Trivia: Like his younger brother John, American actor Lionel Barrymore wanted more than anything to be an artist. But a member of the celebrated Barrymore family was expected to enter the family trade, so Lionel reluctantly launched an acting career. Not as attractive as John or sister Ethel, he was most effectively cast in character roles - villains, military officers, fathers - even in his youth. Unable to save what he earned, Barrymore was "reduced" to appearing in films for the Biograph Company in 1911, where he was directed by the great D.W. Griffith and where he was permitted to write a few film stories himself, which to Lionel was far more satisfying than playacting. His stage career was boosted when cast in 1917 as Colonel Ibbetson in Peter Ibbetson, which led to his most celebrated role, Milt Shanks in The Copperhead; even late in life, he could always count on being asked to recite his climactic Copperhead soliloquy, which never failed to bring down the house. Moving on to film, Barrymore was signed to what would be a 25-year hitch with MGM and begged the MGM heads to be allowed to direct; he showed only moderate talent in this field, and was most often hired to guide those films in which MGM wanted to "punish" its more rebellious talent. Resigning himself to acting again in 1931, he managed to cop an Academy Award for his bravura performance as a drunken defense attorney in A Free Soul (1931), the first in an increasingly prestigious series of movie character parts. In 1937, Barrymore was crippled by arthritis, and for the rest of his career was confined to a wheelchair. The actor became more popular than ever as he reached his sixtieth birthday, principally as a result of his annual radio appearance as Scrooge in A Christmas Carol and his continuing role as Dr. Gillespie in MGM's Dr. Kildare film series. Barrymore was aware that venerability and talent are not often the same thing, but he'd become somewhat lazy (if one can call a sixtyish wheelchair-bound man who showed up on time and appeared in at least three films per year "lazy") and settled into repeating his "old curmudgeon with a heart of gold" performance, save for the occasional topnotch part in such films as It's a Wonderful Life (1946) and Down to the Sea in Ships (1949). Denied access to television work by his MGM contract, Barrymore nonetheless remained active in radio (he'd starred in the long-running series Mayor of the Town), and at one point conducted a talk program from his own home; additionally, the actor continued pursuing his hobbies of writing, composing music, painting and engraving until arthritis overcame him. On the day of his death, he was preparing for his weekly performance on radio's Hallmark Playhouse; that evening, the program offered a glowing tribute to Barrymore, never once alluding to the fact that he'd spent a lifetime in a profession he openly despised.

Trivia: Born Mary Robison. In her late teens she moved to the U.S. with no intention of becoming an actress; a few years later she became a widow, and in 1884 she took up acting to support her three children. She played both leads and supporting roles on the road and on Broadway, and over several decades she became highly respected as a character actress. From 1914-19 she appeared in a few silent films (sometimes billed as Mrs. Stuart Robson), then returned to the screen for good in 1926 and fourished in the subsequent sound era. She was usually cast as crusty, gruff, domineering society matrons or grandmothers. For her portrayal of Damon Runyon's Apple Annie in Frank Capra's Lady for a Day (1933), one of her rare starring roles, she received a Best Actress Oscar nomination. Ultimately she appeared in more than 60 films, the last of which was released the year of her death.

Trivia: American actor Joel McCrea came from a California family with roots reaching back to the pioneer days. As a youth, McCrea satiated his fascination with movies by appearing as an extra in a serial starring Ruth Roland. By 1920, high schooler McCrea was a movie stunt double, and by the time he attended USC, he was regularly appearing at the Pasadena Playhouse. McCrea's big Hollywood break came with a part in the 1929 talkie Jazz Age; he matriculated into one of the most popular action stars of the 1930s, making lasting friendships with such luminaries as director Cecil B. DeMille and comedian Will Rogers. It was Rogers who instilled in McCrea a strong business sense, as well as a love of ranching; before the 1940s had ended, McCrea was a multi-millionaire, as much from his land holdings and ranching activities as from his film work. Concentrating almost exclusively on westerns after appearing in The Virginian (1946), McCrea became one of that genre's biggest box-office attractions. He extended his western fame to an early-1950s radio series, Tales of the Texas Rangers, and a weekly 1959 TV oater, Wichita Town, in which McCrea costarred with his son Jody. In the late 1960s, McCrea increased his wealth by selling 1200 acres of his Moorpark (California) ranch to an oil company, on the proviso that no drilling would take place within sight of the actor's home. By the time he retired in the early 1970s, McCrea could take pride in having earned an enduring reputation not only as one of Hollywood's shrewdest businessmen, but as one of the few honest-to-goodness gentlemen in the motion picture industry.

Trivia: Before she established herself as a feisty movie ingenue, dark-haired Dorothy Jordan trained in ballet and studied acting at New York's American Academy of Dramatic Art. A veteran of Broadway musicals, Jordan came to Hollywood in 1929, securing such roles as Bianca in the Fairbanks/Pickford version of Taming of the Shrew (1929) and the daughter of Marie Dressler and Wallace Beery in Min and Bill (1930). From 1932 onward, Jordan's film assignments became increasingly humdrum, prompting her to retire from moviemaking when she married producer Merian C. Cooper. At the request (and cajoling) of her husband and their mutual friend John Ford, Dorothy Jordan made a brief comeback in three Ford-directed films of the 1950s, The Sun Shines Bright (1953), The Searchers (1956) and The Wings of Eagles (1957).

Trivia: Fresh out of the University of Chicago, brunette actress Frances Dee began securing extra roles in Hollywood, and by 1930 was co-starring with Maurice Chevalier (at his personal request) in Playboy in Paris. No winsome lass she, Frances truly came to life in parts calling for headstrong, uninhibited behavior. She was at her all-time best in Blood Money (1933), playing a thrill-seeking socialite with a pronounced masochistic streak. Hollywood saw Frances differently, and persisted in casting her in sedate roles that anyone could have played; it was disheartening, for example, to watch her play straight woman to Clifton Webb in Mister Scoutmaster (1953). Offscreen, Frances Dee was, for nearly sixty years, the wife of film star Joel McCrea, and the mother of actor Jody McCrea. In 2004, Dee passed away due to complications from a stroke.

Trivia: Foghorn-voiced stage actor David Landau was brought to Hollywood in 1931 to re-create his Broadway role of the homicidal Maurrant in Elmer Rice's Street Scene. Landau went on to appear in 32 films over a four-year period. Seldom permitted to play a sympathetic role, Landau thrived in parts calling for drunkenness (1932's Taxi), brutality (1932's I Am a Fugitive From a Chain Gang) and all-around skullduggery (Mae West's 1933 vehicle She Done Him Wrong). Modern filmgoers will recall David Landau as high-rolling gambler Jennings in the Marx Brothers' Horse Feathers (1932) and as the mysterious, tattered transient Bob Gillis in Will Rogers' Judge Priest (1934).

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: Before becoming a notable early director and actor on the silver screen, Oscar Apfel was a veteran opera producer and director. His career in cinema began in 1911 when became a director for Edison. Apfel also directed films for other studios including Selig. His work became popular in 1914 when he began co-directing feature-length films with the legendary Cecil B. De Mille for Lasky-Paramount Studios. In 1916, he moved to Fox and later continued director for smaller studios until his career began to wane in the 1920s. At the end of his directorial career, Apfel had been reduced to churning out low-grade melodramas for cut-rate studios. He directed his final film in 1927. One year later, Apfel appeared again as an actor known for playing distinguished characters in films such as Romance of the Underworld (1928), and the 1931 version of The Maltese Falcon.

Trivia: Raspy-voiced, distinguished-looking actor Samuel S. Hinds was born into a wealthy Brooklyn family. Well-educated at such institutions as Philips Academy and Harvard, Hinds became a New York lawyer. He moved to California in the 1920s, where he developed an interest in theatre and became one of the founders of the Pasadena Playhouse. A full-time actor by the early 1930s, Hinds entered films in 1932. Of his nearly 150 screen appearances, several stand out, notably his portrayal of Bela Lugosi's torture victim in The Raven (1935), the dying John Vincey in She (1935), the crooked political boss in Destry Rides Again (1939) and the doctor father of Lew Ayres in MGM's Dr. Kildare series. He frequently co-starred in the films of James Stewart, playing Stewart's eccentric future father-in-law in You Can't Take It With You (1938) and the actor's banker dad in the holiday perennial It's a Wonderful Life (1946). One of Samuel S. Hinds' final film roles was an uncredited supporting part in the 1948 James Stewart vehicle Call Northside 777.

Trivia: Beefy, white-maned stage actor Hale Hamilton made his first film appearance in 1915. Hamilton's frequent film co-star was Grace LaRue, his first wife. A character actor in talkies, Hamilton was seen in such roles as Jackie Cooper's potential stepfather in The Champ (1931) and the crooked recording executive in Wheeler and Woolsey's comedy/mystery The Nitwits (1935). Hale Hamilton's most famous talkie assignment was as the clergyman brother of chain-gang prisoner Paul Muni in 1932's I Am a Fugitive.