Trivia: Although he went on to play a variety of street-wise working-class louts, William Bendix was the son of the conductor of the New York Metropolitan Orchestra. He appeared in one film as a child, then went on to a variety of jobs (including time spent as a minor league baseball player) before joining the New York Theater Guild. His first Broadway appearance was as a cop in William Saroyan's The Time of Your Life (1939); he then began a healthy film career in 1942 with Woman of the Year; the same year, he appeared in Wake Island, for which he was nominated for Best Supporting Actor. With his thick features, broken nose and affected Brooklyn accent, Bendix often played the time-weathered meanie with a heart of gold; eventually he was typecast as dumb and brutish characters. He is best known for his role on the radio show The Life of Riley, which he reprised in the film of the same name (1949) and into a television series in 1953. He played Babe Ruth in The Babe Ruth Story (1948), and generally worked for Paramount.

Trivia: Trevor was born Claire Wemlinger. After attending Columbia and the American Academy of Dramatic Arts, she began her acting career in the late '20s in stock. By 1932 she was starring on Broadway; that same year she began appearing in Brooklyn-filmed Vitaphone shorts. She debuted onscreen in feature films in 1933 and soon became typecast as a gang moll, a saloon girl, or some other kind of hard-boiled, but warm-hearted floozy. Primarily in B movies, her performances in major productions showed her to be a skilled screen actress; nominated for Oscars three times, she won the Best Supporting Actress Oscar for her work in Key Largo (1948). In the '50s she began to appear often on TV; in 1956 she won an Emmy for her performance in Dodsworth opposite Fredric March.

Trivia: Hard-fighting, strong, durable redhead Charles Bickford graduated from MIT before he began appearing in burlesque in 1914. After serving in World War I, he started a career on Broadway in 1919. He didn't come to Hollywood until the birth of the Sound Era in 1929. His first film was Cecil B. DeMille's Dynamite, during the production of which, he punched out DeMille. He became a star after playing Greta Garbo's lover in Anna Christie (1930), but didn't develop into a romantic lead, instead becoming a powerful character actor whose screen appearances commanded attention throughout a career spanning almost four decades, in films such as Duel in the Sun (1946) and Johnny Belinda (1948). His craggy, intense features lent themselves to roles as likable fathers, businessmen, captains, etc. He sometimes played stubborn or unethical roles, but more often projected honesty or warmth. He co-authored a play, The Cyclone Lover (1928) and wrote an autobiography, Bulls, Balls, Bicycles, and Actors (1965). He was Oscar-nominated three times but never won the award. Late in his life he starred in the TV show The Virginian.

Trivia: Adept at playing sardonic, side-of-the-mouth urban types, Sam Levene appeared in several top Broadway productions of the early 1930s. At 29 (though looking far older and worldlier), Levene was brought to Hollywood to re-create his stage role as a superstitious gambler in Three Men on a Horse (1936). Not long afterward, he made the first of two appearances as New York police lieutenant Abrams in MGM's Thin Man series. Since Levene always seemed to have just stepped out of a Damon Runyon story, it was only natural that he create the part of crapshooter deluxe Nathan Detroit in the 1950 Broadway production Guys and Dolls; his endearingly offkey renditions of the Frank Loesser tunes "Oldest Established" and "Sue Me" can still be heard on the original cast album. When he wasn't essaying dese-dem-and-dose roles, Levene was frequently cast as a soft-spoken, philosophical Jew in such films as Action in the North Atlantic (1943) and Crossfire (1947). Though he made 36 films in his 33-year Hollywood career, Sam Levene was always happiest in front of a live audience: one of his last Broadway appearances was in the original production of Neil Simon's The Sunshine Boys.

Trivia: American actor William Frawley had hopes of becoming a newspaperman but was sidetracked by a series of meat-and-potatoes jobs. At 21, he found himself in the chorus of a musical comedy in Chicago; his mother forced him to quit, but Frawley had already gotten greasepaint in his veins. Forming a vaudeville act with his brother Paul, Frawley hit the show-business trail; several partners later (including his wife Louise), Frawley was a headliner and in later years laid claim to having introduced the beer-hall chestnut "Melancholy Baby." Entering films in the early 1930s (he'd made a few desultory silent-movie appearances), Frawley became typecast as irascible, pugnacious Irishmen, not much of a stretch from his off-camera personality. Though he worked steadily into the late 1940s, Frawley's drinking got the better of him, and by 1951 most producers found him virtually unemployable. Not so Desi Arnaz, who cast Frawley as neighbor Fred Mertz on the I Love Lucy TV series when Gale Gordon proved unavailable. Frawley promised to stay away from the booze during filming, and in turn Arnaz promised to give Frawley time off whenever the New York Yankees were in the World Series (a rabid baseball fan, Frawley not only appeared in a half dozen baseball films, but also was one of the investors of the minor-league Hollywood Stars ball team). Frawley played Fred Mertz until the last I Love Lucy episode was filmed in 1960, then moved on to a five-year assignment as Bub, chief cook and bottle-washer to son-in-law Fred MacMurray's all male household on My Three Sons.

Trivia: American actor Stanley Clements pursued a showbiz career immediately upon graduation from Brooklyn's PS 49, appearing in vaudeville and in radio. After a lean year in which he supported himself as a panhandler, Clements was signed by 20th Century-Fox in 1941, earning choice juvenile roles from his first film (Accent on Love) onward. Stan's most memorable teenage role was as the tough kid "humanized" by Bing Crosby and encouraged to organize a boy's choir in the Oscar-winning Going My Way (1944). Due to his small stature, he was most often cast as jockeys, even as late as 1952's Boots Malone. In 1956, Clements was hired by Allied Artists to replace Leo Gorcey in the "Bowery Boys" B-picture series; though compelled to take second billing to comic patsy Huntz Hall, Stanley was ostensibly the group's leader, fast-talking wiseguy Duke Covaleske. Clements played Duke in six pictures, included the final Bowery Boys installment, In the Money (1958). After that, Stanley Clements concentrated on movie and TV supporting roles, including a characteristic appearance as a shifty shoe salesman on an early '60s installment of Leave It to Beaver.

Trivia: Red-haired character-actor Michael Gough was brought to Hollywood in 1948 after 14 years on Broadway. Gough's burgeoning film career was cut short when he was blacklisted on the basis of alleged communist ties; likewise prohibited from working in films was Gough's wife, Karen Morley. The most immediate effect of Gough's blacklisting occurred in the opening titles of RKO's Rancho Notorious (1952); though Gough was prominently cast as the film's principal villain, RKO head man Howard Hughes, a rabid commie-hater, demanded that the actor's name be removed from the credits. Gough retreated to the stage, returning before the cameras in the 1960s, by which time Hollywood's witch-hunt mentality had dissipated. One of his first "comeback" roles was as Michael Axford in the 1966 TV series The Green Hornet. In the 1976 film The Front, Lloyd Gough was reunited with several other former blacklistees, including actors Zero Mostel, Herschel Bernardi and Joshua Shelley, director Martin Ritt and screenwriter Walter Bernstein.

Trivia: British actor Paul Cavanagh came to films in 1928 after extensive stage experience. In Hollywood from 1930, the elegant, trimly mustached Cavanagh occasionally played leads, notably as Maureen O'Sullivan's suitor in Tarzan and His Mate (1934). For the most part he was seen in stiff-upper-lip supporting roles, often cast as a society villain, noble cuckolded husband or military official. As much in demand at the big studios as he was at the poverty-row independents, Paul Cavanagh remained active until 1959, when he appeared in his last picture, the low-budget horror film Four Skulls of Jonathan Drake.

Trivia: A former professional baseball player, Pat Flaherty was seen in quite a few baseball pictures after his 1934 screen debut. Flaherty can be seen in roles both large and small in Death on the Diamond (1934), Pride of the Yankees (1942), It Happened in Flatbush (1942), The Stratton Story (1949, as the Western All-Stars coach), The Jackie Robinson Story (1950) and The Winning Team (1952, as legendary umpire Bill Klem). In 1948's Babe Ruth Story, Flaherty not only essayed the role of Bill Corrigan, but also served as the film's technical advisor. Outside the realm of baseball, he was usually cast in blunt, muscle-bound roles, notably Fredric March's taciturn male nurse "Cuddles" in A Star is Born (1937). One of Pat Flaherty's most unusual assignments was Wheeler and Woolsey's Off Again, On Again (1937), in which, upon finding his wife (Patricia Wilder) in a compromising position with Bert Wheeler, he doesn't pummel the hapless Wheeler as expected, but instead meekly apologizes for his wife's flirtatiousness!

Trivia: A repertory actor since childhood, Wisconsin-born Richard Lane was singing and dancing in vaudeville by the time he reached his thirteenth birthday. Lane toured europe with a circus "iron jaw" act, then bluffed his way into a dance band job. After more vaudeville work, Lane began securing "legit" gigs on Broadway. He appeared with Al Jolson in the late-'20s musical Big Boy, and was a headliner with George White's Scandals when he was signed to an RKO movie contract in 1937. While at RKO, Lane developed his standard characterization of a fast-talking sharpster, which secured him a recurring role on Al Pearce's popular radio program. He played a variety of detectives, con artists and travelling salesmen throughout the '40s, most often at 20th Century-Fox, Universal and Columbia. He was featured in several Abbott and Costello and Laurel and Hardy comedies during the decade, and costarred as Inspector Farraday in Columbia's Boston Blackie B-series; he also appeared in 11 Columbia 2-reel comedies, teamed with comic actor Gus Schilling. Though most closely associated with breezy, urban characters, Lane was also effective in slow-and-steady dramatic roles, notably the father in the 1940 sleeper The Biscuit Eater and baseball manager Clay Hopper in 1950's The Jackie Robinson Story. A television pioneer, Lane worked at Los Angeles' KTLA-TV as a newsman, sportscaster and used-car pitchman. For over twenty years, he was the mile-a-minute commentator on KTLA's nationally syndicated wrestling and roller derby matches. Significantly, Richard Lane's last screen appearances were in Raquel Welch's roller-derby epic Kansas City Bomber (1978) and Henry Winkler's pro-wrestling spoof The One and Only (1982).

Trivia: Alternately dubbed the "Honorary Mayor of Hollywood" and "Mr. Hollywood," Johnny Grant earned those monikers for his almost constant presence at Tinseltown events, and his status as the regular emcee at celebrity inductions into the Hollywood Walk of Fame. During Grant's career, in fact, he reportedly inducted over 500 such individuals. Another key aspect of his career involved maximizing Hollywood publicity -- spreading the news of Hollywood events to people across the country, via red-carpet celebrations, premieres, Christmas parades,and the like.A Goldsboro, NC, native, Grant began his career in journalism, initially as a cub reporter for WGBR radio. Following a period of WWII military service, he first hosted the television game show Stop the Clock, then subsequently trekked off to Hollywood and established himself as an actor, essaying occasional supporting roles in films including The Babe Ruth Story (1948), White Christmas (1954), and The Oscar (1966). During periods of global conflict including the Vietnam and Korean wars, Grant also joined actor/comedian Bob Hope as a globe-trotting USO "goodwill ambassador." Additional jobs included working as a White House correspondent for KMPC Radio and hosting the television programs Johnny Grant at Universal Studios and Johnny Grant Backstage in Hollywood. In 1980, Grant's "Honorary Mayor" tag became concrete when the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce officiated this status. Grant made one of his last film appearances as himself in the 2003 Harrison Ford police comedy Hollywood Homicide. He passed away in January 2008.