Trivia: The most endlessly talked-about and mythologized figure in Hollywood history, Marilyn Monroe remains the ultimate superstar, her rise and fall the stuff that both dreams and nightmares are made of. Innocent, vulnerable, and impossibly alluring, she defined the very essence of screen sexuality. Rising from pin-up girl to international superstar, she was a gifted comedienne whom the camera adored, a luminous and incomparably magnetic screen presence. In short, she had it all, yet her career and life came crashing to a tragic halt, a Cinderella story gone horribly wrong; dead before her time -- her fragile beauty trapped in amber, impervious to the ravages of age -- Monroe endures as the movies' greatest and most beloved icon, a legend eclipsing all others. Born Norma Jean Mortensen (later Baker) on June 1, 1926, in Los Angeles, she was seemingly destined for a life of tragedy: Her mother spent the majority of her life institutionalized, she was raised in an endless succession of orphanages and foster homes, and she was raped at the age of eight. By 1942, she was married to one Jim Dougherty, subsequently dropping out of school to work in an aircraft production plant; within a year she attempted suicide. When Dougherty entered the military, Baker bleached her hair and began modeling. By 1946, the year of the couple's divorce, she was accredited to a top agency, and her image regularly appeared in national publications. Her photos piqued the interest of the eccentric billionaire Howard Hughes, who scheduled her for a screen test at RKO; however, 20th Century Fox beat him to the punch, and soon she was on their payroll at 125 dollars a week.Rechristened Marilyn Monroe, she began studying at the Actors' Lab in Hollywood; however, when virtually nothing but a bit role in the juvenile delinquent picture The Dangerous Years came of her Fox contract, she signed to Columbia in 1948, where she was tutored by drama coach Natasha Lytess. There she starred in Ladies of the Chorus before they too dropped her. After briefly appearing in the 1949 Marx Brothers comedy Love Happy, she earned her first real recognition for her turn as a crooked lawyer's mistress in the 1950 John Huston thriller The Asphalt Jungle. Good notices helped Monroe win a small role in the classic All About Eve, but she otherwise continued to languish relatively unnoticed in bit parts. While she was now back in the Fox stable, studio chief Darryl F. Zanuck failed to recognize her potential, and simply mandated that she appear in any picture in need of a sexy, dumb blonde. In 1952, RKO borrowed Monroe for a lead role in the Barbara Stanwyck picture Clash by Night. The performance brought her significant exposure, which was followed by the publication of a series of nude photos she had posed for two years prior. The resulting scandal made her a celebrity, and seemingly overnight she was the talk of Hollywood. Zanuck quickly cast her as a psychotic babysitter in a quickie project titled Don't Bother to Knock, and after a series of minor roles in other similarly ill-suited vehicles, Monroe starred in 1953's Niagara, which took full advantage of her sexuality to portray her as a sultry femme fatale. However, lighter, more comedic fare was Monroe's strong suit, as evidenced by her breakout performance in the Howard Hawks musical Gentlemen Prefer Blondes. Like its follow-up How to Marry a Millionaire (just the second film shot in the new CinemaScope process), the picture was among the year's top-grossing ventures, and her newfound stardom was cemented. After starring in the 1954 Western River of No Return, Monroe continued to make headlines by marrying New York Yankees baseball great Joe DiMaggio. She also made a much-publicized appearance singing for American troops in Korea, and -- in a telling sign of things to come -- created a flap by failing to show up on the set of the movie The Girl in Pink Tights. As far back as 1952, Monroe had earned a reputation for her late on-set arrivals, but The Girl in Pink Tights was the first project she boycotted outright on the weakness of the material. The studio suspended her, and only after agreeing to instead star in the musical There's No Business Like Show Business did she return to work. After starring in the 1955 Billy Wilder comedy The Seven Year Itch, Monroe again caused a stir, this time for refusing the lead in How to Be Very, Very Popular. In response, she fled to New York to study under Lee Strasburg at the Actors' Studio in an attempt to forever rid herself of the dumb blonde stereotype. In New York, Monroe met playwright Arthur Miller, whom she wed following the disintegration of her marriage to DiMaggio. In the meantime, her relationship with Fox executives continued to sour, but after pressure from stockholders -- and in light of her own financial difficulties -- she was signed to a new, non-exclusive seven-year deal which not only bumped her salary to 100,000 dollars per film, but also allowed her approval of directors. For her first film under the new contract, Monroe delivered her most accomplished performance to date in Joshua Logan's 1956 adaptation of the William Inge Broadway hit Bus Stop. She then starred opposite Laurence Olivier in 1957's The Prince and the Showgirl. Two years later, she co-starred in Wilder's classic Some Like It Hot, her most popular film yet. However, despite her success, Monroe's life was in disarray -- her marriage to Miller was crumbling, and her long-standing reliance on alcohol and drugs continued to grow more and more serious. After starring in George Cukor's Let's Make Love with Yves Montand, Monroe began work on the Miller-penned The Misfits; the film was her final completed project, as she frequently clashed with director John Huston and co-stars Clark Gable and Montgomery Clift, often failed to appear on-set, and was hospitalized several times for depression. In light of her erratic behavior on the set of the follow-up, the ironically titled Something's Got to Give, she was fired 32 days into production and slapped with a lawsuit. Just two months later, on August 5, 1962, Monroe was dead. The official cause was an overdose of barbiturates, although the truth will likely never be revealed. Her alleged affairs with President John F. Kennedy and his brother, Robert, have been the focus of much speculation regarding the events leading to her demise, but many decades later fact and fantasy are virtually impossible to separate. In death, as in life, the legend of Marilyn Monroe continues to grow beyond all expectation.

Trivia: Voluptuous sex symbol and star of Hollywood films, TV, and nightclubs, Jane Russell was the daughter of an actress. She worked as a receptionist and model, and studied theater at Max Reinhardt's Theatrical Workshop and with Maria Ouspenskaya. Endowed with a large bust, she won the lead role in Howard Hughes's The Outlaw (1941) after Hughes conducted a nationwide search for a curvaceous actress, eventually finding her working in his dentist's office. The film caused a storm of controversy due primarily to the amount of cleavage shown by Russell onscreen, and, after brief releases in 1941 and 1943, it was not officially released until 1950. The controversy brought her much publicity, often in the form of off-color, sophomoric jokes. However, she surpassed her mindless "bombshell" image and went on to perform with versatility in a number of films during the subsequent three decades, including comedies with Bob Hope and musicals with Marilyn Monroe. She often played cynical, "tough broads," and starred in the Broadway musical Company in 1971. TV viewers may also remember her for a series of bra commercials during the '70s.

Trivia: American actor Charles Coburn had already put in nearly forty years as a stage actor, producer, and director (specializing in Shakespeare) before making his screen debut at age 61 in Of Human Hearts (1938). At home in any kind of film, Coburn was most popular in comedies, and in 1943 won an Academy Award for his role in The More the Merrier as the bombastic but likable business executive forced by the wartime housing shortage to share a Washington D.C. apartment with Jean Arthur and Joel McCrea. Coburn continued playing variations on his elderly scalawag character (he was the living image of the Monopoly-board millionaire) throughout the late 1940s and 1950s, most notably as Marilyn Monroe's erstwhile "sugar daddy" in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1953). The actor also kept busy on stage, touring with the Theatre Guild as Falstaff in Merry Wives of Windsor and supervising the annual Mohawk Drama Festival at Schenectady's Union College, which he'd founded in 1934. Moving into television work with the enthusiasm of a novice, the octogenarian Coburn continued acting right up to his death. Coburn's last appearance, one week before his passing, was as Grandpa Vanderhoff in an Indianapolis summer-stock production of You Can't Take It With You.

Trivia: Trained for an acting career at various Manhattan professional children's schools, Elliot Reid was hired for the CBS radio announcer's staff while still a teenager. His work on the airwaves led to Reid's being hired by Orson Welles for the latter's 1937 modern-dress production of Julius Caesar. Reid was subsequently featured in such Broadway hits as My Sister Eileen and Ladies in Retirement. Uncomfortably cast as a two-fisted hero in his first film, the 1950 anti-Red opus The Whip Hand, Reid was seen to better advantage in comedy roles. Highlights in the actor's film career included the part of Jane Russell's erstwhile suitor in Gentleman Prefer Blondes (1954) and Fred MacMurray's snotty romantic rival in Disney's The Absent-Minded Professor (1960) and Son of Flubber (1963). In the 1960s, Elliot Reid gained a reputation as a sharp-witted political satirist on such programs as The Jack Paar Program and That Was the Week That Was, fracturing audiences with his on-target impressions of such pundits as Lyndon Johnson and Paul Harvey. Other TV work in Reid's resumé included the role of Darleen Carr's father on the weekly sitcom Miss Winslow and Son (1979). Even in the later stages of his career, Elliot Reid would occasionally return to his dramatic-radio roots in such audio series as "Theater 5" and "The CBS Radio Mystery Theater."

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: George Winslow, born George Wentzlaff in Los Angeles, earned his nickname "Foghorn" for having an unusually loud, raucous, and deep voice. He was popular during the '50s and made his debut on Art Linkletter's People Are Funny television series. He made a few films during the '50s, but the novelty of his voice soon wore thin and by the time he was 12, Foghorn Winslow was a has-been.

Trivia: Actor Taylor Holmes first made a theatrical name for himself on the Keith Vaudeville Circuit. In the course of his subsequent five-decade Broadway career, Holmes starred in over 100 plays, usually in light comedy roles. Making his film debut in 1917, he played the title role in the 1918 adaptation of Ruggles of Red Gap, then made scattered screen appearances before settling down in Hollywood permanently in 1947. Most often employed by 20th Century-Fox, he showed up in such flashy roles as gullible millionaire Ezra Grindle in the Tyrone Power melodrama Nightmare Alley (1947). He also played more than his share of shyster lawyers (most memorable in 1947's Kiss of Death) and absent-minded professors. Holmes was the father of actors Phillips and Ralph Holmes. Outliving his wife and both his sons, Taylor Holmes died at the age of 85; his last assignment was the voice of King Steffan in Disney's animated feature Sleeping Beauty (1959).

Trivia: The daughter of a retired sea captain, British actress Norma Varden was a piano prodigy. After study in Paris, she played concerts into her teens, but at last decided that this was be an uncertain method of making a living--so she went to the "security" of acting. In her first stage appearance in Peter Pan, Varden, not yet twenty, portrayed the adult role of Mrs. Darling, setting the standard for her subsequent stage and film work; too tall and mature-looking for ingenues, she would enjoy a long career in character roles. Bored with dramatic assignments, Varden gave comedy a try at the famous Aldwych Theatre, where from 1929 through 1933 she was resident character comedienne in the theatre's well-received marital farces. After her talkie debut in the Aldwych comedy A Night Like This (1930), she remained busy on the British film scene for over a decade. Moving to Hollywood in 1941, she found that the typecasting system frequently precluded large roles: Though she was well served as Robert Benchley's wife in The Major and the Minor (1942), for example, her next assignment was the unbilled role of a pickpocket victim's wife in Casablanca (1942). Her work encompassed radio as well as films for the rest of the decade; in nearly all her assignments Norma played a haughty British or New York aristocrat who looked down with disdain at the "commoners." By the '50s, she was enjoying such sizeable parts as the society lady who is nearly strangled by Robert Walker in Strangers on a Train (1951), the bejeweled wife of "sugar daddy" Charles Coburn in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1953), and George Sanders' dragonlike mother in Jupiter's Darling (1955). Norma Varden's greatest film role might have been as the mother superior in The Sound of Music (1965), but the producers decided to go with Peggy Wood, consigning Varden to the small but showy part of Frau Schmidt, the Von Trapps' housekeeper. After countless television and film assignments, Norma Varden retired in 1972, spending most of her time thereafter as a spokesperson for the Screen Actors Guild, battling for better medical benefits for older actors.

Trivia: Short of stature but giant in talent, French actor Marcel Dalio entered films in 1933. He gained world-wide renown for his brilliant work in the Jean Renoir classics La Grande Illusion (1937) and Rules of the Game (1938). When the Nazis marched into Paris, the Jewish Dalio fled to the United States with his actress wife Madeleine Le Beau (the wisdom of his sudden flight was confirmed when the Nazis distributed a photograph of Dalio, labelled "The Typical Jew"). Launching his Hollywood career in 1941, Dalio was never able to rescale the heights of prominence that he'd enjoyed in France. In fact, he was often unbilled, even for his memorable role as the cynical croupier in 1942's Casablanca. The best of Dalio's Hollywood character parts included Clemenceau in Wilson (1945), Danny Kaye's nervous business associate in On the Riviera (1951), and the "dirty" old Italian in Catch-22 (1970). A frequent visitor to American television, Dalio was cast as Inspector Renault (the role originated by Claude Rains) in the short-lived 1955 TV version of Casablanca. In his final years, Marcel Dalio returned to the French film industry; his last movie assignment was 1980's Vaudoux aux Caraibes.

Trivia: Stoutly proportioned yet dignified character actor Howard Wendell was known for his skill and reliability in a screen career lasting three decades -- according to his grandson, he was referred to by those who knew his work as "one-take Wendell." Born Howard David Wendell in Johnstown, Pennsylvania in 1908, though he considered Elyria, Ohio, where he was raised, to be his home. His acting career began with work in a minstrel show, and he later appeared on a radio show broadcast out of Cleveland, Ohio. Wendell worked with the Elyria Playmakers, and was later an apprentice at the Cleveland Playhouse. Later, while traveling across the midwest as an actor, he also began directing plays and acting in summer stock, and subsequently moved on to road show productions in the northeast. By the end of the 1940s, he'd amassed some Broadway credits as well, and made his small-screen debut on Colgate Theatre. By 1952, he was in Hollywood and working in feature films, most notably Fritz Lang's The Big Heat (1953). Wendell proved adept at older character parts, including politicians, doctors, business executives, judges, and other authority figures -- in Lang's film, he was memorable as an incompetent and crooked police chief, who is seen harassing the honest members of his force and kowtowing to his city's worst gang elements. Perhaps Wendell's strangest appearance was in Edward L. Cahn's The Fourt Skulls of Jonathan Drake (1958), in which he portrayed a medical doctor whose skill at saving lives gets him killed -- his character appears, decidedly postmortem, in the guise of a severed head in the vault of the villain. Wendell could also do comedy, and appeared in his share of sitcoms, including The Dick Van Dyke Show. Although he officially retired in 1963, Wendell went on to do appearances in episodes of I Dream of Jeannie Batman in the later 1960s, and he gave his final screen performance on an episode of Adam-12 in 1971.

Trivia: Czech character actor Steven Geray was for many years a member in good standing of the Hungarian National Theater. He launched his English-speaking film career in Britain in 1935, then moved to the U.S. in 1941. His roles ranged from sinister to sympathetic, from "A" productions like Gilda (1946) to potboilers like El Paso (1949). He flourished during the war years, enjoying top billing in the moody little romantic melodrama So Dark the Night (1946), and also attracting critical praise for his portrayal of Dirk Stroeve in The Moon and Sixpence (1942). Many of Geray's film appearances in the 1950s were unbilled; when he was given screen credit, it was usually as "Steve Geray." Geray's busy career in film and television continued into the 1960s. Steven Geray worked until he had obviously depleted his physical strength; it was somewhat sad to watch the ailing Geray struggle through the western horror pic Jesse James Meets Frankenstein's Daughter (1965).

Trivia: A dapper-looking character actor from Russia, Leo Mostovoy played Fydor, one of "the usual suspects" in Casablanca (1942), perhaps an early highlight in a screen career that was spent mainly playing excitable chefs, headwaiters, pawnbrokers, and the like. Mostovoy, who also appeared frequently on early television, played a chef once again in his last credited film, Serenade (1956).

Trivia: The son of actors Harry Carey and Olive Golden, Harry Carey Jr. never answered to "Harry" or "Junior"; to his friends, family and film buffs, he was always "Dobe" Carey. Raised on his father's California ranch, the younger Carey spent his first six adult years in the Navy. While it is commonly assumed that he made his film debut under the direction of his dad's longtime friend John Ford, Carey in fact was first seen in a fleeting bit in 1946's Rolling Home, directed by William Berke. It wasn't until his third film, Three Godfathers (dedicated to the memory of his father) that Carey worked with Ford. Honoring his promise to Harry Sr. that he'd "look after" Dobe, Ford saw to it that the younger Carey was given a starring assignment (along with another of the director's proteges, Ben Johnson), in Wagonmaster (1950). Though he handled this assignment nicely, exuding an appealing earnest boyishness, Carey wasn't quite ready for stardom so far as the Hollywood "higher-ups" were concerned, so he settled for supporting roles, mostly in westerns. John Ford continued to use Carey whenever possible; in 1955's The Long Gray Line, the actor has a few brief scenes as West Point undergraduate Dwight D. Eisenhower. Carey was also featured on the "Spin and Marty" segments of Walt Disney's daily TVer The Mickey Mouse Club (1955-59). In later years, Carey's weather-beaten face was seen in choice character assignments in films ranging from The Whales of August (1987) to Back to the Future III (1990); he was also hired by such John Ford aficionados as Peter Bogdanovich, who cast Carey as an old wrangler named Dobie (what else?) in Nickelodeon (1976), and as an ageing bike-gang member named Red in Mask (1985). In 1994, Harry Carey Jr. published his autobiography, Company of Heroes. Carey died of natural causes at age 91 in late December 2012.

Trivia: In films from 1919, Dutch vaudeville comic George Davis played one of the featured clowns in Lon Chaney's He Who Gets Slapped (1924) and was also in Buster Keaton's Sherlock, Jr. that same year. In the sound era, Davis specialized in playing waiters but would also turn up as bus drivers, counter men, and circus performers, often assuming a French accent. When told that Davis' business as a hotel porter included carrying Greta Garbo's bags, the soviet envoy opined: "That's no business. That's social injustice." "Depends on the tip," replied Davis. He continued to play often humorous bits well into the '50s, appearing in such television shows as Cisco Kid and Perry Mason. The veteran performer died of cancer at the Motion Picture Country House and Hospital.

Trivia: In films from 1926, former vaudevillian and stage actor/playwright Alphonse Martell was one of Hollywood's favorite Frenchmen. While he sometimes enjoyed a large role, Martell could usually be found playing bits as maitre d's, concierges, gendarmes, duelists, and, during WW II, French resistance fighters. In 1933, he directed the poverty-row quickie Gigolettes of Paris. Alphonse Martell remained active into the 1960s, guest-starring on such TV programs as Mission: Impossible.

Trivia: A debonair, mustachioed supporting actor from France, Jean De Briac played prominent roles in the silent era -- Fred Thomson's fisherman brother in Mary Pickford's The Love Light (1921), the notorious "The Knifer" in Clara Bow's Parisian Love (1925), the stage director in Greta Garbo's The Divine Woman (1928) -- but mainly bit parts thereafter. De Briac, whose career continued well into the '50s, even turned up in a 1949 episode of television's The Lone Ranger.

Trivia: French character actor Jean Del Val was a regular in American films from at least 1927. In the early days of the talkies, he offered his services as translator and vocal coach for the French-language versions of American films. Many of his later roles were fleeting but memorable: he's the French aviator in Block-Heads (1938) who rescues over-aged doughboy Stan Laurel from the trenches ("Why, you blockhead. Ze war's been over for twenty years!") and the French radio announcer who opens Casablanca (1942) by spreading the news of the murder of two German couriers carrying letters of transit. He enjoyed a larger role in Columbia's So Dark the Night (1946), a film seemingly conceived as a showcase for the best of Hollywood's foreign-accented bit players. Active in films until the 1960s, Jean del Val played a crucial non-speaking role in Fantastic Voyage (1966): he's the comatose scientist whose arterial system and brain are explored by the miniaturized heroes.

Trivia: Ray Montgomery was a gifted character actor who spent his early career trapped behind a too-attractive face, which got him through the studio door in the days just before World War II, but limited him to callow, handsome supporting roles. Born in 1922, Montgomery joined Warner Bros. in 1941 and spent the next two years working in short-subjects and playing small, uncredited parts in feature films, including All Through The Night, Larceny, Inc., Air Force, and Action In The North Atlantic -- in all of which he was overshadowed by lead players such as Humphrey Bogart, Edward G. Robinson, and John Garfield, and the veteran character actors in supporting roles (including Alan Hale, William Demarest, Frank McHugh, Barton McLane, and Edward Brophy) at every turn. And even in The Hard Way as Jimmy Gilpin, he was overshadowed (along with everyone else) by Ida Lupino. Montgomery went into uniform in 1943 and didn't return to the screen until three years later, when he resumed his career precisely where he left off, playing a string of uncredited roles. He got what should have been his breakthrough in 1948 with Bretaigne Windust's comedy June Bride, and his first really visible supporting role -- but again, he was lost amid the presence of such players as Robert Montgomery and Bette Davis and a screwball-comedy story-line. It was back to uncredited parts for the next few years, until the advent of dramatic television. In the early 1950s, after establishing himself on the small-screen as a quick study and a good actor, Montgomery finally got co-starring status in the syndicated television series Ramar of the Jungle, playing Professor Howard Ogden, friend and colleague of the Jon Hall's title-character in the children's adventure series. The show was rerun on local television stations continuously into the 1960s. By then, Montgomery had long since moved on to more interesting parts and performances in a multitude of dramatic series and feature films. He proved much better with edgy character roles and outright bad guys than he had ever been at playing good natured background figures -- viewers of The Adventures of Superman (which has been in reruns longer than even Ramar), in particular, may know Montgomery best for two 1956 episodes, his grinning, casual villainy in the episode "Jolly Roger" and his sadistic brutality in "Dagger Island", where his character convincingly turns on his own relatives (as well as a hapless Jimmy Olsen). He could do comedy as well as drama, and was seen in multiple episodes of The Lone Ranger, The Gale Storm Show, and Lassie, in between movie stints that usually had him in taciturn roles, such as Bombers B-52 (1957) and A Gathering of Eagles (1963). During the 1960s, the now-balding, white-haired Montgomery was perhaps most visible in police-oriented parts, as a tough old NYPD detective in Don Siegel's Madigan (1968) and as an equally crusty (but sensitive) LAPD lieutenant in the Dragnet episode "Community Relations: DR-17". Montgomery's last screen appearance was in the series Hunter -- following his retirement from acting, he opened a notably successful California real estate agency.

Trivia: In films from 1952, thin-necked, crew-cutted Alvy Moore was typecast as snoops, unwanted suitors and general, all-around pests. Moore did get to break away from his usual assignments in such roles as a motorcycle bum in The Wild One (1953) and Debbie Reynolds' boyfriend in Susan Slept Here (1954). A prolific TV guest star, Moore was hilarious as the faux IRS agent Handlebuck in the Emmy-winning Dick Van Dyke Show episode "The Impractical Joke." Fans of the sitcom Green Acres (1965-71) will remember Moore best as self-contradictory agricultural agent Hank Kimball a role he reprised in a 1990 reunion film. In the 1970s, Alvy Moore turned producer, teaming with another busy character actor, L.Q. Jones, to turn out the low-budget chiller Brotherhood of Satan (1971) and the cult classic A Boy and His Dog (1975).

Trivia: American character actor Robert Nichols appeared in numerous Hollywood and British films during the 1950s. He was particularly prolific during the 1950s. Nichols has also worked on stage and in television.

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

Trivia: The namesake son of veteran screen director William Christy Cabanne, handsome William Cabanne played callow youths at Paramount in the early '40s. Although stardom eluded him, young Cabanne continued to play bit roles in films and on television through the mid-'50s. As far as can be determined, he was only directed by his father once, the 1947 Cisco Kid Western King of the Bandits, in which he played an orderly.

Trivia: A mustachioed supporting player from Russia, Jack Chefe (sometimes credited as Chefé) played exactly what he looked and sounded like: headwaiters. That was also his occupation when not appearing in films, of which he did literally hundreds between 1932 and 1959, serving such stars as Carole Lombard (My Man Godfrey, 1936), Jeanette MacDonald (Bitter Sweet, 1940), Bob Hope (My Favorite Brunette, 1947), and even Dick Tracy (in the 1945 RKO feature film). Once in a while, Chefe managed to escape typecasting, playing one of the legionnaires in Laurel and Hardy's Flying Deuces (1939) and a croupier in The Big Sleep (1946).

Trivia: A bald, jovial-looking character actor from Austria, Max Willenz was very busy in Hollywood films during World War II but was, oddly enough, usually cast as a Frenchman (the barkeeper Louis in Dr. Renault's Secret, 1942; the captain in Mademoiselle Fifi, 1944 ) or Russian characters (Dr. Grutschakoff in The Heavenly Body, 1943; Mr. Slepoff in A Likely Story, 1947). In fact, Willenz once again played a Frenchman, a court clerk, in his final film, Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1953).

Trivia: Dapper character actor Rolfe Sedan was nine times out of ten cast as a foreigner, usually a French maître d' or Italian tradesman. In truth, Sedan was born in New York City. He'd planned to study scientific agriculture, but was sidetracked by film and stage work in New York; he then embarked on a vaudeville career as a dialect comic. Sedan began appearing in Hollywood films in the late '20s, frequently cast in support of such major comedy attractions as Laurel and Hardy, Charlie Chase, the Marx Brothers, and Harold Lloyd. He was proudest of his work in a handful of films directed by Ernst Lubitsch, notably Bluebeard's Eighth Wife (1938). Though distressed that he never made it to the top ranks, Sedan remained very much in demand for comedy cameos into the 1980s. Rolfe Sedan's television work included the recurring role of Mr. Beasley the postman on The Burns and Allen Show, and the part of Chef Boy-Ar-Dee in several TV commercials of the mid-'70s.

Trivia: Starting his Hollywood career in or around 1951, American actor Robert Foulk was alternately passive and authoritative in such westerns as Last of the Badmen (1957), The Tall Stranger (1957), The Left-Handed Gun (1958) and Cast a Long Shadow (1958). He remained a frontiersmen for his year-long stint as bartender Joe Kingston on the Joel McCrea TV shoot-em-up Wichita Town (1959) (though he reverted to modern garb as the Anderson family's next-door neighbor in the '50s sitcom Father Knows Best). In non-westerns, Foulk usually played professional men, often uniformed. Some of his parts were fleeting enough not to have any designation but "character bit" (vide The Love Bug [1968]), but otherwise there was no question Foulk was in charge: as a doctor in Tammy and the Doctor (1963), a police official in Bunny O'Hare (1971) or a railroad conductor in Emperor of the North (1973). Robert Foulk was given extensive screen time in the Bowery Boys' Hold That Hypnotist (1957), as the title character; and in Robin and the Seven Hoods (1964), playing straight as Sheriff Glick opposite such "Merrie Men" as Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin Sammy Davis Jr. and Bing Crosby.

Trivia: Moon-faced American character actor Ralph Peters was active in films from 1937 to 1956. At first, Peters showed up in Westerns, usually cast as a bartender. He then moved on to contemporary films, usually cast as a bartender. During the 1940s, Ralph Peters could be seen in scores of Runyon-esque gangster roles like Asthma Anderson in Ball of Fire (1941) and Baby Face Peterson in My Kingdom for a Cook (1943).

Trivia: A veteran of vaudeville and Broadway, Harry Seymour came to films with extensive credits as a composer and musical-comedy star. Unfortunately, Seymour made his movie debut in 1925, at the height of the silent era. When talkies came in, he was frequently employed as a dialogue director with the Warner Bros. B-unit. From 1932 to 1958, Harry Seymour also essayed bit roles at Warners and 20th Century Fox, most often playing pianists (Irish Eyes Are Smiling, Rhapsody in Blue, A Ticket to Tomahawk, etc.).

Trivia: Born in Ohio to Greek parents, George Chakiris made his first film appearance as an adolescent chorus singer in Song of Love (1947), the filmed biography of Robert and Clara Schumann. After receiving training as a dancer, Chakiris was given a few unbilled solo spots in such film musicals as Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1953) and White Christmas (1954). His roles increased in size after he became a dramatic actor in the late 1950s. Chakiris went on to win an Academy Award for his singing/dancing/acting portrayal of Puerto Rican gang leader Bernardo in West Side Story (1961), after which his starring career went into an unexpected eclipse. George Chakiris' television credits include a leading role (along with Anna Maria Alberghetti, Jose Ferrer and Barbara Eden) in a 1967 TV adaptation of Kismet; a co-starring stint with Rosemary Harris in Notorious Woman, a 1975 dramatization of the life of George Sand which premiered in the U.S. on PBS' Masterpiece Theatre; and a recurring role on the prime-time serial Dallas.

Trivia: One of the great American film directors, Howard Hawks was a craftsman who made tight, lean pictures during the studio era. Not confined to a particular genre, his filmography provides outstanding and influential examples of a variety of movies. His style was non-obtrusive and no-nonsense, with telling images (he's famous for narratively significant cigarette lighting) and rapid-fire dialogue. Lines in his work were delivered overlapping each other, resulting in unnaturally quick-paced conversations that added tension and a sense of urgency to the stories. In addition to being a good screenwriter himself, he had a tendency to work with some of the era's best writers, including Ben Hecht, William Faulkner, and Jules Furthman. Born in the Midwest in 1896, Hawks moved to California during the earliest days of Hollywood. After studying mechanical engineering at Cornell and serving in the U.S. Army Air Corps, he went to work at Famous Players-Laskey and started his own independent productions. By 1924, he was running the story department at Paramount and directing silent films for Fox. But he really began to make his mark with the advent of sound; his first talking pictures included the aviator adventure The Dawn Patrol, the prison film The Criminal Code, and sea adventure Tiger Shark. In 1932, he made the historically important Scarface, which, in many ways, defined the standard of gangster films. In 1938, he made the exemplary screwball comedy Bringing up Baby starring Katharine Hepburn and Cary Grant. This quick-talking duo was one of Hawks' many star pairings involving a tough wise guy and smart-mouthed heroine; another good team was Carole Lombard and John Barrymore in the comedy Twentieth Century. Hawks also had a knack for helping to initiate the careers of major Hollywood stars. His 1939 macho adventure Only Angels Have Wings featured Rita Hayworth in a supporting role before she became a leading femme fatale. He made the romantic comedy touchstone His Girl Friday the following year, with Rosalind Russell as the embodiment of the smart-mouthed heroine. In 1944, the director helped start the career of newcomer Lauren Bacall by pairing her with Humphrey Bogart in the war romance To Have and Have Not. Their obvious chemistry and snappy repartee led to one of the most beloved screen duos in history, and to Hawks' 1946 mystery The Big Sleep. During the '40s, he made the powerful Western drama Red River with John Wayne and Montgomery Clift. He also had a hand in launching the iconic stardom of Marilyn Monroewith the '50s comedy Monkey Business and the musical Gentlemen Prefer Blondes. In a response to the Western High Noon, Hawks teamed up again with Wayne for the revisionist Western Rio Bravo. As age caught up with him during the '60s, Hawks' career slowed down -- and so did the pace of his films. He received his first Oscar in 1974, an honorary award from the Academy before his death in Palm Springs, CA, in 1977.

Trivia: A performer who succinctly defines the term "character actor," Tom Noonan has appeared in over 20 feature films and numerous TV series and movies, and has also enjoyed a career as a playwright, director, and acting professor. A 1973 graduate of the esteemed Yale acting program, Noonan began his career as a guitarist and composer, working with such downtown theater troupes as Mabou Mines and The Wooster Group (which has included fellow actor Willem Dafoe among its ranks) until he found his niche in film and TV in the early '80s.Noonan began to find work as a premier villain in such films as Manhunter ([1986] the first film to feature the infamous Hannibal Lecter), The Monster Squad (1987), Robocop 2 (1990), and Last Action Hero (1993), the latter few representing Hollywood action-adventure pictures that helped subsidize smaller projects that the actor wished to take on. One of these projects was the 1994 Sundance Film Festival sleeper What Happened Was..., a startling examination of a truly awkward first date based on Noonan's play produced the previous year. The film, which Noonan wrote, directed, and starred in opposite Karen Sillas, won the Grand Jury Prize at Sundance that year, as well as the Waldo Salt Screenwriting Award. That same year, the film was released on the arthouse circuit and garnered accolades for Noonan, including several Ten Best citations from critics. What Happened Was... was featured in Scenario Magazine in the July 1995 issue as one of its featured screenplays.Noonan continued to appear in such mainstream fare as Michael Mann's cops-and-robbers epic Heat (1995) and more television offerings, including a memorable stint on the popular sci-fi show The X-Files. He then made a film called The Wife, based on his play Wifey, co-starring Wallace Shawn, Julie Hagerty, and Karen Young, all holdovers from the stage version, which premiered at his Paradise Theater, a small off-off-Broadway space in New York's East Village. This film was also accepted into the Sundance Film Festival and was (barely) released theatrically, not enjoying the same success as his 1994 play to film.Noonan is the author of several collections of fiction, as well as an unpublished novel titled Must Have. A former National Endowment of the Arts scholar, he has long used New York City as his home and professional base, and has taught classes in acting technique at the Paradise Theater, which for years has been host to original, quirky downtown theatre.