minor diplomat before he turned to acting, Hale began appearing in minor film roles in 1934, showing up fleetingly in such well-remembered films as the Karloff/Lugosi film The Raven (1935), the Marx Brothers' A Night at the Opera (1935) and the first version of A Star is Born (1937). In 1938, Hale was cast as construction executive J. C. Dithers in Blondie, the first of 28 "B"-pictures based on Chic Young's popular comic strip. Though taller and more distinguished-looking than the gnomelike Dithers of the comics, Hale became instantly synonymous with the role, continuing to portray the character until 1946's Blondie's Lucky Day (his voice was heard in the final film of the series, Beware of Blondie, though that film's on-camera Dithers was Edward Earle). During this same period, Hale also appeared regularly as Irish-brogued Inspector Fernack in RKO's "The Saint" series. After 1946, Hale alternated between supporting roles and bits, frequently unbilled (e.g. Angel on My Shoulder, Call Northside 777 and Son of Paleface); he had a pivotal role as Robert Walker's hated father in Hitchcock's Strangers on a Train (1951), though the part was confined to a smidgen of dialogue and a single long-shot. Hale worked prolifically in television in the '50s, with substantial guest roles in such series as Disneyland and The Adventures of Superman. In 1966, after a long illness, Jonathan Hale committed suicide at the age of 75, just months before the TV release of the Blondie films that had won him prominence in the '30s and '40s.

Charles Arnt (Actor) .. Sidney X. Hackle

Born: August 20, 1908
Died: August 06, 1990

Trivia: Indiana native Charles Arnt attended Princeton University, where he was president of the Triangle Club and where he earned a geological engineering degree. Short, balding and with an air of perpetual suspicion concerning his fellow man, Arnt seemed far older than his 30 years when he was featured in the original Broadway production of Knickerbocker Holiday. In the movies, Arnt was often cast as snoopy clerks, inquisitive next-door neighbors or curious bystanders. Charles Arnt was seen in such films as The Falcon's Brother (1942), The Great Gildersleeve (1943) and That Wonderful Urge (1948); he also played one top-billed lead, as an obsessive art dealer in PRC's Dangerous Intruder (1946).

Ray Mayer (Actor) .. Tom Delaney

Born: January 01, 1943
Died: January 01, 1948

Bobby Hyatt (Actor) .. Richard Kenet

Born: December 29, 1939

Dick Wessel (Actor) .. Jim Hale

Born: January 01, 1913
Died: April 20, 1965

Trivia: American actor Dick Wessel had a face like a Mack Truck bulldog and a screen personality to match. After several years on stage, Wessel began showing up in Hollywood extra roles around 1933; he is fleetingly visible in the Marx Brothers' Duck Soup (1933), Laurel and Hardy's Bonnie Scotland (1935), and the Columbia "screwball" comedy She Couldn't Take It (1935). The size of his roles increased in the '40s; perhaps his best feature-film showing was as the eponymous bald-domed master criminal in Dick Tracy vs. Cueball (1946). He was a valuable member of Columbia Pictures' short subject stock company, playing a variety of bank robbers, wrestlers, jealous husbands and lazy brother-in-laws. Among his more memorable 2-reel appearances were as lovestruck boxer "Chopper" in The Three Stooges' Fright Night (1947), Andy Clyde's invention-happy brother-in-law in Eight Ball Andy (1948), and Hugh Herbert's overly sensitive strongman neighbor in Hot Heir (1947). Wessel was shown to good (if unbilled) advantage as a handlebar-mustached railroad engineer in the superspectacular Around the World in 80 Days (1956), and had a regular role as Carney on the 1959 TV adventure series Riverboat. Dick Wessel's farewell screen appearance was as a harried delivery man in Disney's The Ugly Dachshund (1965).

Robert Emmett O'Connor (Actor) .. Joe

Born: March 18, 1885

Celia Travers (Actor) .. Maggie

Born: January 01, 1914
Died: January 01, 1975

Mary Servoss (Actor) .. Aunt Martha

Born: January 01, 1887
Died: January 01, 1968

Eula Guy (Actor) .. Vera Mercer

Born: January 01, 1953
Died: January 01, 1960

Jack Davis (Actor) .. Det. Halloran

Died: January 01, 1968

Tom Quinn (Actor) .. Det. Schaeffer

Born: April 28, 1934

Frank Jenks (Actor) .. Drunk

Born: January 01, 1902
Died: May 13, 1962

Trivia: From 1922 through 1934, Iowa-born performer Frank Jenks was a song and dance man in vaudeville. He began picking up day work in Hollywood films in 1933, and by 1937 had worked his way up to a contract with Universal Pictures. Jenks was seen in sizeable character roles in films ranging from the sumptuous Deanna Durbin vehicle 100 Men and a Girl to several entries in the Crime Club B-series. He portrayed sardonic sleuth Bill Crane (a creation of mystery writer Jonathan Latimer) in the Crime Club entries The Westland Case (1937) and Lady in the Morgue (1938). Jenks' familiar Hibernian grin and salty delivery of dialogue graced many a feature of the '40s and '50s; most of the roles were supporting, though Jenks was allowed full leads in an informal series of PRC detective films of the mid '40s. Frank Jenks' most conspicuous assignment of the '50s was as Uthas P. Garvey, the Runyonesque assistant of lovable con artist Alan Mowbray on the TV series Colonel Humphrey Flack, which ran live in 1953-54 and was resurrected for 39 filmed episodes in 1958.

Irving Bacon (Actor) .. Gas Station Proprietor

Born: September 06, 1893
Died: February 05, 1965

Trivia: Irving Bacon entered films at the Keystone Studios in 1913, where his athletic prowess and Ichabod Crane-like features came in handy for the Keystone brand of broad slapstick. He appeared in over 200 films during the silent and sound era, often playing mailmen, soda jerks and rustics. In The Amazing Dr. Clitterhouse (1938) it is Irving, as a flustered jury foreman, who delivers the film's punchline. In the late 1930s and early 1940s, Irving played the recurring role of Mr. Crumb in Columbia's Blondie series; he's the poor postman who is forever being knocked down by the late-for-work Dagwood Bumstead, each collision accompanied by a cascade of mail flying through the air. Irving Bacon kept his hand in throughout the 1950s, appearing in a sizeable number of TV situation comedies.

Bernard Gorcey (Actor) .. Hirsch

Born: January 01, 1887
Died: September 11, 1955

Trivia: Of Jewish-Swiss descent, actor Bernard Gorcey was in his early 20s when he emigrated to the U.S. At 4' 10", Gorcey ruled out the possibility of becoming a leading man on stage; instead, he concentrated on comedy roles, and in so doing assured himself nearly five decades of steady work. On Broadway and in stock, he provided comedy relief to such operettas as Rose Marie, Wildflower, and Song of the Flame. In 1922, he was cast as Isaac Cohen in the phenomenally popular Broadway play Abie's Irish Rose; six year later, he repeated his role in the film version. Then it was back to Broadway and radio work until 1939, when Charlie Chaplin hired Gorcey to play philosophical ghetto dweller Mr. Mann in The Great Dictator. Gorcey went on to play minor roles at Warner Bros. and Monogram, where his son, actor Leo Gorcey was firmly established as a member of the "Dead End Kids" and "East Side Kids" aggregations. After another sojourn to Broadway, the elder Gorcey returned to Monogram, this time to stay. In 1946, the "East Side Kids" matriculated into "The Bowery Boys," a series that lasted until 1958. In the first Bowery Boys entry Live Wires, Gorcey played a featured role as a nervous bookie. From Bowery Bombshell (1946) onward, he was ensconced in the role of Louie Dumbrowski, the eternally flustered, supremely gullible owner of the sweet shop where the Bowery Boys whiled away their time hatching schemes and mooching sodas. Occasionally, Gorcey would accept an "outside" role in films like No Minor Vices, but his principal source of income remained Louie Dumbrowski (and the Los Angeles print shop that he ran in his off-hours). Not long after appearing in the 1955 Bowery Boys opus Dig That Uranium, Bernard Gorcey died of injuries sustained in a traffic accident.

Bert Hanlon (Actor) .. Bored Clerk

Born: January 01, 1894
Died: January 01, 1972

Selmer Jackson (Actor) .. Insp. Harding

Born: May 07, 1888

John Hamilton (Actor) .. Police Surgeon

Born: January 01, 1886
Died: October 15, 1958

Trivia: Born and educated in Pennsylvania, John Hamilton headed to New York in his twenties to launch a 25-year stage career. Ideally cast as businessmen and officials, the silver-haired Hamilton worked opposite such luminaries as George M. Cohan and Ann Harding. He toured in the original company of the long-running Frank Bacon vehicle Lightnin', and also figured prominently in the original New York productions of Seventh Heaven and Broadway. He made his film bow in 1930, costarring with Donald Meek in a series of 2-reel S.S.Van Dyne whodunits (The Skull Mystery, The Wall St. Mystery) filmed at Vitaphone's Brooklyn studios. Vitaphone's parent company, Warner Bros., brought Hamilton to Hollywood in 1936, where he spent the next twenty years playing bits and supporting roles as police chiefs, judges, senators, generals and other authority figures. Humphrey Bogart fans will remember Hamilton as the clipped-speech DA in The Maltese Falcon (1941), while Jimmy Cagney devotees will recall Hamilton as the recruiting officer who inspires George M. Cohan (Cagney) to compose "Over There" in Yankee Doodle Dandy (1942). Continuing to accept small roles in films until the mid '50s (he was the justice of the peace who marries Marlon Brando to Teresa Wright in 1950's The Men), Hamilton also supplemented his income with a group of advertisements for an eyeglasses firm. John Hamilton is best known to TV-addicted baby boomers for his six-year stint as blustering editor Perry "Great Caesar's Ghost!" White on the Adventures of Superman series.

Lee Phelps (Actor) .. Telephone Man

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).

Matt Willis (Actor) .. Admittance Clerk

Born: October 16, 1913
Died: March 30, 1989

Trivia: Matt Willis -- who was known on-stage as Marion Willis -- was a successful general-purpose actor who appeared in a dozen Broadway productions, including Come Angel Band, How Beautiful With Shoes, Sweet River, Stork Mad, The Burning Deck, and Tobacco Road (as Lov Bensey), and over 60 feature films in the period from 1941 through 1952. He started out in vaudeville, and initially came to notice as a blackface comedian while a member of Hank White's Minstrels, before moving into legitimate theater in the mid-'30s. His screen career mostly consisted of small parts -- during World War II, he portrayed a succession of taciturn sergeants in single scenes -- though he occasionally rose to key supporting roles. The best-known movie in which Willis appeared was Alfred Hitchcock's Saboteur (1942); he played a sheriff's deputy. His credits also included Lewis Milestone's A Walk in the Sun (1945), Frank Borzage's Stage Door Canteen (1943), and Walt Disney's production of So Dear to My Heart (1949), but his best role was in a decidedly lower-budgeted B-feature, Columbia's The Return of the Vampire (1943), in which he played Andreas, the tormented werewolf under the spell of the vampire played by Bela Lugosi. Surprisingly, given the deep, gravel-textured voice that he often displayed, Willis also sang in at least one production, Swingtime Johnny. He passed away in at age 75.

Robert B. Williams (Actor) .. Deputy

Born: January 01, 1905
Died: January 01, 1978

Trivia: Character actor, onscreen from 1937.

Eddie Dunn (Actor) .. Deputy

Born: March 31, 1896
Died: May 05, 1951

Trivia: In the '30s, tall, sandy-haired, deep-voiced American actor Eddie Dunn was frequently cast as a laconic police officer in the 2-reelers of comedy producers Hal Roach and Mack Sennett. The actor's feature-film roles consisted mainly of small-town bullies, prison guards, bartenders, military policemen and private detectives. Eddie Dunn was last seen in a fleeting role as a sheriff in the 1950 MGM musical Summer Stock.

Jim Drum (Actor) .. Orderly

Paul Kruger (Actor) .. Orderly

Born: January 01, 1894
Died: January 01, 1960

Jack Worth (Actor) .. Orderly

Lisa Golm (Actor) .. Dr. Golm

Born: April 10, 1891
Died: January 01, 1964

Grandon Rhodes (Actor) .. Dr. Edermann

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.

Perry Ivins (Actor) .. Cackling Patient

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.

Dorothy Vaughan (Actor) .. Harriett

Born: November 05, 1889
Died: March 15, 1955

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

Jean Andren (Actor) .. Nurse

Born: February 19, 1904

Frank Marlowe (Actor) .. Patient

Born: January 01, 1904
Died: March 30, 1964

Trivia: American character actor Frank Marlowe left the stage for the screen in 1934. For the next 25 years, Marlowe showed up in countless bits and minor roles, often in the films of 20th Century-Fox. He played such peripheral roles as gas station attendants, cabdrivers, reporters, photographers, servicemen and murder victims (for some reason, he made a great corpse). As anonymous as ever, Frank Marlowe made his final appearance as a barfly in 1957's Rockabilly Baby.

John Beck (Actor) .. Patient

Born: January 28, 1943

Henry Sylvester (Actor) .. Patient

Born: January 01, 1881
Died: January 01, 1961

Phil Dunham (Actor) .. Patient

Born: January 01, 1884
Died: January 01, 1972

Skeets Noyes (Actor) .. Patient

Marta Mitrovich (Actor) .. Patient

Kate MacKenna (Actor) .. Patient

Born: January 01, 1877
Died: January 01, 1957

Russell Arms (Actor) .. Patient

Born: February 03, 1929
Died: February 13, 2012

Trivia: Pleasant-looking Russell Arms parlayed success on radio into a minor screen career during World War II, first under contract to Warner Bros. then as a freelance performer in mostly Westerns. He found more lasting fame as a host/vocalist on the long-running television program Your Hit Parade, on which he appeared from 1952 to 1957. Arms' subsequent television work included guest-starring roles on such diverse shows as Rawhide and Diff'rent Strokes.

Al Hill (Actor) .. Patient

Born: July 14, 1892
Died: January 01, 1954

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

Erville Alderson (Actor) .. Patient

Born: January 01, 1882
Died: August 04, 1957

Trivia: In films from 1921 through 1952, white-maned American character actor Erville Alderson was most closely associated with D.W. Griffith in his early movie years. Alderson played major roles in Griffith's The White Rose (1932), America (1924) and Isn't Life Wonderful (1924). In D.W.'s Sally of the Sawdust (1926), Alderson performed double duty, playing the merciless Judge Foster in front of the cameras and serving as assistant director behind the scenes. During the talkie era, the actor showed up in "old codger" roles as sheriffs, court clerks and newspaper editors. You might remember Erville Alderson as the crooked handwriting expert (he was crooked, not the handwriting) in Frank Capra's Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939) and as Jefferson Davis in the Errol Flynn starrer Santa Fe Trail (1940).

William Fawcett (Actor) .. Patient

Born: January 01, 1893
Died: January 25, 1974

Trivia: From his first film appearance in 1946 until his retirement sometime in the late 1960s, the wizened, rusty-voiced actor William Fawcett specialized in cantankerous farmers, grizzled old prospectors and Scroogelike millionaires. He worked frequently at Columbia, appearing in that studio's quota of "B" westerns and Arabian Nights quickies, as well as such serials as The Adventures of Sir Galahad (1949), in which he played the juicy bad-guy role of Merlin the Magician. Though occasionally seen in sizeable parts in "A" pictures--he played Andy Griffith's septuagenarian father in No Time For Sergeants (1957)--Fawcett's appearances in big-budgeters frequently went unbilled, as witness The Music Man (1962) and What a Way to Go (1964). Baby boomers will fondly recall William Fawcett as ranch-hand Pete ("who cut his teeth on a brandin' iron") in the Saturday-morning TV series Fury (1956-60).

Guy Beach (Actor) .. Patient

Born: January 01, 1887
Died: January 01, 1952

Stanley Price (Actor) .. Patient

Born: January 01, 1892
Died: January 01, 1955

Trivia: American character actor Stanley Price reportedly launched his screen career in 1922. Possessed of a sharkish smile and luminescent stare, Price was usually seen as a villain, often of the psychotic variety. He was a "regular" in the serial field, appearing in such chapter plays as The Miracle Rider (1935), Red Barry (1938), Adventures of Captain Marvel (1941), Holt of the Secret Service (1942), Batman (1943), Captain America (1944), Superman (1948), and King of the Rocket Man (1949). His flair for comedy was well represented in such films as Road to Morocco (1942), in which he played the blithering idiot in the opening bazaar scene, and his many appearances with the Three Stooges. According to at least one source, Stanley Price was briefly a dialogue director at Lippert Studios.

Joel Friedkin (Actor) .. Patient

Born: January 01, 1884
Died: January 01, 1954

Helen Eby-Rock (Actor) .. Josephine

Milton Kibbee (Actor) .. Counterman

Born: January 27, 1896

George Bunny (Actor) .. Customer

Born: July 13, 1867
Died: April 16, 1952

Bob Wendal (Actor) .. Customer

Sammy Shack (Actor) .. Customer

Hank Worden (Actor) .. Customer

Born: January 01, 1901
Died: December 06, 1992

Trivia: Bald, lanky, laconic American actor Hank Worden made his screen debut in The Plainsman (1936), and began playing simpleminded rustics at least as early as the 1941 El Brendel two-reel comedy Love at First Fright. A member in good standing of director John Ford's unofficial stock company, Worden appeared in such Ford classics as Fort Apache (1948) and Wagonmaster (1950). The quintessential Worden-Ford collaboration was The Searchers (1955) wherein Worden portrayed the near-moronic Mose Harper, who spoke in primitive, epigrammatic half-sentences and who seemed gleefully obsessed with the notion of unexpected death. Never a "normal" actor by any means, Worden continued playing characters who spoke as if they'd been kicked by a horse in childhood into the '80s; his last appearance was a recurring role in the quirky David Lynch TV serial Twin Peaks. In real life, Hank Worden was far from addled and had a razor-sharp memory, as proven in his many appearances at Western fan conventions and in an interview program about living in the modern desert, filmed just before Worden's death for cable TV's Discovery Channel.

Georgia Caine (Actor) .. Miss Twitchell

Born: October 30, 1876
Died: April 04, 1964

Trivia: Georgia Caine is best remembered today by film buffs for her work in most of Preston Sturges's classic films for Paramount Pictures, as well as the movies he subsequently made independently and at 20th Century Fox. She was practically born on stage, the daughter of George Caine and the former Jennie Darragh, both of whom were Shakespearean actors. As an infant and toddler, she was kept in the company of her parents as they toured the United States. Bitten by the theatrical bug, she left school before the age of 17 to become an actress and she started out in Shakespearean repertory. Caine quickly shifted over to musical comedy, however, and became a favorite of George M. Cohan, appearing in his plays Mary, The O'Brien Girls, and The Silver Swan, among others. In 1914, she also starred in a stage production of The Merry Widow in London. Caine was a favorite subject of theater columnists during the teens and '20s. By the end of that decade, however, after 30 years on stage, her star had begun to fade, and that was when Hollywood beckoned. The advent of talking pictures suddenly created a demand for actors and actresses who could handle spoken dialogue. She moved to the film Mecca at the outset of the 1930s, and Caine worked in more than 60 films over the next 20 years, usually playing mothers, aunts, and older neighbors. She also occasionally broke out of that mold to do something strikingly different, most notably in Camille (1937), in which she portrayed a streetwalker. Starting with Christmas in July in 1940, she was a regular member of Preston Sturges' stock company of players (even portraying a bearded lady in The Sin of Harold Diddlebock), appearing in most of his movies right up to his directorial swan song, The Beautiful Blonde From Bashful Bend (1949).

Boyd Davis (Actor) .. Mr. Grant

Born: June 19, 1885
Died: January 25, 1963

Trivia: Although he played bit roles in films in the late silent era, tall, gangly character actor Boyd Davis spent the 1930s almost exclusively on the stage. He was back in Hollywood with a vengeance in the '40s, appearing in hundreds of bit roles, mostly as men of power and distinction -- judges, military officers, college professors, and the like. Davis' last film was the 1953 Western Born to the Saddle, in which he once again played a judge.

Henry Hall (Actor) .. Rev. Holmsby

Born: November 05, 1876

Trivia: In films since the earliest days of sound, distinguished-looking Henry Hall specialized in playing small-town doctors, lawyers, benign businessmen, or the heroine's father, often in low-budget Westerns and frequently unbilled. On Broadway in the first decade of the 20th century, Hall spent his final years as a resident at the Motion Picture Country House and Hospital in Woodland Hills, CA.

Howard Michell (Actor) .. Attendant

Frank Darien (Actor) .. Old Man in the Tub

Born: January 01, 1875
Died: January 01, 1955

Trivia: Frail-looking character actor Frank Darien began working in films around 1910, playing parts in a smattering of D. W. Griffith and Mack Sennett shorts. Darien was busiest during the early-talkie era, essaying peripheral roles in such productions as Cimarron (1931), The Miracle Man (1932) and Mystery of the Wax Museum (1932). He was most often cast as coroners, doctors, household servants, doormen and justices of the peace. Frank Darien's most memorable role was Uncle John in The Grapes of Wrath (1940), directed by another D. W. Griffith alumnus, John Ford.

Dorothy Neumann (Actor) .. Mrs. Miller

Born: January 26, 1914
Died: May 23, 1994

Trivia: American character actress Dorothy Neumann was long a stage performer before making her film bow in 1948's Sorry, Wrong Number. She spent the next two decades in small roles, usually playing clerks, domestics, ladies' club chairpersons and grandmothers. One of Ms. Neumann's best remembered assignments was her uncredited role in The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951), as the suspicious housekeeper of Einstein-like scientist Sam Jaffe, who is confronted in Jaffe's den by benevolent space alien Michael Rennie. Frequently on television, Dorothy Neumann was seen in the regular role of Miss Mittelman on the now-forgotten 1965 sitcom Hank.

Ray Teal (Actor) .. Lieutenant of Police

Born: January 12, 1902
Died: April 02, 1976
Birthplace: Grand Rapids, Michigan

Trivia: Possessor of one of the meanest faces in the movies, American actor Ray Teal spent much of his film career heading lynch mobs, recruiting for hate organizations and decimating Indians. Naturally, anyone this nasty in films would have to conversely be a pleasant, affable fellow in real life, and so it was with Teal. Working his way through college as a saxophone player, Teal became a bandleader upon graduation, remaining in the musical world until 1936. In 1938, Teal was hired to act in the low-budget Western Jamboree, and though he played a variety of bit parts as cops, taxi drivers and mashers, he seemed more at home in Westerns. Teal found it hard to shake his bigoted badman image even in A-pictures; as one of the American jurists in Judgment at Nuremberg (1961), he is the only member of Spencer Tracy's staff that feels that sympathy should be afforded Nazi war criminals -- and the only one on the staff who openly dislikes American liberals. A more benign role came Teal's way on the '60s TV series Bonanza, where he played the sometimes ineffectual but basically decent Sheriff Coffee. Ray Teal retired from films shortly after going through his standard redneck paces in The Liberation of LB Jones (1970).

Dan Quigg (Actor) .. Police Clerk

Tay Dunn (Actor) .. Police Clerk

Rhea Mitchell (Actor) .. Woman

Born: December 10, 1893
Died: September 16, 1957

Trivia: Rhea Mitchell appeared no less than six times opposite early silent Western star William S. Hart; in five of the films -- beginning with On the Night Stage (1914) -- she was his leading lady, usually a saloon girl redeemed by love. In their last film together, The Money Corral (1919), Mitchell lost her taciturn leading man to the younger, blonder Jane Novak, a metaphor for a career that had been on the wane since the failure of the self-explanatory Sequel to the Diamond from the Sky (1916) -- an unmitigated fiasco for Mitchell and everyone concerned and, with only four chapters produced, the shortest serial in history. Rhea Mitchell continued in films through Danger Patrol (1928), but her roles grew gradually smaller. One of several former silent stars offered extra work by MGM's charitable Louis B. Mayer, she returned to the screen in the mid-'30s and appeared in scores of miniscule bit parts through the early '50s. In retirement, Mitchell managed an apartment building in Hollywood, which is where she was found brutally strangled on September 16, 1957. The killer proved to be a young drifter whom the devoutly religious woman had offered to help.

Abe Dinovitch (Actor) .. Cab Driver

Jack Chefe (Actor) .. Bartender

Born: April 01, 1894
Died: December 01, 1975

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).

Jack Baxley (Actor) .. Bartender

Born: January 01, 1883
Died: January 01, 1950

Trivia: Burly Jack Baxley had been a side show barker and played that in most of his early films, including Anna Christie (1930), Dancing Lady (1933) and O'Shaughnessey's Boy (1935). Long at MGM, Baxley also portrayed salesmen, bartenders, process servers, and reporters -- in other words men not necessarily all that trustworthy. He was a member of Screen Extras Guild until his death in 1950.

Elizabeth Risdon (Actor) .. Mrs. Kenet

Born: April 26, 1887
Died: December 20, 1958

Trivia: Inaugurating her acting career in her native London, Elizabeth Risdon studied at the RADA, and later taught there. She made her Broadway bow in the 1912 production Fanny's First Play. She then returned to England, where she was voted 1915's most popular silent film star. The tiny but resilient actress spent the 1920s alternating between the New York and London stages. After a lengthy association with the Theatre Guild, Risdon settled in Hollywood in 1934. Her talkie career consisted mostly of iron-willed matriarchs, but she also played a few frivolous comedy roles; her screen credits ranged from the lofty heights of Mourning Becomes Electra to such homely divertissement as Roy Rogers Westerns. Elizabeth Risdon was married to director George Loane Tucker and actor Brandon Evans.

Selmar Jackson (Actor) .. Inspector Harding

Born: May 07, 1888
Died: March 30, 1971

Trivia: American actor Selmer Jackson first stepped before the cameras in the 1921 silent film Supreme Passion. Silver-haired and silver-tongued, Jackson so closely resembled such dignified character players as Samuel S. Hinds and Henry O'Neill that at times it was hard to tell which actor was which -- especially when (as often happened at Warner Bros. in the 1930s) all three showed up in the same picture. During World War II, Jackson spent most of his time in uniform as naval and military officers, usually spouting declarations like "Well, men...this is it!" Selmer Jackson's final film appearance was still another uniformed role in 1960's The Gallant Hours.

Milt Kibbee (Actor) .. Counterman

Born: January 01, 1896
Died: April 21, 1970

Trivia: Milton Kibbee was the younger brother of prominent stage and screen character actor Guy Kibbee. Looking like a smaller, skinnier edition of his brother, Milton followed Guy's lead and opted for a show business career. The younger Kibbee never reached the professional heights enjoyed by Guy in the '30s and '40s, but he was steadily employed in bit parts and supporting roles throughout the same period. Often cast as desk clerks, doctors and park-bench habitues, Milton Kibbee was most frequently seen as a pencil-wielding reporter, notably (and very briefly) in 1941's Citizen Kane.

Robert E. O'Connor (Actor) .. Joe the gatekeeper

Born: January 01, 1885
Died: September 04, 1962

Trivia: Boasting a colorful show-biz background as a circus and vaudeville performer, Robert Emmet O'Connor entered films in 1926. Blessed with a pudgy Irish mug that could convey both jocularity and menace, O'Connor was most often cast as cops and detectives, some of them honest and lovable, some of them corrupt and pugnacious. His roles ranged from such hefty assignments as the flustered plainclothesman Henderson in Night at the Opera (1935) to such bits as the traffic cop who is confused by Jimmy Cagney's barrage of Yiddish in Taxi! (1932). One of his most famous non-cop roles was warm-hearted bootlegger Paddy Ryan in Public Enemy. During the 1940s, O'Connor was a contract player at MGM, showing up in everything from Our Gang comedies to the live-action prologue of the Tex Avery cartoon classic Who Killed Who? (1944). Robert Emmet O'Connor's last film role was Paramount studio-guard Jonesy in Sunset Boulevard (1950). Twelve years later, he died of injuries sustained in a fire.

Howard Mitchell (Actor) .. Attendant

Born: December 11, 1883
Died: October 09, 1958

Trivia: Howard M. Mitchell's screen acting career got off to a good start with a pair of silent serials, Beloved Adventurer (1914) and The Road of Strife (1915). Mitchell kept busy as a director in the 1920s, returning to acting in 1935. His roles were confined to bits and walk-ons as guards, storekeepers, judges, and especially police chiefs. Howard M. Mitchell closed out his career playing a train conductor in the classic "B" melodrama The Narrow Margin (1952).

5:45 pm - 8:00 pm, Thursday, January 8 on WNYW Movies! (5.2)