Trivia: Although Groucho Marx was the third-oldest son of "stage mama" Minnie Marx, he was the first to take the plunge into show business. With his mother's blessing, the 14-year-old Marx took a job as a boy soprano with a group called the LeRoy Trio. This first engagement was nearly his last when, while on tour, he was stranded in Colorado and had to work his way back home. Marx was willing to chuck the theater and pursue his dream of becoming a doctor, but the undaunted Minnie organized Groucho, his younger brother Gummo, and a less than talented girl named Mabel O'Donnell into a vaudeville act called The Three Nightingales. Before long, Groucho's older brothers Chico and Harpo joined the act, which, by 1910, had metamorphosed into The Six Mascots (Minnie and the boy's Aunt Hannah rounded out the sextet). Fed up with indifferent audiences, Groucho began throwing jokes and insults into the act, directly addressing the crowd in as hilariously nasty a manner as possible. The audience loved it, and the four Marx Brothers eventually became a comedy team. Through the many incarnations of their vaudeville act, the characters remained the same: Groucho, the mustached, cigar-chomping leader of the foursome, alternately dispensing humorous invectives and acting as exasperated straight man for his brothers' antics; Chico, the monumentally stupid, pun-happy Italian; Harpo, the non-speaking, whirling dervish; and Gummo (later replaced by Zeppo), the hopelessly lost straight man. During the run of their vaudeville sketch Home Again, Groucho was unable to find his prop mustache and rapidly painted one on with greasepaint -- which is how he would appear with his brothers ever afterward, despite efforts by certain film directors to make his hirsute adornment look realistic. After managing to offend several powerful vaudeville magnates, the Marx Brothers accepted work with a Broadway-bound "tab" show, I'll Say She Is. The play scored a surprise hit when it opened in 1924, and the brothers became the toast of Broadway. They followed this success with 1925's The Cocoanuts, in which playwrights George Kaufman and Morris Ryskind refined Groucho's character into the combination con man/perpetual wisecracker that he would portray until the team dissolved. The Cocoanuts was also the first time Groucho appeared with his future perennial foil and straight woman Margaret Dumont. Animal Crackers, which opened in 1928, cast Groucho as fraudulent African explorer Capt. Geoffrey T. Spaulding, and introduced his lifelong signature tune, the Bert Kalmar/Harry Ruby classic "Hooray for Captain Spaulding." Both Cocoanuts and Animal Crackers were made into early talkies, prompting Paramount to invite the Brothers to Hollywood for a group of comedies written specifically for the screen. Monkey Business (1931), Horse Feathers (1932), and Duck Soup (1933) are now acknowledged classics, but box-office receipts dropped off with each successive feature, and, by 1934, the Marx Brothers were considered washed up in Hollywood. Groucho was only mildly put out; professional inactivity gave him time to commiserate with the writers and novelists who comprised his circle of friends. He always considered himself a writer first and comedian second, and, over the years, published several witty books and articles. (He was gratified in the '60s when his letters to and from friends were installed in the Library of Congress -- quite an accomplishment for a man who never finished grade school.) The Marx Brothers were given a second chance in movies by MGM producer Irving Thalberg, who lavished a great deal of time, money, and energy on what many consider the team's best film, A Night at the Opera (1935). The normally iconoclastic Groucho remained an admirer of Thalberg for the rest of his life, noting that he lost all interest in filmmaking after the producer died in 1936. The Marx Brothers continued making films until 1941, principally to bail out the eternally broke Chico. Retired again from films in 1941, Groucho kept busy with occasional radio guest star appearances and a stint with the Hollywood Victory Caravan. Despite his seeming insouciance, Groucho loved performing and was disheartened that none of his radio series in the mid-'40s were successful. (Nor was the Marx Brothers' 1946 comeback film A Night in Casablanca.) When producer/writer John Guedel approached him in 1947 to host a radio quiz show called You Bet Your Life, Groucho initially refused, not wanting another failure on his resume. But he accepted the job when assured that, instead of being confined to a banal script or his worn-out screen character, he could be himself, ad-libbing to his heart's content with the contestants. You Bet Your Life was a rousing success on both radio (1947-1956) and television (1950-1961 on NBC), winning high ratings and several Emmy awards in the process. Except for an occasional reunion with his brothers (the 1949 film Love Happy, the 1959 TV special The Incredible Jewel Robbery), Groucho became a solo performer for the remainder of his career. During the '50s, Marx made occasional stage appearances in Time for Elizabeth, a play he co-wrote with his friend Harry Kurnitz; this slight piece was committed to film as a 1964 installment of Bob Hope Presents the Chrysler Theatre, and in which the comedian looked ill at ease playing an everyman browbeaten by his boss. Working less frequently in the late '60s, Marx returned to the limelight in the early '70s when his old films were rediscovered by young antiestablishment types of the era, who revelled in his willingness to deflate authority and attack any and all sacred cows. By this time, Marx's health had been weakened by a stroke, but through the encouragement (some say prodding) of his secretary/companion Erin Fleming, he returned to active performing with TV guest appearances and a 1972 sold-out appearance at Carnegie Hall. And though he seemed very frail and aphasic in his latter-day performances, his fans couldn't get enough of him. In 1974, with Fleming at his side, Marx accepted a special Oscar. Ironically, it was the increasing influence of Fleming, which some observers insisted gave the octogenarian a new lease on life, that caused him the greatest amount of difficulty in his final years, resulting in the estrangement of his children and many of his oldest friends. In the midst of a heated battle between the Marx family and Fleming over the disposition of his estate, Groucho Marx died in 1977 at the age of 86.

Trivia: The second son of German/Alsatian immigrants Sam and Minnie Marx (the first son, Manfred, died in infancy), comedian Leonard "Chico" Marx was the oldest of the five siblings who would become internationally famous as The Marx Brothers. But when mother Minnie first organized younger brothers Groucho, Harpo and Gummo into a singing vaudeville act, Chico chose to go it alone as a free-lance pianist in orchestras, saloons, and "bawdy houses." Though a limited musician, Marx learned early on how to keep an audience enthralled. When Chico joined his brothers in a "schoolroom" act, he drew upon his expertise with dialects by playing a comic Italian. After their Broadway debut in 1924's I'll Say She Is, the Four Marx Brothers (Zeppo had replaced Gummo) were a big-money act. After their 1937 film A Day at the Races, the Brothers considered retiring from movies, but Chico's financial difficulties were a major factor in their decision to remain active. During the war years, Chico headed his own orchestra, and in the '50s he would pay his bills by headlining state fairs and other such barnstorming endeavors with his brother Harpo. In 1950, Chico made his dramatic TV debut in the half-hour Papa Romani. He was also a regular on the 1950 variety series College Bowl, and appeared briefly as an Italian monk in the Irwin Allen all-star film The Story of Mankind (1957) (Groucho and Harpo also showed up in separate sequences). Chico Marx's final professional appearance was with Harpo and (briefly) Groucho in the 1959 GE Theatre entry "The Incredible Jewel Robbery." Chico's daughter Maxine Marx was a prominent actor's agent, and briefly the wife of animated cartoon director Shamus Culhane.

Trivia: Born Adolph Marx (a name he later legally changed to Arthur), New York-native Harpo Marx was the second oldest member of the Marx Brothers comedy team. Dropping out of school in the 2nd grade (literally so -- he was thrown out the window by two older boys), Harpo took odd jobs to help support his family, but his first love was always music. Inheriting a harp from a relative -- hence his nickname -- Marx taught himself how to play, and soon became proficient in several instruments, even though he never learned how to read music. Pressed into service by his stagestruck mother, Harpo joined brothers Groucho and Gummo as part of a vaudeville act called the Four Nightingales. When older brother Chico joined the act, Harpo found that, thanks to the verbosity of Chico and Groucho, his stage role as red-wigged tough kid Patsy Brannigan was being alotted less and less dialogue in each performance. Eventually Harpo stopped talking onstage altogether. Marx would never utter a word while dressed in the top hat and battered raincoat of Harpo; instead, he expressed a wide arrange of emotions through whistles, horn honks and frenetic pantomime, taking time out from his lunatic behavior only when settling down to play his harp. When the Marx Brothers became the toast of Broadway in the '20s, Harpo was befriended by theatre critic Alexander Woollcott, who introduced the wide-eyed comedian to the most brilliant artistic and literary talents of the era. (When asked how he got along so well with such heady company, Harpo always claimed it was because he was the only member of the witty group who kept his mouth shut). Harpo settled down at the age of 48 to marry actress Susan Fleming; thereafter, except for his manic film appearances, he revelled in the life of a loving husband and father, adopting several children and raising them beautifully. While most of his professional work between 1919 and 1949 was done with his brothers, Harpo appeared by himself in the 1925 silent film Too Many Kisses, and spent several weeks filming Androcles and the Lion in 1952 before he was replaced by Alan Young. In 1949, Harpo was supposed to solo in a film comedy titled Love Happy, but the money men wouldn't ante up the budget unless his brothers Groucho and Chico also appeared in the film. Though professionally a "dummy", Harpo was a sharp businessman, instinctively making wise investments that would keep him wealthy for life; and though he was no babe in the woods in terms of life experiences, Harpo was widely regarded as one of the kindest and most even-tempered men in show business. After the Marx Brothers went their separate ways, Harpo continued making TV guest appearances in his traditional wig and costume; the most fondly remembered of these guest stints occured on a 1955 episode of I Love Lucy. He also appeared out of character on the 1960 Jane Wyman Theatre "Silent Panic" -- albeit as a deaf-mute, thereby maintaining his professional silence. In collaboration with Rowland Barber, Harpo Marx hilariously summed up his life in a 1961 autobiography Harpo Speaks, the last sentence of which was a characteristic "Honk! Honk!"

Trivia: Considered by many to be the "normal" (and most handsome) Marx brother, Zeppo Marx appeared in only five Marx Brothers' films. Generally not the center of attention, Zeppo functioned mainly as a bland romantic distraction to Groucho, Chico, and Harpo's vaudeville-based comic craziness, and as a replacement for older brother Gummo, who left the act to pursue other avenues. Zeppo appeared in The Cocoanuts, Animal Crackers, Monkey Business, Horse Feathers, and what is considered by many to be the best Marx Brothers' film, Duck Soup. After leaving the act, both Zeppo and Gummo became very successful Hollywood talent agents. In addition, Zeppo invented a wristwatch to monitor the pulse-rate of cardiac patients that would ring an alarm if the patient went into cardiac arrest as well as clamping devices used in atomic bomb raids in the mid-'40s. Zeppo's second wife, Barbara, a former Vegas showgirl, divorced him after ten years and later became the last Mrs. Frank Sinatra.

Trivia: Originally an opera singer, American actress Margaret Dumont was engaged in 1925 to act in The Cocoanuts, a Broadway musical comedy starring the Marx Brothers. As wealthy widow Mrs. Potter, Dumont became the formidable stage target for the rapid-fire insults and bizarre lovemaking approach of Groucho Marx. So impressive was her "teaming" with Groucho that she was hired for their next Broadway production, Animal Crackers (1928), in which she portrayed society dowager Mrs. Rittenhouse. Though Groucho would later insist that Dumont never understood his jokes, she more than held her own against the unpredictable Marx Brothers, facing their wild ad-libs, practical jokes and roughhouse physical humor with the straight-faced aplomb of a school principal assigned a classroom of unruly children. Dumont continued appearing opposite the Marx Brothers when they began making motion pictures, co-starring in seven of the team's films, most notably as hypochondriac Emily Upjohn in A Day at the Races (1937). It was for this picture that Dumont won a Screen Actor's Guild award; upon this occasion, film critic Cecilia Ager suggested that a monument be erected in honor of Dumont's courage and steadfastness in the face of the Marx invasion. Although she appeared in many other films (sometimes in the company of other famous comedy teams such as Laurel and Hardy, Wheeler and Woolsey, and Abbott and Costello), it is for her Marx appearances that Dumont--often dubbed "the Fifth Marx Brother"--is best remembered. Dumont made her last professional appearance a week before her death, on the TV variety series Hollywood Palace; appropriately, it was in support of Groucho Marx in a re-creation of the "Hooray for Captain Spaulding" production number from Animal Crackers.

Trivia: Born in New York City, Louis Calhern moved to St. Louis with his family as a child. There he played high-school football, and while engaged in gridiron activity he was spotted by a theatrical manager and hired as a supernumerary in a local stage troupe. Borrowing money from his father, Calhern headed to New York to pursue acting. Because World War I was going on at the time, the young actor thought it expedient to change his Teutonic given name of Carl Henry Vogt ("Calhern" was a rearrangement of the letters in his first and second names). After his first Broadway break in the 1923 George M. Cohan production Song and Dance Man, the tall, velvet-voiced Calhern became a matinee idol by virtue of a play titled The Cobra. In films from 1921, Calhern thrived in the early talkie era as a cultured, saturnine villain. For a time, Calhern battled alcoholism and lost several important stage and screen assignments because of his personal problems, but by the late 1940s, Calhern had gone cold turkey and completely cleaned up his act. He was brilliant as Oliver Wendell Holmes in both the Broadway and film versions of The Magnificent Yankee, and from 1950 onward made several well-reviewed appearances as Shakespeare's King Lear (his favorite role). An MGM contract player throughout the 1950s, Calhern was seen as Buffalo Bill in Annie Get Your Gun (1950), the above-suspicion criminal mastermind (and "uncle" of kept woman Marilyn Monroe) in The Asphalt Jungle (1950), and the title character in Julius Caesar (1953). Louis Calhern died of a sudden heart attack while filming The Teahouse of the August Moon in Japan; he was replaced by character actor Paul Ford.

Trivia: Actress Raquel Torres (born Paula Osterman in Hermosillo, Mexico) made an auspicious film debut at age 19 in Woody Van Dyke's White Shadows in the South Seas (1928), MGM's first film to have full synchronization for music, dialogue, and sound effects. Her film career lasted until 1934 when she married a successful businessman and retired. She was typically cast as a passionate Latina.

Trivia: One of the best remembered B-Western heroines of the 1930s, blonde Verna Hillie was Ken Maynard's leading lady in the Mascot serial Mystery Mountain (1934) and John Wayne's in two of his best for Lone Star, The Trail Beyond (1934) and the evocative The Star Packer (1934). A teenage radio actress in Detroit, Hillie was one of the runners-up in Paramount's countrywide Panther Woman search. Kathleen Burke won the coveted role as the animalistic glamour girl created by Charles Laughton in Island of Lost Souls (1932), but Hillie was assigned bit roles in Madame Butterfly (1932) with Sylvia Sidney and Duck Soup (1933) with the Marx Brothers. A top supporting role in the Paramount Western Under the Tonto Rim (1933) led to her brief but memorable B-Western stint, but she left Hollywood in favor of appearing in a stage production of The Night of January 16th. Returning only for a couple of quickies and Walt Disney's The Reluctant Dragon (1941), Hillie retired from show business in the 1940s to raise a family (her daughter, with writer Frank Gill Jr., became an actress and played a secretary in the hit 1983 comedy Tootsie under the name of Pamela Lincoln). Resettled in New York City, Hillie went on to become the U.S. representative for British pulp fiction writer Barbara Cartland.

Trivia: Forced to flee his native St. Petersburg after the Bolshevik revolution, Russian-born actor Leonid Kinskey arrived in New York in 1921. At that time, he was a member of the Firebird Players, a South American troupe whose act consisted of dance-interpreting famous paintings; since there was little call for this on Broadway, Kinskey was soon pounding the pavements. The only English words he knew were such translation-book phrases as "My good kind sir," but Kinskey was able to improve his vocabulary by working as a waiter in a restaurant. Heading west for performing opportunities following the 1929 Wall Street Crash, Kinskey joined the road tour of the Al Jolson musical Wonder Bar, which led to a role in his first film Trouble in Paradise (1932). His Slavic dialect and lean-and-hungry look making him ideal for anarchist, artist, poet and impresario roles, Kinskey made memorable appearances in such films as Duck Soup (1933), Nothing Sacred (1937) and On Your Toes (1939). His best known appearance was as Sacha, the excitable bartender at Rick's Cafe Americain in Casablanca (1942). The film's star, Humphrey Bogart, was a drinking buddy of Kinskey's, and when the first actor cast as the barkeep proved inadequate, Bogart arranged for Kinskey to be cast in the role. During the Red Scare of the '50s, Kinskey was frequently cast as a Communist spy, either comic or villainous. In 1956 he had a recurring role as a starving artist named Pierre on the Jackie Cooper sitcom The People's Choice. Kinskey cut down on acting in the '60s and '70s, preferring to write and produce, and help Hollywood distribution companies determine which Russian films were worth importing. But whenever a television script (such as the 1965 "tribute" to Stan Laurel) called for a "crazy Russian", Leonid Kinsky was usually filled the bill.

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: A former opera singer and stage actor/director, William Worthington entered films as a leading man in 1913. Worthington's more notable screen roles included General George Washington in The Spy and Damon in Damon and Pythias (both 1914). From 1917 to 1925, he concentrated on directing, and during this period was also head of a short-lived production firm called Multicolor Films. Active until his death, William Worthington essayed scores of bit roles in the talkie era, usually playing judges or military officers.

Trivia: After a considerable career on stage as an actor and director, Dublin-born Edwin Maxwell made his screen debut as Baptista in the Doug Fairbanks-Mary Pickford version of Taming of the Shrew (1929). The stocky, balding Maxwell spent the 1930s specializing in oily bureaucrats, crooked businessmen and shyster lawyers. Once in a while, he'd play a sympathetic role, notably the scrupulously honest Italian-American detective in Scarface. More often (especially in the films of director Frank Capra), his characters existed merely as an easily deflatable foil. One of Maxwell's most flamboyant performances was as the maniacal serial killer, in Night of Terror(1933), who rose from the dead at fade-out time to warn the audience not to reveal the end of the film or else! Essaying more benign characters in 1940s, he was seen as William Jennings Bryan in Wilson (1944) and as Oscar Hammerstein in The Jolson Story (1946). From 1939 to 1942, Maxwell served as dialogue director for the films of Cecil B. DeMille. Edwin Maxwell holds the distinction of appearing in four Academy Award-winning films: All Quiet on the Western Front (1930), Grand Hotel (1932), The Great Ziegfeld (1936) and You Can't Take It With You (1938).

Trivia: When the four Marx Brothers became an overnight sensation on Broadway in I'll Say She Is in 1924, they had already spent 20 years in show business. Their uncle, character actor Al Shean (of Gallagher and Shean), helped them get started in the business, spurred on by their mother Minnie. The boys toured the vaudeville circuits, first as singers and eventually as comedians, until they slowly improved enough to make it to Broadway. Ultimately, the Marx Brothers revolutionized American comedy with their anarchistic, faster-than-lightning, anything-goes approach. By the time of their first film, The Cocoanuts, in 1929 -- which was basically a filmed version of their second Broadway hit -- brother Gummo (Milton Marx, 1897-1977) had retired from the act and been replaced by the baby, Zeppo (Herbert Marx, 1901-1979). Ultimately, Zeppo retired from performing as well, leaving the three Marx Brothers best known today: Chico (Leonard Marx, 1886-1961), Harpo (Adolph Arthur Marx, 1888-1964), and the one and only Groucho (Julius Henry Marx, 1890-1977). Each of these three had his own strong screen persona: Chico was the Italian who mangled the English language and played the piano; Harpo never spoke, chased blondes, created general mayhem, and played the harp; Groucho, with his grease paint mustache and tilted walk, was a fast-talking wisecracker often on the dubious side of the law or morality. The brothers could be just as wild offscreen as they were on, and tended to create chaos wherever they went. Their first five films -- The Cocoanuts; Animal Crackers (1930), based upon their third Broadway hit; Monkey Business (1931); Horse Feathers (1932); and Duck Soup (1933) -- all for Paramount, were particularly anti-social and anti-establishment, which made them well-suited to the mood of the country in the early years of the Depression. By 1935, they were working for Irving Thalberg at MGM (thanks to Chico, who played bridge with the producer and had worked out the deal). Thalberg insisted on better plot structure and romantic subplots, which made the brothers more popular in their day but, in retrospect, detracted from the inspired anarchy of their earlier comedies. After the first two MGM films, A Night at the Opera (1935) and A Day at the Races (1937), Thalberg died, and the quality of their films began a descent from which they never recovered, culminating in the mostly pathetic Love Happy (1949). The Marx Brothers themselves flourished, however. Even Gummo and Zeppo, who had quit performing years earlier, developed financially successful, albeit tangential, careers in show business. Chico formed his own band in 1942, which included a very young Mel Torme. Harpo made numerous comedy/concert tours, including an early trip to Russia. Numerous books have been written about the Marx Brothers' often turbulent personal lives and their zany comedies. Their influence has been so widespread that many Marx Brothers routines -- particularly Groucho's -- have slipped into the American vernacular ("I shot an elephant in my pajamas. How he got into my pajamas, I'll never know"). The character of Hawkeye Pierce on M*A*S*H was strongly influenced by Grouchos screen persona, and the role of Banjo in George S. Kaufman's The Man Who Came to Dinner (1941) was based on Harpo.

Trivia: American comic actor Edgar Kennedy left home in his teens, smitten with the urge to see the world. He worked a number of manual labor jobs and sang in touring musical shows before returning to his native California in 1912 to break into the infant movie industry. Hired by Mack Sennett in 1914, Kennedy played innumerable roles in the Keystone comedies. He would later claim to be one of the original Keystone Kops, but his specialty during this period was portraying mustache-twirling villains. By the early 1920s, Kennedys screen image had mellowed; now he most often played detectives or middle-aged husbands. He joined Hal Roach Studios in 1928, where he did some of his best early work: co-starring with Laurel and Hardy, Charlie Chase and Our Gang; directing two-reelers under the stage name E. Livingston Kennedy; and receiving top billing in one of Roach's most enduring comedies, A Pair of Tights (1928). Kennedy was dropped from the Roach payroll in a 1930 economy drive, but he'd already made a satisfactory talkie debut -- even though he'd had to lower his voice to his more familiar gravelly growl after it was discovered that his natural voice sounded high-pitched and effeminate. During his Roach stay, Kennedy developed his stock-in-trade "slow burn," wherein he'd confront a bad situation or personal humiliation by glowering at the camera, pausing, then slowly rubbing his hand over his face. In 1931, Kennedy was hired by RKO studios to star in a series of two-reelers, unofficially titled "Mr. Average Man." These films, precursors to the many TV sitcoms of the 1950s, cast Kennedy as head of a maddening household consisting of his dizzy wife (usually Florence Lake, sister of Arthur "Dagwood" Lake), nagging mother-in-law and lazy brother-in-law. Kennedy made six of these shorts per year for the next 17 years, taking time out to contribute memorable supporting roles in such film classics as Duck Soup (1933), San Francisco (1936), A Star Is Born (1937) and Anchors Aweigh (1944). Some of Kennedy's most rewarding movie assignments came late in his career: the "hidden killer" in one of the Falcon B mysteries, the poetic bartender in Harold Lloyd's Sin of Harold Diddlebock (1946), and the classical music-loving private detective in Unfaithfully Yours (1948), which like Diddlebock was directed by Preston Sturges. On November 9, 1948, shortly after completing his 103rd "Average Man" two-reeler and 36 hours before a Hollywood testimonial dinner was to be held in his honor, Kennedy died of throat cancer; his last film appearance as Doris Day's Uncle Charlie in My Dream is Yours (1949) was released posthumously.

Trivia: From 1931's Vice Squad onward, American character actor Davison Clark could be seen onscreen as scores of lawyers, doctors and big-city officials. One of Clark's meatier assignments (albeit still a minor one) was as Horace Greeley in The Mighty Barnum. As an member of Cecil B. DeMille's unofficial stock company, Clark essayed bits in DeMille's The Plainsman (1936), The Buccaneer (1938), Union Pacific (1939), The Story of Dr. Wassell (1947), Unconquered (1948) and Samson and Delilah (1949). Davison Clark made his last film appearance in the 1951serial Zombies of the Stratosphere.

Trivia: Filmmaker and actor E.H. Calvert had a distinguished military career before retiring as a captain and entering stock theater and vaudeville. He came to films as an actor for Essanay and soon became a filmmaker who directed such silent stars as Gloria Swanson, Coleen Moore, Francis X. Bushman, and Wallace Beery. In the late 'teens, he left films to launch a few businesses. Each venture failed, and during the '20s, Calvert returned to films as a character actor and appeared through the early '30s. In these films, he typically played military officers or authoritarian figures.

Trivia: To six decades' worth of filmgoers, Kentucky-born character actor Charles B. Middleton was Ming the Merciless, the megalomaniac ruler of the planet Mongo in three 1930s serials based on Alex Raymond's comic strip Flash Gordon. Beginning his career in circuses and carnivals in the South, Middleton worked in vaudeville and stock companies before his 1927 entree into films. With his hatchet face, bad teeth, and rolling-toned voice, Middleton was ideally cast as stern judges, cruel orphanage officials, backwater sheriffs, and small town bigots. Outside of his extensive work in serials and Westerns, he was used to best advantage in the films of Laurel and Hardy and Will Rogers. In a far less villainous vein, Charles Middleton was cast as Tom Lincoln, father of the 16th president, in Abe Lincoln in Illinois (1940); he also portrayed the Great Emancipator himself on several occasions -- while in 1937's Stand-In, Middleton was hilariously cast as an unsuccessful actor who dresses like Lincoln in hopes of landing a movie role.

Trivia: A University of Florida football star, Dale Van Sickel entered films in the very early '30s as an extra. Playing hundreds of bit parts at almost every studio in Hollywood, Van Sickel earned his true fame as one of Republic Pictures' famous stuntmen, specializing in fisticuffs and car stunts. He appeared in nearly all the studio's serials in the 1940s, including The Tiger Woman (1944), The Purple Monster Strikes (1945), and The Black Widow (1947), almost always playing several bit roles as well. Often the studio cast their leading men because of their resemblance to Van Sickel and the other members of the serial stunt fraternity that included Tom Steele, Dave Sharpe, and Ted Mapes. A founding member and the first president of the Stuntmen's Association of Motion Pictures, Van Sickel later performed in innumerable television shows as well as such diverse feature films as Spartacus (1960), It's a Mad Mad Mad Mad World (1963), and The Love Bug (1969).