Trivia: American actor Gary Cooper was born on the Montana ranch of his wealthy father, and educated in a prestigious school in England -- a dichotomy that may explain how the adult Cooper was able to combine the ruggedness of the frontiersman with the poise of a cultured gentleman. Injured in an auto accident while attending Wesleyan College, he convalesced on his dad's ranch, perfecting the riding skills that would see him through many a future Western film. After trying to make a living at his chosen avocation of political cartooning, Cooper was encouraged by two friends to seek employment as a cowboy extra in movies. Agent Nan Collins felt she could get more prestigious work for the handsome, gangling Cooper, and, in 1926, she was instrumental in obtaining for the actor an important role in The Winning of Barbara Worth. Movie star Clara Bow also took an interest in Cooper, seeing to it that he was cast in a couple of her films. Cooper really couldn't act at this point, but he applied himself to his work in a brief series of silent Westerns for his home studio, Paramount Pictures, and, by 1929, both his acting expertise and his popularity had soared. Cooper's first talking-picture success was The Virginian (1929), in which he developed the taciturn, laconic speech patterns that became fodder for every impressionist on radio, nightclubs, and television. Cooper alternated between tie-and-tails parts in Design for Living (1933) and he-man adventurer roles in The Lives of a Bengal Lancer (1935) for most of the 1930s; in 1941, he was honored with an Oscar for Sergeant York, a part for which he was the personal choice of the real-life title character, World War I hero Alvin York. One year later, Cooper scored in another film biography, Pride of the Yankees. As baseball great Lou Gehrig, the actor was utterly convincing (despite the fact that he'd never played baseball and wasn't a southpaw like Gehrig), and left few dry eyes in the audiences with his fade-out "luckiest man on the face of the earth" speech. In 1933, Cooper married socialite Veronica Balfe, who, billed as Sandra Shaw, enjoyed a short-lived acting career. Too old for World War II service, Cooper gave tirelessly of his time in hazardous South Pacific personal-appearance tours. Ignoring the actor's indirect participation in the communist witch-hunt of the 1940s, Hollywood held Cooper in the highest regard as an actor and a man. Even those co-workers who thought that Cooper wasn't exerting himself at all when filming were amazed to see how, in the final product, Cooper was actually outacting everyone else, albeit in a subtle, unobtrusive manner. Consigned mostly to Westerns by the 1950s (including the classic High Noon [1952]), Cooper retained his box-office stature. Privately, however, he was plagued with painful, recurring illnesses, and one of them developed into lung cancer. Discovering the extent of his sickness, Cooper kept the news secret, although hints of his condition were accidentally blurted out by his close friend Jimmy Stewart during the 1961 Academy Awards ceremony, where Stewart was accepting a career-achievement Oscar for Cooper. One month later, and less than two months after his final public appearance as the narrator of a TV documentary on the "real West," Cooper died; to fans still reeling from the death of Clark Gable six months earlier, it seemed that Hollywood's Golden Era had suddenly died, as well.

Trivia: In an industry of prima donnas, actress Barbara Stanwyck was universally recognized as a consummate professional; a supremely versatile performer, her strong screen presence established her as a favorite of directors, including Cecil B. De Mille, Fritz Lang, and Frank Capra. Born Ruby Stevens July 16, 1907, in Brooklyn, NY, she was left orphaned at the age of four and raised by her showgirl sister. Upon quitting school a decade later, she began dancing in local speakeasies and at the age of 15 became a Ziegfeld chorus girl. In 1926, Stanwyck made her Broadway debut in The Noose, becoming a major stage star in her next production, Burlesque. MGM requested a screen test, but she rejected the offer. She did, however, agree to a supporting role in 1927's Broadway Nights, and after completing her stage run in 1929 appeared in the drama The Locked Door. With her husband, comedian Frank Fay, Stanwyck traveled to Hollywood. After unsuccessfully testing at Warner Bros., she appeared in Columbia's low-budget Mexicali Rose, followed in 1930 by Capra's Ladies of Leisure, the picture which shot her to stardom. A long-term Columbia contract was the result, and the studio soon loaned Stanwyck to Warners for 1931's Illicit. It was a hit, as was the follow-up Ten Cents a Dance. Reviewers were quite taken with her, and with a series of successful pictures under her belt, she sued Columbia for a bigger salary; a deal was struck to share her with Warners, and she split her time between the two studios for pictures including Miracle Woman, Night Nurse, and Forbidden, a major hit which established her among the most popular actresses in Hollywood. Over the course of films like 1932's Shopworn, Ladies They Talk About, and Baby Face, Stanwyck developed an image as a working girl, tough-minded and often amoral, rarely meeting a happy ending; melodramas including 1934's Gambling Lady and the following year's The Woman in Red further established the persona, and in Red Salute she even appeared as a student flirting with communism. Signing with RKO, Stanwyck starred as Annie Oakley; however, her contract with the studio was non-exclusive, and she also entered into a series of multi-picture deals with the likes of Fox (1936's A Message to Garcia) and MGM (His Brother's Wife, co-starring Robert Taylor, whom she later married).For 1937's Stella Dallas, Stanwyck scored the first of four Academy Award nominations. Refusing to be typecast, she then starred in a screwball comedy, Breakfast for Two, followed respectively by the downcast 1938 drama Always Goodbye and the caper comedy The Mad Miss Manton. After the 1939 De Mille Western Union Pacific, she co-starred with William Holden in Golden Boy, and with Henry Fonda she starred in Preston Sturges' outstanding The Lady Eve. For the 1941 Howard Hawks comedy Ball of Fire, Stanwyck earned her second Oscar nomination. Another superior film, Capra's Meet John Doe, completed a very successful year. Drama was the order of the day for the next few years, as she starred in pictures like The Gay Sisters and The Great Man's Lady. In 1944, she delivered perhaps her most stunning performance in Billy Wilder's classic noir Double Indemnity. Stanwyck's stunning turn as a femme fatale secured her a third Oscar bid and helped make her, according to the IRS, the highest-paid woman in America. It also won her roles in several of the decade's other great film noirs, including 1946's The Strange Love of Martha Ivers and 1949's The File on Thelma Jordon. In between, Stanwyck also starred in the 1948 thriller Sorry, Wrong Number, her final Academy Award-nominated performance. The 1950s, however, were far less kind, and strong roles came her way with increasing rarity. With Anthony Mann she made The Furies and with Lang she appeared opposite Marilyn Monroe in 1952's Clash by Night, but much of her material found her typecast -- in 1953's All I Desire, she portrayed a heartbroken mother not far removed from the far superior Stella Dallas, while in 1954's Blowing Wild she was yet another tough-as-nails, independent woman. Outside of the all-star Executive Suite, Stanwyck did not appear in another major hit; she let her hair go gray, further reducing her chances of winning plum parts, and found herself cast in a series of low-budget Westerns. Only Samuel Fuller's 1957 picture Forty Guns, a film much revered by the Cahiers du Cinema staff, was of any particular notice. It was also her last film for five years. In 1960, she turned to television to host The Barbara Stanwyck Show, winning an Emmy for her work.Stanwyck returned to cinemas in 1962, portraying a lesbian madam in the controversial Walk on the Wild Side. Two years later, she co-starred with Elvis Presley in Roustabout. That same year, she appeared in the thriller The Night Walker, and with that, her feature career was over. After rejecting a role in Hush...Hush, Sweet Charlotte, she returned to television to star in the long-running Western series The Big Valley, earning another Emmy for her performance as the matriarch of a frontier family. Upon the show's conclusion, Stanwyck made a TV movie, The House That Would Not Die. She then appeared in two more, 1971's A Taste of Evil and 1973's The Letters, before vanishing from the public eye for the remainder of the decade. In 1981, she was awarded an honorary Oscar; two years later, she was also the recipient of a Lincoln Center Life Achievement Award. Also in 1983, Stanwyck returned to television to co-star in the popular miniseries The Thorn Birds. Two years later, she headlined The Colbys, a spin-off of the hugely successful nighttime soap opera Dynasty. It was her last project before retiring. Stanwyck died January 20, 1990.

Trivia: Beetle-browed, heavily-accented Viennese character actor Oscar Homolka graduated from the Royal Dramatic Academy in Vienna before going on to work on the Austrian and German stage, which led him to appear in many German silent and sound films. After Hitler came to power, he moved first to England, then to the U.S. in 1936. In Hollywood films and on Broadway he played imposing character roles, usually scheming or villainous but sometimes humorous or sympathetic. For his portrayal of gruff Uncle Chris in I Remember Mama (1948) he received a Best Supporting Actor Oscar nomination. Because of his coarse, Slavic features, he was frequently cast as heavies in films about foreign intrigue. He returned to England in the mid-'60s, intending to retire; instead, he continued appearing in films, and in 1975 came back to Hollywood to make two made-for-TV movies, One of Our Own and The Legendary Curse of the Hope Diamond, co-starring his wife, actress Joan Tetzel.

Trivia: A stage actor in the British Isles from 1894, Henry Travers settled permanently in America in 1901. Even as a comparative youngster, the pudding-faced, wispy-voiced Travers specialized in portraying befuddled old men. He was brought to Hollywood in 1933 to recreate his stage role as Father Krug in Robert E. Sherwood's Reunion in Vienna. Though often cast in amiable, self-effacing roles, Travers was perfectly capable of meatier stuff: as a downtrodden Chinese farmer in Dragon Seed (1944), he delivers a terse monologue describing how he has regained his self respect by beating his shrewish wife! Travers' best-remembered movie assignments included his Oscar-nominated portrayal of British postman Mr. Ballard in Mrs. Miniver (1942); his amusing turn as bank clerk and mystery-magazine fanatic Joseph Newton in Hitchcock's Shadow of a Doubt (1943); and, of course, his matchless performance as wingless guardian angel Clarence Oddbody in the Yuletide perennial It's a Wonderful Life (1946). After several years in retirement, Henry Travers died of arteriosclerosis at the age of 91.

Trivia: Chubby-jowled Hungarian character actor S.Z. Sakall began as a sketch writer for Budapest vaudeville shows, then turned to acting at age 18. Initially billed as Szoeko Szakall (the name translated to "blonde beard," in honor of the hirsute adornment he'd grown to appear older), the actor became a star of the Hungarian stage and screen in the 1910s and 1920s. Among his German-language films of the early-talkie era were 1929's Ihre Majestaet die Liebe (remade in the U.S. as Her Majesty Love, with W.C. Fields in Sakall's role) and the box-office hit Two Hearts in Waltz Time (1930); he also briefly ran his own production company during this period. Fleeing Hitler in the late '30s, Sakall settled in Hollywood, where from 1939 through 1955 he played an endless succession of excitable theatrical impresarios, lovable European uncles, and befuddled shopkeepers. His rotund cuteness earned Sakall the nickname "Cuddles," and he was often billed as S.Z. "Cuddles" Sakall in his later films. Nearly always featured in the supporting cast (notably as Karl the waiter in 1942's Casablanca), S.Z. Sakall was given the principal role of songwriter Fred Fisher in 1949's Oh, You Beautiful Doll, though top billing went to June Haver. S.Z. Sakall's final performances were seen in the 1954 film The Student Prince and the like-vintage TV series Ford Theatre.

Trivia: Cadaverous character actor Tully Marshall attended the University of Santa Clara in the 1880s. Drifting into acting, Marshall first appeared onstage at the age of 26, turning professional shortly thereafter. He had nearly a quarter century of theatrical experience behind him when he made his first film in 1914. Like his fellow actors Charles Coburn and Donald Crisp, Marshall was one of those performers who seemed to have been born at the age of 60. Throughout the silent era, he played a vast array of drunken trail scouts, lovable grandpas, unforgiving fathers, sinister attorneys and lecherous aristocrats. In films until his death at the age of 78, one of the best of Tully Marshall's last performances was as the wheelchair-bound criminal mastermind in This Gun For Hire (1942).

Trivia: Forced to flee his native St. Petersburg after the Bolshevik revolution, Russian-born actor Leonid Kinskey arrived in New York in 1921. At that time, he was a member of the Firebird Players, a South American troupe whose act consisted of dance-interpreting famous paintings; since there was little call for this on Broadway, Kinskey was soon pounding the pavements. The only English words he knew were such translation-book phrases as "My good kind sir," but Kinskey was able to improve his vocabulary by working as a waiter in a restaurant. Heading west for performing opportunities following the 1929 Wall Street Crash, Kinskey joined the road tour of the Al Jolson musical Wonder Bar, which led to a role in his first film Trouble in Paradise (1932). His Slavic dialect and lean-and-hungry look making him ideal for anarchist, artist, poet and impresario roles, Kinskey made memorable appearances in such films as Duck Soup (1933), Nothing Sacred (1937) and On Your Toes (1939). His best known appearance was as Sacha, the excitable bartender at Rick's Cafe Americain in Casablanca (1942). The film's star, Humphrey Bogart, was a drinking buddy of Kinskey's, and when the first actor cast as the barkeep proved inadequate, Bogart arranged for Kinskey to be cast in the role. During the Red Scare of the '50s, Kinskey was frequently cast as a Communist spy, either comic or villainous. In 1956 he had a recurring role as a starving artist named Pierre on the Jackie Cooper sitcom The People's Choice. Kinskey cut down on acting in the '60s and '70s, preferring to write and produce, and help Hollywood distribution companies determine which Russian films were worth importing. But whenever a television script (such as the 1965 "tribute" to Stan Laurel) called for a "crazy Russian", Leonid Kinsky was usually filled the bill.

Trivia: Tweedy, eccentric character actor Richard Haydn failed at several professions -- including music hall entertainer and overseer of a Jamaican banana plantation -- before latching onto a touring British theatre troupe. While performing on radio, Haydn created the character of nerdish, nasal "fish expert" Edwin Carp, a role which earned him a spot in the American variety revue Set to Music and later resulted in several satirical books written by the actor (he would reprise the Edwin Carp character on a memorable 1964 episode of The Dick Van Dyke Show). Signed to a 20th Century-Fox film contract in 1940, Haydn's first film assignment was the comparatively straight role of Charley Wyckham in Charley's Aunt (1941). Versatile to a fault, Haydn's film roles ranged from normal, sobersided types like the schoolteacher in the Green Years (1946), to the despicable British nobleman in Forever Amber (1946). His most enjoyable performances were as fey, prissy, often mother-dominated types: Cluny Brown (1946) and Sitting Pretty (1947) were his best assignments in this vein. Haydn directed three films for Paramount, playing small roles in each (under such pseudonyms as Richard Rancyd): Miss Tatlock's Millions (1947), Dear Wife (1948) and Mr, Music (1950), The biggest hit with which Haydn was associated was 1965's The Sound of Music (1965), in which he played the vacillating theatrical entrepreneur Max Detweiller. He also sparkled in TV roles on such series as Lassie, The Man From UNCLE and Bonanza. His last film role (heavily cut before release) was a tiny expository part at the beginning of Mel Brooks' Young Frankenstein (1974). Almost as mercurial offscreen as on, Richard Haydn was averse to granting interviews, usually making comments like "There is no Richard Haydn. It is probably something you ate".

Trivia: Character actor Aubrey Mather launched his stage career in 1905, touring the British provinces until his 1909 London debut in Brewster's Millions. Ten years later, Mather made his first Broadway appearance in Luck of the Navy. In British films from 1931, he essayed such supporting roles as Corin in As You Like It. Moving to Hollywood in 1940, he worked with regularity at 20th Century-Fox, playing roles like Colonel Dent in Jane Eyre (1943), the Scotland Yard chief inspector in The Lodger (1944), and, best of all, mild-mannered Nazi spy Mr. Fortune in Careful Soft Shoulders (1942). Other assignments included Professor Peagram, one of the "seven dwarfs" in Goldwyn's Ball of Fire (1941), and James Forsyte in That Forsyte Woman (1949). Like his fellow Britons Arthur Treacher and Charles Coleman, Aubrey Mather is fondly remembered for his butler roles, notably Merriman in the British The Importance of Being Earnest (1952).

Trivia: The screen's premier "comic gangster," Allen Jenkins studied at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts and worked several years in regional stock companies and on Broadway before talking pictures created a demand for his talents in Hollywood. One of his first films was Blessed Event (1932), in which Jenkins played the role he'd originated in the stage version. This and most subsequent Allen Jenkins films were made at Warner Bros., where the actor made so many pictures that he was sometimes referred to as "the fifth Warner Brother." As outspoken and pugnacious off screen as on, Jenkins was a member in good standing of Hollywood's "Irish Mafia," a rotating band of Hibernian actors (including James Cagney, Pat O'Brien, Matt McHugh and Jimmy Gleason) who palled around incessantly. Popular but undisciplined and profligate with his money, Jenkins was reduced to "B" films by the 1940s and 1950s, including occasional appearances in RKO's Falcon films and the Bowery Boys epics at Monogram; still, he was as game as ever, and capable of taking any sort of physical punishment meted out to his characters. TV offered several opportunities for Jenkins in the 1950s and 1960s, notably his supporting role on 1956's Hey Jeannie, a sitcom starring Scottish songstress Jeannie Carson, and 30 weeks' worth of voice-over work as Officer Dibble on the 1961 animated series Top Cat. Going the dinner theater and summer stock route in the 1960s, Jenkins was as wiry as ever onstage, but his eyesight had deteriorated to the point that he had to memorize where the furniture was set. Making ends meet between acting jobs, Jenkins took on work as varied as tool-and-die making for Douglas Aircraft and selling cars for a Santa Monica dealer. Asked in 1965 how he felt about "moonlighting", Jenkins (who in his heyday had commanded $4000 per week) growled, "I go where the work is and do what the work is! Moonlighting's a fact. The rest is for the birds." Towards the end of his life, Jenkins was hired for cameo roles by directors who fondly remembered the frail but still feisty actor from his glory days; one of Jenkins' last appearances was as a telegrapher in the final scene of Billy Wilder's The Front Page (1974).

Trivia: A former accountant for the Gulf Oil Company, Dana Andrews made his stage debut with the prestigious Pasadena Playhouse in 1935. Signed to a joint film contract by Sam Goldwyn and 20th Century Fox in 1940, Andrews bided his time in supporting roles until the wartime shortage of leading men promoted him to stardom. His matter-of-fact, dead pan acting style was perfectly suited to such roles as the innocent lynching victim in The Ox-Bow Incident (1943) and laconic city detective Mark McPherson in Laura (1944). For reasons unknown, Andrews often found himself cast as aviators: he was the downed bomber pilot in The Purple Heart (1944), the ex-flyboy who has trouble adjusting to civilian life in The Best Years of Our Lives (1946), and the foredoomed airliner skipper in Zero Hour (1957), The Crowded Sky (1960), and Airport 1975 (1974). His limited acting range proved a drawback in the 1950s, and by the next decade he was largely confined to character roles, albeit good ones. From 1963 to 1965, Andrews was president of the Screen Actors Guild, where among other things he bemoaned Hollywood's obsession with nudity and sordidness (little suspecting that the worst was yet to come!). An ongoing drinking problem seriously curtailed his capability to perform, and on a couple of occasions nearly cost him his life on the highway; in 1972, he went public with his alcoholism in a series of well-distributed public service announcements, designed to encourage other chronic drinkers to seek professional help. In addition to his film work, Andrews also starred or co-starred in several TV series (Bright Promise, American Girls, and Falcon Crest) and essayed such TV-movie roles as General George C. Marshall in Ike (1979). Dana Andrews made his final screen appearance in Peter Bogdanovich's Saint Jack.

Trivia: Hissable movie heavy Dan Duryea was handsome enough as a young man to secure leading roles in the student productions at White Plains High School. He majored in English at Cornell University, but kept active in theatre, succeeding Franchot Tone as president of Cornell's Dramatic Society. Bowing to his parents' wishes, Duryea sought out a more "practical" profession upon graduation, working for the N. W. Ayer advertising agency. After suffering a mild heart attack, Duryea was advised by his doctor to leave advertising and seek out employment in something he enjoyed doing. Thus, Duryea returned to acting in summer stock, then was cast in the 1935 Broadway hit Dead End. The first of his many bad-guy roles was Bob Ford, the "dirty little coward" who shot Jesse James, in the short-lived 1938 stage play Missouri Legend. Impressed by Duryea's slimy but somehow likeable perfidy in this play, Herman Shumlin cast the young actor as the snivelling Leo Hubbard in Lillian Hellman's The Little Foxes. This 1939 Broadway production was converted into a film by Sam Goldwyn in 1941, with many members of the original cast -- including Duryea -- making their Hollywood debuts. Duryea continued playing supporting roles in films until 1945's The Woman in the Window, in which he scored as Joan Bennett's sneering "bodyguard" (that's Hollywoodese for "pimp"). Thereafter, Duryea was given star billing, occasionally in sympathetic roles (White Tie and Tails [1946], Black Angel [1946]), but most often as a heavy. From 1952 through 1955, he starred as a roguish soldier of fortune in the syndicated TV series China Smith, and also topped the cast of a theatrical-movie spin-off of sorts, World for Ransom (1954), directed by Duryea's friend Robert Aldrich. One of the actor's last worthwhile roles in a big-budget picture was as a stuffy accountant who discovers within himself inner reserves of courage in Aldrich's Flight of the Phoenix (1965). In 1968, shortly before his death from a recurring heart ailment, Duryea was cast as Eddie Jacks in 67 episodes of TV's Peyton Place. Dan Duryea was the father of actor Peter Duryea, likewise a specialist in slimy villainy.

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: Moon-faced American character actor Ralph Peters was active in films from 1937 to 1956. At first, Peters showed up in Westerns, usually cast as a bartender. He then moved on to contemporary films, usually cast as a bartender. During the 1940s, Ralph Peters could be seen in scores of Runyon-esque gangster roles like Asthma Anderson in Ball of Fire (1941) and Baby Face Peterson in My Kingdom for a Cook (1943).

Trivia: Described by film historian William K. Everson as "that supercilious martyr" (he was of course referring to her on-screen personality), Canadian character actress Kathleen Howard usually comported herself before the cameras in a most operatic fashion. And who with better right? Howard was a Metropolitan opera star from 1916 through 1928, turning to film acting only after her voice broke. She was also an accomplished writer, serving on the executive staff of Harper's Bazaar. She made her first movie appearance, appropriately cast as an Italian grande dame, in Death Takes a Holiday (1934). Generations of W.C. Fields fans have doted upon Howard's full-blooded portrayals of Fields' virago wife in It's a Gift (1934) and The Man on the Flying Trapeze (1935). Toning down her screen mannerisms a bit, Kathleen Howard spent her last decade in films in such supporting roles as the melancholy schoolmistress in Deanna Durbin's First Love (1939) and the wry lady judge in One Night in the Tropics (1940).

Trivia: Hatchet-faced character actor Charles Lane has been one of the most instantly recognizable non-stars in Hollywood for more than half a century. Lane has been a familiar figure in movies (and, subsequently, on television) for 60 years, portraying crotchety, usually miserly, bad-tempered bankers and bureaucrats. Lane was born Charles Levison in San Francisco in 1899 (some sources give his year of birth as 1905). He learned the ropes of acting at the Pasadena Playhouse during the middle/late '20s, appearing in the works of Shakespeare, Chekhov, and Noel Coward before going to Hollywood in 1930, just as sound was fully taking hold. He was a good choice for character roles, usually playing annoying types with his high-pitched voice and fidgety persona, encompassing everything from skinflint accountants to sly, fast-talking confidence men -- think of an abrasive version of Bud Abbott. His major early roles included the stage manager Max Jacobs in Twentieth Century and the tax assessor in You Can't Take It With You. One of the busier character men in Hollywood, Lane was a particular favorite of Frank Capra's, and he appeared in Mr. Deeds Goes to Town, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, Arsenic and Old Lace, It's a Wonderful Life -- with a particularly important supporting part in the latter -- and State of the Union. He played in every kind of movie from screwball comedy like Ball of Fire to primordial film noir, such as I Wake Up Screaming. As Lane grew older, he tended toward more outrageously miserly parts, in movies and then on television, where he turned up Burns & Allen, I Love Lucy, and Dear Phoebe, among other series. Having successfully played a tight-fisted business manager hired by Ricky Ricardo to keep Lucy's spending in line in one episode of I Love Lucy (and, later, the U.S. border guard who nearly arrests the whole Ricardo clan and actor Charles Boyer at the Mexican border in an episode of The Lucy-Desi Comedy Hour), Lane was a natural choice to play Lucille Ball's nemesis on The Lucy Show. Her first choice for the money-grubbing banker would have been Gale Gordon, but as he was already contractually committed to the series Dennis the Menace, she hired Lane to play Mr. Barnsdahl, the tight-fisted administrator of her late-husband's estate during the first season of the show. Lane left the series after Gordon became available to play the part of Mr. Mooney, but in short order he moved right into the part that came very close to making him a star. The CBS country comedy series Petticoat Junction needed a semi-regular villain and Lane just fit the bill as Homer Bedloe, the greedy, bad-tempered railroad executive whose career goal was to shut down the Cannonball railroad that served the town of Hooterville. He became so well-known in the role, which he only played once or twice a season, that at one point Lane found himself in demand for personal appearance tours. In later years, he also turned up in roles on The Beverly Hillbillies, playing Jane Hathaway's unscrupulous landlord, and did an excruciatingly funny appearance on The Odd Couple in the mid-'70s, playing a manic, greedy patron at the apartment sale being run by Felix and Oscar. Lane also did his share of straight dramatic roles, portraying such parts as Tony Randall's nastily officious IRS boss in the comedy The Mating Game (1959), the crusty River City town constable in The Music Man (1962) (which put Lane into the middle of a huge musical production number), the wryly cynical, impatient judge in the James Garner comedy film The Wheeler-Dealers (1963), and portraying Admiral William Standley in The Winds of War (1983), based on Herman Wouk's novel. He was still working right up until the late '80s, and David Letterman booked the actor to appear on his NBC late-night show during the middle of that decade, though his appearance on the program was somewhat disappointing and sad; the actor, who was instantly recognized by the studio audience, was then in his early nineties and had apparently not done live television in many years (if ever), and apparently hadn't been adequately prepped. He seemed confused and unable to say much about his work, which was understandable -- the nature of his character parts involved hundreds of roles that were usually each completed in a matter or two or three days shooting, across almost 60 years. Lane died at 102, in July 2007 - about 20 years after his last major film appearance.

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).

Trivia: American actor Elisha Cook Jr. was the son of an influential theatrical actor/writer/producer who died early in the 20th Century. The younger Cook was in vaudeville and stock by the time he was fourteen-years old. In 1928, Cook enjoyed critical praise for his performance in the play Her Unborn Child, a performance he would repeat for his film debut in the 1930 film version of the play. The first ten years of Cook's Hollywood career found the slight, baby-faced actor playing innumerable college intellectuals and hapless freshmen (he's given plenty of screen time in 1936's Pigskin Parade). In 1940, Cook was cast as a man wrongly convicted of murder in Stranger on the Third Floor (1940), and so was launched the second phase of Cook's career as Helpless Victim. The actor's ability to play beyond this stereotype was first tapped by director John Huston, who cast Cook as Wilmer, the hair-trigger homicidal "gunsel" of Sidney Greenstreet in The Maltese Falcon (1941). So far down on the Hollywood totem pole that he wasn't billed in the Falcon opening credits, Cook suddenly found his services much in demand. Sometimes he'd be shot full of holes (as in the closing gag of 1941's Hellzapoppin'), sometimes he'd fall victim to some other grisly demise (poison in The Big Sleep [1946]), and sometimes he'd be the squirrelly little guy who turned out to be the last-reel murderer (I Wake Up Screaming [1941]; The Falcon's Alibi [1946]). At no time, however, was Cook ever again required to play the antiseptic "nerd" characters that had been his lot in the 1930s. Seemingly born to play "film noir" characters, Cook had one of his best extended moments in Phantom Lady (1944), wherein he plays a set of drums with ever-increasing orgiastic fervor. Another career high point was his death scene in Shane (1953); Cook is shot down by hired gun Jack Palance and plummets to the ground like a dead rabbit. A near-hermit in real life who lived in a remote mountain home and had to receive his studio calls by courier, Cook nonetheless never wanted for work, even late in life. Fans of the 1980s series Magnum PI will remember Cook in a recurring role as a the snarling elderly mobster Ice Pick. Having appeared in so many "cult" films, Elisha Cook Jr. has always been one of the most eagerly sought out interview subjects by film historians.

Trivia: A tough-looking bit player onscreen from the late '30s, Al Rhein (real name: Alexander Rhein) often played professional gamblers, croupiers, and various thugs.

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

Trivia: An alumnus of both Washington State University and Pomona College, Addison Richards began acting on an amateur basis in California's Pilgrimage Play, then became associate director of the Pasadena Playhouse. In films from 1933, Richards was one of those dependable, distinguished types, a character player of the Samuel S. Hinds/Charles Trowbridge/John Litel school. Like those other gentlemen, Richards was perfectly capable of alternating between respectable authority figures and dark-purposed villains. He was busiest at such major studios as MGM, Warners, and Fox, though he was willing to show up at Monogram and PRC if the part was worth playing. During the TV era, Addison Richards was a regular on four series: He was narrator/star of 1953's Pentagon USA, wealthy Westerner Martin Kingsley on 1958's Cimarron City, Doc Gamble in the 1959 video version of radio's Fibber McGee and Molly, and elderly attorney John Abbott on the short-lived 1963 soap opera Ben Jerrod.

Trivia: Pat West spent many years in American vaudeville in a song-and-snappy-patter act with his wife, Lucille. In films from 1929, West could be seen in innumerable bit parts (usually bartenders) in both features and short subjects. He was something of a regular in the films of Howard Hawks, attaining billing as Warden Cooley in Hawks' His Girl Friday (1940), and he also showed up in several Preston Sturges films. Pat West can be seen in the opening reels of The Bank Dick as the assistant movie director who hires Egbert Souse (W.C. Fields) to replace inebriated director A. Pismo Clam (Jack Norton).

Trivia: Looking far younger than his true age, blonde, curly haired Ken Howell played Jack Jones in the mildly popular 20th Century Fox situation comedy series The Jones Family, which played neighborhood theaters with some regularity in the late '30s. He was later one of the Junior G-Men in the 1940 Universal serial of the same name but "old age" basically killed his screen career and he joined the U.S. Navy Medical Corps in 1942. A still very youthful-looking Howell attempted a screen comeback playing a spoiled rich kid in the 1951 Roy Rogers Western In Old Amarillo, but it remained his final film. His early death in 1966 was reportedly a suicide.

Trivia: A beautiful blonde bit player, Ethelreda Leopold was discovered in a lipstick ad by Warner Bros., who put her under contract. She later made Columbia Pictures a home of sorts, popping up in everything from Three Stooges shorts (Leopold was the harem girl hailing from "Toidy-toid and Toid Avenue" in Wee Wee Monsieur) to musical spectaculars. When her movie career petered out in the late '40s, Leopold turned to television and can be seen today in such diverse fare as The Mary Tyler Moore Show and Hart to Hart.

Trivia: Gangly, bald-pated stage actor Otto Hoffman inaugurated his screen career with producer Thomas Ince in 1916. After directing Ince's Secret of Black Mountain (1917), Hoffman concentrating on acting. He was seen as cadaverous, crafty, menacing, and sometimes near-moronic types in such silents as Human Wreckage (1918), The Eagle (1925), The Terror (1928) and Noah's Ark (1929). His ethnic range in talkies embraced the Riffian Hasse in Desert Song (1929), frontiersman Murch Rankin in Cimarron (1931), and Gandhi parody "Khook" in Eddie Cantor's Kid Millions (1934). Otto Hoffman spent his last film years in bit roles, most often cast as pawnbrokers or caretakers.

Trivia: The husband of actress/writer/producer Corra Beach, Walter Shumway made his screen debut opposite his wife in What Becomes of the Children? (1918), an "uplift" melodrama dealing with divorce. The couple remade the film as a talkie in 1936, this time with Shumway directing Robert Frazer and Natalie Moorhead. As an actor, the tall, dark-haired Shumway usually played villains in low-budget Westerns and would continue to appear in bit parts onscreen until at least 1950. He died at the Motion Picture Country House and Hospital in Woodland Hills, CA.

Trivia: An auburn-haired starlet of the 1940s, whose slight resemblance to Rita Hayworth was much commented upon, Lorraine Miller had been voted Rodeo Queen prior to making her screen debut as one of the Goldwyn Girls. After a couple of years of mostly cheesecake layouts, Miller performed in a skit with Bob Hope in Paramount's Star Spangled Rhythm (1942) and then settled in as a popular B-Western heroine, appearing opposite such low-budget cowboys as Eddie Dew, Jimmy Wakely, and the constellation of Tex Ritter, Dave O'Brien, and Guy Wilkerson, aka PRC's Texas Rangers. Today, Miller is probably best remembered for playing one of the sexy hatcheck girls in the seminal film noir The Big Sleep (1946).

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

Trivia: 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).

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

Trivia: Not to be confused with director Richard Rush, portly, raspy-voiced American character actor Dick Rush was in films from 1920 until the early '40s. Rush was generally a comedy foil, most memorably for Harold Lloyd. Little Rascals devotees will remember Rush as the side-show impresario in Arbor Day (1936), who shows up at the end of the picture to whisk midget George and Olive Brasno away from their forced participation in a grade-school assembly show. Otherwise, he played a variety of cops, guards, mob leaders, and train conductors. Dick Rush spent his last active years as a featured player at RKO Radio.

Trivia: A diminutive comedian/supporting actor, well-known in vaudeville, Johnny Morris played scores of small-time crooks, jockeys, and newspaper vendors in a screen career that lasted from 1927-1941 and included a stint as Pappy Yokum in the 1940 live-action version of Li'l Abner.

Trivia: Drummer Gene Krupa was 24 when he joined Benny Goodman's orchestra in 1933. While with Goodman, he made his first film appearance in Hollywood Hotel (1937), the highlight of which was a jam session featuring Krupa, Lionel Hampton and Teddy Wilson. Krupa formed his own band in 1938, alternating between this endeavor and performing with other bands until 1951. His movie activity during this period chiefly consisted of a handful of energetic musical short subjects produced by Universal. He was featured as "himself" in two Technicolor biopics of the 1950s, The Glenn Miller Story and The Benny Goodman Story. Gene Krupa's own biography (with undue emphasis on his drug problems) was filmed as The Gene Krupa Story in 1960, with Sal Mineo, no mean drummer himself, in the title role.

Trivia: Well versed in virtually every aspect of live entertainment, American performer Tim Ryan spent the greater part of his professional career as one-half of the team of Tim and Irene. The other half was Tim's wife Irene Ryan, better known to modern audiences as Granny on The Beverly Hillbillies. The Ryans appeared on Broadway, starred in a mid-'30s radio series, headlined a brief series of 2-reelers for Educational studios, and guested in such medium-budget musical films as 1943's Hot Rhythm. Even after Tim and Irene divorced, they frequently found themselves working at the same studio, and sometimes even the same soundstage. On his own, Ryan appeared in numerous films as cops, plainclothes detectives and newspaper editors. His best opportunities came at modest little Monogram studios in the '40s and early '50s, where he not only showed up in featured roles, but also wrote several screenplays. In Detective Kitty O'Day (1945), one can spot the reflection of Tim Ryan in a highly polished hubcap, listening intently as leading man Peter Cookson recites the long comic monologue that Ryan had written for him.