Trivia: After attending the 1932 Olympics in Los Angeles, Esther Williams set her cap on becoming a world-renowned swimming champion. By the time she was 15, she was well on her way to achieving that goal; within a few years, she had won such events as the Women's Outdoor Nationals and the Pacific Coast Championships, and had set records for the 100- and 220-meter swims. Sorely disappointed when the advent of World War II forced the cancellation of the 1940 Olympics in Finland, Williams cut her losses by going to work for Billy Rose's San Francisco Aquacade. It was here that she was spotted by an MGM talent scout, who cast Williams in a supporting role in Andy Hardy's Double Life (1942). Hoping that their new discovery would surpass the popularity of 20th Century-Fox's skating queen Sonja Henie, MGM began grooming Williams for stardom, completely refashioning her third film, the modest 1944 Red Skelton comedy Mister Bride, into the Technicolor superspectacular Bathing Beauty. Williams immediately clicked with the public, and for the next decade she starred in one musical comedy after another, warbling the Oscar-winning tune "Baby It's Cold Outside" in Neptune's Daughter (1949) and trading steps with Gene Kelly in Take Me Out to the Ballgame (1949). As her popularity soared--she was among the top ten box office stars in 1949 and 1950--MGM went out of its way to make her swimming sequences more complex and elaborate with each new picture, freshening up the act with trapezes, hang-gliders and fiery hoops. Her string of successes came to a halt with her last MGM release, the unsuccessful Jupiter's Darling (1955). Now a free-lancer, Williams tried to gain acceptance as a dramatic actress, turning in worthwhile performances in such films as The Unguarded Moment (1956) and Raw Wind in Eden (1958), but the public wasn't buying. She returned to what she did best, starring in annual TV aquacades and acting as spokeswoman for her own swimming-pool company. She closed out her film career in 1961, shunning the spotlight for the next 15 years and devoting her time to her third husband Fernando Lamas, her children (including stepson Lorenzo Lamas) and her many business activities. She made headlines in 1974 when she sued MGM for unauthorized use of her films in the 1974 anthology That's Entertainment (evidently she came to terms with her old studio; in 1994, she was one of the narrators for That's Entertainment Part III). After Fernando Lamas' death in 1982, Williams returned to the limelight, promoting such money-spinning enterprises as a line of "modest" swimwear. Still a strikingly beautiful woman, Esther Williams remains a top attraction on the interview and talk-show circuit, offering candid, self-effacing and unpretentious observations on Hollywood's so-called Golden Age. Williams passed away in 2013 at the age of 91.

Trivia: The first male film star to be officially labelled a "hunk," Victor Mature was the son of Swiss immigrants. When he arrived in California to study acting at the Pasadena Playhouse, Mature was so broke that he lived in a pup tent in a vacant lot and subsisted on canned sardines and chocolate bars. There was speculation amongst his fellow students that Mature's spartan lifestyle was deliberately engineered to draw publicity to himself; if so, the ploy worked, and by 1938 he'd been signed to a contract by producer Hal Roach. Mature's first starring film role was as Tumack the caveman in Roach's One Million BC (1940), which enabled the fledgling actor to display his physique without being unduly encumbered by dialogue. While still under contract to Roach, Mature made his Broadway debut in the Moss Hart/Kurt Weill musical Lady in the Dark, playing a musclebound male model. In 1941, Mature was signed by 20th Century-Fox as the "beefcake" counterpart to the studio's "cheesecake" star Betty Grable; the two attractive stars were frequently cast together in Fox musicals, where a lack of clothes was de rigeur. Apparently because of his too-handsome features, the press and fan magazines went out of their way to make Mature look ridiculous and untalented. In truth, he had more good film performances to his credit than one might think: he was excellent as the tubercular Doc Holliday in John Ford's My Darling Clementine (1948), and also registered well in Kiss of Death (1947), Cry of the City (1948), The Egyptian (1954), Betrayed (1954), and Chief Crazy Horse (1955). As the slave Demetrius in The Robe (1953), Mature is more understated and credible than the film's "distinguished" but hopelessly hammy star Richard Burton. Nonetheless, and thanks to such cinematic folderol as Samson and Delilah (1949), Mature was still widely regarded as a lousy actor who survived on the basis of his looks. Rather than fight this ongoing perception, Mature tended to denigrate his own histrionic ability in interviews; later in his career, he hilariously parodied his screen image in such films as After the Fox (1966) and Won Ton Ton, the Dog Who Saved Hollywood (1976). Semi-retired from acting in the late 1970s, Victor Mature ran a successful television retail shop in Hollywood, although in 1984 he did appear in a TV remake of Samson and Delilah, effectively portraying Samson's father.

Trivia: MGM's resident "perfect gentleman," Canadian-born Walter Pidgeon was the son of a men's furnishing store owner. Young Walter Pidgeon planned to follow his brothers into a military career, but was invalided out of the service after a training accident. Pidgeon moved to Boston in 1919, where he worked as a banker until the death of his first wife. He gave up the world of finance to study singing at the New England Conservatory of Music, then in 1924 joined E.E. Clive's acting company. With the help of his friend Fred Astaire, Pidgeon (using the stage name Walter Verne) was hired as the touring partner of musical comedy star Elsie Janis; this led to his first Broadway appearance in Puzzles of 1925. Pidgeon was signed by film producer Joseph Schenck for a string of silent-film leading-man assignments in 1926, making his talkie debut in Universal's Melody of Love (1928). He starred or co-starred in several First National/Warner Bros. musicals of the early-talkie era, but this stage of his movie career ended when the musical craze petered out in 1931. Deciding to switch professional gears, Pidgeon returned to Broadway in order to establish himself as a dramatic actor. He returned to Hollywood in 1936, spending most of the next two decades at MGM, where he was cast opposite such stellar leading ladies as Jean Harlow, Myrna Loy, Rosalind Russell, and Hedy Lamarr. His most famous screen teammate was Greer Garson; the sophisticated twosome co-starred in seven films, including the Oscar-winning Mrs. Miniver. In the early '40s, MGM made the most of Pidgeon's popularity by loaning him out to other studios. It was on one of these loanouts to 20th Century Fox that the actor was cast in one of his favorite films, How Green Was My Valley (the 1941 Oscar winner). In 1955, the same year that he starred in the sci-fi favorite Forbidden Planet, Pidgeon hosted his home studio's TV anthology series The MGM Parade. After ending his 20-year association with MGM, Pidgeon returned to Broadway, where he starred in The Happiest Millionaire and Take Me Along. He continued accepting character assignments that intrigued him into the 1970s, notably the brief role of Florenz Ziegfeld in Funny Girl (1968). When asked if he minded that most of his screen and TV assignments were secondary ones in his last two decades, Walter Pidgeon replied that he always strove to follow the advice given to him by Lionel Barrymore: even when your character has nothing to do, do nothing magnificently.

Trivia: Authoritative leading man David Brian had previously been a musical comedy performer when signed by Warner Bros. in 1949. His first role was as the unbilled "host" of the 1949 reissue of Warners' 1935 G-Men, but within a few months he was starring opposite Joan Crawford (Flamingo Road) and Bette Davis (Beyond the Forest). Loaned out to MGM, Brian delivered one of his finest performances as the civil libertarian lawyer in Intruder in the Dust (1949). In films until the early 1970s, Brian was also a prominent TV actor, starring in the syndicated Mr. District Attorney (1954-1955, repeating his radio role) and appearing as villainous billionaire Arthur Maitland in the Christopher George series The Immortal (1970). David Brian was the husband of actress Adrian Booth, aka Lorna Gray.

Trivia: Donna Corcoran was the second oldest child of MGM studio policeman Bill Corcoran. When the call went out for child extras for an upcoming MGM production, Corcoran sent Donna down to audition, thereby launching his daughter's six-year film career. Reportedly, screenwriter Dorothy Kingsley selected Corcoran for the important role of Bridget White in Angels in the Outfield (1951) after sitting behind the girl at Mass. Outside of Angels, Corcoran's showiest film assignment was on loan-out to 20th Century Fox, in Don't Bother to Knock in which the poor child was jeopardized by psychotic baby-sitter Marilyn Monroe. After that, her screen roles dwindled in importance. One of her last appearances, as a Quaker child in Fox's Violent Saturday (1955), went uncredited. Featured in that film with Corcoran were her siblings Kevin Corcoran, who went on to a sizeable career at Disney under the nickname of "Moochie," and Noreen Corcoran, who would play John Forsythe's niece in the popular TV sitcom Bachelor Father (1957-1963). By the late '50s, Donna Corcoran decided to retire from show business altogether, leaving the field open to her brothers, Kevin, Brian, and Hugh, and her sisters, Noreen and Kerry (her older brother, Bill Corcoran Jr., became a dentist after briefly pursuing his own acting career).

Trivia: A self-described "household face," character actor Jesse White made his first stage appearance as a teenager in his adopted hometown of Akron, OH. Supporting himself with a variety of civilian jobs, White worked the nightclub circuit in Cleveland, then moved on to what was left of vaudeville in the late '30s. White's first Broadway role was in 1942's The Moon is Down; two years later he scored his biggest success as the acerbic sanitarium attendant in Mary Chase's Harvey, a role he would repeat for the 1950 film version (though Harvey is often listed as White's film debut, he can be seen in a bit role as an elevator operator in 1947's Gentleman's Agreement). While he has appeared in some 60 films, White is best known for his TV work, which allowed him to play Runyon-esque gangsters, theatrical agents, neurotic TV talk show hosts, art connoisseurs, toy manufacturers, and whatever else suited his fancy. Two of his longest professional associations were with satirist Stan Freberg (White was featured in several of Freberg's commercials and comedy albums) and comedian/TV mogul Danny Thomas (White played agent Jesse Leeds during the first few seasons of Make Room for Daddy). In the 1970s, White became established as the "lonely" Maytag repairman in a series of well-circulated TV commercials; when he stepped down from this role in the late '80s, the event received a generous amount of press coverage. Jesse White was still in harness into the 1990s. In 1992, he was memorably cast as a sarcastic, cigar-chomping theater chain owner in Joe Dante's Matinee. He passed away at age 79 following complications from surgery on January 8, 1997.

Trivia: Portly American character actor Howard Freeman was the archetypal small-town banker or businessman. With his impeccably groomed pencil mustache, finicky manners and eternal air of condescension, Freeman was ideal for such roles as bank president J. P. Norton in Laurel and Hardy's Air Raid Wardens--and equally ideal for the injuries and indignities heaped upon him by the two comedians in their efforts to administer emergency first aid. Air Raid Wardens was made in 1943, Freeman's first year in pictures after several seasons on stage. He quickly found his niche in authoritative roles, even playing a few bureaucratic Nazis during the war years: Freeman portrays a fussy Heinrich Himmler, casually targeting the Czech village of Lidice for extermination in Hitler's Madmen (1943). After nearly two decades in Hollywood, Freeman resettled in New York, remaining available for stage and TV work. One of Howard Freeman's last roles was as a peace-loving police captain mistaken for a slave-driving martinet in a 1963 episode of Car 54, Where are You?

Trivia: Rotund, moon-faced character actor Charles Watts made a mini-career out of portraying glad-handing politicians, voluble businessmen and salesmen, crafty bankers, and cheerful or cynical parents, uncles, family friends, and other supporting players. He never had a starring role, or even a co-starring role, in a motion picture, but his physical presence and voice made for some memorable moments. Born in Clarksville, TN, in 1912, Watts was a high-school teacher -- handling both business law and drama -- for a time during his mid-twenties, working in Chattanooga. He worked in local theater and tent shows early in his career, and after World War II was also in demand for industrial shows. Watts didn't start doing movie or television appearances until 1950, and in that first year he played small, uncredited roles in such serious dramas as The Killer That Stalked New York (1950), as a mailman, and Storm Warning (1951), as a lunch-counter proprietor -- and somewhat larger parts, as a sheriff, in three episodes of The Lone Ranger. Over the next 16 years, he was seen in nearly 100 movies and television shows. His most prominent big-screen role was that of Judge (and later United States Senator) Oliver Whiteside in George Stevens' Giant (1956), where his rich, melodious voice and cheerful demeanor were put to extensive use. Watts was also an uncredited man in the crowd in Stuart Heisler's I Died a Thousand Times, a police sergeant in Philip Dunne's The View From Pompey's Head (both 1955), and Mr. Schultz, the salesman from the suspender company, in Billy Wilder's The Spirit of St. Louis (1957). Watts even found his way into two big-scale musicals -- Million Dollar Mermaid (1952) and Jumbo (1962) -- a decade apart. When he had a role with dialogue of any length, he was often used -- or so it seemed -- for his tendency to speechify, and to make even ordinary words stand out in relief. As active on television as he was in movies, Watts was familiar to several generations of young viewers for his role as Bill Green, the skeptical anti-superstition league leader in the Adventures of Superman episode "The Lucky Cat" (1955). He also played a small but key role in the Father Knows Best episode "24 Hours in Tyrantland," done on behalf of the Treasury Department to sell U.S. Savings Bonds, as the Andersons' skeptical neighbor, whose brief, cynical talk to son Bud finally pushes Jim Anderson (Robert Young) to straighten his kids out about the importance of savings bonds. Watts remained busy into the mid-'60s, and died of cancer in 1966.

Trivia: In films from 1945, Wilton Graff carved a screen career out of playing judges, doctors, DAs and the like. Graff's movie assignments ranged from bits in "A" pictures to sizeable supporting roles in programmers. He could be seen as the maitre d' in the crucial Gregory Peck-John Garfield restaurant scene in Gentleman's Agreement (1947), and as Baron Fitzwalter, Robin Hood's father-in-law, in Rogues of Sherwood Forest (1950). Wilton Graff's only starring role was as Dr. Belleau, the crazed sportsman who hunted human quarry in the 1961 Most Dangerous Game knock-off Bloodlust.

Trivia: Busy character actor Frank Ferguson was able to parlay his pinched facial features, his fussy little moustache, and his bellows-like voice for a vast array of characterizations. Ferguson was equally effective as a hen-pecked husband, stern military leader, irascible neighbor, merciless employer, crooked sheriff, and barbershop hanger-on. He made his inaugural film appearance in Father is a Prince (1940) and was last seen on the big screen in The Great Sioux Massacre (1965). Ferguson proved himself an above-average actor by successfully pulling off the treacly scene in The Babe Ruth Story (1948) in which Babe (William Bendix) says "Hi, kid" to Ferguson's crippled son--whereupon the boy suddenly stands up and walks! Among Franklin Ferguson's hundreds of TV appearances were regular stints on the children's series My Friend Flicka (1956) and the nighttime soap opera Peyton Place (1964-68).

Trivia: Character actor James Bell has appeared in many films during his 40-year film career. He was usually cast as a sympathetic character. The Virginia-born Bell first attended the Virginia Polytechnic Institute before making his theatrical debut in 1921. Eleven years later he made his film debut in I Am a Fugitive from a Chain Gang. Most of the films he appeared in were made during the '40s and '50s.

Trivia: Authoritative, sandy-haired character actor Willis Bouchey abandoned a busy Broadway career in 1951 to try his luck in films. Bouchey's striking resemblance to Dwight D. Eisenhower enabled him to play roles calling for quick decisiveness and unquestioned leadership; he even showed up as the President of the United States in 1952's Red Planet Mars, one year before the "real" Ike ascended to that office. The actor's many judge, executive, military, and town-marshal characterizations could also convey weakness and vacillation, but for the most part there was no question who was in charge when Bouchey was on the scene. A loyal and steadfast member of the John Ford stock company, Willis Bouchey was seen in such Ford productions as The Long Gray Line (1955), The Last Hurrah (1958), Sergeant Rutledge (1960), Two Rode Together (1961), The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962), and Cheyenne Autumn (1962).

Trivia: American actor James Flavin was groomed as a leading man when he first arrived in Hollywood in 1932, but he balked at the glamour treatment and was demonstrably resistant to being buried under tons of makeup. Though Flavin would occasionally enjoy a leading role--notably in the 1932 serial The Airmail Mystery, co-starring Flavin's wife Lucille Browne--the actor would devote most of his film career to bit parts. If a film featured a cop, process server, Marine sergeant, circus roustabout, deckhand or political stooge, chances are Jimmy Flavin was playing the role. His distinctive sarcastic line delivery and chiselled Irish features made him instantly recognizable, even if he missed being listed in the cast credits. Larger roles came Flavin's way in King Kong (1933) as Second Mate Briggs; Nightmare Alley (1947), as the circus owner who hires Tyrone Power; and Abbott and Costello Meet the Killer, Boris Karloff (1949), as a long-suffering homicide detective. Since he worked with practically everyone, James Flavin was invaluable in later years as a source of on-set anecdotes for film historians; and because he evidently never stopped working, Flavin and his wife Lucille were able to spend their retirement years in comfort in their lavish, sprawling Hollywood homestead.

Trivia: American director/choreographer Busby Berkeley made his stage debut at five, acting in the company of his performing family. During World War I, Berkeley served as a field artillery lieutenant, where he learned the intricacies of drilling and disciplining large groups of people. During the 1920s, Berkeley was a dance director for nearly two dozen Broadway musicals, including such hits as A Connecticut Yankee. As a choreographer, Berkeley was less concerned with the terpsichorean skill of his chorus girls as he was with their ability to form themselves into attractive geometric patterns. His musical numbers were among the largest and best-regimented on Broadway. The only way they'd get any larger was if Berkeley moved to films, which he did the moment films learned to talk. His earliest movie gigs were on Sam Goldwyn's Eddie Cantor musicals, where he began developing such techniques as "individualizing" each chorus girl with a loving close-up, and moving his dancers all over the stage (and often beyond) in as many kaleidoscopic patterns as possible. Berkeley's legendary "top shot" technique (the kaleidoscope again, this time shot from overhead) first appeared seminally in the Cantor films, and also the 1932 Universal programmer Night World. Berkeley's popularity with an entertainment-hungry Depression audience was secured in 1933, when he choreographed three musicals back-to-back for Warner Bros.: 42nd Street, Footlight Parade and The Gold Diggers of 1933. Berkeley's innovative and often times splendidly vulgar dance numbers have been analyzed at length by cinema scholars who insist upon reading "meaning" and "subtext" in each dancer's movement. Berkeley always pooh-poohed any deep significance to his work, arguing that his main professional goals were to constantly top himself and to never repeat his past accomplishments. As the outsized musicals in which Berkeley specialized became passé, he turned to straight directing, begging Warners to give him a chance at drama; the result was 1939's They Made Me a Criminal, one of John Garfield's best films. Berkeley moved to MGM in 1940, where his Field Marshal tactics sparked a great deal of resentment with the studio's pampered personnel. He was fired in the middle of Girl Crazy (1941), reportedly at the insistence of Judy Garland. His next stop was at 20th Century-Fox for 1943's The Gang's All Here. Berkeley entered the Valhalla of Kitsch with Carmen Miranda's outrageous "Lady in the Tutti-Frutti Hat" number. The film made money, but Berkeley and the Fox brass didn't see eye to eye over budget matters. Berkeley returned to MGM in the late 1940s, where among many other accomplishments he conceived the gloriously garish Technicolor finales for the studio's Esther Williams films. Berkeley's final film as choreographer was MGM's Billy Rose's Jumbo (1962). In private life, Berkeley was as flamboyant as his work. He went through six wives, an alienation-of-affections suit involving a prominent movie queen, and a fatal car accident which resulted in his being tried (and acquitted) for second degree murder. In the late 1960s, the "camp" craze brought the Berkeley musicals back into the forefront. He hit the college and lecture circuit, and even directed a 1930s-style cold tablet commercial, complete with a top shot of a "dancing clock". In his 75th year, Busby Berkeley returned to Broadway to direct a success revival of No, No Nanette, starring his old Warner Bros. colleague and 42nd Street star Ruby Keeler.

Trivia: A handsome, mustachioed bit player from England, long in Hollywood, Clive Morgan played Tarzan's evil cousin in the 1929 Universal serial Tarzan the Tiger (1929). Roles thereafter were miniscule, often military officers, doormen, sales clerks, and others. Morgan's screen career lasted well into the 1960s.

Trivia: British music-hall performer Queenie Leonard made her film bow in 1937's The Show Goes On. Possessed of a wicked wit and boundless energy, Leonard quickly became a "pet" of Hollywood's British colony when she moved to the U.S. in 1940. With the exception of The Lodger (1944), few of her film appearances captured her natural effervescence; for the most part, she was cast as humorless domestics in such films as And Then There Were None (1944) and Life with Father (1947). In the 1950s and 1960s, she provided delightful voiceovers for such Disney cartoon features as Peter Pan (1953) and 101 Dalmatians (1961). Queenie Leonard was married twice, to actor Tom Conway and to art director Lawrence Paul Williams.

Trivia: In Hollywood from 1941, British actor Leslie Dennison played scores of military officers, secret service agents, and Scotland Yard detectives, often merely as part of the wartime ambience but well remembered for playing the detective tracking down Bela Lugosi's ghoul in The Return of the Vampire and as Alan-a-Dale in Bandits of Sherwood Forest (1946). Denison, who also did voice-over work, retired in the '60s.

Trivia: British stage actor and producer Wilson Benge inaugurated his Hollywood career in 1922. From 1925's Lady Windemere's Fan onward, the slight, balding Benge was typecast in butler and valet roles. He played Ronald Colman's faithful retainer Denny in 1929's Bulldog Drummond, performed virtually the same function for Colman as Barraclough the valet in Raffles (1930), and portrayed Brassett in the 1931 version of Charley's Aunt, among many others. His "domestic" career extended to such two-reelers as Laurel and Hardy's Scram (1932). One of Benge's few non-servant roles was supposed murder victim Guy Davies in the 1945 Sherlock Holmes entry The House of Fear. He remained active in films until 1951, essaying still another manservant role in Royal Wedding (1951). Wilson Benge was married to actress Sarah L. Benge, who preceded him in death by one year.

Trivia: Enjoying one of the longest screen careers on record, Irish-born, English-reared Al Ferguson became one of the silent era's busiest Western villains, his wolf-like features instantly recognizable to action fans everywhere. According to the actor himself, Ferguson had entered films with the American company as early as 1910, and by 1912, he was appearing in Selig Westerns under the name of "Smoke" Ferguson, often opposite action heroine Myrtle Steadman. In 1920, Ferguson played Hector Dion's henchman in the partially extant The Lost City, the first of more than 40 serials, silent and sound, in which he would appear. Still reasonably good-looking by the early '20s, Ferguson even attempted to become an action star in his own right, producing, directing, and starring in a handful of low-budget Westerns filmed in Oregon and released to the States' Rights market by Poverty Row mogul J. Charles Davis. None of these potboilers, which included The Fighting Romeo (1925), with Ferguson as a ranch foreman rescuing his employer's kidnapped daughter, made him a star, however, and he returned to ply his nefarious trade in low-budget oaters featuring the likes of Bob Steele and Tom Tyler. Today, Ferguson is perhaps best remembered as the main heavy in two Tarzan serials, Tarzan the Mighty (1928) and Tarzan the Tiger (1929), both starring Frank Merrill. The later survives intact and Ferguson emerges as a melodramatic screen villain at the top of his game.Like most of his contemporaries, including Bud Osborne and the silent era James Mason, Al Ferguson saw his roles decrease in stature after the advent of sound. Not because of his Irish accent, which had become all but undetectable, but mainly due to changing acting styles. Ferguson, however, hung in there and appeared in scores of sound Westerns and serials, not exclusively portraying villains but also playing lawmen, peaceful ranchers, townsmen, and even a Native American or two. By the 1950s, he had included television shows such as Sky King to his long resumé, but B-Westerns and serials remained Ferguson's bread and butter, the now veteran actor appearing in the cast of both Perils of the Wilderness (1956) and Blazing the Overland Trail (1956), the final chapter plays to be released in America.

Trivia: Silent-film leading man Creighton Hale was brought to America from his native Ireland via a theatrical touring company. While starring in Charles Frohman's Broadway production of Indian Summer, Hale was spotted by a representative of the Pathe film company and invited to appear before the cameras. His first film was the Pearl White serial The Exploits of Elaine, after which he rose to stardom in a series of adventure films and romantic dramas. Director D.W. Griffith used Hale as comedy relief in his films Way Down East (1920) and Orphans of the Storm (1922)--possibly Hale's least effective screen appearances, in that neither he nor Griffith were comedy experts. Despite his comparative failure in these films, Hale remained a popular leading man throughout the 1920s. When talking pictures arrived, Hale's star plummeted; though he had a pleasant, well-modulated voice, he was rapidly approaching fifty, and looked it. Most of Hale's talkie roles were unbilled bits, or guest cameos in films that spotlighted other silent movie veterans (e.g. Hollywood Boulevard and The Perils of Pauline). During the 1940s, Hale showed up in such Warner Bros. productions as Larceny Inc (1941), The Maltese Falcon (1941) and Casablanca (1943); this was due to the largess of studio head Jack Warner, who kept such faded silent favorites as Hale, Monte Blue and Leo White on permanent call. Creighton Hale's final appearance was in Warners' Beyond the Forest (1949).

Trivia: A former professional baseball player, Pat Flaherty was seen in quite a few baseball pictures after his 1934 screen debut. Flaherty can be seen in roles both large and small in Death on the Diamond (1934), Pride of the Yankees (1942), It Happened in Flatbush (1942), The Stratton Story (1949, as the Western All-Stars coach), The Jackie Robinson Story (1950) and The Winning Team (1952, as legendary umpire Bill Klem). In 1948's Babe Ruth Story, Flaherty not only essayed the role of Bill Corrigan, but also served as the film's technical advisor. Outside the realm of baseball, he was usually cast in blunt, muscle-bound roles, notably Fredric March's taciturn male nurse "Cuddles" in A Star is Born (1937). One of Pat Flaherty's most unusual assignments was Wheeler and Woolsey's Off Again, On Again (1937), in which, upon finding his wife (Patricia Wilder) in a compromising position with Bert Wheeler, he doesn't pummel the hapless Wheeler as expected, but instead meekly apologizes for his wife's flirtatiousness!

Trivia: Diminutive British knockabout comedian Jimmy Aubrey got his start with the legendary Fred Karno troupe, working alongside such budding stars as Charlie Chaplin and Stan Laurel. Like Charley and Stan, Aubrey flourished as a silent screen comic. He headlined a series of Vitagraph two-reelers in 1919 and 1920, with a young Oliver Hardy lending support. In the mid-1920s, he starred in another comedy series for producer Joe Rock. By 1927, Aubrey's stardom was a thing of the past, and he found himself virtually unemployable. His old colleagues Laurel and Hardy cast Aubrey in supporting roles in three of their starring vehicles, most memorably as the flirtatious drunk in the 1929 2-reeler That's My Wife. Jimmy Aubrey continued taking movie jobs until his retirement in 1952, playing bits and featured roles as drunken sailors, hoboes, store clerks and cowboy sidekicks.

Trivia: Supporting actor in Australian comedies of the '30.

Trivia: Irish stage actor Patrick O'Moore began his film career in 1934, playing a few leads in English films before settling in Hollywood. A close friend of actor Humphrey Bogart, O'Moore was seen to good advantage in such Bogart features as Sahara (1943) and Conflict (1945). Otherwise, most of his film roles were unbilled bits as clerks, constables, government officials, and military men. He kept active into the 1980s, playing small parts in such TV productions as QB VII and theatrical features as The Sword and the Sorcerer. Patrick O'Moore was at one time married to Broadway musical-comedy star Zelma O'Neal.

Trivia: One of the original Keystone Kops, Clarence Hennecke later worked as a gagman (or, as he was sometimes grandly billed, "comedy constructor") for Vitagraph, Fox, and Hal Roach. For the latter, Hennecke co-directed (with Stan Laurel) the Jimmy Finlayson farce Yes, Yes Nanette (1925). In the same vein, Hennecke later served as Frank Capra's assistant on Harry Langdon's classic feature comedies, including The Strong Man (1926) and Long Pants (1927). Sadly, there was little call for the veteran comedian's talents after the changeover to sound and he spent the remainder of his career as a Hollywood "dress extra."

Trivia: For over six decades, Louise Lorimer played character roles on stage, screen and television. She launched her career on Broadway, appearing in I Remember Mama opposite Marlon Brando. Lorimer later worked on My Fair Lady with Rex Harrison. Lorimer made her feature-film debut in Gangster's Boy (1938). She subsequently appeared steadily in feature films through the late 1970s. Her television work includes appearances on Profiles in Courage and Marnie. She also frequently appeared on the Alfred Hitchcock anthology series Hitchcock Presents and on the sitcom Dennis the Menace. On Hopalong Cassidy, Lorimer occasionally played "Stagecoach Sal." Lorimer graduated from the Leland Powers School of Drama in Boston. She served in the USO during WW II. Later in her career, Lorimer became a teacher at the Martha's Vineyard branch of the Leland Powers School of Drama.

Trivia: In his prime--which lasted a good 40 years--voice artist Paul Frees was not so much ubiquitous as inescapable. It was literally impossible during the 1960s and most of the 1970s to turn on the TV on any given night and not hear the ineluctable Mr. Frees. Blessed with a versatile voicebox from an early age, Frees first came to public attention as "Buddy Green," the name he was using when he won a radio impersonation contest. He toured in vaudeville, then returned to radio as star of The Player, a syndicated anthology series in which he played all the roles. He went to work as actor, announcer and narrator for such series as Suspense and Escape; he also made a number of appearances on comedy programs, usually playing a hammy Orson Wellesian actor (one such character was actually named "Lawson Bells"). In bandleader Spike Jones' memorable rendition of the old torch song "My Old Flame," Frees recites the lyrics in the style of a Peter Lorre-like pyromaniac. Frees began working in films in 1948, sometimes as an on-screen actor (His Kind of Woman, The Thing, War of the Worlds, Suddenly, The Shaggy Dog) but most often in a variety of voiceover capacities. When Chill Wills was unavailable to provide his talking-mule voice in Francis in the Haunted House (1955), Frees replaced him, accurately recreating Wills' folksy drawl; when producer George Pal was forced to rerecord most of the male actors in Atlantis, the Lost Continent (1961), Frees supplied all the voices; and whenever Japanese film star Toshiro Mifune appeared in an English-language film like Grand Prix (1969), he would insist that his heavily-accented voice be redubbed by Frees, who "sounds more like me than I do." In addition to his TV-ad work as Poppin' Fresh, Mr. Goodwrench et. al, Frees was heard as the "late, fabulously wealthy" John Beresford Tipton on The Millionaire (1955-60). Frees' vocal activities in the realm of animated cartoons is so extensive that to list all his credits would require five single-spaced columns, a few examples are: Boris Badenov and Captain Peter Peachfuzz in Rocky and His Friends, Inspector Fenwick in Dudley Do-Right, Oliver Wendell Clutch in Calvin and the Colonel, Flat-Top in The Dick Tracy Show, the title character in Squiddly Diddly, Morocco Mole in Secret Squirrel, John Lennon in The Beatles, and Ludwig Von Drake in Walt Disney's Wonderful World of Color. In addition, Frees worked in virtually everything ever produced by satirist Stan Freberg, including the legendary 1963 LP History of the United States. By the mid-1970s, Frees was averaging $1 million per year--and was only working six months out of the year, spending the remaining six months vacationing on his own South Sea island. According to most sources, Frees was married six times. Since his death in 1986, Paul Frees' legacy has been carried on by a wealth of imitators, none of whom have quite come up to the standard set by The Master.