Trivia: When Carole Lombard died at the age of 34 in a plane crash following a World War II war bond drive, the American film industry lost one of its most talented and intelligent actresses. Starting out in silent films as a Mack Sennett bathing beauty, she later epitomized screwball comedy in Twentieth Century (1934); My Man Godfrey (1936), for which she was Oscar nominated as Irene Bullock, with ex-husband William Powell as Godfrey; and Nothing Sacred (1937), playing the not-so-doomed Hazel Flagg. But Lombard was also a capable dramatic actress whose talents can be seen in her subdued performance as a nurse in one of her final roles, in Vigil in the Night (1940), as well as in The Eagle and the Hawk (1933), In Name Only (1939) and They Knew What They Wanted (1940). Other fine appearances include teaming with Fred MacMurray in several films, the best of which are Hands Across the Table (1935) and The Princess Comes Across (1936), in which Lombard does a humorously accurate Greta Garbo takeoff. Her two final films contain two of her best performances: Mr. and Mrs. Smith (1940) and the Ernst Lubitsch war satire, To Be or Not To Be (1942). She was married to William Powell from 1931-33 and to Clark Gable from 1939 til her death.

Trivia: Given that Fred MacMurray built a successful film career as the quintessential nice guy, it's rather ironic that some of his strongest and best-remembered performances cast him against type. While remaining known as a fixture of light comedies and live-action Disney productions, his definitive roles nonetheless were those which found him contemplating murder, adultery, and other villainous pursuits. Born August 30, 1908, in Kankakee, IL, MacMurray, the son of a concert violinist, was educated at a military academy and later studied at the Chicago Art Institute. His original goal was to become a professional saxophonist, and toward that aim he worked with a variety of bands and even recorded with Gus Arnheim. MacMurray's musical aspirations eventually led him to Hollywood, where he frequently worked as an extra. He later joined the California Collegians and with them played Broadway in the 1930 revue Three's a Crowd, where he joined Libby Holman on a duet of "Something to Remember Me By." He subsequently appeared in productions of The Third Little Show and Roberta. The story behind MacMurray's return to Hollywood remains uncertain -- either a Paramount casting scout saw him on-stage, or he simply signed up with Central Casting -- but either way, he was under contract by 1934. At Paramount, he rose to fame in 1935's The Gilded Lily, a romantic comedy which pit him against Claudette Colbert. Seemingly overnight he was among the hottest young actors in town, and he quickly emerged as a favorite romantic sparring partner with many of Hollywood's leading actresses. After Katherine Hepburn requested his services for Alice Adams, MacMurray joined Carole Lombard in Hands Across the Table before reuniting with Colbert in The Bride Comes Home, his seventh film in 12 months. He kept up the frenetic pace, appearing in 1936's The Trail of the Lonesome Pine alongside Henry Fonda, reteaming with Lombard in The Princess Comes Across. After settling a contract dispute with Paramount, MacMurray again starred with Colbert in the 1937 swashbuckler Maid of Salem, one of the first films to move him away from the laid-back, genial performances on which he'd risen to success.Along with Colbert, Lombard remained the actress with whom MacMurray was most frequently paired. They reunited in 1937's Swing High, Swing Low and again that same year in True Confession. After starring with Bing Crosby in Sing You Sinners, he also began another onscreen partnership with Madeleine Carroll in 1939's Cafe Society, quickly followed by a reunion in Invitation to Bali. While not the superstar that many predicted he would become, by the 1940s MacMurray had settled comfortably into his leading man duties, developing an amiable comic style perfectly suited to his pictures' sunny tone. While occasionally appearing in a more dramatic capacity, as in the Barbara Stanwyck drama Remember the Night, the majority of his pictures remained light, breezy affairs. However, in 1944 he and Stanwyck reunited in Billy Wilder's superb Double Indemnity, which cast MacMurray as a murderous insurance salesman. The result was perhaps the most acclaimed performance of his career, earning him new respect as a serious actor.However, MacMurray soon returned to more comedic fare, appearing with Colbert in 1944's Practically Yours. After the following year's farcical Murder He Says, his contract with Paramount ended and he moved to 20th Century Fox, where he starred in the historical musical Where Do We Go From Here? His co-star, June Haver, became his wife in 1954. MacMurray then produced and starred in Pardon My Past, but after announcing his displeasure with Fox he jumped to Universal to star in the 1947 hit The Egg and I. During the 1940s and early '50s, he settled into a string of easygoing comedies, few of them successful either financially or artistically. His star began to wane, a situation not helped by a number of poor career choices; in 1950, he even turned down Wilder's classic Sunset Boulevard. In 1954, however, MacMurray returned to form in The Caine Mutiny, where he appeared as a duplicitous naval officer. As before, cast against type he garnered some of the best notices of his career, but this time he continued the trend by starring as a dirty cop in The Pushover. Despite recent critical acclaim, MacMurray's box-office clout remained diminished, and throughout the mid-'50s he appeared primarily in low-budget action pictures, most of them Westerns. In 1959, however, he was tapped by Walt Disney to star in the live-action comedy The Shaggy Dog, which became one of the year's biggest hits. MacMurray appeared as a callous adulterer in Wilder's Oscar-winning 1960 smash The Apartment before moving to television to star in the family sitcom My Three Sons; a tremendous success, it ran until 1972. He then returned to the Disney stable to essay the title role in 1961's The Absent-Minded Professor and remained there for the following year's Bon Voyage and 1963's Son of Flubber. However, after two more Disney features -- 1966's Follow Me Boys and 1967's The Happiest Millionaire -- both flopped, MacMurray remained absent from the big screen for the rest of the decade, and only resurfaced in 1973 in Disney's Charley and the Angel. After a pair of TV movies, MacMurray made one last feature, 1978's The Swarm, before retiring. He died in Santa Monica, CA, on November 5, 1991.

Trivia: American actress/singer Dorothy Lamour graduated from Spencer Business College, after spending a few teen years as an elevator operator in her home town of New Orleans. By 1930, she'd turned her back on the business world and was performing in the Fanchon and Marco vaudeville troupe. In 1931, she became vocalist for the Herbie Kay Band, and soon afterward married (briefly) Kay. In the years just prior to her film debut, Lamour built up a solid reputation as a radio singer, notably on the 1934 series Dreamer of Songs. Paramount Pictures signed Lamour to a contract in 1936, creating an exotic southseas image for the young actress: she wore her fabled sarong for the first time in Jungle Princess (1936), the first of three nonsensical but high-grossing "jungle" films in which the ingenuous island girl asked her leading man what a kiss was. A more prestigious "sarong" role came about in Goldwyn's The Hurricane (1937), wherein Lamour, ever the trouper, withstood tons of water being thrust upon her in the climactic tempest of the film's title. A major star by 1939, Lamour had developed enough onscreen self awareness to amusingly kid her image in St. Louis Blues (1939), in which she played a jaded movie star who balked at playing any more southseas parts. Lamour's latter-day fame was secured in 1940, when she co-starred in Road to Singapore (1940), the first of six "Road" pictures teaming Lamour with Bob Hope and Bing Crosby. It represented both a career summit and a downslide: As the "Road" series progressed, Lamour found herself with fewer and fewer comic lines, and by 1952's Road to Bali she was little more than a decorative "straight woman" for Bob and Bing. Very popular with the troops during World War II, Lamour gave selflessly of her time and talent in camp tours, USO shows and bond drives throughout the early 1940s. A tough cookie who brooked no nonsense on the set, Lamour was nonetheless much loved by Paramount casts and crews, many of which remained friends even after the studio dropped her contract in the early 1950s. Occasionally retiring from films during her heyday to devote time to her family, Lamour was out of Hollywood altogether between 1952 and 1962, during which time she developed a popular nightclub act. She returned to films for Hope and Crosby's Road to Hong Kong (1962), not as leading lady (that assignment was given to Joan Collins) but as a special guest star -- this time she was allowed as many joke lines as her co-stars in her one scene. More on stage than on film in the 1960s and 1970s, Lamour was one of several veteran actresses to star in Hello Dolly, and spent much of her time in regional productions of such straight plays as Barefoot in the Park. She took on a few film and television roles in the '70s and '80s, participated in many Bob Hope TV birthday specials, and was the sprightly subject of an interview conducted by Prof. Richard Brown on cable's American Movie Classics channel. Dorothy Lamour passed away in her North Hollywood, California home in 1996 at the age of 81.

Trivia: A master at playing diffident, absentminded middle-aged bachelors, American actor and Notre Dame alumnus Charles Butterworth was an established Broadway musical comedy star when he made his first film, Life of the Party (1930). Butterworth's heyday was in the 1930s, when he appeared as either the hero's silly best friend or a besotted society twit in one film after another. An offscreen drinking buddy of such literary wits as Robert Benchley and Corey Ford, Butterworth became so famous for his dry quips and cynical asides that Hollywood screenwriters began writing only fragmentary scripts for him, hoping that the actor would "fill in the blanks" with his own bon mots. Butterworth hated this cavalier treatment, complaining "I need material as much as anyone else!" By the early 1940s, material of all sorts began running thin, and Butterworth was accepting assignments at such lesser studios as Monogram and PRC, with the occasional worthwhile role in A-films like This Is the Army (1943). Two years after completing his last picture, Dixie Jamboree (1946), the still relatively youthful Butterworth was killed in an automobile accident. His memory was kept alive in the early 1960s by actor Daws Butler, who used a Butterworth-type voice for the cartoon commercial spokesman Cap'n Crunch.

Trivia: The distinctly urban-American character actress Jean Dixon got her theatrical start in, of all places, France, where she appeared in a Sarah Bernhardt production. On Broadway from 1921, Dixon rapidly rose to prominence in a string of comically sarcastic leading roles. She was a particular favorite of playwright George S. Kaufman, who wrote parts in such plays as Once in a Lifetime and June Moon with Jean specifically in mind. In films, Jean Dixon usually headed the supporting cast, essaying such acerbic roles as the wisecracking maid in My Man Godfrey (1936).

Trivia: Statuesque, foghorn-voiced comedienne Cecil Cunningham at one time pursued an operatic career. After extensive training, Cunningham made her stage debut in the chorus of a Fritzi Scheff musical. She played her first important role in the 1911 production Will o' the Wisp, then enjoyed her greatest success as a serious singer in the 1913 operetta Pink Lady. Alas, nervous tension robbed Cunningham of her glorious singing voice, whereupon she cut her losses and went into comedy. For many years she was a headliner in vaudeville, performing first-rate material written for her by her then-husband Jean Havez. When vaudeville went into decline in 1930, she headed to Hollywood. Signed by Paramount, she played roles of varying sizes, usually portraying a mannish society matron or show-business diva. Cunningham can be seen as a brutally frank party hostess in Paramount on Parade (1930), as supercilious opera star Madame Swempski in the Marx Brothers' Monkey Business (1932), as a outraged dowager whose beauty treatment has left her totally bald in Kiss and Make Up (1934) and as Jack Benny's dry-witted secretary in Artists and Models (1937). Comedy fans hold a special place in their hearts for two of Cunningham's 1930s appearances: in If I Had a Million, she plays the haughty ex-trapeze artist who is put down in short order by W.C. Fields; and in Leo McCarey's The Awful Truth, she enjoys one of her juiciest parts as Irene Dunne's waspish Aunt Patsy. Even in her briefest appearances, Cecil Cunningham managed to draw attention to herself, usually through such simple expedients as a firmly planted tongue in cheek and a withering, all-knowing glare.

Trivia: Indiana native Charles Arnt attended Princeton University, where he was president of the Triangle Club and where he earned a geological engineering degree. Short, balding and with an air of perpetual suspicion concerning his fellow man, Arnt seemed far older than his 30 years when he was featured in the original Broadway production of Knickerbocker Holiday. In the movies, Arnt was often cast as snoopy clerks, inquisitive next-door neighbors or curious bystanders. Charles Arnt was seen in such films as The Falcon's Brother (1942), The Great Gildersleeve (1943) and That Wonderful Urge (1948); he also played one top-billed lead, as an obsessive art dealer in PRC's Dangerous Intruder (1946).

Trivia: American actor Franklin Pangborn spent most of his theatrical days playing straight dramatic roles, but Hollywood saw things differently. From his debut film Exit Smiling (1926) to his final appearance in The Story of Mankind (1957), Pangborn was relegated to almost nothing but comedy roles. With his prissy voice and floor-walker demeanor, Pangborn was the perfect desk clerk, hotel manager, dressmaker, society secretary, or all-around busybody in well over 100 films. Except for a few supporting appearances in features and a series of Mack Sennett short subjects in the early 1930s, most of Pangborn's pre-1936 appearances were in bits or minor roles, but a brief turn as a snotty society scavenger-hunt scorekeeper in My Man Godfrey (1936) cemented his reputation as a surefire laugh-getter. The actor was a particular favorite of W.C. Fields, who saw to it that Pangborn was prominently cast in Fields' The Bank Dick (1940) (as hapless bank examiner J. Pinkerton Snoopington) and Never Give a Sucker An Even Break (1941). Occasionally, Pangborn longed for more dramatic roles, so to satisfy himself artistically he'd play non-comic parts for Edward Everett Horton's Los Angeles-based Majestic Theatre; Pangborn's appearance in Preston Sturges' Hail the Conquering Hero (1942) likewise permitted him a few straight, serious moments. When jobs became scarce in films for highly specialized character actors in the 1950s, Pangborn thrived on television, guesting on a number of comedy shows, including an appearance as a giggling serial-killer in a "Red Skelton Show" comedy sketch. One year before his death, Pangborn eased quietly into TV-trivia books by appearing as guest star (and guest announcer) on Jack Paar's very first "Tonight Show."

Trivia: Earthy and at times exuberant, Anthony Quinn was one of Hollywood's more colorful personalities. Though he played many important roles over the course of his 60-year career, Quinn's signature character was Zorba, a zesty Greek peasant who teaches a stuffy British writer to find joy in the subtle intricacies of everyday life in Zorba the Greek (1964), which Quinn also produced. The role won him an Oscar nomination and he reprised variations of Zorba in several subsequent roles. Although he made a convincing Greek, Quinn was actually of Irish-Mexican extraction. He was born Antonio Rudolfo Oaxaca Quinn in Chihuahua, Mexico, on April 21, 1915, but raised in the U.S. Before becoming an actor, Quinn had been a prizefighter and a painter. He launched his film career playing character roles in several 1936 films, including Parole (his debut) and The Milky Way, after a brief stint in the theater. In 1937, he married director Cecil B. DeMille's daughter Katherine De Mille, but this did nothing to further his career and Quinn remained relegated to playing "ethnic" villains in Paramount films through the 1940s. By 1947, he was a veteran of over 50 films and had played everything from Indians, Mafia dons, Hawaiian chiefs, Chinese guerrillas, and comical Arab sheiks, but he was still not a major star. So he returned to the theater, where for three years he found success on Broadway in such roles as Stanley Kowalski in A Streetcar Named Desire. Upon his return to the screen in the early '50s, Quinn was cast in a series of B-adventures like Mask of the Avenger (1951). He got one of his big breaks playing opposite Marlon Brando in Elia Kazan's Viva Zapata! (1952). His supporting role as Zapata's brother won Quinn his first Oscar and after that, Quinn was given larger roles in a variety of features. He went to Italy in 1953 and appeared in several films, turning in one of his best performances as a dim-witted, thuggish, and volatile strongman in Federico Fellini's La Strada (1954). Quinn won his second Best Supporting Actor Oscar portraying the painter Gaugin in Vincente Minnelli's Lust for Life (1956). The following year, he received another Oscar nomination for George Cukor's Wild Is the Wind. During the '50s, Quinn specialized in tough, macho roles, but as the decade ended, he allowed his age to show. His formerly trim physique filled out, his hair grayed, and his once smooth, swarthy face weathered into an appealing series of crags and crinkles. His careworn demeanor made him an ideal ex-boxer in Requiem for a Heavyweight and a natural for the villainous Bedouin he played in Lawrence of Arabia (both 1962). The success of Zorba the Greek in 1964 was the highwater mark of Quinn's career during the '60s -- it offered him another Oscar nomination -- and as the decade progressed, the quality of his film work noticeably diminished. The 1970s offered little change and Quinn became known as a ham, albeit a well-respected one. In 1971, he starred in the short-lived television drama Man in the City. His subsequent television appearances were sporadic, though in 1994, he became a semi-regular guest (playing Zeus) on the syndicated Hercules series. Though his film career slowed considerably during the 1990s, Quinn continued to work steadily, appearing in films as diverse as Jungle Fever (1991), Last Action Hero (1993), and A Walk in the Clouds (1995). In his personal life, Quinn proved as volatile and passionate as his screen persona. He divorced his wife Katherine, with whom he had three children, in 1956. The following year he embarked on a tempestuous 31-year marriage to costume designer Iolanda Quinn. The union crumbled in 1993 when Quinn had an affair with his secretary that resulted in a baby; the two shared a second child in 1996. In total, Quinn has fathered 13 children and has had three known mistresses. He and Iolanda engaged in a public and very bitter divorce in 1997 in which she and one of Quinn's sons, Danny Quinn, alleged that the actor had severely beaten and abused Iolanda for many years. Quinn denied the allegations, claiming that his ex-wife was lying in order to win a larger settlement and part of Quinn's priceless art collection. When not acting or engaging in well-publicized court battles, Quinn continued to paint and became a well-known artist. He also wrote and co-wrote two memoirs, The Original Sin (1972) and One Man Tango (1997). In the latter, Quinn is candid and apologetic about some of his past's darker moments. Shortly after completing his final film role in Avenging Angelo (2001), Anthony Quinn died of respiratory failure in Boston, MA. He was 86.

Trivia: Dutch-born character actor Charles Judels' expertise with dialects served him well throughout his fifty-year career. After several seasons in vaudeville, Judels made his Broadway debut as a snotty Frenchman in The Ziegfeld Follies of 1912. He went on to provide comedy relief for such stage musicals as Nobody Home (1914) and George M. Cohan's Mary (1920). In films from 1915, Judels was a fixture of the Vitaphone short-subject product in the early 1930s, starring in his own series of 2-reelers and providing support to such comedians as Jack Haley and Shemp Howard. His feature-film assignments found him playing Italians, Greeks, Slavs, Germans and Spaniards (he also served as dialogue director for 1928's Mother Knows Best, which curiously contained no dialect humor whatsoever!) Film buffs will remember Charles Judels as the cheese-store proprietor in Laurel & Hardy's 1938 effort Swiss Miss (his musical number with Stan and Ollie was, alas, left on the cutting room floor), the plot-motivating murder victim in the early "film noir" Stranger on the Third Floor (1940), and the voice of Stromboli and the Coachman in the Disney cartoon feature Pinocchio (1940).

Trivia: In films from 1918, dark, mustachioed Harry Semels was a reliable serial villain for Pathe and other studios. Semels spent the 1920s menacing the heroes and heroines of such chapter plays as Hurricane Hutch, Pirate Gold, Plunder, and Play Ball; he even found time to spoof his screen image in the serial parody Bound and Gagged (1919). Active in talkies until his death in 1946, Semels played mostly bit roles, usually as excitable foreigners. During this period, Harry Semels was also a fixture of Columbia Pictures' two-reel comedy unit, in support of such funmakers as Andy Clyde, Buster Keaton, Monty Collins, Tom Kennedy, Gus Schilling, Dick Lane, and especially the Three Stooges: He made seven appearances with the last-named team, most memorably as the prosecuting attorney ("Whooo killed Kirk Robin?") in Disorder in the Court (1936).

Trivia: Born in the Arizona Territory to Mexican parents, Chris-Pin Martin developed a reputation as a laughgetter at an early age. He made his earliest film appearance in 1911, playing an Indian. During his heyday of the 1930s and 1940s, Martin earned his salary perpetuating a stereotype that nowadays would be the ultimate in political incorrectness: the lazy, dull-witted Hispanic comic foil. Chris-Pin Martin appeared in several Cisco Kid programmers, playing sidekick Pancho (sometimes named Gorditor) to such screen Ciscos as Warner Baxter, Cesar Romero, Gilbert Roland and Duncan Renaldo.

Trivia: It is usually axiomatic that any actor who uses the nickname "Tiny" is anything but. Such was the case of tall, stockily built Paul "Tiny" Newlan. Born in Nebraska, Newlan began his acting career in repertory at the Garden Theater in Kansas City. After attending the University of Missouri, he played pro football and basketball, then returned to acting. In films from 1935, he signed a two-year Paramount contract in 1938, leading to dozens of tiny roles as bartenders, bouncers, stevedores, and the like. The size of his screen roles increased in the late '40s-early '50s, though Newlan didn't start landing truly important parts until he entered television. Paul Newlan is best remembered for his recurring appearances as Captain Grey on the TV cop show M-Squad (1957-1960).

Trivia: Bowman attended the American Academy of Dramatic Arts and began a career as a stage actor and radio singer in the '30s. Beginning with his debut in Internes Can't Take Money (1937), he spent seven years playing second leads, often as a playboy thanks to his suave, elegant style and dapper, handsome looks. Bowman hit his stride in the mid '40s, notably in Smash-Up (1947) opposite Susan Hayward. Never a major star, he began concentrating more on his stage work in the late '40s. He briefly starred in the TV series The Adventures of Ellery Queen (1950-51). After the mid '50s Bowman retired from the screen (except for a role in Youngblood Hawke in 1964), after which he went on to become the radio and TV consultant for the Republican Senatorial and Congressional Committee in Washington and later for Bethlehem Steel, coaching politicians and businessmen in speaking and on-camera techniques.

Trivia: American actor Darby Jones began appearing in Hollywood features at the age of nine. By the 1930s, he had begun playing leading roles, something he did through the 1940s.

Trivia: European character actor George Sorel made his first American film appearance in 1936. Usually showing up unbilled as gendarmes and maître d's, Sorel was afforded rare screen billing for his one scene and one line as Walter Woolf King's valet in Laurel and Hardy's Swiss Miss (1938). He flourished during WWII thanks to his rather shifty, sinister features, which permitted him to play many a Nazi or collaborator. One of George Sorel's most extensive assignments was in the 1946 Universal serial Lost City of the Jungle; when the serial's principal heavy, Lionel Atwill, died during production, Sorel was called in to double for Atwill in several transitional scenes.

Trivia: Enjoying one of the longer careers in Hollywood history, Gino Corrado is today best remembered as a stocky bit-part player whose pencil-thin mustache made him the perfect screen barber, maître d', or hotel clerk, roles he would play in both major and Poverty Row films that ranged from Citizen Kane (1941) and Casablanca (1942) to serials such as The Lost City (1935) and, perhaps his best-remembered performance, the Three Stooges short Micro Phonies (1945; he was the bombastic Signor Spumoni).A graduate of his native College of Strada, Corrado finished his education at St. Bede College in Peru, IL, and entered films with D.W. Griffith in the early 1910s, later claiming to have played bit parts in both Birth of a Nation (1915) and Intolerance (1916). By the mid-1910s, he was essaying the "other man" in scores of melodramas, now billed under the less ethnic-sounding name of Eugene Corey. He became Geno Corrado in the 1920s but would work under his real name in literally hundreds of sound films, a career that lasted well into the 1950s and also included live television appearances. In a case of life imitating art, Corrado reportedly supplemented his income by working as a waiter in between acting assignments.

Trivia: A veteran stage and screen actor from New York, burly Frank Whitson appeared opposite some of the more prominent leading ladies of the 1910s, including Theda Bara and child star Marie Osborne. At his busiest in the 1920s, Whitson usually played villains and it was his attempt to kidnap Tarzan (Elmo Lincoln) in The Adventures of Tarzan that furnished most of the excitement in that popular 1921 serial. Five years later, he was still at it, planning to rob his own ward (Molly Malone) in Buffalo Bill Jr.'s Bad Man's Bluff. Sadly, Whitson was reduced to working as an extra in sound films.

Trivia: The film career of actor Louis Natheaux spanned 19 years (1921-1940). At first, the slender, mustachioed Natheaux was cast as pomaded city slickers and shifty-eyed con artists. After a burst of activity in the first years of the talkies, he was consigned to bit parts, usually as a jaded croupier or snap-brim-hatted crook. He played larger roles in the two-reelers of such Hal Roach comedians as Charley Chase, Thelma Todd, and Patsy Kelly, and was occasionally featured as murder suspects in Poverty Row mysteries like Sinister Hands (1932). Louis Natheaux was also an off-and-on utility actor for Cecil B. De Mille, essaying minor parts in King of Kings (1929), Union Pacific (1939), and Northwest Mounted Police (1940).

Trivia: After accumulating experience at the Pasadena Playhouse, William Wright launched his film career in the late '30s. Signed to a Columbia contract in 1942, Wright showed up in roles of varying sizes in the studio's crime melodramas and Ann Miller musicals. Drafted into the army in 1945, Wright had trouble re-establishing himself upon his return to Hollywood a year later. He played detective Philo Vance in one PRC production of 1947, but was replaced by Alan Curtis in the studio's next two Vance mysteries. William Wright died of cancer at the age of 47.

Trivia: A grandson of the legendary Apache chief Geronimo, Charles Stevens (often billed as Charles "Injun" Stevens because of his ethnic background) made his film bow as an extra in The Birth of a Nation (1915). The close friend and "mascot" of cinema idol Douglas Fairbanks Sr., Stevens appeared in all but one of Fairbanks' starring films, beginning with 1915's The Lamb. He was often seen in multiple roles, never more obviously than in Fairbanks' The Black Pirate (1926). His largest role during his Fairbanks years was Planchet in The Three Musketeers (1921) and its sequel The Iron Mask (1929). In talkies, Stevens was generally cast as a villain, usually an Indian, Mexican, or Arab. Outside of major roles in early sound efforts like The Big Trail and Tom Sawyer (both 1930), he could be found playing menacing tribal chiefs and bandits in serials and B-pictures, and seedy, drunken "redskin" stereotypes (invariably named Injun Joe or Injun Charlie or some such) in big-budget films like John Ford's My Darling Clementine (1946). He was also much in demand as a technical adviser on Native American lore and customs. Charles Stevens remained active until 1956, 17 years after the death of his pal and mentor Doug Fairbanks.

Trivia: Switching from Broadway to Hollywood in 1931, actress Esther Howard was an expert at portraying blowsy old crones, man-hungry spinsters and oversexed dowagers. Utilizing her wide, expressive eyes and versatile voice for both broad comedy and tense drama, Howard was equally at home portraying slatternly tosspot Mrs. Florian in Murder My Sweet (1944) as she was in the role of genteelly homicidal Aunt Sophie in Laurel and Hardy's The Big Noise (1944). She was a regular participant in the films of writer/director Preston Sturges, playing everything from an addled farm woman in Sullivan's Travels (1942) to the bejeweled wife of "The Wienie King" in The Palm Beach Story (1942). From 1935 to 1952, Esther Howard was a fixture of Columbia's short-subject unit, usually cast as the wife or sweetheart of comedian Andy Clyde.

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

Trivia: Sporting a pencil-thin mustache and an air of superiority, New York-born actor Richard Kipling played literally hundreds of unbilled bit parts from 1934 to 1955, often cast as "dignified men," the exact description of his character in the 1943 musical Girl Crazy. A veteran stock company actor, Kipling had formed Richard Kipling Enterprises in the late '10s to produce low-budget Westerns starring also-ran cowboys Bill Patton and Roy Stewart. At least five films were produced: The Midnight Rider (1920), Outlawed (1921), The Battlin' Kid (1921), and The Golden Silence (1923) -- all directed by Alvin J. Neitz and starring Patton -- and The Lone Hand (1920), starring Stewart.

Trivia: Born Edward Flanagan, O'Keefe was a lithe, brash, charming, tall, rugged lead actor. The son of vaudevillians, he began appearing onstage in his parents' act while still a toddler. By age 16 he was writing scripts for "Our Gang" comedy shorts. He attended some college and did more work on vaudeville before entering films in the early '30s, appearing in bit roles in more than 50 films under the name Bud Flanagan. His work in a small role in the film Saratoga (1937) impressed Clark Gable, who recommended that he be cast in leads. MGM agreed, so he changed his name to Dennis O'Keefe and went on to play leads in numerous films, beginning with Bad Man of Brimstone (1938). Besides many light action-oriented films, he also appeared in numerous '40s comedies, and later specialized in tough-guy parts. Later in his career he directed a film or two and also wrote mystery stories. In the late '50s O'Keefe starred in the short-lived TV series "The Dennis O'Keefe Show." He was in only two films in the '60s. He died at 60 of lung cancer. His widow is actress Steffi Duna.