Trivia: Trained for a career in opera, blonde leading lady Anne Jeffreys supported herself as a singer and model before going to Hollywood in 1941. Among her first film assignments was a modest Columbia 2-reeler, Olaf Laughs Last, starring El Brendel; she then worked briefly at MGM before signing at RKO. Jeffreys now insists that she was rushed through so many "B" pictures during her first few years at the latter studio that she's forgotten most of them. When reminded by a fan that she played Tess Trueheart in the first two Dick Tracy films, she refused to believe it until she saw the pictures herself on TV. Her roles, and the quality of her films, improved towards the end of her RKO stay, but by 1948 Jeffreys briefly abandoned Hollywood for Broadway. Appearing in several productions throughout the 1950s, Jeffreys was at one time the highest-paid actress on the New York musical stage. In 1951, Jeffreys married her second husband, actor Robert Sterling, with whom she co-starred in the very popular TV sitcom Topper (1953-55), as well as the very unpopular 13-week wonder Love That Jill (1958). Except for a few isolated films like Clifford (1992), Anne Jeffreys has limited her acting to television and the stage in the last few decades; she was a regular on the daytime drama General Hospital, and briefly hosted a fashion-and-health series on cable TV.

Trivia: The son of legendary opera star Leo Slezak, Walter Slezak was a medical student before settling into the comfortable position of bank clerk. Slezak was coerced by his friend, actor/director Michael Curtiz, to accept an acting role in Curtiz's 1922 spectacular Sodom and Gomorrah -- and with this film, Slezak's career in the world of finance came to an end. Those familiar with Walter Slezak only as the corpulent supporting player in such films as Sinbad the Sailor (1947), People Will Talk (1951), and Emil and the Detectives (1964) will be surprised upon viewing Slezak's appearances as a slim, romantic leading man in his German silent films. Unable to keep his weight under control, Slezak decided around 1930 to become a character actor. He made his Broadway debut in the 1930 production Meet My Sister. After 12 years of stage work, Slezak was cast in his first American film, 1942's Once Upon a Honeymoon, playing the fifth-columnist husband of social-climbing Ginger Rogers. Equally adept at comedy and villainy, Slezak was able to combine these two extremes in such films as The Princess and the Pirate (1944) and The Inspector General (1949). Occasionally returning to the stage in the 1950s, Slezak won a Tony award for his portrayal of Cesar in the 1955 musical Fanny, and in 1957 followed in his father's footsteps by singing at the Metropolitan Opera. His TV assignments included the role of the Clock King on Batman (1966-1967). Slezak's 1962 autobiography What Time Is the Next Swan? derived its title from the punch line of an apocryphal story involving his father. At the age of 80, despondent over his many illnesses, Slezak committed suicide in his Beverly Hills home. Walter Slezak was the father of actress Erika Slezak, best known for her continuing role on the ABC soap opera One Life to Live.

Trivia: Familiar to million as the twangy, bucolic Pa Kettle, Percy Kilbride first stepped on the stage in the role of an 18th-century French fop in a San Francisco production of Tale of Two Cities. Interrupting his career to serve in World War I, Kilbride spent the postwar years in regional stock companies. He made a few scattered movie appearances in the 1930s, then returned to Hollywood to stay in 1942, when he re-created his Broadway role in the film version of George Washington Slept Here. Kilbride played a variety of rustic parts until 1947, when he created the Pa Kettle role in The Egg and I. From 1949 through 1955, he starred exclusively in Universal's Ma and Pa Kettle series, retiring from the screen after Ma and Pa Kettle at Waikiki (1955) (Kilbride's co-star Marjorie Main appeared in two more Kettle films opposite Arthur Hunnicutt and Parker Fennelly). In 1964, Percy Kilbride and his actor friend Ralf Belmont were crossing a Los Angeles street near Kilbride's home when a car struck both of them down; Belmont was killed instantly, but Kilbride survived long enough to undergo brain surgery. He died of his injuries after a long hospital stay.

Trivia: From vaudeville and stock companies, actor Jerome Cowan graduated to Broadway in the now-forgotten farce We've Gotta Have Money. While starring in the 1935 Broadway hit Boy Meets Girl, Cowan was spotted by movie producer Sam Goldwyn, who cast Cowan as a sensitive Irish rebel in 1936's Beloved Enemy. Most of Cowan's subsequent films found him playing glib lawyers, shifty business executives and jilted suitors. A longtime resident at Warner Bros., the pencil-mustached Cowan appeared in several substantial character parts from 1940 through 1949, notably the doomed private eye Miles Archer in The Maltese Falcon. Warners gave Cowan the opportunity to be a romantic leading man in two "B" films, Crime By Night (42) and Find the Blackmailer (43). As the years rolled on, Cowan's air of slightly unscrupulous urbanity gave way to respectability, and in this vein he was ideally suited for the role of Dagwood Bumstead's new boss Mr. Radcliffe in several installments of Columbia's Blondie series; he also scored in such flustered roles as the hapless district attorney in Miracle on 34th Street. Cowan briefly left Hollywood in 1950 to pursue more worthwhile roles on stage and TV; he starred in the Broadway play My Three Angels and was top-billed on the 1951 TV series Not for Publication. In his fifties and sixties, Cowan continued essaying roles calling for easily deflated dignity (e.g. The Three Stooges' Have Rocket Will Travel [59] and Jerry Lewis' Visit to a Small Planet [60]) and made regular supporting appearances on several TV series, among them Valiant Lady, The Tab Hunter Show, Many Happy Returns and Tycoon.

Trivia: Though born in Omaha, George Givot gained fame in vaudeville with his characterization of an English-language-fracturing Greek immigrant. Givot's catch-phrase "How'd ya like that?" served as the title for one of the many 2-reelers he starred in between 1933 and 1934; another of his short-subject vehicles was Roast Beef and Movies (1933), in which he was teamed with the 3 Stooges' Curly Howard. After making his feature debut in Meet the Baron (1933), Givot continued playing dialect parts in films and on radio. By 1940, however, he was accepting "straight" roles, speaking without a trace of accent and frequently opting for dramatics rather than laughs. His later screen efforts include The Falcon and the Co-eds (1943) and Riff Raff (1947). In 1949, he co-hosted the TV musical series Versatile Varieties, reviving his malapropish Greek characterization. George Givot briefly returned to dialect humor once more as the voice of Italian restaurateur Tony in the Disney cartoon feature Lady and the Tramp (1956).

Trivia: He studied theater at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts. After establishing himself prominently on the American stage, he began appearing in silents beginning with The Gilded Lily (1921). He appeared in more than 100 films, the last of which was the Elvis Presley vehicle Wild in the Country (1961). He starred in a number of silents, often as a clean-living rural hero; in the sound era he began playing character roles, almost always as an arch villain. Due to a serious eye infection, he was absent from the big screen in the '50s. He was the father of actor Jason Robards, with whom he appeared on Broadway in 1958 in The Disenchanted.

Trivia: Though he claimed to be a born-and-bred Californian, Julian Rivero was actually born in Texas. Rivero started out as a Shakespearean actor under the tutelage of Robert B. Mantell. He made his film debut in the New York-filmed The Bright Shawl (1923), then relocated in Hollywood, where he remained active until 1973. Most often cast in Westerns, he played opposite such horse-opera heroes as Buck Jones, Hoot Gibson, and Harry Carey. His parts ranged from such bits as the barber in John Huston's The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1947) to the major role of ruthless Mexican General Santa Anna (which he played sympathetically) in Heroes of the Alamo (1937). The addition of a well-groomed, snow-white beard enabled Rivero to play dozens of aristocratic Latin American patriarchs in the 1950s and 1960s. Julian Rivero was the husband of former Mack Sennett bathing beauty Isabelle Thomas.

Trivia: Tommy Noonan was still in his teens when he and his half-brother, John Ireland, made their stage debuts with a New York-based experimental theater. Noonan then returned to his home state of Delaware to launch his own repertory company. After serving in the Navy during WWII, Noonan made his Broadway bow, then was brought to Hollywood with an RKO contract. When his brother, John, married actress Joanne Dru, Noonan befriended Joanne's brother, Peter Marshall. Taking into consideration the success of Martin and Lewis, Noonan and Marshall formed their own comedy team. It was a strictly informal professional association, with the teammates spending as much time apart as together. During one of the team's "down" periods, Noonan established himself as a supporting actor in films; he played Marilyn Monroe's boyfriend in Gentleman Prefer Blondes (1953), Judy Garland's platonic musician friend in A Star Is Born (1954), and the officious floorwalker in Bundle of Joy, the 1956 musical remake Bachelor Mother (1939). In 1959, Noonan reteamed with Marshall for a feature film, The Rookie, which Noonan also wrote and produced. The picture was a disaster, as was its 1961 followup, Swingin' Along. The team broke up for keeps at this point; Peter Marshall went on to become a popular TV game show host, while Noonan gained prominence as the producer/star/"auteur" of two softcore nudie films, Jayne Mansfield's Promises Promises (1963) and Mamie Van Doren's Three Nuts in Search of a Bolt (1964). His last effort as a producer was 1967's Cottonpickin' Chickenpickers, which was also the screen swan song of the estimable Sonny Tufts. Five days short of his 47th birthday, Tommy Noonan died of a brain tumor.

Trivia: Diminutive character actor Lou Lubin enjoyed a career of about a dozen years in movies and early television, as well as radio work. As is the case with most character players, he usually got small roles in big pictures and more substantial roles in small-scale productions. Lubin's short stature and distinctly urban accent made him ideal for playing henchmen and other shady, disreputable characters, although he also turned up on the side of the angels from time to time -- his most memorable part was in Val Lewton's production of The Seventh Victim (1943), as a seedy private eye who loses his life trying to do something decent and then turns up as a corpse on a subway. That same year, he was also given a fair amount of screen time in William Wellman's Lady of Burlesque as Moey the candy butcher. And in 1945, he was seen in Max Nosseck's Dillinger as the luckless waiter who gets on the wrong side of Lawrence Tierney's John Dillinger and receives savage vengeance for his trouble. Lubin's had been out of pictures for 20 years at the time of his death in 1973, at age 77.

Trivia: American actor Pat O'Brien could never remember just why he wanted to go on stage; it just sort of happened naturally, just as his college football activities at Marquette University and his enlistment in the Navy for World War I. In the company of college chum Spencer Tracy, O'Brien moved to New York in the early twenties, where, while studying at Sargent's Academy, they were cast as robots in the theatrical production RUR. O'Brien spent several years with numerous stock companies, forming lasting friendships with such future Hollywood notables as Frank McHugh, James Gleason and Percy Kilbride. He also met his wife, actress Eloise Taylor, with whom he remained for the next five decades. In 1930, O'Brien was brought to Hollywood to play ace reporter Hildy Johnson in The Front Page (1931); this came about because the director mistakenly believed O'Brien had played the role on Broadway, when in fact he'd played managing editor Walter Burns in a Chicago stock-company version. This misunderstanding was forgotten when O'Brien scored a success in Front Page, which led to a long term contract with Warner Bros. Casual film fans who believe that O'Brien played nothing but priests and football coaches might be surprised at the range of roles during his first five years at Warners. Still, the performances for which Pat O'Brien is best remembered are Father Jerry in Angels with Dirty Faces (1938), in which he begs condemned killer Jimmy Cagney to "turn yellow" during the Last Walk so Cagney won't be a hero to the neighborhood kids, and, of course, the title role in Knute Rockne, All American (1940), wherein he exhorted his flagging team to "win just one for the Gipper." Too old to serve in World War II, O'Brien tirelessly did his bit with several hazardous USO tours in the thick of the action. Following the war, O'Brien continued to play leads in a good series of RKO films, but he'd put on weight and lost a few hairs in the years since his Warner Bros. heyday, thus was more effectively cast in character roles like Dean Stockwell's vaudeville dad in The Boy With Green Hair (1949). Then, inexplicably, the roles dried up. O'Brien always believed that he was the victim of a blacklist -- not for being a Communist, but for being such a right winger that he was frozen out by Hollywood's liberal contingent. The diminishing box office for his films and an overall slump in the movie industry may also have played a part in O'Brien's fall from grace, but the fact was he found the going rough in the '50s. Fortunately, he had an aggresive agent and several loyal friends -- notably Spencer Tracy, who refused to star in MGM's The People Against O'Hara unless the studio set aside a big part for O'Brien. Television and summer stock kept O'Brien busy throughout most of the 1950s, with a brief comeback to stardom via a good part in Billy Wilder's Some Like It Hot (1959) and a weekly TV sitcom, "Harrigan and Son" (1960). O'Brien also worked up a well-received nightclub act, in which he described himself as "an Irish Myron Cohen" (Cohen was a popular Jewish dialect comedian of the era). Unlike his close friend James Cagney, O'Brien never stopped working, touring with his wife Eloise in straw hat productions of Never too Late and On Golden Pond. His performances proved that this was no pathetic oldster clinging desperately to the past, but a vibrant, up-to-date talent who could still deliver the goods. Nor was Pat O'Brien falsely modest. In answer to an interviewer's query if he felt that he'd been underrated by Hollywood, the seventy-plus O'Brien mustered all his Irish pugnacity and snapped "I'm damn good and I know it." As did everyone who saw Pat O'Brien's feisty final film performances in The End (1978) and Ragtime (1981).