Trivia: One of Hollywood's most luminous actresses, Gene Tierney remains best remembered for her performance in the title role of the 1944 mystery classic Laura. Born November 20, 1920, in Brooklyn, NY, Tierney was the daughter of a wealthy insurance broker, and was educated in Connecticut and Switzerland; she traveled in social circles, and at a party met Anatole Litvak, who was so stunned by her beauty that he requested she screen test at Warner Bros. The studio offered a contract, but the salary was so low that her parents dissuaded her from signing; instead, Tierney pursued a stage career, making her Broadway debut in 1938's Mrs. O'Brien Entertains. A six-month contract was then offered by Columbia, which she accepted. However, after the studio failed to find her a project, she returned to New York to star on-stage in The Male Animal. The lead in MGM's National Velvet was offered her, but when the project was delayed Tierney signed with Fox, where in 1940 she made her film debut opposite Henry Fonda in the Fritz Lang Western The Return of Frank James.A small role in Hudson's Bay followed before Tierney essayed her first major role in John Ford's 1940 drama Tobacco Road. She then starred as the titular Belle Starr. Fox remained impressed with her skills, but critics consistently savaged her work. Inexplicably and wholly inappropriately, she was cast as a native girl in three consecutive features: Sundown, The Shanghai Gesture, and Son of Fury. Closer to home was 1942's Thunder Birds, in which Tierney starred as a socialite; however, she was just as quickly returned to more exotic fare later that same year for China Girl. A supporting turn in Ernst Lubitsch's classic 1943 comedy Heaven Can Wait signalled an upward turn in Tierney's career, however, and the following year she starred as the enigmatic Laura in Otto's Preminger's masterful mystery. After 1945's A Bell for Adano, she next appeared as a femme fatale in the melodrama Leave Her to Heaven, a performance which won her a Best Actress Academy Award nomination -- her most successful film to date.Tierney continued working at a steady pace, and in 1946 co-starred with Tyrone Power in an adaptation of the W. Somerset Maugham novel The Razor's Edge. The 1947 The Ghost and Mrs. Muir was her last major starring role; from 1948's The Iron Curtain onward, she appeared primarily in smaller supporting performances in projects including the 1949 thriller Whirlpool and Jules Dassin's classic 1950 noir Night and the City. After 1952's Way of a Gaucho, Tierney's Fox contract expired, and at MGM she starred with Spencer Tracy in Plymouth Adventure, followed by the Clark Gable vehicle Never Let Me Go. The latter was filmed in Britain, and she remained there to shoot Personal Affair. While in Europe, Tierney also began a romance with Aly Khan, but their marriage plans were met by fierce opposition from the Aga Khan; dejectedly she returned to the U.S., where she appeared in 1954's Black Widow.After 1955's The Left Hand of God, Tierney's long string of personal troubles finally took their toll, and she left Hollywood and relocated to the Midwest, accepting a job in a small department store; there she was rediscovered in 1959, and Fox offered her a lead role in the film Holidays for Lovers. However, the stress of performing proved too great, and days into production Tierney quit to return to the clinic. In 1960 she married Texas oil baron Howard Lee. Two years later, Fox announced her for the lead role in Return to Peyton Place, but she became pregnant and dropped out of the project. Finally, Tierney returned to screens in 1962's Advise and Consent, followed a year later by Toys in the Attic. After 1964's The Pleasure Seekers, she again retired, but in 1969 starred in the TV movie Daughter of the Mind. Remaining out of the public eye for the next decade, in 1979 Tierney published an autobiography, Self-Portrait, and in 1980 appeared in the miniseries Scruples; the performance was her last -- she died in Houston on November 6, 1991.

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

Trivia: Clifton Webb was the most improbable of movie stars that one could imagine -- in an era in which leading men were supposed to be virile and bold, he was prissy and, well, downright fussy. Where the actors in starring roles were supposed to lead with their fists, or at least the suggestion of potential mayhem befalling those who got in the way of their characters, Webb used a sharp tongue and a waspish manner the way John Wayne wielded a six-gun and Clark Gable a smart mouth, a cocky grin, and great physique. And where male movie stars (except in the singing cowboy movies) were supposed to maintain a screen image that had women melting in their arms if not their presence, Webb hardly ever went near women in most of his screen roles, except in a fatherly or avuncular way. Nevertheles, the public devoured it all, even politely looking past Webb's well-publicized status as a "bachelor" who lived with his mother, and in the process turned him into one of Hollywood's most popular post-World War II movie stars, with a string of successful movies rivaling those of Wayne, Gable, Humphrey Bogart, Gary Cooper, or any other leading man one cares to name. Indeed, Webb was for more than 15 years a mainstay of 20th Century Fox, his movies earning profits as reliably as the sun rising -- not bad for a man who was nearly rejected from his first film on the lot because the head of production couldn't abide his fey mannerisms. Clifton Webb was born Webb Parmalee Hollenbeck, in Indianapolis, IN, in 1891 (his date of birth was falsified during his lifetime and pushed up by several years, and some sources list the real year as 1889). His father -- about whom almost nothing is known, except that he was a businessman -- had no interest in preparing his offspring for the stage or the life of a performer, a fact that so appalled his mother (a frustrated actress) that she packed herself and the boy off to New York, and he started dancing lessons at age three. By the time he was seven years old, he was good enough to attract the attention of Malcolm Douglas, the director of the Children's Theatre, and he made his Carnegie Hall debut in 1900 (when he would have been either seven, nine, or 11), playing Cholly in The Brownies. Webb was taking lessons in all of the arts by then, and in 1911, made his operatic debut in La Bohème. It was as a dancer, though, that he first found his real fortune -- seen at a top New York nightspot, he so impressed one lady professional that she immediately proposed a partnership that resulted in an international career for Webb. Webb's acting wasn't neglected, either, and in the 1920s and '30s, he was regarded as one of the top stage talents in the country, a multiple-threat performer equally adept in musicals, comedies, or drama. Early in his career, he'd worked under a variety of names, finally transposing his first name to his last and reportedly taking the Clifton from the New Jersey town, because his mother liked the sound of it. Webb was a well-known figure on-stage, but his value as a film performer was considered marginal until he was well past 50 -- he'd done some film work during the silent era, but in the mid-'30s, he was brought out to Hollywood by MGM for a film project that ran into script problems. He spent a year out there collecting his contracted salary of 3,500 dollars a week and doing absolutely nothing, and hated every minute of it. Webb returned to New York determined never to experience such downtime again, and over the ensuing decade bounced back with hits in George S. Kaufman and Moss Hart's The Man Who Came to Dinner and Noël Coward's Blithe Spirit, doing the latter for three years. Ironically, the role of Sheridan Whiteside in The Man Who Came to Dinner was inspired by the real-life author/columnist Alexander Woollcott, who would also be the inspiration for the role that finally brought Webb to Hollywood successfully. In 1943, 20th Century Fox set out to adapt a novel by Vera Caspary entitled Laura to the screen. The book, a murder mystery set in New York, had in it a character named Waldo Lydecker, who was modeled on Alexander Woollcott; a waspish, stylish, and witty author and raconteur, Woollcott was a well-known and popular media figure, who'd even done a little acting onscreen and on-stage. When it came time to cast the role, producer Otto Preminger and director Rouben Mamoulian decided to give Webb a screen test. Preminger was totally convinced of Webb's rightness for the role, and the screen test bore him out, but studio production chief Darryl F. Zanuck couldn't abide Webb's fey, effete mannerisms and obviously gay persona, and did his best to keep him from the role. Luckily, Preminger prevailed, and Webb -- in what is usually regarded as his real film debut -- proved to be one of the most popular elements of what turned out to be a massively popular movie. It was the beginning of a very profitable two-decade relationship between the actor and the studio. Webb gave an Academy Award-caliber performance in Edmund Goulding's The Razor's Edge (1946), and in 1948 he became an out-and-out star, portraying Mr. Belvedere, the housekeeper and "nanny" hired by the harried parents (portrayed by Robert Young and Maureen O'Hara) in the hit comedy Sitting Pretty (1948). Beginning with Laura in 1944, each of the next 15 movies that Webb made was a success, and they included everything from comedies to some of the most intense film noir -- most notably The Dark Corner (1946), in which he played a murderer -- but the role of Mr. Belvedere proved to be so popular that it threatened to swallow him up. Webb flatly refused to do any sequel that did not meet with his approval, and only two ever did -- this even as he received thousands of letters from mothers seeking advice on raising their children. The great unspoken irony in all of this was that Webb was not only unmarried and childless, but was as close to being openly gay as any leading actor in Hollywood could be -- he lived with his mother, and the two attended parties together, and was on record as being a "bachelor," which was code in those days (where certain kinds of actors were concerned) for being gay. And in an era in which this wasn't acceptable as a choice or a condition, audiences didn't care -- in a testimony to the sheer power of his acting, they devoured Webb's work in whatever role he took on. He never did a Western, but he did play a father of two children who unexpectedly rises to heroism in Titanic (1953), and he played the father of 12 children in Cheaper by the Dozen (1950); as he said when asked about the propriety of a childless, unmarried man playing a father of 12, "I didn't need to be a murderer to play Waldo Lydecker -- I'm not a father, but I am an actor." Webb was always stylishly dressed in public, and owned dozens of expensive suits -- he was, in many ways, the America's first pop-culture "metrosexual," and he made it work for two decades. The death of Webb's mother in 1960, reportedly at age 90, was an event from which the actor never fully recovered. Though he did a few more screen appearances, his health was obviously in decline, and he passed away in 1966.

Trivia: Lean, effete, and sinister, Vincent Price was among the movies' greatest villains as well as one of the horror genre's most beloved and enduring stars. Born May 27, 1911, in St. Louis, MO, Price graduated from Yale University, and later studied fine arts at the University of London. He made his theatrical debut in the Gate Theatre's 1935 production of Chicago, followed by work on Broadway, in stock and with Orson Welles' famed Mercury Theater. Under contract to Universal, Price traveled to Hollywood, making his screen debut in 1938's Service de Luxe, before returning to Broadway for a revival of Outward Bound. His tenure at Universal was largely unsuccessful, and the studio kept him confined to supporting roles. Upon completing his contract, Price jumped to 20th Century Fox, starring in a pair of 1940 historical tales, Brigham Young -- Frontiersman and Hudson Bay. Still, fame eluded him, and in 1941 he began a long Broadway run (in Angel Street) that kept him out of films for three years. Price returned to the West Coast to co-star in 1943's The Song of Bernadette and became a prominent supporting player in a series of acclaimed films, including 1944's Wilson and Laura, and 1946's Leave Her to Heaven. His first starring role was in the low-budget Shock!, portraying a murderous psychiatrist. He next played a sadistic husband opposite Gene Tierney in Dragonwyck. Clearly, Price's niche was as a villain -- everything about him suggested malice, with each line reading dripping with condescension and loathing; he relished these roles, and excelled in them. Still, he was not the star Fox wanted; after 1947's The Web, his contract expired and was not renewed. Price spent the next several years freelancing with a variety of studios and by 1952 had grown so disenchanted with Hollywood that he returned to the stage, performing in a San Francisco production of The Cocktail Party before replacing Charles Laughton in the touring company of Don Juan in Hell.Price then signed on to star in 1953's House of Wax, Warners' 3-D update of their Mystery of the Wax Museum. The picture was one of the year's biggest hits, and one of the most successful horror films ever produced. Price's crazed performance as a vengeful sculptor brought him offers for any number of similar projects, and he next appeared in another 3-D feature, Dangerous Mission. He also made a triumphant return to the stage to appear in Richard III, followed by Black-Eyed Susan. The latter was Price's last theatrical performance for 14 years, however, as he began a very busy and eclectic motion picture schedule. Though he essayed many different types of characters, his forays into horror remained by far his most popular, and in 1958 he co-starred in the hit The Fly as well as William Castle's House on Haunted Hill. By the 1960s, Price was working almost exclusively in the horror genre. For producer Roger Corman, he starred in a series of cult classic adaptations of Edgar Allen Poe stories including 1960's The Fall of the House of Usher, 1963's The Raven, 1964's The Masque of the Red Death, and 1968's The Conqueror Worm. He also appeared in a number of teen movies like 1963's Beach Party, 1965's Dr. Goldfoot and the Bikini Machine, and the 1969 Elvis Presley vehicle The Trouble With Girls. Price began to cut back on his film activities during the 1970s despite hits like 1971's The Abominable Dr. Phibes and its follow-up Dr. Phibes Rises Again. Instead he frequently lectured on art, and even published several books. For disciple Tim Burton, Price co-starred in the 1990 fantasy Edward Scissorhands; apart from voice-over work, it was his last screen appearance. He died in Los Angeles on October 25, 1993.

Trivia: Australian-born Dame Judith Anderson (she was knighted in 1960) was for nearly 70 years one of the foremost Shakespearian actresses of the stage, playing everything from Lady MacBeth to Portia to Hamlet (yes, Hamlet). In films, she was Cruella DeVil--over and over again. Perhaps this is an oversimplification, but it is true that movies seldom took full advantage of Anderson's versatility and rich speaking voice, opting instead to confine her to unsympathetic roles on the basis of her hard, cruel facial features. She made her first film appearance as an incongrously sexy temptress in 1933's Blood Money; seven years later, she essayed her most famous screen role, the obsessed housekeeper Mrs. Danvers in Rebecca (1940). For the rest of her career, she was apparently regarded by Hollywood as an alternate for Gale Sondergaard in roles calling for refined truculence. She played the New York society dragon who "keeps" weak-willed Vincent Price in Laura (1944), the sinister wife of tormented farmer Edward G. Robinson in The Red House (1948), the imperious Queen Herodias in Salome (1953) and the wicked stepmother of Jerry Lewis in Cinderfella (1960). Some of Judith Anderson's later film roles allowed her a modicum of audience empathy, notably the aged Sioux Indian matriarch in A Man Called Horse (1970) and the High Priestess of the Vulcans in Star Trek IV: The Search for Spock (1984).

Trivia: Whenever Ellen Corby or Mary Field weren't available to play a timid, spinsterish film role, chances are the part would go to Dorothy Adams. Though far from a shrinking violet in real life, Ms. Adams was an expert at portraying repressed, secretive women, usually faithful servants or maiden aunts. Her best-remembered role was the overly protective maid of Gene Tierney in Laura (1944). Dorothy Adams was the wife of veteran character actor Byron Foulger; both were guiding forces of the Pasadena Playhouse, as both actors and directors. Dorothy and Byron's daughter is actress Rachel Ames, who played Audrey March on TV's General Hospital.

Trivia: American actor James Flavin was groomed as a leading man when he first arrived in Hollywood in 1932, but he balked at the glamour treatment and was demonstrably resistant to being buried under tons of makeup. Though Flavin would occasionally enjoy a leading role--notably in the 1932 serial The Airmail Mystery, co-starring Flavin's wife Lucille Browne--the actor would devote most of his film career to bit parts. If a film featured a cop, process server, Marine sergeant, circus roustabout, deckhand or political stooge, chances are Jimmy Flavin was playing the role. His distinctive sarcastic line delivery and chiselled Irish features made him instantly recognizable, even if he missed being listed in the cast credits. Larger roles came Flavin's way in King Kong (1933) as Second Mate Briggs; Nightmare Alley (1947), as the circus owner who hires Tyrone Power; and Abbott and Costello Meet the Killer, Boris Karloff (1949), as a long-suffering homicide detective. Since he worked with practically everyone, James Flavin was invaluable in later years as a source of on-set anecdotes for film historians; and because he evidently never stopped working, Flavin and his wife Lucille were able to spend their retirement years in comfort in their lavish, sprawling Hollywood homestead.

Trivia: A handsome stage actor, mustachioed Clyde Fillmore (born Clyde Fogle) made quite an impression as the rakish Captain Rex Strong, Una Trevelyan's suspected lover in Erich Von Stroheim's now sadly lost The Devil's Passkey (1920). In fact, 1920 was a good year for Fillmore, who also played Griswold, the white slaver in Jack Holt's Crooked Streets and was Mary Miles Minter's love interest in Nurse Marjorie. The actor returned to the legitimate stage at that point, but was back in Hollywood from 1941 to 1946 to play such distinguished-looking supporting characters as senators, mayors, and doctors.

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: The son of a general and a graduate of Yale College and Harvard Law School, Ohioan Grant Mitchell was a lawyer (he certainly looked the part) for several years before going into acting. He made his stage bow at the age of 27, and spent the next quarter of a century as a leading player, often billed above the title of the play. Mitchell was a special favorite of showman George M. Cohan, who wrote a vehicle specifically tailored to Mitchell's talents, The Baby Cyclone, in 1927. Though he reportedly appeared in a 1923 film, Mitchell's movie career officially began in 1932, first in bits (the deathhouse priest in If I Had a Million), then in sizeable supporting roles at Warner Bros. Often cast as the father of the heroine, Mitchell socked across his standard dyspeptic-papa lines with a delivery somewhat reminiscent of James Cagney (leading one to wonder if the much-younger Cagney didn't take a few pointers from Mitchell during his own formative years). While he sparkled in a variety of secondary roles as businessmen, bank clerks and school principals, Mitchell was occasionally honored with a B-picture lead, as in 1939's Father is a Prince. With years of theatrical experience behind him, Mitchell was shown to best advantage in Warners' many adaptations of stage plays, notably A Midsummer Night's Dream (1935) and The Man Who Came to Dinner (1942). Freelancing in the mid '40s, Grant Mitchell occasionally showed up in unbilled one-scene cameos (Leave Her to Heaven [1945]) and in reprises of his small-town bigwig characterizations in such B-films as Blondie's Anniversary (1947) and Who Killed Doc Robbin? (1948).

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

Trivia: Working in virtual anonymity throughout his film career, the sharp-featured, gangly character actor Harry Strang was seldom seen in a feature film role of consequence. From 1930 through 1959, Strang concentrated on such sidelines characters as soldiers, sentries, beat cops and store clerks. He was given more to do and say in 2-reel comedies, notably in the output of RKO Radio Pictures, where he appeared frequently in the comedies of Leon Errol and Edgar Kennedy. Harry Strang will be remembered by Laurel and Hardy fans for his role as a desk clerk in Block-Heads (1938), in which he was not once but twice clobbered in the face by an errant football.

Trivia: A genuine westerner, Lane Chandler, upon leaving Montana Wesleyan College, moved to LA and worked as a garage mechanic while seeking out film roles. After several years in bit parts, Chandler was signed by Paramount in 1927 as a potential western star. For a brief period, both Chandler and Gary Cooper vied for the best cowboy roles, but in the end Paramount went with Cooper. Chandler made several attempts to establish himself as a "B" western star in the 1930s, but his harsh voice and sneering demeanor made him a better candidate for villainous roles. He mostly played bits in the 1940s, often as a utility actor for director Cecil B. DeMille. The weather-beaten face and stubbly chin of Lane Chandler popped up in many a TV and movie western of the 1950s, his roles gradually increasing in size and substance towards the end of his career.

Trivia: Blonde American actress Dorothy Christy thrived in the early 1930s as an excellent second lead and comedy foil. Christy seemed most at home in slapstick comedies: she played the older sister who must be married off to clear the way for her younger sister's happiness in Buster Keaton's Parlor, Bedroom and Bath (1931) and rifle-wielding Mrs. Betty Laurel ("I've never missed yet!") in Laurel & Hardy's Sons of the Desert (1933). She was also quite adept at conveying icy truculence, notably as the gossiping socialite in Devil and the Deep (1932) and as bratty Jane Withers' avaricious mother in the 1934 Shirley Temple musical Bright Eyes. Perhaps her most offbeat role was Queen Tika, ruler of the underground city of Murania, in the camp-classic serial Phantom Empire (1935). Throughout the 1940s, she continued playing supporting roles in the 2-reelers of such comics as Leon Errol and Edgar Kennedy, and bits in features, most often in those productions helmed by her Sons of the Desert director William A. Seiter (Little Giant, Lover Come Back etc.) At various junctures in her film career, Dorothy Christy billed herself as Dorothy Christie.

Trivia: Born into wealth, American actress Aileen Pringle was educated in San Francisco (her home town), Paris, and London. Married to a titled Englishman before the age of twenty, Pringle defied the wishes of her husband and her family to take on a stage career in 1915. The actress worked on stage and in non-Hollywood films until 1922, when she was awarded a major-studio movie contract. She was personally selected by romance novelist Elinor Glyn (one of the great poseurs of the '20s) to star in the 1942 film adaptation of Glyn's steamy Ruritanian bodice-ripper Three Weeks (1924). An apocryphal story popped up during the making of this film, wherein Pringle, being carried into the boudoir by co-star Conrad Nagel, play-acted deep passion while actually whispering to Nagel, "If you drop me, you bastard, I'll break your neck." (Something like this did happen on the set of another film that starred neither Pringle or Nagel). Not well liked by coworkers due to her haughty attitude, Aileen nonetheless became Hollywood's unofficial "Darling of the Intelligentsia," and was regularly sent out by the studios to greet such literary wits as H.L. Mencken upon their arrival in Tinseltown. Indeed, Pringle's second husband was a celebrated writer, James M. Cain (Double Indemnity, The Postman Always Rings Twice), though hardly one of the intellectual elite. Behaving as contrarily as possible due to her disdain of filmmakers, Pringle sabotaged her chances at continuing her starring career in talking pictures; by 1942, she was played unbilled bits in such films as They Died with Their Boots On (1942). Comeback attempts in the '50s were thwarted because of Aileen Pringle's condescention and outspokenness; if the extremely wealthy actress truly wanted stardom, she sure didn't actively court it.

Trivia: In films from 1937, silver-haired American actor Forbes Murray could be described as a less-costly Claude Rains. Murray lent his middle-aged dignity to such serials as The Spider's Web (1938), Mandrake the Magician (1940), Lone Ranger (1938), Perils of Nyoka (1942), Manhunt of Mystery Island (1945), and Radar Patrol vs. Spy King (1950). He also showed up in quite a few comedies, notably as the bank president who finances the college education of Laurel and Hardy ("Diamonds in the rough," as he describes them) in A Chump at Oxford (1940). Forbes Murray was active at least until 1955.

Trivia: Bostonian Cyril Ring certainly had the pedigree for a successful show business career; he was the brother of stage luminary Blanche Ring and the less famous but equally busy actress Frances Ring. And Cyril certainly had the right connections: he was the brother-in-law of stage comedian Charles Winninger (Blanche's husband) and film star Thomas Meighan (Frances' husband). All Cyril Ring lacked was talent. He managed to coast as actor on his family ties and his rakish good looks, but his range never matured beyond a tiny handful of by-rote mannerisms and facial expressions. In the early '20s, Ring was briefly married to musical comedy star Charlotte Greenwood. Reasonably busy as a silent-film western villain, Ring was cast as the caddish Harvey Yates in the Marx Bros.' 1929 film debut The Cocoanuts. The subsequent reviews bent over backward to condemn Ring's performance as the stiffest and most amateurish of the year -- and thus his fate was sealed. For the rest of his movie career, Ring would be confined to microscopic bit parts and extra roles, with the occasional supporting parts in 2-reel comedies (he's the fugitive crook who demands a shave from W.C. Fields in 1933's The Barber Shop). One of the few features in which he had more than five lines was RKO's 1945 mystery-comedy Having Wonderful Crime; perhaps significantly, his sister Blanche Ring topped the film's supporting cast. Cyril Ring's last recorded credits occured in 1947, after which he dropped from public view until his obituary was published in the trades twenty years later.

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: The product of a broken home, Cara Williams was still a preteen when she was taken by her mother from her hometown of Brooklyn to Los Angeles. Williams' first professional acting job was supplying vocal impressions of famous movie stars for animated cartoons. At 17, Williams was signed to a 20th Century Fox contract, but few of her subsequent film roles were large enough to attract notice. Her fortunes improved when she replaced Judy Holliday in the Broadway production of Born Yesterday (1950); thereafter, her film and TV roles increased in size and prominence. She was nominated for an Academy Award for her portrayal of a sex-starved farm woman in The Defiant Ones (1958). By virtue of her flaming red hair and acute comic timing, Williams was touted as "the new Lucille Ball" on the CBS sitcoms Pete and Gladys (1961) and The Cara Williams Show (1964). Her TV efforts were not particularly popular, but she had a powerful ally in the form of actor/producer Keefe Brasselle -- who was the best friend of CBS programming head James Aubrey. When Brasselle fell out of favor and Aubrey's regime toppled, Williams' stardom diminished. She went on to play character roles on-stage and in films, and was briefly a regular on the late-'70s TV series Rhoda. From 1952 through 1959, Cara Williams was the wife of actor John Barrymore Jr., by whom she had a son.

Trivia: Baby boomers will recall silver-maned actor William Forrest as Major Swanson, the brusque but fair-minded commander of Fort Apache in the 1950s TV series The Adventures of Rin Tin Tin. This character was but one of many military officers portrayed by the prolific Forrest since the late 1930s. Most of his film appearances were fleeting, and few were billed, but Forrest managed to pack more authority into 30 seconds' film time than many bigger stars were able to manage in an hour and a half. Outside of Rin Tin Tin, William Forrest is probably most familiar as the sinister fifth-columnist Martin Crane in the 1943 Republic serial The Masked Marvel.

Trivia: Redheaded Jane Nigh was a defense-plant worker when she was discovered for films in 1944. Nigh made her screen debut in the 20th Century Fox musical Something for the Boys, then went on to play both sweet young things and femme fatales for a variety of studios. In 1952, she co-starred as Lorelei on the popular TV series Big Town. The third actress to play this role, Nigh was replaced in 1953 by Beverly Tyler, who in turn was replaced by Trudy Wroe. Jane Nigh's last screen appearance was in the Bowery Boys entry Hold That Hypnotist (1957); her vivid memories of that experience have been duly recorded in David Hayes and Brent Walker's The Films of the Bowery Boys (Citadel, 1984).

Trivia: Not to be confused with the later 20th Century-Fox contract player of the same name, silent screen actor Harry Carter had appeared in repertory with Mrs. Fiske and directed The Red Mill for Broadway impresario Charles Frohman prior to entering films with Universal in 1914. Often cast as a smooth villain, the dark-haired Carter made serials something of a specialty, menacing future director Robert Z. Leonard in The Master Key (1914); playing the title menace in The Gray Ghost (1917); and acting supercilious towards Big Top performers Eddie Polo and Eileen Sedgwick in Lure of the Circus (1918). In addition to his serial work, Carter played General Von Kluck in the infamous propaganda piece The Kaiser, the Beast of Berlin (1918). It was back to chapterplays in the 1920s, where he menaced Claire Anderson and Grace Darmond in two very low-budget examples of the genre: The Fatal Sign (1920) and The Hope Diamond Mystery (1921).

Trivia: The faces of most movie extras are unmemorable blurs in the public's memory. Not so the elegant, statuesque Bess Flowers, who was crowned by appreciative film buffs as "Queen of the Hollywood Dress Extras." After studying drama (against her father's wishes) at the Carnegie Inst of Technology, Flowers intended to head to New York, but at the last moment opted for Hollywood. She made her first film in 1922, subsequently appearing prominently in such productions as Hollywood (1922) and Chaplin's Woman of Paris (1923). Too tall for most leading men, Flowers found her true niche as a supporting actress. By the time talkies came around, Flowers was mostly playing bits in features, though her roles were more sizeable in two-reel comedies; she was a special favorite of popular short-subject star Charley Chase. Major directors like Frank Lloyd always found work for Flowers because of her elegant bearing and her luminescent gift for making the people around her look good. While generally an extra, Flowers enjoyed substantial roles in such films as Frank Capra's It Happened One Night (1934), Gregory La Cava's Private Worlds and Leo McCarey's The Awful Truth (1937). In 1947's Song of the Thin Man, the usually unheralded Flowers was afforded screen billing. Her fans particularly cherish Flowers' bit as a well-wisher in All About Eve (1950), in which she breaks her customary screen silence to utter "I'm so happy for you, Eve." Flowers was married twice, first to Cecil B. DeMille's legendary "right hand man" Cullen Tate, then to Columbia studio manager William S. Holman. After her retirement, Bess Flowers made one last on-camera appearance in 1974 when she was interviewed by NBC's Tom Snyder.

Trivia: Singer and Broadway performer Sam Harris got his big break as the grand champion on the talent-competition series Star Search in 1983. He subsequently embarked on a career as a recording artist, working in the adult contemporary style. He also began appearing in stage musicals such as The Producers and Grease -- for which he won a Tony award. In 2006, Harris joined the cast of the TV series The Class, about members of a third-grade class who reunite as adults.

Trivia: A song-and-dance man at the beginning of the 20th century, Frank Herman LaRue billed himself the "Trombone Tramp" and later appeared in vaudeville with his second wife, Elsie Mae Payne. LaRue began turning up in Hollywood films in the very early 1930s and soon emerged as one of filmdom's busiest character actors, specializing in playing pompous bankers and windy politicians in such films as Once in a Lifetime (1932) and The Cat's Paw (1934). By the middle of the decade, he had segued into portraying benign ranchers and/or the heroine's father in B-Westerns, of which he did more than a hundred through the years, his trademark being a booming, authoritative voice. Like so many of his peers, Frank LaRue passed away at the Motion Picture Country House and Hospital in Woodland Hills, CA.

Trivia: Cyrus W. Kendall was eight years old when he made his acting debut at the fabled Pasadena Playhouse. As an adult, the portly Kendall became a charter member of the Playhouse's Eighteen Actors Inc., acting in and/or directing over 100 theatrical productions. In films from 1936, he was usually typecast as an abrasive, cigar-chomping detective, gangster or machine politician. He showed up in roles both large and small in feature films, and was prominently cast in several of MGM's Crime Does Not Pay short subjects. Typical Kendall assignments of the 1940s included Jumbo Madigan in Alias Boston Blackie (1941) and "Honest" John Travers in Outlaw Trail (1944). Remaining active into the early years of live television, Cyrus W. Kendall essayed several guest spots on the 1949 quiz show/anthology Armchair Detective, and co-starred with Robert Bice, Spencer Chan and Herb Ellis on the Hollywood-based ABC weekly Mysteries of Chinatown (1949-50).