Trivia: The daughter of a Massachusetts lawyer, American actress Bette Davis matured with a desire to become an actress upon her graduation from Cushing Academy, but was turned away from Eva LeGallienne's Manhattan Civic Repertory in New York. Undaunted, Davis enrolled in John Murray Anderson's Dramatic School, where everyone (including classmate Lucille Ball) regarded her as the star pupil. After a 1928 summer season with director George Cukor's stock company in Rochester, NY (where she worked with future co-star -- and rival -- Miriam Hopkins), Davis went on to Broadway, starring in Broken Dishes and Solid South before Hollywood called. Dazzling on-stage, Davis was signed to a contract by Universal in 1930. After an unimpressive debut in Bad Sister in 1931, however, Davis was out of work, but picked up by Warner Bros. soon thereafter. Davis applied herself with white-hot intensity to becoming a star with that company, and after a major role in the 1932 George Arliss vehicle The Man Who Played God, a star she became. Still, the films at Warner Bros. were uneven, and it wasn't until the studio loaned out Davis to play the bravura role of Mildred in RKO's Of Human Bondage (1934) that the critics began to take notice. An Oscar nomination seemed inevitable for her performance in Bondage, but Davis was let down by Warner Bros., which didn't like the fact that her best appearance had been in a rival's movie, and it failed to get behind her Oscar campaign (although there was a significant write-in vote for the actress). But, in 1935, Davis excelled as a self-destructive actress in the otherwise turgid film Dangerous, and an Oscar was finally hers. And when Warner Bros. subsequently failed to give Davis the top roles she felt she then merited, the actress went on strike and headed for England. She lost a legal battle with the studio and came back, but it acknowledged her grit and talent by increasing her salary and giving her much better roles. In 1939 alone, Davis starred in Dark Victory, Juarez, The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex, and The Old Maid. But she didn't get the plum role of the season -- Scarlet O'Hara in Gone With the Wind -- because Warner Bros. wouldn't loan her to David O. Selznick unless Errol Flynn was chosen to play Rhett Butler (a piece of casting both Selznick and Davis violently opposed). But Davis had already had her turn at playing a Southern belle in Jezebel (1938), which won her second a Oscar. As her star status increased in the 1940s, Davis found that it would have to be at the expense of her private life -- she would be married and divorced four times, admitting toward the end of her life that her career came first, last, and always. A fling at being her own producer in 1946 was disappointing, and her contract with Warner Bros. petered out in 1949 with a string of unsuccessful films. Davis made a spectacular comeback in 1950 when she replaced an ailing Claudette Colbert in the role of Margot Channing in the Oscar-winning All About Eve. Though suffering from a bone disease that required part of her jaw to be removed, Davis continued to work in films throughout the '50s; but, in 1961, things came to a standstill, forcing the actress to take out a famous job-wanted ad in the trade papers. In 1962, Davis began the next phase of her career when she accepted the role of a whacked-out former child star in What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? This led to a string of gothic horror films that did little to advance Davis' reputation, but kept her in the public eye. It was also in 1962 that Davis penned her thoughtful and honest autobiography The Lonely Life. Working in movies, TV, on-stage and on one-woman lecture tours into the '70s, Davis may have been older but no less feisty and combative; her outspokenness may have unnerved some of her co-stars, but made her an ideal interview subject for young film historians and fans. In 1977, Davis received a Lifetime Achievement Award from the American Film Institute, an honor usually bestowed upon performers who were retired or inactive. Not Davis. She kept at her craft into the '80s, even after a stroke imposed serious limitations on her speech and movement. Amidst many TV movies and talk-show appearances, Davis gave one last memorable film appearance in The Whales of August (1987), in which she worked with another venerable screen legend, Lillian Gish. Though plagued with illness, Davis was formidable to the end -- so much so that when she died in France at the age of 82, a lot of her fans refused to believe it.

Trivia: Born in Japan to a British patent attorney and his actress wife, Olivia de Havilland succumbed to the lure of Thespis while attending high school in Los Gatos, CA, where she played Hermia in an amateur production of A Midsummer Night's Dream. The older sister of actress Joan Fontaine, de Havilland was spotted by famed director Max Reinhardt, who cast her in his legendary Hollywood Bowl production of the play. This led to her part in the Warner Bros. film adaptation of Midsummer in 1935, and being signed to a long-term contract wiht the company. Considering herself a classical actress, de Havilland tried to refuse the traditional ingenue roles offered her by the studio, which countered by telling her she'd be ruined in Hollywood if she didn't cooperate. Loaned out to David O. Selznick, de Havilland played Melanie Hamilton in Gone With the Wind (1939), earning an Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actress in the process. Although she didn't come out on top that year, she would later win two Best Actress Oscars, the first for 1946's To Each His Own, and then again for 1949's The Heiress. De Havilland also made news when she sued Warner Bros. for extending her seven-year contract by tacking on the months she'd been on suspension for refusing to take a part. The actress spent three long years off the screen, but she ultimately won her case, and the "De Havilland Law," as it would become known, effectively destroyed the studios' ability to virtually enslave their contractees by unfairly extending their contract time. After completing The Heiress, de Havilland spent several years on Broadway, cutting down her subsequent film appearances to approximately one per year. In 1955, she moved to France with her second husband, Paris Match editor Pierre Galante; she later recalled her Paris years with the semiautobiographical Every Frenchman Has One. De Havilland showed up in a brace of profitable fading-star horror films in the '60s: Lady in a Cage (1964) and Hush ... Hush, Sweet Charlotte (1965), in which she replaced Joan Crawford. During the next decade, she appeared in a number of TV productions and in such all-star film efforts as Airport '77 (1977) and The Swarm (1978). After a number of TV appearances (if not always starring roles) in the '80s, de Havilland once more found herself in the limelight in 1989, on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of Gone With the Wind. As one of the only surviving stars from this film, she was much sought after for interviews and reminiscences, but graciously refused almost every request.

Trivia: Though Dennis Morgan would later allude to Milwaukee, Wisconsin as his hometown, he was actually born in the small burg of Prentice. After attending Carroll College in nearby Waukesha, Morgan acted in stock companies, worked as a radio announcer, and sang with travelling opera troupes. Still using his given name of Stanley Morner, he was signed to an MGM contract in 1936, then spent a frustrating year playing bit parts. What might have been his big break, as soloist in the "Pretty Girl is Like a Melody" number in MGM's mammoth The Great Ziegfeld (1936), was compromised by the fact that the studio dubbed in Allan Jones' singing voice. Morgan then moved to Paramount, where he played supporting roles under the new moniker Richard Stanley. In 1939, he landed at Warner Bros., where he became "Dennis Morgan" for good and all. His Warners roles were better than anything he'd had at MGM or Paramount, though he still was inexplicably prevented from singing. His biggest acting break came about when Warners loaned him to RKO to appear opposite Ginger Rogers in Kitty Foyle (1940). Finally in 1943, he was given a full-fledged singing lead in Warners' The Desert Song. This led to a series of well-received musicals which earned Morgan a faithful fan following--and, for a brief period, he was the studio's highest paid male star. In 1947, Morgan was teamed with Jack Carson for a group of musical comedies which Warners hoped would match the success of Paramount's Hope-Crosby "Road" pictures. Best of the batch was Two Guys From Milwaukee (1947), which had its premiere in that city. When the sort of musicals Morgan starred in went out of fashion in the 1950s, he shifted creative gears and appeared in westerns and adventure yarns. In 1959, he headlined a TV cop series, 21 Beacon Street. For all intents and purposes retired by the 1960s, Dennis Morgan re-emerged to play cameos in two theatrical features, Rogue's Gallery (1968) and Won Ton Ton, the Dog Who Saved Hollywood (1976).

Trivia: With his pencil-thin mustache, the suave, gallant George Brent was one of Hollywood's most dependable leading men. A handsome, but never very exciting or dynamic lead, he played opposite all of Warner's greatest actresses, including Barbara Stanwyck and Olivia de Havilland he is best known for his work with Bette Davis, with whom (according to some sources) he had a lasting but secret off-screen romance. He began his career playing small roles as a child in Abbey Theater (Ireland) plays. During the Irish Rebellion he participated in subversive activities and had to be smuggled out of the country to Canada where he eventually toured with a stock company for two years, before moving on to New York. There he continued to appear with several stock companies, three of which he formed on his own. Brent then found work on Broadway in the late '20s, before heading for Hollywood to begin a career that spanned two decades. Brent was typically cast as a gentlemanly, romantic leading man (after briefly being cast in tough hero roles). He debuted in Under Suspicion (1930). He retired from the big screen in 1953, going on to star in the TV series Wire Service (1956-59). He made his final screen appearance in 1978, playing a judge in Born Again. His six wives included actresses Ruth Chatterton (with whom he co-starred in The Rich Are Always With Us, [1932]), Constance Worth, and Ann Sheridan (with whom he appeared in Honeymoon for Three, [1941]).

Trivia: American actor Charles Coburn had already put in nearly forty years as a stage actor, producer, and director (specializing in Shakespeare) before making his screen debut at age 61 in Of Human Hearts (1938). At home in any kind of film, Coburn was most popular in comedies, and in 1943 won an Academy Award for his role in The More the Merrier as the bombastic but likable business executive forced by the wartime housing shortage to share a Washington D.C. apartment with Jean Arthur and Joel McCrea. Coburn continued playing variations on his elderly scalawag character (he was the living image of the Monopoly-board millionaire) throughout the late 1940s and 1950s, most notably as Marilyn Monroe's erstwhile "sugar daddy" in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1953). The actor also kept busy on stage, touring with the Theatre Guild as Falstaff in Merry Wives of Windsor and supervising the annual Mohawk Drama Festival at Schenectady's Union College, which he'd founded in 1934. Moving into television work with the enthusiasm of a novice, the octogenarian Coburn continued acting right up to his death. Coburn's last appearance, one week before his passing, was as Grandpa Vanderhoff in an Indianapolis summer-stock production of You Can't Take It With You.

Trivia: American actor/playwright Frank Craven enjoyed a long stage career as both performer and writer. As an actor, he specialized in wry middle-aged small-town types. As a writer, he favored domestic comedies, usually centered around the tribulations of "normal" family life. Craven was so firmly locked into his particular style that he felt lost doing anything else. For several years during the silent film era, Craven had begged Harold Lloyd to allow him to sit in on the "gag sessions" for Lloyd's films, in order to contribute comedy ideas; after a particularly harrowing session with Lloyd's writers, who tossed gag ideas about at the tops of their voices, Craven admitted that slapstick wasn't his brand of humor and returned to the stage. Craven made his film bow in the 1928 "ethnic melting pot" drama We Americans, but when he was finally brought to Hollywood under contract to Fox in 1932, it was as a writer. One of Craven's best-known screenplays was for the Laurel and Hardy vehicle Sons of the Desert (1933), one of the comedy team's few feature films with a solid plot structure. Concentrating mainly on performing for most of his film career, Craven returned to Broadway in 1939 to play the Stage Manager in Thornton Wilder's Pulitzer Prize-winning Our Town. The actor was called upon to repeat the role in the 1940 film version, and thereafter most of his film roles were variations of the Stage Manager, complete with his ubiquitous pipe. Craven died in 1945 at age 70, shortly after completing his role in Colonel Effingham's Raid (1945).

Trivia: The daughter of a circus clown, American actress Billie Burke became a musical comedy star in the early 1900s under the aegis of two powerful Broadway producers: Charles K. Frohman and Florenz Ziegfeld. Burke's career soared after her marriage to Ziegfeld, which was both a blessing and a curse in that some newspaper critics, assuming she wouldn't have reached the heights without her husband's patronage, gave her some pretty rough reviews. Actually, she had a very pleasant singing voice and ingratiating personality, not to mention natural comic gift that transferred well to the screen for her film debut in Peggy (1915). She had no qualms about adjusting to characters roles upon reaching 40, but she was devoted to the stage and didn't intend to revive her film career - until the crippling debts left behind by Ziegfeld after his death in 1932 forced her to return full-time to Hollywood. At first concentrating on drama, Burke found that her true strength lay in comedy, particularly in portraying fey, birdbrained society ladies. She worked most often at MGM during the sound era, with rewarding side trips to Hal Roach studios, where she appeared as Mrs. Topper in the three Topper fantasy films, played Oliver Hardy's wife in Zenobia (1939) and earned an academy award nomination for her performance in Merrily We Live (1938). A tireless trouper, Burke appeared in virtually every sort of film, from rugged westerns like Sgt. Rutledge (1960) to a pair of surprisingly good two-reel comedies for Columbia Pictures in the late 1940s. If she had done nothing else worthwhile in her seven-decade career, Burke would forever be remembered for her lighthearted portrayal of Glinda the Good Witch in the matchless The Wizard of Oz (1939). In addition to her many film portrayals, Burke was herself portrayed in two filmed biographies of Flo Ziegfeld: Myrna Loy played her in The Great Ziegfeld (1936), while Samantha Eggar took the role in the TV-movie Ziegfeld: The Man and His Women (1978).

Trivia: Although her movie career consisted almost entirely of playing stereotypic maids and other servants, Hattie McDaniel was in fact the first black woman to sing on the radio and the first black performer to win an Academy Award, for her portrayal of Mammy in Gone with the Wind (1939). Before coming to Hollywood, she had been a blues singer and had toured as Queenie in Show Boat, later playing the same role in the 1936 Irene Dunne version of the film. Her considerable film credits include Blonde Venus (1932) with Marlene Dietrich, I'm No Angel (1933) with Mae West, Nothing Sacred (1937) with Carole Lombard and Fredric March, The Shopworn Angel (1938) with Margaret Sullavan, They Died with Their Boots On (1941), James Thurber's story The Male Animal (1942), Thank Your Lucky Stars (1943), Since You Went Away (1944), and Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House (1948). She starred in the Beulah series on radio and was scheduled to take over the role from Ethel Waters for the television series, which would have reunited her with Gone with the Wind co-star Butterfly McQueen, when she became ill and was replaced by Louise Beavers.

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: Blunt, burly American actor William B. Davidson was equally at home playing gangster bosses, business executives, butlers and military officials. In films since 1914, Davidson seemed to be in every other Warner Bros. picture made between 1930 and 1935, often as a Goliath authority figure against such pint-sized Davids as James Cagney and Edward G. Robinson. In the early '40s, Davidson was a fixture of Universal's Abbott and Costello comedies, appearing in In the Navy (1941), Keep 'Em Flying (1941) and In Society (1944). In Abbott & Costello's Hold That Ghost (1941), Davidson shows up as Moose Matson, the dying gangster who sets the whole plot in motion. An avid golfer, William B. Davidson frequently appeared in the all-star instructional shorts of the '30s starring legendary golf pro Bobby Jones.

Trivia: A distinguished actor who had made his stage debut in London, tall, dignified Edward Fielding was especially known for his roles in the works of Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen. Although he appeared in the occasional silent film, including as Watson opposite William Gillette's Sherlock Holmes (1916), Fielding did not turn to the screen full-time until the late '30s, when he became a special favorite of British director Alfred Hitchcock, who cast him as the butler Frith in Rebecca (1940), the antique store owner in Suspicion (1941), the doctor on the train in Shadow of a Doubt (1943), and Dr. Edwardes in Spellbound (1945).

Trivia: Born and educated in Pennsylvania, John Hamilton headed to New York in his twenties to launch a 25-year stage career. Ideally cast as businessmen and officials, the silver-haired Hamilton worked opposite such luminaries as George M. Cohan and Ann Harding. He toured in the original company of the long-running Frank Bacon vehicle Lightnin', and also figured prominently in the original New York productions of Seventh Heaven and Broadway. He made his film bow in 1930, costarring with Donald Meek in a series of 2-reel S.S.Van Dyne whodunits (The Skull Mystery, The Wall St. Mystery) filmed at Vitaphone's Brooklyn studios. Vitaphone's parent company, Warner Bros., brought Hamilton to Hollywood in 1936, where he spent the next twenty years playing bits and supporting roles as police chiefs, judges, senators, generals and other authority figures. Humphrey Bogart fans will remember Hamilton as the clipped-speech DA in The Maltese Falcon (1941), while Jimmy Cagney devotees will recall Hamilton as the recruiting officer who inspires George M. Cohan (Cagney) to compose "Over There" in Yankee Doodle Dandy (1942). Continuing to accept small roles in films until the mid '50s (he was the justice of the peace who marries Marlon Brando to Teresa Wright in 1950's The Men), Hamilton also supplemented his income with a group of advertisements for an eyeglasses firm. John Hamilton is best known to TV-addicted baby boomers for his six-year stint as blustering editor Perry "Great Caesar's Ghost!" White on the Adventures of Superman series.

Trivia: Baby boomers will recall silver-maned actor William Forrest as Major Swanson, the brusque but fair-minded commander of Fort Apache in the 1950s TV series The Adventures of Rin Tin Tin. This character was but one of many military officers portrayed by the prolific Forrest since the late 1930s. Most of his film appearances were fleeting, and few were billed, but Forrest managed to pack more authority into 30 seconds' film time than many bigger stars were able to manage in an hour and a half. Outside of Rin Tin Tin, William Forrest is probably most familiar as the sinister fifth-columnist Martin Crane in the 1943 Republic serial The Masked Marvel.

Trivia: Pressured into an acting career by her ambitious parents, Mary Astor was a silent film star before she was 17 -- a tribute more to her dazzling good looks than anything else. Debuting in The Beggar Maid (1921), Astor appeared opposite John Barrymore in 1923's Beau Brummell with whom she had a romantic relationship and later starred with in Don Juan (1926), Anxious not to be a victim of the talking-picture revolution, the actress perfected her vocal technique in several stage productions for Edward Everett Horton's Los Angeles-based Majestic Theatre, and the result was a most successful talkie career. Things nearly fell to pieces in 1936 when, in the midst of a divorce suit, Astor's ex-husband tried to gain custody of the couple's daughter by making public a diary she had kept. In this volume, Astor detailed her affair with playwright George S. Kaufman; portions of the diary made it to the newspapers, causing despair for Astor and no end of embarrassment for Kaufman. But Astor's then-current employer, producer Sam Goldwyn, stood by his star and permitted her to complete her role in his production of Dodsworth (1936). Goldwyn was touched by Astor's fight for the custody of her child, and was willing to overlook her past mistakes. Some of Astor's best films were made after the scandal subsided, including The Maltese Falcon (1941), in which she played the gloriously untrustworthy Brigid O'Shaughnessy opposite Humphrey Bogart's Sam Spade, and The Great Lie (1941), in which she played a supremely truculent concert pianist (and won an Academy Award in the bargain). Seemingly getting better as she got older, Astor spent the final phase of her career playing spiteful or snobbish mothers, with one atypical role as murderer Robert Wagner's slow-on-the-uptake mom in A Kiss Before Dying (1956). A lifelong aspiring writer, Astor wrote two entertaining and insightful books on her career, My Story and A Life on Film. Retiring after the film Hush Hush Sweet Charlotte (1966), Astor fell victim to health complications and financial tangles, compelling her to spend her last years in a small but comfortable bungalow on the grounds of the Motion Picture Country House and Hospital.

Trivia: The brother of country/western singer Roy Acuff, actor Eddie Acuff drifted to Hollywood in the early 1930s, where he almost immediately secured day-player work at Warner Bros. studios. From his 1934 debut in Here Comes the Navy onward, Acuff showed up in film after film as reporters, photographers, delivery men, sailors, shop clerks, and the occasional western comical sidekick. Acuff's most memorable acting stint occured after actor Irving Bacon left Columbia's Blondie series. From 1946 through 1949, Eddie Acuff made nine Blondie appearances as the hapless postman who was forever being knocked down by the eternally late-for-work Dagwood Bumstead (Arthur Lake).

Trivia: After establishing himself on the New York stage, Elliott Sullivan headed to Hollywood in 1937, where over the next dozen years he would appear in nearly 80 films. Somewhat forbidding in appearance, Sullivan specialized in gangster roles, impersonating such characters as "Lefty" and "Mugsy" in films like King of the Underworld (1938) and The Man Who Talked Too Much (1942). He managed to squeeze in a few early TV assignments before falling victim to the Hollywood Blacklist. Sullivan spent the 1950s working in England as a dialogue coach. In the years just prior to his death, Elliot Sullivan made a brief comeback in such films as On Her Majesty's Secret Service (1969), The Spikes Gang (1974) and The Great Gatsby (1974).

Trivia: Herbert Heywood spent the bulk of his screen career answering to the nicknames "Pop" and "Old Timer." Already well into middle age when he began his film career in 1935, Heywood could be seen as mailmen, doormen, judges, convicts and railroad workers. Most of his films were made at Universal and Fox, two companies historically averse to crediting their minor players. Among the few roles played by Herbert Heywood to be given names rather than descriptions were Hot Cake Joe in Criminals of the Air (1937) and brakeman Arnold Kelly in King's Row (1941).

Trivia: Like most African-American performers of his generation, comic actor Dudley Dickerson played more than his fair share of Pullman porters, bell-boys, waiters, and shoe-shine boys. But from the late '30s until the mid-'50s, Dickerson was the most prominent black actor working in two-reel comedies. Contracted by Columbia's short subject department, the roly-poly supporting comic brought a refreshing energy to his portrayals of, yes, Pullman porters, shoe-shine boys, and the always demeaning "frightened Negro domestic." Closer in type to Mantan Moreland than Stepin Fetchit, Dickerson was especially good opposite Charley Chase in His Bridal Fright (1940) and the Three Stooges in A-Plumbing We Will Go (1940). Dickerson played a Pullman porter once again in his final film The Alligator People (1959), after which he concentrated on television work. The veteran comic died of cerebral thrombosis.

Trivia: Ruth Ford had been a photographer's model and stock actress before she was hired for Orson Welles's Mercury Theater in 1938. Ford enjoyed sizeable roles in the Mercury stage productions of Shoemaker's Holiday and Danton's Death, and also appeared on Welles' weekly radio anthology. In 1942, she was signed by Warner Bros. and groomed as a standard ingenue in such forgettable film fare as The Gorilla Man (1942) and The Hidden Hand (1943). In 1945 she moved on to 20th Century-Fox where she appeared in Wilson as Woodrow Wilson's daughter Margaret. Returning to Broadway, Ford distinguished herself in the demanding works of such playwrights as Shakespeare, Aigust Strindberg, Jean-Paul Sartre and Edward Albee. Her favorite stage roles included Estelle in No Exit, Temple Drake in Requiem for a Nun and Lorraine in A Breeze from the Gulf. Among the handful of films in which she appeared after 1950 were Act One (1963, as Beatrice Kaufman) and Play It As It Lays (1972). Previously married to actor Peter Van Eyck, Ruth Ford later married Zachary Scott, whom she outlived.

Trivia: Canadian-born actor Walter Huston enjoyed an early theatrical life of roller-coaster proportions which he doggedly pursued, despite a lifelong suffering of "stage fright." Taking nickel and dime performing jobs, quitting to pursue "real" work -- an engineering job came to an end when his inept attempts to fix a town's reservoir nearly resulted in a flood -- then returning to bit roles were all part of Huston's early days. Before 1910, Huston had toured in vaudeville, worked in stock companies, tried to maintain a normal married life, and fathered a son whose life was twice as tempestuous as Walter's: future director John Huston. The barnstorming days ended when Huston got his first major Broadway role in Mr. Pitt (1924), which led to several successful New York seasons for the actor in a variety of plays. His stage and vaudeville training made him an excellent candidate for talkies; Huston launched his movie career with Gentlemen of the Press (1929), and spent the 1930s playing everything from a Mexican bandit to President Lincoln. Returning to Broadway in 1938 for the musical comedy Knickerbocker Holiday, Huston, in the role of 17th century New Amsterdam governor Peter Minuit, achieved theatrical immortality with his poignant rendition of the show's top tune, "September Song," the recording of which curiously became a fixture of the Hit Parade after Huston's death in 1950. Throughout the 1940s, Huston offered a gallery of memorable screen portrayals, from the diabolical Mr. Scratch in All That Money Can Buy (1941) to George M. Cohan's father in Yankee Doodle Dandy (1942). Still, it was only after removing his expensive false teeth and trading his fancy duds for a dusty bindlestiff's outfit that the actor would win an Academy Award, for his portrayal of the cackling old prospector Howard in The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948), directed by his son. At the time of his death, Huston was preparing to take on the part of the "world's oldest counterfeiter" in Mister 880, a role ultimately played by fellow Oscar winner Edmund Gwenn.

Trivia: In films from 1931, Alan Bridge was always immediately recognizable thanks to his gravel voice, unkempt moustache and sour-persimmon disposition. Bridge spent a lot of time in westerns, playing crooked sheriffs and two-bit political hacks; he showed up in so many Hopalong Cassidy westerns that he was practically a series regular. From 1940's Christmas in July onward, the actor was one of the most ubiquitous members of writer/director Preston Sturges' "stock company." He was at his very best as "The Mister," a vicious chain-gang overseer, in Sturges' Sullivan's Travels, and as the political-machine boss in the director's Hail the Conquering Hero, shining brightly in an extremely lengthy single-take scene with blustery Raymond Walburn. Alan Bridge also essayed amusing characterizations in Sturges' Sin of Harold Diddlebock (1946), Unfaithfully Yours (1948, as the house detective) and the director's final American film, The Beautiful Blonde From Bashful Bend (1949).

Trivia: It's hard to believe that American actor Walter Brooke, who always looked about 45 years old, actually made his first film in 1942 when he was all of 27. Confined for the most part to B productions after his film debut in Bullet Scars (1942), Brooke's film roles improved as he grew into his familiar businesslike demeanor, as in his plot-motivating character in Conquest of Space (1953). Character actors never seem to be out of work, and Brooke was no exception. A full two decades after his film bow, he was still getting good parts in films like The Graduate (1967) (as Mr. Maguire) and Tora! Tora! Tora! (1970). In between film assignments, Brooke kept busy on television. Among his many guest-starring spots (including the 1963 Twilight Zone episode "A Short Drink from a Certain Fountain"), Walter Brooke played Bill Herbert for two years on the early serial One Man's Family (1950-52); he was a regular two other soap operas, Three Steps to Heaven (1953) and Paradise Bay (1965); and he was seen as District Attorney Scanlon on the adventure series The Green Hornet (1966), costarring with Van Williams and a young Bruce Lee.

Trivia: Lee Phelps was a longtime resident of Culver City, California, the home of several film studios, including MGM and Hal Roach. Whenever the call went out for street extras, Phelps was always available; his Irish face and shiny pate can be easily spotted in such silent 2-reelers as Laurel and Hardy's Putting Pants on Phillip. Phelps was active in films from 1921 through 1953, often in anonymous bit or atmosphere parts, usually playing a cop or a delivery man. Lee Phelps has found his way into several TV movie-compilation specials thanks to his participation in two famous films of the early '30s: Phelps played the cowering speakeasy owner slapped around by Jimmy Cagney in The Public Enemy (1931), and also portrayed the waterfront waiter to whom Greta Garbo delivers her first talking-picture line ("Gif me a viskey, baby...etc.") in Anna Christie (1930).

Trivia: The older brother of actresses Etta and Hattie McDaniel, Sam McDaniel began his stage career as a clog dancer with a Denver minstrel show. Later on, he co-starred with his brother Otis in another minstrel troupe, this one managed by his father Henry. Sam and his sister Etta moved to Hollywood during the talkie revolution, securing the sort of bit roles usually reserved for black actors at that time. He earned his professional nickname "Deacon" when he appeared as the "Doleful Deacon" on The Optimistic Do-Nut Hour, a Los Angeles radio program. During this period, Sam encouraged his sister Hattie to come westward and give Hollywood a try; he even arranged Hattie's first radio and nightclub singing jobs. McDaniel continued playing minor movie roles doormen, porters, butlers, janitors while Hattie ascended to stardom, and an Academy Award, as "Mammy" in Gone with the Wind (1939). During the 1950s, McDaniel played a recurring role on TV's Amos 'N' Andy Show.

Trivia: Ohio-born Fred Kelsey was so firmly typed as a comedy cop in Hollywood films that in the 1944 MGM cartoon classic Who Killed Who?, animator Tex Avery deliberately designed his detective protagonist to look like Kelsey -- mustache, heavy eyebrows, derby hat and all. In films from 1909, Kelsey started out as a director (frequently billed as" Fred A. Kelcey"), but by the '20s he was well into his established characterization as the beat cop or detective who was forever falling asleep on the job or jumping to the wrong conclusion. Often Kelsey's dialogue was confined to one word: "Sayyyyy....!" He seemed to be busiest at Warner Bros. and Columbia, appearing in fleeting bits at the former studio (butchers, bartenders, house detectives), and enjoying more sizeable roles in the B-films, short subjects and serials at the latter studio. From 1940 through 1943, Kelsey had a continuing role as dim-witted police sergeant Dickens in Columbia's Lone Wolf B-picture series. Seldom given a screen credit, Fred Kelsey was curiously afforded prominent featured billing in 20th Century-Fox's O. Henry's Full House (1952), in which he was barely recognizable as a street-corner Santa Claus.

Trivia: The son of slaves, actor George H. Reed was nearing the age of 50 when he made his first screen appearance in 1914. If it is true that Reed was cast in D.W. Griffith's Birth of a Nation, he would have been one of the few genuine black performers in this controversial film, which relied almost exclusively upon white actors in blackface. In contrast to the rampant racism in Birth, Reed's next confirmed appearance was in Realization of a Negro's Ambition (1916), which was relatively sympathetic to the African-American viewpoint. He went on to play escaped slave Jim in the 1920 version of Huckleberry Finn, then was consigned to stereotypical minor roles, bearing such character names as Rastus, Uncle Remus, and the like. During the talkie era, the stately, dignified Reed was often cast as a minister, most memorably as Reverend Deshee in The Green Pastures (1936). From 1939 to 1947, George H. Reed was a regular in MGM's Dr. Kildare series as elderly hospital orderly Conover, whose principal job it was to pilot the wheelchair bearing the curmudgeonly Dr. Gillespie (Lionel Barrymore).

Trivia: American small-part player Billy Wayne was active from 1935 to 1955. Wayne spent most of his film career at Universal, with a few side trips to Fox and Paramount. He was often cast as a chauffeur, usually an all-knowing or sarcastic one. Billy Wayne also played more than his share of cabbies, sailors, reporters, photographers, and assistant directors (vide W.C. Fields' Never Give a Sucker an Even Break).

Trivia: Bespectacled American actor Walter Baldwin was already a venerable stage performer at the time he appeared in his first picture, 1940's Angels over Broadway. With a pinched Midwestern countenance that enabled him to portray taciturn farmers, obsequious grocery store clerks and the occasional sniveling coward, Baldwin was a familiar (if often unbilled) presence in Hollywood films for three decades. Possibly Baldwin's most recognizable role was as Mr. Parrish in Sam Goldwyn's multi-Oscar winning The Best Years of Our Lives (1946), for which the actor received thirteenth billing. He also had a prime opportunity to quiver and sweat as a delivery man whose truck is commandeered by homicidal prison escapee Robert Middleton in The Desperate Hours (1955). Seemingly ageless, Walter Baldwin made his last film appearance three years before his death in 1969's Hail Hero.

Trivia: American actor Elisha Cook Jr. was the son of an influential theatrical actor/writer/producer who died early in the 20th Century. The younger Cook was in vaudeville and stock by the time he was fourteen-years old. In 1928, Cook enjoyed critical praise for his performance in the play Her Unborn Child, a performance he would repeat for his film debut in the 1930 film version of the play. The first ten years of Cook's Hollywood career found the slight, baby-faced actor playing innumerable college intellectuals and hapless freshmen (he's given plenty of screen time in 1936's Pigskin Parade). In 1940, Cook was cast as a man wrongly convicted of murder in Stranger on the Third Floor (1940), and so was launched the second phase of Cook's career as Helpless Victim. The actor's ability to play beyond this stereotype was first tapped by director John Huston, who cast Cook as Wilmer, the hair-trigger homicidal "gunsel" of Sidney Greenstreet in The Maltese Falcon (1941). So far down on the Hollywood totem pole that he wasn't billed in the Falcon opening credits, Cook suddenly found his services much in demand. Sometimes he'd be shot full of holes (as in the closing gag of 1941's Hellzapoppin'), sometimes he'd fall victim to some other grisly demise (poison in The Big Sleep [1946]), and sometimes he'd be the squirrelly little guy who turned out to be the last-reel murderer (I Wake Up Screaming [1941]; The Falcon's Alibi [1946]). At no time, however, was Cook ever again required to play the antiseptic "nerd" characters that had been his lot in the 1930s. Seemingly born to play "film noir" characters, Cook had one of his best extended moments in Phantom Lady (1944), wherein he plays a set of drums with ever-increasing orgiastic fervor. Another career high point was his death scene in Shane (1953); Cook is shot down by hired gun Jack Palance and plummets to the ground like a dead rabbit. A near-hermit in real life who lived in a remote mountain home and had to receive his studio calls by courier, Cook nonetheless never wanted for work, even late in life. Fans of the 1980s series Magnum PI will remember Cook in a recurring role as a the snarling elderly mobster Ice Pick. Having appeared in so many "cult" films, Elisha Cook Jr. has always been one of the most eagerly sought out interview subjects by film historians.