Trivia: A vaudeville dancer prior to her screen debut in 1926, Doris Hill made quite an impression opposite Sidney Chaplin in the comedy The Better 'Ole, the second feature film released with a Vitaphone score and sound effects. But Hill was saddled by a contract with FBO, a minor company best known for low-budget Westerns and melodramas, and despite being voted a 1929 WAMPAS Baby Star, she remained in the minor leagues throughout her career. That Hill's first talkie was the disastrous His Glorious Night (1929) in which John Gilbert's declarations of love provoked mirth instead of palpitations, did nothing to change things for the better and she spent the remainder of her career in B-Westerns. Hill's second husband was writer/director Monte Brice who had helmed Casey at the Bat (1927), in which she was one of the Floradora Girls.

Trivia: French actress Renée Adorée, born Jeanne de la Fonte, was a leading lady in Hollywood films during the 1920s. She began entertaining at age five when she worked as a bareback rider in the circus. As a young woman she worked for a time as a chorine for the Folies-Bergères. She came to Hollywood in 1920 and began playing leads in mediocre films. She became an overnight sensation after she appeared in The Big Parade (1925) opposite heartthrob John Gilbert. Adorée died at the age of 35 in 1933, a victim of tuberculosis.

Trivia: Dignified, shiny-domed American actor/playwright Richard Carle acted in both the U.S. and England for several decades before making his first film in 1916. Usually fitted with a pince-nez and winged collar, Carle was perfect for roles calling for slightly faded dignity. Comedy fans will recall Carle as the genially mad scientist in the Laurel and Hardy 2-reeler Habeas Corpus (1928) and as the besotted ship's captain who takes six months to travel from New York to Paris in Wheeler and Woolsey's Diplomaniacs (1933). He went on to appear as college deans, bankers and judges until his death in 1941, a year in which he showed up in no fewer than eight films. What might have been Richard Carle's finest screen role, the eccentric Father William in the 1933 version of Alice in Wonderland, was cut from the final release print of that film.

Trivia: A major stage star who played Lady Macbeth, Hedda Gabler, and Camille, the tall (nearly six feet) Nance O'Neil was reportedly the lover of murderess Lizzie Borden. A notorious spendthrift always in financial trouble, O'Neil was one of the first of her generation of actresses to embrace motion pictures. Signing with producer William Fox, she starred in a 1915 screen version of Leo Tolstoy's The Kreutzer Sonata. Although receiving favorable reviews, the veteran star was somewhat upstaged by the colorful Theda Bara, and it was Bara who would become Fox's major dramatic star, not the aging O'Neil. The latter continued to appear in films through 1917 -- including playing the Czarina in The Fall of the Romanoffs -- but moviegoers never truly warmed up to her and she returned to the stage. O'Neil was back in the new, audible Hollywood by 1929, supporting John Gilbert and Catherine Dale Owen in the ill-fated His Glorious Night. Neither Gilbert nor Owen had much future in sound films, but O'Neil lent her considerable presence to scores of early talkies, including appearing as the mother superior in Call of the Flesh, the Grand Mere in Their Mad Moment (1931), and unbilled as Mrs. Von Stael in Westward Passage. Nance O'Neil was briefly the wife of actor Alfred Hickman (1872-1931).

Trivia: Satanic-featured Austrian actor/director Gustav von Seyffertitz not only looked like a villain, but with that three-barrelled name he sounded like one -- even in silent pictures. After a lengthy stage career in both Germany and New York, Seyffertitz began appearing in World War One films as the very embodiment of the "Hideous Hun" -- America's notion of the merciless, atrocity-happy German military officer. Allegedly to avoid persecution from the anti-German organizations of the era, Seyffertitz changed his professional name to G. Butler Cloneblough -- a monicker so satiric in its timbre that one can't help that the "rechristening" was the concoction of a clever press agent. Returning to his own name after the war, Seyffertitz remained busy as a "villain of all nations:" He was British criminal mastermind Moriarty in John Barrymore's Sherlock Holmes (1922), a torturer for the Borgias in Barrymore's Don Juan (1926), and the evil American backwoods farmer Grimes in Mary Pickford's Sparrows (1926). Nearly always a supporting actor, Seyffertitz was given his full head with a mad-scientist leading role in the 1927 horror flick The Wizard. Offscreen, Seyffertitz was a kindly, temperate man, patient enough to direct Vitagraph star Alice Calhoun in three back-to-back vehicles in 1921: Princess Jones, Closed Doors and Peggy Puts It Over. In talking pictures, Seyffertitz' deep, warm voice somewhat mitigated his horrific demeanor. Though few of his talkie roles were billed, Gustav von Seyffertitz made the most of such parts as the High Priest in the 1935 version of She and the pontificating court psychiatrist in Capra's Mr. Deeds Goes to Town (1936).

Trivia: American actress and gossip columnist Hedda Hopper was born Elda Furry, but used the last name of her then-husband, Broadway star DeWolf Hopper, when she launched her movie career in 1915. Never a major star in silent films, Hedda was a competent character actress specializing in "best friend" and "other woman" roles. When she divorced DeWolf Hopper, Hedda found that she had to take any roles that came her way in order to support herself and her son DeWolf Jr. (who later became a film and TV actor under the name William Hopper). Her career running smoothly if not remarkably by 1932, Ms. Hopper decided to branch out into politics, running for the Los Angeles city council; she lost and returned to movies, where good roles were becoming scarce. Practically unemployed in 1936, Hedda took a job on a Hollywood radio station, dispensing news and gossip about the film capital. Impressed by Hedda's chatty manner and seemingly bottomless reserve of "dirt" on her fellow actors (sometimes gleaned from her own on-set experiences, sometimes mere wild-card speculations), the Esquire news syndicate offered Ms. Hopper her own column, one that would potentially rival the Hearst syndicate columnist Louella Parsons. Carried at first by only 17 papers, Hedda did much better for herself by switching to the Des Moines Register and Tribune syndicate; her true entree into the big time occured in 1942, when she linked up with the behemoth Chicago Tribune-Daily News syndicate. Between them, Hedda and archrival Louella Parsons wielded more power and influence than any other Hollywood columnists - and they exploited it to the utmost, horning in uninivited at every major social event and premiere, and throwing parties that few dared not to attend. While Louella had the stronger newspaper affiliations, Hedda was more popular with the public, due to her breezy, matter-of-fact speaking style and her wry sense of humor; she also more flamboyant than Louella, given to wearing elaborate hats which cost anywhere from $50 to $60 each. On the credit side, Hedda touted several new young stars without expecting favors in return from their studios; she'd admit her errors (and there were many) in public, giving herself "the bird" - a bronx cheer - during her broadcasts; and wrote flattering and affectionate pieces about old-time stars who had long fallen out of favor with filmakers. On the debit side, Hedda carried long and vicious grudges; demanded that stars appear for free as guests on her radio program, or else suffer the consequences; and set herself up as an arbiter of public taste, demanding in the '50s and '60s that Hollywood censor its "racy" films. Hedda's greatest influence was felt when the studio system controlled Hollywood and a mere handful of moguls wielded the power of professional life and death on the stars; the studios needed a sympathetic reporter of their activities, and thus catered to Hedda's every whim. But as stars became their own producers and film production moved further outside Hollywood, Hedda's control waned; moreover, the relaxing of movie censorship made her rantings about her notions of good taste seem like something out of the Dark Ages. Also, Hedda was a strident anti-communist, which worked to her benefit in the days of the witchhunts and blacklists, but which made her sound like a reactionary harpy in the more liberal '60s. Evidence of Hedda's downfall occured in 1960 when she assembled an NBC-TV special and decreed that Hollywood's biggest stars appear gratis; but this was a year fraught with industry strikes over wages and residuals, and Hedda was only able to secure the services of the few celebrities who agreed with her politics or were wealthy enough to appear for free. By the early '60s, Hedda Hopper was an institution without foundation, "starring" as herself in occasional movies like Jerry Lewis' The Patsy (1964) which perpetuated the myth of her influence, and writing (or commissioning, since she'd stopped doing her own writing years earlier) long, antiseptic celebrity profiles for Sunday-supplement magazines.

Trivia: During the '20s, American actress Catherine Owen was a popular Broadway blonde leading lady who at her peak was considered one of the most beautiful women in the world. She made her feature-film debut in the late '20s and appeared in several films, most notably the romantic film fiasco that destroyed the career of handsome leading man John Gilbert, His Glorious Night (1929). Owen's film career folded in 1931, for though beautiful and talented, audiences never warmed to her.

Trivia: A major talent of the silent era, John Gilbert is best remembered today as a textbook victim of the Hollywood machinery, a classic example of the motion picture industry's ability not only to manufacture stars but also destroy them. Born John Pringle in Logan, Utah on July 10, 1899, he broke into movies in 1915 as a bit player in Matrimony. His big break came four years later, when he appeared opposite Mary Pickford in Heart O' the Hills. Soon Gilbert was a star, moving to Fox during the 1920s and cementing his reputation as a leading adventure and western hero thanks to such swashbuckling fare as the 1922 hit Monte Cristo.By the middle of the decade, Gilbert was a cinema idol with few peers, starring in a string of successes ranging from the 1924 hit He Who Gets Slapped to the back-to-back 1925 smashes The Merry Widow and The Big Parade. In 1927 he teamed with Greta Garbo in MGM's Flesh and the Devil; the two stars were soon rumored to be romantically involved, and the intensity of the on-screen relationship made subsequent pairings like 1927's Love and the following year's A Woman of Affairs major hits. However, following the deterioration of Gilbert's relationship with Garbo, he came into conflict with studio-mogul Louis B. Mayer, effectively ending his career. While Gilbert's later fall from grace was publicly attributed to the awkwardness of his voice following the advent of the talkies, Hollywood insiders knew the truth -- Gilbert was the victim of Mayer's considerable wealth and influence. The writing was on the wall: the studio heads could crush anyone who crossed their paths, regardless of their popularity and star power. Gilbert was perhaps their most celebrated sacrifice. On January 9, 1936 he died of a massive heart attack.