Trivia: Athletic, dashing, and heroic onscreen, and a notorious bon vivant in his personal life, Errol Flynn ranked among Hollywood's most popular and highly paid stars from the mid-'30s through the early '40s, and his costume adventures thrilled audiences around the world. Unfortunately, a combination of hard-living, bad financial investments, and scandal brought Flynn's career to a tragic end in 1959. He was born on the isle of Tasmania, the son of distinguished Australian marine biologist/zoologist Prof. Theodore Thomson Flynn. In school, Flynn was more drawn to athletics than academics and he was expelled from a number of exclusive Australian and British schools. At age 15, he found work as a shipping clerk in Sydney, and the following year he sailed to New Guinea to work in the government service, but the daily grind proved not to the adventuresome Flynn's taste, so he took off to prospect for gold. In 1930, Flynn returned to Sydney and purchased a boat, and he and three friends embarked upon a seven-month voyage to New Guinea. Upon arrival, Flynn became the overseer of a tobacco plantation and also wrote a column for the Sydney Bulletin. Flynn's introduction to acting came via an Australian film producer who happened to see photographs of the extraordinarily good-looking young man and had him cast as Fletcher Christian in the low-budget docudrama In the Wake of the Bounty (1933). After a year of stage repertory acting to hone his dramatic skills, Flynn headed to London for film work. Attaining a contract at Warner Bros. in 1935, Flynn languished in tiny parts until star Robert Donat suddenly dropped out of the big-budget swashbuckler Captain Blood (1935). The studio took a chance on Flynn, and the result was overnight stardom. It was also during this year that Flynn married actress Lili Damita. Although he'd make stabs at modern-dress dramas and light comedies, Flynn was most effective in period costume films, leading his men "into the Valley of Death" in Charge of the Light Brigade (1936), trading swordplay and sarcasm with Basil Rathbone in The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938), and even making the West safe for women and children in Dodge City (1939). At his romantic best onscreen, Flynn was king of the rouges, egotistically strutting before such damsels as Olivia de Havilland and Alexis Smith, arrogantly taunting them and secretly thrilling them with his sharp, often cynical wit and his muscular legs. But despite such rapscallion behavior, the ladies and his cohorts loved Flynn because, undisguised in his arresting blue eyes, they could see that he was a man of honor, passion, sincerity, and even a little vulnerability. Thus, an Errol Flynn adventure caused female fans to swoon and male fans to imagine themselves in his place.By the early '40s, Flynn ranked among Warner Bros.' most popular and lucrative stars. It should come as no surprise that the actor, with his potent charisma and obvious zest for life onscreen, was no less a colorful character, albeit a less heroic one, offscreen. His antics with booze, young women, and brawling kept studio executives nervous, PR men busy, and fans titillated for years. In 1942, Flynn was brought up on statutory rape charges involving two teenage girls, but was acquitted. Such allegations could easily have destroyed a lesser star's career, but not in Flynn's case. Instead of finding his career in ruins, he found himself more popular than ever -- particularly with female fans. In fact, the matter inspired a new catch phrase: "In like Flynn." That same year, he divorced Damita. (The couple's son, actor Sean Flynn, a dead ringer for his father, worked as a photojournalist and war correspondent in Southeast Asia where he disappeared in 1970 and was presumed dead.)But while Flynn's pictures continued to score at the box office, the actor, himself, was declining; already demoralized by his inability to fight in World War II due to a variety of health problems -- including recurring malaria, tuberculosis, and a bad heart -- Flynn's drinking and carousing increased, and, although he remained a loyal and good friend to his cronies, the actor's overall behavior became erratic. By the time he starred in The Adventures of Don Juan (1949) -- a role he could have done blindfolded ten years earlier -- Flynn was suffering from short-term memory loss and seemed unsure of himself. He divorced his second wife, Nora Eddington, in 1949 and the following year married actress Patrice Wymore. In 1952, Flynn appeared to have regained his former prowess (but for several injuries during production) in Against All Flags, but the success was short-lived. As his box-office appeal lessened and his debts grew larger, the increasingly bitter Flynn left for Europe to make a few films, including The Master of Ballantrae (1953) and Crossed Swords (1954). The latter was poorly received stateside, something Flynn blamed on the distributor's (United Artists) lack of promotion. The final blow for Flynn came when he lost his entire fortune on an ill-fated, never-completed attempt to film the story of William Tell. To cope with his pain and losses, Flynn took to the sea, sailing about for long periods in his 120-foot ocean-going sailboat, the Zaca. Returning to Hollywood in 1956, Flynn made a final bid to recapture his earlier glory, offering excellent performances in The Sun Also Rises (1957), The Roots of Heaven (1958), and Too Much, Too Soon (1958). Ironically, in the latter film, Flynn played another self-destructive matinee idol, John Barrymore. Strapped for cash during this period, Flynn penned his memoirs, My Wicked, Wicked Ways, which were published after his death in 1959. It was Flynn's third book; the first two were Beam Ends (1937), a description of his voyage to New Guinea in the Scirocco, and Showdown (1946), a novel. His final film was the grade-Z Cuban Rebel Girls (1958), in which he appeared with his girlfriend at the time, 17-year-old Beverly Aadland. Four months after turning 50, Flynn's years of hard living caught up with him and he died of heart failure. According to the coroner's report, his body was so afflicted by various ailments that it looked as if it belonged to a much older man.

Trivia: Brenda Marshall wanted to be a film actress, all right; it's just that she didn't want to be Brenda Marshall. Throughout her years in Hollywood, she insisted that her friends and co-workers address her not by her studio-fabricated cognomen, but by her given name of Ardis Anderson Gaines. A Warner Bros. contractee of the early 1940s, Anderson/Marshall did her best work opposite Errol Flynn in The Sea Hawk (1940) and Footsteps in the Dark (1941). From 1941 through 1973, Brenda Marshall was married to actor William Holden, a curious union that evidently soured early on (Holden's friends blamed Marshall, and vice versa), and was distinguished by extended separations and numerous extracurricular romances.

Trivia: From his late teens to his late 20s, Ralph Bellamy worked with 15 different traveling stock companies, not just as an actor but also as a director, producer, set designer, and prop handler. In 1927 he started his own company, the Ralph Bellamy Players. He debuted on Broadway in 1929, then broke into films in 1931. He went on to play leads in dozens of B-movies; he also played the title role in the "Ellery Queen" series. For his work in The Awful Truth (1937) he received an Oscar nomination, playing the "other man" who loses the girl to the hero; he was soon typecast in this sort of role in sophisticated comedies. After 1945 his film work was highly sporadic as he changed his focus to the stage, going on to play leads in many Broadway productions; for his portrayal of FDR in Sunrise at Campobello (1958) he won a Tony Award and the New York Drama Critics Award. From 1940-60 he served on the State of California Arts Commission. From 1952-64 he was the president of Actors' Equity. In 1986 he was awarded an honorary Oscar "for his unique artistry and his distinguished service to the profession of acting." He authored an autobiography, When the Smoke Hits the Fan (1979).

Trivia: At age 13 she debuted on Broadway and went on to do much work onstage. She appeared in one film in 1929, then went back to Broadway and was not in another film until 1937; after that she was in numerous movies, usually in character roles but occasionally playing leads. In the '50s she costarred in such TV series as Topper and Mr. Adams and Eve. After retiring from the screen in 1964 she returned once more: she portrayed Sam Spade's secretary Effie in The Black Bird (1975), a comic remake of The Maltese Falcon; she had played Effie in the 1941 Humphrey Bogart version.

Trivia: The screen's premier "comic gangster," Allen Jenkins studied at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts and worked several years in regional stock companies and on Broadway before talking pictures created a demand for his talents in Hollywood. One of his first films was Blessed Event (1932), in which Jenkins played the role he'd originated in the stage version. This and most subsequent Allen Jenkins films were made at Warner Bros., where the actor made so many pictures that he was sometimes referred to as "the fifth Warner Brother." As outspoken and pugnacious off screen as on, Jenkins was a member in good standing of Hollywood's "Irish Mafia," a rotating band of Hibernian actors (including James Cagney, Pat O'Brien, Matt McHugh and Jimmy Gleason) who palled around incessantly. Popular but undisciplined and profligate with his money, Jenkins was reduced to "B" films by the 1940s and 1950s, including occasional appearances in RKO's Falcon films and the Bowery Boys epics at Monogram; still, he was as game as ever, and capable of taking any sort of physical punishment meted out to his characters. TV offered several opportunities for Jenkins in the 1950s and 1960s, notably his supporting role on 1956's Hey Jeannie, a sitcom starring Scottish songstress Jeannie Carson, and 30 weeks' worth of voice-over work as Officer Dibble on the 1961 animated series Top Cat. Going the dinner theater and summer stock route in the 1960s, Jenkins was as wiry as ever onstage, but his eyesight had deteriorated to the point that he had to memorize where the furniture was set. Making ends meet between acting jobs, Jenkins took on work as varied as tool-and-die making for Douglas Aircraft and selling cars for a Santa Monica dealer. Asked in 1965 how he felt about "moonlighting", Jenkins (who in his heyday had commanded $4000 per week) growled, "I go where the work is and do what the work is! Moonlighting's a fact. The rest is for the birds." Towards the end of his life, Jenkins was hired for cameo roles by directors who fondly remembered the frail but still feisty actor from his glory days; one of Jenkins' last appearances was as a telegrapher in the final scene of Billy Wilder's The Front Page (1974).

Trivia: Canadian-born, convent-educated Lucille Watson studied acting in the waning years of the 19th century at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts. On the Broadway stage from 1900, Watson scored her first big hit in the 1902 production The Girl with Green Eyes. She made her first film in 1916, but for the most part avoided Hollywood until after the death of her husband, playwright Louis Shipman, in 1934. Frequently cast as the mother, grandmother or maiden aunt of the hero/heroine, the formidable Ms. Watson was seen in such roles as Louisa Bradley in The Razor's Edge (1946) and Aunt March in the 1949 version of Little Women. In 1943, Lucille Watson earned an Oscar nomination for her portrayal of blinkered Washington D.C. matriarch Fanny Fannelly in Watch on the Rhine.

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: Educated at California's Harvard Military academy and USC, Roscoe Karns was acting from age 15 with Marjorie Rambeau's stock company. By 1922, he was playing leads at LA's Morosco theatre, which led to film work at the Christie comedy studios. He showed up in several silent features, including the historic part-talkie The Jazz Singer (1927) and the very first Academy Award winner, Wings (1927). In the early talkie era, Karns returned to the stage, then made a movie comeback playing fast-lipped reporters and press agents, most often at Columbia studios. He was awarded strong supporting roles in such Columbias as It Happened One Night (1934) ("Shapely's my name, and shapely's the way I like 'em"), Twentieth Century (1934) (working with his idol, John Barrymore) and His Girl Friday (1939); he also starred in a brace of Columbia 2-reelers, Black Eyes and Blues and Half Shot at Sunrise (both 1941). His film assignments dwindling in the late 1940s, Karns wrote a letter to the DuMont TV network, asking if they had any work handy. The result was a five-year starring stint on Rocky King, Detective, one of the most popular weekly series of the early 1950s. Karns' last TV assignment was the role of the crusty Admiral Walter Shafer on the Jackie Cooper sitcom Hennessey (1959-62). Roscoe Karns was the father of actor/recording executive Todd Karns, who starred in TV's first filmed comedy series, Jackson and Jill (1949).

Trivia: The son of a general and a graduate of Yale College and Harvard Law School, Ohioan Grant Mitchell was a lawyer (he certainly looked the part) for several years before going into acting. He made his stage bow at the age of 27, and spent the next quarter of a century as a leading player, often billed above the title of the play. Mitchell was a special favorite of showman George M. Cohan, who wrote a vehicle specifically tailored to Mitchell's talents, The Baby Cyclone, in 1927. Though he reportedly appeared in a 1923 film, Mitchell's movie career officially began in 1932, first in bits (the deathhouse priest in If I Had a Million), then in sizeable supporting roles at Warner Bros. Often cast as the father of the heroine, Mitchell socked across his standard dyspeptic-papa lines with a delivery somewhat reminiscent of James Cagney (leading one to wonder if the much-younger Cagney didn't take a few pointers from Mitchell during his own formative years). While he sparkled in a variety of secondary roles as businessmen, bank clerks and school principals, Mitchell was occasionally honored with a B-picture lead, as in 1939's Father is a Prince. With years of theatrical experience behind him, Mitchell was shown to best advantage in Warners' many adaptations of stage plays, notably A Midsummer Night's Dream (1935) and The Man Who Came to Dinner (1942). Freelancing in the mid '40s, Grant Mitchell occasionally showed up in unbilled one-scene cameos (Leave Her to Heaven [1945]) and in reprises of his small-town bigwig characterizations in such B-films as Blondie's Anniversary (1947) and Who Killed Doc Robbin? (1948).

Trivia: In films from 1938, statuesque brunette American actress Maris Wrixon fluctuated from full leads to supporting parts. In many of her films, Wrixon was bumped off in the first or second reel, but in just as many she was permitted to survive to the fadeout. She was starred in several Warner Bros. B-pictures of the 1940s, usually in remakes of earlier Warner A's. Horror fans remember her best as Boris Karloff's daughter in Monogram's The Ape (1941). Maris Wrixon retired in the late '40s following her marriage to film editor Rudi Fehr.

Trivia: The son of famed Yiddish actor Maurice Moscovitch (1871-1940), Noel Madison was educated at the University of Laussane in Switzerland and Loudoun House in London. At first billed as Nat Madison, he established his reputation on Broadway as an actor and director. In films from 1930, he was usually cast as a smooth-talking gangster. He left Hollywood in 1937 for a brief sojourn to England, where he was prominently featured in three Jessie Mathews musicals. Once back in America, it was business as usual for Madison, who returned to screen villainy. During World War II, the actor's unique facial features permitted him to play both German and Japanese bad guys. One of Noel Madison's rare sympathetic roles was Carl Rothschild in the 1934 George Arliss vehicle House of Rothschild.

Trivia: American actor Jack LaRue is frequently mistaken for Humphrey Bogart by casual fans. In both his facial features and his choice of roles, LaRue did indeed resemble Bogart, in every respect but one; Bogart became a star, while LaRue remained in the supporting ranks. After stage work in his native New York, LaRue came to Hollywood for his first film, The Mouthpiece, in 1932. For the next few years he played secondary hoodlums (for example, the hot-head hit man in the closing sequences of Night World [1932]) and unsavory lead villains -- never more unsavory than as the sex-obsessed kidnapper in The Story of Temple Drake (1933). LaRue decided to shift gears and try romantic leading roles, but this "new" LaRue disappeared after the Mayfair Studios cheapie, The Fighting Rookie (1934). He was at his most benign as "himself", trading gentle quips with Alice Faye at an outdoor carnival in the MGM all-star short Cinema Circus (1935). Otherwise, it was back to gangsters and thugs, with a few exceptions like his sympathetic role in A Gentleman from Dixie (1941). By the 1940s, LaRue had spent most of his movie savings and was compelled to seek out any work available. Awaiting his cue to appear in a small role on one movie set, LaRue was pointed out to up-and-coming Anne Shirley on a movie set as an example of what happens when a Hollywood luminary doesn't provide for possible future career reverses. Things improved a bit when LaRue moved to England in the late 1940s to play American villains in British pictures. His most memorable appearance during this period was as Slim Grissom in the notorious No Orchids for Miss Blandish (1948) -- a virtual reprisal of his part in The Story of Temple Drake. LaRue worked often in television during the last two decades of his career; in the early 1950s, he was the eerily-lit host of the spooky TV anthology Lights Out.

Trivia: Handsome, dapper leading man Bey was born Turhan Selahattin Sahultavy to a Turkish father and Czech mother in Vienna. He came to the U.S. in the '30s and studied acting at Ben Bard's School of Dramatic Arts and at the Pasadena Playhouse. With available actors depleted by World War Two, he began finding work in Hollywood in 1941, usually in exotic Arabian Nights-type films in which he co-starred with Maria Montez, Jon Hall, and Sabu. When that genre dried up in the late '40s, so did Bey's career, a problem exacerbated when he was called up for an extended term of military service; after 1950 he appeared in only one film, Prisoners of the Casbah (1953), and produced another, Stolen Identity (1953). Bey did become a well-respected photographer in his native Vienna, and he directed plays at the Marionette Theater in Salzburg.

Trivia: American actor Frank Faylen was born into a vaudeville act; as an infant, he was carried on stage by his parents, the song-and-dance team Ruf and Clark. Traveling with his parents from one engagement to another, Faylen somehow managed to complete his education at St. Joseph's Prep School in Kirkwood, Missouri. Turning pro at age 18, Faylen worked on stage until getting a Hollywood screen test in 1936. For the next nine years, Faylen played a succession of bit and minor roles, mostly for Warner Bros.; of these minuscule parts he would later say, "If you sneezed, you missed me." Better parts came his way during a brief stay at Hal Roach Studios in 1942 and 1943, but Faylen's breakthrough came at Paramount in 1945, where he was cast as Bim, the chillingly cynical male nurse at Bellevue's alcoholic ward in the Oscar-winning The Lost Weekend. Though the part lasted all of four minutes' screen time, Faylen was so effective in this unpleasant role that he became entrenched as a sadistic bully or cool villain in his subsequent films. TV fans remember Faylen best for his more benign but still snarly role as grocery store proprietor Herbert T. Gillis on the 1959 sitcom Dobie Gillis. For the next four years, Faylen gained nationwide fame for such catch-phrases as "I was in World War II--the big one--with the good conduct medal!", and, in reference to his screen son Dobie Gillis, "I gotta kill that boy someday. I just gotta." Faylen worked sporadically in TV and films after Dobie Gillis was canceled in 1963, receiving critical plaudits for his small role as an Irish stage manager in the 1968 Barbra Streisand starrer Funny Girl. The actor also made an encore appearance as Herbert T. Gillis in a Dobie Gillis TV special of the 1970s, where his "good conduct medal" line received an ovation from the studio audience. Faylen was married to Carol Hughes, an actress best-recalled for her role as Dale Arden in the 1939 serial Flash Gordon Conquers the Universe, and was the father of another actress, also named Carol.

Trivia: The son of an actress, Garry Owen first appeared on-stage with his mother in vaudeville. Owen went on to perform in such Broadway productions as Square Crooks and Miss Manhattan. In films from 1933, Owen was occasionally seen in such sizeable roles as private-eye Paul Drake in the 1936 Perry Mason movie Case of the Black Cat. For the most part, however, he played character bits, most memorably in the films of Frank Capra; in Capra's Arsenic and Old Lace (1944), for example, he plays the monumentally impatient taxi driver who closes the picture with the exclamation, "I'm not a cab driver, I'm a coffee pot!" In addition to his feature-film work, Garry Owen showed up in scores of short subjects for Hal Roach and MGM.

Trivia: After a tentative movie debut in the New York-filmed 1929 musical Glorifying the American Girl, stately character actress Sarah Edwards settled in Hollywood for keeps in 1935. Another of those performers who evidently jumped directly from birth to old age, Edwards portrayed many a kindly grandmother, imperious dowager, hardy pioneer wife, ill-tempered teacher and strict governess. She played peripheral roles in films like The Great Ziegfeld (1936) and Shadow of the Doubt (1942), and enjoyed larger assignments in films like Hal Roach's Dudes are Pretty People (1942, as "The Colonel") and Frank Capra's It's a Wonderful Life (1946). Sarah Edwards is not related to the 1980s TV personality of the same name.

Trivia: American actor Frank Wilcox had intended to follow his father's footsteps in the medical profession, but financial and personal circumstances dictated a redirection of goals. He joined the Resident Theater in Kansas City in the late '20s, spending several seasons in leading man roles. In 1934, Wilcox visited his father in California, and there he became involved with further stage work, first with his own acting troupe and then with the Pasadena Playhouse. Shortly afterward, Wilcox was signed to a contract at Warner Bros., where he spent the next few years in a wide range of character parts, often cast as crooked bankers, shifty attorneys, and that old standy, the Fellow Who Doesn't Get the Girl. Historian Leslie Haliwell has suggested that Wilcox often played multiple roles in these Warners films, though existing records don't bear this out. Frank Wilcox was still working into the 1960s; his most popular latter-day role was as Mr. Brewster, the charming banker who woos and wins Cousin Pearl Bodine (Bea Benaderet) during the inaugural 1962-1963 season of TV's The Beverly Hillbillies.

Trivia: Piping-voice, hamster-faced Scottish character actor Olaf Hytten left the British stage for films in 1921. By the time the talkie era rolled around, Hytten was firmly established in Hollywood, playing an abundance of butlers and high-society gentlemen. The actor was primarily confined to one or two-line bits in such films as Platinum Blonde (1931), The Sphinx (1933), Bonnie Scotland (1935), Beloved Rebel (1936), The Howards of Virginia (1940) and The Bride Came COD (1941). He was a semi-regular of the Universal B-unit in the '40s, appearing in substantial roles as military men and police official in the Rathbone/Bruce Sherlock Holmes series and as burgomeisters and innkeepers in the studio's many horror films (Ghost of Frankenstein, House of Frankenstein, etc.) Olaf Hytten was active until at least 1956; one of his more memorable assignments of the '50s was as the larcenous butler who participates in a scheme to drive Daily Planet editor Perry White crazy in the "Great Caesar's Ghost" episode of the TV series Adventures of Superman.

Trivia: Slight, grey-templed, bespectacled actor Harry Hayden was cast to best advantage as small-town store proprietors, city attorneys and minor bureaucrats. Dividing his time between stage and screen work from 1936, Hayden became one of the busiest members of Central Casting, appearing in everything from A-pictures like Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939) to the RKO 2-reelers of Leon Errol and Edgar Kennedy. Among his better-known unbilled assignments are horn factory owner Mr. Sharp (his partner is Mr. Pierce) in Laurel and Hardy's Saps at Sea (1940) and Farley Granger's harrumphing boss who announces brusquely that there'll be no Christmas bonus in O. Henry's Full House (1951). Hayden's final flurry of activity was in the role of next-door-neighbor Harry on the 1954-55 season of TV's The Stu Erwin Show (aka The Trouble with Father), in which he was afforded the most screen time he'd had in years -- though he remains uncredited in the syndicated prints of this popular series. From the mid '30s until his death in 1955, Harry Hayden and his actress wife Lela Bliss ran Beverly Hills' Bliss-Hayden Miniature Theatre, where several Hollywood aspirants were given an opportunity to learn their craft before live audiences; among the alumni of the Bliss-Hayden were Jon Hall, Veronica Lake, Doris Day, Craig Stevens, Debbie Reynolds, and Marilyn Monroe.

Trivia: With his silvery hair and dignified bearing, American actor John Dilson was a natural for "executive" roles. In films from 1935, Dilson was usually seen playing doctors, lawyers and newspaper editors. Occasionally, however, he played against type as sarcastic working stiffs, as witness his bit as an unemployment-office clerk in The Monster and the Girl (1941). John Dilson's larger screen roles can be found in Republic serials like Robinson Crusoe on Clipper Island (1936), and Dick Tracy (1937) and in such two-reel efforts as MGM's "Crime Does Not Pay" series.

Trivia: Silent-film leading man Creighton Hale was brought to America from his native Ireland via a theatrical touring company. While starring in Charles Frohman's Broadway production of Indian Summer, Hale was spotted by a representative of the Pathe film company and invited to appear before the cameras. His first film was the Pearl White serial The Exploits of Elaine, after which he rose to stardom in a series of adventure films and romantic dramas. Director D.W. Griffith used Hale as comedy relief in his films Way Down East (1920) and Orphans of the Storm (1922)--possibly Hale's least effective screen appearances, in that neither he nor Griffith were comedy experts. Despite his comparative failure in these films, Hale remained a popular leading man throughout the 1920s. When talking pictures arrived, Hale's star plummeted; though he had a pleasant, well-modulated voice, he was rapidly approaching fifty, and looked it. Most of Hale's talkie roles were unbilled bits, or guest cameos in films that spotlighted other silent movie veterans (e.g. Hollywood Boulevard and The Perils of Pauline). During the 1940s, Hale showed up in such Warner Bros. productions as Larceny Inc (1941), The Maltese Falcon (1941) and Casablanca (1943); this was due to the largess of studio head Jack Warner, who kept such faded silent favorites as Hale, Monte Blue and Leo White on permanent call. Creighton Hale's final appearance was in Warners' Beyond the Forest (1949).

Trivia: The son of legendary Broadway actor DeWolfe Hopper and movie actress Hedda Hopper, William Hopper made his film debut as an infant in one of his father's films. The popular consensus is that the younger Hopper was given his first talking-picture break because of his mother's reputation as the most feared of the Hollywood gossips. Not so: Hopper was signed to his first Warner Bros. contract in 1937, a year or so before Hedda had established herself as the queen of the dirt-dishers. At first billing himself as DeWolfe Hopper Jr., Hopper languished in bit parts and walk-ons for several years. He wasn't able to graduate to better roles until the 1950s, by which time he was calling himself William Hopper. After a largely undistinguished film career (notable exceptions to his usual humdrum assignments were his roles in 20 Million Miles to Earth [1957] and The Bad Seed [1956]) Hopper finally gained fame -- and on his own merits -- as private detective Paul Drake on the enormously popular Perry Mason television series, which began its eight-season run in 1957. In a bizarre coincidence, Perry Mason left the air in 1966, the same year that William Hopper's mother Hedda passed away.

Trivia: American actress Betty Farrington worked in Hollywood from 1929 to 1949, mostly at Paramount and mostly in minor roles. Farrington's screen appearances frequently went uncredited, even when she played such pivotal roles as the malevolent ghost of Mary Meredith in The Uninvited (1943). She occasionally enjoyed larger assignments at other studios like Republic and 20th Century-Fox. For example, Betty Farrington was given ample screen time as Mrs. Al Smith in Fox's The Dolly Sisters (1945).

Trivia: The son of a patent medicine manufacturer, American actor Alan Hale chose a theatrical career at a time when, according to his son Alan Hale Jr., boarding houses would post signs reading "No Dogs or Actors Allowed." Undaunted, Hale spent several years on stage after graduating from Philadelphia University, entering films as a slapstick comedian for Philly's Lubin Co. in 1911. Bolstering his acting income with odd jobs as a newspaperman and itinerant inventor (at one point he considered becoming an osteopath!), Hale finally enjoyed a measure of security as a much-in-demand character actor in the 1920s, usually as hard-hearted villains. One of his more benign roles was as Little John in Douglas Fairbanks' Robin Hood (1922), a role he would repeat opposite Errol Flynn in 1938 and John Derek in 1950. Talkies made Hale more popular than ever, especially in his many roles as Irishmen, blusterers and "best pals" for Warner Bros. Throughout his career, Hale never lost his love for inventing things, and reportedly patented or financed items as commonplace as auto brakes and as esoteric as greaseless potato chips. Alan Hale contracted pneumonia and died while working on the Warner Bros. western Montana (1950), which starred Hale's perennial screen cohort Errol Flynn.

Trivia: Handsome, wavy-haired actor David Newell was signed by Paramount Pictures during the industry switchover to talkies. Newell played large roles in such Paramount productions as Hole in the Wall and Dangerous Curves (1929), and made a guest appearance in the all-star Paramount on Parade (1930). For obscure reasons, he failed to catch on, and by the end of the 1930s was making do with bits and extra roles. One of his more famous uncredited assignments was as murder-victim Geoffrey Hammond in the 1940 remake of The Letter; director William Wyler forced the actor to tumble down a flight of stairs ten times then edited the scene so severely that all the audience saw of Newell were his feet. In 1954, David Newell gave up performing to become a makeup artist at Walt Disney studios, where he worked on such productions as Westward Ho, the Wagons! (1956), The Great Locomotive Chase (1956), Johnny Tremain (1957), and TV's The Mickey Mouse Club (1955-1959).