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: The son of British stage actor Frederick Rains, Claude Rains gave his first theatrical performance at age 11 in Nell of Old Drury. He learned the technical end of the business by working his way up from being a two-dollars-a-week page boy to stage manager. After making his first U.S. appearance in 1913, Rains returned to England, served in the Scottish regiment during WWI, then established himself as a leading actor in the postwar years. He was also featured in one obscure British silent film, Build Thy House. During the 1920s, Rains was a member of the teaching staff at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art; among his pupils were a young sprout named Laurence Olivier and a lovely lass named Isabel Jeans, who became the first of Rains' six wives. While performing with the Theatre Guild in New York in 1932, Rains filmed a screen test for Universal Pictures. On the basis of his voice alone, the actor was engaged by Universal director James Whale to make his talking-picture debut in the title role of The Invisible Man (1933). During his subsequent years at Warner Bros., the mellifluous-voiced Rains became one of the studio's busiest and most versatile character players, at his best when playing cultured villains. Though surprisingly never a recipient of an Academy award, Rains was Oscar-nominated for his performances as the "bought" Senator Paine in Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939), the title character in Mr. Skeffington (1944), the Nazi husband of Ingrid Bergman in Notorious (1946), and, best of all, the cheerfully corrupt Inspector Renault in Casablanca (1942). In 1946, Rains became one of the first film actors to demand and receive one million dollars for a single picture; the role was Julius Caesar, and the picture Caesar and Cleopatra. He made a triumphant return to Broadway in 1951's Darkness at Noon. In his last two decades, Claude Rains made occasional forays into television (notably on Alfred Hitchcock Presents) and continued to play choice character roles in big-budget films like Lawrence of Arabia (1962) and The Greatest Story Ever Told (1965).

Trivia: A graduate of the American Academy of Dramatic Arts, American actor Walter Abel began his stage career in 1919, and made his first film in 1920. Tall and quietly dignified, Abel was well cast in several of the plays of Eugene O'Neill. His first talking picture role was as the industrious young bridegroom Wolf in Liliom (1930). Abel had a go at a romantic lead when he replaced Francis Lederer as D'Artagnan in the 1935 version of The Three Musketeers; but the film was dull and Abel's performance mannered, so, thereafter, he was more effectively cast in top supporting roles. With his performance as the prosecuting attorney in Fury, Abel established his standard screen image: the well-groomed, mustachioed professional man, within whom lurked a streak of barely controlled hysteria. In this guise, Abel was excellent as the dyspeptic newspaper editor in Arise My Love (1940) and as Bing Crosby and Fred Astaire's long-suffering agent in Holiday Inn (1942). Busier on stage and television than in films during the 1950s, Abel received extensive critical and public attention for his role as a doomed industrialist in the 1966 melodrama Mirage. Sent out by Universal to promote the film, Abel regaled talk-show hosts with the story of how his fatal plunge from a skyscraper was actually filmed. Also during this period, Abel was appointed president of the American National Theatre and Academy. His last screen performance was opposite Katharine Hepburn in The Ultimate Solution of Grace Quigley (1984).

Trivia: When his parents resisted his desire to become an actor, George Coulouris ran away from his home in Manchester, England. After training at London's Central School of Dramatic Art, Coulouris made his first professional stage appearance in 1925 with the Old Vic. In 1929, Coulouris came to Broadway, where he would remain throughout the 1930s save for a brief appearance in the 1933 Hollywood film Christopher Bean. The tall, aristocratic-sounding Coulouris joined Orson Welles's Mercury Theatre, appearing in Welles's 1937 modern-dress version of Julius Caesar. He also appeared as the Rockefeller-like Walter Parks Thatcher in Welles's landmark film Citizen Kane (1941) (for publicity purposes, Kane was advertised as Coulouris' cinematic debut). Most of Coulouris' subsequent film roles were villainous in nature; in 1944, he was Oscar-nominated for his performance as a hateful fascist in Watch on the Rhine, and in 1945 he was top-billed for his role as an incognito Nazi in The Master Race. A victim of Parkinson's disease, George Coulouris still managed to remain active until 1980, when he made his farewell screen appearance in The Long Good Friday.

Trivia: British screenwriter Richard Waring spent most of his time working on television scripts for such series as The World of Wooster (1965-1968), Not in Front of the Children (1967), and Miss Jones and Son (1977-1978).

Trivia: The son of a wholesale grocer who later became one of the founders of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, Robert Shayne studied business administration at Boston University. Intending to study for the ministry, Shayne opted instead to work as field secretary for the Unitarian Layman's League. He went on to sell real estate during the Florida Land Boom of the 1920s before heading northward to launch an acting career. After Broadway experience, Shayne was signed to a film contract at RKO radio in 1934. When this led nowhere, Shayne returned to the stage. While appearing with Katharine Hepburn in the Philip Barry play Without Love, Shayne was again beckoned to Hollywood, this time by Warner Bros. Most of his feature film roles under the Warner banner were of the sort that any competent actor could have played; he was better served by the studio's short subjects department, which starred him in a series of 2-reel "pocket westerns" built around stock footage from earlier outdoor epics. He began free-lancing in 1946, playing roles of varying size and importance at every major and minor outfit in Hollywood. In 1951, Shayne was cast in his best-known role: Inspector Henderson on the long-running TV adventure series Superman. He quit acting in the mid-1970s to become an investment banker with the Boston Stock Exchange. The resurgence of the old Superman series on television during this decade thrust Shayne back into the limelight, encouraging him to go back before the cameras. He was last seen in a recurring role on the 1990 Superman-like weekly series The Flash. Reflecting on his busy but only fitfully successful acting career, Robert Shayne commented in 1975 that "It was work, hard and long; a terrible business when things go wrong, a rewarding career when things go right."

Trivia: Portly, penguin-shaped actor John Alexander was brought to Hollywood in 1941 to recreate the stage role of Teddy Brewster in Frank Capra's film version of Arsenic and Old Lace. Alexander entered the comedy-movie hall of fame in this role of a demented, middle-aged fellow who imagined himself to be Teddy Roosevelt, and who frequently disrupted his household by yelling "CHAAAARGE!" and rushing up "San Juan Hill" (aka the staircase). Alexander would repeat the Teddy Brewster role in later stage and TV revivals of Arsenic for the rest of his career; he also occasionally played the real Teddy Roosevelt in such films as Fancy Pants (1950). Outside of his Roosevelt impersonations, Alexander was memorable as one of Bette Davis' earnest suitor in Mrs. Skeffington (1947), and as minstrel impresario Lew Dockstader in The Jolson Story (1946). Before his retirement in the mid-1960s, John Alexander appeared in several Broadway plays and musicals, and was an occasional guest star on such Manhattan-filmed TV series as Car 54, Where Are You?

Trivia: From vaudeville and stock companies, actor Jerome Cowan graduated to Broadway in the now-forgotten farce We've Gotta Have Money. While starring in the 1935 Broadway hit Boy Meets Girl, Cowan was spotted by movie producer Sam Goldwyn, who cast Cowan as a sensitive Irish rebel in 1936's Beloved Enemy. Most of Cowan's subsequent films found him playing glib lawyers, shifty business executives and jilted suitors. A longtime resident at Warner Bros., the pencil-mustached Cowan appeared in several substantial character parts from 1940 through 1949, notably the doomed private eye Miles Archer in The Maltese Falcon. Warners gave Cowan the opportunity to be a romantic leading man in two "B" films, Crime By Night (42) and Find the Blackmailer (43). As the years rolled on, Cowan's air of slightly unscrupulous urbanity gave way to respectability, and in this vein he was ideally suited for the role of Dagwood Bumstead's new boss Mr. Radcliffe in several installments of Columbia's Blondie series; he also scored in such flustered roles as the hapless district attorney in Miracle on 34th Street. Cowan briefly left Hollywood in 1950 to pursue more worthwhile roles on stage and TV; he starred in the Broadway play My Three Angels and was top-billed on the 1951 TV series Not for Publication. In his fifties and sixties, Cowan continued essaying roles calling for easily deflated dignity (e.g. The Three Stooges' Have Rocket Will Travel [59] and Jerry Lewis' Visit to a Small Planet [60]) and made regular supporting appearances on several TV series, among them Valiant Lady, The Tab Hunter Show, Many Happy Returns and Tycoon.

Trivia: Upon graduating from Nichols College, Charles Ruppert entered the professional world as a salesman. When he decided to switch to acting, Ruppert changed his name to Drake. In films from 1939, Drake was signed to a Warner Bros. contract and appeared in such films as The Man Who Came to Dinner (1941), The Maltese Falcon (1941), Now, Voyager (1942), Dive Bomber (1942), Air Force (1943), and Mr. Skeffington (1944). Freelancing in the mid-'40s, he played the romantic lead in the Marx Brothers flick A Night in Casablanca (1946). Once he moved to Universal in 1949, Drake proved that the fault lay not in himself but in the roles he'd previously been assigned to play. He was quite personable as Dr. Sanderson in Harvey (1950) and thoroughly despicable as the cowardly paramour of dance-hall girl Shelley Winters in Winchester '73 (1950). One of his most unusual performances was as the ostensible hero of You Never Can Tell (1951), who after spending two reels convincing the viewer that he's a prince of a fellow, turns out to be the villain of the piece. Drake did some of his best work at Universal as a supporting player in the vehicles of his offscreen pal Audie Murphy. In 1955, Drake turned to television as one of the stock-company players on Robert Montgomery Presents; three years later, he was star/host of the British TV espionage weekly Rendezvous. Charles Drake prospered as a character actor well into the early 1970s.

Trivia: Stage actress Dorothy Peterson made her screen debut in 1930's Mothers Cry, a lachrymose domestic drama that required the 29-year-old actress to age nearly three decades in the course of the film. Mothers Cry instantly typecast Peterson in careworn maternal roles, which she continued to essay for the rest of her career. Most of her subsequent film assignments were supporting roles like Mrs. Hawkins in Treasure Island (1934); often as not she received no screen credit, not even for her touching cameo in 1943's Air Force. In 1942, she briefly replaced Olive Blakeney as Mrs. Aldrich in the comedy series entry Henry Aldrich for President. Her last screen appearance was as Shirley Temple's mother in That Hagen Girl (1947). Dorothy Peterson remained active on the New York TV and theatrical scene until the early '60s.

Trivia: Burly character actor Peter Whitney was under contract to Warner Bros. from 1941 to 1945. Whitney spent much of that time on loan-out, playing a variety of moronic thugs and henchmen. His best-ever screen role (or roles) was as identical twin hillbilly murderers Mert and Bert Fleagle in the 1944 screwball classic Murder He Says. He enjoyed a rare romantic lead in the 1946 horror film The Brute Man (the title character was played by Rondo Hatton). Throughout the 1950s and 1960s, Whitney supported himself by portraying some of TV's most scurrilous and homicidal backwoods villains. Peter Whitney essayed a more comical characterization as rustic free-loader Lafe Crick in several first-season episodes of The Beverly Hillbillies.

Trivia: A former truck driver, stock broker, and radio announcer, handsome Bill Kennedy (born Willard A. Kennedy) played supporting roles in World War II melodramas before embarking on a career in B-Westerns. It began well, with Kennedy and George Dolenz sharing top billing in the 1945 Universal serial The Royal Mounted Rides Again, but Kennedy was always a bit too glib for comfort and would soon become one of Hollywood's younger Boss Villains, as well as a thorn in the side of Johnny Mack Brown in four of that veteran star's better vehicles. In the 1950s, Kennedy was busy on television becoming a guest star on such popular programs as The Lone Ranger, The Cisco Kid, The Gene Autry Show, and Death Valley Days. In addition to acting assignments, he was the announcer for the entire 1953-1957 run of Adventures of Superman.

Trivia: Handsome British stage actor Tom Stevenson had played the homicidal husband in the stage version of Gaslight before making his screen debut as the gravedigger in The Wolf Man (1941). Freelancing, Stevenson played minor supporting roles at almost every Hollywood studio, often portraying supercilious headwaiters or forbidding military officers. When MGM filmed Gaslight in 1944, Stevenson played Williams, the constable, and he was Reverend Hyslip in Bette Davis's Mr. Skeffington later that year. Stevenson, who also appeared in early television shows, returned to the legitimate stage in 1950.

Trivia: Having been born at Stratford-on-Avon, Halliwell Hobbes would have been remiss if he hadn't given acting a try. On stage from 1898, the imposing, sturdily built Hobbes appeared opposite such immortals as Mrs. Patrick Campbell and Ellen Terry. His first U.S. appearance was in the 1923 Broadway staging of Molnar's The Swan. He made the first of his over 150 films in 1929. Hobbes was most often seen as a diplomatic butler, in films ranging from Here Comes Mr. Jordan (1941) to the East Side Kids' Million Dollar Kid (1943) (in which he was billed as Holliwell Hobbs!). Other notable screen appearances in Halliwell Hobbes' resume include the role of General Carew in the 1931 version of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde and as the "fugitive" iceman, Mr. DePinna, in You Can't Take It With You (1938).

Trivia: One of the busiest members of Hollywood's British colony, actor Walter Kingsford inaugurated his stage career in London. Seldom a leading man (he wasn't tall enough), the august Kingsford provided support for such theatrical giants as John Barrymore, Ethel Barrymore, and Fay Bainter. His first American film was 1934's The Pursuit of Happiness, a Revolutionary-era comedy in which Kingsford had appeared on Broadway. Most of the actor's film characters were unsympathetic; he had the air of a disgraced aristocrat who'd been caught misappropriating trust funds or selling government secrets. Often appearing in brief, uncredited roles, Kingsford enjoyed good billing and steady work as Dr. Walter Carew, the snobbish, ultra-conservative head of Blair General Hospital in MGM's Dr. Kildare series. As Hollywood began turning out fewer and fewer films in the '50s, Walter Kingsford secured steady work in television: In the pilot film of Amos 'n' Andy, Kingsford has the first line in the first scene as a rare-coin assessor.

Trivia: The daughter of French refugees, Gigi Perreau was born within a stone's throw of Hollywood. Registered with Central Casting as an infant, 18-month-old Gigi played Eve Curie as a baby in 1942's Madame Curie, and at two played young Fanny (who grew up to be Bette Davis) in Mrs. Skeffington. As soon as she was able to talk, Gigi was being groomed by her managers as a potential Margaret O'Brien replacement. A little less mannered and more versatile than O'Brien, Gigi was at her best in such roles as Ann Blyth's irksome kid sister in My Foolish Heart (1950) an emotionally disturbed murder witness in Shadow on the Wall (1950), and a yet-to-be-born child shopping around for suitable parents in the 1950 comedy/fantasy For Heaven's Sake (1950). As her film career faded, Perreau flourished briefly as a TV leading lady, with supporting roles on the 1959 sitcom The Betty Hutton Show and the 1961 adventure weekly Follow the Sun. Adult stardom eluded her however, and by 1967 she was retired. Gigi Perreau was the sister of two other juvenile performers, Janine Perreau and Richard Miles; in the early 1960s, Perreau and brother Richard managed a popular Los Angeles art gallery.

Trivia: Primarily a stage actress -- she starred in the London production of Irving Berlin's Annie Get Your Gun -- blonde, long-limbed Dolores Gray enjoyed a brief flurry of film activity. Though she made a brace of cameo appearances in Lady for a Night (1941) and Mr. Skeffington (1944), she began her movie career proper as Gene Kelly's vis-à-vis in MGM's It's Always Fair Weather (1955). She went on to play the alluring Lalume in Kismet (1955), the gossipy Sylvia in The Opposite Sex (the 1956 musical remake of The Women), and the TV star, ex-flame of sportswriter Gregory Peck in Designing Women (1957). When MGM briefly decided to abandon big-budget musicals in 1957, Dolores Gray bade farewell to films, successfully returning to the Broadway and London stage.

Trivia: Slightly built, snowy-haired American actor Harry C. Bradley had a long career on stage before his film bow in 1931's The Smiling Lieutenant. Usually sporting a well-tailored suit and a pair of rimless spectacles, Bradley played dozens of bookkeepers, court clerks, conductors and pharmacists. Two of his more visible screen roles were the justice of the peace in the 1936 comedy classic Libelled Lady and Keedish in the 1940 serial Flash Gordon Conquers the Universe. He was also a member in good standing of the Frank Capra stock company, showing up fleetingly in such Capra productions as It Happened One Night (1934) and Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939). Harry C. Bradley's last film assignment included a pair of Henry Aldrich "B"-pictures, in which he was cast as a tweedy high school teacher named Tottle.

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: A sadly neglected supporting actress, Ann Doran played everything from Charley Chase's foil in Columbia two-reelers of the late '30s to James Dean's mother in Rebel Without a Cause (1955) and also guest starred in such television shows as Superman, Petticoat Junction, Bewitched, and The A Team. A former child model and the daughter of silent screen actress Rose Allen (1885-1977), Doran made her screen bow in Douglas Fairbanks' Robin Hood (1922) but then spent the next 12 years or so getting herself an education. She returned to films in 1934 and joined the Columbia short subject department two years later. While with Columbia, Doran worked on all of Frank Capra's films save Lost Horizon (1937) and she later toiled for both Paramount and Warner Bros., often receiving fine reviews but always missing out on the one role that may have made her a star. Appearing in more than 500 films and television shows (her own count), Doran worked well into the 1980s, often unbilled but always a noticeable presence.

Trivia: Georgia Caine is best remembered today by film buffs for her work in most of Preston Sturges's classic films for Paramount Pictures, as well as the movies he subsequently made independently and at 20th Century Fox. She was practically born on stage, the daughter of George Caine and the former Jennie Darragh, both of whom were Shakespearean actors. As an infant and toddler, she was kept in the company of her parents as they toured the United States. Bitten by the theatrical bug, she left school before the age of 17 to become an actress and she started out in Shakespearean repertory. Caine quickly shifted over to musical comedy, however, and became a favorite of George M. Cohan, appearing in his plays Mary, The O'Brien Girls, and The Silver Swan, among others. In 1914, she also starred in a stage production of The Merry Widow in London. Caine was a favorite subject of theater columnists during the teens and '20s. By the end of that decade, however, after 30 years on stage, her star had begun to fade, and that was when Hollywood beckoned. The advent of talking pictures suddenly created a demand for actors and actresses who could handle spoken dialogue. She moved to the film Mecca at the outset of the 1930s, and Caine worked in more than 60 films over the next 20 years, usually playing mothers, aunts, and older neighbors. She also occasionally broke out of that mold to do something strikingly different, most notably in Camille (1937), in which she portrayed a streetwalker. Starting with Christmas in July in 1940, she was a regular member of Preston Sturges' stock company of players (even portraying a bearded lady in The Sin of Harold Diddlebock), appearing in most of his movies right up to his directorial swan song, The Beautiful Blonde From Bashful Bend (1949).

Trivia: Actress Mary Field kept her private life such a well-guarded secret that not even her most devoted fans (including several film historians who've attempted to write biographies of the actress) have ever been able to find out anything about her background. So far as anyone can ascertain, she entered films around 1937; her first important assignment was the dual role of the mothers of the title characters in The Prince and the Pauper (1937). Viewers may not know the name but they have seen the face: too thin and sharp-featured to be beautiful, too soft and kindly to be regarded as homely. Mary Field is the actress who played Huntz Hall's sister in the 1941 Universal serial Sea Raiders; the spinsterish sponsor of Danny Kaye's doctoral thesis in A Song of Born (1947); the nice lady standing in Macy's "Santa Claus" line with the little Dutch girl in Miracle on 34th Street (1947); the long-suffering music teacher in Cheaper by the Dozen (1950); and Harold Peary's bespectacled vis-a-vis in The Great Gildersleeve (1942)--to name just four films among hundreds.

Trivia: The faces of most movie extras are unmemorable blurs in the public's memory. Not so the elegant, statuesque Bess Flowers, who was crowned by appreciative film buffs as "Queen of the Hollywood Dress Extras." After studying drama (against her father's wishes) at the Carnegie Inst of Technology, Flowers intended to head to New York, but at the last moment opted for Hollywood. She made her first film in 1922, subsequently appearing prominently in such productions as Hollywood (1922) and Chaplin's Woman of Paris (1923). Too tall for most leading men, Flowers found her true niche as a supporting actress. By the time talkies came around, Flowers was mostly playing bits in features, though her roles were more sizeable in two-reel comedies; she was a special favorite of popular short-subject star Charley Chase. Major directors like Frank Lloyd always found work for Flowers because of her elegant bearing and her luminescent gift for making the people around her look good. While generally an extra, Flowers enjoyed substantial roles in such films as Frank Capra's It Happened One Night (1934), Gregory La Cava's Private Worlds and Leo McCarey's The Awful Truth (1937). In 1947's Song of the Thin Man, the usually unheralded Flowers was afforded screen billing. Her fans particularly cherish Flowers' bit as a well-wisher in All About Eve (1950), in which she breaks her customary screen silence to utter "I'm so happy for you, Eve." Flowers was married twice, first to Cecil B. DeMille's legendary "right hand man" Cullen Tate, then to Columbia studio manager William S. Holman. After her retirement, Bess Flowers made one last on-camera appearance in 1974 when she was interviewed by NBC's Tom Snyder.

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: Affectionately described by film historian William K. Everson as "That lovable old wreck of a busybody," actress Vera Lewis was indeed quite lovable in person, even though most of her screen characters were sharp-tongued and spiteful in the extreme. Lewis first appeared in films in 1915, playing bits in such historical spectacles as D.W. Griffith's Birth of a Nation (1915) and Intolerance (1916) and the privately-funded Argonauts of California. By the 1920s, she was well-established in such venomous characterizations as the remonstrative stepmother in the 1926 Colleen Moore starrer Ella Cinders. She continued playing small-town snoops, gimlet-eyed landladies, irksome relatives and snobbish society doyennes well into the talkie era. Even when unbilled, Lewis was unforgettable: in 1933's King Kong, she's the outraged theater patron who mercilessly browbeats an usher upon finding out that the mighty Kong will be appearing in person instead of on film. When all is said and done, Vera Lewis was never better than when she was playing a gorgon-like mother-in-law, as witness her work as Mrs. Nesselrode in W.C. Fields' Man on the Flying Trapeze (1935) and as Andy Clyde's vituperative mom-by-marriage in the 1947 2-reeler Wife to Spare.

Trivia: Legend has it that Orson Welles saw his first theatrical production at age seven, when a touring company of Mr. Pim Passes By played in Welles' hometown of Kenosha, WI. Invited backstage, young Welles was effusively greeted by the play's leading man, Erskine Sanford, whose kind and encouraging words inspired Welles to pursue an acting career himself. Whether this story is true or not, the fact remains that, in 1936, Erskine Sanford left the Theatre Guild after a 15-year association to join Orson Welles' experimental Mercury Theatre. When Welles took the Mercury Players to Hollywood in 1940 to film Citizen Kane, Sanford was assigned the small but plum role of Herbert Carter, the sputtering, apoplectic former editor of the New York Inquirer. The actor went on to appear prominently in such Welles-directed films as The Magnificent Ambersons (1942, as Mr. Bronson), Lady From Shanghai (1947, as the judge), and MacBeth (1948, as King Duncan). Outside of his Mercury Theatre activities, Erskine Sanford played featured roles in such mainstream Hollywood productions as Ministry of Fear (1943) and Angel on My Shoulder (1946) before his retirement in 1950.

Trivia: Bostonian Cyril Ring certainly had the pedigree for a successful show business career; he was the brother of stage luminary Blanche Ring and the less famous but equally busy actress Frances Ring. And Cyril certainly had the right connections: he was the brother-in-law of stage comedian Charles Winninger (Blanche's husband) and film star Thomas Meighan (Frances' husband). All Cyril Ring lacked was talent. He managed to coast as actor on his family ties and his rakish good looks, but his range never matured beyond a tiny handful of by-rote mannerisms and facial expressions. In the early '20s, Ring was briefly married to musical comedy star Charlotte Greenwood. Reasonably busy as a silent-film western villain, Ring was cast as the caddish Harvey Yates in the Marx Bros.' 1929 film debut The Cocoanuts. The subsequent reviews bent over backward to condemn Ring's performance as the stiffest and most amateurish of the year -- and thus his fate was sealed. For the rest of his movie career, Ring would be confined to microscopic bit parts and extra roles, with the occasional supporting parts in 2-reel comedies (he's the fugitive crook who demands a shave from W.C. Fields in 1933's The Barber Shop). One of the few features in which he had more than five lines was RKO's 1945 mystery-comedy Having Wonderful Crime; perhaps significantly, his sister Blanche Ring topped the film's supporting cast. Cyril Ring's last recorded credits occured in 1947, after which he dropped from public view until his obituary was published in the trades twenty years later.

Trivia: American character actor Crane Whitley made his first film appearance in 1938, acting under his given name of Clem Wilenchik. One of Whitley's first billed roles was the Foreign Legion corporal in Laurel and Hardy's Flying Deuces (1939). From 1939's Hitler: The Beast of Berlin until the end of the war, the actor was generally cast as a Nazi spy or military officer. In this capacity, he showed up in several Republic serials, including Spy Smasher (1942). After the war, and until his retirement in 1958, Crane Whitley played scores of doctors, ministers, and detectives.

Trivia: Actor Matt McHugh was born into a show business family, joining his parents, his brother Frank, and his sister Kitty in the family stock company as soon as he learned to talk. Matt came to Hollywood to repeat his stage role in the 1931 film adaptation of Elmer Rice's Broadway hit Street Scene. He continued to have sizeable film assignments for the next few years (notably the bourgeois Italian bridegroom Francesco in Laurel and Hardy's The Devil's Brother [1933]) before settling into bits and minor roles. A dead ringer for his more famous brother Frank McHugh, Matt projected an abrasive, sardonic screen image; as such, he was utilized in such rough-edged roles as cab drivers, bartenders and mechanics. Matt McHugh's best screen opportunities in the '40s came with his supporting roles in the 2-reel comedy output of Columbia Pictures; he appeared in the short comedies of Andy Clyde, Hugh Herbert, Walter Catlett, The Three Stooges and many others, most often cast as a lazy or caustic brother-in-law.

Trivia: Diminutive William Sidney Stanton enjoyed an acting career that took him from London to Los Angeles. After honing his craft in the theater, Stanton made his motion-picture debut in 1927 and continued with a busy schedule of bit parts and character roles (specializing in comic drunks) into the 1930s and early 1940s. Raoul Walsh, for one, used him in nearly identical drunk roles in two films from 1932, Me And My Gal and Sailor's Luck. Often availing himself of his Cockney accent, Stanton's range also allowed him to play parts such as menacing thugs, crowd members, valets and butlers. His last screen role was in Adam's Rib (1949), in the uncredited part of a taxi driver.

Trivia: Also billed as Saul Gorse and Sol Gorss, this busy character actor/stunt man entered films in 1933. Gorss spent the better part of his career at Warner Bros., playing muscular utility roles and doubling for the studio's male stars. He forsook Hollywood for war service in 1943, then returned to films, once more cast in minor roles in westerns and crime pictures. One of Saul Gorss' most distinguished credits of the 1950s was The Thing, in which he was one of the stunt performers and coordinators.

Trivia: Belgian actress Ann Codee toured American vaudeville in the 'teens and twenties in a comedy act with her husband, American-born Frank Orth. The team made its film debut in 1929, appearing in a series of multilingual movie shorts. Thereafter, both Codee and Orth flourished as Hollywood character actors. Codee was seen in dozens of films as florists, music teachers, landladies, governesses and grandmothers. She played a variety of ethnic types, from the very French Mme. Poullard in Jezebel (1938) to the Teutonic Tante Berthe in The Mummy's Curse (1961). Ann Codee's last film appearance was as a tight-corseted committeewoman in Can-Can (1960).

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: Actress Minerva Urecal claimed that her last name was an amalgam of her family home town of Eureka, California. True or not, Urecal would spend the balance of her life in California, specifically Hollywood. Making the transition from stage to screen in 1934, Ms. Urecal appeared in innumerable bits, usually as cleaning women, shopkeepers and hatchet-faced landladies. In B-pictures and 2-reelers of the 1940s, she established herself as a less expensive Marjorie Main type; her range now encompassed society dowagers (see the East Side Kids' Mr. Muggs Steps Out) and Mrs. Danvers-like housekeepers (see Bela Lugosi's The Ape Man). With the emergence of television, Minerva Urecal entered the "guest star" phase of her career. She achieved top billing in the 1958 TV sitcom Tugboat Annie, and replaced Hope Emerson as Mother for the 1959-60 season of the weekly detective series Peter Gunn. Minerva Urecal was active up until the early '60s, when she enjoyed some of the most sizeable roles of her career, notably the easily offended Swedish cook in Mr. Hobbs Takes a Vacation (1962) and the town harridan who is turned to stone in Seven Faces of Dr. Lao (1964).

Trivia: Bald-domed, prominently chinned American character actor Joe Devlin was seen in bits in major films, and as a less-costly Jack Oakie type in minor pictures. Devlin usually played two-bit crooks and sarcastic tradesmen in his 1940s appearances. The actor's uncanny resemblance to Benito Mussolini resulted in numerous "shock of recognition" cameos during the war years, as well as full-fledged Mussolini imitations in two Hal Roach "streamliners," The Devil With Hitler (1942) and That Nazty Nuisance (1943). In 1950, Joe Devlin was cast as Sam Catchem in a TV series based on Chester Gould's comic-strip cop Dick Tracy.

Trivia: The son of an itinerant piano tuner-father and a restaurateur-mother, Richard Erdman was born in Oklahoma and grew up in Colorado. Having taken drama lessons since his early childhood, Erdman was 15 when he was brought to Hollywood by his mother to be "discovered." It wasn't until he'd held down an interim job as a sports reporter for the Los Angeles Examiner that Erdman finally appeared in his first film, Warner Bros.' Janie (1944). Rapidly outgrowing juvenile roles, Erdman played character parts in Hollywood films like Stalag 17 (1953) and in such European productions as Four Days Leave (1950) and Face of Fire (1959). In 1961, Erdman co-starred on the short-lived sitcom The Tab Hunter Show, playing Tab's millionaire-playboy buddy, Peter Fairchild III. In 1973, Erdman made his big-screen directorial debut with The Brothers O'Toole. Since that time, Richard Erdman has kept busy as a voice-over actor, offering a wide range of vocal characterizations for dozens of TV cartoon series, as well as the 1994 animated feature film The Pagemaster.