Trivia: The son of an Irish whiskey distiller, Brian Donlevy was 10 months old when his family moved to Wisconsin. At 15, Donlevy ran away from home, hoping to join General Pershing's purge against Mexico's Pancho Villa. His tenure below the border was brief, and within a few months he was enrolled in military school. While training to be a pilot at the U.S. Naval Academy, Donlevy developed an interest in amateur theatricals. He spent much of the early 1920s living by his wits in New York, scouting about for acting jobs and attempting to sell his poetry and other writings. He posed for at least one Arrow Collar ad and did bit and extra work in several New York-based films, then received his first break with a good supporting role in the 1924 Broadway hit What Price Glory?. Several more Broadway plays followed, then in 1935 Donlevy decided to try his luck in Hollywood. A frustrated Donlevy was prepared to head back to Manhattan when, at the last minute, he was cast as a villain in Sam Goldwyn's Barbary Coast. In 1936 he was signed to a 20th Century-Fox contract, alternating between "B"-picture heroes and "A"-picture heavies for the next few years. The most notable of his bad-guy roles from this period was the cruel but courageous Sgt. Markoff in Beau Geste (1939); reportedly, Donlevy deliberately behaved atrociously off-camera as well as on, so that his co-workers would come to genuinely despise his character. From 1940 through 1946, Donlevy was most closely associated with Paramount Pictures, delivering first-rate performances in such films as The Great McGinty (1940), Wake Island (1942), The Glass Key (1942) and The Virginian (1946). His own favorite role was that of the good-hearted, raffish con-artist in Universal's Nightmare (1942). In 1950, Donlevy took time off from films to star and co-produce the syndicated radio (and later TV) series Dangerous Assignment. He went on to introduce the character of Dr. Quatermass in two well-received British science fiction films, The Creeping Unknown (1955) and Enemy From Space (1957). Brian Donlevy left behind an impressive enough filmic legacy to put the lie to his own assessment of his talents: "I think I stink."

Trivia: Earthy Russian character actor Akim Tamiroff was relatively aimless, not settling upon a theatrical career until he was nearly 19. Selected from 500 applicants, Tamiroff was trained by Stanislavsky at the Moscow Art Theater School. While touring the U.S. with a Russian acting troupe in 1923, Tamiroff decided to remain in New York and give Broadway a try. He was quite active with the Theatre Guild during the 1920s and early '30s, then set out for Hollywood, hoping to scare up movie work. After several years' worth of bit roles, Tamiroff's film career began gaining momentum when he was signed by Paramount in 1936. He became one of the studio's top players, appearing in juicy featured roles in A-pictures and starring in such B's as The Great Gambini (1937), King of Chinatown (1938), and The Magnificent Fraud (1939). Essaying a wide variety of nationalities, Tamiroff was most frequently cast as a villain or reprobate with a deep down sentimental and/or honorable streak. He was a favorite of many directors, including Cecil B. DeMille, starring in Union Pacific (1939), Northwest Mounted Police (1940), and Preston Sturges' The Great McGinty (1940). He was twice nominated for the best supporting actor Oscar for his work in The General Died at Dawn (1936) and For Whom the Bell Tolls (1943). During the 1950s, Tamiroff was a close associate of actor/director Orson Welles, who cast Tamiroff in underhanded supporting roles in Mr. Arkadin (1955), Touch of Evil (1958), and The Trial (1963), and retained his services for nearly two decades in the role of Sancho Panza in Welles' never-finished Don Quixote. Akim Tamiroff continued to flourish with meaty assignments in films like Topkapi (1964) and After the Fox (1966), rounding out his long and fruitful career with a starring assignment in the French/Italian political melodrama, Death of a Jew (1970).

Trivia: Allyn Joslyn was the son of a Pennsylvania mining engineer. On stage from age 17, Joslyn scored as a leading man in such Broadway productions as Boy Meets Girl (1936) and Arsenic and Old Lace (1941), appearing in the latter as beleaguered theatrical critic Mortimer Brewster. Joslyn's leading-man qualities surprisingly evaporated on camera, thus he spent most of his movie career playing obnoxious reporters, weaklings, and gormless "other men" who never got the girl. Among his more notable film appearances were as Don Ameche's snobbish rival for the attentions of Gene Tierney in Lubitsch's Heaven Can Wait (1943), and as the jellyfish cardsharp who sneaks onto a lifeboat disguised as a woman in Titanic (1953). In the sprightly "B" picture It Shouldn't Happen to a Dog (1946), Joslyn was for once cast in the lead, even winning heroine Carole Landis at fade-out time. A prolific radio and TV performer, Allyn Joslyn played one-half of the title role on the 1962 TV-sitcom McKeever and the Colonel.

Trivia: Scottish actress Muriel Angelus, born Muriel Angelus Findlay, occasionally played leading roles in British and U.S. films during the 1930s. She began her career acting on stage when she was only 12. Following her marriage to Paul Lavell in the mid-1940s, Angelus retired from all aspects of performing.

Trivia: Famed for his ratchety voice and cold-fish stare, William Demarest was an "old pro" even when he was a young pro. He began his stage career at age 13, holding down a variety of colorful jobs (including professional boxer) during the off-season. After years in carnivals and as a vaudeville headliner, Demarest starred in such Broadway long-runners as Earl Carroll's Sketch Book. He was signed with Warner Bros. pictures in 1926, where he was briefly paired with Clyde Cook as a "Mutt and Jeff"-style comedy team. Demarest's late-silent and early-talkie roles varied in size, becoming more consistently substantial in the late 1930s. His specialty during this period was a bone-crushing pratfall, a physical feat he was able to perform into his 60s. While at Paramount in the 1940s, Demarest was a special favorite of writer/director Preston Sturges, who cast Demarest in virtually all his films: The Great McGinty (1940); Christmas in July (1940); The Lady Eve (1941); Sullivan's Travels (1942); The Palm Beach Story (1942); Hail the Conquering Hero (1944); Miracle of Morgan's Creek (1944), wherein Demarest was at his bombastic best as Officer Kockenlocker; and The Great Moment (1944). For his role as Al Jolson's fictional mentor Steve Martin in The Jolson Story (1946), Demarest was Oscar-nominated (the actor had, incidentally, appeared with Jolie in 1927's The Jazz Singer). Demarest continued appearing in films until 1975, whenever his increasingly heavy TV schedule would allow. Many Demarest fans assumed that his role as Uncle Charlie in My Three Sons (66-72) was his first regular TV work: in truth, Demarest had previously starred in the short-lived 1960 sitcom Love and Marriage.

Trivia: It was once said of the versatile Louis Jean Heydt that he played everything except a woman. Born in New Jersey, the blonde, chiseled-featured Heydt attended Worcester Academy and Dartmouth College. He briefly served as a reporter on the New YorkWorld before opting for a stage career. Among his Broadway appearances was the lead in Preston Sturges' Strictly Dishonorable, establishing a long working relationship with Sturges that would extend to the latter's film productions The Great McGinty (1940) and The Great Moment (1942). Heydt's film characters often seemed destined to be killed off before the fourth reel, either because they were hiding something or because they'd just stumbled upon important information that could prove damaging to the villains. He was knocked off in the first three minutes of Charlie Chan at Treasure Island (1939) and was shot full of holes just before revealing an important plot point to Humphrey Bogart in The Big Sleep (1946) (this after an unforgettable interrogation scene in which Heydt is unable to look Bogart straight in the eye). Heydt's many other assignments include the hungry soldier in Gone with the Wind (1939), Mentor Graham in Abe Lincoln in Illinois (1940), a frustrated general practitioner in Tortilla Flat (1941), a squadron leader in Gung Ho (1943) and a loquacious rural family man in Come to the Stable (1949). Our Gang fans will recall Heydt as Bobby Blake's stepfather in the MGM "Gang" shorts Dad For a Day (1939) and All About Hash (1940). A ubiquitous TV actor, Louis Jean Heydt was seen on many anthology series, and as a semi-regular on the 1958 syndicated adventure weekly MacKenzie's Raiders.

Trivia: Harry Rosenthal was an unlikely actor, mostly because he never set out to be one -- but that didn't stop him from being busy in movies for more than 15 years, or getting mentioned on the Broadway and Hollywood gossip pages with surprising frequency. A composer, pianist, and bandleader, he left his native Ireland for a successful career in music in London in the 1920s, during which he wrote several successful operettas, and then headed for New York. He found success as a performer beginning in 1930 when he appeared in the musical June Moon, written by Ring Lardner and George S. Kaufman, in the role of a wisecracking pianist. A subsequent appearance at a reception for Edward, the Prince of Wales, led to his touring the world with the would-be heir to the British throne. Rosenthal appeared in movies beginning in 1931, and he worked onscreen right up through The Big Clock in 1948, but most of his best work was concentrated in the early/mid-'40s in the films of writer/director Preston Sturges, who used the pianist/actor in various roles in his films from The Great McGinty (1940) through The Sin of Harold Diddlebock (1947). Even in Hail the Conquering Hero (1944), the only Sturges film at Paramount in which Rosenthal didn't appear, his name can be seen on a poster announcing music attractions, in the background of the shot introducing the Marines led by William Demarest in the movie's opening minutes. Rosenthal often added a wry, comical element to any scene that he was in, and, because of his Broadway stage background, he was a favorite subject of columnists, far beyond the size of the parts he often played. His passing in 1953 was noted by far more journalists than would have been usual for character actors in that era.

Trivia: Stage actor/director Arthur Hoyt first stepped before the movie cameras in 1916. During the silent era, Hoyt played sizeable roles in such major productions as Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (1921) and The Lost World (1925). In sound films, he tended to be typecast as a henpecked husband or downtrodden office worker. One of his mostly fondly remembered talkie performances was as befuddled motel-court manager Zeke in It Happened One Night (1934). Despite advancing age, he was busy in the late 1930s, appearing in as many as 12 pictures per year. In his last active decade, Arthur Hoyt was a member of writer/director Preston Sturges' unofficial stock company, beginning with The Great McGinty (1940) and ending with The Sin of Harold Diddlebock (1947).

Trivia: The living image of the man on the Monopoly cards, Thurston Hall began his six-decade acting career on the New England stock-company circuit. Forming his own troupe, Hall toured America, Africa and New Zealand. On Broadway, he was starred in such venerable productions as Ben-Hur and Mrs. Wiggs of the Cabbage Patch. In films from 1915, Hall appeared in dozens of silents, notably the 1917 Theda Bara version of Cleopatra, in which he played Mark Antony. After 15 years on Broadway, Hall returned to films in 1935, spending the next 20 years portraying many a fatuous businessman, pompous politician, dyspeptic judge or crooked "ward heeler." From 1953 through 1955, Hall was seen as the choleric bank president Mr. Schuyler on the TV sitcom Topper. Towards the end of his life, a thinner, goateed Thurston Hall appeared in several TV commercials as the Kentucky-colonel spokesman for a leading chicken pot pie manufacturer.

Trivia: Invariably cast as a hot-blooded Latin or tropical temptress, Steffi Duna was actually born in Budapest. By the time she was 13, Steffi was already well known in the rarefied world of the European ballet. In films from 1931, Duna was prominently featured in the pioneering Technicolor projects La Cucaracha (1935) and The Dancing Pirate (1936). She also appeared in the mammoth Anthony Adverse (1936) as the title character's cast-off mistress. In 1935, she performed an unforgettable song and dance in La Cucaracha, a Technicolor short. In 1940, she married actor Dennis O'Keefe and retired from films. They remained married until his death in 1968.

Trivia: Switching from Broadway to Hollywood in 1931, actress Esther Howard was an expert at portraying blowsy old crones, man-hungry spinsters and oversexed dowagers. Utilizing her wide, expressive eyes and versatile voice for both broad comedy and tense drama, Howard was equally at home portraying slatternly tosspot Mrs. Florian in Murder My Sweet (1944) as she was in the role of genteelly homicidal Aunt Sophie in Laurel and Hardy's The Big Noise (1944). She was a regular participant in the films of writer/director Preston Sturges, playing everything from an addled farm woman in Sullivan's Travels (1942) to the bejeweled wife of "The Wienie King" in The Palm Beach Story (1942). From 1935 to 1952, Esther Howard was a fixture of Columbia's short-subject unit, usually cast as the wife or sweetheart of comedian Andy Clyde.

Trivia: Gravel-voiced, granite-faced former heavyweight boxer Frank C. Moran made his film debut as a convict in Mae West's She Done Him Wrong (1933). Though quickly typecast as a thick-eared brute, Moran was in real life a gentle soul, fond of poetry and fine art. Perhaps it was this aspect of his personality that attracted Moran to eccentric producer/director/writer Preston Sturges, who cast the big lug in all of his productions of the 1940s. It was Moran who, as a cop in Sturges' Christmas in July (1940), halted a tirade by an argumentative Jewish storeowner by barking, "Who do ya think you are, Hitler?" And it was Moran who, as a tough truck driver in Sullivan's Travels (1942), patiently explains to his traveling companions the meaning of the word "paraphrase." On a less lofty level, Frank Moran shared the title role with George Zucco in Monogram's Return of the Ape Man (1944).

Trivia: The pint-sized American actor Jimmy Conlin preceded his film career as a vaudeville headliner on the Keith and Orpheum circuits, where he appeared with his wife Muriel Glass in a song-and-dance turn called "Conlin and Glass." After starring in the 1928 Vitaphone short Sharps and Flats, Conlin began regularly appearing in movie bit roles in 1933. Writer/director Preston Sturges liked Conlin's work and saw to it that the actor received sizeable roles--with good billing--in such Sturges projects as Sullivan's Travels (1941), Hail the Conquering Hero (1944) and Miracle of Morgan's Creek (1944). Conlin's all-time best role was as Wormy, the birdlike barfly who persuades Harold Lloyd to have his first-ever drink in Sturges' The Sin of Harold Diddlebock (1946). When Sturges' fortunes fell in the 1950s, Conlin and his wife remained loyal friends, communicating on a regular basis with the former top director and helping out in any way they could. In 1954, Conlin had a regular role as Eddie in the syndicated TV series Duffy's Tavern. Jimmy Conlin remained a Hollywood fixture until 1959, when he appeared in his last role as an elderly habitual criminal in Otto Preminger's Anatomy of a Murder.

Trivia: Barrel-chested American actor Dewey Robinson was much in demand during the gangster cycle of the early '30s. Few actors could convey muscular menace and mental vacuity as quickly and as well as the mountainous Mr. Robinson. Most of his roles were bits, but he was given extended screen time as a polo-playing mobster in Edward G. Robinson's Little Giant (1933), as a bored slavemaster in the outrageously erotic "No More Love" number in Eddie Cantor's Roman Scandals (1933) and as a plug-ugly ward heeler at odds with beauty contest judge Ben Turpin in the slapstick 2-reeler Keystone Hotel (1935). Shortly before his death in 1950, Dewey Robinson had a lengthy unbilled role as a Brooklyn baseball fan in The Jackie Robinson Story, slowly metamorphosing from a brainless bigot to Jackie's most demonstrative supporter.

Trivia: Dignified, shiny-domed American actor/playwright Richard Carle acted in both the U.S. and England for several decades before making his first film in 1916. Usually fitted with a pince-nez and winged collar, Carle was perfect for roles calling for slightly faded dignity. Comedy fans will recall Carle as the genially mad scientist in the Laurel and Hardy 2-reeler Habeas Corpus (1928) and as the besotted ship's captain who takes six months to travel from New York to Paris in Wheeler and Woolsey's Diplomaniacs (1933). He went on to appear as college deans, bankers and judges until his death in 1941, a year in which he showed up in no fewer than eight films. What might have been Richard Carle's finest screen role, the eccentric Father William in the 1933 version of Alice in Wonderland, was cut from the final release print of that film.

Trivia: Character actor Donald Kerr showed up whenever a gumchewing Runyonesque type (often a reporter or process server) was called for. A bit actor even in two-reelers and "B" pictures, Kerr was one of those vaguely familiar faces whom audiences would immediately recognize, ask each other "Who is that?", then return to the film, by which time Kerr had scooted the scene. The actor's first recorded film appearance was in 1933's Carnival Lady. Twenty-two years later, Donald Kerr concluded his career in the same anonymity with which he began it in 1956's Yaqui Drums.

Trivia: Pat West spent many years in American vaudeville in a song-and-snappy-patter act with his wife, Lucille. In films from 1929, West could be seen in innumerable bit parts (usually bartenders) in both features and short subjects. He was something of a regular in the films of Howard Hawks, attaining billing as Warden Cooley in Hawks' His Girl Friday (1940), and he also showed up in several Preston Sturges films. Pat West can be seen in the opening reels of The Bank Dick as the assistant movie director who hires Egbert Souse (W.C. Fields) to replace inebriated director A. Pismo Clam (Jack Norton).

Trivia: In the 1959 Twilight Zone episode "Walking Distance," Gig Young comments that he thinks he's seen drugstore counterman Byron Foulger before. "I've got that kind of face" was the counterman's reply. Indeed, Foulger's mustachioed, bespectacled, tremble-chinned, moon-shaped countenance was one of the most familiar faces ever to grace the screen. A graduate of the University of Utah, Foulger developed a taste for performing in community theatre, making his Broadway debut in the '20s. Foulger then toured with Moroni Olsen's stock company, which led him to the famed Pasadena Playhouse as both actor and director. In films from 1936, Foulger usually played whining milksops, weak-willed sycophants, sanctimonious sales clerks, shifty political appointees, and the occasional unsuspected murderer. In real life, the seemingly timorous actor was not very easily cowed; according to his friend Victor Jory, Foulger once threatened to punch out Errol Flynn at a party because he thought that Flynn was flirting with his wife (Mrs. Foulger was Dorothy Adams, a prolific movie and stage character actress). Usually unbilled in "A" productions, Foulger could count on meatier roles in such "B" pictures as The Man They Could Not Hang (1939) and The Panther's Claw (1943). In the Bowery Boys' Up in Smoke (1957), Foulger is superb as a gleeful, twinkly-eyed Satan. In addition to his film work, Byron Foulger built up quite a gallery of portrayals on television; one of his final stints was the recurring role of engineer Wendell Gibbs on the popular sitcom Petticoat Junction.

Trivia: African American actor Charles Moore was sometimes billed as Charles R. Moore. In films from 1929, Moore played a variety of supporting roles and was evidently a favorite of writer/director Preston Sturges, as he appeared in four of Sturges' films, delivering one of the funniest single lines in 1941's The Palm Beach Story (to repeat the line out of context would kill the joke). Unfortunately, Charles Moore's skills as a dancer seldom got a workout during his 25-year screen career.

Trivia: Jean Phillips was a young ingénue at Paramount who aspired very briefly to stardom at the outset of the 1940s. Born in Sioux Falls, SD, Jean Phillips grew up in California; one day, near the end of her time in high school, on a whim, she entered a beauty contest in Culver City. As a prize, Phillips won a series of dancing lessons, and was in the class when the casting office at MGM called one day in 1934, asking for a particular girl who happened to be out sick. Instead, Phillips went on the audition and won a small role in the 1934 Jimmy Durante musical comedy Student Tour. After a few more uncredited performances, the studio pegged her as the stand-in for Jean Harlow, who was then MGM's resident bombshell. Phillips held the job until Harlow's sudden death in 1937, and after that she took any kind of movie-related work there was, including a job making personal appearances, posing with a boat as part of the publicity campaign for a Paramount film called Rulers of the Sea. The movie bombed but Paramount was impressed enough with the reaction to Phillips to sign her. From 1940 until 1942, she appeared in 15 movies, playing a manicurist in Preston Sturges' The Great McGinty, an uncredited part in Mitchell Leisen's melodrama Hold Back the Dawn, and a small role in Stuart Heisler's Among the Living. Despite being nearly 30, Phillips could look much younger, and played a cowgirl barely out of her teens in the Hopalong Cassidy movie Outlaws of the Desert. She briefly graduated to stardom in Anthony Mann's superb debut thriller, Dr. Broadway, but gave up acting that same year, following her appearance in William Clemens' Night in New Orleans (1942).

Trivia: Trained at Iowa's Morningside College for a career as a musician, American actor Emory Parnell spent his earliest performing years as a concert violinist. He worked the Chautauqua and Lyceum tent circuits for a decade before leaving the road in 1930. For the next few seasons, Parnell acted and narrated in commercial and industrial films produced in Detroit. Determining that the oppurtunities and renumeration were better in Hollywood, Emory and his actress wife Effie boarded the Super Chief and headed for California. Endowed with a ruddy Irish countenance and perpetual air of frustration, Parnell immediately landed a string of character roles as cops, small town business owners, fathers-in-law and landlords (though his very first film part in Bing Crosby's Dr. Rhythm [1938] was cut out before release). In roles both large and small, Parnell became an inescapable presence in B-films of the '40s; one of his better showings was in the A-picture Louisiana Purchase, in which, as a Paramount movie executive, he sings an opening song about avoiding libel suits! Parnell was a regular in Universal's Ma and Pa Kettle film series (1949-55), playing small town entrepreneur Billy Reed; on TV, the actor appeared as William Bendix' factory foreman The Life of Riley (1952-58). Emory Parnell's last public appearance was in 1974, when he, his wife Effie, and several other hale-and-hearty residents of the Motion Picture Country Home and Hospital were interviewed by Tom Snyder.

Trivia: Gawky, comic actor Victor Potel started out in one- and two-reel comedies, starring in Universal's Snakeville series. Potel went on to essay supporting parts in feature films of the 1920s, then played bits and walk-ons in such talkies as Three Godfathers (1936) and The Big Store (1941). He was a member of filmmaker Preston Sturges' unofficial stock company from 1940's Christmas in July until his death in 1947. One of Victor Potel's final film roles was diminutive Indian peddler Crowbar in The Egg and I (1947), a character played by Chief Yowlachie, Teddy Hart, Zachary Charles, and Stan Ross in the subsequent Ma and Pa Kettle series.

Trivia: Slight, grey-templed, bespectacled actor Harry Hayden was cast to best advantage as small-town store proprietors, city attorneys and minor bureaucrats. Dividing his time between stage and screen work from 1936, Hayden became one of the busiest members of Central Casting, appearing in everything from A-pictures like Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939) to the RKO 2-reelers of Leon Errol and Edgar Kennedy. Among his better-known unbilled assignments are horn factory owner Mr. Sharp (his partner is Mr. Pierce) in Laurel and Hardy's Saps at Sea (1940) and Farley Granger's harrumphing boss who announces brusquely that there'll be no Christmas bonus in O. Henry's Full House (1951). Hayden's final flurry of activity was in the role of next-door-neighbor Harry on the 1954-55 season of TV's The Stu Erwin Show (aka The Trouble with Father), in which he was afforded the most screen time he'd had in years -- though he remains uncredited in the syndicated prints of this popular series. From the mid '30s until his death in 1955, Harry Hayden and his actress wife Lela Bliss ran Beverly Hills' Bliss-Hayden Miniature Theatre, where several Hollywood aspirants were given an opportunity to learn their craft before live audiences; among the alumni of the Bliss-Hayden were Jon Hall, Veronica Lake, Doris Day, Craig Stevens, Debbie Reynolds, and Marilyn Monroe.

Trivia: As a boy growing up in Sacramento, Robert Warwick sang in his church choir. Encouraged to pursue music as a vocation, Warwick studied in Paris for an operatic career. He abandoned singing for straight acting when, in 1903, he was hired by Clyde Fitch as an understudy in the Broadway play Glad of It. Within a few year, Warwick was a major stage star in New York. He managed to retain his matinee-idol status when he switched from stage to screen, starring in such films as A Modern Othello and Alias Jimmy Valentine and at one point heading his own production company. He returned to the stage in 1920, then resumed his Hollywood career in authoritative supporting roles. His pear-shaped tones ideally suited for talkies, Warwick played such characters as Neptune in Night Life of the Gods (1933), Sir Francis Knolly in Mary of Scotland (1936) and Lord Montague in Romeo and Juliet (1936). He appeared in many of the Errol Flynn "historicals" at Warner Bros. (Prince and the Pauper, Adventures of Robin Hood, The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex); in more contemporary fare, he could usually be found in a military uniform or wing-collared tuxedo. From The Great McGinty (1940) onward, Warwick was a particular favorite of producer/director Preston Sturges, who was fond of providing plum acting opportunities to veteran character actors. Warwick's best performance under Sturges' guidance was as the brusque Hollywood executive who insists upon injecting "a little sex" in all of his studio's product in Sullivan's Travels (1942). During the 1950s, Warwick played several variations on "Charles Waterman," the broken-down Shakespearean ham that he'd portrayed in In a Lonely Place (1950). He remained in harness until his eighties, playing key roles on such TV series as The Twilight Zone and The Law and Mr. Jones. Robert Warwick was married twice, to actresses Josephine Whittell and Stella Lattimore.