Trivia: Son of a London stockbroker, British actor Leslie Howard worked as a bank clerk after graduating from London's Dulwich School. Serving briefly in World War I, Howard was mustered out for medical reasons in 1918, deciding at that time to act for a living. Working in both England and the U.S. throughout the 1920s, Howard specialized in playing disillusioned intellectuals in such plays as Outward Bound, the film version of which served as his 1930 film debut. Other films followed on both sides of the Atlantic, the best of these being Howard's masterful star turn in The Scarlet Pimpernel (1934). In 1935, Howard portrayed yet another disenchanted soul in The Petrified Forest, which co-starred Humphrey Bogart as a gangster patterned after John Dillinger. Howard was tapped for the film version, but refused to make the movie unless Bogart was also hired (Warner Bros. had planned to use their resident gangster type, Edward G. Robinson). Hardly a candidate for "Mr. Nice Guy" -- he was known to count the lines of his fellow actors and demand cuts if they exceeded his dialogue -- Howard was nonetheless loyal to those he cared about. Bogart became a star after The Petrified Forest, and in gratitude named his first daughter Leslie Bogart. Somehow able to hide encroaching middle-age when on screen, Howard played romantic leads well into his late 40s, none more so than the role of -- yes -- disillusioned intellectual Southern aristocrat Ashley Wilkes in the 1939 classic Gone with the Wind. In the late 1930s, Howard began dabbling in directing, notably in his starring films Pygmalion (1938) and Pimpernel Smith (1941). Fiercely patriotic, Howard traveled extensively on behalf of war relief; on one of these trips, he boarded a British Overseas Airways plane in 1943 with several other British notables, flying en route from England to Lisbon. The plane was shot down over the Bay of Biscay and all on board were killed. Only after the war ended was it revealed that Howard had selflessly taken that plane ride knowing it would probably never arrive in Lisbon; it was ostensibly carrying Prime Minister Winston Churchill, and was sent out as a decoy so that Churchill's actual plane would be undisturbed by enemy fire.

Trivia: Born in India to an Indian mother and an Indo-Irish father, Estelle Merle O'Brien Thompson spent an impoverished childhood in the subcontinent, before coming to England in 1928 to pursue an acting career. Because her bi-racial parentage would have been a subject of immense prejudice, Oberon began telling others that she was born to white parents on the Australian island of Tasmania -- a story she would keep up until almost the end of her life. It was Hungarian-born film mogul Alexander Korda who first spotted Oberon's screen potential, and began giving her parts in his pictures, building her up toward stardom with role such as Anne Boleyn in The Private Life of Henry VIII (1933). Although she was an actress of very limited range, Oberon acquitted herself well in movies such as The Scarlet Pimpernel (1934), as Sir Percy Blakeney's wife, and her exotic good looks made her extremely appealing. She was cast opposite Laurence Olivier in the 1938 comedy The Divorce of Lady X, which was shot in Technicolor and showed Oberon off to even better advantage. Seeking to build her up as an international star, Korda sold half of Oberon's contract to Samuel Goldwyn in America, who cast her as Cathy in Wuthering Heights (1939). She moved to America with the outbreak of war, and also married Korda (1939-1945), but despite some success in That Uncertain Feeling, The Lodger, and A Song to Remember, her star quickly began to fade, and the Korda vehicle Lydia (1941), a slow-moving melodrama that had her aging 50 years, didn't help her career at all. Even a good acting performance in the Hitchcock-like chiller Dark Waters (1944) failed to register with the public. Oberon re-emerged only occasionally after the early '50s, until 1973 when she starred in, produced, and co-edited Interval, a strange romantic drama that costarred her future husband Robert Wolders, that failed to find good reviews or an audience.Oberon would marry three more times, to cinematographer Lucien Ballard in the late forties, to Italian industrialist Bruno Pagliali throughout the 60's, and finally, to actor Robert Wolders from the mid 70's until her death in 1979 at the age of 68.

Trivia: As one of several sons of the owner of Toronto's Massey/Harris Agricultural Implement Company, Raymond Massey was expected to distinguish himself in business or politics or both (indeed, one of Raymond's brothers, Vincent Massey, later became Governor General of Canada). But after graduating form Oxford University, Massey defied his family's wishes and became an actor. He made his first stage appearance in a British production of Eugene O'Neill's In the Zone in 1922. By 1930, Massey was firmly established as one of the finest classical actors on the British stage; that same year he came to Broadway to play the title role in Hamlet. In 1931, Massey starred in his first talking picture, The Speckled Band, portraying Sherlock Holmes. One year later, he was co-starred with Charles Laughton, Melvyn Douglas, Gloria Stuart and Ernst Thesiger in his first Hollywood film, the classic The Old Dark House (1932). Returning to England, Massey continued dividing his time between stage and screen, offering excellent performances in such major motion-picture efforts as The Scarlet Pimpernal (1935) and Things to Come (1936). In 1938, he was cast in his most famous role: Abraham Lincoln, in Robert E. Sherwood's Pulitzer Prize-winning Broadway production Abe Lincoln in Illinois. Massey repeated his Lincoln characterization in the 1940 film version of the Sherwood play, and 22 years later played a cameo as Honest Abe in How the West Was Won (1962). Refusing to allow himself to be pigeonholed as Lincoln, Massey played the controversial abolitionist John Brown in both Santa Fe Trail (1940) and Seven Angry Men (1955), and gave an effectively straight-faced comic performance as mass murderer Jonathan Brewster (a role originally written for Boris Karloff) in Frank Capra's riotous 1941 filmization of Arsenic And Old Lace. Though he would portray a wisecracking AWOL Canadian soldier in 1941's 49th Parallel and a steely-eyed Nazi officer in 1943's Desperate Journey, Massey served valiantly in the Canadian Army in both World Wars. On television, Massey played "Anton the Spymaster", the host of the 1955 syndicated anthology I Spy; and, more memorably, portrayed Dr. Gillespie in the 1960s weekly Dr. Kildare. An inveterate raconteur, Massey wrote two witty autobiographies, When I Was Young and A Thousand Lives (neither of which hinted at his legendary on-set contentiousness). Married three times, Raymond Massey was the father of actors Daniel and Anne Massey.

Trivia: Though a British subject through and through, actor Nigel Bruce was born in Mexico while his parents were on vacation there. His education was interrupted by service in World War I, during which he suffered a leg injury and was confined to a wheelchair for the duration. At the end of the war, Bruce pursued an acting career, making his stage debut in The Creaking Door (1920). A stint in British silent pictures began in 1928, after which Bruce divided his time between stage and screen, finally settling in Hollywood in 1934 (though he continued to make sporadic appearances in such British films as The Scarlet Pimpernel). Nigel's first Hollywood picture was Springtime for Henry (1934), and soon he'd carved a niche for himself in roles as bumbling, befuddled middle-aged English gentlemen. It was this quality which led Bruce to being cast as Sherlock Holmes' companion Dr. Watson in The Hound of the Baskervilles (1939), a pleasurable assignment in that the film's Holmes, Basil Rathbone, was one of Bruce's oldest and closest friends. While Bruce's interpretation of Watson is out of favor with some Holmes purists (who prefer the more intelligent Watson of the original Conan Doyle stories), the actor played the role in 14 feature films, successfully cementing the cinema image of Sherlock's somewhat slower, older compatriot - even though he was in fact three years younger than Rathbone. Bruce continued to play Dr. Watson on a popular Sherlock Holmes radio series, even after Rathbone had deserted the role of Holmes in 1946. Bruce's last film role was in the pioneering 3-D feature, Bwana Devil (1952). He fell ill and died in 1953, missing the opportunity to be reunited with Basil Rathbone in a Sherlock Holmes theatrical production.

Trivia: After a brief stint as an insurance clerk, British actor Bramwell Fletcher took to the stage, making his theatrical debut with the Shakespeare Memorial Company in 1927. After making his first London-produced film in 1928, Fletcher appeared on Broadway in 1929, and like many actors who could "talk British" he was spirited away to Hollywood during the earliest days of the sound-film boom. Fletcher went from actor to "type" in Hollywood, portraying slightly callow Englishmen in such pictures as Will Rogers' So This is London (1930) and the Ronald Colman version of Raffles (1930). Acting in the company of Katharine Hepburn and John Barrymore in A Bill of Divorcement (1932), poor Fletcher all but vanished from view, so it's little wonder that he sought the more fulfilling environs of the theatre. With his first wife Helen Chandler, Fletcher toured in several plays, notably Noel Coward's Tonight at 8:30, and after leaving movies for good and all in 1943, he worked uninterruptedly in both theatre and television. In 1965, the actor scored a critical success in Broadway's The Bernard Shaw Story, which he also wrote. Despite his thespic accomplishments, Fletcher earned his niche in Hollywood history for two things, one private, one public. The "private" thing was his second marriage to the tragic Diana Barrymore, a union later dramatized in the 1958 movie Too Much Too Soon, wherein Fletcher's name was changed to "Vincent Bryant" and he was played by the most un-Fletcherlike Efrem Zimbalist Jr. The public thing was Bramwell Fletcher's brief but unforgettable appearance in The Mummy (1932), in which, after being driven mad by the sight of a 3000-year-old mummy coming to life, Fletcher insanely giggles "It...it went for a little walk!"

Trivia: A graduate of Oxford, British actor Anthony Bushell came to Broadway in 1927 to appear opposite the legendary Jeanne Eagels in Her Cardbord Lover. In 1929, Bushell was hired as the secondary romantic lead in the award-winning talking picture Disraeli, at the insistence of the film's star George Arliss. Though his performance in Disraeli was stiff and unconvincing, he was much better in James Whale's WWI drama Journey's End (1930). Gradually, Bushell gravitated to the production end of the film business, serving as associate producer for Laurence Olivier's Shakespearean productions Hamlet (1948) and Richard III (1955). He served as director for a trio of profitable if undistinguished films: The Long Dark Hall (1951), Angel With a Trumpet (1951), and Terror of the Tongs (1961). In the 1960s, he worked extensively in television, notably as one of the producer/directors of the anthology series Winston Churchill: The Valiant Years (1960). Anthony Bushell was married to American actress Zelma O'Neal.

Trivia: British leading lady Joan Gardner began supplementing her stage income with film roles in 1932, showing up in such quickies as Men of Tomorrow (1932) and Wedding Rehearsal (1932). Looking smashing in period costumes, Gardner was seen in the larger-budgeted Catherine the Great (1934) and The Private Life of Don Juan (1934). Perhaps her best screen assignment was as the lady friend of Roland Young in the 1937 fantasy The Man Who Could Work Miracles (1937). Joan Gardner retired from films in 1939 upon marrying producer/director Zoltan Korda.

Trivia: A virile romantic lead in his turn-of-the-century stage performances, British actor O. B. Clarence settled for what one writer characterized as "benevolent, doddering" roles in films. On screen from 1914, Clarence played dozens of benign old duffers, usually wearing a working-class cloth cap. He also showed up in clerical roles, playing vicars and ministers in such productions as Pygmalion (1937) and Uncle Silas (1947). The most celebrated of his 1940s film assignments was his brief turn as The Aged Parent in Great Expectations (1946). One of O. B. Clarence's least characteristic "appearances" was in a film in which he never appeared on screen: in Dead Eyes of London (1940), Clarence's voice was heard whenever villain Bela Lugosi adopted the disguise of the kindly operator of a home for the blind.

Trivia: Reversing the usual procedure, Scottish actor Edmund Breon began his film career in Hollywood in 1928, then returned to the British Isles in 1932. Breon was most often seen in self-effacing roles, usually military in nature. He was cast as Lt. Bathurst in The Dawn Patrol (1930), Colonel Morgan in Goodbye, Mr. Chips (1939), and General Huddleston in Gaslight (1944). Among Edmund Breon's late-'40s assignments was the role of Julian Emery in the Sherlock Holmes opus Dressed to Kill (1946), an indication perhaps that the part had been slated for the real Gilbert Emery, a British actor who, like Breon, specialized in humble, passive characterizations.

Trivia: British actor Melville Cooper was 18 when he made his first stage appearance at Stratford-on-Avon. He settled in the U.S. in 1934, after making an excellent impression in the Alexander Korda-produced film The Private Life of Don Juan. The Pickwick-like Cooper was generally cast as snobbish, ineffectual society types or confidence tricksters; occasionally, as in 1939's The Sun Never Sets, he was given a chance at a more heroic role. Among Cooper's most famous screen portrayals were the Sheriff of Nottingham in The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938), the amorous Reverend Collins (altered to "Mr. Collins" to avoid censor problems) in Pride and Prejudice (1940), and the officious wedding-rehearsal supervisor in Father of the Bride (1950). Retiring from films in 1958, Melville Cooper returned to the stage, where he essayed such roles as Reverend Chasuble in The Importance of Being Earnest.

Trivia: Emaciated British character actor Gibb McLaughlin spent years as a music hall monologist, telling morbid jokes about his many imagined illnesses. McLaughlin also performed a "protean act," playing all the roles with rapid costume changes. Making his film debut in 1921, the prune-visaged McLaughlin showed up in comic supporting roles for the next 36 years. Gibb McLaughlin's larger screen assignments included such roles as the Duke of York in Nell Gwynne (1926), the pretentious French executioner in Private Life of Henry VIII (1933), and sour-pussed Sowerberry the undertaker in Oliver Twist (1948).

Trivia: British actor/playwright Allan Jeayes made his first screen appearance as the cuckolded Sir William Hamilton in the 1918 historical drama Nelson. Jeayes then returned to the stage, where he remained until the talkie era. From 1930 to 1962, with rare exceptions, the actor projected what film historian Leslie Halliwell once described as a "dignified, heavy presence." Allan Jeayes was particularly busy in the films of producer Alexander Korda, playing important roles in The Scarlet Pimpernel (1934), Rembrandt (1936), Elephant Boy (1938), and especially The Four Feathers (1939) and Thief of Baghdad (1940).

Trivia: Even when he wasn't dressed in period costume or contemporary cutaway and ascot, British actor Lawrence Hanray exuded dignity and breeding. In films from 1932's Wedding Rehearsal, Hanray was especially busy in producer Alexander Korda's lavish historic dramas. He was seen as Archbishop Cranmer in Private Life of Henry VIII (1933) and essayed equally prominent roles in Catherine the Great (1934), Rembrandt (1936), and several other Korda productions. Lawrence Hanray remained active well into the WW II years, when he was well into his seventies.

Trivia: The son of British stage actor Willard Shine, Bill Shine first trod the boards at age six, playing the Stork in the pantomime Princess Posey. At fifteen, Shine made his first London stage appearance, and at eighteen was seen in the first of many films, Under the Greenwood Tree. Most often cast as an upper-class twit, Shine has also shown up in many a one-scene movie assignment as various reporters, commissioners, ticket sellers and executives. While seldom rising above the featured cast in films, Bill Shine achieved star status in the role of Conn in the 1950 production The Shaugran.

Trivia: German actor Walter Rilla used the rise of Hitler as his cue to get out of his native country while the getting was good. Having no trouble establishing himself in British and French films after 1934 (he'd been on stage for 13 years at that time), Rilla specialized in sinister foreigners -- and, of course, Nazis during the war years. After the war, Rilla continued his evil film ways in a progression of appearances as sultans, megalomaniacs and corporate villains. Walter Rilla was the father of prominent British-based film director Wolf Rilla; the elder Rilla's own directorial career was confined to one film, 1951's Behold the Man, and several stage and TV productions.

Trivia: A stage actor from the age of seventeen, Derrick DeMarney made his film bow in 1928, at age 21. A handsome and virile leading man in films like Forbidden Music (1936) and Hitchcock's Young and Innocent (1937), DeMarney seemed to prefer playing against type in such character roles as Disraeli in Victoria the Great (1936) and Sixty Glorious Years (1938). During his wartime service, he directed the government documentary Malta GC (1942). He went on to produce or co-produce a number of films, including the morale-boosting The Gentle Sex (1943) and the noirish thrillers Latin Quarter (1946) and She Shall Have Murder (1950). De Marney's postwar film roles included the vastly different title characters in Uncle Silas (1947) and Meet Slim Callaghan (1952). Derrick DeMarney was the brother of actor Terence De Marney (1909-71).

Trivia: British actor Hugh Dempster is best remembered as Col. Pickering in the theatrical production of My Fair Lady, a role he reenacted thousands of times over many years of touring. The London-born WW II RAF veteran also appeared in many films of the '30s, '40s, and '50s.

Trivia: William Freshman entered the British film industry as an actor in 1929. Among Freshman's more prestigious acting assignments was the role of Lord Hastings in The Scarlet Pimpernel (1934). He began his screenwriting activities in 1936 and directed his first film in 1940. William Freshman's best-known effort as writer/director was 1947's Teheran, a fast-paced melodrama about an assassination attempt aimed at President Franklin D. Roosevelt.

Trivia: Carl Harbord was a very busy English actor from the outset of his career, on stage and later in movies, and had the distinction of appearing in one of the earliest dramas ever broadcast by the BBC. Born in Salcombe, Devonshire, England, Harbord began working on stage in the early '20s, and his theatrical appearances included work in The Painted Veil, When Ladies Meet, and The Happy Husband. In 1932, as the BBC began experimental television broadcasts, Harbord starred opposite Isobel Elsom in The Christmas Present, which was one of the very first dramas ever shown on television. Harbord entered motion pictures in 1928 as Lt. Gunther in Bolibar, a historical drama directed by Walter Summers. He easily made the transition to sound and among the early talkies he appeared in was a now-forgotten 1929 British-made version of Liam O'Flaherty's The Informer, directed by Arthur Robinson (and featuring a young Ray Milland in a tiny role). Harbord was busy in British films right up through 1937, although his earlier films tended to be more notable, such as his portrayal of one of the doomed Australian soldiers in Anthony Asquith's 1931 drama Tell England (aka The Battle of Gallipoli). After 1937, Harbord ceased working in British films and his screen career resumed in Hollywood in 1942 with his performance as Blake in the Technicolor action vehicle Captains of the Clouds, starring James Cagney. In middle age in Hollywood, Harbord usually played small but important character roles in good movies, such as Zoltan Korda's Sahara and Roy William Neill's final Sherlock Holmes series entry with Basil Rathbone, Dressed to Kill, in 1946. In 1957, the year before his death, Harbord appeared on Broadway in Hide and Seek, an atomic-age drama that also starred Rathbone and Barry Morse.