Trivia: Western film star Harry Carey was the Eastern-born son of a Bronx judge. Carey's love and understanding of horses and horsemanship was gleaned from watching the activities of New York's mounted policemen of the 1880s. He worked briefly as an actor in stock, then studied law until a bout of pneumonia forced him to quit the job that was paying for his education. He reactivated his theatrical career in 1904 by touring the provinces in Montana, a play he wrote himself. In 1911, Carey signed with the Bronx-based Biograph film company, playing villain roles for pioneer director D. W. Griffith. Though only in his mid-30s, Carey's face had already taken on its familiar creased, weatherbeaten look; it was an ideal face for westerns, as Carey discovered when he signed with Hollywood's Fox Studios. Under the guidance of fledgling director John Ford, Carey made 26 features and two-reelers in the role of hard-riding frontiersman Cheyenne Harry. Throughout the 1920s, Carey remained an audience favorite, supplementing his acting income with occasional scripting, producing and co-directing assignments. At the dawn of the talkie era, Carey had been around so long that he was considered an old-timer, and had resigned himself to playing supporting parts. His starring career was revitalized by the 1931 jungle epic Trader Horn, in which he appeared with his wife Olive Golden. While he still accepted secondary roles in "A" features (he earned an Oscar nomination for his performance as the Vice President in Frank Capra's Mr. Smith Goes to Washington [1939]), Carey remained in demand during the 1930s as a leading player, notably in the autumnal 1936 western The Last Outlaw and the rugged 1932 serial Last of the Mohicans. In 1940, Carey made his belated Broadway debut in Heavenly Express, following this engagement with appearances in Ah, Wilderness (1944) and But Not Goodbye (1944). By the early 1940s, Carey's craggy face had taken on Mount Rushmore dimensions; his was the archetypal "American" countenance, a fact that director Alfred Hitchcock hoped to exploit. Hitchcock wanted to cast Carey against type as a Nazi ringleader in 1942's Saboteur, only to have these plans vetoed by Mrs. Carey, who insisted that her husband's fans would never accept such a radical deviation from his image. Though Carey and director John Ford never worked together in the 1930s and 1940s, Ford acknowledged his indebtedness to the veteran actor by frequently casting Harry Carey Jr. (born 1921), a personable performer in his own right, in important screen roles. When Carey Sr. died in 1948, Ford dedicated his film Three Godfathers to Harry's memory. A more personal tribute to Harry Carey Sr. was offered by his longtime friend John Wayne; in the very last shot of 1955's The Searchers, Wayne imitated a distinctive hand gesture that Harry Carey had virtually patented in his own screen work.

Trivia: Actor C. Aubrey Smith was, so far as many American moviegoers were concerned, the very personification of the British Empire. Even so, when young English journalist Alistair Cooke first travelled to Hollywood in the early 1930s to interview Smith, it was not to discuss the actor's four decades in show business, but to wax nostalgic on his athletic career. The son of a London surgeon, Smith played soccer for the Corinthians and cricket for Cambridge. For four years, "Round the Corner Smith" (so named because of his unique playing style) was captain of the Sussex County Cricket Club, playing championship matches throughout the Empire. When time came to choose a "real" vocation, Smith dallied with the notion of following in his dad's footsteps, then worked as a teacher and stockbroker. In 1892, at the age of 29, he finally decided to become an actor (not without family disapproval!), launching his stage career with the A. B. Tappings Stock Company. He made his London debut in 1895, and the following year scored his first significant success as Black Michael in The Prisoner of Zenda; also in 1896, he married Isobel May Wood, a union that endured for over fifty years. His subsequent stage triumphs included Shaw's Pygmalion, in which he succeeded Sir Herbert Beerbohm-Tree as Professor Henry Higgins. Despite the theatrical community's disdainful attitude towards the "flickers", Smith enthusiastically launched his film career in 1914. He was one of the co-founders of the short-lived but energetic Minerva Film Company, and by 1915 had begun making movies in America. It was his 1928 stage hit Bachelor Father that led to Smith's phenomenally successful career in talking pictures. For 18 years, he was perhaps Hollywood's favorite "professional Englishmen." He was at his best in martinet military roles, most memorably in a brace of 1939 productions: The Sun Never Sets, in which he used a wall-sized map to dutifully mark off the far-flung locations where his progeny were serving the Empire, and The Four Feathers, wherein he encapsulated his generation by crustily declaring "War was war in my day, sir!" Other notable roles in the Smith canon included Jane's father in Tarzan the Ape Man (1932), a close-minded aristocrat who turns out to be an out-of-work actor in Bombshell (1933), the intensely loyal Colonel Zapt in The Prisoner of Zenda (1937) and an outraged murder-victim-to-be in Ten Little Indians (1945). Smith briefly returned to the stage in 1941, and throughout the war years could be seen in roles ranging from single-scene cameos (The Adventures of Mark Twain, Unconquered) to full leads (1945's Scotland Yard Inspector). A recipient of the Order of the British Empire in 1938, he was knighted by King George VI in 1944, largely because of the positive image of Mother England that the actor invariably projected. The undisputed leader of Tinseltown's "British Colony," Smith also organized the Hollywood Cricket Club, taking great pride in the fact that he hadn't missed a weekend match for nearly sixty years. Sir C. Aubrey Smith was still in harness when he died of pneumonia at the age of 85; his last film appearance as Mr. Lawrence in Little Women was released posthumously in 1949.

Trivia: Born with show business in his blood, Charles Winninger was nine years old when he joined his parents' vaudeville act, the Winninger Family Novelty Company. The troupe appeared at the Chicago World's Fair of 1893, then spent the next sixteen years touring the provinces. Going out as a "single" in 1909, Winninger trod the boards as a monologist, dialectician, singer, dancer, dramatic actor and master of ceremonies. He made his Broadway debut as a German comic in 1912's Yankee Girl Company. Three years later, he launched his film career at the L-KO comedy studios. The character-actor phase of his Hollywood years began in 1924, though at the time he was still more committed to the stage than film. In 1927, he scored one of his biggest Broadway successes as Cap'n Andy in Showboat, a role he repeated with gusto in the 1936 film version. Except for occasional Dutch-comic turns in such films as Soup to Nuts (1930) and Friendly Enemies (1945) Winninger was generally seen in talkies in "foxy papa" or roguish-reprobate roles. His own favorite screen part was Deanna Durbin's roving-eyed millionaire father in Three Smart Girls (1936) and its three sequels. Winninger's performance as the drink-sodden, grudge-bearing general practitioner in Nothing Sacred (1937) is perhaps his finest cinematic hour, with his portrayal of Iowa farmer Abel Frake in State Fair (1945) running a close second. Usually billed at the top of the supporting cast list, Winninger was afforded a rare starring role as Judge Priest in John Ford's wonderful The Sun Shines Bright (1953). On TV, Winninger co-starred in the 1956 sitcom The Charles Farrell Show as Farrell's dad, and guested as Fred Mertz' down-and-out vaudeville partner in the "Mertz and Kurtz" episode of I Love Lucy. Charles Winninger was at one time married to Broadway favorite Blanche Ring, meaning that he was briefly the brother-in-law of silent screen star Thomas Meighan and comedienne Charlotte Greenwood.

Trivia: One of the most dynamic, and tiniest, of character actresses, Russian-born Maria Ouspenskaya had originally dreamed of an operatic career. She studied in both Warsaw and Moscow until money ran out, then switched gears and decided to concentrate on acting. Though she was past 30 when she entered Adasheff's School of Drama, Mme. Ouspenskaya was the school's most energetic and ambitious pupil; after graduation, she toured Russia in stock company, no mean feat in those pre-airplane days, then starred with the Moscow Art Theatre of Konstantin Stanislavsky. The Revolution and the famine that followed only strengthened her reserve to make something of herself. Remaining as a performing and instructor with the Moscow Art Theatre after the Communist takeover, the actress toured Europe and America, settling in the latter country for good in 1924. A fellow Stansilavsky pupil, Richard Boleslawsky, found work for Ouspenskaya on the faculty of the American Laboratory Theatre; She branched out to form her own acting school in 1929. Maria's role as the wise old mother of a titled fortune hunter in the stage play Dodsworth led to her recreation of the role in Sam Goldwyn's 1936 film version. Thereafter, if a wizened matriarch of any nationality was required for a movie - French, Polish, East Indian - Mme. Oupenskaya was among the first to be called upon. Despite her steady work in A-pictures, it was for a medium-budget horror film that she is best remembered today. In The Wolf Man (1941), it is Ouspenskaya as mournful gypsy woman Maleva who breaks the news that poor Lon Chaney Jr. has been bitten by a werewolf; the actress' chilling recital of the famed Wolf Man curse ("Even a man who is pure at heart, and says his prayers by night") is enough to give adult viewers nightmares. She repeated the role in Frankenstein Meets the Wolfman (1943), to which she brought the same degree of artistry that she invested in such prestigious assignments as King's Row (1942). While her earlier deprivations in Russia had made her nearly impervious to illness and infirmity, Maria Ouspenskaya was unable to survive one of mankind's oldest scourges. In 1949, she fell asleep while smoking a cigarette in bed; the resultant fire led to her death from burns and a stroke at age 73.

Trivia: A bald, round-faced comedian from the Ukraine, Alex Melesh (born Melesher) made his professional debut in American vaudeville in 1907. Onscreen from 1927, Melesh went on to portray scores of highly agitated foreigners, waiters, bellboys, revolutionists, and others, usually comedic in nature. More often than not unbilled, Melesh's career screen lasted until his death in 1949.

Trivia: The daughter of a Texas oil executive, trim blonde actress Helen Vinson had a respectable Broadway career behind her when she made her first film, Jewel Robbery, in 1932. Seldom a leading lady, Vinson carved her cinematic niche in bewitching other-woman roles. She had the gift of conveying truculence and connivance by merely batting an eyelash or murmuring a sweet nothing. From 1935 to 1936, Vinson made films in London, the home of her then-husband, tennis star Fred Perry. Helen Vinson retired from films after her supporting role in The Thin Man Goes Home (1945).

Trivia: Though it sounded like a Hollywood fabrication, Rod LaRocque was that particular American actor's real name. Stagestruck from childhood, LaRocque did his first stage work at age 9 with Willard Mack's Chicago stock company; the pay was a munificent one dollar per show. During a lull in stock company activity when he was 16, LaRocque entered vaudeville with a dramatic sketch, then broke into films as an extra when director E. H. Calvert was filming The Snowman at Chicago's Essanay Studios. When Essanay folded, LaRocque went to Fort Lee, New Jersey, where in the pre-1920 days films were still being made. After working briefly for Sam Goldwyn in Fort Lee and spending some time as a circus performer, LaRocque finally made it to Hollywood, where his prior experience and matinee-idol looks won him a contract with Cecil B. DeMille. The one silent DeMille picture that gets the most circulation today is The Ten Commandments (1923), which was divided into Biblical and modern scenes; LaRocque was in the latter, playing the weak-willed brother of Richard Dix and ultimately killing himself after contracting leprosy. When DeMille set up his own independent studio in the mid '20s, LaRocque became a stalwart of the operation, building up his box-office pull in such popular films as The Coming of Amos (1926) and Strong Heart (1927). In 1927, LaRocque fell in love with Vilma Banky, the lovely Hungarian star best remembered for her appearances in Rudolph Valentino's final films. They were married in a private ceremony, which infuriated Banky's boss Sam Goldwyn, who wanted to throw a big bash for his two favorite actors. To pacify Goldwyn, Rod and Vilma were married again in a royally lavish ceremony that lacked only one element: it was to have been a double wedding, but the other bride, Greta Garbo, failed to show up to marry her betrothed John Gilbert. LaRocque made an acceptable transition to sound, but Vilma Banky's thick Hungarian accent proved difficult to record; but by this time she was through with films (except for a few European productions), preferring to be Mrs. Rod LaRocque, period. By the late '30s, Rod LaRocque's career had waned, though he was seen to good advantage in character roles in such films as The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1939) and Meet John Doe (1940), but by the early '40s both LaRocque and his wife were too busily socially -- and too rich from real estate investments -- to care about the transience of fame.

Trivia: Richard Carlson received his M.A. at the University of Minnesota and taught there briefly before working in the theater as an actor, director, and writer. He appeared on Broadway, then was brought to Hollywood in 1938 by David O. Selznick, who hired him as a writer assigned to work on the film The Young at Heart; Janet Gaynor, the film's star, urged that he appear in the movie, which became his debut. After that, he had lead and costarring roles in many films of the '30s, '40s, and '50s. Typecast early in his career as a diffident juvenile, he had trouble breaking out of the mold and landing more mature roles; he tended to appear in monster flicks and B-movies in the '50s. He turned to directing in that decade, beginning with Riders to the Stars (1954), which he also wrote and in which he acted. Besides acting and directing, he also became a magazine writer and wrote scripts for TV. Carlson starred in the TV series I Led Three Lives and McKenzie's Raiders and appeared in episodes of numerous others.

Trivia: While still a junior high student, American actress Jean Parker was discovered by MGM when she posed for a poster contest. Her first film under her MGM contract was Divorce in the Family (1932), and her first important film was Rasputin and the Empress (1933), in which the novice performer failed to wilt despite the formidable presence in the cast of Lionel, John and Ethel Barrymore. Pretty and vivacious, Parker became the queen of the MGM B-pictures but never quite made it in the studio's top-drawer productions. Gaining a reputation of working quickly, efficiently and inexpensively, she became a valuable commodity on the independent-film market; two of her free-lance appearance, in Laurel and Hardy's Flying Deuces (1939) and director Eddie Sutherland's ultra-sentimental Beyond Tomorrow (1940), are familiar public-domain additions to video stores throughout America. At Monogram in the mid '40s, Parker inagurated a comedy-mystery series as Detective Kitty O'Day, but only two films were made, with her performance overshadowed by costar Peter Cookson in both. The actress was a regular in B-plus Technicolor westerns of the '50s, seen to best advantage as a faded society belle in Randolph Scott's A Lawless Street (1955). Parker made her final appearance in a western, billed eleventh after several other movie veterans in Apache Uprising (1966), in which she had only one scene. While never a big star in films, Parker did considerably better on stage, appearing in the west-coast productions of such hits as Dream Girl and Born Yesterday. Jean Parker worked as an acting coach in the '60s and early '70s, but by the '80s she was a recluse, accepting few visitors outside of her grown son.

Trivia: A tough-looking younger supporting player from New York, J. Anthony Hughes (the "J" stood for "Joseph") usually played reporters, cops (often on motorcycles), prison inmates, and various less-than-desirable members of the underworld. He also turned up as one of Mrs. O'Leary's sons in In Old Chicago (1937), Captain Williams in Abbott & Costello's Buck Privates (1941), and the owner of the Dirty Dog saloon in Alias Jesse James (1959), his final credited film. Hughes' death in 1970 was attributed to alcohol and barbiturate poisoning.

Trivia: Actor Robert Emmett Homans seemingly had the map of Ireland stamped on his craggy face. As a result, Homans spent the better part of his film career playing law enforcement officers of all varieties, from humble patrolmen to detective chiefs. After a lengthy stage career, Homans entered films in 1923. A break from his usual microscopic film assignments occured in Public Enemy (1931), where Homans is given an opportunity to deliver reams of exposition (with a pronounced brogue) during a funeral sequence. And in the 1942 Universal horror programmer Night Monster, Robert Emmett Homans is alotted a sizeable role as the ulcerated detective investigating the supernatural goings-on at the home of seemingly helpless invalid Ralph Morgan.

Trivia: From 1932 until his retirement sometime in the early 1950s, American general purpose actor James Bush trafficked in faceless minor roles: Bush played one of the Twelve Oaks party guests in Gone With the Wind (1939). In W.C. Fields' You Can't Cheat an Honest Man (1939), wherein Bush was cast as Constance Moore's dishwater-dull fiance Roger Bel-Goodie. Evidently, he struck a responsive chord with the team of Laurel and Hardy: he was prominently cast in three of the team's 20th Century-Fox vehicles, A-Haunting We Will Go (1942), Jitterbugs (1943, as the gangster who expands and levitates to the ceiling after consuming one of Hardy's "gas pills") and The Big Noise (1944). One of James Bush's more noticeable post-war screen roles was Dr. Ernest O. Lawrence in The Beginning or the End (1947), MGM's dramatization of the Manhattan Project.

Trivia: William Bakewell began playing film juveniles at the age of 17. Bakewell enjoyed a flurry of activity in the early talkie era, with substantial roles in such major films as All Quiet on the Western Front (1930). By the end of the 1930s, his career had by-and-large diminished to minor roles, such as the chivalrous mounted officer in the evacuation scenes in Gone With the Wind (1939). During the next decade, Bakewell fluctuated between one-scene bits and stuffed-shirt character parts, notably James Stewart's rival for the affections of Lana Turner in You Gotta Stay Happy (1948). The baby-boomer generation will always remember Bakewell as Tobias Norton in Disney's ratings-grabbing Davy Crockett episodes of the 1950s; he also played the condescending stage manager on the prime-time version of The Pinky Lee Show (1950). William Bakewell spent most of the last half of his life as a successful California Realtor.

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.