Trivia: Paris-born actress Claudette Colbert was brought to New York at the age of seven by her banker father. She planned an art career after high school graduation, studying at the Art Student's League. Attending a party with actress Anne Morrison, the 18-year-old was offered a three-line bit in Morrison's new play The Wild Westcotts. That ended her art aspirations, and Colbert embarked on a stage career in 1925, scoring her first big critical success in the 1926 Broadway production of The Barker, in which she played a duplicitous snake charmer. One year later, the actress made her first film at Long Island's Astoria studio, For the Love of Mike (1927), but the film was unsuccessful and she enjoyed neither the experience nor her young director, Frank Capra. So back she went to Broadway, returning to films during the talkie revolution in The Hole in the Wall (1929), which was also the movie-speaking debut of Edward G. Robinson. Once again, Colbert disliked film acting; but audiences responded to her beauty and cultured voice, so she forsook the stage for Hollywood. Colbert's popularity (and salary) skyrocketed after she was cast as "the wickedest woman in history," Nero's unscrupulous wife Poppaea, in the Biblical epic The Sign of the Cross (1932). Colbert expanded her range as a street-smart smuggler's daughter in I Cover the Waterfront and in the pioneering screwball comedy Three-Cornered Moon (both 1933), but it was for a role she nearly refused that the actress secured her box-office stature. Virtually every other actress in Hollywood had turned down the role of spoiled heiress Ellie Andrews in Columbia's It Happened One Night (1934), and when director Frank Capra approached an unenthusiastic Colbert, she wearily agreed to appear in the film on the conditions that she be paid twice her normal salary and that the film be completed before she was scheduled to go on vacation in four weeks. Colbert considered the experience one of the worst in her life -- until the 1935 Academy Awards ceremony, in which It Happened One Night won in virtually all major categories, including a Best Actress Oscar for her. Colbert spent the next decade alternating between comedy and drama, frequently in the company of her most popular co-star, Fred MacMurray. She gained a reputation of giving 110 percent of her energies while acting, which compensated for her occasional imperviousness and her insistence that only one side of her face be photographed (which frequently necessitated redesigning movie sets just to accommodate her phobia about her "bad side"). Colbert remained a top money-making star until her last big hit, The Egg and I (1947), after which she lost some footing, partly because of producers' unwillingness to meet her demands that (under doctor's orders) she could only film a short time each day (her doctor was her husband). She hoped to jump-start her career in the role of Margo Channing in All About Eve, but those plans were squelched when she injured her back and had to relinquish the character to Bette Davis. Traveling the usual "fading star" route, Colbert made films in Europe and a budget Western in the U.S. before returning triumphantly to Broadway, first in 1956's Janus, then in the long-running 1958 comedy Marriage Go Round. The actress also appeared on television, although reportedly had trouble adjusting to live productions. In 1961, she returned to Hollywood as Troy Donahue's mother in Parrish. It would be her last film appearance until the 1987 TV movie, The Two Mrs. Grenvilles -- in which she far outclassed her material. Still a prominent figure in the Hollywood hierarchy, Colbert retired to her lavish home in California, where she frequently entertained her old friends Ronald and Nancy Reagan. Claudette Colbert died in 1996 in Bridgetown, Barbados, at the age of 92.

Trivia: One of the cinema's most enduring actors, Henry Fonda enjoyed a highly successful career spanning close to a half century. Most often in association with director John Ford, he starred in many of the finest films of Hollywood's golden era. Born May 16, 1905, in Grand Island, NE, Fonda majored in journalism in college, and worked as an office boy before pursuing an interest in acting. He began his amateur career with the Omaha Community Playhouse, often performing with the mother of Marlon Brando. Upon becoming a professional performer in 1928, Fonda traveled east, tenuring with the Provincetown Players before signing on with the University Players Guild, a New England-based ensemble including up-and-comers like James Stewart, Margaret Sullavan, and Joshua Logan. Fonda's first Broadway appearance followed with 1929's The Game of Life and Death. He also worked in stock, and even served as a set designer. In 1931, Fonda and Sullavan were married, and the following year he appeared in I Loved You Wednesday. The couple divorced in 1933, and Fonda's big break soon followed in New Faces of '34. A leading role in The Farmer Takes a Wife was next, and when 20th Century Fox bought the film rights, they recruited him to reprise his performance opposite Janet Gaynor, resulting in his 1935 screen debut. Fonda and Gaynor were slated to reunite in the follow-up, Way Down East, but when she fell ill Rochelle Hudson stepped in. In 1936 he starred in The Trail of the Lonesome Pine (the first outdoor Technicolor production), the performance which forever defined his onscreen persona: Intense, insistent, and unflappable, he was also extraordinarily adaptable, and so virtually impossible to miscast. He next co-starred with Sullavan in The Moon's Our Home, followed by Wings of the Morning (another Technicolor milestone, this one the first British feature of its kind). For the great Fritz Lang, Fonda starred in 1937's You Only Live Once, and the following year co-starred with Bette Davis in William Wyler's much-celebrated Jezebel. His next critical success came as the titular Young Mr. Lincoln, a 1939 biopic directed by John Ford. The film was not a commercial sensation, but soon after Fonda and Ford reunited for Drums Along the Mohawk, a tremendous success. Ford then tapped him to star as Tom Joad in the 1940 adaptation of John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath, a casting decision which even Steinbeck himself wholeheartedly supported. However, 20th Century Fox's Darryl Zanuck wanted Tyrone Power for the role, and only agreed to assign Fonda if the actor signed a long-term contract. Fonda signed, and Zanuck vowed to make him the studio's top star -- it didn't happen, however, and despite the success of The Grapes of Wrath (for which he scored his first Best Actor Academy Award nomination), his tenure at Fox was largely unhappy and unproductive.The best of Fonda's follow-up vehicles was the 1941 Preston Sturges comedy The Lady Eve, made at Paramount on loan from Fox; his co-star, Barbara Stanwyck, also appeared with him in You Belong to Me. After a number of disappointing projects, Fox finally assigned him to a classic, William Wellman's 1943 Western The Ox-Bow Incident. Studio executives reportedly hated the film, however, until it won a number of awards. After starring in The Immortal Sergeant, Fonda joined the navy to battle in World War II. Upon his return, he still owed Fox three films, beginning with Ford's great 1946 Western My Darling Clementine. At RKO he starred in 1947's The Long Night, followed by Fox's Daisy Kenyon. Again at RKO, he headlined Ford's The Fugitive, finally fulfilling his studio obligations with Ford's Fort Apache, his first unsympathetic character. Fonda refused to sign a new contract and effectively left film work for the next seven years, returning to Broadway for lengthy runs in Mister Roberts, Point of No Return, and The Caine Mutiny Court Martial. Outside of cameo roles in a handful of pictures, Fonda did not fully return to films until he agreed to reprise his performance in the 1955 screen adaptation of Mister Roberts, one of the year's biggest hits. Clearly, he had been greatly missed during his stage exile, and offers flooded in. First there was 1956's War and Peace, followed by Alfred Hitchcock's The Wrong Man. In 1957, Fonda produced as well as starred in the Sidney Lumet classic Twelve Angry Men, but despite a flurry of critical acclaim the film was a financial disaster. In 1958, after reteaming with Lumet on Stage Struck, Fonda returned to Broadway to star in Two for the Seesaw, and over the years to come he alternated between projects on the screen (The Man Who Understood Women, Advise and Consent, The Longest Day) with work on-stage (Silent Night, Lonely Night, Critic's Choice, Gift of Time). From 1959 to 1961, he also starred in a well-received television series, The Deputy.By the mid-'60s, Fonda's frequent absences from the cinema had severely hampered his ability to carry a film. Of his many pictures from the period, only 1965's The Battle of the Bulge performed respectably at the box office. After 1967's Welcome to Hard Times also met with audience resistance, Fonda returned to television to star in the Western Stranger on the Run. After appearing in the 1968 Don Siegel thriller Madigan, he next starred opposite Lucille Ball in Yours, Mine and Ours, a well-received comedy. Fonda next filmed Sergio Leone's Once Upon a Time in the West; while regarded as a classic, the actor so loathed the experience that he refused to ever discuss the project again. With his old friend, James Stewart, he starred in The Cheyenne Social Club before agreeing to a second TV series, the police drama Smith, in 1971. That same year, he was cast to appear as Paul Newman's father in Sometimes a Great Notion.After a pair of TV movies, 1973's The Red Pony and The Alpha Stone, Fonda began a series of European productions which included the disastrous Ash Wednesday and Il Mio Nome è Nessuno. He did not fare much better upon returning to Hollywood; after rejecting Network (the role which won Peter Finch an Oscar), Fonda instead appeared in the Sensurround war epic Midway, followed by The Great Smokey Roadblock. More TV projects followed, including the miniseries Roots -- The Next Generation. Between 1978 and 1979, he also appeared in three consecutive disaster movies: The Swarm, City on Fire, and Meteor. Better received was Billy Wilder's 1978 film Fedora. A year later, he also co-starred with his son, Peter Fonda, in Wanda Nevada. His final project was the 1981 drama On Golden Pond, a film co-starring and initiated by his daughter, Jane Fonda; as an aging professor in the twilight of his years, he finally won the Best Actor Oscar so long due him. Sadly, Fonda was hospitalized at the time of the Oscar ceremony, and died just months later on August 12, 1982.

Trivia: "Horse faced" was the usual capsule assessment given American actress Edna May Oliver - a gross disservice to her talent and accomplishments. A descendant of President John Quincy Adams, she aspired to a career in opera, and at 16 her uncle secured her a job with a light opera company. Her voice was damaged from overuse and exposure to bad weather, so Oliver turned her energies to acting. Stock company work began in 1911, and even as a teenager she lanternlike facial features assured her older character roles. Her 1916 Broadway debut led to a string of small and unsatisfying roles, until fortune smiled upon her with a supporting part as a servant in Owen Davis' Icebound. Davis' play won the 1923 Pulitzer Prize, thrusting everyone involved into the spotlight. Oliver was hired to repeat her Icebound duties for the film cameras in 1924, and though not technically her film debut, she would always list Icebound as her starting point in cinema. Solid roles in the Broadway productions The Cradle Snatchers, Strike Up the Band and the immortal Show Boat kept Oliver busy during the '20s, culminating in a contract with RKO Radio Studios. RKO thrust her into anything and everything, from Wheeler and Woolsey comedies to the Oscar-winning Cimarron (1931). The best testament to her popularity in films were the Edna May Oliver caricatures (complete with "Oh, reaaallly" voice imitation) that popped up with regularity in animated cartoons of the '30s. Oliver worked for virtually all the big studios in the '30s, at one point starring briefly in the Hildegarde Withers mystery series, a role she seemed born to play. Evidently, producers loved to put her angular frame in period costumes, as witness her marvelous roles in David Copperfield (1934), Tale of Two Cities (1935), Romeo and Juliet (1936) and Drums Along the Mohawk (1939). By 1940, Edna May Oliver was a law unto herself (even dictating what hours she would and wouldn't work) and filmakers wisely allowed her to use all the acting tricks at her disposal, from her famous loud sniff of distaste to her low, claxonish voice. After a long intestinal illness, Edna May Oliver died in 1942 on her 59th birthday; ironically, her last screen role had been as an infuriatingly healthy hypochondriac in Lydia (1941).

Trivia: Though best known to modern filmgoers as a horror star, cadaverous John Carradine was, in his prime, one of the most versatile character actors on the silver screen. The son of a journalist father and physician mother, Carradine was given an expensive education in Philadelphia and New York. Upon graduating from the Graphic Arts School, he intended to make his living as a painter and sculptor, but in 1923 he was sidetracked into acting. Working for a series of low-paying stock companies throughout the 1920s, he made ends meet as a quick-sketch portrait painter and scenic designer. He came to Hollywood in 1930, where his extensive talents and eccentric behavior almost immediately brought him to the attention of casting directors. He played a dizzying variety of distinctive bit parts -- a huntsman in Bride of Frankenstein (1935), a crowd agitator in Les Miserables (1935) -- before he was signed to a 20th Century Fox contract in 1936. His first major role was the sadistic prison guard in John Ford's Prisoner of Shark Island (1936), which launched a long and fruitful association with Ford, culminating in such memorable screen characterizations as the gentleman gambler in Stagecoach (1939) and Preacher Casy ("I lost the callin'!") in The Grapes of Wrath (1940). Usually typecast as a villain, Carradine occasionally surprised his followers with non-villainous roles like the philosophical cab driver in Alexander's Ragtime Band (1938) and Abraham Lincoln in Of Human Hearts (1938). Throughout his Hollywood years, Carradine's first love remained the theater; to fund his various stage projects (which included his own Shakespearean troupe), he had no qualms about accepting film work in the lowest of low-budget productions. Ironically, it was in one of these Poverty Row cheapies, PRC's Bluebeard (1944), that the actor delivered what many consider his finest performance. Though he occasionally appeared in an A-picture in the 1950s and 1960s (The Ten Commandments, Cheyenne Autumn), Carradine was pretty much consigned to cheapies during those decades, including such horror epics as The Black Sleep (1956), The Unearthly (1957), and the notorious Billy the Kid Meets Dracula (1966). He also appeared in innumerable television programs, among them Twilight Zone, The Munsters, Thriller, and The Red Skelton Show, and from 1962 to 1964 enjoyed a long Broadway run as courtesan-procurer Lycus in A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum. Though painfully crippled by arthritis in his last years, Carradine never stopped working, showing up in films ranging from Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex But Were Afraid to Ask (1972) to Peggy Sue Got Married (1984). Married four times, John Carradine was the father of actors David, Keith, Robert, and Bruce Carradine.

Trivia: Born in the waning months of the Civil War, Jessie Ralph made her stage debut with a Providence, RI, stock company in 1880. Her extensive Broadway experience ranged from Shakespearean classics to George M. Cohan musicals. She had appeared in films as early as 1915, but did not become a permanent Hollywood resident until 1933. For the most part, Ralph was cast as kindly grandmas, sagacious maids, and stern but loving governesses; her finest screen performances included Peggoty in 1934's David Copperfield and a benign sorceress in 1940's The Blue Bird. Her gift for exuding imperious abrasiveness was amply demonstrated in such films as After the Thin Man (1936), and W.C. Fields' The Bank Dick (1940), appearing in the latter as Fields' gorgon mother-in-law, Mrs. Hermisillio Brunch. Jessie Ralph retired in 1941 after enduring a leg amputation.

Trivia: The younger brother of Irish actor Barry Fitzgerald, Arthur Shields joined Fitzgerald at Dublin's famed Abbey as a Player in 1914, where he directed as well as acted. Though in films fitfully since 1910, Shield's formal movie career didn't begin until he joined several other Abbey veterans in the cast of John Ford's Plough and the Stars (1936). He went on to appear in several other Ford films, generally cast in more introverted roles than those offered his brother. Unlike his sibling, Shields was not confined to Irish parts; he often as not played Americans, and in 1943's Dr. Renault's Secret, he was seen as a French police inspector. Never as prominent a film personality as his brother, Arthur Shields nonetheless remained a dependable second-echelon character player into the 1960s.

Trivia: Leading man Robert Lowery came to Hollywood on the strength of his talent as a band vocalist. He was signed to a movie contract in 1937 by 20th Century-Fox, a studio that seemed to take a wicked delight in shuttling its male contractees from bits to second leads to bits again. Freelancing from 1942 onward, Lowery starred in a few low-budget films at Universal and Monogram. In 1949, he portrayed the Caped Crusader in the Columbia serial Batman and Robin. On television, Robert Lowery co-starred as Big Tim Champion on the kiddie series Circus Boy (1956-1958), and played smooth-talking villain Buss Courtney on the Anne Sheridan sitcom Pistols and Petticoats (1967).

Trivia: Roger Imhof began his performing career with a circus, then went on to tour in vaudeville with his wife Marcelle Coreine. An established stage performer, Imhof made his first film appearance in 1930. While under contract to Fox, he showed up in several films starring his friend Will Rogers. Elsewhere, he was generally cast as tight-lipped military officers or domineering fathers. In 1940's Little Old New York, he had a cute opening bit as millionaire-to-be John Jacob Astor. Roger Imhof remained in films until 1945.

Trivia: Mainly remembered for offering younger brother John Ford his first opportunities in the movie business, Francis Ford (born Feeney) was a touring company actor before entering films with Thomas Edison in 1907. In the early 1910s, he served a tumultuous apprenticeship as a director/star for producer Thomas Ince -- who in typical Ince fashion presented many of Ford's accomplishments as his own -- before moving over to Carl Laemmle's Universal in 1913. A true auteur, Ford would direct, write, and star in his own Westerns and serials, often opposite Grace Cunard, the studio's top action heroine. Contrary to popular belief they never married, but their onscreen partnership resulted in such popular action serials as Lucille Love -- Girl of Mystery (1914), The Broken Coin (1915), and The Adventures of Peg o' the Ring (1916). Both Ford's and Cunard's careers declined in the 1920s, with Ford directing mostly poverty row productions. He kept working in films as a supporting actor through the early '50s, mainly due to the influence of John, who often made Francis Ford and Victor McLaglen supply the corny Irish humor for which he exhibited a lifelong fondness. Francis Ford's son, Philip Ford, also became a director of Westerns, and also like his father, mainly of the poverty row variety.

Trivia: American actor Ward Bond was a football player at the University of Southern California when, together with teammate and lifelong chum John Wayne, he was hired for extra work in the silent film Salute (1928), directed by John Ford. Both Bond and Wayne continued in films, but it was Wayne who ascended to stardom, while Bond would have to be content with bit roles and character parts throughout the 1930s. Mostly playing traffic cops, bus drivers and western heavies, Bond began getting better breaks after a showy role as the murderous Cass in John Ford's Young Mr. Lincoln (1939). Ford cast Bond in important roles all through the 1940s, usually contriving to include at least one scene per picture in which the camera would favor Bond's rather sizable posterior; it was an "inside" joke which delighted everyone on the set but Bond. A starring role in Ford's Wagonmaster (1950) led, somewhat indirectly, to Bond's most lasting professional achievement: His continuing part as trailmaster Seth Adams on the extremely popular NBC TV western, Wagon Train. No longer supporting anyone, Bond exerted considerable creative control over the series from its 1957 debut onward, even seeing to it that his old mentor John Ford would direct one episode in which John Wayne had a bit role, billed under his real name, Marion Michael Morrison. Finally achieving the wide popularity that had eluded him during his screen career, Bond stayed with Wagon Train for three years, during which time he became as famous for his offscreen clashes with his supporting cast and his ultra-conservative politics as he was for his acting. Wagon Train was still NBC's Number One series when, in November of 1960, Bond unexpectedly suffered a heart attack and died while taking a shower.

Trivia: Of Norwegian descent, brunette Kay Linaker had graduated from the American Academy of Dramatic Arts and appeared in a couple of short-lived Broadway plays -- including Henry Rosendahl's Yesterday's Orchids (1934) with fellow Hollywood hopefuls Carleton Young and Richard Reeves -- prior to signing with Warner Bros. and later Fox, where she mainly played supporting roles in Grade-A production while earning leading assignments in programmers. With Paramount in the 1940s, Linaker usually played society women, often rather cold-hearted, but left the screen to marry writer-turned-television executive Howard Phillips. As Kate Phillips, she co-wrote (with Theodore Simonson) the screenplay to the sci-fi classic The Blob (1958) and, later still, taught courses at a university in New Hampshire.

Trivia: American actor Russell Simpson is another of those character players who seemed to have been born in middle age. From his first screen appearance in 1910 to his last in 1959, Simpson personified the grizzled, taciturn mountain man who held strangers at bay with his shotgun and vowed that his daughter would never marry into that family he'd been feudin' with fer nigh on to forty years. It was not always thus. After prospecting in the 1898 Alaska gold rush, Simpson returned to the States and launched a career as a touring actor in stock -- most frequently cast in romantic leads. This led to a long association with Broadway impresario David Belasco. Briefly flirting with New York-based films in 1910, Simpson returned to the stage, then chose movies on a permanent basis in 1917. Of his hundreds of motion picture and TV appearances, Russell Simpson is best known for his participation in the films of director John Ford, most memorably as Pa Joad in 1940's The Grapes of Wrath.

Trivia: Burly, puffy-cheeked American actor Spencer Charters entered films in 1923, after decades of stage experience. In his first talkie appearances (Whoopee [1930], The Bat Whispers [1931], etc.), Charters was often seen as an ill-tempered authority figure. Traces of this characterization continued into such mid-'30s efforts as Wheeler and Woolsey's Hips Hips Hooray, but before the decade was over Charters was firmly locked into playing such benign types as rustic sheriffs, bucolic hotel clerks and half-asleep justices of the peace. Advancing age and the attendant infirmities made it difficult for Charters to play anything other than one-scene bits by the early '40s. At the age of 68, he ended his life by downing an overdose of sleeping pills and then inhaling the exhaust fumes of his car.

Trivia: After years on the circus and vaudeville circuits, Si Jenks came to films in 1931. Virtually always cast as a grizzled, toothless old codger, Jenks was a welcome presence in dozens of westerns. In Columbia's Tim McCoy series of the early 1930s, Jenks was often teamed with another specialist in old-coot roles, Walter Brennan (17 years younger than Jenks). In non-westerns, Si Jenks played town drunks, hillbillies and Oldest Living Citizens usually with names like Homer and Zeke until his retirement at the age of 76.

Trivia: WWI-veteran Jack Pennick was working as a horse wrangler when, in 1926, he was hired as a technical advisor for the big-budget war drama What Price Glory? Turning to acting in 1927, Pennick made his screen bow in Bronco Twister. His hulking frame, craggy face, and snaggle-toothed bridgework made him instantly recognizable to film buffs for the next 35 years. Beginning with 1928's Four Sons and ending with 1962's How the West Was Won, Pennick was prominently featured in nearly three dozen John Ford films. He also served as Ford's assistant director on How Green Was My Valley (1941) and Fort Apache (1947), and as technical advisor on The Alamo (1960), directed by another longtime professional associate and boon companion, John Wayne. Though pushing 50, Jack Pennick interrupted his film career to serve in WWII, earning a Silver Star after being wounded in combat.

Trivia: Actor Arthur Aylesworth's first regular film employment was in a series of Paramount "newspaper" short subjects produced between 1932 and 1933. Aylesworth signed a Warner Bros. contract in 1934, appearing in nine films his first year. His roles under the Warners escutcheon included the Chief Censor in Life of Emile Zola (1937), the auto court owner in High Sierra (1941) and the sleigh driver in Christmas in Connecticut (1946). He also showed up at other studios, playing the night court judge in W.C. Fields' Man on the Flying Trapeze (Paramount 1935) and essaying minor roles in several of director John Ford's 20th Century-Fox productions. Arthur Aylesworth's last screen assignment was the part of a tenant farmer in Fox's Dragonwyck (1946).

Trivia: Best known for having posed for the famous Indian head nickel, Chief John Big Tree (real name Isaac John) enjoyed a screen career lasting 1915-1950. Among his countless Westerns, large and small, Big Tree played important roles in the controversial The Spirit of '76 (1917) and such epics as The Big Trail (1930), Drums Along the Mohawk (1939), and She Wore a Yellow Ribbon (1949).

Trivia: The son of vaudeville monologist Julius Tannen, Charles Tannen launched his own film career in 1936. For the rest of his movie "life," Tannen was most closely associated with 20th Century Fox, playing minor roles in films both large (John Ford's The Grapes of Wrath) and not so large (Laurel and Hardy's Great Guns). Rarely receiving screen credit, Tannen continued playing utility roles well into the 1960s, showing up in such Fox productions as The Fly (1958) and Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea (1961). Charles Tannen's older brother, William, was also an active film performer during this period.

Trivia: American character actor Paul McVey was a Fox contract player from 1934 to 1939. McVey had a substantial role in the 1934 Will Rogers vehicle Judge Priest, then settled into bit parts as detectives, stage manager and express agents. One of his meatier roles of the 1940s was "The Excellency Zanoff" in the 1941 Republic serial King of the Royal Mounted (1941). Before his retirement in 1953, Paul McVey appeared in a supporting part in the first-ever 3-D feature film, Bwana Devil (1952).

Trivia: After a considerable career on stage as an actor and director, Dublin-born Edwin Maxwell made his screen debut as Baptista in the Doug Fairbanks-Mary Pickford version of Taming of the Shrew (1929). The stocky, balding Maxwell spent the 1930s specializing in oily bureaucrats, crooked businessmen and shyster lawyers. Once in a while, he'd play a sympathetic role, notably the scrupulously honest Italian-American detective in Scarface. More often (especially in the films of director Frank Capra), his characters existed merely as an easily deflatable foil. One of Maxwell's most flamboyant performances was as the maniacal serial killer, in Night of Terror(1933), who rose from the dead at fade-out time to warn the audience not to reveal the end of the film or else! Essaying more benign characters in 1940s, he was seen as William Jennings Bryan in Wilson (1944) and as Oscar Hammerstein in The Jolson Story (1946). From 1939 to 1942, Maxwell served as dialogue director for the films of Cecil B. DeMille. Edwin Maxwell holds the distinction of appearing in four Academy Award-winning films: All Quiet on the Western Front (1930), Grand Hotel (1932), The Great Ziegfeld (1936) and You Can't Take It With You (1938).

Trivia: Endowed with a voice like a bellows and a face like a bullfrog, Australian actor Robert Greig specialized in pompous-servant roles. In Greig's first talking picture, the Marx Brothers' vehicle Animal Crackers (1930), he portrays Hives, Margaret Dumont's imperious butler; Hives dominates the film's opening scene by singing his instructions to the rest of the staff, and later participates in Groucho Marx' signature tune "Hooray for Captain Spaulding". Evidently the Marx Brothers liked his work, for in 1932 Greig was cast as an unflappable chemistry professor in Horse Feathers (1932). In most of his films, Greig played variations of Hives, notably in the wacked-out 1932 comedy short Jitters the Butler, in which he willingly offers his ample derriere to be kicked at the slightest provocation. In 1940, Greig became a member of the informal stock company of writer/producer Preston Sturges. Sturges brought out untapped comic possibilities in all of his favorite character actors; accordingly, Greig's performances in The Lady Eve (1941), Sullivan's Travels (1942) and The Palm Beach Story (1942) are among his best. Fans of Robert Greig's work with Sturges and the Marx Brothers are advised to catch his non-butler roles as the Duke of Weskit in Wheeler and Woolseys Cockeyed Cavaliers (1934) and as the wealthy, gross "protector" of Hedy Lamarr in Algiers (1938).

Trivia: Diminutive actress Clara Blandick was technically a U.S. citizen, since she was born aboard an American ship docked in the harbor of Hong Kong. She remained in Hong Kong with her family, making her stage debut in Richard Lovelace with visiting actor E. H. Sothern. Blandick made her first film in 1910, but she preferred the theatre, where she could count on being cast in leading roles. Nearly fifty when talkies came in, Blandick slipped easily into such character roles as Aunt Polly in Tom Sawyer (1930) and Huckleberry Finn (1931). By the mid 1930s she was a day player, appearing in unbilled bits and supporting parts in a number of top productions including A Star is Born (1937). In 1939, she was cast in her most memorable role, as Auntie Em in The Wizard of Oz (1939). Ironically, many Wizard of Oz fans of the 1950s and 1960s didn't know the real name of the actress portraying Auntie Em; Ms. Blandick's name does not appear in the opening credits, while the film's closing cast list (in which she is billed last, below Pat Walshe as the head flying monkey) was never telecast during the ten years that CBS owned the TV rights to Wizard. After her week's work as Auntie Em, Blandick went back to playing tiny uncredited roles in "A" pictures like One Foot in Heaven (1941) and The Big Store (1941), as well as good supporting parts in such "B" efforts as Pillow of Death (1945) and Philo Vance Returns (1947) -- playing a cold-blooded killer in the latter film. Clara Blandick retired in 1950; 12 years later, suffering from arthritis and encroaching blindness, she committed suicide in her modest Hollywood apartment.

Trivia: Athletically inclined, Tyler entered films at age 21 as a stuntman and extra. He went on to play supporting roles in several late silents, then signed a contract to star in Westerns. He soon became a popular screen cowboy, often accompanied by sidekick Frankie Darro; he survived the transition to sound, going on to star in a number of serials in the early '30s. He remained popular through the early '40s and occasionally played supporting roles in major films. In 1943 he was struck by a crippling rheumatic condition; although he appeared in a handful of additional films throughout the next decade, his career was effectively ended as he was relegated to minor roles. By the early '50s he was broke. He died of a heart attack at age 50.

Trivia: The very picture of an English gentleman officer, monocle and all, Lionel Pape came to Hollywood in 1935 after a distinguished career on stage and screen in his home country. Usually seen as a member of the horsy set, Pape played Major Allardyce in Shirley Temple's Wee Willie Winkie (1937), Lord Harry Droopy in The Big Broadcast of 1938, Lord Melrose in Raffles (1940), and Babberly in Charlie's Aunt (1941). Pape died at the then newly founded Motion Picture Country House and Hospital.

Trivia: Born in Missouri, Noble Johnson was raised in Colorado Springs, Colorado where he was a classmate of future film-star Lon Chaney Sr., who became one of his closest friends. At 15, Johnson dropped out of school to help his horse-trainer father. The 6'2", 225-pound teenager had little trouble finding "man-sized" employment, and at various junctures he worked as a miner and a rancher. In 1909, he made his motion picture debut, playing an American Indian (the first of many). Seven years later, Johnson and his brother George formed the Lincoln Motion Picture Company, the first American film studio exclusively devoted to the production of all-black feature films. Business was poor, however; by 1918, the studio had failed, and Johnson returned to acting in other's films. During the silent era, he essayed such roles as Friday in Robinson Crusoe (1922) and Uncle Tom in Topsy and Eva (1927), and also began a longtime professional relationship with producer/director Cecil B. DeMille. His talkie roles included Queequeg in Moby Dick (1930) and the Native Chieftan in King Kong (1933); he also played important parts in Murders in the Rue Morgue (1932), Mystery Ranch (1932) and The Mummy (1932). Launching the 1940's with a vivid portrayal of a zombie in Bob Hope's The Ghost Breakers (1940), Johnson spent the rest of the decade playing Africans, Indians, Mexicans, Arabs and South Sea Islanders, one of the few black performers in Hollywood to be permitted any sort of versatility. Noble Johnson retired in 1950.

Trivia: American actress Mae Marsh was the daughter of an auditor for the Santa Fe railroad - and as such, she and her family moved around quite a bit during Marsh's childhood. After her father died and her stepfather was killed in the San Francisco earthquake, she was taken to Los Angeles by her great aunt, a one-time chorus girl who'd become a New York actress. Marsh followed her aunt's footsteps by securing film work with Mack Sennett and D.W. Griffith; it was Griffith, the foremost film director of the early silent period, who first spotted potential in young Miss Marsh. The actress got her first big break appearing as a stone-age maiden in Man's Genesis (1911), after Mary Pickford refused to play the part because it called for bare legs. Specializing in dramatic and tragic roles, Marsh appeared in innumerable Griffith-directed short films, reaching a career high point as the Little Sister in the director's Civil War epic, The Birth of A Nation (1915). She made such an impression in this demanding role that famed American poet Vachel Lindsay was moved to write a long, elaborate poem in the actress' honor. Marsh's career went on a downhill slide in the '20s due to poor management and second-rate films, but she managed to score a personal triumph as the long-suffering heroine of the 1931 talkie tear-jerker Over the Hill. She retired to married life, returning sporadically to films - out of boredom - as a bit actress, notably in the big-budget westerns of director John Ford (a longtime Marsh fan). When asked in the '60s why she didn't lobby for larger roles, Mae Marsh replied simply that "I didn't care to get up every morning at five o'clock to be at the studio by seven."

Trivia: Veteran American silent-screen actress Ruth Clifford began her career at the tender age of 16, starring for various Universal companies. Britisher Monroe Salisbury, the teenage Clifford's leading man in melodramas such as The Savage (1917), Hungry Eyes (1918), and The Millionaire Pirate (1919), was a paunchy gent no longer in the bloom of youth and sporting an ill-fitting hairpiece. According to the actress, although ever the gentleman, Mr. Salisbury's appearance made love scenes somewhat uneasy. Clifford played Ann Rutledge in Abraham Lincoln (1924), but overall her career was on the wane when she struck up a lifelong friendship with director John Ford in the late 1920s. Along with another early silent-screen actress, Mae Marsh, Clifford would turn up in about every other Ford film, usually playing pioneer women. In more glamorous surroundings, Clifford and Marsh stole the limelight for a brief moment as aging saloon belles in Three Godfathers (1948) and, away from Ford, Clifford was the studio head's secretary in Wilder's Sunset Boulevard (1950). Her last recorded appearance was in Ford's Two Rode Together in 1961; she was billed merely as "Woman." Although not known for enjoying interviews, Clifford was keenly interested in film history and made appearances in two documentaries on the subject: the 1984 Ulster Television program A Seat in the Stars: The Cinema and Ireland and historian Anthony Slide's ground-breaking The Silent Feminists: America's First Women Directors. In the latter, she discussed the work of Elsie Jane Wilson, Clifford's director on both The Lure of Luxury (1918) and The Game's Up (1919). As old as the century, Ruth Clifford was one of the last remaining leading ladies of the early, silent era when she died at the Motion Picture Country Hospital in Woodland Hills on December 1, 1998.

Trivia: Evidently weaned on a diet of pickles and vinegar, wizened screen sourpuss Clarence H. Wilson grimaced and glowered his way through over 100 films from 1920 until his death in 1941. Clarence Hummel Wilson was born in Cincinnati, OH. He began his 46-year acting career in Philadelphia in 1895, in a stock company, and spent years touring the United States and Canada in various road shows. On stage in New York, he later played supporting roles to such stars as James K. Hackett, Virginia Harned, Marguerite Clark, Amelia Bingham, Charles Cherry, and Wilton Lackaye. He entered motion pictures in 1920 and ultimately moved to Hollywood. With the coming of sound, his bald, mustachioed, stoop-shouldered persona, topped by a distinctive and annoying high, whining voice, and coupled with his broad approach to acting, made him an ideal villain. Wilson, whose slightly squinty yet hovering gaze seemed to invoke bad fortune upon whomever it landed, played dozens of irascible judges, taciturn coroners, impatient landlords, flat-footed process servers, angry school superintendents, miserly businessmen, and cold-hearted orphanage officials. Whenever he smiled, which wasn't often, one could almost hear the creak of underused facial muscles. Though he generally played bits, he was occasionally afforded such larger roles as the drunken sideshow-impresario father of heroine Helen Mack in Son of Kong (1933), with his pathetic trained animal act. He was the perfect over-the-top villain, a nastier male equivalent to Margaret Hamilton, and indispensable to comedy films, in which he served brilliantly as the humorless foil of such funmakers as W.C. Fields, Wheeler & Woolsey, Charley Chase, and especially the Our Gang kids. Although he appeared in such major films as the 1931 version of The Front Page (playing the corrupt sheriff) and the aforementioned Son of Kong, Wilson's most prominent screen roles for modern audiences were in a pair of short subjects in the Our Gang series of films: first as Mr. Crutch, the greedy orphanage manager who is undone when a pair of adults get transformed into children by a magical lamp in Shrimps for a Day (1934); and, at the other end of the series' history, as nasty schoolboard chairman Alonzo K. Pratt in Come Back, Miss Pipps (1941), his penultimate film release.