Trivia: At the peak of his career in the early '30s, actor Bela Lugosi was the screen's most notorious personification of evil; the most famous and enduring Dracula, he helped usher in an era of new popularity for the horror genre, only to see his own fame quickly evaporate. Béla Ferenc Dezsõ Blaskó was born in Lugos, Hungary, on October 20, 1882. After seeing a touring repertory company as they passed through town, he became fascinated by acting, and began spending all of his time mounting his own dramatic productions with the aid of other children. Upon the death of his father in 1894, Lugosi apprenticed as a miner, later working on the railroad. His first professional theatrical job was as a chorus boy in an operetta, followed by a stint at the Budapest Academy of Theatrical Arts. By 1901, he was a leading actor with Hungary's Royal National Theatre, and around 1917 began appearing in films (sometimes under the name Arisztid Olt) beginning with A Régiséggyüjtö. Lugosi was also intensely active in politics, and he organized an actors' union following the 1918 collapse of the Hungarian monarchy; however, when the leftist forces were defeated a year later he fled to Germany, where he resumed his prolific film career with 1920's Der Wildtöter und Chingachgook. Lugosi remained in Germany through 1921, when he emigrated to the United States. He made his American film debut in 1923's The Silent Command, but struggled to find further work, cast primarily in exotic bit roles on stage and screen. His grasp of English was virtually non-existent, and he learned his lines phonetically, resulting in an accented, resonant baritone which made his readings among the most distinctive and imitated in performing history. In 1924, Lugosi signed on to direct a drama titled The Right to Dream, but unable to communicate with his cast and crew he was quickly fired; he sued the producers, but was found by the court to be unable to helm a theatrical production and was ordered to pay fines totalling close to 70 dollars. When he refused, the contents of his apartment were auctioned off to pay his court costs -- an inauspicious beginning to his life in America, indeed. Lugosi's future remained grim, but in 1927 he was miraculously cast to play the title character in the Broadway adaptation of the Bram Stoker vampire tale Dracula; reviews were poor, but the production was a hit, and he spent three years in the role. In 1929, Lugosi married a wealthy San Francisco widow named Beatrice Weeks, a union which lasted all of three days; their divorce, which named Clara Bow as the other woman, was a media sensation, and it launched him to national notoriety. After a series of subsequent films, however, Lugosi again faded from view until 1931, when he was tapped to reprise his Dracula portrayal on the big screen. He was Universal executives' last choice for the role -- they wanted Lon Chaney Sr., but he was suffering from cancer -- while director Tod Browning insisted upon casting an unknown. When no other suitable choice arose, however, only Lugosi met with mutual, if grudging, agreement. Much to the shock of all involved, Dracula was a massive hit. Despite considerable studio re-editing, it was moody and atmospheric, and remains among the most influential films in American cinema. Dracula also rocketed Lugosi to international fame, and he was immediately offered the role of the monster in James Whale's Frankenstein; he refused -- in order to attach himself to a picture titled Quasimodo -- and the part instead went to Boris Karloff. The project never went beyond the planning stages, however, and in a sense Lugosi's career never righted itself; he remained a prolific screen presence, but the enduring fame which appeared within his reach was lost forever. Moreover, he was eternally typecast: Throughout the remainder of the decade and well into the 1940s, he appeared in a prolific string of horror films, some good (1932's Island of Lost Souls and 1934's The Black Cat, the latter the first of many collaborations with Karloff), but most of them quite forgettable. Lugosi's choice of projects was indiscriminate at best, and his reputation went into rapid decline; most of his performances were variations on his Dracula role, and before long he slipped into outright parodies of the character in pictures like 1948's Abbott & Costello Meet Frankenstein, which was to be his last film for four years.As Lugosi's career withered, he became increasingly eccentric, often appearing in public clad in his Dracula costume. He was also the victim of numerous financial problems, and became addicted to drugs. In 1952, he returned from exile to star in Bela Lugosi Meets a Brooklyn Gorilla, followed later that year by the similarly low-brow My Son, the Vampire and Old Mother Riley Meets the Vampire. By 1953, Lugosi was firmly aligned with the notorious filmmaker Ed Wood, widely recognized as the worst director in movie history; together they made a pair of films -- Glen or Glenda? and Bride of the Monster -- before Lugosi committed himself in 1955 in order to overcome his drug battles. Upon his release, he and Wood began work on the infamous Plan 9 From Outer Space, but after filming only a handful of scenes, Lugosi died of a heart attack on August 15, 1956; he was buried in his Dracula cape. In the decades to come, his stature as a cult figure grew, and in 1994 the noted filmmaker Tim Burton directed the screen biography Ed Wood, casting veteran actor Martin Landau as Lugosi; Landau was brilliant in the role, and won the Oscar which Lugosi himself never came remotely close to earning -- a final irony in a career littered with bittersweet moments.

Trivia: Comely Suzanne Kaaren was attracting offers from producers and impressarios interested in featuring her in their work from her early teens. Born in New York and trained as a dancer, when she was 15 she came to the attention of Florenz Ziegfeld, who offered to put her into his Follies, and would have but for her parents' refusal to allow it. She entered films in 1934 at the age of 18, usually playing dancers or small speaking roles, and even managed to get a part in M-G-M's The Great Ziegfeld, although most of her work took place in less important films. One of Kaaren's most prominent appearances took place in the Three Stooges vehicle Disorder in the Court, in which she acted and had a superb dance number. She later recalled working with the Three Stooges very fondly, remembering that they were always trying out new gags and bits of physical comedy in front of her on and off the set, to see if they were funny or not. Kaaren did two more movies with the comic trio, Yes, We Have No Bonanza and What's the Matador, sandwiched in between appearances in small (often uncredited) roles in major films such as Idiot's Delight, in which she played one of the nurses that Clark Gable kisses in the hospital sequence. Her biggest role (and best-known movie) was as the heroine in the Bela Lugosi chiller The Devil Bat, a low-budget horror film which, thanks to its public domain status (in which it is often distributed under the name Killer Bats), is still widely shown more than six decade later. Kaaren later married actor Sidney Blackmer and retired from acting. In the 1980s, she made headlines again in New York when she was one of the successful plaintiffs in a lawsuit against real estate mogul Donald Trump, and she returned to acting briefly, in a small uncredited role in the movie The Cotton Club, playing the Duchess of Park Avenue.

Trivia: A longtime character actor/stuntman/leading man/director, Dave O'Brien (born David Barclay) was born in Big Springs, Texas, and entered movies in the early '30s as a stuntman and occasional character actor -- he is probably best remembered by college students of the late '60s and early '70s for his portrayal of the crazed marijuana smoker in the exploitation film Reefer Madness. During the late '30s and early '40s, O'Brien also played the title role in the serial Captain Midnight, and was the responsible adult in the East Side Kids series, but it was as the lead in MGM's Pete Smith Specialty comedy shorts -- which O'Brien also directed, under his real name David Barclay -- that he was best known to '40s moviegoers. The Pete Smith shorts, which were basically comedic looks at human foibles, took full advantage of O'Brien's background in stunt work, and hold up extremely well today. O'Brien still played occasional lead roles, especially in B-pictures such as The Man Who Walks Alone (1946), an unusual comedy with serious overtones about a veteran returning home from World War II, but by the early '50s had moved into supporting parts, such as that of the stage manager in Kiss Me Kate (1953), directed by his fellow Pete Smith alumnus George Sidney. O'Brien later became a writer for Red Skelton on television.

Trivia: Stocky, officious American actor Guy Usher made a spectacular film debut in The Penguin Pool Murder (1932), playing the drowned victim of the titular crime. Many of Usher's subsequent roles required a great deal of fluster and bluster: As land-developer Harry Payne Bosterly in It's a Gift (1934), he dismissed W.C. Fields by bellowing, "You're drunk!," whereupon Fields put him in his place by responding, "And you're crazy. But tomorrow I'll be sober, and you'll always be crazy." Usher also appeared as D.A. Hamilton Burger in the 1934 Perry Mason adaptation The Case of the Black Cat. In the late '30s-early '40s, Guy Usher was a mainstay at Monogram Pictures, again specializing in murder victims.

Trivia: Actress Yolande Donlan is primarily known for her work on the British stage, but she has also appeared in a few films including Expresso Bongo (1959) and The Adventurers (1970). The daughter of James Donlan, she was born in Jersey City, NJ and educated in an LA convent. At age 18, she debuted onstage in Los Angeles. In 1944 she made her first Broadway appearance and by the end of 1946 had moved to London.

Trivia: Character actor Donald Kerr showed up whenever a gumchewing Runyonesque type (often a reporter or process server) was called for. A bit actor even in two-reelers and "B" pictures, Kerr was one of those vaguely familiar faces whom audiences would immediately recognize, ask each other "Who is that?", then return to the film, by which time Kerr had scooted the scene. The actor's first recorded film appearance was in 1933's Carnival Lady. Twenty-two years later, Donald Kerr concluded his career in the same anonymity with which he began it in 1956's Yaqui Drums.

Trivia: American actor Gene O'Donnell played character roles in films of the '40s, '50s, and '60s, primarily working for Republic Studios. He got his start as a radio announcer and made his film debut in the Boris Karloff vehicle The Ape (1940). He served in the Army during WWII and afterward returned to Hollywood to resume his career in both films and television.

Trivia: Best known as the voice of Elmer Fudd in numerous Warner Bros. cartoons, Arthur Q. Bryan also appeared in various live action character roles, most notably as a newspaper editor in the 1941 film The Devil Bat. He was a prolific radio talent as well.

Trivia: Sometimes he was Hal Price, other times he was Harry Price. Sometimes (in fact, much of the time) he wasn't billed at all. Whatever the case, Hal Price was one of the more ubiquitous performers in the field of B-Westerns and serials. He was the bald, mustachioed frontiersman who usually said something like, "We got a nice, quiet town here, stranger...and we aim to keep it that way."

Trivia: Character actor John Davidson entered films in 1914. Though a native New Yorker, Davidson seemed most at home playing sinister Middle Easterners or Europeans; he was, for example, cast as the sheik in Priscilla Dean's 1922 version of Under Two Flags and as Cardinal Richelieu in the 1924 Rudolph Valentino vehicle Monsieur Beaucaire. In talkies, he was seen in roles ranging from bit-part concierges to criminal masterminds. Busiest in serials, Davidson menaced his way through such chapter plays as The Perils of Pauline (1934), Dick Tracy vs. Crime Inc. (1941), The Adventures of Captain Marvel (1941), Secret Service in Darkest Africa (1942), The Perils of Nyoka (1942), and The Purple Monster Strikes (1945). Even in his fleeting A-picture appearances, he remained an unsavory presence (e.g., Benedict Arnold in Where Do We Go From Here?). Once in a while, he'd spoof his established screen image, notably as the capricious sidewalk hypnotist in the 1939 Our Gang one-reeler Duel Personalities. He retired from films sometime in the early '50s. John Davidson is no relation to the singer of the same name.