Trivia: A stage actor from the age of seventeen, Derrick DeMarney made his film bow in 1928, at age 21. A handsome and virile leading man in films like Forbidden Music (1936) and Hitchcock's Young and Innocent (1937), DeMarney seemed to prefer playing against type in such character roles as Disraeli in Victoria the Great (1936) and Sixty Glorious Years (1938). During his wartime service, he directed the government documentary Malta GC (1942). He went on to produce or co-produce a number of films, including the morale-boosting The Gentle Sex (1943) and the noirish thrillers Latin Quarter (1946) and She Shall Have Murder (1950). De Marney's postwar film roles included the vastly different title characters in Uncle Silas (1947) and Meet Slim Callaghan (1952). Derrick DeMarney was the brother of actor Terence De Marney (1909-71).

Trivia: 15-year-old Nova Pilbeam was already a seasoned stage veteran when she made her screen debut as the youthful kidnap victim in Alfred Hitchcock's The Man Who Knew Too Much (1934). She went on to deliver a superb performance as the ill-fated Lady Jane Grey in Nine Days a Queen (1934). Her first significant adult role was in Young and Innocent (1937), again for Hitchcock. Nova Pilbeam retired in 1939 upon marrying director Pen Tennyson, returning to the screen after Tennyson's death in WWII.

Trivia: Gaunt British actor Percy Marmont was the George Brent of the silent era; though not a particularly commanding screen presence in himself, Marmont was the much-in-demand leading man of such dynamic 1920s actresses as Ethel Barrymore, Geraldine Farrar, Clara Bow and Nita Naldi. Marmont launched his theatrical career in London at age 17, then worked with touring companies in Liverpool and South Africa. While in the latter country he made his first film appearance in 1913's The Voertrekkers; his second movie was the Australian The Monk and the Woman (1916). Then it was on to New York, where he made his American film bow opposite popular leading-lady Elsie Ferguson in Rose of the World (1917). Resettling in Hollywood, Marmont starred in his favorite film, a 1922 adaptation of the stage hit If Winter Comes. All told, he appeared in over 50 silent films then enjoyed a thriving career as a character actor in British talkies. He also starred in the London stage versions of such American long-runners as Witness for the Prosecution, The Philadelphia Story and The Little Foxes. Percy Marmont retired at the age of 85; he died 9 years later.

Trivia: A professional from age 16 onward, British actress Mary Clare seemed most at home in costume roles. She played Lady Caroline Lamb in The Life of Lord Byron (1922), Queen Eleanor in Becket (1923), Mrs. Corney in Oliver Twist (1948), Mme. Loubet in Moulin Rouge (1952) and Mrs. Peachum in The Beggar's Opera (1953). Clare's "contemporary" film assignments included the sinister baroness in Hitchcock's The Lady Vanishes (1938). In 1942, Mary Clare enjoyed a rare top-billed role in the enjoyable detective comedy-drama Mrs. Pym of Scotland Yard.

Trivia: British actor John Longden played the hero in a number of silent films during the late '20s and into the '30s. He later became a noted character actor. Before becoming an actor, Longden, a native of the West Indies, worked as a mining engineer.

Trivia: Actor Basil Radford was on the British stage from 1922 in twittish, tweedy comedy roles. His first film appearance was in 1929's Barnum Was Right. International fame came Radford's way when he and Naunton Wayne originated the roles of cricket-obsessed Charters and Caldicott in Alfred Hitchcock's The Lady Vanishes (1938). Radford and Wayne continued to play these roles (or facsimiles thereof) in such films as Night Train (1940), Crooks Tour (1941), Next of Kin (1942), Millions Like Us (1945), and Dead of Night (1945). They were supposed to revive Charters and Caldicott once more for Sir Carol Reed's The Third Man (1949), but their roles were streamlined into a solo part for Wilfred Hyde-White. The best of Radford's later roles included the blindsided British bureaucrat in Tight Little Island (1948). Basil Radford died of a heart attack at age 55, shortly after co-starring in White Corridors (1951).

Trivia: H.F. Maltby was a prolific stage actor, director and playwright long before his 1933 film debut. Many of Maltby's stage plays, notably The Rotters and The Right Age to Marry, were successfully adapted to the screen. As a film actor, he excelled in roles calling for brusque pomposity: magistrates, politicians, and the like. As a screenwriter, he turned out several Todd Slaughter melodramas of the 1930s, as well as such lighter fare as 1944's Over the Garden Wall. Busy though he was in films, he managed to find time to write for radio during the war years. In 1950, H. F. Maltby published his autobiography, Ring Up the Curtain.

Trivia: Alfred Hitchcock was the most well-known director to the general public, by virtue of both his many thrillers and his appearances on television in his own series from the mid-'50s through the early '60s. Probably more than any other filmmaker, his name evokes instant expectations on the part of audiences: at least two or three great chills (and a few more good ones), some striking black comedy, and an eccentric characterization or two in every one of the director's movies.Originally trained at a technical school, Hitchcock gravitated to movies through art courses and advertising, and by the mid-'20s he was making his first films. He had his first major success in 1926 with The Lodger, a thriller loosely based on Jack the Ripper. While he worked in a multitude of genres over the next six years, he found his greatest acceptance working with thrillers. His early work with these, including Blackmail (1929) and Murder (1930), seem primitive by modern standards, but have many of the essential elements of Hitchcock's subsequent successes, even if they are presented in technically rudimentary terms. Hitchcock came to international attention in the mid- to late '30s with The Man Who Knew Too Much (1934), The 39 Steps (1935), and, most notably, The Lady Vanishes (1938). By the end of the 1930s, having gone as far as the British film industry could take him, he signed a contract with David O. Selznick and came to America.From the outset, with the multi-Oscar-winning psychological thriller Rebecca (1940) and the topical anti-Nazi thrillers Foreign Correspondent (1940) and Saboteur (1942), Hitchcock was one of Hollywood's "money" directors whose mere presence on a marquee attracted audiences. Although his relationship with Selznick was stormy, he created several fine and notable features while working for the producer, either directly for Selznick or on loan to RKO and Universal, including Spellbound (1945), probably the most romantic of Hitchcock's movies; Notorious (1946); and Shadow of a Doubt (1943), considered by many to be his most unsettling film.In 1948, after leaving Selznick, Hitchcock went through a fallow period, in which he experimented with new techniques and made his first independent production, Rope; but he found little success. In the early and mid-'50s, he returned to form with the thrillers Strangers on a Train (1951), which was remade in 1987 by Danny DeVito as Throw Momma From the Train; Dial M for Murder (1954), which was among the few successful 3-D movies; and Rear Window (1954). By the mid-'50s, Hitchcock's persona became the basis for the television anthology series Alfred Hitchcock Presents, which ran for eight seasons (although he only directed, or even participated as producer, in a mere handful of the shows). His films of the late '50s became more personal and daring, particularly The Trouble With Harry (1955) and Vertigo (1958), in which the dark side of romantic obsession was explored in startling detail. Psycho (1960) was Hitchcock's great shock masterpiece, mostly for its haunting performances by Janet Leigh and Anthony Perkins and its shower scene, and The Birds (1963) became the unintended forerunner to an onslaught of films about nature-gone-mad, and all were phenomenally popular -- The Birds, in particular, managed to set a new record for its first network television showing in the mid-'60s.By then, however, Hitchcock's films had slipped seriously at the box office. Both Marnie (1964) and Torn Curtain (1966) suffered from major casting problems, and the script of Torn Curtain was terribly unfocused. The director was also hurt by the sudden departure of composer Bernard Herrmann (who had scored every Hitchcock's movie since 1957) during the making of Torn Curtain, as Herrmann's music had become a key element of the success of Hitchcock's films. Of his final three movies, only Frenzy (1972), which marked his return to British thrillers after 30 years, was successful, although his last film, Family Plot (1976), has achieved some respect from cult audiences. In the early '80s, several years after his death in 1980, Hitchcock's box-office appeal was once again displayed with the re-release of Rope, The Trouble With Harry, his 1956 remake of The Man Who Knew Too Much, and Vertigo, all of which had been withheld from distribution for several years, but which earned millions of dollars in new theatrical revenues.

Trivia: Torin Thatcher came out of a military family in India to become a top stage actor in England and a well-known character actor in international films and television. Born Torin Herbert Erskine Thatcher in Bombay, India, in 1905, he was the great-grandson and grandson of generals -- one of whom had fought with Clive -- but he planned for a quieter life; educated at Bedford School, he originally intended to become a teacher before being bitten by the acting bug. Instead, he attended the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, and later worked in every kind of theatrical production there was, from Greek tragedy to burlesque. Thatcher made his London debut in 1927 as Tranio in a production of The Taming of the Shrew with the Old Vic Company, and he subsequently portrayed both the Ghost and Claudius in Hamlet with the same company. In the years that followed, Thatcher was in more than 50 Shakespearean productions and 20 plays by George Bernard Shaw. The outbreak of the Second World War took Thatcher into uniform, and he served for six years in the army, achieving the rank of lieutenant colonel before he returned to civilian life in 1946. In 1944, Thatcher had made his first acquaintance of the theater world in New York when he found himself on leave in the city with only ten shillings in his pocket -- he spent it sparingly and discovered that Allied servicemen, even officers, were accorded a great many perks in those days; he was also amazed and delighted when he was recognized while on his way into a play in New York by a theatergoer who was able to name virtually every movie that he'd done in England over the preceding decade. He got a firsthand look at the city's generosity and also made sure to meet a number of people associated with the New York theater scene, contacts that served him in good stead when he returned to New York in 1946, as a civilian eager to pick up his career. He starred in two plays opposite Katharine Cornell, First Born and That Lady, and portrayed Claggart in a stage adaptation of Billy Budd, but his big success was in Noel Langley and Robert Morley's Edward My Son. Thatcher had been in movies in England since 1933, in small roles, occasionally in major and important films such as Alfred Hitchcock's Young and Innocent (1937) and Michael Powell's The Spy in Black (1939); his British career had peaked with a superb performance in a small but important role in Carol Reed's The Fallen Idol (1948). After moving to the United States, however, Thatcher quickly moved up to starring and major supporting roles in Hollywood movies, beginning with Affair in Trinidad (1952). He was busy at 20th Century Fox, Universal, and Warner Bros. over the next decade, moving between their American and British units, and stood out in such hit movies as The Crimson Pirate (1952) (as the pirate Humble Bellows) and Love Is a Many-Splendored Thing (1955). Although Thatcher could play benevolent characters, his intense expression and presence and imposing physique made him more natural as a villain, and he spent his later career in an array of screen malefactors, of whom the best known was the sorcerer Sokurah in The 7th Voyage of Sinbad (1958), directed by Nathan Juran. Thatcher and Juran were close friends and the director loved to use him -- the two became a kind of double act together for a time, turning up in "The Space Trader" episode of Lost in Space, guest-starring Thatcher and directed by Juran.

Trivia: Lancashire-born character actor Frank Atkinson appeared in at least 130 films in the 33 years between the advent of sound in 1930 and his death in 1963. His work extended to both sides of the Atlantic -- although he worked primarily in his native England, he did go over to Hollywood in the mid-1930's, where he seemed to keep busy at Fox. He was often in roles too small to be credited, but that didn't stop him from doing a memorable turn (or two) in pictures. Tall and slender, and with gaunt facial features that lent themselves to looks of eccentricity, and with a highly cultured speaking voice, he could melt unobtrusively into a scene, as an anonymous bit-player, or could, with the utterance of a few words or a look, transform himself into a wryly comedic presence -- he played everything from jailers, guards, garage attendants, and soldiers to upper-class twits, and, in a manner unique to his era, sometimes got into some gender-bending portrayals. His most interesting attributes were shown off in a pair of Raoul Walsh-directed features: Sailor's Luck (1933), starring James Dunn and Sally Eilers, in which Atkinson plays an overtly gay swimming pool attendant in an important scene in the middle of the picture; and in Me And My Gal (1932), an excellent romantic comedy/thriller starring Spencer Tracy and Joan Bennett, in which he turns in a brief (but wonderfully rewarding) comedic tour-de-force as the funniest of a trio of effete, drunken waterfront tavern patrons, debating the matter of the type of fish with which one of them has been assaulted. His roles were usually not named, but Atkinson was highly regarded enough so that in The Green Cockatoo, he gets some memorable lines as a wry-toned butler named Provero, whose name becomes a comical issue. Atkinson also wrote screenplays and scripts for various British films in the 1930's, in genres ranging from light comedy to thrillers. Toward the end of his career, he also worked extensively in British television, on series such as Z-Cars and The Saint, and in 1963, the year of his death -- at age 69 -- he was in three television episodes as well as chalking up an uncredit appearance in Murder At the Gallop. In more recent years, thanks to the activity of various researches and scholars, and revivals of Fox's pre-Code features, especially Sailor's Luck, Atkinson has been mentioned in articles and books dealing with gay images and personae in Hollywood films.

Trivia: The son of British stage actor Willard Shine, Bill Shine first trod the boards at age six, playing the Stork in the pantomime Princess Posey. At fifteen, Shine made his first London stage appearance, and at eighteen was seen in the first of many films, Under the Greenwood Tree. Most often cast as an upper-class twit, Shine has also shown up in many a one-scene movie assignment as various reporters, commissioners, ticket sellers and executives. While seldom rising above the featured cast in films, Bill Shine achieved star status in the role of Conn in the 1950 production The Shaugran.

Trivia: The daughter of a Dublin attorney, Geraldine Fitzgerald was still in her teens when she made her theatrical bow with the Gate Theatre. In films from 1934, she played a series of petulant ingénues in a string of forgettable quota quickies; in later years, she sarcastically summed up her early screen roles by repeating her most frequent snatch of dialogue, "But daddy, it's my birthday!" With her first husband, she moved to New York in 1938, where she was hired by her old Gate Theatre colleague Orson Welles to star in the Mercury Theater production Heartbreak House. This led to several choice Hollywood assignments in such films as Dark Victory (1939) and Wuthering Heights (1939). Forever battling with studio executives over her often inconsequential screen assignments (exceptions included such roles as Edith Galt in the 1945 biopic Wilson), Fitzgerald briefly gave up films in 1948 to return to the stage. Carefully picking and choosing her subsequent movie roles, she established herself as a reliable character actress in quality films like Ten North Frederick (1958) and The Pawnbroker (1965). She briefly pursued a folksinging career before returning to Broadway in the ultra-demanding role of Mary Tyrone in the 1971 revival of Long Day's Journey Into Night. Active into the late '80s, Fitzgerald has added a welcome dash of Hibernian feistiness to such projects as Arthur (1981) and Easy Money (1983). Geraldine Fitzgerald is the mother of prominent British film director Michael Lindsay-Hogg.

Trivia: Vaudevillian John "Skins" Miller was a Hollywood habitue from the early 1930s until his retirement in 1951. Miller's biggest screen role was the Comedy Hillbilly in 1934's Stand Up and Cheer; holding Stepin Fetchit at bay with a shotgun, the bearded, barefooted Miller sings a love song to his gargantuan sweetheart Sally, then inexplicably falls flat on his back. During the 1930s, he was briefly under contract to MGM, where one of his duties was to imitate Groucho Marx during rehearsals of such Marx Bros. films as Day at the Races at At the Circus, so that Groucho could decide whether or not the material written for him would "play." Some sources have incorrectly listed John "Skins" Miller as a member of the original Three Stooges, in truth, he appeared in 1934's Gift of Gab as one-third of another team calling themselves the Three Stooges, who never worked together before or since (for the record, Miller's fellow "stooges" were Sid Walker and Jack Harling).

Trivia: Long esteemed as one of the most gifted directors (and occasional producers) of British telefilms, Peter Graham Scott arrived in that venue via a somewhat circuitous route. Born in East Sheen, Surrey, England, Scott accepted his mother's prompting to pursue an acting career, actualized with a bit part in an Alfred Hitchcock film, Young and Innocent (1937). Scott then realized, mid-production (while quietly watching Hitchcock set up a key tracking shot), that he wanted to direct his own ideas and stories. A brief stint at the British Ministry of Information, followed by an abortive attempt to shoot a script by Dylan Thomas, a helming assignment on a documentary, and an editing gig on the Graham Greene picture Brighton Rock (1947) preceded Scott's decision to join the BBC as a producer-in-training. His foremost ability, however -- as he had initially sensed -- lay in directing actors, and he indeed made his most enduring impact in that capacity, with such critically acclaimed efforts as Escape Route (1952), Hideout (1956), One (1956), and the 1958 Women in Love (not to be confused with the 1969 Ken Russell picture or an adaptation of D.H. Lawrence's work). In time, Scott ventured into helming episodes of ongoing British television series, particularly the cult spy-themed programs The Prisoner and The Avengers. In the 1970s and '80s, Scott also gravitated more from direction to production; his credits during that period include Kidnapped (1979), Jamaica Inn (1983), The Canterville Ghost (1986), and Passion and Paradise (1989). His Kidnapped qualified as the first British series to make it to U.S. cable television. Scott's greatest accomplishment over the course of his career, however, arguably lay in launching the careers of such legends as Judi Dench, Oliver Reed, Sean Connery, Glenda Jackson, and Peter Sellers, whom he hired for small-screen productions when they were virtual unknowns. Scott spent the final years of his career at the HTV network in Great Britain. He died at age 83 on August 25, 2007, of unspecified causes.