Trivia: Ruth Chatterton was a dignified, sophisticated, brittle, blonde leading lady. At age 12, she debuted on stage in a stock production, reached Broadway by age 18, then triumphed at 20 as the star of Daddy Long Legs. She didn't break into films until her mid-30s, starting with Sins of the Fathers (1928) opposite Emil Jannings. She was subsequently nominated for "Best Actress" Oscars for her work in Madame X (1929) and Sarah and Son (1930), but is perhaps best remembered as Walter Huston's spoiled, selfish wife in Dodsworth (1936), after the making of which she left Hollywood. She went on to appear in two British productions, then retired from the screen. She continued a successful and variety-filled career on the stage, once directing a play but more usually starring in Broadway productions. She authored a Broadway play, Monsieur Brotonneau (1930), as well as several novels in the '50s. Chatterton was also a licensed pilot who flew her own plane cross-country. She was married three times, each time to an actor: Ralph Forbes (1924-32), George Brent (1932-34), and Barry Thomson (1942-his death in 1960).

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: Born in Pittsburgh and raised in Alabama, actress Lois Wilson was one of four sisters, all of whom would subsequently have silent film careers--but only Lois would rise to stardom. Intending to become a schoolteacher, Wilson was lost to academia forever when she won an Alabama beauty contest sponsored by Universal Pictures. Her first film for the studio was Dumb Girl of Portici (1916), filmed in Chicago, where she showed up uncredited in several minor roles (along with another newcomer named Boris Karloff). Blessed with a serene beauty and expressive eyes, Lois had little trouble achieving leading-lady status in a group of J. Warren Kerrigan westerns. She moved to Famous Players (aka Paramount) in 1919, attaining full stardom for her subtly shaded performance as an outwardly meek but inwardly determined Scotswoman in What Every Woman Knows (1921). After being reunited with J. Warren Kerrigan in the western classic The Covered Wagon (1923), Wilson followed up this film with several other outdoor epics; it was while on location for these films that she developed her lifelong concern with fair treatment of Native Americans, contributing thousands of dollars to Indian mission schools. While filming North of 36 (1924), Wilson, an amateur photographer, filmed invaluable footage of the last major cattle drive in the US--which looks better than anything the "professionals" filmed while recording the same event. In 1926, she reached an artistic peak with her performance as Daisy Buchanan in the first version of The Great Gatsby. Throughout the silent era, she would balk whenever given a passive role that did little justice to her talents, and as a result spent nine months on suspension from Paramount in 1927, which did considerable damage to her career. This coincided with the advent of talkies; though her voice recorded beautifully, the suspension lost her too much ground for her to thrive as a star in sound pictures. Oddly, it was one of her secondary talkie roles for which Wilson is most fondly recalled today: As Shirley Temple's mother in Bright Eyes (1934), she is killed off halfway through the picture, but her sudden demise affects the outcome of the film to such an extent that one can't help remembering her. In 1937, Wilson left Hollywood for a long and fruitful stage career, returning only periodically thereafter. Her last screen appearance was as Virginia Mayo's mother in 1949's The Girl from Jones Beach, but she remained active on stage (I Never Sang for My Father, Madwoman of Chaillot) and television (The Aldrich Family, The Guiding Light) into the '70s. In 1958, Lois Wilson was made a vice president of Actors Equity, using the clout of her position on behalf of the union's Ethnic Minorities Committee.

Trivia: Former All-American halfback Johnny Mack Brown was a popular screen cowboy during the 1930s. Already in the public eye for his athletic prowess, Brown was persuaded by a friend to give Hollywood a try after graduating from the University of Alabama. In 1927, the muscular macho man was signed by MGM where he played in a number of leading roles opposite popular actresses such as Garbo, Pickford, and Crawford for several years. But Brown never really found his acting niche until he starred in King Vidor's Billy the Kid (1930). From then on he was happily typecast as a cowboy actor, and became a hero to millions of American boys, appearing in over 200 B-grade Westerns over the next two decades. From 1942-50 he was consistently among the screen's ten most popular Western actors. Brown formally retired from movies in 1953 but made occasional return appearances as a "nostalgia" act.

Trivia: The daughter of a New Jersey newspaper reporter/ critic/ editor, Ruth Donnelly made her first stage appearance at 17, in the chorus of the touring show The Quaker Girl. Shortly afterward, she essayed the first of hundreds of comedy roles in a theatrical piece called Margie Pepper. Her Broadway debut occurred in 1914's A Scrap of Paper, which brought her to the attention of showman George M. Cohan, who cast Ruth in choice comic-relief roles for the next five years. Her first film was 1927's Rubber Heels, but Ruth didn't pursue a Hollywood career until the Wall Street crash reduced her opportunities in "live" theatre. From 1932's Blessed Event onward, Ruth was one of Tinseltown's favorite wisecracking matrons, brightening many a sagging scene in such films as Wonder Bar (1934), Mr. Deeds Goes to Town (1936) and Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939). She was proudest of her performance as a lively middle-aged nun in Leo McCarey's The Bells of St. Mary's; unfortunately, most of that performance ended up on the cutting-room floor. Closing out her film career with Autumn Leaves (1956) and her stage career with The Riot Act (1963), Ruth Donnelly retired to a Manhattan residential hotel, politely but firmly refusing all offers to appear in TV commercials and soap operas.

Trivia: After nearly four decades on the stage, the diminutive, bald-domed Ferdinand Gottschalk made his film bow as the Duke de Brissac in Zaza (1923). He flourished in the talkie era, playing small but memorable roles in such films as Grand Hotel (1932) and Les Miserables (1935). Cecil B. DeMille thought enough of the actor's talents to cast him in the same role--a dissipated Roman nobleman named Glabrio--in two separate films, Sign of the Cross (1932) and Cleopatra (1934). One of Gottschalk's best screen showings was the Universal mystery Secret of the Chateau (1934), in which he stole the show as crafty French police inspector Marotte. Ferdinand Gottschalk retired in 1938, returning to his native England.

Trivia: One didn't become a stage and movie leading man with a monicker like Milton LeRoy in the early '30s, so the Brooklyn-born, Cornell-educated LeRoy was rechristened Phillip Reed. He made his earliest appearances as a utility actor in films like Penthouse (1933), then came into his own with several starring parts in the late '30s and early '40s. Mostly he was cast opposite big names like Dorothy Lamour and Bette Davis, who occasionally preferred to work with handsome but unremarkable hunks who wouldn't detract from their star performances. When not outshone by his female costars, Reed was often seen as a good-looking but mean-spirited type, who lost the girl to the hero or who found himself the principal murder suspect. Better served in his stage work, Reed still managed a few truly memorable film appearances: he was the stalwart Uncas in the 1936 version of Last of the Mohicans (1936), and was superb as a loudmouthed house guest who just won't leave in Weekend for Three (1941). Phillip Reed's final film was the Elvis Presley vehicle Harum Scarum (1965), after which the 57 year old actor launched a lucrative career in business.

Trivia: Tall, hawk-nosed leading man Gavin Gordon was one of many stage actors drafted for the movies in the first years of sound. Stardom seemed within his grasp when he was cast opposite Greta Garbo in her second talkie, Romance (1930). Unfortunately, though his voice was clear and resonant, Gordon came off as stiff and soulless as a romantic lead. He would fare better in such secondary parts as the sanctimonious missionary fiancé of Barbara Stanwyck in The Bitter Tea of General Yen (1933), and the imperious Lord Byron in Bride of Frankenstein (1935). During the 1950s, Gavin Gordon was most active at Paramount Pictures, playing small character roles in such films as White Christmas (1954), Knock on Wood (1954) and The Ten Commandments (1955).

Trivia: Silver-tongued actor Douglas Dumbrille played just about every type in his long screen career, but it was as a dignified villain that he is best remembered. Born in Canada, Dumbrille did most of his stage work in the United States, breaking into films with His Woman in 1931. He bounced between supporting parts and unbilled bits in the early 1930s, usually at Warner Bros., where his sleek brand of skullduggery fit right in with the gangsters, shysters and political phonies popping up in most of the studio's 1930s product. Superb in modern dress roles, Dumbrille also excelled at costume villainy: it is claimed that, in Lives of the Bengal Lancers (1935), he was the first bad guy to growl, "We have ways of making you talk." The actor's pompous demeanor made him an ideal foil for such comedians as the Marx Brothers, with whom he appeared twice, and Abbott and Costello, who matched wits with Dumbrille in four different films. Sometimes, Dumbrille's reputation as a no-good was used to lead the audience astray; he was frequently cast as red-herring suspects in such murder mysteries as Castle in the Desert (1942), while in the Johnny Mack Brown western Flame of the West (1945), Dumbrille piqued the viewer's interest by playing a thoroughly honest, decent sheriff (surely he'd turn bad by the end, thought the audience -- but he didn't). In real life a gentle man whose diabolical features were softened by a pair of spectacles, Dumbrille mellowed his image as he grew older, often playing bemused officials and judges who couldn't make head nor tails of Gracie Allen's thought patterns on TV's The Burns and Allen Show. Late in life, a widowed Douglas Dumbrille married Patricia Mobray, daughter of his close friend -- and fellow screen villain -- Alan Mowbray.

Trivia: Raspy-voiced, distinguished-looking actor Samuel S. Hinds was born into a wealthy Brooklyn family. Well-educated at such institutions as Philips Academy and Harvard, Hinds became a New York lawyer. He moved to California in the 1920s, where he developed an interest in theatre and became one of the founders of the Pasadena Playhouse. A full-time actor by the early 1930s, Hinds entered films in 1932. Of his nearly 150 screen appearances, several stand out, notably his portrayal of Bela Lugosi's torture victim in The Raven (1935), the dying John Vincey in She (1935), the crooked political boss in Destry Rides Again (1939) and the doctor father of Lew Ayres in MGM's Dr. Kildare series. He frequently co-starred in the films of James Stewart, playing Stewart's eccentric future father-in-law in You Can't Take It With You (1938) and the actor's banker dad in the holiday perennial It's a Wonderful Life (1946). One of Samuel S. Hinds' final film roles was an uncredited supporting part in the 1948 James Stewart vehicle Call Northside 777.

Trivia: Burly, puffy-cheeked American actor Spencer Charters entered films in 1923, after decades of stage experience. In his first talkie appearances (Whoopee [1930], The Bat Whispers [1931], etc.), Charters was often seen as an ill-tempered authority figure. Traces of this characterization continued into such mid-'30s efforts as Wheeler and Woolsey's Hips Hips Hooray, but before the decade was over Charters was firmly locked into playing such benign types as rustic sheriffs, bucolic hotel clerks and half-asleep justices of the peace. Advancing age and the attendant infirmities made it difficult for Charters to play anything other than one-scene bits by the early '40s. At the age of 68, he ended his life by downing an overdose of sleeping pills and then inhaling the exhaust fumes of his car.

Trivia: After establishing herself on the Italian stage, actress Rafaela Ottiano came to American films in 1924. During the talkie era, Ottiano specialized in sinister, spiteful characterizations. As aging trollop Russian Rita in She Done Him Wrong (1933), she meets her well-deserved end at the hands of Mae West, while in The Devil Doll (1935), she makes clear her plans to exploit her scientist husband's "miniaturization" process by hissing malevolently, "We'll make the whole world small!!!!" A somewhat more benign Rafaela Ottiano can be seen in Grand Hotel (1932), in which she plays the overprotective maidservant of ballerina Greta Garbo, and Curly Top (1935), in which her sour severity melts when exposed to the relentless cheeriness of Shirley Temple.

Trivia: Agreeable leading man Kenneth Thompson entered films in 1927 as a contractee of Cecil B. De Mille's Producers Distributing Corporation. Thompson was one of the stars of PDC's ethereal "mood Western" White Gold, and was briefly seen as Lazarus in De Mille's The King of Kings (1927). He made his talkie debut in 1929, playing wealthy Jack Warriner in the pioneering MGM musical Broadway Melody (1929). His subsequent roles -- notably MT-3 in the futuristic musicomedy Just Imagine (1930) and Vance in Harold Lloyd's Movie Crazy (1932) -- tended to be variations of his Broadway Melody characterization. Kenneth Thomson was one of the founders and charter members of the Screen Actors Guild.

Trivia: Frail-looking character actor Frank Darien began working in films around 1910, playing parts in a smattering of D. W. Griffith and Mack Sennett shorts. Darien was busiest during the early-talkie era, essaying peripheral roles in such productions as Cimarron (1931), The Miracle Man (1932) and Mystery of the Wax Museum (1932). He was most often cast as coroners, doctors, household servants, doormen and justices of the peace. Frank Darien's most memorable role was Uncle John in The Grapes of Wrath (1940), directed by another D. W. Griffith alumnus, John Ford.

Trivia: American actor Walter Walker had already enjoyed an extensive theatrical career by the time he made his first film appearance in 1917. From that point onward until his death in 1941, Walker played dozens of judges, wardens, governors, and college deans. In the talkie era, he was often as not cast as an old-timer, inevitably named "Pop." Among his many one-scene roles of the 1930s was Benjamin Franklin in MGM's Marie Antoinette. Walter Walker's credits should not be confused with those of bit player/extra Wally Walker (1901-1975).

Trivia: As a boy growing up in Sacramento, Robert Warwick sang in his church choir. Encouraged to pursue music as a vocation, Warwick studied in Paris for an operatic career. He abandoned singing for straight acting when, in 1903, he was hired by Clyde Fitch as an understudy in the Broadway play Glad of It. Within a few year, Warwick was a major stage star in New York. He managed to retain his matinee-idol status when he switched from stage to screen, starring in such films as A Modern Othello and Alias Jimmy Valentine and at one point heading his own production company. He returned to the stage in 1920, then resumed his Hollywood career in authoritative supporting roles. His pear-shaped tones ideally suited for talkies, Warwick played such characters as Neptune in Night Life of the Gods (1933), Sir Francis Knolly in Mary of Scotland (1936) and Lord Montague in Romeo and Juliet (1936). He appeared in many of the Errol Flynn "historicals" at Warner Bros. (Prince and the Pauper, Adventures of Robin Hood, The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex); in more contemporary fare, he could usually be found in a military uniform or wing-collared tuxedo. From The Great McGinty (1940) onward, Warwick was a particular favorite of producer/director Preston Sturges, who was fond of providing plum acting opportunities to veteran character actors. Warwick's best performance under Sturges' guidance was as the brusque Hollywood executive who insists upon injecting "a little sex" in all of his studio's product in Sullivan's Travels (1942). During the 1950s, Warwick played several variations on "Charles Waterman," the broken-down Shakespearean ham that he'd portrayed in In a Lonely Place (1950). He remained in harness until his eighties, playing key roles on such TV series as The Twilight Zone and The Law and Mr. Jones. Robert Warwick was married twice, to actresses Josephine Whittell and Stella Lattimore.

Trivia: When actor Charles C. Wilson wasn't portraying a police chief onscreen, he was likely to be cast as a newspaper editor. The definitive Wilson performance in this vein was as Joe Gordon, reporter Clark Gable's apoplectic city editor in the 1934 multi-award winner It Happened One Night. Like many easily typecast actors, Wilson was usually consigned to one-scene (and often one-line) bits, making the sort of instant impression that hundreds of scripted words could not adequately convey. Shortly before his death in 1948, Charles C. Wilson could once more be seen at the editor's desk of a big-city newspaper -- this time as the boss of those erstwhile newshounds the Three Stooges in the two-reel comedy Crime on Their Hands (1948).

Trivia: American actor Joseph Crehan bore an uncanny resemblance to Ulysses S. Grant and appeared as Grant in a number of historical features, notably They Died With Their Boots On (1941) and The Adventures of Mark Twain (1944). Appearing in hundreds of other films as well, the short, snappish actor's field-commander personality assured him authoritative roles as police chiefs, small-town mayors and newspaper editors. Because he never looked young, Joseph Crehan played essentially the same types of roles throughout his screen career, even up until 1961's Judgment at Nuremberg. Perhaps Joseph Crehan's oddest appearance is in a film he never made; in West Side Story (1961), it is Crehan's face that appears on those ubiquitous political campaign posters in the opening Jets vs. Sharks sequences.

Trivia: It had originally been the hope of Walter Brennan (and his family) that he would follow in the footsteps of his father, an engineer; but while still a student, he was bitten by the acting bug and was already at a crossroads when he graduated in 1915. Brennan had already worked in vaudeville when he enlisted at age 22 to serve in World War I. He served in an artillery unit and although he got through the war without being wounded, his exposure to poison gas ruined his vocal chords, leaving him with the high-pitched voice texture that made him a natural for old man roles while still in his thirties. His health all but broken by the experience, Brennan moved to California in the hope that the warm climate would help him and he lost most of what money he had when land values in the state collapsed in 1925. It was the need for cash that drove him to the gates of the studios that year, for which he worked as an extra and bit player. The advent of the talkies served Brennan well, as he had been mimicking accents in childhood and could imitate a variety of different ethnicities on request. It was also during this period that, in an accident during a shoot, another actor (some stories claimed it was a mule) kicked him in the mouth and cost him his front teeth. Brennan was fitted for a set of false teeth that worked fine, and wearing them allowed him to play lean, lanky, virile supporting roles; but when he took them out, and the reedy, leathery voice kicked in with the altered look, Brennan became the old codger with which he would be identified in a significant number of his parts in the coming decades. He can be spotted in tiny, anonymous roles in a multitude of early-'30s movies, including King Kong (1933) (as a reporter) and one Three Stooges short. In 1935, however, he was fortunate enough to be cast in the supporting role of Jenkins in The Wedding Night. Directed by King Vidor and produced by Samuel Goldwyn, it was supposed to launch Anna Sten (its female lead) to stardom; but instead, it was Brennan who got noticed by the critics. He was put under contract with Goldwyn, and was back the same year as Old Atrocity in Barbary Coast. He continued doing bit parts, but after 1935, his films grew fewer in number and the parts much bigger. It was in the rustic drama Come and Get It (1936) that Brennan won his first Academy Award as Best Supporting Actor. Two years later, he won a second Best Supporting Actor Oscar for his performance in Kentucky (1938). That same year, he played major supporting roles in The Texans and The Buccaneer, and delighted younger audiences with his moving portrayal of Muff Potter, the man wrongfully accused of murder in Norman Taurog's The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. Brennan worked only in high-profile movies from then on, including The Story of Vernon and Irene Castle, Stanley and Livingston, and Goldwyn's They Shall Have Music, all in 1939. In 1940, he rejoined Gary Cooper in The Westerner, playing the part of a notoriously corrupt judge. Giving a beautifully understated performance that made the character seem sympathetic and tragic as much as dangerous and reprehensible, he won his third Best Supporting Actor award. There was no looking back now, as Brennan joined the front rank of leading character actors. His ethnic portrayals gradually tapered off as Brennan took on parts geared specifically for him. In Frank Capra's Meet John Doe and Howard Hawks' Sergeant York (both 1941), he played clear-thinking, key supporting players to leading men, while in Jean Renoir's Swamp Water (released that same year), he played another virtual leading role as a haunted man driven by demons that almost push him to murder. He played only in major movies from that point on, and always in important roles. Sam Wood used him in Goldwyn's The Pride of the Yankees (1942), Lewis Milestone cast him as a Russian villager in The North Star (1943), and he was in Goldwyn's production of The Princess and the Pirate (1944) as a comical half-wit who managed to hold his own working alongside Bob Hope. Brennan played the choice role of Ike Clanton in Ford's My Darling Clementine (1946) and reprised his portrayal of an outlaw clan leader in more comic fashion in Burt Kennedy's Support Your Local Sheriff some 23 years later. He worked with Cooper again on Delmer Daves' Task Force (1949) and played prominent roles in John Sturges' Bad Day at Black Rock and Anthony Mann's The Far Country (both 1955). In 1959, the 64-year-old Brennan got one of the biggest roles of his career in Hawks' Rio Bravo, playing Stumpy, the game-legged jailhouse keeper who is backing up the besieged sheriff. By that time, Brennan had moved to television, starring in the CBS series The Real McCoys, which became a six-season hit built around his portrayal of the cantankerous family patriarch Amos McCoy. The series was such a hit that John Wayne's production company was persuaded to release a previously shelved film, William Wellman's Goodbye, My Lady (1956), about a boy, an old man (played by Brennan), and a dog, during the show's run. Although he had disputes with the network and stayed a season longer than he had wanted, Brennan also liked the spotlight. He even enjoyed a brief, successful career as a recording artist on the Columbia Records label during the 1960s. Following the cancellation of The Real McCoys, Brennan starred in the short-lived series The Tycoon, playing a cantankerous, independent-minded multimillionaire who refuses to behave the way his family or his company's board of directors think a 70-year-old should. By this time, Brennan had become one of the more successful actors in Hollywood, with a 12,000-acre ranch in Northern California that was run by his sons, among other property. He'd invested wisely and also owned a share of his first series. Always an ideological conservative, it was during this period that his political views began taking a sharp turn to the right in response to the strife he saw around him. During the '60s, he was convinced that the anti-war and civil rights movements were being run by overseas communists -- and said as much in interviews. He told reporters that he believed the civil rights movement, in particular, and the riots in places like Watts and Newark, and demonstrations in Birmingham, AL, were the result of perfectly content "Negroes" being stirred up by a handful of trouble-makers with an anti-American agenda. Those on the set of his last series, The Guns of Will Sonnett -- in which he played the surprisingly complex role of an ex-army scout trying to undo the damage caused by his being a mostly absentee father -- say that he cackled with delight upon learning of Martin Luther King Jr.'s assassination in 1968. Brennan later worked on the 1972 presidential campaign of reactionary right-wing California Congressman John Schmitz, a nominee of the American Party, whose campaign was predicated on the notion that the Republican Party under Richard Nixon had become too moderate. Mostly, though, Brennan was known to the public for his lovable, sometimes comical screen persona, and was still working as the '60s drew to a close, on made-for-TV movies such as The Over-the-Hill Gang, which reunited him with one of his favorite directors, Jean Yarbrough, and his old stablemate Chill Wills. Brennan died of emphysema in 1974 at the age of 80.

Trivia: Irving Bacon entered films at the Keystone Studios in 1913, where his athletic prowess and Ichabod Crane-like features came in handy for the Keystone brand of broad slapstick. He appeared in over 200 films during the silent and sound era, often playing mailmen, soda jerks and rustics. In The Amazing Dr. Clitterhouse (1938) it is Irving, as a flustered jury foreman, who delivers the film's punchline. In the late 1930s and early 1940s, Irving played the recurring role of Mr. Crumb in Columbia's Blondie series; he's the poor postman who is forever being knocked down by the late-for-work Dagwood Bumstead, each collision accompanied by a cascade of mail flying through the air. Irving Bacon kept his hand in throughout the 1950s, appearing in a sizeable number of TV situation comedies.

Trivia: An oily looking supporting actor who often played gangsters or blue-collar working stiffs, Wisconsin-born, Oregon-educated Lew Harvey had spent three years on the legitimate stage before entering films with the Texas Guinan company in the very early '20s. Later in the decade he was mainly seen as "half-breeds" or gangsters but did turn up as Will Rogers in MGM's behind-the-scenes look at the Follies, in Pretty Ladies (1925). Reduced to bit parts in talkies and under long-term contract to MGM, Harvey turned up in scores of mostly dramas, usually playing truck drivers, two-bit hoodlums, guards, and policemen. His final-known appearance came in The File on Thelma Jordan (1949), in which he played a court reporter.

Trivia: American comic actor George Ovey appeared in a number of silent slapstick shorts between 1915 and around 1926. Short and wiry, Ovey was best known for appearing in the simultaneously funny and suspenseful Jerry series. Between the late '20s and the early '30s, he played comic supporting roles in feature films.

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: Actress Ethel Wales made her first film appearance in Cecil B. DeMille's The Whispering Chorus (1918). Wales remained a DeMille regular until the early '30s, playing such small but indelible roles as the Roman matron who complains that she's been seated too far away to see the Christians being devoured by lions in Sign of the Cross (1932). She also worked for C.B.'s director brother William in the exceptional 1921 drama Miss Lulu Bett. Ethel Wales remained active in films until 1950.

Trivia: A Hollywood child actor from 1927, Dick Winslow showed up in dozen of early talkies as page boys, messenger boys, and office boys. One of Winslow's few "named" roles was Joe Harper in the 1930 version of Tom Sawyer. Adept at several musical instruments, Winslow graced many a film of the 1940s and 1950s, playing everything from picnic accordion players to cocktail pianists. The apotheosis of this stage of Winslow's career was his one-man band in 1965's Do Not Disturb. A veteran of 60 years in the business, Dick Winslow made his last screen appearance as "the Old Man" in 1988's Fatal Judgment.

Trivia: General purpose actor Lester Dorr kept himself busy in every size role there was in Hollywood, in a screen career lasting nearly 35 years. Born in Massachusetts in 1893, he was working on Broadway in the late 1920s, including the cast of Sigmund Romberg's New Moon (1928). The advent of talking pictures brought Dorr to Hollywood, where, working mostly as a day-player, he began turning up in everything from two-reel shorts (especially from Hal Roach) in the latter's heyday) to major features (including Michael Curtiz's Female and Raoul Walsh's The Bowery, both 1933), in which he usually had tiny parts, often in crowd scenes, with an occasional line or two of dialogue -- in the mid-1930s he was literally appearing in dozens of movies each year, though usually with scarcely more than a minute's screen time in any one of them. Dorr was also one of the founding members of the Screen Actors Guild.He was almost as busy after World War II, and starting in 1951 he also started working in television, ranging from westerns to anthology series. He slowed down significantly in the 1960s, by which time he was in his seventies. Among his rare screen credits are two of his most oft-repeated large- and small-screen appearances -- in W. Lee Wilder's Killers From Space, the public domain status of which has made it a ubiquitous presence on cable television and low-priced VHS and DVD releases, he is the gas station attendant who spots fugitive scientist Peter Graves' car; and in The Adventures of Superman episode The Mind Machine, repeated for decades as part of the ever-popular series, Dorr plays the hapless but well-intention school bus driver whose vehicle (with three kids inside) is stolen by mentally unhinged mob witness Harry Hayden. His last three appearances were in full-blown feature films: Richard Quine's Hotel (1967), Gene Kelly's Hello Dolly (1969), and Peter Bogdanovich's At Long Last Love (1975).

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 New Year's baby, actor Willard Robertson grew up in Texas, where he became a successful lawyer. Reportedly he was offered an opportunity to become a federal judge, but he turned it down because of a sudden interest in acting. Since he looked the part of a prosperous attorney, however, Robertson frequently found himself playing a member of the very profession he'd left behind. The actor also showed up as sheriffs, mayors, city councilmen and stern father figures during his quarter-centry film career. While Preston Sturges buffs pinpoint Robertson's flamboyant defense attorney in Remember the Night? (1940) as his best performance, the actor is equally fondly recalled for his portrayal of Jackie Cooper's outwardly stern, inwardly loving father in Skippy (1931) and Sooky (1931). By the mid '40s, Willard Robertson's roles were usually of one scene's duration or less, but he still carried plenty of authority, notably as the sheriff in the grim The Ox-Bow Incident (1943); Robertson's icy remonstration to a lynch mob, "The Lord better have mercy on you...you won't get it from me," still chills the blood after fifty years.

Trivia: A tall, dark-haired, often elegant silent screen actor, Larry Steers had appeared with the famous Bush Temple Stock Company and opposite matinee idol Robert Edeson prior to making his film debut with Paramount in 1917. Extremely busy in the 1920s, Steers usually played professional men, doctors, lawyers, and politicians, typecasting that continued well into the sound era, albeit in much diminished circumstances. By the mid-'30s, the veteran actor had become a Hollywood dress extra.

Trivia: British actor Wallis Clark was a fixture of American films from at least 1916, when he played Pencroft in the first cinemazation of Jules Verne's 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. In talkies, Clark busied himself in utility roles as lawyers, city commissioners, foreign noblemen and doctors (he's the medico who warns Warner Baxter that he's courting heart failure in 1933's 42nd Street. During the mid-1930s, he was most often found in the "B" product of Columbia Pictures. In 1939, he was briefly seen as the poker-playing Yankee captain in Gone with the Wind. Wallis Clark's resemblance to Teddy Roosevelt enabled him to portray old Rough 'n' Ready in several films, including Yankee Doodle Dandy (1942) and Jack London (1943).

Trivia: Edmund Breese enjoyed a long pre-film career as a vaudevillian, touring actor, monologist, dialectician and playwright. Breese made his first films in 1914, at the old Edison studios. He continued making screen appearance throughout the 1920s, even while headlining several stage revues. Making his talking-picture debut in Al Jolson's Sonny Boy, Breese went on to play such ethnic character roles as Herr Meyer in All Quiet on the Western Front (1933), prime minister Zander in the Marx Brothers' Duck Soup (1933), and "radioscope" inventor Dr. Wong (one of his many Asian characterizations) in the all-star musical comedy International House (1933). Edmund Breese died of peritonitis at age 65.

Trivia: Actor Eric Wilton made his first screen appearance in Samuel Goldwyn's Arrowsmith (1931) and his last in Paramount's The Joker Is Wild (1957). Usually uncredited, Wilton played such utility roles as ministers, doormen, and concierges. Most often, however, he was cast as butlers. Of his eight film appearances in 1936, for example, Eric Wilton played butlers in five of them.

Trivia: Born in Ireland, actor Vesey O'Davoren started out with Dublin's Abbey Theatre. During WWI, he was caught in a mustard gas attack and lost his voice. To help himself heal, he moved to Hollywood and began appearing in silent films. By the time talkies were invented, he had recovered his voice and O'Davoren appeared in over two dozen films before retiring in the late '50s.