First Comes Courage

Merle OBeron (Actor) .. Nicole Larsen

Born: February 19, 1911
Died: November 23, 1979
Birthplace: Mumbai, India

Trivia: Born in India to an Indian mother and an Indo-Irish father, Estelle Merle O'Brien Thompson spent an impoverished childhood in the subcontinent, before coming to England in 1928 to pursue an acting career. Because her bi-racial parentage would have been a subject of immense prejudice, Oberon began telling others that she was born to white parents on the Australian island of Tasmania -- a story she would keep up until almost the end of her life. It was Hungarian-born film mogul Alexander Korda who first spotted Oberon's screen potential, and began giving her parts in his pictures, building her up toward stardom with role such as Anne Boleyn in The Private Life of Henry VIII (1933). Although she was an actress of very limited range, Oberon acquitted herself well in movies such as The Scarlet Pimpernel (1934), as Sir Percy Blakeney's wife, and her exotic good looks made her extremely appealing. She was cast opposite Laurence Olivier in the 1938 comedy The Divorce of Lady X, which was shot in Technicolor and showed Oberon off to even better advantage. Seeking to build her up as an international star, Korda sold half of Oberon's contract to Samuel Goldwyn in America, who cast her as Cathy in Wuthering Heights (1939). She moved to America with the outbreak of war, and also married Korda (1939-1945), but despite some success in That Uncertain Feeling, The Lodger, and A Song to Remember, her star quickly began to fade, and the Korda vehicle Lydia (1941), a slow-moving melodrama that had her aging 50 years, didn't help her career at all. Even a good acting performance in the Hitchcock-like chiller Dark Waters (1944) failed to register with the public. Oberon re-emerged only occasionally after the early '50s, until 1973 when she starred in, produced, and co-edited Interval, a strange romantic drama that costarred her future husband Robert Wolders, that failed to find good reviews or an audience.Oberon would marry three more times, to cinematographer Lucien Ballard in the late forties, to Italian industrialist Bruno Pagliali throughout the 60's, and finally, to actor Robert Wolders from the mid 70's until her death in 1979 at the age of 68.

Carl Esmond (Actor) .. Maj. Paul Dichter

Born: June 14, 1902

Brian Aherne (Actor) .. Capt. Allan Lowell

Born: May 02, 1902
Died: February 10, 1986

Trivia: Active in amateur theatricals from age three, Briton Brian Aherne studied for his craft at the Italia Conti School, making his professional bow when he was eight. Aherne would later claim that he remained an actor into adulthood (after a tentative stab at becoming an architect) mainly because he liked to sleep until ten in the morning. Successful on stage and screen in England, Aherne came to America in 1931 to appear in the first Broadway production of The Barretts of Wimpole Street. His first Hollywood film was 1933's Song of Songs, in which he appeared with Marlene Dietrich. Free-lancing throughout the 1930s, Aherne established himself as a gentlemanly Britisher who was willing to defend his honor (or someone else's) with his fists if needs be. Many of his roles were secondary, though he played the title role in 1937's The Great Garrick and was starred in a brace of Hal Roach productions in 1938 and 1939 (the actor wasn't crazy about the improvisational attitude at Roach, but he enjoyed the roles). He was Oscar-nominated for his sensitive performance of the doomed Emperor Maximillian in Juarez (1939). In the late 1950s, he put film and TV work aside for a theatrical tour as Henry Higgins in My Fair Lady. Off-camera, Aherne was a licensed pilot and an aspiring writer: he penned a 1969 autobiography, A Proper Job, as well as a biography of his close friend George Sanders, A Dreadful Man. At one point in his life, Aherne was married to Joan Fontaine, but he knew the honeymoon was over when, out of pique, she ripped up a collection of his best reviews. Brian Aherne was the brother of Patrick Ahearne, a character player who showed up in such films as Titanic (1953), The Court Jester (1955) and Around the World in Eighty Days (1956).

Fritz Leiber (Actor) .. Dr. Aanrud

Born: January 31, 1882
Died: October 14, 1949

Trivia: With his piercing eyes and shock of white hair, Fritz Leiber seemed every inch the priests, professors, musical professors and religious fanatics that he was frequently called upon to play in films. A highly respected Shakespearean actor, Leiber made his film bow in 1916, playing Mercutio in the Francis X. Bushman version of Romeo and Juliet. His many silent-era portrayals included Caesar in Theda Bara's 1917 Cleopatra and Solomon in the mammoth 1921 Betty Blythe vehicle Solomon and Sheba. He thrived as a character actor in talkies, usually in historical roles; one of his larger assignments of the 1940s was as Franz Liszt in the Claude Rains remake of The Phantom of the Opera (1943). Fritz Leiber was the father of the famous science-fiction author of the same name.

Erville Alderson (Actor) .. Soren

Born: January 01, 1882
Died: August 04, 1957

Trivia: In films from 1921 through 1952, white-maned American character actor Erville Alderson was most closely associated with D.W. Griffith in his early movie years. Alderson played major roles in Griffith's The White Rose (1932), America (1924) and Isn't Life Wonderful (1924). In D.W.'s Sally of the Sawdust (1926), Alderson performed double duty, playing the merciless Judge Foster in front of the cameras and serving as assistant director behind the scenes. During the talkie era, the actor showed up in "old codger" roles as sheriffs, court clerks and newspaper editors. You might remember Erville Alderson as the crooked handwriting expert (he was crooked, not the handwriting) in Frank Capra's Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939) and as Jefferson Davis in the Errol Flynn starrer Santa Fe Trail (1940).

Erik Rolf (Actor) .. Ole

Born: January 01, 1911
Died: January 01, 1957

Reinhold Schunzel (Actor) .. Col. Kurt von Elser

Born: November 07, 1886
Died: September 11, 1954

Trivia: German-born Reinhold Schunzel had been a businessman and journalist before turning to acting and directing in the World War I years. In 1919, Schunzel directed his first film, Mary Magdalena. Specializing in light comedies, Schunzel helmed the classic 1933 "drag" farce Viktor und Viktoria (as well as the simultaneously film French-language version George et Georgette), which of course was resuscitated by Blake Edwards in 1981 as a vehicle for his wife Julie Andrews. Even when he was at his busiest as a director, Schunzel found time to act in other men's films, notably G.W. Pabst's Threepenny Opera (1931), in which he played crooked constable Tiger Brown. Though he tried to make the best of things after Hitler's ascent to power, Schunzel finally fled Germany in 1936. He resettled in Hollywood, playing character roles. Amidst the requisite Nazis and Professorial types, Schunzel enjoyed one of his best-ever screen roles in Paramount's The Man in Half-Moon Street (1942), playing the conscience-stricken associate of murderous "eternal-life" experimenter Nils Asther. In 1952, Schunzel returned to Germany, where after making two additional film appearances he died at the age of 68. A 1989 biography, Reinhold Schunzel: Schaupieler und Regisseur, was written by Hans-Michael Bock, Wolfgang Jacobson, and Joerg Schoening.

Isobel Elsom (Actor) .. Rose Linstrom

Born: March 16, 1893
Died: January 12, 1981

Trivia: A stage actress of long standing in her native England, aristocratic leading lady Isobel Elsom made her first Broadway appearance in 1926. Her biggest stage hit was in the role of the wealthy murder victim in 1939's Ladies in Retirement, a role she repeated (after a two-year, nonstop theatrical run) in the 1941 film version. Nearly always cast as a stately lady of fine breeding, Elsom played everything from Gary Cooper's soon-to-be mother-in-law in Casanova Brown (1946) to a movie studio executive in Jerry Lewis' The Errand Boy (1962). She was also seen as Mrs. Eynesford-Hill in the 1964 movie adaptation of My Fair Lady. At one time married to director Maurice Elvey, Isobel Elsom was sometimes billed under the last name of another husband, appearing as Isobel Harbold.

William Martin (Actor) .. Dichter's Chauffeur

Dick Ryan (Actor) .. Dr. Hoff

Born: August 25, 1896
Died: August 12, 1969

Trivia: Actor Dick Ryan made his first movie appearance in Monogram's Smark Alecks (1942), and his last in Paramount's Summer and Smoke (1961), an artistic stretch if ever there was one. Ryan usually plays doctors, judges, and prison wardens, with a few beat cops and bartenders thrown in. Accordingly, most of his screen characters were identified by their professions rather than by proper names. One of Dick Ryan's larger assignments was in the 1957 Rowan and Martin vehicle Once Upon a Horse, which nostalgically featured several Hollywood old-timers in choice roles.

Lewis Wilson (Actor) .. Dr. Kleinich

John Elliott (Actor) .. Norwegian Patient

Born: July 05, 1876
Died: December 12, 1956

Trivia: A distinguished gray-haired stage actor, John Elliott appeared sporadically in films from around 1920. But Elliott became truly visible after the advent of sound, when he found his niche in B-Westerns. As versatile as they come, he could play the heroine's harassed father with as much conviction as he would "boss heavies." Doctors, lawyers, assayers, prospectors, clergymen -- John Elliott played them all in a screen career that lasted until 1956, the year of his death. His final screen appearance was in Perils of the Wilderness (1956) which, coincidentally, was the second-to-last action serial produced in the United States.

Greta Granstedt (Actor) .. Girl Assistant

Born: July 13, 1907
Died: October 07, 1987

Trivia: Born Irene Granstedt, this Swedish starlet changed her first name for obvious reasons when entering films in 1928. No one, however, mistook Granstedt for Garbo and she went on to play a series of hardboiled roles seemingly deemed too small for the likes of Veda Ann Borg. Growing up in Mountain View, CA, Granstedt first made headlines when at 14 she shot and critically wounded a boyfriend who had committed the sin of accompanying another girl to a church social. According to newspaper reports, Greta Granstedt was sentenced "to leave Mountain View and never return." By the mid-'20s, she had recovered enough from the ordeal to appear opposite Joseph Schildkraut in a Los Angeles production of From Hell Came a Lady and had taken the second of her seven husbands. She made her screen debut in a small role in Buck Privates (1928), with European idol Lya de Putti, and her talkie debut in The Last Performance (1929). Again the role was miniscule and Granstedt would make her biggest impact in low-budget action films, including two serials. Her unfortunate past was dredged up again when she married musician Ramon Ramos but her reputation as the "Tragedy Girl" failed to open any new doors in Hollywood and she continued to play mainly bit parts. Some of these, however, were quite good and she is memorable as Beulah Bondi's daughter in the crime drama Street Scene (1931) and as Margo's hardboiled friend in the New York-lensed Crime Without Passion (1934). While in New York, Granstedt appeared in a couple of Broadway plays before returning to Hollywood for perhaps her best remembered role, that of Anna, one of the resistance workers in Beasts of Berlin (1939), the exploitation drama that put ramshackle PRC on the map. Her other 1940s roles were minor and she had to wait until 1958 and The Return of Dracula to make any kind of impact. In this not-as-bad-as-it-sounds horror pastiche she played a stout California housewife welcoming Francis Lederer's count to her suburban home -- with the expected results. Retiring permanently from the screen in 1970, Granstedt relocated to Canada and raised Appaloosa horses.

William 'Bill' Phillips (Actor) .. Aanrud's Assistant

Born: January 01, 1907
Died: June 27, 1957

Trivia: Muscular actor William "Bill" Phillips attended George Washington University, where he distinguished himself in such contact sports as football and boxing. After cutting his acting teeth with Eva Le Galienne's Civic Repertory group, Phillips made his film debut in 1940. He landed a long-term MGM contract after registering well in a small role in See Here Private Hargrove (1944). By the 1950s, Phillips was typed as a Western actor, usually in such secondary roles as the barber in High Noon (1952). William "Bill" Phillips made his last appearance in the Ronald Reagan-Nancy Davis starrer Hellcats of the Navy (1957).

Pietro Sosso (Actor) .. Janitor

Born: November 20, 1869

Conrad Binyon (Actor) .. Small Boy

Arno Frey (Actor) .. Sergeant

Born: January 01, 1899
Died: January 01, 1961

Eric Feldary (Actor) .. Private

Born: January 01, 1919
Died: January 01, 1968

Henry Rowland (Actor) .. Private

Born: January 01, 1914
Died: April 26, 1984

Trivia: Though born in the American Midwest, Henry Rowland had heavily Teutonic facial features, making him an invaluable commodity in wartime films. Rowland "heiled" and "achtunged" his way through films ranging from 1942's Casablanca to 1975's Russ Meyer's Supervixens, in which he played a suspicious old coot named Martin Borman! Conversely, he showed up as an American flight surgeon in 1944's Winged Victory, billed under his military ranking as Corporal Henry Rowland. In his last years, Rowland continued playing such Germanic characters as the Amish farmer in 1975's The Frisco Kid.

Hans Von Morhart (Actor) .. German Guard

Born: January 01, 1896

Ethel Griffies (Actor) .. Nurse

Born: April 26, 1878
Died: September 09, 1975

Trivia: The daughter of actor-manager Samuel Rupert Woods and actress Lillie Roberts, Ethel Griffies began her own stage career at the age of 3. Griffies was 21 when she finally made her London debut in 1899, and 46 when she made her first Broadway appearance in Havoc (1924). Discounting a tentative stab at filmmaking in 1917, she made her movie bow in 1930, repeating her stage role in Old English (1930). Habitually cast as a crotchety old lady with the proverbial golden heart, she alternated between bits and prominently featured roles for the next 35 years. Her larger parts included Grace Poole in both the 1935 and 1944 versions of Jane Eyre, and the vituperous matron who accuses Tippi Hedren of being a harbinger of doom in Hitchcock's The Birds (1963). Every so often, she'd take a sabbatical from film work to concentrate on the stage; she made her last Broadway appearance in 1967, at which time she was England's oldest working actress. Presumably at the invitation of fellow Briton Arthur Treacher, Ethel Griffies was a frequent guest on TV's Merv Griffin Show in the late 1960s, never failing to bring down the house with her wickedly witty comments on her 80 years in show business.

Walter Thiele (Actor) .. Orderly

John Royce (Actor) .. German Orderly

Frederic Brunn (Actor) .. German Guard

Lloyd Ingraham (Actor) .. Old Norwegian

Born: November 30, 1874
Died: April 04, 1956

Trivia: An important screen director in the 1910s, Illinois-born Lloyd Ingraham had been a stock manager for California entrepreneur Oliver Morosco prior to entering films directing Broncho Billy Westerns for Essanay in the early 1910s. He went on to direct some of the silent era's biggest stars, including Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks, and would specialize in robust outdoor adventures and Westerns. An equally busy supporting player who appeared in scores of silent films ranging from Intolerance (1916) to Scaramouche (1923), the white-haired, ascetic-looking veteran became an actor for hire after the advent of sound, appearing mostly in low-budget Westerns and almost always playing the heroine's father or a lawman. Spending his final years as a resident of the Motion Picture Country House and Hospital in Woodland Hills, CA, Ingraham's death was attributed to pneumonia.

Louis Adlon (Actor) .. Nazi Lieutenant

Born: October 07, 1907
Died: March 31, 1947

Trivia: A supporting actor and bit player from Germany, in Hollywood from the late '30s, Louis Adlon was the son of the great Berlin hotel owner. Although his Hollywood screen roles were miniscule at best -- almost always secondary Nazis -- Adlon later gained fame as the main character of the 1997 semi-documentary In der Glanzwollen Welt der Adlon Hotel (The Glamorous World of the Adlon Hotel), written and directed by his nephew, German cult director Percy Adlon. Louis Adlon left Hollywood for Berlin in 1945 to function as overseas correspondent for the Hearst papers and there found the old family hostelry almost unharmed by the allied bombardments. The role of Louis was played in the film by his great-nephew (and Percy's son), Felix Adlon.

Niels Bagge (Actor) .. Thorsten

Rex Williams (Actor) .. Young Nazi Officer

Otto Reichow (Actor) .. Young Nazi Officer

Born: January 01, 1904

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.

Hans Von Twardowski (Actor) .. Nazi Captain

Born: May 05, 1898

Fern Emmett (Actor) .. Dress Designer

Born: March 22, 1896
Died: September 03, 1946

Trivia: Most of character actress Fern Emmett's early appearances were in westerns, where she played scores of maiden aunts, hillbilly wives, town spinsters, ranch owners and stagecoach passengers. When she moved into contemporary films, she was most often seen as a landlady or gossip. She enjoyed a rare breakaway from this established screen persona when she played a screaming murder victim in the 1943 Universal thriller Captive Wild Women. Seldom given more than a few lines in "A" features, Emmett was better-served in programmers and 2-reel comedies. Emmett so closely resembled "Wicked Witch of the West" Margaret Hamilton that some historians have lumped their credits together, even though Emmett began her film career in 1930, three years before Hamilton ever stepped before a camera. Fern Emmett was the wife of actor Henry Rocquemore.

Bob McKenzie (Actor) .. Justice of the Peace

Born: September 22, 1883
Died: July 08, 1949

Trivia: Irish-born Robert McKenzie was already a theatrical showman of some renown by the time he made his first film appearance in 1921. The barrel-chested, snaggle-toothed McKenzie appeared in dozens of westerns and comedies, usually as a bombastic lawman or backwoods con artist. Even when he played bits (which was often), his raspy voice and hyena-like laugh always identified him. His more memorable feature-film roles included W. C. Fields' drinking buddy Charlie Bogle in You're Telling Me (1934), larcenous Judge Roy Dean in Gene Autry's Sing, Cowboy, Sing (1937), and the jolly captain who rents Laurel & Hardy a broken-down boat in Saps at Sea (1940). In addition, he appeared in hundreds of short subjects, playing opposite the likes of Our Gang, Andy Clyde, Charley Chase and the Three Stooges. In 1927, McKenzie tried his hand at screenwriting with the low-budget western The White Outlaw. Robert McKenzie and his actress-wife Eva had three daughters, all of whom acted in films at one time or another; their daughter Ella was the wife of comedian Billy Gilbert.

Guy Kingsford (Actor) .. Sub Commander

Born: September 30, 1911
Died: November 09, 1986

Trivia: The son of British-born character actor Walter Kingsford (Dr. Carey in MGM's Dr. Kildare series), Guy Kingsford had appeared on-stage at London's West End and on Broadway (in Frederick Lonsdale's Once Is Enough (1937) with Ina Claire) but his screen career proved a disappointment. Often appearing unbilled, Kingsford played scores of typical "British" characters and was especially busy during World War II. Father and son appeared together only once, in Bomber's Moon (1943), where, once again, Kingsford Jr. performed unbilled. He later appeared on such television programs as Sergeant Preston of the Yukon and Alcoa Presents.

Louis Jean Heydt (Actor) .. Norwegian

Born: April 17, 1905
Died: January 29, 1960

Trivia: It was once said of the versatile Louis Jean Heydt that he played everything except a woman. Born in New Jersey, the blonde, chiseled-featured Heydt attended Worcester Academy and Dartmouth College. He briefly served as a reporter on the New YorkWorld before opting for a stage career. Among his Broadway appearances was the lead in Preston Sturges' Strictly Dishonorable, establishing a long working relationship with Sturges that would extend to the latter's film productions The Great McGinty (1940) and The Great Moment (1942). Heydt's film characters often seemed destined to be killed off before the fourth reel, either because they were hiding something or because they'd just stumbled upon important information that could prove damaging to the villains. He was knocked off in the first three minutes of Charlie Chan at Treasure Island (1939) and was shot full of holes just before revealing an important plot point to Humphrey Bogart in The Big Sleep (1946) (this after an unforgettable interrogation scene in which Heydt is unable to look Bogart straight in the eye). Heydt's many other assignments include the hungry soldier in Gone with the Wind (1939), Mentor Graham in Abe Lincoln in Illinois (1940), a frustrated general practitioner in Tortilla Flat (1941), a squadron leader in Gung Ho (1943) and a loquacious rural family man in Come to the Stable (1949). Our Gang fans will recall Heydt as Bobby Blake's stepfather in the MGM "Gang" shorts Dad For a Day (1939) and All About Hash (1940). A ubiquitous TV actor, Louis Jean Heydt was seen on many anthology series, and as a semi-regular on the 1958 syndicated adventure weekly MacKenzie's Raiders.

George O'Flaherty (Actor) .. Cipher Expert

Emerson Fisher-Smith (Actor) .. Cipher Expert

Nelson Leigh (Actor) .. Blake

Born: January 01, 1913
Died: January 01, 1967

Tom Stevenson (Actor) .. Blakeley

Born: February 22, 1910

Trivia: Handsome British stage actor Tom Stevenson had played the homicidal husband in the stage version of Gaslight before making his screen debut as the gravedigger in The Wolf Man (1941). Freelancing, Stevenson played minor supporting roles at almost every Hollywood studio, often portraying supercilious headwaiters or forbidding military officers. When MGM filmed Gaslight in 1944, Stevenson played Williams, the constable, and he was Reverend Hyslip in Bette Davis's Mr. Skeffington later that year. Stevenson, who also appeared in early television shows, returned to the legitimate stage in 1950.

Miles Mander (Actor) .. Col. Wallace

Born: May 14, 1888
Died: February 08, 1946

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.

Evan Thomas (Actor) .. Ship's Captain

Born: February 17, 1891

Larry Parks (Actor) .. Capt. Langdon

Born: December 13, 1914
Died: April 13, 1975

Trivia: Plagued by several severe childhood illnesses, Larry Parks was inspired by the example of his doctors to study medicine at the University of Illinois. But before graduating, Parks had decided to become an actor. He headed for New York, where he ushered at various theaters and movie houses before joining the Group Theater. He signed a movie contract with Columbia Pictures in 1941, appearing in "B"s and bits until selected to play the title role in the big-budget The Jolson Story. Parks was coached in the role by Al Jolson himself, whose singing voice was heard throughout the film (reportedly, this association was a pleasant one until Jolson, incensed that Columbia had not asked him to star in his own biopic, viciously turned on Parks and treated him atrociously). With the exceptions of Jolson Story and its 1949 follow-up, Jolson Sings Again, most of Parks' starring vehicles were easily forgettable. As a result of his brief association with the Communist Party, Parks was ordered by the HUAC to testify in its loyalty hearing in 1951. Though he publicly begged not to be forced to turn stool pigeon by identifying his fellow "Reds" in the movie industry, Parks ended up being strongarmed into doing just that. If he had harbored any hopes that his testimony would save his own career, those hopes were dashed when Parks was dropped by Columbia and unofficially blacklisted from films for ten years. He supported himself during these dark days by appearing in musical stage productions with his wife, actress Betty Garrett. In 1962, the ban was lifted on Larry Parks, and he made his movie comeback in John Huston's Freud; it proved to be his last film.

Richard Ryen (Actor) .. Dr. Hoff

Born: September 13, 1885
Died: December 22, 1965

Trivia: Richard Revi led a roller-coaster of a career as an actor on-stage and screen between two continents, mostly thanks to the rise of the Nazis in Germany. Born Richard Anton Robert Felix in Föherczeglack, in what was then Austria-Hungary in 1885, he embarked on an acting career in the theater in the second half of the first decade of the 20th century. Using the professional name Richard Revi, he subsequently moved into directing and achieved some considerable success and respect in Zurich and later in Germany. His most important protégé during the early '20s was a youthful dancer/actress/singer who was known originally as Karoline Wilhemine Charlotte Blamauer, but, with Revi's help and encouragement -- and a shared love of the two for Uncle Vanya -- took the stage name Lotte Lenja, later altered to Lotte Lenya. Revi failed in his initial attempt to break into theater in Germany by way of Berlin, though in the process of this abortive effort he did inadvertently facilitate the first meeting between Lenya and her future husband, Kurt Weill. It was in Munich that Revi ended up making his name, as the stage director of the Munich Chamber Theater. He also began a screen career, appearing in such films as The Bartered Bride (1932), The Tunnel (1933), Inheritance in Pretoria, White Majesty, and Peer Gynt (all 1934). The rise of the Nazi Party to power in Germany in 1933 cost Revi his position, however, and he eventually moved to America, where he began working onscreen under the name Richard Ryen (sometimes spelled Richard Ryan). Rather ironically, most of the roles that he played during World War II were Nazi officers and officials, most notably in Michael Curtiz's Casablanca, in which he portrayed Colonel Heinz, the aide to the Gestapo Major Strasser (portrayed by his fellow expatriate Conrad Veidt), forever walking in the shadow of his superior. He also occasionally played other parts, including that of the narrator in the feature Chetniks (1943). Revi also occasionally got to work in non-war-related movies, including The Constant Nymph (1943) and Salome, Where She Danced (1945). His best postwar role was probably as Meyer in Billy Wilder's ironic, bittersweet comedy A Foreign Affair (1948), shot and set in postwar Berlin. He worked mainly on-stage after World War II, and principally in America, although he did resume something of a European career in Switzerland before becoming a writer.

Marten Lamont (Actor) .. Lieutenant Colonel

Born: March 16, 1911

Trivia: British-born, California-educated Marten Lamont enjoyed a varied career that included a stint as a feature writer for Time, managing editor of Arts & Architecture (1938-1942), writing and producing for NBC and, in 1941, a flying instructor for the Army Air Corps. In between all these endeavors, Lamont found time to appear in scores of Hollywood productions, almost always playing dignified gentlemen from the British Isles: Sir Guy's Squire in The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938), Mr. Denny in Pride and Prejudice (1940), and Yestyn, the mine owner's son in How Green Was My Valley (1944), to name a few. With his comfortable features and Cary Grant-like voice, Lamont was perhaps the least obvious serial star of all time but there he was, starring as Jerry Blake in Republic's Federal Operator 99, a "4-F" hero as ever there was one.

Byron Foulger (Actor) .. Norwegian Shopkeeper

Born: January 01, 1900
Died: April 04, 1970

Trivia: In the 1959 Twilight Zone episode "Walking Distance," Gig Young comments that he thinks he's seen drugstore counterman Byron Foulger before. "I've got that kind of face" was the counterman's reply. Indeed, Foulger's mustachioed, bespectacled, tremble-chinned, moon-shaped countenance was one of the most familiar faces ever to grace the screen. A graduate of the University of Utah, Foulger developed a taste for performing in community theatre, making his Broadway debut in the '20s. Foulger then toured with Moroni Olsen's stock company, which led him to the famed Pasadena Playhouse as both actor and director. In films from 1936, Foulger usually played whining milksops, weak-willed sycophants, sanctimonious sales clerks, shifty political appointees, and the occasional unsuspected murderer. In real life, the seemingly timorous actor was not very easily cowed; according to his friend Victor Jory, Foulger once threatened to punch out Errol Flynn at a party because he thought that Flynn was flirting with his wife (Mrs. Foulger was Dorothy Adams, a prolific movie and stage character actress). Usually unbilled in "A" productions, Foulger could count on meatier roles in such "B" pictures as The Man They Could Not Hang (1939) and The Panther's Claw (1943). In the Bowery Boys' Up in Smoke (1957), Foulger is superb as a gleeful, twinkly-eyed Satan. In addition to his film work, Byron Foulger built up quite a gallery of portrayals on television; one of his final stints was the recurring role of engineer Wendell Gibbs on the popular sitcom Petticoat Junction.

Rolf Lindau (Actor) .. Jr. Officer

Charles Irwin (Actor) .. Capt. Lungden

Born: January 01, 1888
Died: January 12, 1969

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).

Hans Heinrich VonTwardowski (Actor) .. Nazi Captain

Born: January 01, 1897
Died: January 01, 1958

Paul Langton (Actor) .. Commando

Born: April 17, 1913
Died: April 15, 1980

Trivia: Making his movie bow in 1941, Paul Langton became a contract player at MGM, frequently appearing in war films. During the 1950s, Langton was seen in character parts like publicist Buddy Bliss in Big Knife (1955). He often showed up in horror films, notably The Snow Creature (1954), The Incredible Shrinking Man (1957; as the hero's brother), It! The Terror From Beyond Space (1958) and The Cosmic Man (1959). Paul Langton achieved TV stardom in the role of Leslie Harrington on the prime time serial Peyton Place (1964-68).

Gordon Clark (Actor) .. Commando

Sven Hugo Borg (Actor) .. Schmidt

Born: July 26, 1896
Died: February 19, 1981

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.

Paul Power (Actor) .. English Officer

Born: December 07, 1902
Died: April 05, 1968

Trivia: Basically a bit player, tall, dark-haired Paul Power (born Luther Vestergaard) came to films in 1925 with a background as a lawyer. Although rarely featured, Power spent more than three decades playing a variety of bit roles that included one of King Richard's knights in The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938), a Scottish highlander in I Married an Angel (1942), and a minister in Ma Barker's Killing Brood (1960). He added television to his long resumé in the 1950s, appearing in such shows as I Love Lucy, Perry Mason, and Maverick.

Leslie Denison (Actor) .. English Officer

Born: June 16, 1905
Died: September 25, 1992

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.

Pat Moriarity (Actor) .. Irish Top Sergeant.

1:30 pm - 3:00 pm, Friday, November 14 on Turner Classic Movies ()