Crossroads

Basil Rathbone (Actor) .. Henri Sarrou

Born: June 13, 1892
Died: July 21, 1967
Birthplace: Johannesburg, South African Republic

Trivia: South African-born Basil Rathbone was the son of a British mining engineer working in Johannesburg. After a brief career as an insurance agent, the 19-year-old aspiring actor joined his cousin's repertory group. World War I service as a lieutenant in Liverpool Scottish Regiment followed, then a rapid ascension to leading-man status on the British stage. Rathbone's movie debut was in the London-filmed The Fruitful Vine (1921). Tall, well profiled, and blessed with a commanding stage voice, Rathbone shifted from modern-dress productions to Shakespeare and back again with finesse. Very much in demand in the early talkie era, one of Rathbone's earliest American films was The Bishop Murder Case (1930), in which, as erudite amateur sleuth Philo Vance, he was presciently referred to by one of the characters as "Sherlock Holmes." He was seldom more effective than when cast in costume dramas as a civilized but cold-hearted villain: Murdstone in David Copperfield (1934), Evremonde in Tale of Two Cities (1935), and Guy of Gisbourne in The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938) (Rathbone was a good friend of Robin Hood star Errol Flynn -- and a far better swordsman). Never content with shallow, one-note performances, Rathbone often brought a touch of humanity and pathos to such stock "heavies" as Karenin in Anna Karenina (1936) and Pontius Pilate in The Last Days of Pompeii (1936). He was Oscar-nominated for his portrayals of Tybalt in Romeo and Juliet (1936) and the crotchety Louis XVI in If I Were King (1938). In 1939, Rathbone was cast as Sherlock Holmes in The Hound of the Baskervilles, the first of 14 screen appearances as Conan Doyle's master detective. He also played Holmes on radio from 1939 through 1946, and in 1952 returned to the character (despite his despairing comments that Holmes had hopelessly "typed" him in films) in the Broadway flop The Return of Sherlock Holmes, which was written by his wife, Ouida Bergere. Famous for giving some of Hollywood's most elegant and elaborate parties, Rathbone left the West Coast in 1947 to return to Broadway in Washington Square. He made a movie comeback in 1954, essaying saturnine character roles in such films as We're No Angels (1955), The Court Jester (1956), and The Last Hurrah (1958). Alas, like many Hollywood veterans, Rathbone often found the pickings lean in the 1960s, compelling him to accept roles in such inconsequential quickies as The Comedy of Terrors (1964) and Hillbillies in the Haunted House (1967). He could take consolation in the fact that these negligible films enabled him to finance projects that he truly cared about, such as his college lecture tours and his Caedmon Record transcriptions of the works of Shakespeare. Basil Rathbone's autobiography, In and Out of Character, was published in 1962.

William Powell (Actor) .. David Talbot, aka Jean Pelletier

Born: July 29, 1892
Died: March 05, 1984
Birthplace: Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States

Trivia: Originally planning to become a lawyer, William Powell chose instead to pursue a career as an actor, dropping out of the University of Kansas to attend the American Academy of Dramatic Arts, where his classmates included Edward G. Robinson and Joseph Schildkraut. He made his Broadway debut in 1912, and within a few years had attained stardom in urbane, sophisticated roles. The sleek, moustachioed young actor entered films in 1922, playing the first of many villainous roles in John Barrymore's Sherlock Holmes. He finally broke out of the bad guy mode when talkies came in; his clipped, precise speech patterns and authoritative demeanor were ideally suited to such "gentleman detective" roles as Philo Vance in The Canary Murder Case, the Kennel Murder Case, and others in the Vance series. In 1933 he moved from Warner Bros. to MGM, where he co-starred with Myrna Loy in Manhattan Melodrama (1934). So well-received was the Powell-Loy screen teaming that the actors were paired together in several subsequent MGM productions, most memorably the delightful Thin Man series and the 1936 blockbuster The Great Ziegfeld, in which Powell played the title character and Loy was cast as Ziegfeld's second wife, Billie Burke. Away from the screen for nearly a year due to a serious illness, Powell returned in 1944, curtailing his film activities thereafter. As he eased into his late fifties he reinvented himself as a character actor, offering superbly etched performances as a lamebrained crooked politician in The Senator Was Indiscreet (1947) and the lovably autocratic Clarence Day Sr. in Life With Father (1947), which earned him his third Academy Award nomination (the others were for The Thin Man and My Man Godfrey). After playing Doc in the 1955 film version of Mister Roberts, he retired to his lavish, air-conditioned home in Palm Springs, insisting that he'd return to films if the right role came along but he turned down all offers. Married three times, Powell's second wife was actress Carole Lombard, with whom he remained good friends after the divorce, and co-starred with in My Man Godfrey (1936); his third marriage to MGM starlet Diana Lewis was a happy union that lasted from 1940 until Powell's death in 1984. It has been said, however, that the great love of William Powell's life was actress Jean Harlow, to whom he was engaged at the time of her premature death in 1936.

Hedy Lamarr (Actor) .. Lucienne Talbot

Born: November 09, 1914
Died: January 19, 2000
Birthplace: Vienna, Austria

Trivia: The daughter of a Vienesse banker, Hedy Lamarr began her acting career at 16 under the tutelage of German impresario Max Reinhardt. She began appearing in German films in 1930, but garnered little attention until her star turn in Czech director Gustav Machaty's Extase (Ecstasy) in 1933. It wasn't just because Lamarr appeared briefly in the nude; Extase was filled to overflowing with orgasmic imagery, including tight close-ups of Lamarr in the throes of delighted passion. Though her first husband, Austrian businessman Fritz Mandl, tried to buy up and destroy all prints of Extase, the film enjoyed worldwide distribution, the result being that Lamarr was famous in America before ever setting foot in Hollywood. She was signed by producer Walter Wanger to co-star with Charles Boyer in the American remake of the French Pepe Le Moko, titled Algiers (1938). That Lamarr wasn't much of an actress was compensated with several scenes in which she was required to merely stand around silently and look beautiful (she would later downgrade these performances, equating sex appeal with "looking stupid"). The prudish Louis B. Mayer was willing to forgive Lamarr the "indiscretion" of Extase by signing her to a long MGM contract in 1939. Most of her subsequent roles were merely decorative (never more so than as Tondelayo in White Cargo [1940]), though she was first rate in the complex role of the career woman who "liberates" stuffy Bostonian Robert Young in H.M. Pulham, Esq. (1942). In 1949, Lamarr, tastefully under-dressed, appeared opposite the equally attractive Victor Mature in Cecil B. DeMille's Samson and Delilah (1949). Lamarr's limited acting skills became more pronounced in her 1950s films, especially when she gamely tried to play Joan of Arc in the all-star disaster The Story of Mankind (1957). She disappeared from films in 1958. An autobiography, Ecstasy and Me, enabled her to pay many of her debts, though she'd later sue her collaborators for distorting the facts. In another legal action, Lamarr took on director Mel Brooks for using the character name "Hedley Lamarr" in his 1974 Western spoof Blazing Saddles. In 1990, Lamarr made an unexpected return before the cameras in the obscure low-budget Hollywood satire Instant Karma, in which she was typecast in the role of Movie Goddess.

Claire Trevor (Actor) .. Michelle Allaine

Born: March 08, 1909
Died: April 08, 2000

Trivia: Trevor was born Claire Wemlinger. After attending Columbia and the American Academy of Dramatic Arts, she began her acting career in the late '20s in stock. By 1932 she was starring on Broadway; that same year she began appearing in Brooklyn-filmed Vitaphone shorts. She debuted onscreen in feature films in 1933 and soon became typecast as a gang moll, a saloon girl, or some other kind of hard-boiled, but warm-hearted floozy. Primarily in B movies, her performances in major productions showed her to be a skilled screen actress; nominated for Oscars three times, she won the Best Supporting Actress Oscar for her work in Key Largo (1948). In the '50s she began to appear often on TV; in 1956 she won an Emmy for her performance in Dodsworth opposite Fredric March.

Felix Bressart (Actor) .. Dr. Andre Tessier

Born: January 01, 1890
Died: March 17, 1949

Trivia: German actor Felix Bressart made his stage debut in 1914, and his film bow in 1928's Liebe Im Kuhstall (1928). Forced out of Germany by the Nazis, Bressart came to the United States in 1936, concentrating on theatrical work until his first American film, Swanee River (1939). Two of his best screen roles were for director and fellow German expatriate Ernst Lubitsch: the hilariously hedonistic Soviet agent Buljanoff in Ninotchka (1939), and the deceptively mild-mannered Jewish actor Greenberg in To Be or Not to Be (1942). While playing the role of Professor Kropotkin in the 1949 film version of the popular radio series My Friend Irma, Felix Bressart died; he was replaced by the radio program's Kropotkin, Hans Conried, though Bressart still can be glimpsed in long shots.

Margaret Wycherly (Actor) .. Mme. Pelletier

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

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

Reginald Owen (Actor) .. Concierge

Born: August 05, 1887
Died: November 05, 1972

Trivia: British actor Reginald Owen was a graduate of Sir Herbert Beerbohm Tree's Academy of Dramatic Arts. He made his stage bow in 1905, remaining a highly-regarded leading man in London for nearly two decades before traversing the Atlantic to make his Broadway premiere in The Swan. His film career commenced with The Letter (1929), and for the next forty years Owen was one of Hollywood's favorite Englishmen, playing everything from elegant aristocrats to seedy villains. Modern viewers are treated to Owen at his hammy best each Christmas when local TV stations run MGM's 1938 version of The Christmas Carol. As Ebeneezer Scrooge, Owen was a last-minute replacement for an ailing Lionel Barrymore, but no one in the audience felt the loss as they watched Owen go through his lovably cantankerous paces. Reginald Owen's film career flourished into the 1960s and 1970s. He was particularly amusing and appropriately bombastic as Admiral Boom, the cannon-happy eccentric neighbor in Disney's Mary Poppins (1964).

Philip Merivale (Actor) .. Commissionaire of Police

Born: November 02, 1886
Died: March 12, 1946

Trivia: Born in India to English parents, Philip Merivale began his British stage career at the turn of century. On both London and Broadway stage, Merivale was a star, the sort of actor for whom vehicles were specially written. Perhaps he came into films too late for his star status to remain intact, or perhaps his saturnine facial features were not considered particularly photogenic. Whatever the case, Merivale was relegated to secondary roles during his film years. His screen characters were usually serene and sympathetic, notably the martyred Professor Sorel in the 1942 drama This Land is Mine; but he was also effective as an erudite villain, e.g. his duplicitous Prince Saul in Laurel & Hardy's Nothing But Trouble (1945). His final film role was Judge Longstreet in Orson Welles' The Stranger (1946). Philip Merivale's second wife was British actress Gladys Cooper.

Sig Rumann (Actor) .. Dr. Alex Benoit

Born: October 11, 1884
Died: February 14, 1967

Trivia: Born in Germany, actor Sig Rumann studied electro-technology in college before returning to his native Hamburg to study acting. He worked his way up from bits to full leads in such theatrical centers as Stettin and Kiel before serving in World War I. Rumann came to New York in 1924 to appear in German-language plays. He was discovered simultaneously by comedian George Jessel, playwright George S. Kaufman, and critic Alexander Woollcott. He began chalking up an impressive list of stage roles, notably Baron Preysig in the 1930 Broadway production of Grand Hotel (in the role played by Wallace Beery in the 1932 film version). Rumann launched his film career at the advent of talkies, hitting his stride in the mid 1930s. During his years in Hollywood, he whittled down his stage name from Siegfried Rumann to plain Sig Ruman. The personification of Prussian pomposity, Rumann was a memorable foil for the Marx Brothers in A Night at the Opera (1935), A Day at the Races (1937), and A Night in Casablanca (1946). He also was a favorite of director Ernst Lubitsch, appearing in Ninotchka (1939) as a bombastic Soviet emissary and in To Be or Not to Be (1942) as the unforgettable "Concentration Camp Ehrardt." With the coming of World War II, Ruman found himself much in demand as thick-headed, sometimes sadistic Nazis. Oddly, in The Hitler Gang (1944), Rumann was cast in a comparatively sympathetic role, as the ailing and senile Von Hindenburg. After the war, Rumann was "adopted" by Lubitsch admirer Billy Wilder, who cast the actor in such roles as the deceptively good-natured Sgt. Schultz in Stalag 17 (1953) and a marinet doctor in The Fortune Cookie (1966); Wilder also used Rumann's voice to dub over the guttural intonations of German actor Hubert von Meyerinck in One, Two, Three (1961). In delicate health during his last two decades, Rumann occasionally accepted unbilled roles, such as the kindly pawnbroker in O. Henry's Full House (1952). During one of his heartier periods, he had a recurring part on the 1952 TV sitcom Life with Luigi. Rumann's last film appearance was as a shoe-pounding Russian UN delegate in Jerry Lewis' Way... Way Out (1967).

Vladimir Sokoloff (Actor) .. Le Duc

Born: December 26, 1889
Died: February 14, 1962

Trivia: A literature and philosophy student in his native Moscow, Vladimir Sokoloff trained for an acting career under Stanislavsky at the Moscow Art Theatre. Leaving Russia in 1923, Sokoloff resettled in Germany, where he made his first film, Uneasy Money, in 1926. Dividing his time between Paris and Berlin throughout the 1930s, Sokoloff came to Hollywood in 1937, where his craggy face and colorful accent enabled him to secure choice character roles. Despite his name and ethnic derivation, Sokoloff successfully portrayed nearly 35 different nationalities during his American career: He was Frenchman Paul Cezanne in The Life of Emile Zola (1937), a Middle Easterner in Road to Morocco (1942), Spanish freedom fighter Anselmo in For Whom the Bell Tolls (1943), an elderly Mexican in The Magnificent Seven (1960), and so it went. Vladimir Sokoloff was active in films (Taras Bulba) and TV programs (The Twilight Zone) right up to his death in 1962.

H. B. Warner (Actor) .. Prosecuting Attorney

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.

Guy Bates Post (Actor) .. President of Court

Born: September 22, 1875
Died: January 16, 1968

Trivia: Hawk-nosed character actor Guy Bates Post enjoyed a long and distinguished career on Broadway that included such major successes as The Virginian (1904), opposite future screen star Dustin Farnum; Omar the Tent Maker (1914), in the title role; and The Masquerader (1917), in a complicated dual role. Post starred in moderately successful screen versions of the latter two in 1922, but a third film, Gold Madness (1923), from a James Oliver Curwood story, proved a flop. His stage career waning, Post resettled permanently in Hollywood in 1935 and went on to appear in several highly visible character assignments, including that of Emperor Louis Napoleon in Maytime (1937). He was the husband of character actress Violet Kemble-Cooper.

Fritz Leiber (Actor) .. Deval

Born: January 31, 1882
Died: October 14, 1949

Trivia: With his piercing eyes and shock of white hair, Fritz Leiber seemed every inch the priests, professors, musical professors and religious fanatics that he was frequently called upon to play in films. A highly respected Shakespearean actor, Leiber made his film bow in 1916, playing Mercutio in the Francis X. Bushman version of Romeo and Juliet. His many silent-era portrayals included Caesar in Theda Bara's 1917 Cleopatra and Solomon in the mammoth 1921 Betty Blythe vehicle Solomon and Sheba. He thrived as a character actor in talkies, usually in historical roles; one of his larger assignments of the 1940s was as Franz Liszt in the Claude Rains remake of The Phantom of the Opera (1943). Fritz Leiber was the father of the famous science-fiction author of the same name.

John Mylong (Actor) .. Baron de Lorraine

Born: September 27, 1892
Died: September 07, 1975

Trivia: A distinguished stage and screen actor from Austria (born Johan Mylong-Münz), John Mylong was one in a score of European actors cast as Middle European types in Hollywood wartime melodramas. In the U.S. from 1941, when he starred in the New York Theatre Guild's production of Somewhere in France, Mylong later played Colonel Duval in For Whom the Bell Tolls (1943), the duplicitous General Halder in The Strange Death of Adolf Hitler (1943), Von Bülow in Hotel Berlin (1945), and Kaiser Wilhelm in Annie Get Your Gun (1950). Equally busy on television, Mylong played the casino manager in the "Lucy Goes to Monte Carlo" episode of I Love Lucy and also appeared on Black Saddle and The Dick Van Dyke Show.

Frank Conroy (Actor) .. Defense Attorney

Born: October 14, 1890
Died: February 24, 1964

Trivia: The embodiment of corporate dignity, British actor Frank Conroy nonetheless gave the impression of being a long-trusted executive who was about to abscond with the company funds. During his Broadway career, Conroy frequently achieved above-the-title billing; he never quite managed this in Hollywood, but neither was he ever without work. Conroy made his first film, Royal Family of Broadway, in 1930; uncharacteristically, he plays the ardent suitor of the leading lady (Ina Claire), and very nearly wins the lady before she decides that her stage career comes first. Conroy's respectable veneer allowed him to play many a "hidden killer" in movie mysteries like Charlie Chan in Egypt (1935). He left films periodically for more varied assignments on stage; in 1939, he originated the role of dying millionaire Horace Giddens in Lillian Hellmans The Little Foxes. Returning to Hollywood in the 1940s, it was back to authoritative villainy, notably his role in The Ox-Bow Incident as a martinet ex-military officer who rigidly supervises a lynching, then kills himself when he realizes he's executed three innocent men. More benign roles came Conroy's way in All My Sons (1948), in which he plays an industrialist serving a prison sentence while the guilty man (Edward G. Robinson) walks free; and in Day the Earth Stood Still (1951), wherein Conroy has a lengthy unbilled role as the American diplomat who listens to the demands of outer-space visitor Michael Rennie. Frank Conroy remained a top character player until his retirement in 1960, usually honored with "guest star" billing on the many TV anthologies of the era.

James Rennie (Actor) .. Martin

Born: January 01, 1889
Died: January 01, 1965

Bertram Marburgh (Actor) .. Landers

Born: May 17, 1875
Died: August 22, 1956

Trivia: A veteran stage actor who had appeared opposite John Drew in Much Ado About Nothing, William Faversham in The Squaw Man, and Maude Adams in Chanticleer, dark-complexioned Bertram Marburgh became a fixture in Hollywood films of the 1910s and 1920s, usually portraying powerful characters, judges, noblemen, medical doctors, and the like. He returned to the legitimate stage after the changeover to sound but was back in Hollywood by the 1940s, playing mostly bit roles. Marburgh spent his final years as a resident at the Motion Picture Country House and Hospital in Woodland Hills, CA.

Harry Fleischmann (Actor) .. Assistant Defense Attorney

Louis Montez (Actor) .. Associate Judge

Octavio Giraud (Actor) .. Associate Judge

Born: January 01, 1889
Died: January 01, 1958

Enrique Acosta (Actor) .. Associate Judge

Adolph Faylauer (Actor) .. Associate Judge

Jean Del Val (Actor) .. Court Clerk

Born: November 17, 1891
Died: March 13, 1975

Trivia: French character actor Jean Del Val was a regular in American films from at least 1927. In the early days of the talkies, he offered his services as translator and vocal coach for the French-language versions of American films. Many of his later roles were fleeting but memorable: he's the French aviator in Block-Heads (1938) who rescues over-aged doughboy Stan Laurel from the trenches ("Why, you blockhead. Ze war's been over for twenty years!") and the French radio announcer who opens Casablanca (1942) by spreading the news of the murder of two German couriers carrying letters of transit. He enjoyed a larger role in Columbia's So Dark the Night (1946), a film seemingly conceived as a showcase for the best of Hollywood's foreign-accented bit players. Active in films until the 1960s, Jean del Val played a crucial non-speaking role in Fantastic Voyage (1966): he's the comatose scientist whose arterial system and brain are explored by the miniaturized heroes.

Paul Weigel (Actor) .. Old Man

Born: February 18, 1867
Died: May 25, 1951

Trivia: Though born in Germany, Paul Weigel generally played French and Spanish aristocrats during the silent era. Active in films from 1917 to 1943, Weigel spent most of the talkie era portraying kindly ministers. Every so often he would show up in a comedy, notably the 1925 Our Gang two-reeler Boys Will Be Joys. Paul Weigel's best-remembered talkie assignment was the philosophical Jewish ghetto-dweller Mr. Agar in Chaplin's The Great Dictator (1940).

Torben Meyer (Actor) .. Old Man

Born: December 01, 1884
Died: May 22, 1975

Trivia: Sour-visaged Danish actor Torben Meyer entered films as early as 1913, when he was prominently featured in the Danish super-production Atlantis. Despite his Scandinavian heritage, Meyer was usually typecast in Germanic roles after making his American screen debut in 1933. Many of his parts were fleeting, such as the Amsterdam banker who is offended because "Mister Rick" won't join him for a drink in Casablanca (1942). He was shown to excellent advantage in the films of producer/director Preston Sturges, beginning with Christmas in July (1940) and ending with The Beautiful Blonde of Bashful Bend (1949). Evidently as a private joke, Sturges nearly always cast Meyer as a character named Schultz, with such conspicuous exceptions as "Dr. Kluck" in The Palm Beach Story (1942). Torben Meyer made his last movie appearance in Judgment at Nuremberg (1961), playing one of the German judges on trial for war crimes; Meyer's guilt-ridden inability to explain his actions was one of the film's most powerful moments.

John St. Polis (Actor) .. Professor

Born: November 24, 1875
Died: October 10, 1946

Trivia: Dignified character actor John Saint Polis billed himself as Saint Polis when he made his screen bow in 1914. During the pre-WWI era, the actor starred in such important productions as Joseph and His Brethren. During the 1920s, he was established as a character actor, with sizeable roles in Three Weeks (1924) and The Phantom of the Opera (1925), among others. He made an impressive transition to talkies as Mary Pickford's fatally honor-bound father in Coquette (1929), then spent the remainder of his career in roles of varying sizes, usually playing doctors or officials. Like many other venerable silent-film veterans, John Saint Polis made his last appearance in a Cecil B. De Mille production, Reap the Wild Wind (1942).

Jack Zoller (Actor) .. Student

Francis X. Bushman Jr. (Actor) .. Giant Policeman

Born: May 01, 1903
Died: April 16, 1978

Trivia: Although he appeared in more than 40 films, Ralph Bushman never became as well known as his father, silent-movie star Francis X. Bushman. He made his screen debut under his own name in 1920 in It's a Great Life, but soon gave way to billing himself as Francis X. Bushman Jr. By the 1930s, he was reduced to playing bit parts, often taking advantage of his 6'4" frame to play some sort of hulking presence. While Ralph Bushman's film career ended in the mid-'40s, ironically his father's career would outlast his own by another two decades.

Christian J. Frank (Actor) .. Guard

Born: March 13, 1890

Alex Davidoff (Actor) .. Detective

Theodore Rand (Actor) .. Orchestra Leader

Anna Q. Nilsson (Actor) .. Mme. Deval

Born: March 30, 1888
Died: February 11, 1974

Trivia: Born in Sweden, actress Anna Q. Nilsson was lured to the U.S. as a teenager by dreams of luxury and creature comforts. Her first job was as a nursemaid, but Anna learned English quickly and was able to advance herself professionally. Her striking Nordic beauty made her a much sought-after commercial model; one of the photographers with whom Nillson worked suggested that the girl was pretty enough for motion pictures, and recommended her for a one-reel epic titled Molly Pitcher (1913). She worked her way up to stardom, and her career might have continued unabated had not Nillson been seriously injured in 1925 when, while riding a horse, she was thrown against a stone wall. Nillson was an invalid for one whole year, working arduously with therapists and specialists in Sweden and Vienna until she was finally able to walk without aid. One of Nillson's comeback films was The Babe Comes Home (1927), in which she worked like a Spartan to give her own performance while trying to make baseball star Babe Ruth look good. When talking pictures came in, Nillson, whose career had been faltering since her accident, gave up films to concentrate on charity work. Occasionally she'd accept featured or bit roles, though few are worth mentioning except for her appearance as one of the silent-star "waxworks" - including Buster Keaton and H.B. Warner - in the 1950 film drama Sunset Boulevard. Anna Q. Nilsson retired in 1963 to Sun City, California.

Alphonse Martell (Actor) .. Headwaiter

Born: March 27, 1890
Died: March 18, 1976

Trivia: In films from 1926, former vaudevillian and stage actor/playwright Alphonse Martell was one of Hollywood's favorite Frenchmen. While he sometimes enjoyed a large role, Martell could usually be found playing bits as maitre d's, concierges, gendarmes, duelists, and, during WW II, French resistance fighters. In 1933, he directed the poverty-row quickie Gigolettes of Paris. Alphonse Martell remained active into the 1960s, guest-starring on such TV programs as Mission: Impossible.

Hector V. Sarno (Actor) .. Organ Grinder

Born: January 01, 1879
Died: January 01, 1953

William Edmunds (Actor) .. Driver

Born: January 01, 1885
Died: January 01, 1981

Trivia: A slight man with an air of perpetual anxiety, character actor William Edmunds was most often cast in stereotypical Spanish and Italian roles. Edmunds' first film, the Bob Hope 2-reeler Going Spanish (1934), was lensed in New York; he didn't settle down in Hollywood until 1938. He played bits in films like Idiot's Delight (1939) and Casablanca (1942), and larger roles in such fare as House of Frankenstein (1944, as gypsy leader Fejos), Bob Hope's Where There's Life (1947, as King Hubertus II) and Double Dynamite (1951, as waiter Groucho Marx's long-suffering boss). His many short subject appearances include a few stints as Robert "Mickey" Blake's father in the Our Gang series. William Edmunds was afforded top billing in the 1951 TV situation comedy Actors' Hotel.

Armand Cortez (Actor) .. Clerk

Born: August 16, 1880
Died: November 19, 1948

Trivia: A former violinist and a leading man for such diverse Broadway luminaries as musical comedy star Fritzi Scheff and tragedienne Lenore Ulric, dark and swarthy-looking French actor Armand Cortez (or, as it was sometimes spelled, Cortes) played numerous villains in the silent era, from the 1916 serial The Yellow Menace to the 1927 farce Rubber Heels. Mostly playing bit parts in sound films, Cortez is perhaps best remembered as Hamid, the wise man in the 1941 serial Adventures of Captain Marvel.

George Davis (Actor) .. Clerk

Born: November 07, 1889
Died: April 19, 1965

Trivia: In films from 1919, Dutch vaudeville comic George Davis played one of the featured clowns in Lon Chaney's He Who Gets Slapped (1924) and was also in Buster Keaton's Sherlock, Jr. that same year. In the sound era, Davis specialized in playing waiters but would also turn up as bus drivers, counter men, and circus performers, often assuming a French accent. When told that Davis' business as a hotel porter included carrying Greta Garbo's bags, the soviet envoy opined: "That's no business. That's social injustice." "Depends on the tip," replied Davis. He continued to play often humorous bits well into the '50s, appearing in such television shows as Cisco Kid and Perry Mason. The veteran performer died of cancer at the Motion Picture Country House and Hospital.

Marek Windheim (Actor) .. Clerk at Airport

Born: January 01, 1895
Died: December 01, 1960

Trivia: A former operatic tenor, diminutive (about five feet tall) Polish-born character comedian Marek Windheim usually portrayed excitable characters, such as headwaiters and hotel clerks, often sporting a fake French accent. Making his Hollywood debut as the ballet master in Shall We Dance? (1937), Windheim popped up in countless, usually unbilled bit parts until at least 1946.

John Picorri (Actor) .. Waiter

Born: August 04, 1895
Died: July 01, 1976

Trivia: A bit player from England in scores of Hollywood productions from 1935-1943, diminutive, weasel-like John Picorri became a regular supporting villain in Republic serials: the High Priest in Robinson Crusoe of Clipper Island (1936), Rackerby the mad scientist in SOS Coast Guard (1937), Dr. Moloch in Dick Tracy (1937), and Professor Krantz in Drums of Fu Manchu (1940).

Billy Roy (Actor) .. Boy

Frank Morales (Actor) .. Boy

Jo Jo LaSavio (Actor) .. Boy

Adrian Kerbrat (Actor) .. Boy

Ferdinand Munier (Actor) .. Fat Man

Born: December 03, 1889
Died: May 27, 1945

Trivia: Rotund, ruddy-faced character actor Ferdinand Munier first showed up in films around 1923. Blessed with a rich, rolling voice that perfectly matched his portly frame, Munier flourished in the talkie era, playing scores of pompous foreign ambassadors, gouty aristocrats, and philandering businessmen. His many screen assignments included King Louis XIII in The Count of Monte Cristo (1934) and the aptly named Prince Too-Much-Belly in Diamond Horseshoe. A perfect Santa Claus type, Ferdinand Munier was frequently cast as Saint Nick, most amusingly in Laurel and Hardy's Babes in Toyland (1934) and Hope and Crosby's Road to Utopia (1945).

Guy D'Ennery (Actor) .. Reporter

Born: June 04, 1884
Died: October 17, 1978

Trivia: Distinguished-looking, gray-haired supporting actor Guy D'Ennery appeared only sporadically in films prior to the changeover to sound. Busy thereafter, D'Ennery usually played dignified characters -- his character in a 1937 Paramount B-film was simply given as "Dignified Man" -- but could also play villains, such as the henchman Mordaunt in Universal's Meet the Wildcat (1940). Of his scores of mostly minor roles, D'Ennery is best remembered for two wildly diverging versions of the "Zorro" legend: the 12-chapter serial Zorro's Fighting Legion, in which he was the governor of the beleaguered San Mendolito, dispatched in the opening chapter; and the high-budget 20th Century Fox spectacular The Mark of Zorro (1940), as one of the California nobles, of which he was one in real life as well. D'Ennery continued playing bit roles on screen until at least 1943.

Shirley McDonald (Actor) .. Reporter

Gibson Gowland (Actor) .. Reporter

Born: January 04, 1872
Died: September 09, 1951

Trivia: Bearlike, bushy-eyebrowed British actor Gibson Gowland began his stage career in England, where he was billed as T.E. Gowland. He came to America in the teens, almost immediately securing film work as a minor character actor. Director Erich Von Stroheim admired Gowland's naturalistic acting style, and cast the actor as the lead of two of his films. The better of the two was Greed (1924), in which Gowland etched an unforgettable portrait of an essentially decent man driven to madness and murder by his grasping, money-hungry wife. Gowland continued to play roughneck character parts throughout the silent era, returning to England in the 1930s. By 1940 Gibson Gowland was back in the U.S., where he spent his declining years playing bit roles in such films as The Wolf Man (1940) and Mrs. Miniver (1942).

Jack Chefe (Actor) .. Reporter

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).

Louis Natheaux (Actor) .. Reporter

Born: January 01, 1898
Died: August 23, 1942

Trivia: The film career of actor Louis Natheaux spanned 19 years (1921-1940). At first, the slender, mustachioed Natheaux was cast as pomaded city slickers and shifty-eyed con artists. After a burst of activity in the first years of the talkies, he was consigned to bit parts, usually as a jaded croupier or snap-brim-hatted crook. He played larger roles in the two-reelers of such Hal Roach comedians as Charley Chase, Thelma Todd, and Patsy Kelly, and was occasionally featured as murder suspects in Poverty Row mysteries like Sinister Hands (1932). Louis Natheaux was also an off-and-on utility actor for Cecil B. De Mille, essaying minor parts in King of Kings (1929), Union Pacific (1939), and Northwest Mounted Police (1940).

Edith Penn (Actor) .. Reporter

Sandra Morgan (Actor) .. Reporter

Irene Shirley (Actor) .. Maid

Alice Ward (Actor) .. Nurse Receptionist

Grace Hayle (Actor) .. Patient

Born: January 01, 1888
Died: March 20, 1963

Trivia: American actress Grace Hayle spent most of her screen time playing bejeweled dowagers, huffy department store customers and aggressive lady journalists. Hayle proved a worthy Margaret Dumont type in Wheeler and Woolsey's Diplomaniacs (1933), supplied laughs as a ruddy-faced cyclist in The Women (1939) and played a most unlikely rhumba dancer in Two-Faced Woman (1940). One of her few credited roles was the long-suffering Madame Napaloni in Chaplin's The Great Dictator (1940). Grace Hayle remained in Hollywood long enough to appear in an early Elvis Presley film.

Lester Sharpe (Actor) .. Clerk/Paris Policeman

Born: January 01, 1894
Died: January 01, 1962

Budd Fine (Actor) .. Paris Policeman

Born: September 10, 1894

3:45 pm - 5:35 pm, Thursday, March 5 on WNYW Movies! (5.2)