Trivia: The most well-known filmmaker to the public this side of Alfred Hitchcock, Orson Welles was the classic example of the genius that burns bright early in life only to flicker and fade later. The prodigy son of an inventor and a musician, Welles was well-versed in literature at an early age -- particularly Shakespeare -- and, through the unusual circumstances of his life (both of his parents died by the time he was 12, leaving him with an inheritance and not many family obligations), he found himself free to indulge his numerous interests, which included the theater. He was educated in private schools and traveled the world, even wangling stage work with Dublin's Gate Players while still a teenager. He found it tougher to get onto the Broadway stage, and traveled the world some more before returning to get a job with Katharine Cornell, with help from such notables as Alexander Woollcott and Thornton Wilder. He later became associated with John Houseman, and, together, the two of them set the New York theater afire during the 1930s with their work for the Federal Theatre Project, which led to the founding of the Mercury Theater. The Mercury Players later graduated to radio, and their 1938 "War of the Worlds" broadcast made history when thousands of listeners mistakenly believed aliens had landed on Earth. In 1940, Hollywood beckoned, and Welles and company went west to RKO, where he began his short-lived reign over the film world. Working as director, producer, co-author, and star, he made Citizen Kane (1941), the most discussed -- if not the greatest -- American movie ever created. It made striking use of techniques that had been largely forgotten or overlooked by other American filmmakers, and Welles was greatly assisted on the movie by veteran cinematographer Gregg Toland. Kane, himself, attracted more attention than viewers, especially outside the major cities, and a boycott of advertising and coverage by the newspapers belonging to William Randolph Hearst -- who had served as a major model for the central figure of Charles Foster Kane -- ensured that it racked up a modest loss. Welles second film, The Magnificent Ambersons, ran into major budget and production problems, which brought down the studio management that had hired him. With the director overextending himself, the situation between Welles and RKO deteriorated. Faced with a major loss on a picture that was considered unreleasable, RKO gained control of the film and ordered it recut without Welles' consent or input, and the result is considered a flawed masterpiece. However, it was a loss for RKO, and soon after the Mercury Players were evicted from RKO, word quickly spread through the film community of Welles' difficulty in adhering to shooting schedules and budgets. His career never fully recovered, and, although he directed other films in Hollywood, including The Stranger (1946), Macbeth (1948), and Touch of Evil (1958), he was never again given full control over his movies. European producers, however, were more forgiving, and with some effort and help from a few well-placed friends, Welles was able to make such pictures as Othello (1952), Chimes at Midnight (1967), and The Trial (1963). He also remained highly visible as a personality -- he discovered in the mid-'40s that, for 100,000 dollars a shot, he could make money as an actor to help finance his films and his fairly expensive lifestyle, which resulted in Welles' appearances in The Third Man (1949), The Roots of Heaven (1958), and Catch-22 (1970), among other pictures. He also made television appearances, did voice-overs and recordings, and occasional commercials until his death in 1985. Despite his lack of commercial success, Welles remains one of the most well-known, discussed, and important directors in the history of motion pictures.

Trivia: After playing Susan Alexander, a key role in Orson Welle's magnum opus Citizen Kane, it seemed that American actress Dorothy Comingore was destined to finally become a star. Although her performance won considerable acclaim, Comingore only made three more films. Before the film, she had worked in stock theater and during the 1930s, appeared in many Columbia comedy shorts billed as Linda Winters. She also worked with The Three Stooges, played leads in a few cheap westerns, and had several bit parts.

Trivia: Born to a well-to-do Southern family, Joseph Cotten studied at the Hickman School of Expression in Washington D.C., and later sought out theater jobs in New York. He made his Broadway debut in 1930, and seven years later joined Orson Welles' progressive Mercury Theatre company, playing leads in such productions as Julius Caesar and Shoemaker's Holiday. He briefly left Welles in 1939 to co-star in Katharine Hepburn's Broadway comeback vehicle The Philadelphia Story. Cotten rejoinedWelles in Hollywood in 1940, making his feature-film debut as Jed Leland in Welles' Citizen Kane (1941). As a sort of private joke, Jed Leland was a dramatic critic, a profession which Cotten himself had briefly pursued on the Miami Herald in the late '20s. Cotten went on to play the kindly auto mogul Eugene Morgan in Welles' The Magnificent Ambersons in 1942, and both acted in and co-wrote Journey Into Fear, the film that Welles was working on when he was summarily fired by RKO. Cotten remained a close friend of Welles until the director's death in 1985; he co-starred with Welles in Carol Reed's The Third Man (1949) and played an unbilled cameo for old times' sake in the Welles-directed Touch of Evil (1958). A firmly established romantic lead by the early '40s, Cotten occasionally stepped outside his established screen image to play murderers (Alfred Hitchcock's Shadow of a Doubt [1943]) and surly drunkards (Under Capricorn [1949]). A longtime contractee of David O. Selznick, Cotten won a Venice Film Festival award for his performance in Selznick's Portrait of Jennie (1948). Cotten's screen career flagged during the 1950s and '60s, though he flourished on television as a guest performer on such anthologies as Alfred Hitchcock Presents, Fireside Theatre, The Great Adventure, and as host of The 20th Century-Fox Hour (1955), The Joseph Cotten Show (1956), On Trial (1959), and Hollywood and the Stars (1963). He also appeared in several stage productions, often in the company of his second wife, actress Patricia Medina. In 1987, Cotten published his engagingly candid autobiography, Vanity Will Get You Somewhere. He died of pneumonia in 1994 at the age of 88.

Trivia: Manhattan-born Everett Sloane first set foot on-stage at age seven, in the role of Puck in a school production of A Midsummer Night's Dream. At 18, he dropped out of the University of Pennsylvania to join a stock company. Poor reviews convinced Sloane that his future did not lie in the theater, so he secured a job as a Wall Street runner -- only to return to acting after the 1929 crash. He went into radio, playing anything and everything (he was the standard voice of Adolph Hitler on "The March of Time"), then made his Broadway bow with Orson Welles' Mercury Theater. Welles brought Sloane to Hollywood in 1940 to play the wizened Mr. Bernstein in the cinema classic Citizen Kane; Sloane remained a Mercury associate until 1947, when he played the crippled attorney Bannister in Welles' Lady From Shanghai. Outside of the Welles orbit, Sloane was seen in the 1944 Broadway hit A Bell for Adano, and starred as the ruthless business executive in both the television and screen versions of Rod Serling's Patterns. Sloane's additional TV work included a 39-week starring stint on the syndicated series Official Detective, the voice of Dick Tracy in a batch of 130 cartoons produced in 1960 and 1961, and several episodic-TV directorial credits. Reportedly depressed over his encroaching blindness, Everett Sloane committed suicide at the age of 55.

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: At age three Agnes Moorehead first appeared onstage, and at 11 she made her professional debut in the ballet and chorus of the St. Louis Opera. As a teenager she regularly sang on local radio. She earned a Ph.D. in literature and studied theater at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts. She began playing small roles on Broadway in 1928; shortly thereafter she shifted her focus to radio acting, becoming a regular on the radio shows March of Time, Cavalcade of America, and a soap opera series. She toured in vaudeville from 1933-36 with Phil Baker. In 1940 she joined Orson Welles's Mercury Theater Company, giving a great boost to her career. Moorehead debuted onscreen as Kane's mother in Welles' film Citizen Kane (1941). Her second film was Welles' The Magnificent Ambersons (1942), for which she received a Best Supporting Actress Oscar nomination; ultimately she was nominated for an Oscars five times, never winning. In films, she tended to play authoritarian, neurotic, puritanical, or soured women, but also played a wide range of other roles, and was last onscreen in 1972. In the '50s she toured the U.S. with a stellar cast giving dramatic readings of Shaw's Don Juan in Hell. In 1954 she began touring in The Fabulous Redhead, a one-woman show she eventually took to over 200 cities across the world. She was also active on TV; later audiences remember her best as the witch Endora, Elizabeth Montgomery's mother, in the '60s TV sitcom Bewitched. Moorehead's last professional engagement was in the Broadway musical Gigi. She died of lung cancer in 1974. She was married to actors John Griffith Lee (1930-52) and Robert Gist (1953-58).

Trivia: A 1941 RKO radio press book claimed that actress Ruth Warrick first came to New York as the winner of something called the "Miss Jubelesta" contest, carrying a live turkey into Mayor LaGuardia's office. It's a safe bet Warrick, a former radio singer and model, would rather be remembered for her first Hollywood accomplishment, which was certainly no turkey: the role of Emily Monroe Norton, Mrs. Kane number one, in Orson Welles' Citizen Kane (1941). Much too reserved and aristocratic for standard leading lady roles, Warrick was seen to better advantage in character parts. Since 1970, Ruth Warrick has starred as a snooty, status-conscious doctor's wife on the ABC daytime drama All My Children; Warrick alluded to this long-running character in the title of her 1980 autobiography, The Confessions of Phoebe Tyler.

Trivia: A stagestruck 15-year-old Michigan farm boy, Harry Shannon succumbed to the lure of greasepaint upon joining a traveling repertory troupe. Developing into a first-rate musical comedy performer, Shannon went on to work in virtually all branches of live entertainment, including tent shows, vaudeville, and Broadway. By the 1930s, Shannon was a member of Joseph Schildkraut's Hollywood Theater Guild, which led to film assignments. Though he was busiest playing Irish cops and Western sheriffs, Harry Shannon is best remembered as Charles Foster Kane's alcoholic father ("What that kid needs is a good thrashin'!") in Orson Welles' masterpiece Citizen Kane (1941).

Trivia: A descendant of one of California's pioneer families, American actor Ray Collins' interest in the theatre came naturally. His father was drama critic of the Sacramento Bee. Taking to the stage at age 14, Collins moved to British Columbia, where he briefly headed his own stock company, then went on to Broadway. An established theatre and radio performer by the mid-1930s, Collins began a rewarding association with Orson Welles' Mercury Theatre. He played the "world's last living radio announcer" in Welles' legendary War of the Worlds broadcast of 1938, then moved to Hollywood with the Mercury troupe in 1939. Collins made his film debut as Boss Jim Gettys in Welles' film classic Citizen Kane (1940). After the Mercury disbanded in the early 1940s, Collins kept busy as a film and stage character actor, usually playing gruff business executives. Collins is most fondly remembered by TV fans of the mid-1950s for his continuing role as the intrepid Lt. Tragg on the weekly series Perry Mason.

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: So eager was Neighborhood Playhouse-trained William Alland to become a on-stage member of Orson Welles' Mercury Theatre in the late 1930s that he locked himself in Welles' dressing room and wouldn't come out until Orson had heard his audition. He functioned as an actor and stage manager with the Mercury on Broadway, and as assistant director on the troupe's radio series. When Welles took his players to Hollywood in 1940 to make Citizen Kane, Alland went along as dialogue director; he also appeared in the film as the shadowy reporter Thompson, and was heard as the stentorian narrator in the "News on the March" sequence. He remained with Welles into the late 1940s, acting in Lady from Shanghai (1947) and MacBeth (1948) (as one of the murderers) and wearing several hats behind the camera. In 1952, Allan was engaged as a staff producer at Universal-International. Among his best-known productions were the science fiction classics It Came From Outer Space (1953), Creature From the Black Lagoon (1954) and This Island Earth (1955). In 1961, William Alland made his film directorial debut with the juvenile-delinquency melodrama Look in Any Window. Alland died at the age of 81 following complications from heart disease.

Trivia: A law student at the University of Madrid, Fortunio Bonanova switched his major to music at Madrid's Real Conservatory and the Paris Conservatory. Bonanova inaugurated his operatic career as a baritone at the age of 17. By age 21 he was in films, producing, directing and starring in a silent production of Don Juan (1921). He spent most of the 1920s singing at the Paris opera and writing books, plays and short stories; he arrived in America in 1930 to co-star with Katherine Cornell on Broadway. At the invitation of his friend Orson Welles, Bononova portrayed the feverish singing teacher Signor Matisti in Welles' Citizen Kane (1941). Fortunio Bonanova remained gainfully employed in Hollywood as a character actor into the early 1960s.

Trivia: He began acting in plays in his early teens, and was already a veteran by the time he joined Orson Welles's Mercury Theater in 1938; among his Mercury credits was a role in the infamous War of the Worlds radio broadcast. Like many Mercury performers, he followed Welles to Hollywood and debuted onscreen in Citizen Kane (1941). In a sporadically busy film career, he went on to play many character roles over the next four decades; he was often cast as insensitive, no-nonsense types, and sometimes played gangsters. He began a second career in the mid '50s as a TV director.

Trivia: A product of vaudeville and burlesque, gerbil-faced comic actor Gus Schilling hit the big time when he joined the Earl Carroll Vanities in the 1930s. He moved on to Orson Welles' Mercury Theatre troupe, appearing in several Mercury radio shows and in the Welles-directed films Citizen Kane (1940), Magnificent Ambersons (1942), The Lady From Shanghai (1947), and MacBeth (1948). He also showed up in such comedy characterizations as the harried orchestra leader in Hellzapoppin' (1941) and the nervous TV repairman in Our Very Own (1950). From 1945 through 1950, Schilling teamed with Dick Lane in a lively series of 11 Columbia Pictures two-reelers; appearing in nearly all of these shorts was Schilling's burlesque partner, Judy Malcolm, who'd invariably pop up out of nowhere, slap Schilling's face, and shout, "How dare you look like someone I hate?" A heavy smoker, Schilling looked terribly drawn and haggard in his last film appearances. Gus Schilling died at the age of 49 of a reported heart attack, though many of those close to him were of the opinion that he killed himself.

Trivia: Beginning his stage career in his native Holland in 1927, Phil Van Zandt moved to America shortly afterward, continuing to make theatrical appearances into the late '30s. From his first film (Those High Gray Walls [1939]) onward, the versatile Van Zandt was typed as "everyday" characters whenever he chose not to wear his mustache; with the 'stache, however, his face took on a sinister shade, and he found himself playing such cinematic reprobates as evil caliphs, shady attorneys, and heartless Nazis. Because of deliberately shadowy photography, the audience barely saw Van Zandt's face at all in one of his best roles, as the Henry Luce-like magazine editor Rawlston in Orson Welles' Citizen Kane (1941). Though many of his feature-film assignments were bits, Van Zandt was permitted generous screen time in his many appearances in two-reel comedies. Beginning with the Gus Schilling/Dick Lane vehicle Pardon My Terror (1946), Van Zandt was a fixture at the Columbia Pictures short subjects unit, usually playing crooks and mad scientists at odds with the Three Stooges. He established his own acting school in Hollywood in the 1950s, though this and other ventures ultimately failed. Philip Van Zandt died of a drug overdose at the age of 54.

Trivia: Alan Ladd was a short (5' 5"), unexpressive lead actor with icy good looks and a resonant voice. He worked a variety of odd jobs -- in addition to radio and in local theater -- before entering films in his late teens as a bit player and grip. In the mid-'30s, he began appearing regularly in minor screen roles. Hollywood agent Sue Carol discovered him and began trumpeting him as star material, and the actor eventually landed a major role in This Gun for Hire (1942) opposite Veronica Lake. He quickly became a major star, and was teamed with Lake in other films -- all hits. Ladd and Carol married in 1942, and she remained his agent for the rest of his life. On the Top Ten box-office attractions list in 1947, 1953, and 1954, he continued to star in films throughout the '50s, but -- with the exception of Shane (1953) -- few of his films were noteworthy; most were entertaining adventures featuring Ladd bare-chested and in fistfights, but, by the late '50s, their appeal was waning. Ladd was the father of actors Alan Ladd Jr. and David Ladd, and former child actress Alana Ladd. He died in 1964.

Trivia: A veteran vaudevillian, American actor Arthur O'Connell made his legitimate stage debut in the mid '30s, at which time he fell within the orbit of Orson Welles' Mercury Theatre. Welles cast O'Connell in the tiny role of a reporter in the closing scenes of Citizen Kane (1941), a film often referred to as O'Connell's film debut, though in fact he had already appeared in Freshman Year (1939) and had costarred in two Leon Errol short subjects as Leon's conniving brother-in-law. After numerous small movie parts, O'Connell returned to Broadway, where he appeared as the erstwhile middle-aged swain of a spinsterish schoolteacher in Picnic -- a role he'd recreate in the 1956 film version, earning an Oscar nomination in the process. The somewhat downtrodden-looking O'Connell was frequently cast as fortyish losers and alcoholics; in the latter capacity he appeared as Jimmy Stewart's boozy attorney mentor in Anatomy of a Murder (1959), and the result was another Oscar nomination. O'Connell continued appearing in choice character parts on both TV and films during the '60s (he'd graduated to villainy in a few of these roles), but avoided a regular television series, holding out until he could be assured top billing. The actor accepted the part of a man who discovers that his 99-year-old father has been frozen in an iceberg on the 1967 sitcom The Second Hundred Years, assuming he'd be billed first per the producers' agreement. Instead, top billing went to newcomer Monty Markham in the dual role of O'Connell's father (the ice had preserved his youthfulness) and his son. O'Connell accepted the demotion to second billing as well as could be expected, but he never again trusted the word of any Hollywood executive. Illness forced O'Connell to cut down on his appearances in the mid '70s, but the actor stayed busy as a commercial spokesman for a popular toothpaste. At the time of his death, O'Connell was appearing solely in these commercials -- by his own choice. For a mere few hours' work each year, Arthur O'Connell remained financially solvent 'til the end of his days.

Trivia: A veteran vaudeville performer from Kentucky, wavy-haired Sam Ash was fairly busy in Broadway musicals of the 1910s and 1920s, including the hugely successful Katrinka (1915), Some Party (1922; with Jed Prouty and De Wolf Hopper), and The Passing Show of 1922. Third-billed in his screen debut as one of the suspects in the Craig Kennedy mystery Unmasked (1929), Ash went on to play literally hundreds of bit parts as waiters, news vendors, ship stewards, reporters, and the like. He was popular with the Republic Pictures serial units in the 1940s, playing one of the reporters swooping down on poor Louise Currie in The Masked Marvel (1944) and a florist in Captain America (1944), to mention but two of many chapterplay roles. His final film, the Warner Bros. Western The Big Sky (1952), was released posthumously.

Trivia: Gaunt, deep-voiced American actor Pedro De Cordoba was often cast as a Spanish don or a kindly Mexican padre on the basis of his last name and aristocratic bearing. Actually he was born in New York City of French and Cuban parents. His priestlike manners came naturally; when not acting, he was a highly regarded Catholic layman, and at one point president of the Catholic Actors Guild of America. He made his film debut in a 1913 version of Carmen, but preferred the stage to silent films, co-starring with such Broadway legends as Jane Cowl and Katharine Cornell. De Cordoba's mellifluous stage-trained voice was perfect for talking pictures, and from 1930 through 1950 he was one of the busiest of character actors. On occasion he would be seen as a villain, but most of De Cordoba's roles were as gentle and courtly as the actor himself. Alfred Hitchcock cast De Cordoba in perhaps his most memorable part, as the fair-minded sideshow "living skeleton" who allows fugitive Robert Cummings to hide out in his carnival wagon in Saboteur (1942). The actor's last film was the posthumously released Crisis (1950), a political drama set in an unnamed South American dictatorship.

Trivia: American character actress Joan Blair (born Lilian Wilck in New York City) got her start playing ingenues with the Ziegfeld Follies. From there she appeared on stage in various stock companies and tour groups. She launched her film career in the early '30s and went on to appear in numerous films, including Citizen Kane (1941) and Earthquake (1974), through the mid '70s. She also continued her stage career and worked on television where she appeared on such series as My Little Margie and Mr. District Attorney. Blair was 93 when she passed away following a brief illness.

Trivia: The grandson of a governor of New Mexico, pioneering screen cowboy Edmund Cobb began his long career toiling in Colorado-produced potboilers such as Hands Across the Border (1914), the filming of which turned tragic when Cobb's leading lady, Grace McHugh, drowned in the Arkansas River. Despite this harrowing experience, Cobb continued to star in scores of cheap Westerns and was making two-reelers at Universal in Hollywood by the 1920s. But unlike other studio cowboys, Cobb didn't do his own stunts -- despite the fact that he later claimed to have invented the infamous "running w" horse stunt -- and that may actually have shortened his starring career. By the late '20s, he was mainly playing villains. The Edmund Cobb remembered today, always a welcome sign whether playing the main henchman or merely a member of the posse, would pop up in about every other B-Western made during the 1930s and 1940s, invariably unsmiling and with a characteristic monotone delivery. When series Westerns bit the dust in the mid-'50s, Cobb simply continued on television. In every sense of the word a true screen pioneer and reportedly one of the kindest members of the Hollywood chuck-wagon fraternity, Edmund Cobb died at the age of 82 at the Motion Picture Country House and Hospital in Woodland Hills, CA.

Trivia: Enjoying one of the longer careers in Hollywood history, Gino Corrado is today best remembered as a stocky bit-part player whose pencil-thin mustache made him the perfect screen barber, maître d', or hotel clerk, roles he would play in both major and Poverty Row films that ranged from Citizen Kane (1941) and Casablanca (1942) to serials such as The Lost City (1935) and, perhaps his best-remembered performance, the Three Stooges short Micro Phonies (1945; he was the bombastic Signor Spumoni).A graduate of his native College of Strada, Corrado finished his education at St. Bede College in Peru, IL, and entered films with D.W. Griffith in the early 1910s, later claiming to have played bit parts in both Birth of a Nation (1915) and Intolerance (1916). By the mid-1910s, he was essaying the "other man" in scores of melodramas, now billed under the less ethnic-sounding name of Eugene Corey. He became Geno Corrado in the 1920s but would work under his real name in literally hundreds of sound films, a career that lasted well into the 1950s and also included live television appearances. In a case of life imitating art, Corrado reportedly supplemented his income by working as a waiter in between acting assignments.

Trivia: Actress Louise Currie was signed to an RKO contract in 1940 and spent her year at RKO in such minor roles as the coed chum of Helen Parrish in You'll Find Out (1940) and a bespectacled reporter in the closing scenes of 1941's Citizen Kane. After parting company with RKO, she appeared in a brace of Republic serials, The Adventures of Captain Marvel (1940) and The Masked Marvel (1943); played opposite El Brendel and Harry Langdon at Columbia's two-reel comedy unit; and co-starred in such Monogram extravaganzas as Voodoo Man (1944), in which she was reunited with her You'll Find Out colleague Bela Lugosi. Retiring from films in 1949, Louise Currie became a successful clothing designer, touring the world for business and pleasure in the company of her husband, noted importer and antique dealer John Good.

Trivia: A former dentist, Robert Dudley began appearing in small supporting roles on screen around 1917 (he played a clerk in the first screen version of the mystery-comedy Seven Keys to Baldpate) and would appear in literally hundreds of films until his retirement in 1951. Often cast as jurors, shopkeepers, ticket agents, and court clerks, the typical Dudley character displayed a very short fuse. Of all his often miniscule performances, one in particular stands out: the apartment-hunting "Wienie King" in Preston Sturges' hilarious The Palm Beach Story (1942).

Trivia: American character actress Edith Evanson began showing up in films around 1941. Cast as a nurse, it is Evanson who appears in the reflection of the shattered glass ball in the prologue of Orson Welles' Citizen Kane (1941). Her larger screen assignments included Aunt Sigrid in George Stevens' I Remember Mama (1948) and Mrs. Wilson the housekeeper in Hitchcock's Rope (1948). Hitchcock also directed her in Marnie (1964). Edith Evanson is best remembered by science fiction fans for her lengthy, uncredited appearance as Klaatu's landlady Mrs. Crockett in The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951).

Trivia: Milton Kibbee was the younger brother of prominent stage and screen character actor Guy Kibbee. Looking like a smaller, skinnier edition of his brother, Milton followed Guy's lead and opted for a show business career. The younger Kibbee never reached the professional heights enjoyed by Guy in the '30s and '40s, but he was steadily employed in bit parts and supporting roles throughout the same period. Often cast as desk clerks, doctors and park-bench habitues, Milton Kibbee was most frequently seen as a pencil-wielding reporter, notably (and very briefly) in 1941's Citizen Kane.

Trivia: A balding former stage actor from Oregon, Irving Mitchell appeared in scores of films of the 1940s, often playing medical doctors, as in Citizen Kane (1941) and All-American Co-Ed (1941). Mitchell was also one of the suspects in the theft of Napoleon's jewels in Secrets of the Lone Wolf (1941) and one of the two duplicitous industrialists forced by Bela Lugosi to shoot and kill each other in Black Dragons (1942). Very busy in television shows such as Perry Mason and Maverick, Mitchell's last credited feature film was 1957's Jeanne Eagles, in which he played a lawyer.

Trivia: Benny Rubin inaugurated his career as a 14-year-old tap dancer in his hometown of Boston. He worked in stock and on showboats during the WWI years, breaking into burlesque as a dialect comedian in 1918. A vaudeville headliner throughout the 1920s, Rubin seemed a sure bet for movie stardom when he was signed by MGM in 1927. According to one source, however, the powers-that-be decided that Rubin looked "too Jewish" for movies. Nonetheless, he entered films during the talking era, starring in a brace of Tiffany Studios musicals -- Sunny Skies and Hot Curves, both filmed in 1930 -- before freelancing as a character actor. Though he was top-billed in a handful of two-reelers and was given prominent screen credit as one the scenarists for the Wheeler and Woolsey films Off Again -- On Again (1937) and High Flyers (1937), Rubin had to settle for bits and minor roles as a feature-film actor. He would later claim that his fall from grace was due to his bad temper and his chronic gambling. Far more successful on radio, Rubin became one of the most prominent members of Jack Benny's "stock company," usually playing an obnoxious information desk attendant ("I dunno! I dunno! I dunno!). During the 1950s and 1960s, Rubin worked steadily in TV programs, feature films, and two-reel comedies; he also worked in animated cartoons and TV commercials as a voice-over artist, truthfully proclaiming that he could convincingly convey any foreign accent -- "except Arabian." In 1973, Rubin produced a self-published, self-serving autobiography, Come Backstage With Me, in which he made innumerable specious claims about his show biz accomplishments; for example, he stated that it was he who advised fledging film director Orson Welles to hire cameraman Gregg Toland for the 1941 classic Citizen Kane (in truth, Rubin's contribution to the film was confined to a one-scene bit as a typesetter, which was cut from the final release print). Benny Rubin's final appearance was in the TV miniseries Glitter.

Trivia: Born in Colorado and raised in Oregon, actor Walter Sande was a music student from age six. He dropped out of college to organize his own band, then for many years served as musical director for the West Coast Fox Theater chain. In 1937, Sande entered films with a small role in Goldwyn Follies (1938). He fluctuated thereafter between bits in films like Citizen Kane (1941), in which he played one of the many reporters, and supporting roles in films like To Have and Have Not (1944), in which he portrayed the defaulting customer who is punched out by a boat-renting Humphrey Bogart. On television, Walter Sande played Horatio Bullwinkle on Tugboat Annie (1958) and Papa Holstrum on The Farmer's Daughter (1963-1966).