Trivia: Though born in a Chicago hospital, entertainer Jack Benny was a Waukegan boy through and through. The son of a Polish immigrant haberdasher, Benny studied the violin from an early age (he really could play, though he was certainly no virtuoso), and managed to find work in local theatre orchestras. As a teenager, Benny gave vaudeville a try with a musical act in partnership with pianist Cora Salisbury, but this first fling at show business was only fitfully successful. During World War I, Benny was assigned to the Great Lakes Naval Training Center, where, while appearing in camp shows, he first began telling jokes in between violin selections. Benny returned to vaudeville with a comedy act, slowly building himself up into a headliner. He made his first radio appearance on Ed Sullivan's interview show on March 29, 1932; within a year he had his own show, which would evolve over the next two decades into one of radio's most popular programs. He met with equal success when he moved into television in 1950. There are few comedy fans in existence who aren't familiar with the character Benny played on the air: The vain, tone-deaf, penny-pinching, eternal 39-year-old who spent his life being flustered and humiliated by his supporting cast (Mary Livingstone, Eddie "Rochester" Anderson, Dennis Day, Frank Nelson, Mel Blanc, Don Wilson et. al.); nor need his fans be reminded that this character developed gradually, rather than springing full-blown upon the world way back in 1932. What is usually de-emphasized in the many accounts of Benny's life and career is his sizeable body of movie work. Benny himself insisted that most of his films were no good, and many casual viewers have been willing to accept his word on this. Actually, Benny's films, while not all classics, were by and large moneymakers, and never anything to be truly ashamed of. His first feature appearance was as the wisecracking emcee of MGM's The Hollywood Revue of 1929. He followed this with a comic-relief role in Chasing Rainbows (1930) and an uncharacteristic straight part in the low-budget The Medicine Man (1930). He was a perfectly acceptable semicomic romantic lead in It's in the Air (1935), Artists and Models (1936), Artists and Models Abroad (1936), and in his appearances in Paramount's College and Big Broadcast series. Whenever Benny expressed displeasure over his film career, he was usually alluding to those pictures that insisted upon casting him as Benny the Famous Radio Comedian rather than a wholly different screen character. Transatlantic Merry-Go-Round (1934), Man About Town (1939) and Buck Benny Rides Again (1940), though enjoyable, are totally reliant upon Benny's pre-established radio character and "schtick" for their laughs, and as such aren't nearly as effective as his actual radio appearances. His most disappointing movie vehicle was Love Thy Neighbor (1940), designed to cash in on his phony feud with fellow radio humorist Fred Allen. Not only was the film uninspired, but also outdated, since the feud's full comic value had pretty much peaked by 1937. Many of Benny's best films were made during his last four years in Hollywood. 1941's Charley's Aunt was a lively adaptation of the old Brandon Thomas theatrical chestnut (though it did have to work overtime in explaining why a man in his forties was still an Oxford undergraduate!); 1942's George Washington Slept Here, likewise adapted from a stage play (by George S. Kaufman and Moss Hart), was a reasonably funny comedy of frustration; and yet another stage derivation, 1943's The Meanest Man in the World (based on a George M. Cohan farce), allowed Benny to go far afield from his truculent radio persona by playing a man who is too nice for his own good. Benny's finest film, bar none, was the Ernst Lubitsch-directed To Be or Not to Be (1942), in which the comedian was superbly cast as "that great, great Polish actor" Joseph Tura. Benny's final starring feature, the much maligned Horn Blows at Midnight (1945), was an enjoyable effort, and not by any means the unmitigated disaster he used to joke about on radio. The film's problem at the box-office was that it was a comedy fantasy, and audiences in 1945 had had their fill of comedy fantasies. After Horn Blows at Midnight, Benny's theatrical film appearances were confined to guest spots and unbilled gag bits (e.g. The Great Lover and Beau James). In 1949, Benny produced a Dorothy Lamour movie vehicle, The Lucky Stiff; in addition, his J&M Productions, which produced his weekly television series from 1950 through 1965, was also responsible for the moderately popular TV adventure series Checkmate (1960-62). In 1974, Benny was primed to restart his long-dormant movie career by appearing opposite Walter Matthau in the 1975 film adaptation of Neil Simon's play The Sunshine Boys; unfortunately, he died of cancer before filming could begin, and the film ultimately starred George Burns and Matthau.

Trivia: When Carole Lombard died at the age of 34 in a plane crash following a World War II war bond drive, the American film industry lost one of its most talented and intelligent actresses. Starting out in silent films as a Mack Sennett bathing beauty, she later epitomized screwball comedy in Twentieth Century (1934); My Man Godfrey (1936), for which she was Oscar nominated as Irene Bullock, with ex-husband William Powell as Godfrey; and Nothing Sacred (1937), playing the not-so-doomed Hazel Flagg. But Lombard was also a capable dramatic actress whose talents can be seen in her subdued performance as a nurse in one of her final roles, in Vigil in the Night (1940), as well as in The Eagle and the Hawk (1933), In Name Only (1939) and They Knew What They Wanted (1940). Other fine appearances include teaming with Fred MacMurray in several films, the best of which are Hands Across the Table (1935) and The Princess Comes Across (1936), in which Lombard does a humorously accurate Greta Garbo takeoff. Her two final films contain two of her best performances: Mr. and Mrs. Smith (1940) and the Ernst Lubitsch war satire, To Be or Not To Be (1942). She was married to William Powell from 1931-33 and to Clark Gable from 1939 til her death.

Trivia: The son of a wealthy California businessman, Robert Stack spent his teen years giving skeet shooting lessons to such Hollywood celebrities as Carole Lombard and Clark Gable; it was only natural, then, that he should gravitate to films himself after attending the University of Southern California. At age 20, he made his screen debut in Deanna Durbin's First Love (1939) in which he gave his teenaged co-star her very first screen kiss. Two years later he appeared opposite his former "pupil" Carole Lombard in the Ernst Lubitsch classic To Be or Not to Be (1942). After serving with the navy in WWII he resumed his film career, avoiding typecasting with such dramatically demanding film assignments as The Bullfighter and the Lady (1951), The Tarnished Angels (1957), and John Paul Jones (1959). He earned an Academy Award nomination for his performance as a self-destructive alcoholic in Written on the Wind (1956). In 1959 he gained a whole new flock of fans when he was cast as humorless federal agent Elliot Ness in TV's The Untouchables, which ran for four seasons and won him an Emmy award. He continued playing taciturn leading roles in such TV series as Name of the Game (1969-1971), Most Wanted (1976-1977), and Strike Force (1981), and from 1987 to 2002 was the no-nonsense host of the TV anthology Unsolved Mysteries. Not nearly as stoic and serious in real life, Stack was willing to spoof his established screen image in Steven Spielberg's 1941 (1979) and Zucker-Abraham-Zucker's Airplane! (1980). The warmer side of Robert Stack could be glimpsed in the TV informational series It's a Great Life (1985), which he hosted with his wife Rosemarie, and in his 1980 autobiography, Straight Shooting. Though film appearances grew increasingly sporatic through the 1990s, Stack remained a familiar figure to television viewers thanks to syndicated reruns of Unsolved Mysteries well into the new millennium. Memorable film roles in 1990s included lending his voice to Beavis and Butthead Do America (1996) and appearing as himself in the 1999 comedy drama Mumford. In October of 2002 Stack underwent successful radiation treatment for prostate cancer. On May 14, 2003, Robert Stack's wife Rosemarie found the actor dead in their Los Angeles home. He was 84.

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

Trivia: British actor Lionel Atwill was born into wealth and educated at London's prestigious Mercer School, where he planned to pursue a career as an architect; instead, he became a stage actor, working steadily from his debut at age 20, most often in the plays of Ibsen and Shaw. Establishing himself in America, Atwill continued his stage work, supplementing his income with silent film appearances, the first being Eve's Daughter(1918). Atwill's rich rolling voice made him a natural for talking pictures. Following a pair of Vitaphone short subjects in 1928, the actor made his talkie bow in The Verdict (1932). Most effective in roles as an aristocratic villain, Atwill found himself appearing in numerous melodramas and horror films, including the classic Mystery of the Wax Museum (1933). Atwill's career was threatened in 1940, when it was revealed that he'd thrown an "orgy" at his home, complete with naked guests and pornographic films. Atwill "lied like a gentleman" to protect his party guests at the subsequent trial, and was convicted of perjury. The ensuing scandal made Atwill virtually unemployable at most studios, but he found a semi-permanent home at Universal Pictures, which at the time was grinding out low budget horror films. Lionel Atwill died in harness in the middle of production of the 1946 Universal serial Lost City of the Jungle; viewers watching this serial today will no doubt notice how often Atwill's character turns his back to the camera, allowing the producers to cover his absence with a stand-in.

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

Trivia: American actor Charles Halton was forced to quit school at age 14 to help support his family. When his boss learned that young Halton was interested in the arts, he financed the boy's training at the New York Academy of Dramatic Arts. For the next three decades, Halton appeared in every aspect of "live" performing; in the '20s, he became a special favorite of playwright George S. Kaufman, who cast Halton in one of his most famous roles as movie mogul Herman Glogauer in Once in a Lifetime. Appearing in Dodsworth on Broadway with Walter Huston, Halton was brought to Hollywood to recreate his role in the film version. Though he'd occasionally return to the stage, Halton put down roots in Hollywood, where his rimless spectacles and snapping-turtle features enabled him to play innumerable "nemesis" roles. He could usually be seen as a grasping attorney, a rent-increasing landlord or a dictatorial office manager. While many of these characterizations were two-dimensional, Halton was capable of portraying believable human beings with the help of the right director; such a director was Ernst Lubitsch, who cast Halton as the long-suffered Polish stage manager in To Be or Not to Be (1942). Alfred Hitchcock likewise drew a flesh and blood portrayal from Halton, casting the actor as the small-town court clerk who reveals that Robert Montgomery and Carole Lombard are not legally married in Mr. and Mrs. Smith (1942). Charles Halton retired from Hollywood after completing his work on Friendly Persuasion in 1956; he died three years later of hepatitis.

Trivia: Darkly handsome Austrian-born leading man, Helmut Dantine had finely chiseled features and deep-set eyes. A fugitive from the German Anschluss of Austria, he moved to California in 1938. Soon thereafter he joined the Pasadena Community Players, gaining enough acting experience to make his film-debut playing a Nazi in International Squadron (1941) with Ronald Reagan. Soon he had cornered the market on young Nazi characters in Hollywood films, particularly after his popular performance as a downed and wounded Luftwaffe pilot in Mrs. Miniver (1942), his third film. Later Dantine was promoted to stardom by Warner Brothers, who gave him his first lead role in Edge of Darkness (1943). He went on to play leads and second leads in many films of the '40s and '50s, but made few films after 1958. In 1958 he directed the unmemorable film Thundering Jets. After marrying the daughter of Nicholas M. Schenck, the former president of Loew's Inc., he became the vice president of the Schenck Enterprises film production and distribution organization in 1959; in 1970 he became its president. In the '70s Dantine was the executive producer of three films, two of which he appeared in.

Trivia: German actor Otto Reichow launched his stage and film career in Berlin in 1928. In the early talkie era, Reichow was featured in Fritz Lang's Testament of Dr. Mabuse (1932). When Hitler came to power, Reichow and his family were consigned to the führer's blacklist due to their outspoken opposition of Nazism. After his brother was killed by Hitler's minions, Reichow relocated to France in 1936, where he appeared in Renoir's La Grande Illusion (1937). The actor continued to express his hatred of Hitler through his brutal portrayals of Nazis in Hollywood films of the 1940s. In addition to his mainstream film work, Otto Reichow was featured in several propaganda films for the U.S. Army Air Force motion picture unit.

Trivia: The son of an English manufacturer, Miles Mander had dabbled in several careers before making his screen bow as an extra in 1918. He'd been a farmer, a novelist, a playwright, a stage director and a cinema exhibitor -- and, if all the stories can be believed, a fight promoter, horse and auto racer, and aviator. He was billed as Luther Miles in his earliest film appearances, reserving his real name for his screenwriting credits. In Hollywood from 1935 on, the weedy, mustachioed Mander made a specialty of portraying old-school-tie Britishers who, for various reasons, had fallen into disgrace. He was never more unsavory than when he portrayed master criminal Giles Conover in the 1945 "Sherlock Holmes" entry The Pearl of Death. Mander also showed up in two separate versions of The Three Musketeers, playing Louis XIII in the 1935 version and Richelieu in the 1939 edition (he also played Aramis in the Musketeers sequel The Man in the Iron Mask [1939]). Shortly after wrapping up his scenes in Imperfect Lady (1947), 57-year-old Miles Mander died of a sudden heart attack.

Trivia: American general-purpose actor George Lynn played scores of younger characters in Hollywood film during World War II, sometimes billing himself Peter Lynn and George Peter Lynn, a fact that makes tracking his many screen credits something of an ordeal. He was George Peter Lynn as Professor Fisher in the Republic serial Adventures of Captain Marvel (1941), George Lynn as the heavy in Laurel & Hardy's A-Haunting We Will Go (1943), and Peter Lynn as a reporter in Suddenly It's Spring (1947). To confuse matters even further, the actor used his real name, George M. Lynn, playing bit parts in Something to Live For (1952) and The Bushwackers (1952). Lynn also guest-starred on television shows such as The Lone Ranger and Adventures of Rin Tin Tin.

Trivia: Born in England but raised in Germany, Henry Victor began his film career in 1916. During the silent era, the tall, muscular Victor played leads in such literary adaptations as Portrait of Dorian Gray (1917) and She (1925). When talkies came in, Victor's thick Teutonic accent precluded future leading roles, though he enjoyed a substantial career as a character actor, specializing in brutish Nazis during WWII. Henry Victor's best-known talkie roles include the sadistic strong-man Hercules in 1932's Freaks and the beleaguered Nazi adjutant Schultz in the Ernst Lubitsch classic To Be or Not to Be (1942).

Trivia: Canadian character actress Maude Eburne studied elocution in Toronto, gleaning a talent for dialects. She carried over this skill into her earliest stage work in Ontario and upstate New York. Eburne's first Broadway appearance was as a love-hungry cockney maid in the 1914 stage farce A Pair of Sixes; she spent the next fifteen years specializing in comic servants on stage. She came to films in 1931, as the eternally frightened companion of mystery authoress Grayce Hampton in The Bat Whispers (1931). Most of her film roles can best be described as "eccentric," ranging from dotty aristocrats to pipe-smoking harridans. Among her more prominent roles were Fay Wray's tremulous aunt in Vampire Bat (1933), a rambunctious frontierswoman in Ruggles of Red Gap (1935), half-mad recluse Borax Betty in Glamour Boy (1941), Susan Hayward's slatternly mother in Among the Living (1942), and Jean Hersholt's housekeeper in six Dr. Christian (all "B "films of the 1930s and 1940s). Maude Eburne retired from the screen after appearing in the religious semi-epic The Prince of Peace (1951).

Trivia: A busy presence in Hollywood films of the 1930s and 1940s, Sicilian-born Armand "Curly" Wright's hairdo resembled that of Larry Fine. Rarely billed, Wright (born Rao) seems to have been called in whenever a producer needed an excitable fruit peddler, hot dog or news vendor, or Italian barber. Onscreen in America from around 1932, Wright seems to have retired in the late '40s.

Trivia: Having been born at Stratford-on-Avon, Halliwell Hobbes would have been remiss if he hadn't given acting a try. On stage from 1898, the imposing, sturdily built Hobbes appeared opposite such immortals as Mrs. Patrick Campbell and Ellen Terry. His first U.S. appearance was in the 1923 Broadway staging of Molnar's The Swan. He made the first of his over 150 films in 1929. Hobbes was most often seen as a diplomatic butler, in films ranging from Here Comes Mr. Jordan (1941) to the East Side Kids' Million Dollar Kid (1943) (in which he was billed as Holliwell Hobbs!). Other notable screen appearances in Halliwell Hobbes' resume include the role of General Carew in the 1931 version of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde and as the "fugitive" iceman, Mr. DePinna, in You Can't Take It With You (1938).

Trivia: In Hollywood from 1941, British actor Leslie Dennison played scores of military officers, secret service agents, and Scotland Yard detectives, often merely as part of the wartime ambience but well remembered for playing the detective tracking down Bela Lugosi's ghoul in The Return of the Vampire and as Alan-a-Dale in Bandits of Sherwood Forest (1946). Denison, who also did voice-over work, retired in the '60s.

Trivia: Launching his theatrical career in his native Germany, actor/director Frank Reicher worked in London before coming to the US in 1899. His entree into the movies was as co-director of the 1915 production The Clue; he continued to direct in Hollywood before returning to the stage in 1921. At the dawn of the talkie era, Reicher was brought back to California to direct German-language versions of American films. For his acting bow before the microphones, Reicher was cast in the title role of Napoleon's Barber (1928) a Fox Movietone two-reeler which represented the first talkie for director John Ford. Reicher specialized at this time in humorless, wizened authority figures: college professors, doctors, scientists, cabinet ministers. In 1933 he was cast as Captain Engelhorn in the classic adventure fantasy King Kong; director Ernest Schoedsack later characterized Reicher as "the best actor we had" in a cast which included Robert Armstrong, Bruce Cabot and Fay Wray. He repeated the Engelhorn role, with a modicum of uncharacteristic humor added, in Son of Kong (1933). The remainder of Reicher's film career was devoted to brief character roles, often as murder victims. He was killed off at least twice by Boris Karloff (Invisible Ray [1936] and House of Frankenstein [1944]), and was strangled by Lon Chaney Jr. at the very beginning of The Mummy's Ghost (1944) (When Chaney inadvertently cut off his air during the feigned strangulation, Reicher subjected the star to a scorching reprimand, reducing Chaney to a quivering mass of meek apologies). During the war, Reicher's Teutonic name and bearing came in handy for the many anti-Nazi films of the era, notably To Be or Not to Be (1942) and Mission to Moscow (1944). In 1946, Reicher had one of his largest parts in years as the general factotum to hypnotist Edmund Lowe in The Strange Mr. Gregory (1946); that the part may have been written for the venerable actor is evidenced by the fact that his character name was Reicher. Frank Reicher retired in 1951; he died fourteen years later, at age 90.

Trivia: Born in Ohio to German parents, thin, frightened-looking Wolfgang Zilzer was a well-known stage and silent screen actor in Germany in the 1920s. After playing Wolfchen in Alraune (1928) and Gina Manés' cuckolded husband in Shadows of Fear (1928), Zilzer came to America where to his surprise he discovered that he already held American citizenship. After a stint on the stage, he entered American films in 1939 under the name of John Voight and became a constant presence in World War II melodramas. Having billed himself Wolfgang Zilzer in such films as Casablanca ([1942] as the desperate man with expired papers) and Hitler's Madman (as a German colonel), he changed his name once again, this time to Paul Andor, and offered a chillingly accurate portrayal of infamous propaganda minister Dr. Paul Joseph Goebbels, whom he somewhat resembled, in Enemy of Women (1944). Although primarily a stage actor, Andor/Zilzer continued in films through the early '80s, including an appearance as Ludendorf in the bizarre Union City (1979) and as an analyst in the Dudley Moore comedy Lovesick (1983).

Trivia: Piping-voice, hamster-faced Scottish character actor Olaf Hytten left the British stage for films in 1921. By the time the talkie era rolled around, Hytten was firmly established in Hollywood, playing an abundance of butlers and high-society gentlemen. The actor was primarily confined to one or two-line bits in such films as Platinum Blonde (1931), The Sphinx (1933), Bonnie Scotland (1935), Beloved Rebel (1936), The Howards of Virginia (1940) and The Bride Came COD (1941). He was a semi-regular of the Universal B-unit in the '40s, appearing in substantial roles as military men and police official in the Rathbone/Bruce Sherlock Holmes series and as burgomeisters and innkeepers in the studio's many horror films (Ghost of Frankenstein, House of Frankenstein, etc.) Olaf Hytten was active until at least 1956; one of his more memorable assignments of the '50s was as the larcenous butler who participates in a scheme to drive Daily Planet editor Perry White crazy in the "Great Caesar's Ghost" episode of the TV series Adventures of Superman.

Trivia: Before turning to films, Irish-born Charles Irwin enjoyed a long career as a music hall and vaudeville monologist. Irwin's talking-picture debut was the appropriately titled 1928 short subject The Debonair Humorist. Two years later, he proved a dapper and agreeable master of ceremonies for Universal's big-budget Technicolor musical The King of Jazz (1930). As the 1930s wore on, his roles diminished into bits and walk-ons; he fleetingly showed up as a green-tinted "Ozite" in The Wizard of Oz (1939) and appeared as the British racetrack announcer describing the progress of "Little Johnny Jones" in Yankee Doodle Dandy (1942). Before his retirement in 1959, Charles Irwin essayed such one-scene assignments as territorial representative Andy Barnes in the first few Bomba the Jungle Boy pictures and Captain Orton in The King and I (1956).

Trivia: British actor Leyland Hodgson launched his theatrical career at the advanced age of six. From 1915 to 1919, Hodgson toured the British provinces of the Orient with the Bandmann Opera Company, then retraced most of this tour as head of his own stock company. A star of the Australian stage from 1920 to 1929, Hodgson moved to Hollywood, where he made his film bow in RKO's The Case of Sergeant Grischa (1930). Largely confined to minor roles in films, Hodgson enjoyed some prominence as a regular of Universal's Sherlock Holmes films of the 1940s. Otherwise, he contented himself with bits as butlers, military officers, hotel clerks, reporters and chauffeurs until his retirement in 1948. Either by accident or design, Leyland Hodgson was frequently teamed on screen with another busy British utilitarian player, Charles Irvin.

Trivia: Born in Germany, Anders was billed under his given name of Rudolph Amendt when he made his American screen bow in Stamboul Quest (1934). He became "Robert O. Davis" for such roles as Franz Joseph in Champagne Waltz (1937) and "His Excellency" in the 1941 serial King of the Texas Rangers. During the war years, when character actors with Germanic names became bankable commodities, he settled upon "Rudolph Anders," and remained so until his retirement in 1964. Anders flourished in sinister roles, often playing Nazis or communist spies. In the early 1950s, he was seen as Teutonic scientists in the sci-fiers Phantom from Space (1953) and The Snow Creature (1954). And on TV, he played Dr. Von Meter on the kiddie serial Space Patrol. Rudolph Anders was back at work for Der Fatherland as a Nazi doctor in his final film, 36 Hours (1964).

Trivia: Holland-born character actor Roland Varno's best-known film role was also his first one in the German classic Der Blaue Engle (1930), which starred German sensation Marlene Dietrich. Afterwards, Varno went to Hollywood and appeared with some of the town's best actresses, including Katharine Hepburn. Varno was fluent in several languages and during WWII, he was placed in the Office of Strategic Services and appeared in several propaganda movies, including Hitler's Children. His linguistic versatility came in handy after the war and made him a popular radio performer in radio programs across the country. He made his last movie appearance in Istanbul (1957). Several years into his retirement, Varno's language skills again came in handy on the set of the highly touted miniseries War and Remembrance (1988).

Trivia: A former concert violinist from Austria, Gene Rizzi played assorted thugs and henchmen in Hollywood films 1940-1943, notably the young gunslinger challenging Billy the Kid (Jack Buetel) in The Outlaw (1943). Rizzi served in China with the 369th Signal Corps during World War II and did not act professionally again.

Trivia: After stock experience in New England and a starring role in a Broadway flop, American actor John Kellogg was selected to play the lead in the road company of the long-running service comedy Brother Rat. He continued working steadily on stage until interrupted by World War II service. After a smattering of movie exposure at other studios, Kellogg signed a Columbia contract in 1946. Good-looking and dependable enough for secondary roles but not quite star material, Kellogg was seen in such films as Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo (1943), A Walk in the Sun (1945), Johnny O'Clock (1947) and 12 O'Clock High (1949).

Trivia: Much in demand in World War II Hollywood films -- playing both Nazi officers and Scandinavian resistance fighters -- blond Sven-Hugo Borg was a secretary with the Swedish Consulate in Los Angeles in 1925 when the newly arrived Greta Garbo hired him as her interpreter. Bitten by the acting bug, Borg played minor roles in Joan Crawford's Rose Marie (1928) and a few other films but remained with the consulate until the late 1930s. Best remembered perhaps for playing "Sven," one of the doomed crew members in Paramount's Mystery Sea Raider (1940), Borg appeared as a German soldier in Ernst Lubitsch's satire To Be or Not to Be (1942), as well as This Land Is Mine (1943) and Tarzan Triumphs (1943). Filming less frequently after the war, Borg was Dr. Mattsen in The Farmer's Daughter (1947), "Swede" in Fortunes of Captain Blood (1950), an aide to Bernadotte (Michael Rennie) in Desirée (1954), and a scientist in The Prize (1963) -- his final credited role.

Trivia: In films from 1935, Scottish character actor Alec Craig perpetuated the stereotype of the penny-pinching Highlander for nearly 15 years. Craig's wizened countenance and bald head popped up in quite a few mysteries and melodramas, beginning with his appearance as the inept defense attorney in the embryonic "film noir" Stranger on the Third Floor. He essayed small but memorable roles in a handful of Val Lewton productions, notably the zookeeper in Cat People (1942). Later, he was a general hanger-on in Universal's horror films and Sherlock Holmes entries. Craig's showiest assignment was his dual role in RKO's A Date with the Falcon. The legions of fans of Lubitsch's To Be or Not to Be know Alec Craig best as the Scottish farmer who, upon being confronted by Hitler look-alike Tom Dugan, mutters to his fellow farmer James Finlayson "First it was Hess...now it's him."

Trivia: Scottish comedian James Finlayson attended the University of Edinburgh with the intention of pursuing a business career. He was deflected by his best friend, stage actor Andy Clyde, who encouraged Finlayson to give theatre a try. After serving his apprenticeship in regional repertory, Finlayson was cast in the West End production of Bunty Pulls the Strings in 1912, a production which brought him to New York. He embarked on a vaudeville tour with Alec Lauder (brother of the more famous Sir Harry Lauder), then headed to Hollywood, working at the Ince and L-KO studios before settling at the Mack Sennett fun factory in 1919. While with Sennett, Finlayson developed his famous, apoplectic caricature of the old-fashioned "me proud beauty" Victorian villain.In 1923, Finlayson moved to Hal Roach, where he would spend the next 17 years as both a star comic and (more successfully) a supporting player. During his Roach years, Finlayson perfected his comic signature, the "double take and fade away": a reaction of surprise, followed by several turns of the head and an upraised eyebrow, capped with the expletive "Doh!" Legend has it that one of Finlayson's double-takes was so energetic that it caused him to crack his skull against a wall and lose consciousness! Though he worked with everyone on the Roach lot, Finlayson became most closely associated with Laurel and Hardy, co-starring with the team on 33 occasions between 1927 and 1940. Fin's most memorable films with L&H include Big Business (1929), Another Fine Mess (1930), Chickens Come Home (1931), Our Wife (1931), The Devil's Brother (1933) and, best of all, Way Out West (1937), wherein as western saloon keeper Mickey Finn, Finlayson outdoes himself with his own hilarious brand of double-dyed villainy. He also appeared frequently with another team, Clark and McCullough, over at RKO. While some of Finlayson's feature-film roles were sizeable, notably his assignments in Dawn Patrol (1930) and All Over Town (1937), he was most often seen in unbilled bits, sometimes (as in the 1938 Astaire-Rogers vehicle Carefree) minus his trademarked paintbrush moustache. Because of his long associations with Sennett and Roach, James Finlayson was frequently called upon to appear in nostalgic recreations of Hollywood's silent era, notably Hollywood Cavalcade (1939) and The Perils of Pauline (1947).

Trivia: On American stages since 1927 and in Hollywood from the mid-'30s, Stuttgart-born Hans Schumm was well situated when the inevitable calls for German-accented actors came at the onset of World War II. With his piercing eyes and sculpted face, Schumm played some of the worst offenders of Nazi atrocities, real or Hollywood-imagined, in scores of war melodramas that included everything from the ludicrous Spy Smasher (1942) to the sensationalistic Hitler's Hangman) (1943), in which he was Heydrich's chief henchman. Roles inevitably got scarcer after the war and Schumm returned to Germany in the 1950s, playing, among other roles, Curd Jürgens' father in Wernher von Braun (1959). His final credited performance came in the low-budget Captain Sindbad (1963), an American production filmed in West Germany.