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).

Trivia: Born in Japan to a British patent attorney and his actress wife, Olivia de Havilland succumbed to the lure of Thespis while attending high school in Los Gatos, CA, where she played Hermia in an amateur production of A Midsummer Night's Dream. The older sister of actress Joan Fontaine, de Havilland was spotted by famed director Max Reinhardt, who cast her in his legendary Hollywood Bowl production of the play. This led to her part in the Warner Bros. film adaptation of Midsummer in 1935, and being signed to a long-term contract wiht the company. Considering herself a classical actress, de Havilland tried to refuse the traditional ingenue roles offered her by the studio, which countered by telling her she'd be ruined in Hollywood if she didn't cooperate. Loaned out to David O. Selznick, de Havilland played Melanie Hamilton in Gone With the Wind (1939), earning an Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actress in the process. Although she didn't come out on top that year, she would later win two Best Actress Oscars, the first for 1946's To Each His Own, and then again for 1949's The Heiress. De Havilland also made news when she sued Warner Bros. for extending her seven-year contract by tacking on the months she'd been on suspension for refusing to take a part. The actress spent three long years off the screen, but she ultimately won her case, and the "De Havilland Law," as it would become known, effectively destroyed the studios' ability to virtually enslave their contractees by unfairly extending their contract time. After completing The Heiress, de Havilland spent several years on Broadway, cutting down her subsequent film appearances to approximately one per year. In 1955, she moved to France with her second husband, Paris Match editor Pierre Galante; she later recalled her Paris years with the semiautobiographical Every Frenchman Has One. De Havilland showed up in a brace of profitable fading-star horror films in the '60s: Lady in a Cage (1964) and Hush ... Hush, Sweet Charlotte (1965), in which she replaced Joan Crawford. During the next decade, she appeared in a number of TV productions and in such all-star film efforts as Airport '77 (1977) and The Swarm (1978). After a number of TV appearances (if not always starring roles) in the '80s, de Havilland once more found herself in the limelight in 1989, on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of Gone With the Wind. As one of the only surviving stars from this film, she was much sought after for interviews and reminiscences, but graciously refused almost every request.

Trivia: Few actors were more beloved of audiences across multiple generations -- and from more different fields of entertainment -- than Edward Everett Horton. For almost 70 years, his work delighted theatergoers on two coasts (and a lot of the real estate in between) and movie audiences, first in the silents and then in the talkies, where he quickly became a familiar supporting player and then a second lead, often essaying comically nervous "fuddy-duddy" parts, and transcended the seeming limitations of character acting to rival most of the leading men around him in popularity; he subsequently moved into television, both as an actor and narrator, and gained a whole new fandom for his work as the storyteller in the animated series "Fractured Fairy Tales." Edward Everett Horton was born in Brooklyn, NY, in 1886 -- when it was a separate city from New York City -- the son of Edward Everett Horton and Isabella Diack Horton. His grandfather was Edward Everett Hale, the author of the story The Man Without a Country. He attended Boys High School and later studied at the Brooklyn Polytechnic Institute and at Oberlin College in Ohio, and Columbia University in Manhattan. His path to graduation was thwarted when he joined the university's drama club -- despite his 6'2" build, his first role had him cast as a woman. He never did graduate from Columbia, but he embarked on a performing career that was to keep him busy for more than six decades. In those days, he also sang -- in a baritone -- and joined the Staten Island-based Dempsey Light Opera Company for productions of Michael Balfe's The Bohemian Girl and Gilbert & Sullivan's The Mikado. His singing brought him to the Broadway stage as a chorus member, and he subsequently spent three years with the Louis Mann company honing his acting skills while playing in stock -- Horton made his professional acting debut in 1908 with a walk-on role in The Man Who Stood Still. By 1911, he was working steadily and regularly, and often delighting audiences with his comedic talents, and remained with the Mann company for another two years. He was a leading man in the Crescent Theatre stock company, based in Brooklyn, and spent the remainder of the teens playing leading roles in theater companies across the United States, eventually basing himself in Los Angeles. Horton entered movies in 1918, and became well known to screen audiences with his performance in the 1923 version of Ruggles of Red Gap. He was identified almost entirely with comedic work after that, and by the end of the '20s had starring roles in a string of comedic shorts. It was after the advent of sound, however, that he fully hit his stride on the big screen. Horton's first talking feature was The Front Page (1931), directed by Lewis Milestone, based on the hit play by Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur, in which he played fidgety reporter Roy Bensinger. Starting in the early '20s, Horton based most of his stage work on the West Coast, producing as well as acting. He leased the Majestic Theater in Los Angeles and found success with works such as The Nervous Wreck, in which he worked with Franklin Pangborn, a character actor who would also -- like Horton -- specialize in nervous, fidgety roles (though Pangborn, unlike Horton, never rose beyond character actor and supporting player status in features). In 1932, he leased the Hollywood Playhouse, which he subsequently operated for a season starring in Benn Wolfe Levy's Springtime for Henry, in which he performed more than 3000 times, making enough money from that play alone to buy his summer home in the Adirondacks. Horton fit in his movie work in between productions of Springtime for Henry (which was filmed in 1934, without Horton), and was always in demand. Amid his many roles over the ensuing decade, Horton worked in a half-dozen of the Fred Astaire/Ginger Rogers musicals at RKO. His other notable roles onscreen during the 1930s included a portrayal of The Mad Hatter in the 1933 Alice in Wonderland, and a neurotic paleontologist (who first appears disguised as a woman) in Frank Capra's Lost Horizon (1937). He worked in at least six movies a year from the early '30s through the end of the 1940s, and there were occasional serious variations in his roles -- Horton played an unusually forceful part in Douglas Sirk's Summer Storm (1944), and he delivered a comedic tour de force (highlighted by a delightful scene with Carmen Miranda) in Busby Berkeley's The Gang's All Here (1943). Horton kept busy for more than 60 years, and not just in acting -- along with his brother George he bought up property in the San Fernando Valley from the 1920s onward, eventually assembling Beleigh Acres, a 23-acre development where he lived with his mother (who passed away at age 102). His hobbies included antiques, and at the time of his death in 1970, he had a collection with an estimated value of a half million dollars. He was busy on television throughout the 1950s and '60s, not only in onscreen work but also voice-overs for commercials, and he even hosted the Westminster Kennel Club dog show at Madison Square Garden. Horton was a regular cast member on the comedy Western series F Troop, playing Roaring Chicken (also referred to as Running Chicken), the Hekawi indian tribe medicine man. But his most enduring work from the 1960s was as the narrator of "Fractured Fairy Tales," the Jay Ward-produced co-feature to Rocky & Bullwinkle, in which he was prominently billed in the opening credits of every episode. That engagement endeared him to millions of baby boomers and their parents, and his work in those cartoons continues to gain Horton new fans four decades after his death. He grew frail in appearance during the 1960s, and was not averse to playing off of that reality on series such as Dennis the Menace, where he did a guest-star spot in one episode as Uncle Ned, a health-food and physical-culture fanatic. Horton never married, and shared a home later in life with his sister, Hannabelle Grant. He was hospitalized weeks before his death from cancer in September 1970, and was so busy that during that hospitalization he showed up as a guest star in two episodes of the sitcom The Governor and J.J., His final big-screen appearance was in the Bud Yorkin/Norman Lear comedy Cold Turkey, which wasn't released until the following year.

Trivia: British actor Lionel Atwill was born into wealth and educated at London's prestigious Mercer School, where he planned to pursue a career as an architect; instead, he became a stage actor, working steadily from his debut at age 20, most often in the plays of Ibsen and Shaw. Establishing himself in America, Atwill continued his stage work, supplementing his income with silent film appearances, the first being Eve's Daughter(1918). Atwill's rich rolling voice made him a natural for talking pictures. Following a pair of Vitaphone short subjects in 1928, the actor made his talkie bow in The Verdict (1932). Most effective in roles as an aristocratic villain, Atwill found himself appearing in numerous melodramas and horror films, including the classic Mystery of the Wax Museum (1933). Atwill's career was threatened in 1940, when it was revealed that he'd thrown an "orgy" at his home, complete with naked guests and pornographic films. Atwill "lied like a gentleman" to protect his party guests at the subsequent trial, and was convicted of perjury. The ensuing scandal made Atwill virtually unemployable at most studios, but he found a semi-permanent home at Universal Pictures, which at the time was grinding out low budget horror films. Lionel Atwill died in harness in the middle of production of the 1946 Universal serial Lost City of the Jungle; viewers watching this serial today will no doubt notice how often Atwill's character turns his back to the camera, allowing the producers to cover his absence with a stand-in.

Trivia: British actor Melville Cooper was 18 when he made his first stage appearance at Stratford-on-Avon. He settled in the U.S. in 1934, after making an excellent impression in the Alexander Korda-produced film The Private Life of Don Juan. The Pickwick-like Cooper was generally cast as snobbish, ineffectual society types or confidence tricksters; occasionally, as in 1939's The Sun Never Sets, he was given a chance at a more heroic role. Among Cooper's most famous screen portrayals were the Sheriff of Nottingham in The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938), the amorous Reverend Collins (altered to "Mr. Collins" to avoid censor problems) in Pride and Prejudice (1940), and the officious wedding-rehearsal supervisor in Father of the Bride (1950). Retiring from films in 1958, Melville Cooper returned to the stage, where he essayed such roles as Reverend Chasuble in The Importance of Being Earnest.

Trivia: Spanish-born character actor Luis Alberni spent most of his Hollywood career playing excitable Italians: waiters, janitors, stagehands, and shop proprietors. A short, elfish man usually decked out in a string tie and frock coat, Alberni worked on stage in Europe before heading for Broadway (and the movies) in 1921. He was busiest in the early-talkie era, appearing twice in large, juicy supporting roles opposite John Barrymore. In Svengali, Alberni is Barrymore's long-suffering assistant, while in Mad Genius, he's a dope-addicted stage manager who murders Barrymore in a baroque climax. During World War II, Alberni kept busy playing Italian mayors and peasants, both fascist and partisan. Luis Alberni's final film appearance was as the great-uncle of a "compromised" French peasant girl in John Ford's remake of What Price Glory? (1952)

Trivia: The quintessential dumb, buxom blonde, Marie Wilson was born in Anaheim, CA, then moved with her family to Hollywood after the death of her father. She received her first screen role as Mary Quite Contrary in the Laurel and Hardy version of Babes in Toyland (1934), through the auspices of her then-husband, writer/director Nick Grinde. Signed to a Warner Bros. contract, Wilson cemented her scatterbrained reputation in such films as Satan Met a Lady (1936) and Boy Meets Girl (1938). In 1944, she was hired by Ken Murray to perform a comedy striptease in Murray's Hollywood stage revue Blackouts; the engagement lasted five years and 2,332 performances. In 1947, Wilson starred in the radio sitcom "My Friend Irma," which led to two theatrical films (the first of which introduced Martin and Lewis to the moviegoing audience) and a TV series. Her open, grinning face belying her age, Wilson continued doing her dumb-blonde act into the 1960s, starring in summer stock and dinner-theater productions of Born Yesterday and appearing in commercials. Marie Wilson's last TV assignment was a voice-over role in the 1970 animated cartoon series Where's Huddles?; two years later, she died of cancer at the age of 56.

Trivia: One of the most glamorous superstars of Hollywood's golden era, Lana Turner was born February 8, 1921, in Wallace, ID. At the age of 15, while cutting school, she was spotted by Hollywood Reporter staffer Billy Wilkinson in a Hollywood drugstore; enchanted by her beauty, he escorted her to the offices of the Zeppo Marx Agency, resulting in a bit part in 1937's A Star Is Born. Rejected by RKO, Fox, and any number of other studios, Turner next briefly showed up in They Won't Forget. Mervin LeRoy, the picture's director, offered her a personal contract at 50 dollars a week, and she subsequently appeared fleetingly in a series of films at Warner Bros. When LeRoy moved to MGM, Turner followed, and the usual series of bit parts followed before she won her first lead role in the 1939 B-comedy These Glamour Girls. Dancing Co-Ed, a vehicle for bandleader Artie Shaw, followed that same year, and after starring in 1940's Two Girls on Broadway, she and Shaw married. Dubbed "the Sweater Girl" by the press, Turner was touted by MGM as a successor to Jean Harlow, but audiences did not take her to heart; she did, however, become a popular pin-up, especially with American soldiers fighting overseas. In 1941 she starred opposite Clark Gable in Honky Tonk, her first major hit. They again teamed in Somewhere I'll Find You the next year. Upon separating from Shaw, Turner married actor Stephen Crane, but when his earlier divorce was declared invalid, a media frenzy followed; MGM chief Louis B. Mayer was so incensed by the debacle that he kept the now-pregnant Turner off movie screens for a year. Upon returning in 1944's Marriage Is a Private Affair, Turner's stardom slowly began to grow, culminating in her most sultry and effective turn to date as a femme fatale in 1946's The Postman Always Rings Twice. The film was a tremendous success, and it made Turner one of Hollywood's brightest stars. Both 1947's Green Dolphin Street and Cass Timberlane were hits, but a 1948 reunion with Gable in Homecoming failed to re-create their earlier sparks. After appearing in The Three Musketeers, she disappeared from screens for over a year, resurfacing in the George Cukor trifle A Life of Her Own. Turner's box-office stock was plummeting, a situation which MGM attempted to remedy by casting her in musicals; while the first, 1951's Mr. Imperium, was an unmitigated disaster, 1952's The Merry Widow was more successful. However, a string of failures followed, and after 1955's Diane, MGM opted not to renew her contract.When Turner's next project, The Rains of Ranchipur, also failed to ignite audience interest, she again took a sabbatical from movie-making. She returned in 1957 with Peyton Place, director Mark Robson's hugely successful adaptation of Grace Metalious' infamous best-seller about the steamy passions simmering beneath the surface of small-town life. Turner's performance won an Academy Award nomination, and the following year she made international headlines when her lover, gangster Johnny Stampanato, was stabbed to death by her teenage daughter, Cheryl Crane; a high-profile court trial followed, and although Crane was eventually acquitted on the grounds of justifiable homicide, Turner's reputation took a severe beating. The 1959 Douglas Sirk tearjerker Imitation of Life was Turner's last major hit, however, and after a string of disappointments culminating in 1966's Madame X, she did not reappear in films for three years, returning with The Big Cube. Also in 1969, she and George Hamilton co-starred in the short-lived television series The Survivors. After touring in a number of stage productions, Turner starred in the little-seen 1974 horror film Persecution, followed in 1976 by Bittersweet Love. Her final film, Witches' Brew, a semi-comic remake of the 1944 horror classic Weird Woman, was shot in 1978 but not widely released until 1985. In 1982, she published an autobiography, Lana: The Lady, the Legend, the Truth, and also began a stint as a semi-regular on the TV soap opera Falcon Crest. After spending the majority of her final decade in retirement, Lana Turner died June 29, 1995, at the age of 74.

Trivia: Never a Hollywood glamour girl, brunette Brooklynite Dorothy Tree was a versatile general purpose actress, playing everything from a middle-class housewife to a Nazi spy. After graduating from Cornell and working extensively on Broadway, Tree came to Hollywood for a part in the Fox musical comedy Just Imagine (1930). She remained in films for the next twenty years, appearing in such roles as Elizabeth Edwards in Abe Lincoln in Illinois (1940) and Teresa Wright's mother in The Men (1950) (Marlon Brando's first film). Given her expertise at dialects and subtleties of intonations, it isn't surprising that Dorothy Tree later became a top vocal coach, writing a public-speaking guide titled A Woman's Voice.

Trivia: For two decades, the diminutive American actor ChesterClute played a seemingly endless series of harassed clerks, testy druggists, milquetoast husbands, easily distracted laboratory assistants and dishevelled streetcar passengers. A New York-based stage actor, Clute began his movie career at the Astoria studios in Long Island, appearing in several early-talkie short subjects. He moved to the West Coast in the mid '30s, remaining there until his final film appearance in Colorado Territory (1952). While Chester Clute seldom had more than two or three lines of dialogue in feature films, he continued throughout his career to be well-served in short subjects, most notably as Vera Vague's wimpish suitor in the 1947 Columbia 2-reeler Cupid Goes Nuts.

Trivia: Of Anglo/French parentage, birdlike comic actor Etienne Girardot was an established theatrical favorite long before the turn of the century. One of Girardot's best-loved stage roles was Lord Fancourt Babberly in Charley's Aunt; a production photo of the actor in female drag appeared for years in the Collier's Encyclopedia entry on "Theatre." He entered films in 1912 as star of Vitagraph's The Violin of Monsieur. Then it was back to the stage, where in 1933 he scored a personal success as balmy self-styled millionaire Mr. Clark in Hecht and MacArthur's Twentieth Century. It was this role that brought Girardot back to movies on a full-time basis, where he remained until his death in 1939. Etienne Girardot's film roles included crabby coroner Dr. Doremus in two "Philo Vance" mysteries; orphanage official Wyckoff in Curly Top (1935), who endures the indignity of being imitated (quite well) by star Shirley Temple; and King Louis' senile physician in The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1939).

Trivia: A graduate of Bowdoin college, Albert Dekker made his professional acting bow with a Cincinnati stock company in 1927. Within a few months he was featured in the Broadway production of Eugene O'Neill's Marco Millions. After a decade's worth of impressive theatrical appearance, Dekker made his first film, 1937's The Great Garrick. Usually cast as villains, Dekker was starred in the Technicolor horror film Dr. Cyclops (1940) and played a fascinating dual role in the 1941 suspenser Among the Living. Dekker's offscreen preoccupation with politics led to his winning a California State Assembly seat in 1944; during the McCarthy era, Dekker became an outspoken critic of the Wisconsin senator's tactics, and as a result the actor found it hard to get work in Hollywood. He returned to Broadway, then made a movie comeback in 1959. During his last decade, Dekker alternated between film, stage and TV assignments; he also embarked on several college-campus lecture tours. In May of 1968, Dekker was found strangled to death in his Hollywood home. His naked body was bound hand and foot, a hypodermic needle was jammed into each arm, and obscenities were scrawled all over the corpse. At first, it seemed that Dekker was a closet homosexual who had committed suicide (early reports suggested that the writings on his body were his bad movie reviews) or had died while having rough sex. While the kinky particulars of the case were never officially explained, it was finally ruled that Albert Dekker had died of accidental asphyxiation.

Trivia: American actor Trevor Bardette could truly say that he died for a living. In the course of a film career spanning three decades, the mustachioed, granite-featured Bardette was "killed off" over 40 times as a screen villain. Entering movies in 1936 after abandoning a planned mechanical engineering career for the Broadway stage, Bardette was most often seen as a rustler, gangster, wartime collaborator and murderous backwoodsman. His screen skullduggery carried over into TV; one of Bardette's best remembered video performances was as a "human bomb" on an early episode of Superman. Perhaps being something of a reprobate came naturally to Trevor Bardette -- or so he himself would claim in later years when relating a story of how, as a child, he'd won ten dollars writing an essay on "the evils of tobacco," only to be caught smoking behind the barn shortly afterward.

Trivia: Born in Wales, E. E. Clive studied for a medical career before switching his field of endeavor to acting at age 22. Touring the provinces for a decade, Clive became an expert at virtually every sort of regional dialect in the British Isles. He moved to the U.S. in 1912, where after working in the Orpheum vaudeville circuit he set up his own stock company in Boston. By the 1920s, his company was operating in Hollywood; among his repertory players were such up-and-comers as Rosalind Russell. He made his film debut as a rural police officer in 1933's The Invisible Man, then spent the next seven years showing up in wry bit roles as burgomeisters, butlers, reporters, aristocrats, shopkeepers and cabbies. Though he seldom settled down too long in any one characterization, E. E. Clive was a semi-regular as Tenny the Butler in Paramount's Bulldog Drummond "B" series.

Trivia: Harry Davenport was descended from a long and illustrious line of stage actors who could trace their heritage to famed 18th-century Irish thespian Jack Johnson. Davenport made his own stage bow at the age of five, racking up a list of theatrical credits that eventually would fill two pages of Equity magazine. He started his film career at the age of 48, co-starring with Rose Tapley as "Mr. and Mrs. Jarr" in a series of silent comedy shorts. He also directed several silent features in the pre-World War I era. Most of his film activity was in the sound era, with such rich characterizations as Dr. Mead in Gone With the Wind (1939) and Louis XI in The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1939) to his credit. He also essayed a few leading film roles, notably as a lovable hermit in the 1946 PRC programmer The Enchanted Forest. At the time of his final screen performance in Frank Capra's Riding High (1950), much was made in the press of the fact that this film represented Davenport's seventy-eighth year in show business. Married twice, Harry Davenport was the father of actors Arthur Rankin and Dorothy Davenport.

Trivia: A busy supporting actor in the silent era, white-haired, stern-looking Paul Everton played in everything from the serial The Romance of Elaine (1915) to Cappy Ricks (1921), in which he appeared as the ill-fated ship's captain. Devoting most of the '30s to stage work, Everton returned to Hollywood late in the decade to play a variety of judges, mayors, senators, governors, and wardens. In between bit parts, he was featured in the continuing role of Townsend, a powerful industrialist, in Columbia Pictures' short-lived Five Little Peppers series from 1939 to 1940.

Trivia: A confirmed teetotaller, mustachioed American actor Jack Norton nonetheless earned cinematic immortality for his innumerable film appearances as a comic drunk. A veteran vaudevillian - he appeared in a comedy act with his wife Lillian - and stage performer, Norton entered films in 1934, often playing stone-cold sober characters; in one Leon Errol two-reeler, One Too Many, he was a stern nightcourt judge sentencing Errol on a charge of public inebriation! From Cockeyed Cavaliers (1934) onward, however, the Jack Norton that audiences loved began staggering his way from one film to another; it seemed for a while that no film could have a scene in a nightclub or salloon without Norton, three sheets to the wind and in top hat and tails, leaning precariously against the bar. To perfect his act, Norton would follow genuine drunks for several city blocks, memorizing each nuance of movement; to avoid becoming too involved in his roles, the actor drank only ginger ale and bicarbonate of soda. Though his appearances as a drunk could fill a book in themselves, Norton could occasionally be seen sober, notably in You Belong to Me (1940), The Fleet's In (1941) and Harold Lloyd's Sin of Harold Diddlebock (1946); he also "took the pledge" in such short comedies as Our Gang's The Awful Tooth (1938), Andy Clyde's Heather and Yon (1944) and the Three Stooges' Rhythm and Weep (1946). One of Norton's oddest roles was as a detective in the Charlie Chan thriller Shadows over Chinatown (1947), in which he went undercover by pretending to be a souse. Retiring from films in 1948 due to illness, Norton occasionally appeared on live TV in the early '50s. Jack Norton's final appearance would have been in a 1955 episode of Jackie Gleason's The Honeymooners, but age and infirmity had so overwhelmed him that he was literally written out of the show as it was being filmed - though Jackie Gleason saw to it that Norton was paid fully for the performance he was ready, willing, but unable to give.

Trivia: British actor Leyland Hodgson launched his theatrical career at the advanced age of six. From 1915 to 1919, Hodgson toured the British provinces of the Orient with the Bandmann Opera Company, then retraced most of this tour as head of his own stock company. A star of the Australian stage from 1920 to 1929, Hodgson moved to Hollywood, where he made his film bow in RKO's The Case of Sergeant Grischa (1930). Largely confined to minor roles in films, Hodgson enjoyed some prominence as a regular of Universal's Sherlock Holmes films of the 1940s. Otherwise, he contented himself with bits as butlers, military officers, hotel clerks, reporters and chauffeurs until his retirement in 1948. Either by accident or design, Leyland Hodgson was frequently teamed on screen with another busy British utilitarian player, Charles Irvin.

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.

Trivia: Noted U.S. author Fritz Leiber, Jr. began his motion picture career as an infant, occasionally appearing in the films of his father, Fritz Leiber. While his onscreen appearances were infrequent, his classic novel Conjure Wife has been filmed three times, as Weird Woman (1944), Night of the Eagle (1962), and Witches' Brew (1979). Occasionally, Fritz Leiber, Jr. was credited as Fritz Leiber, causing confusion as to which credits were his and which were his father's.

Trivia: Piping-voice, hamster-faced Scottish character actor Olaf Hytten left the British stage for films in 1921. By the time the talkie era rolled around, Hytten was firmly established in Hollywood, playing an abundance of butlers and high-society gentlemen. The actor was primarily confined to one or two-line bits in such films as Platinum Blonde (1931), The Sphinx (1933), Bonnie Scotland (1935), Beloved Rebel (1936), The Howards of Virginia (1940) and The Bride Came COD (1941). He was a semi-regular of the Universal B-unit in the '40s, appearing in substantial roles as military men and police official in the Rathbone/Bruce Sherlock Holmes series and as burgomeisters and innkeepers in the studio's many horror films (Ghost of Frankenstein, House of Frankenstein, etc.) Olaf Hytten was active until at least 1956; one of his more memorable assignments of the '50s was as the larcenous butler who participates in a scheme to drive Daily Planet editor Perry White crazy in the "Great Caesar's Ghost" episode of the TV series Adventures of Superman.

Trivia: As a youth, Ben Welden was trained to be a concert violinist. He chose instead a stage career, heading to London rather than New York to realize his goal. During the early '30s, the bald, barracuda-faced Welden was a valuable British movie commodity, playing American gangster types in such films as The Triumph of Sherlock Holmes (1937). He returned to the U.S. in 1937, where he appeared in picture after picture at Warner Bros., playing vicious thugs and "torpedoes" in several gritty urban efforts, among them Marked Woman (1937), City for Conquest (1940), and The Big Sleep (1946). Welden's work in such two-reelers as Columbia's The Awful Sleuth (1951) and Three Dark Horses (1952), and such sitcoms as The Abbott and Costello Show, revealed a flair for broad comedy that the actor would carry over into his many Runyon-esque bad-guy assignments on the Superman TV series. Gradually retiring from acting in the mid-'60s, Ben Welden (in real life a gentle, likeable man) maintained his comfortable living standard by operating a successful California candy popcorn business.