Trivia: Joan Crawford was not an actress; she was a movie star. The distinction is a crucial one: She infrequently appeared in superior films, and her work was rarely distinguished regardless of the material, yet she enjoyed one of the most successful and longest-lived careers in cinema history. Glamorous and over the top, stardom was seemingly Crawford's birthright; everything about her, from her rags-to-riches story to her constant struggles to remain in the spotlight, made her ideal fodder for the Hollywood myth factory. Even in death she remained a high-profile figure thanks to the publication of her daughter's infamous tell-all book, an outrageous film biography, and numerous revelations of a sordid private life. Ultimately, Crawford was melodrama incarnate, a wide-eyed, delirious prima donna whose story endures as a definitive portrait of motion picture fame, determination, and relentless ambition.Born Lucille Fay Le Sueur on March 23, 1908, in San Antonio, TX, she first earned notice by winning a Charleston contest. She then worked as a professional dancer in Chicago, later graduating to a position in the chorus line of a Detroit-area club and finally to the Broadway revue Innocent Eyes. While in the chorus of The Passing Show of 1924, she was discovered by MGM's Harry Rapf, and made her movie debut in 1925's Lady of the Night. A series of small roles followed before the studio sponsored a magazine contest to find a name better than Le Sueur, and after a winner was chosen, she was rechristened Joan Crawford.Her first major role, in 1925's Sally, Irene and Mary, swiftly followed, and over the next few years she co-starred opposite some of the silent era's most popular stars, including Harry Langdon (1926's Tramp Tramp Tramp), Lon Chaney (1927's The Unknown), John Gilbert (1927's Twelve Miles Out), and Ramon Navarro (1928's Across to Singapore). Crawford shot to stardom on the strength of 1928's Our Dancing Daughters, starring in a jazz-baby role originally slated for Clara Bow. The film was hugely successful, and MGM soon doubled her salary and began featuring her name on marquees.Unlike so many stars of the period, she successfully made the transformation from the silents to the sound era. In fact, the 1929 silent Our Modern Maidens, in which she teamed with real-life fiancé Douglas Fairbanks Jr., was so popular -- even with audiences pining for more talkies -- that the studio did not push her into speaking parts. Finally, with Hollywood Revue of 1929 Crawford began regularly singing and dancing onscreen and scored at the box office as another flapper in 1930's Our Blushing Brides.However, she yearned to play the kinds of substantial roles associated with Greta Garbo and Norma Shearer and actively pursued the lead in the Tod Browning crime drama Paid. The picture was another hit, and soon similar projects were lined up. Dance Fools Dance (1931) paired Crawford with Clark Gable. They were to reunite many more times over in the years to come, including the hit Possessed. She was now among Hollywood's top-grossing performers, and while not all of her pictures from the early '30s found success, those that did -- like 1933's Dancing Lady -- were blockbusters.With new husband Franchot Tone, Crawford starred in several features beginning with 1934's Sadie McKee. She continued appearing opposite some of the industry's biggest male stars, but by 1937 her popularity was beginning to wane. After the failure of films including The Bride Wore Red and 1938's Mannequin, her name appeared on an infamous full-page Hollywood Reporter advertisement which listed actors deemed "glamour stars detested by the public." After the failure of The Shining Hour, even MGM -- which had just signed Crawford to a long-term contract -- was clearly worried. However, a turn as the spiteful Crystal in George Cukor's 1939 smash The Women restored some of Crawford's lustre, as did another pairing with Gable in 1940's Strange Cargo.Again directed by Cukor, 1941's A Woman's Face was another major step in Crawford's comeback, but then MGM began saddling her with such poor material that she ultimately refused to continue working, resulting in a lengthy suspension. She finally left the studio, signing on with Warners at about a third of her former salary. There Crawford only appeared briefly in 1944's Hollywood Canteen before the rumor mill was abuzz with claims that they too planned to drop her. As a result, she fought for the lead role in director Michael Curtiz's 1945 adaptation of the James M. Cain novel Mildred Pierce, delivering a bravura performance which won a Best Actress Oscar. Warners, of course, quickly had a change of heart, and after the 1946 hit Humoresque, the studio signed her to a new seven-year contract. At Warner Bros., Crawford began appearing in the kinds of pictures once offered to the studio's brightest star, Bette Davis. She next appeared in 1947's Possessed, followed by Daisy Kenyon, which cast her opposite Henry Fonda. For 1949's Flamingo Road, meanwhile, she was reunited with director Curtiz. However, by the early '50s, Crawford was again appearing in primarily B-grade pictures, and finally she bought herself out of her contract.In 1952, she produced and starred in Sudden Fear, an excellent thriller which she offered to RKO. The studio accepted, and the film emerged as a sleeper hit. Once again, Crawford was a hot property, and she triumphantly returned to MGM to star in 1953's Torch Song, her first color feature. For Republic, she next starred in Nicholas Ray's 1954 cult classic Johnny Guitar, perceived by many as a "thank you" to her large lesbian fan base. The roller-coaster ride continued apace: Between 1955 and 1957, Crawford appeared in four films -- Female on the Beach, Queen Bee, Autumn Leaves, and The Story of Esther Costello -- each less successful than the one which preceded it, and eventually the offers stopped coming in.Over the next five years, she appeared in only one picture, 1959's The Best of Everything. Then, in 1962, against all odds, Crawford made yet another comeback when director Robert Aldrich teamed her with Bette Davis in Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?, in which the actresses appeared as aging movie queens living together in exile. The film was a major hit, and thanks to its horror overtones, Crawford was offered a number of similar roles, later appearing in the William Castle productions Strait-Jacket (as an axe murderer, no less) and I Saw What You Did. Aldrich also planned a follow-up, Hush...Hush, Sweet Charlotte, but an ill Crawford was replaced by Olivia de Havilland. The final years of Crawford's screen career were among her most undistinguished. She co-starred in 1967's The Karate Killers, a spin-off of the hit television espionage series The Man From U.N.C.L.E., and she subsequently headlined the slasher film Berserk! The 1970's Trog was her last feature-film appearance, and she settled into retirement, penning a 1971 memoir, My Way of Life. A few years later, she made one final public appearance on a daytime soap opera, taking over the role played by her adopted daughter, Christina, when the girl fell ill.After spending her final years in seclusion, Crawford died in New York City on May 10, 1977, but she made headlines a year later when Christina published Mommie Dearest, among the first and most famous in what became a cottage industry of tell-all books published by the children of celebrities. In it, Christina depicted her mother as vicious and unfeeling, motivated only by her desire for wealth and fame. In 1981, Faye Dunaway starred as Crawford in a feature adaptation of the book which has gone on to become a camp classic.

Trivia: The son of an Oklahoma dentist, Van Heflin moved to California after his parents separated. Drawn to a life on the sea, Heflin shipped out on a tramp steamer upon graduating from high school, returning after a year to attend the University of Oklahoma in pursuit of a law degree. Two years into his studies, Heflin was back on the ocean. Having entertained thoughts of a theatrical career since childhood, Heflin made his Broadway bow in Channing Pollock's Mister Moneypenny; when the play folded after 61 performances, Heflin once more retreated to the sea, sailing up and down the Pacific for nearly three years. He revitalized his acting career in 1931, appearing in one short-lived production after another until landing a long-running assignment in S. N. Behrmann's 1936 Broadway offering End of Summer. This led to his film bow in Katharine Hepburn's A Woman Rebels (1936), as well as a brief contract with RKO Radio. Katharine Hepburn requested Heflin's services once more for her Broadway play The Philadelphia Story, and while the 1940 MGM film version of that play cast James Stewart in Heflin's role, the studio thought enough of Heflin to sign him to a contract. One of his MGM roles, that of the alcoholic, Shakespeare-spouting best friend of Robert Taylor in Johnny Eager (1942), won Heflin a "Best Supporting Actor" Oscar. After serving in various Army film units in World War II, Heflin resumed his film career, and also for a short while was heard on radio as Raymond Chandler's philosophical private eye Philip Marlowe. He worked in both Hollywood and Europe throughout the 1950s. In 1963, he was engaged to narrate the prestigious TV anthology The Great Adventure. He was forced to pull out of this assignment when cast as the Louis Nizer character in the Broadway play A Case of Libel. Heflin's final film appearance was in the made-for-TV speculative drama The Last Child; he died of a heart attack at the age of 61. Van Heflin was married twice, first to silent film star Esther Ralston, then to RKO contract player Frances Neal (who should not be confused with Heflin's actress sister Frances Heflin).

Trivia: As one of several sons of the owner of Toronto's Massey/Harris Agricultural Implement Company, Raymond Massey was expected to distinguish himself in business or politics or both (indeed, one of Raymond's brothers, Vincent Massey, later became Governor General of Canada). But after graduating form Oxford University, Massey defied his family's wishes and became an actor. He made his first stage appearance in a British production of Eugene O'Neill's In the Zone in 1922. By 1930, Massey was firmly established as one of the finest classical actors on the British stage; that same year he came to Broadway to play the title role in Hamlet. In 1931, Massey starred in his first talking picture, The Speckled Band, portraying Sherlock Holmes. One year later, he was co-starred with Charles Laughton, Melvyn Douglas, Gloria Stuart and Ernst Thesiger in his first Hollywood film, the classic The Old Dark House (1932). Returning to England, Massey continued dividing his time between stage and screen, offering excellent performances in such major motion-picture efforts as The Scarlet Pimpernal (1935) and Things to Come (1936). In 1938, he was cast in his most famous role: Abraham Lincoln, in Robert E. Sherwood's Pulitzer Prize-winning Broadway production Abe Lincoln in Illinois. Massey repeated his Lincoln characterization in the 1940 film version of the Sherwood play, and 22 years later played a cameo as Honest Abe in How the West Was Won (1962). Refusing to allow himself to be pigeonholed as Lincoln, Massey played the controversial abolitionist John Brown in both Santa Fe Trail (1940) and Seven Angry Men (1955), and gave an effectively straight-faced comic performance as mass murderer Jonathan Brewster (a role originally written for Boris Karloff) in Frank Capra's riotous 1941 filmization of Arsenic And Old Lace. Though he would portray a wisecracking AWOL Canadian soldier in 1941's 49th Parallel and a steely-eyed Nazi officer in 1943's Desperate Journey, Massey served valiantly in the Canadian Army in both World Wars. On television, Massey played "Anton the Spymaster", the host of the 1955 syndicated anthology I Spy; and, more memorably, portrayed Dr. Gillespie in the 1960s weekly Dr. Kildare. An inveterate raconteur, Massey wrote two witty autobiographies, When I Was Young and A Thousand Lives (neither of which hinted at his legendary on-set contentiousness). Married three times, Raymond Massey was the father of actors Daniel and Anne Massey.

Trivia: Born Geraldine Stroock, she first appeared onstage (in a musical) at age 17, then worked in summer stock and toured with the Theater Guild in a repertory of Shakespeare productions; she later studied at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts. An intense, pretty, petite brunette, she went to Hollywood in 1947 after being signed by Warner Brothers; there she was proclaimed as a "new Hepburn" with an electrifying screen presence. Her career, however, never lived up to its promise. The quality of her pictures was low (in most of them she played ingenues), so she accepted an offer by director William Dieterle to appear in an Italian film, Volcano (1950); the film performed badly at the box office, but Brooks remained in Europe to make a few more movies. After returning to the U.S., she largely abandoned her film career in favor of TV and the stage; she received a Tony nomination for her performance in the play Brightower (1970) and several Emmy nominations for her work on TV. Later she became a skilled nature photographer; in 1975 she published Swan Watch, a book of her bird photographs with accompanying text written by her second husband, novelist-screenwriter Budd Schulberg. She died of cancer at age 51 in 1977.

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

Trivia: A protégé of musical comedy star Beatrice Lillie in his native England, actor Stanley Ridges made his London stage debut in O' Boy. He went on to star as a romantic lead in several Broadway plays, and was cast in a similar capacity in his first film, the New York-lensed Crime of Passion (1934). Thereafter, the grey-templed Ridges excelled in dignified, underplayed, and distinctly non-British character roles. His best film assignments included the schizophrenic professor-turned-criminal in Black Friday (1940) (it would be unfair to say that he "stole" the picture from official star Boris Karloff, but he did have the best part), and the treacherous Professor Seletzky in Ernst Lubitsch's matchless black comedy To Be or Not to Be (1942). One of Stanley Ridges' last movie performances was as the kindly mentor of young doctor Sidney Poitier in the race-relations melodrama No Way Out (1950).

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

Trivia: Cutting her theatrical teeth in regional stock, American actress Nana Bryant appeared steadily on Broadway from 1925 thrugh 1935. Her forte during this period was musical-comedy character work, a field she still cultivated in the 1940s with Song of Norway. Bryant's first film was 1935's Guard That Girl; for the next twenty years she appeared mainly in benign, understanding roles, as typified by her last movie assignment as a kindly Mother Superior in The Private War of Major Benson (1955). That same year, Bryant had a six-month run as Mrs. Nestor, owner of a private school, on the popular TV sitcom Our Miss Brooks. So firmly associated was Bryant in motherly roles that she quite took the audience's breath away when playing a nasty character. Even Nana Bryant's daughter-in-law, who knew the real woman as well as anyone, could not bear watching Bryant portray a steely-eyed murderer in the Roy Rogers western Eyes of Texas (1949).

Trivia: Legend has it that Orson Welles saw his first theatrical production at age seven, when a touring company of Mr. Pim Passes By played in Welles' hometown of Kenosha, WI. Invited backstage, young Welles was effusively greeted by the play's leading man, Erskine Sanford, whose kind and encouraging words inspired Welles to pursue an acting career himself. Whether this story is true or not, the fact remains that, in 1936, Erskine Sanford left the Theatre Guild after a 15-year association to join Orson Welles' experimental Mercury Theatre. When Welles took the Mercury Players to Hollywood in 1940 to film Citizen Kane, Sanford was assigned the small but plum role of Herbert Carter, the sputtering, apoplectic former editor of the New York Inquirer. The actor went on to appear prominently in such Welles-directed films as The Magnificent Ambersons (1942, as Mr. Bronson), Lady From Shanghai (1947, as the judge), and MacBeth (1948, as King Duncan). Outside of his Mercury Theatre activities, Erskine Sanford played featured roles in such mainstream Hollywood productions as Ministry of Fear (1943) and Angel on My Shoulder (1946) before his retirement in 1950.

Trivia: From his appearance as Humphrey Bogart's son in the Casablanca follow-up A Passage to Marseille to his career as the writer of films including They Saved Hitler's Brain (1968), actor-turned-screenwriter Gerald Perreau-Saissine's (aka Peter Miles) tenure in film and television provided audiences with both memorable characters and intriguing stories. Born in Tokyo and raised in Los Angeles, Saissine made his feature debut as a baby in Murder Will Out (1939). Saissine would appear in such features as Heaven Only Knows (1947), Special Agent (1949), and Quo Vadis? (1951) throughout the 1950s before making his screenwriting debut with the sci-fi-thriller Madmen of Mandoras (aka They Saved Hitler's Brain) in 1963. Frequently appearing onscreen with sister Gigi Perreau, the siblings remained in close contact with producer Samuel Goldwyn, who would later present Saissine with two Samuel Goldwyn writing awards. In addition to his film work, Saissine published novels and poetry; he also created numerous catalogues of Japanese woodblock print artists and curated their shows at such locations as the Pacific-Asia Museum in Pasadena and the Honolulu Academy of Arts. On August 3, 2002, Gerald Perreau-Saissine died of cancer in his Los Angeles home. He was 64.

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

Trivia: American general-purpose actor Douglas Kennedy attended Deerfield Academy before trying his luck in Hollywood, using both his own name and his studio-imposed name Keith Douglas. He was able to secure contract-player status, first at Paramount and later at Warner Bros. Kennedy's Paramount years weren't what one could call distinguished, consisting mainly of unbilled bits (The Ghost Breakers [1940]) and supporting roles way down the cast list (Northwest Mounted Police [1940]); possibly he was handicapped by his close resemblance to Paramount leading man Fred MacMurray. Warner Bros., which picked up Kennedy after his war service with the OSS and Army Intelligence, gave the actor some better breaks with secondary roles in such A pictures as Nora Prentiss (1947), Dark Passage (1948), and The Adventures of Don Juan (1949). Still, Kennedy did not fill a role as much as he filled the room in the company of bigger stars. Chances are film buffs would have forgotten Kennedy altogether had it not been for his frequent appearances in such horror/fantasy features as Invaders from Mars (1953), The Alligator People (1959) and The Amazing Transparent Man (1960), playing the title role in the latter. Douglas Kennedy gain a modicum of fame and a fan following for his starring role in the well-circulated TV western series Steve Donovan, Western Marshal, which was filmed in 1952 and still posting a profit into the '60s.

Trivia: A product of the Indiana orphanage system, the part-Cherokee-Indian Monte Blue held down jobs ranging from stevedore to reporter before offering his services as a movie-studio handyman in the early 1910s. Pressed into service as an extra and stunt man, Blue graduated to featured parts in D.W. Griffith's Birth of a Nation (1915). Thanks to his work with Griffith and (especially) Cecil B. DeMille, Blue became a dependable box-office attraction of the 1920s, playing everything from lawyers to baseball players. He was a mainstay of the fledgling Warner Bros. studios, where the profits from his films frequently compensated for the expensive failures starring John Barrymore. In 1928 he was cast in his finest silent role, as the drink-sodden doctor in White Shadows on the South Seas. After making a successful transition to talkies, Blue decided to retire from filmmaking, taking a tour around the world to celebrate his freedom. Upon his return to the U.S. in 1931, Blue found that he had lost his fortune through bad investments, and that the public at large had forgotten him. By now too heavy-set to play romantic leads, Blue rebuilt his career from the bottom up, playing bits in "A" pictures and supporting roles in "B"s. He was busiest in the bread-and-butter westerns produced by such minor studios as Republic, Monogram and PRC; he also showed up in several serials, notably as "Ming the Merciless" clone Unga Khan in 1936's Undersea Kingdom. Movie mogul Jack Warner, out of gratitude for Blue's moneymaking vehicles of the 1920s, saw to it that Monte was steadily employed at Warner Bros., and that his name would appear prominently in the studio's advertising copy. While many of his talkie roles at Warners were bits, Blue was given choice supporting roles in such films as Across the Pacific (1942), Mask of Dimitrios (1944) and especially Key Largo (1948). Extending his activities into TV, Blue continued accepting character roles until retiring from acting in 1954. During the last years of his life, Monte Blue was the advance man for the Hamid-Morton Shrine Circus; it was while making his annual appearance in this capacity in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, that Blue suffered a heart attack and died at the age of 73.

Trivia: Former press agent Don McGuire turned to acting in 1945. McGuire's pencil-thin mustache and patronizing persona made him a useful screen antagonist to such stars as Red Skelton (The Fuller Brush Man) and Frank Sinatra (Double Dynamite). His friendship with Sinatra lead to his first screenwriting assignment, Meet Danny Wilson (1951). He was also a pal of comedian Jerry Lewis, collaborating on Jerry's "all star" home movies in the 1950s. After scripting several topnotch 1950s films--including a handful of Martin and Lewis efforts--he landed his first directorial job, the 1956 Frank Sinatra western Johnny Concho. He then directed Jerry Lewis' first solo effort, The Delicate Delinquent (1957). His third and last theatrical-feature directorial gig was 1957's Hear Me Good, a Runyonesque comedy starring TV game show host Hal March. In partnership with comedian Jackie Cooper, McGuire wrote, produced and directed Cooper's TV sitcom Hennessey. After splitting with Cooper, McGuire turned to writing novels. In 1982, Don McGuire shared an Academy Award - posthumously - with the eminent Larry Gelbart and Murray Schisgal - for his first draft of the Dustin Hoffman comedy blockbuster Tootsie.

Trivia: Six-foot-tall American actor Rory Mallinson launched his screen career at the end of WW II. Mallinson was signed to a Warner Bros. contract in 1945, making his first appearance in Price of the Marines. In 1947, he began free-lancing at Republic, Columbia and other "B"-picture mills. One of his larger roles was Hodge in the 1952 Columbia serial Blackhawk. Rory Mallinson made his last film in 1963.

Trivia: Curmudgeonly American character actor Griff Barnett first began showing up in movie bit roles in 1942. Barnett's screen time increased considerably after 1946 with solid supporting roles in films like Possessed (1947), Cass Timberlane (1947) and Tap Roots (1948). He was most often seen as stern judges (Angel Face) and small-town doctors (Pinky). Griff Barnett retired in 1955, three years before his death.

Trivia: Ralph Dunn used his burly body and rich, theatrical voice to good effect in hundreds of minor feature-film roles and supporting appearances in two-reel comedies. He came to Hollywood during the early talkie era, beginning his film career with 1932's The Crowd Roars. A huge man with a withering glare, Dunn was an ideal "opposite" for short, bumbling comedians like Lou Costello in the 1944 Abbott and Costello comedy In Society, Dunn plays the weeping pedestrian who explains that he doesn't want to go to Beagle Street because that's where a two-ton safe fell on his head and killed him. A frequent visitor to the Columbia short subjects unit, Dunn shows up in the Three Stooges comedy Mummie's Dummies as the ancient Egyptian swindled at the Stooges' used chariot lot. Ralph Dunn kept busy into the '60s, appearing in such TV series as Kitty Foyle and such films as Black Like Me (1964).

Trivia: Muscle-bound Mexican-born character actor Max Wagner kept busy in films from 1931 to 1957. Seldom given a line to speak, Wagner showed up in innumerable small roles as thugs, sailors, bodyguards, cabbies, and moving men. In one of his better-known assignments, he played an actor pretending to be the gangster character played by Barton MacLaine in the film-within-a-film segment in Bullets or Ballots (1936). Max Wagner's thick Latino accent served him well in such brief roles as the bull-farm attendant in Laurel and Hardy's The Bullfighters (1945).

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

Trivia: Silent film leading man Jack Mower was at his most effective when cast in outgoing, athletic roles. Never a great actor, he was competent in displaying such qualities as dependability and honesty. His best known silent role was as the motorcycle cop who is spectacularly killed by reckless driver Leatrice Joy in Cecil B. DeMille's Manslaughter (1922). Talkies reduced Jack Mower to bit parts, but he was frequently given work by directors whom he'd befriended in his days of prominence; Mower's last film was John Ford's The Long Gray Line (1955).

Trivia: Silent-film leading man Creighton Hale was brought to America from his native Ireland via a theatrical touring company. While starring in Charles Frohman's Broadway production of Indian Summer, Hale was spotted by a representative of the Pathe film company and invited to appear before the cameras. His first film was the Pearl White serial The Exploits of Elaine, after which he rose to stardom in a series of adventure films and romantic dramas. Director D.W. Griffith used Hale as comedy relief in his films Way Down East (1920) and Orphans of the Storm (1922)--possibly Hale's least effective screen appearances, in that neither he nor Griffith were comedy experts. Despite his comparative failure in these films, Hale remained a popular leading man throughout the 1920s. When talking pictures arrived, Hale's star plummeted; though he had a pleasant, well-modulated voice, he was rapidly approaching fifty, and looked it. Most of Hale's talkie roles were unbilled bits, or guest cameos in films that spotlighted other silent movie veterans (e.g. Hollywood Boulevard and The Perils of Pauline). During the 1940s, Hale showed up in such Warner Bros. productions as Larceny Inc (1941), The Maltese Falcon (1941) and Casablanca (1943); this was due to the largess of studio head Jack Warner, who kept such faded silent favorites as Hale, Monte Blue and Leo White on permanent call. Creighton Hale's final appearance was in Warners' Beyond the Forest (1949).

Trivia: Jacob Gimpel was an internationally known pianist, noted for his interpretation of Chopin. He originally studied piano with Alban Berg and Eduard Stuermann in Vienna and made his concert debut in 1923. Gimpel helped found the Israel Philharmonic (first known as the Palestine Symphony) in 1937. He emigrated to the US in 1938 and went on to appear in two films Gaslight (1944) and The Story of Three Loves (1943). His piano work can be heard on the soundtracks of Strange Fascination (1952) and The Mephisto Waltz (1971). Later, he became a professor at Cal State, Northridge.

Trivia: Best known today for her recurring role as the floor nurse Parker in MGM's Dr. Kildare series, brunette actress Nell Craig had begun her long screen career with Essanay in Chicago in 1913. By 1914, she was starring or co-starring in such melodramas as In the Palace of the King (1915), from F. Marion Crawford's popular novel, and The Breaker (1916). She played a girl detective in the latter and both films were directed by her husband, Fred E. Wright. The 1920s brought mainly supporting roles, notably that of Mary Todd Lincoln opposite George A. Billings in the low-budget Abraham Lincoln (1924), but she was reduced to walk-ons in talkies. Like several of her contemporaries, Craig was rescued by Louis B. Mayer of MGM, who awarded her a player contract. Craig, who also appeared semi-regularly in Paramount's Henry Aldrich series, retired from films in the late '40s and spent her final years as a resident of the Motion Picture Country House and Hospital in Woodland Hills, CA.

Trivia: American character actress Sarah Padden was active in films from 1926 to 1955. Usually cast in peppery maternal or spinsterish roles, Padden was seen to good advantage in the films of such B-entrepreneurs as Republic, Monogram, and PRC. Her larger roles include Sam Houston's mother in Man of Conquest (1939) and the philanthropic millionairess in Reg'lar Fellers (1940). During the late '40s, Sarah Padden was cast as Mom Palooka in Monogram's Joe Palooka series.

Trivia: In films from 1929, mustachioed, businesslike actor Wheaton Chambers could frequently be found in serials, including Flash Gordon's Trip to Mars (1939), The Adventures of Red Ryder (1940), The Purple Monster Strikes (1945) and The Crimson Ghost (1946). In bigger budgeted pictures, he played more than his share of bailiffs, guards and desk clerks. In the 1951 sci-fi masterpiece The Day the Earth Stood Still, Chambers plays the jeweller who appraises Klaatu's (Michael Rennie) extraterrestrial diamonds. When he was afforded screen billing, which wasn't often, Wheaton Chambers preferred to be identified as J. Wheaton Chambers.

Trivia: Actor Philo McCullough began his movie career at the Selig Company in 1912. At first, McCullough specialized in light comedy roles, often playing cads and bounders. After a brief stab at directing with 1921's Maid of the West, he found his true niche as a mustachioed, oily-haired, jack-booted heavy. During the 1920s he appeared in support of everyone from Fatty Arbuckle to Rin Tin Tin. Talkies reduced him to such bit parts as the "Assistant Exhausted Ruler" in Laurel & Hardy's Sons of the Desert (1933) and Senator Albert in Frank Capra's Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939). One of his few roles of consequence in the 1930s was the principal villain in the 1933 serial Tarzan the Fearless. Philo McCullough remained active until 1969, when he appeared with several other silent-screen veterans in They Shoot Horses, Don't They?.

Trivia: The namesake nephew of American journalist Tris Coffin, actor Tristram Coffin set his stage career in motion at age 14. By 1939, the tall, silver-mustached Coffin was well on his way to becoming one of the screen's most prolific character actors. Generally cast as crooked lawyers, shifty business executives, and gang bosses in B-pictures, Coffin projected a pleasanter image in A-films, where he often played soft-spoken doctors and educators. In 1949, he essayed his one-and-only film starring role: heroic Jeff King in the Republic serial King of the Rocket Men. Even busier on TV than in films (he was virtually a regular "guest villain" on the Superman series), Tristram Coffin starred as Captain Ryning of the Arizona Rangers in the weekly syndicated Western 26 Men (1957-1958).