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: Known in vaudeville under the delightful moniker Chotsie Noonan, saucy silent screen comedienne Sally O'Neil (born Virginia Louise Concepta Noonan) became a major star in her second film, Sally, Irene and Mary (1925). Constance Bennett and Joan Crawford filled out the title trio but it was O'Neil's naïve chorus girl who ran away with the notices. Pronounced MGM's answer to Paramount's Clara Bow, O'Neil was voted a 1926 WAMPAS Baby Star but soon found herself mired in tasteless ethnic comedies such as The Callahans and the Murphys (1927) and Frisco Sally Levy (1927), the latter, according to one reviewer, proving as subtle "as a policeman's nightstick." In addition to her shaky screen vehicles, O'Neil suffered a severe case of stage fright. "So much depended on me doing well," she later explained. Her panic, however, was construed as temper tantrums and MGM dropped her option. She was rescued, most surprisingly, by D.W. Griffith, who cast her as a flapper in his one attempt at Lubitschian piquancy, The Battle of the Sexes (1928). The light touch was never a Griffith trademark, unfortunately, and the film was a distinct failure. Sound only tended to amplify O'Neil's nasal New Jersey accent and although well cast as Dion Boucicault's wistful Irish colleen Kathleen Mavourneen (1930), she was really more Bayonne than County Cork. John Ford awarded her the leading role as the street urchin in The Brat (1931), a remake of the 1916 Alla Nazimova melodrama, which O'Neill herself had done on stage the previous year. Although the film wasn't much liked, she emerged with fine personal reviews and a new contract with Fox. Nothing much came out of that, and she quit in disgust after six idle months in favor a return to the stage. In 1937, she turned up in the Irish-made Kathleen, a remake of her 1930 Kathleen Mavourneen, but Hollywood wags named the film "Cinderella Auld Sod" and O'Neil's screen career was over. In her later years, O'Neil appeared in summer stock, toured army hospitals with the USO and starred in a very successful 1951 Pasadena Playhouse production of Edith Wharton's The Bunner Sisters. Retired to the small town of Galesburg, IL, the erstwhile flapper became a locally noted painter who enjoyed several gallery showings. She was the sister of film actress Molly O'Day.

Trivia: A performer from age 12, Australian comedian/acrobat Clyde Cook rose to theatrical fame as "The Kangaroo Boy." Arriving in the U.S. after World War I, he worked briefly for Mack Sennett, then switched to the Sunshine Comedy unit at Fox. A tiny man with a huge paintbrush moustache, Cook was an amusing screen presence, but his lack of a well-defined character kept him from becoming a major star. He played supporting roles in such features as He Who Gets Slapped (1924) before trying his luck again as a two-reel star at Hal Roach Studios. The comedian's fortunes improved when he signed on at Warner Bros. as comedy relief in a number of silent features, in which he was frequently teamed with William Demarest or Louise Fazenda. With the coming of sound, Cook's Australian accent enabled him to secure good supporting roles in such British-based films as Dawn Patrol (1930) and Oliver Twist (1935); he also returned to Roach for a brief series of knockabout comedies titled The Taxi Boys. His roles dwindled to bits by the late '30s, but Cook never wanted for work. He was still at it in the 1950s, showing up in movies (Abbott and Costello Meet Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde [1951]) and on television (The Adventures of Superman). Clyde Cook retired after completing his one-day assignment on John Ford's Donovan's Reef (1963).

Trivia: Born in Italy, Henry Armetta stowed away on an American-bound boat in 1902. While employed as a pants-presser at New York's Lambs Club, Armetta befriended Broadway star Raymond Hitchcock, who secured Armetta a small role in his stage play A Yankee Consul. A resident of Hollywood from 1923, the hunch-shouldered, mustachioed Armetta gained fame in the 1930s in innumerable roles as excited, gesticulating Italians. Often cast as barbers or restaurateurs, Armetta was so popular that he was frequently awarded with extraneous bit roles that were specially written for him (vide 1933's Lady for a Day). Laurel and Hardy fans will remember Armetta as the flustered innkeeper who is kept awake nights trying to emulate Laurel's "kneesie-earsie-nosie" game in The Devil's Brother (1933). In the late 1930s, Armetta was briefly starred in a series of auto-racing films, bearing titles like Road Demon and Speed to Burn. He also headlined several short-subject series, notably RKO's "Nick and Tony" comedies of the early 1930s. Henry Armetta died of a sudden heart attack shortly after completing his scenes in 20th Century-Fox's A Bell for Adano (1945).

Trivia: Also known as Blanche Friderici, this Brooklyn-born actress was generally cast in severe, baleful roles: governesses, matrons, society doyennes and such. Beginning her screen career in 1922, she hit her stride at Paramount in the early 1930s. Her larger roles include one of the three omnipresent maiden aunts in Lubitsch's Love Me Tonight and Madame Si-Si in Madame Butterfly (both 1932). She was also a regular in Paramount's Zane Grey western series, usually as the cast-off wife or mistress of perennial villain Noah Beery. One of Blanche Frederici's last roles was as the wife of motel-court manager Zeke in Frank Capra's It Happened One Night (released posthumously in 1934).

Trivia: Joseph Cawthorn launched his seven-decade show business career at age four as a performer in "variety" revues (the precursor to American vaudeville). At age five, Cawthorn was appearing in minstrel shows, and at seven he moved to England, where he became a successful child performer. Back in America, he toured in vaudeville as a "Dutch" comic, fracturing audiences with his Yiddish dialect and hyperkinetic gestures. He first appeared on Broadway in the 1895 musical Excelsior Jr; two years later he got his biggest break when he replaced William Collier as principal comedian in Miss Philadelphia (1897). A popular Broadway attraction for the next 25 years, Cawthorn starred or co-starred in such tuneful extravaganzas as Victor Herbert's The Fortune Teller (1898), Mother Goose (1903, in the title role!), Little Nemo (1910), The Sunshine Girl (1913), The Girl From Utah (1914) and Rudy Friml' s The Blue Kitten (1922). By the time he appeared in the 1925 Marilyn Miller vehicle Sally, however, Cawthorn was being written off as a "fading star. Rather than stubbornly cling to his Broadway fame, Cawthorn moved to Hollywood in 1927, where he began a whole new career as a movie character actor. He revived his old dialect routines as Cornelius Van Horn in Dixiana (1930) and Joe Bruno in Peach o' Reno; both of these films starred Bert Wheeler and Robert Woolsey, who'd known Cawthorn "way back when" in New York (Woolsey in fact had supported Cawthorn in The Blue Kitten). Not always confined to "Dutch" roles, he was effectively cast as Shakespearean suitor Gremio in the Mary Pickford/Doug Fairbanks version of Taming of the Shrew(1929) and as a French physician in Lubitsch's Love Me Tonight (1932). Nor was he limited to comedy parts: he was most persuasive in the largely serious role of Dr. Bruner, the "Van Helsing" counterpart in Bela Lugosi's White Zombie (1932). Because of his celebrated Broadway past, Cawthorn was often cast in period "backstage" musicals, essaying such roles as the title character's father in The Great Ziegfeld (1936) and Leopold Damrosch in Lillian Russell (1940). Joseph Cawthorn died peacefully at his Beverly Hills home in 1949. His wife, actress Queenie Vassar, lived until 1960.

Trivia: Born Albert de Conti Cedassamare, Conti was a career soldier in the Austrian army who came to America after the close of World War I. Like many impoverished postwar Europeans, Conti was obliged to take a series of manual labor jobs. While working in the California oil fields, Conti answered an open call placed by director Erich von Stroheim, who was in search of an Austrian military officer to act as technical advisor for his upcoming film Merry Go Round (1923). A better actor than most of his fellow Hapsburg empire expatriates, Conti was able to secure dignified character roles in several silent and sound films; his credits ranged from Joseph von Sternberg's Morocco (1930) to the early Laurel and Hardy knockabout Slipping Wives (1927). Though he made his last film in 1942, Albert Conti remained in the industry as an employee of the MGM wardrobe department, where he worked until his retirement in 1962.