Trivia: Steadfast leading man Warner Baxter was born in Ohio and raised in San Francisco by his widowed mother. He worked as a farm implement salesmen in his late teens before turning his hobby of amateur theatricals into a lifelong profession. Alternating between stock-company assignments and "civilian" jobs during the World War I years, Baxter reportedly made his first film in 1914, though he'd later list 1922's Her Own Money as his official screen debut. After one last stage stint in A Tailor Made Man, Baxter became a full-time movie leading man, though full stardom would not be his until his first talkie, In Old Arizona (1929). Armed with a thick Mexican accent and a surfeit of roguish charm, Baxter won an Academy Award for his portrayal of O. Henry's Cisco Kid in this film. His roles became more sophisticated in nature during the 1930s; sporting a rakish mustache and decked out in evening clothes, Baxter cut quite a suave figure in such films as To Mary--With Love (1936) and Wife, Doctor and Nurse (1938). In the '40s he starred in the popular Crime Doctor "B"-picture series at Columbia. One year after completing his final film, 1950's State Penitentiary, Warner Baxter died as a result of cranial surgery, which was intended to relieve his long struggle with arthritis.

Trivia: American actress Bebe Daniels and the motion picture industry virtually grew up together. After touring with her stage-actor parents, Daniels made her film debut at age seven in the silent one-reeler A Common Enemy (1908). After unsuccessfully applying for a job as a Mack Sennett bathing beauty (she was well under the age of consent), Daniels secured a job at Hal Roach's comedy studio in 1915, co-featured with Roach's biggest (and only) star Harold Lloyd in a series of zany slapstick comedies. In 1919, Daniels was signed by producer-director Cecil B. DeMille to star in a group of slick, sophisticated feature films in the company of DeMille regulars Gloria Swanson and Thomas Meighan. Though successful in these glamorous ventures, Daniels found herself more at home in fast-moving comedy roles, in which she specialized while contracted with Paramount Pictures in the mid-1920s; the actress played everything from a female Zorro type in Senorita (1927) to a "lady Valentino" in She's a Sheik (1927). When talking pictures came around, Paramount dropped Daniels' contract, worried that she wouldn't be able to make the transition to sound. But Daniels surprised everyone by scoring a hit in RKO's expensive musical feature Rio Rita (1929), managing to keep her career in high gear until her last American film, Music Is Magic (1935). Upon her retirement from Hollywood, Daniels moved to England with her actor husband Ben Lyon in 1935. Enormously popular with London audiences, Daniels and Lyon starred in stage plays and films, and in the 1940s, headlined the successful radio series Life with the Lyons, which graduated to an even more successful TV program in the 1950s.

Trivia: With his pencil-thin mustache, the suave, gallant George Brent was one of Hollywood's most dependable leading men. A handsome, but never very exciting or dynamic lead, he played opposite all of Warner's greatest actresses, including Barbara Stanwyck and Olivia de Havilland he is best known for his work with Bette Davis, with whom (according to some sources) he had a lasting but secret off-screen romance. He began his career playing small roles as a child in Abbey Theater (Ireland) plays. During the Irish Rebellion he participated in subversive activities and had to be smuggled out of the country to Canada where he eventually toured with a stock company for two years, before moving on to New York. There he continued to appear with several stock companies, three of which he formed on his own. Brent then found work on Broadway in the late '20s, before heading for Hollywood to begin a career that spanned two decades. Brent was typically cast as a gentlemanly, romantic leading man (after briefly being cast in tough hero roles). He debuted in Under Suspicion (1930). He retired from the big screen in 1953, going on to star in the TV series Wire Service (1956-59). He made his final screen appearance in 1978, playing a judge in Born Again. His six wives included actresses Ruth Chatterton (with whom he co-starred in The Rich Are Always With Us, [1932]), Constance Worth, and Ann Sheridan (with whom he appeared in Honeymoon for Three, [1941]).

Trivia: Canadian Keeler was the prototypical '30s musical-comedy star. She got her start on Broadway and became famous when she married the much older Al Jolson. Her biggest success came as the guileless heroine of several Busby Berkeley-directed musicals, often opposite Dick Powell. Following her divorce from Jolson, she retired from films and made only a few appearances until her comeback in No, No, Nanette on Broadway in 1970. Her best-known films include Forty-Second Street (1933), Footlight Parade (1933), Gold Diggers of 1933 (1933), Dames (1934) and Go Into Your Dance (1935), her only film with Jolson.

Trivia: Curly-haired actor, director, and producer, Powell worked as a vocalist and instrumentalist for bands (he had several hit records), and occasionally was an M.C. He debuted onscreen in 1932, at first as a crooner in '30s Warner Bros. backstage musicals, often opposite Ruby Keeler. After playing choir-boy-type leads for a decade, he made a surprising switch to dramatic roles in the 1940s, showing special skill as tough heroes or private eyes such as Philip Marlowe. Powell's last big-screen appearance was in Susan Slept Here (1954), in which he once again sang; he went on to appear frequently on TV. His career took another turn in the early '50s when he began producing and directing films; he was also a founder and president of Four Star Television, a prosperous TV production company. His second wife was actress Joan Blondell, with whom he appeared in Model Wife (1941) and I Want a Divorce (1940); his widow is actress June Allyson. In John Schlesinger's The Day of the Locust (1975) he was portrayed by his son, Dick Powell, Jr.

Trivia: It is possible that when actor Guy Kibbee portrayed newspaper editor Webb in the 1940 film version of Our Town, he harked back to his own father's experiences as a news journalist. The cherubic, pop-eyed Kibbee first performed on Mississippi riverboats as a teenager, then matriculated to the legitimate stage. The 1930 Broadway play Torch Song was the production that brought Kibbee the Hollywood offers. From 1931 onward, Kibbee was one of the mainstays of the Warner Bros. stock companies, specializing in dumb politicos (The Dark Horse [1932]), sugar daddies (42nd Street [1933]) and the occasional straight, near-heroic role (Captain Blood [1935]). In 1934, Kibbee enjoyed one of his rare leading roles, essaying the title character in Babbitt (1934), a role he seemed born to play. During the 1940s, Kibbee headlined the Scattergood Baines B-picture series at RKO. He retired in 1949, after completing his scenes in John Ford's Three Godfathers. Kibbee was the brother of small-part play Milton Kibbee, and the father of Charles Kibbee, City University of New York chancellor.

Trivia: Although she is best known for her later work, Una Merkel actually started in film in 1920 as Lillian Gish's stand-in for Way Down East. After a stage career in the 1920s, she returned to films as Ann Rutledge in D. W. Griffith's Abraham Lincoln (1930). The vivacious character actress brightened up dozens of films, playing mostly comic roles interspersed with an occasional dramatic part. Films to watch include Dangerous Female (1931); Private Lives (1931); Red-Headed Woman (1932); 42nd Street (1933), the film in which she memorably says of Ginger Rogers' character Anytime Annie: "The only time she ever said no she didn't hear the question;" The Merry Widow (both 1934 and 1952); Broadway Melody of 1936 (1935); Born to Dance (1936); Destry Rides Again (1939), where she and Marlene Dietrich have a frenzied hair-pulling battle over the hapless Mischa Auer; On Borrowed Time (1939); The Bank Dick (1940); Road to Zanzibar (1941); This Is the Army (1943); With a Song in My Heart (1952); and The Parent Trap (1961), among many others. In 1956, she won a Tony Award for The Ponder Heart and in 1961 was nominated for an Academy Award for Summer and Smoke in the role she had originated on the stage.

Trivia: In step with Fred Astaire, Ginger Rogers was one half of the most legendary dancing team in film history; she was also a successful dramatic actress, even winning a Best Actress Oscar. Born Virginia McMath on July 16, 1911, in Independence, MO, as a toddler, she relocated to Hollywood with her newly divorced mother, herself a screenwriter. At the age of six, Rogers was offered a movie contract, but her mother turned it down. The family later moved to Fort Worth, where she first began appearing in area plays and musical revues. Upon winning a Charleston contest in 1926, Rogers' mother declared her ready for a professional career, and she began working the vaudeville circuit, fronting an act dubbed "Ginger and the Redheads." After marrying husband Jack Pepper in 1928, the act became "Ginger and Pepper." She soon traveled to New York as a singer with Paul Ash & His Orchestra, and upon filming the Rudy Vallee short Campus Sweethearts, she won a role in the 1929 Broadway production Top Speed.On Broadway, Rogers earned strong critical notice as well as the attention of Paramount, who cast her in 1930's Young Man of Manhattan, becoming typecast as a quick-witted flapper. Back on Broadway, she and Ethel Merman starred in Girl Crazy. Upon signing a contract with Paramount, she worked at their Astoria studio by day and returned to the stage in the evenings; under these hectic conditions she appeared in a number of films, including The Sap From Syracuse, Queen High, and Honor Among Lovers. Rogers subsequently asked to be freed of her contract, but soon signed with RKO. When her Broadway run ended, she went back to Hollywood, starring in 1931's The Tip-Off and The Suicide Fleet. When 1932's Carnival Boat failed to attract any interest, RKO dropped her and she freelanced around town, co-starring with Joe E. Brown in the comedy The Tenderfoot, followed by a thriller, The Thirteenth Guest, for Monogram. Finally, the classic 1933 musical 42nd Street poised her on the brink of stardom, and she next appeared in Warner Bros.' Gold Diggers of 1933.Rogers then returned to RKO, where she starred in Professional Sweetheart; the picture performed well enough to land her a long-term contract, and features like A Shriek in the Night and Sitting Pretty followed. RKO then cast her in the musical Flying Down to Rio, starring Delores Del Rio; however, the film was stolen by movie newcomer Astaire, fresh from Broadway. He and Rogers did not reunite until 1934's The Gay Divorcee, a major hit. Rogers resisted typecasting as strictly a musical star, and she followed with the drama Romance in Manhattan. Still, the returns from 1935's Roberta, another musical venture with Astaire, made it perfectly clear what kinds of films audiences expected Rogers to make, and although she continued tackling dramatic roles when the opportunity existed, she rose to major stardom alongside Astaire in classics like Top Hat, 1936's Follow the Fleet, Swing Time, and Shall We Dance? Even without Astaire, Rogers found success in musical vehicles, and in 1937 she and Katharine Hepburn teamed brilliantly in Stage Door.After 1938's Carefree, Rogers and Astaire combined for one final film, the following year's The Story of Vernon and Irene Castle, before splitting. She still harbored the desire to pursue a dramatic career, but first starred in an excellent comedy, Bachelor Mother. In 1940, Rogers starred as the titular Kitty Foyle, winning an Academy Award for her performance. She next appeared in the 1941 Garson Kanin comedy Tom, Dick and Harry. After starring opposite Henry Fonda in an episode of Tales of Manhattan, she signed a three-picture deal with Paramount expressly to star in the 1944 musical hit Lady in the Dark. There she also appeared in Billy Wilder's The Major and the Minor and Leo McCarey's Once Upon a Honeymoon. Rogers then made a series of films of little distinction, including 1945's Weekend at the Waldorf (for which she earned close to 300,000 dollars, making her one of the highest-paid women in America), the following year's Magnificent Doll, and the 1947 screwball comedy It Had to Be You. Rogers then signed with the short-lived production company Enterprise, but did not find a project which suited her. Instead, for MGM she and Astaire reunited for 1949's The Barkleys of Broadway, their first color collaboration. The film proved highly successful, and rekindled her sagging career. She then starred in a pair of Warner Bros. pictures, the 1950 romance Perfect Strangers and the social drama Storm Warning. After 1951's The Groom Wore Spurs, Rogers starred in a trio of 1952 Fox comedies -- We're Not Married, Monkey Business, and Dreamboat -- which effectively halted whatever momentum her reunion with Astaire had generated, a situation remedied by neither the 1953 comedy Forever Female nor by the next year's murder mystery Black Widow. In Britain, she filmed Beautiful Stranger, followed by 1955's lively Tight Spot. With 1957's farcical Oh, Men! Oh, Women!, Rogers' Hollywood career was essentially finished, and she subsequently appeared in stock productions of Bell, Book and Candle, The Unsinkable Molly Brown, and Annie Get Your Gun.In 1959, Rogers traveled to Britain to star in a television musical, Carissima. A few years later, she starred in a triumphant TV special, and also garnered good notices, taking over for Carol Channing in Hello, Dolly! She also starred in Mame in London's West End, earning over 250,000 pounds for her work -- the highest sum ever paid a performer by the London theatrical community. In 1965, Rogers entered an agreement with the Jamaican government to produce films in the Caribbean; however, shooting there was a disaster, and the only completed film to emerge from the debacle was released as Quick, Let's Get Married. That same year, she also starred as Harlow, her final screen performance. By the 1970s, Rogers was regularly touring with a nightclub act, and in 1980 headlined Radio City Music Hall. A tour of Anything Goes was among her last major performances. In 1991, she published an autobiography, Ginger: My Story. Rogers died April 25, 1995.

Trivia: Probably no one came by the label "Runyon-esque" more honestly than Polish-born actor George E. Stone; a close friend of writer Damon Runyon, Stone was seemingly put on this earth to play characters named Society Max and Toothpick Charlie, and to mouth such colloquialisms as "It is known far and wide" and "More than somewhat." Starting his career as a Broadway "hoofer," the diminutive Stone made his film bow as "the Sewer Rat" in the 1927 silent Seventh Heaven. His most prolific film years were 1929 to 1936, during which period he showed up in dozens of Warner Bros. "urban" films and backstage musicals, and also appeared as the doomed Earle Williams in the 1931 version of The Front Page. He was so closely associated with gangster parts by 1936 that Warners felt obligated to commission a magazine article showing Stone being transformed, via makeup, into an un-gangsterish Spaniard for Anthony Adverse (1936). For producer Hal Roach, Stone played three of his oddest film roles: a self-pitying serial killer in The Housekeeper's Daughter (1938), an amorous Indian brave in Road Show (1940), and Japanese envoy Suki Yaki in The Devil With Hitler (1942). Stone's most popular role of the 1940s was as "the Runt" in Columbia's Boston Blackie series. In the late '40s, Stone was forced to severely curtail his acting assignments due to failing eyesight. Though he was totally blind by the mid-'50s, Stone's show business friends, aware of the actor's precarious financial state, saw to it that he got TV and film work, even if it meant that his co-stars had to literally lead him by the hand around the set. No one was kinder to George E. Stone than the cast and crew of the Perry Mason TV series, in which Stone was given prominent billing as the Court Clerk, a part that required nothing more of him than sitting silently at a desk and occasionally holding a Bible before a witness.

Trivia: Born Salvatore Guaragno in Brooklyn, composer Harry Warren changed his name while working as a drummer and pianist in various travelling bands. His first taste of Hollywood came via a series of handyman jobs at the Vitagraph Studios, but it wasn't until the arrival of talkies that Warren and Hollywood linked arms for keeps. From 1930 through 1967, Warren composed some 300 songs for over 50 films -- roughly a rate of 6 songs per picture. Writing the music for the Eddie Cantor musical Roman Scandals (1933), Warren so impressed the film's choreographer Busby Berkeley that Berkeley brought Warren with him to Warner Bros. for 42nd Street (1933). Working in collaboration with Al Dubin, Warren penned such everlasting tunes as "Shuffle Off to Buffalo," "Young and Healthy" and the title song "42nd Street." In rapid-fire order, Warren worked on two more Berkeley pictures within the same year: Footlight Parade ("By a Waterfall," "Honeymoon Hotel," "Shanghai Lil") and The Gold Diggers of 1933 ("We're In the Money," "Pettin' in the Park," "Remember My Forgotten Man"). The list of Harry Warren songs is virtually a shorthand history of movie musicals: "I Only Have Eyes for You," "You Must Have Been a Beautiful Baby," "Jeepers Creepers," "Chattanooga Choo Choo," "The More I See You," "That's Amore," and his three Oscar-winning numbers: "Lullaby of Broadway," "You'll Never Know" and "The Acheson Topeka and the Santa Fe." Despite the familiarity of his output, Harry Warren's name was never a household word: perhaps the more impressionable fans thought all those songs wrote themselves, or that someone more famous like Harold Arlen or Irving Berlin came up with them. Harry Warren's one chance for latter-day adulation was squelched when producer David Merrick, utilizing over a dozen Warren songs for his 1983 Broadway musical 42nd Street, perversely refused to put Warren's name on the advertising or in the programs! In recent years, singer/pianist Michael Feinstein has worked diligently in bringing the invaluable contributions of his late friend Harry Warren to the attention of audiences who'd grown up humming "Shuffle off to Buffalo" or "By a Waterfall" without ever knowing who'd put the notes on paper in the first place.

Trivia: General purpose actor George Meader appeared in films from 1940 to 1951. Meader played small roles for such big studios as Warner Bros., Universal, Paramount, MGM and Columbia. He was cast as district attorneys, judges, murder suspects, murder victims, medical examiners and doctors (including a singing doctor in 1942's Madame Curie. One of George Meader's best showings was his dual role in Boston Blackie Booked on Suspicion (1945).

Trivia: One of the most imitated comic actors in Hollywood history, stone-faced Ned Sparks began his career as a boy singer during the 1898 Klondike gold rush. After "gold fever" subsided, Sparks knocked around in tent theatricals, medicine shows, and carnivals, then tried his luck in New York. By the mid-teens, Sparks was firmly established as one of Broadway's premiere comedy actors. He was one of the leaders of the 1918 actor's strike, which led to the formation of Actors Equity, and shortly afterward made his first film appearance. Sparks' most rewarding film work came during the talkie era, when his sourpuss countenance and inimitable nasal bray was seen and heard in picture after picture. So well-established was Sparks as a dour doomsayer that he allegedly was heavily insured by Lloyds of London against the possibility of his ever being photographed with a smile on his face. Ned Sparks retired from films in 1947, at which point he apparently cut off virtually all contact with his friends and associates; when he died ten years later, only seven people attended his funeral.

Trivia: Eternally youthful Edward J. "Eddie" Nugent seemed most at home in collegiate roles. Nugent made his screen bow as wealthy young sprout Freddie in Our Dancing Daughters (1928), then went through much the same paces as Reggie in Our Modern Maidens (1929). He continued essaying bright, breezy characters with names like Tommy, Jackie, and Wally until retiring from films in 1937. One of Edward J. Nugent's more substantial talkie roles was Wint Selby in the 1936 filmization of Eugene O'Neill's Ah, Wilderness.

Trivia: The screen's premier "comic gangster," Allen Jenkins studied at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts and worked several years in regional stock companies and on Broadway before talking pictures created a demand for his talents in Hollywood. One of his first films was Blessed Event (1932), in which Jenkins played the role he'd originated in the stage version. This and most subsequent Allen Jenkins films were made at Warner Bros., where the actor made so many pictures that he was sometimes referred to as "the fifth Warner Brother." As outspoken and pugnacious off screen as on, Jenkins was a member in good standing of Hollywood's "Irish Mafia," a rotating band of Hibernian actors (including James Cagney, Pat O'Brien, Matt McHugh and Jimmy Gleason) who palled around incessantly. Popular but undisciplined and profligate with his money, Jenkins was reduced to "B" films by the 1940s and 1950s, including occasional appearances in RKO's Falcon films and the Bowery Boys epics at Monogram; still, he was as game as ever, and capable of taking any sort of physical punishment meted out to his characters. TV offered several opportunities for Jenkins in the 1950s and 1960s, notably his supporting role on 1956's Hey Jeannie, a sitcom starring Scottish songstress Jeannie Carson, and 30 weeks' worth of voice-over work as Officer Dibble on the 1961 animated series Top Cat. Going the dinner theater and summer stock route in the 1960s, Jenkins was as wiry as ever onstage, but his eyesight had deteriorated to the point that he had to memorize where the furniture was set. Making ends meet between acting jobs, Jenkins took on work as varied as tool-and-die making for Douglas Aircraft and selling cars for a Santa Monica dealer. Asked in 1965 how he felt about "moonlighting", Jenkins (who in his heyday had commanded $4000 per week) growled, "I go where the work is and do what the work is! Moonlighting's a fact. The rest is for the birds." Towards the end of his life, Jenkins was hired for cameo roles by directors who fondly remembered the frail but still feisty actor from his glory days; one of Jenkins' last appearances was as a telegrapher in the final scene of Billy Wilder's The Front Page (1974).

Trivia: Frail-looking but iron-willed American actor Henry B. Walthall set out to become a lawyer, but was drawn to the stage instead. After several seasons appearing opposite such luminaries as Henry Miller and Margaret Anglin, Walthall was firmly established in New York's theatrical circles by the time he entered films in 1909 at the invitation of director D.W. Griffith. Clearly, both men benefited from the association: Griffith was able to exploit Walthall's expertise and versatility, while Walthall learned to harness his tendency to overact. The best of the Griffith/Walthall collaborations was Birth of a Nation (1915), in which Walthall portrayed the sensitive Little Colonel. Walthall left Griffith in 1915, a move that did little to advance his career. A string of mediocre productions spelled finis to Walthall's stardom, though he continued to prosper in character parts into the 1930s. One of his best showings in the talkie era was a virtual replay of his Little Colonel characterization in the closing scenes of the 1934 Will Rogers vehicle Judge Priest. Henry B. Walthall died while filming the 1936 Warner Bros. film China Clipper; ironically, he passed away just before he was scheduled to film his character's death scene.

Trivia: With her cotton-candy hairdo and infectious smile, Richmond's Toby Wing (born Martha Virginia Wing) was the quintessential Hollywood chorus girl, rarely given much to do but always awarded choice close-ups as Busby Berkeley's kaleidoscopic cameras panned over or below Warner Bros.' line of chorines. In films from childhood, Wing first gained notice as one of the Goldwyn Girls gracing Eddie Cantor's Palmy Days (1931) and The Kid From Spain (1932), and she was highly visible in (and the very picture of) 42nd Street's "Young and Healthy" number. But when all is said and done, Wing did more cheesecake layouts than actual performing and she later became something of a joke. Retired since 1943, when she married aviator/stunt pilot Dick Merrill, a still very attractive Toby Wing appeared in the television documentary Busby Berkeley: Going Through the Roof (1998). Her sister, Pat Wing, was also a Hollywood chorus girl.

Trivia: American actor Tom Kennedy at first entertained no notions of becoming a performer. An honor student in college, Tom excelled as an athlete; he played football, wrestled, and won the national amateur heavyweight boxing title in 1908. Eschewing a job with the New York City police force for a boxing career, Kennedy didn't have anything to do with movies until he was hired as Douglas Fairbanks Sr.'s trainer in 1915. Shortly afterward, he was hired for small parts at the Keystone Studios and remained primarily a bit actor throughout the silent period. Graduating to supporting roles in talkies, he was often cast as a dumb cop or an easily confused gangster. In 1935, Kennedy achieved star billing by teaming with comedian Monty Collins in a series of 11 Columbia two-reelers. In most of these, notably the hilarious Free Rent (1936), Tom was cast as a lummox whose density caused no end of trouble to the sarcastic Collins. Outside of his short subject work, Tom's most memorable screen appearances occured in Warner Bros' Torchy Blaine B-pictures, in which he was cast as the cretinous, poetry-spouting detective Gahagan. Tom Kennedy stayed active in films into the early '60s, looking and sounding just about the same as he had in the '30s; his most conspicuous screen bits in his last years were in Billy Wilder's Some Like It Hot (1959) and Stanley Kramer's It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World (1963).

Trivia: British actor Wallis Clark was a fixture of American films from at least 1916, when he played Pencroft in the first cinemazation of Jules Verne's 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. In talkies, Clark busied himself in utility roles as lawyers, city commissioners, foreign noblemen and doctors (he's the medico who warns Warner Baxter that he's courting heart failure in 1933's 42nd Street. During the mid-1930s, he was most often found in the "B" product of Columbia Pictures. In 1939, he was briefly seen as the poker-playing Yankee captain in Gone with the Wind. Wallis Clark's resemblance to Teddy Roosevelt enabled him to portray old Rough 'n' Ready in several films, including Yankee Doodle Dandy (1942) and Jack London (1943).

Trivia: American actor Jack LaRue is frequently mistaken for Humphrey Bogart by casual fans. In both his facial features and his choice of roles, LaRue did indeed resemble Bogart, in every respect but one; Bogart became a star, while LaRue remained in the supporting ranks. After stage work in his native New York, LaRue came to Hollywood for his first film, The Mouthpiece, in 1932. For the next few years he played secondary hoodlums (for example, the hot-head hit man in the closing sequences of Night World [1932]) and unsavory lead villains -- never more unsavory than as the sex-obsessed kidnapper in The Story of Temple Drake (1933). LaRue decided to shift gears and try romantic leading roles, but this "new" LaRue disappeared after the Mayfair Studios cheapie, The Fighting Rookie (1934). He was at his most benign as "himself", trading gentle quips with Alice Faye at an outdoor carnival in the MGM all-star short Cinema Circus (1935). Otherwise, it was back to gangsters and thugs, with a few exceptions like his sympathetic role in A Gentleman from Dixie (1941). By the 1940s, LaRue had spent most of his movie savings and was compelled to seek out any work available. Awaiting his cue to appear in a small role on one movie set, LaRue was pointed out to up-and-coming Anne Shirley on a movie set as an example of what happens when a Hollywood luminary doesn't provide for possible future career reverses. Things improved a bit when LaRue moved to England in the late 1940s to play American villains in British pictures. His most memorable appearance during this period was as Slim Grissom in the notorious No Orchids for Miss Blandish (1948) -- a virtual reprisal of his part in The Story of Temple Drake. LaRue worked often in television during the last two decades of his career; in the early 1950s, he was the eerily-lit host of the spooky TV anthology Lights Out.

Trivia: African American actress Louise Beavers was born in Cincinnati and raised in California, where she attended Pasadena High School. Louise's entree into Hollywood was as maid to silent film star Leatrice Joy. With Ms. Joy's encouragement, Louise began accepting small film parts in 1923, and three years later became a full-time performer when she joined the Ladies Minstrel Troupe. After co-starring in the 1927 Universal remake of Uncle Tom's Cabin, Ms. Beavers worked steadily in films, usually playing maids, housekeepers and "mammies." Her most famous role was as troubled pancake entrepreneur Aunt Delilah in the 1934 filmization of Fannie Hurst's Imitation of Life. Another breakaway from stereotype was as the title character's strong-willed mother in The Jackie Robinson Story (1950), On television, Louise Beavers starred on the weekly sitcom Beulah from 1952 through 1953, and played Louise the maid on the 1953 pilot episode of Make Room for Daddy.

Trivia: A longtime character actor/stuntman/leading man/director, Dave O'Brien (born David Barclay) was born in Big Springs, Texas, and entered movies in the early '30s as a stuntman and occasional character actor -- he is probably best remembered by college students of the late '60s and early '70s for his portrayal of the crazed marijuana smoker in the exploitation film Reefer Madness. During the late '30s and early '40s, O'Brien also played the title role in the serial Captain Midnight, and was the responsible adult in the East Side Kids series, but it was as the lead in MGM's Pete Smith Specialty comedy shorts -- which O'Brien also directed, under his real name David Barclay -- that he was best known to '40s moviegoers. The Pete Smith shorts, which were basically comedic looks at human foibles, took full advantage of O'Brien's background in stunt work, and hold up extremely well today. O'Brien still played occasional lead roles, especially in B-pictures such as The Man Who Walks Alone (1946), an unusual comedy with serious overtones about a veteran returning home from World War II, but by the early '50s had moved into supporting parts, such as that of the stage manager in Kiss Me Kate (1953), directed by his fellow Pete Smith alumnus George Sidney. O'Brien later became a writer for Red Skelton on television.

Trivia: The stepdaughter of theatrical producer Alexander Leftwich, Patricia Ellis was barely a teenager when she made her stage debut. She came to films in 1932, playing a variety of ingenues opposite such Warner Bros. contractees as James Cagney, Dick Powell, George Arliss, Paul Muni and Joe E. Brown. Most of her post-Warners roles were unremarkable, though she demonstrated that she could carry a picture when she starred in the innocuous Republic musical Rhythm in the Clouds (1937), and proved a worthy foil to Laurel and Hardy in Block-Heads (1938). Patricia Ellis retired from films in 1941 to marry a Kansas City business executive.

Trivia: Actor and director George Irving gained fame on both the Broadway stage and in feature films. Before launching his professional career, Iriving graduated from New York's City College and the American Academy of Dramatic Arts. He then went on to play the leads in numerous Broadway shows before breaking into film in 1913, where he played many different character roles.

Trivia: Hatchet-faced character actor Charles Lane has been one of the most instantly recognizable non-stars in Hollywood for more than half a century. Lane has been a familiar figure in movies (and, subsequently, on television) for 60 years, portraying crotchety, usually miserly, bad-tempered bankers and bureaucrats. Lane was born Charles Levison in San Francisco in 1899 (some sources give his year of birth as 1905). He learned the ropes of acting at the Pasadena Playhouse during the middle/late '20s, appearing in the works of Shakespeare, Chekhov, and Noel Coward before going to Hollywood in 1930, just as sound was fully taking hold. He was a good choice for character roles, usually playing annoying types with his high-pitched voice and fidgety persona, encompassing everything from skinflint accountants to sly, fast-talking confidence men -- think of an abrasive version of Bud Abbott. His major early roles included the stage manager Max Jacobs in Twentieth Century and the tax assessor in You Can't Take It With You. One of the busier character men in Hollywood, Lane was a particular favorite of Frank Capra's, and he appeared in Mr. Deeds Goes to Town, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, Arsenic and Old Lace, It's a Wonderful Life -- with a particularly important supporting part in the latter -- and State of the Union. He played in every kind of movie from screwball comedy like Ball of Fire to primordial film noir, such as I Wake Up Screaming. As Lane grew older, he tended toward more outrageously miserly parts, in movies and then on television, where he turned up Burns & Allen, I Love Lucy, and Dear Phoebe, among other series. Having successfully played a tight-fisted business manager hired by Ricky Ricardo to keep Lucy's spending in line in one episode of I Love Lucy (and, later, the U.S. border guard who nearly arrests the whole Ricardo clan and actor Charles Boyer at the Mexican border in an episode of The Lucy-Desi Comedy Hour), Lane was a natural choice to play Lucille Ball's nemesis on The Lucy Show. Her first choice for the money-grubbing banker would have been Gale Gordon, but as he was already contractually committed to the series Dennis the Menace, she hired Lane to play Mr. Barnsdahl, the tight-fisted administrator of her late-husband's estate during the first season of the show. Lane left the series after Gordon became available to play the part of Mr. Mooney, but in short order he moved right into the part that came very close to making him a star. The CBS country comedy series Petticoat Junction needed a semi-regular villain and Lane just fit the bill as Homer Bedloe, the greedy, bad-tempered railroad executive whose career goal was to shut down the Cannonball railroad that served the town of Hooterville. He became so well-known in the role, which he only played once or twice a season, that at one point Lane found himself in demand for personal appearance tours. In later years, he also turned up in roles on The Beverly Hillbillies, playing Jane Hathaway's unscrupulous landlord, and did an excruciatingly funny appearance on The Odd Couple in the mid-'70s, playing a manic, greedy patron at the apartment sale being run by Felix and Oscar. Lane also did his share of straight dramatic roles, portraying such parts as Tony Randall's nastily officious IRS boss in the comedy The Mating Game (1959), the crusty River City town constable in The Music Man (1962) (which put Lane into the middle of a huge musical production number), the wryly cynical, impatient judge in the James Garner comedy film The Wheeler-Dealers (1963), and portraying Admiral William Standley in The Winds of War (1983), based on Herman Wouk's novel. He was still working right up until the late '80s, and David Letterman booked the actor to appear on his NBC late-night show during the middle of that decade, though his appearance on the program was somewhat disappointing and sad; the actor, who was instantly recognized by the studio audience, was then in his early nineties and had apparently not done live television in many years (if ever), and apparently hadn't been adequately prepped. He seemed confused and unable to say much about his work, which was understandable -- the nature of his character parts involved hundreds of roles that were usually each completed in a matter or two or three days shooting, across almost 60 years. Lane died at 102, in July 2007 - about 20 years after his last major film appearance.

Trivia: Dapper character actor Rolfe Sedan was nine times out of ten cast as a foreigner, usually a French maître d' or Italian tradesman. In truth, Sedan was born in New York City. He'd planned to study scientific agriculture, but was sidetracked by film and stage work in New York; he then embarked on a vaudeville career as a dialect comic. Sedan began appearing in Hollywood films in the late '20s, frequently cast in support of such major comedy attractions as Laurel and Hardy, Charlie Chase, the Marx Brothers, and Harold Lloyd. He was proudest of his work in a handful of films directed by Ernst Lubitsch, notably Bluebeard's Eighth Wife (1938). Though distressed that he never made it to the top ranks, Sedan remained very much in demand for comedy cameos into the 1980s. Rolfe Sedan's television work included the recurring role of Mr. Beasley the postman on The Burns and Allen Show, and the part of Chef Boy-Ar-Dee in several TV commercials of the mid-'70s.

Trivia: A veteran of vaudeville and Broadway, Harry Seymour came to films with extensive credits as a composer and musical-comedy star. Unfortunately, Seymour made his movie debut in 1925, at the height of the silent era. When talkies came in, he was frequently employed as a dialogue director with the Warner Bros. B-unit. From 1932 to 1958, Harry Seymour also essayed bit roles at Warners and 20th Century Fox, most often playing pianists (Irish Eyes Are Smiling, Rhapsody in Blue, A Ticket to Tomahawk, etc.).

Trivia: The brother of western star Ken Maynard, Kermit Maynard was a star halfback on the Indiana University college team. He began his career as a circus performer, billed as "The World's Champion Trick and Fancy Rider." He entered films in 1926 as a stunt man (using the stage name Tex Maynard), often doubling for his brother Ken. In 1927, Kermit starred in a series for Rayart Films, the ancestor of Monogram Pictures, then descended into minor roles upon the advent of talking pictures, taking rodeo jobs when things were slow in Hollywood. Independent producer Maurice Conn tried to build Kermit into a talkie western star between 1931 and 1933, and in 1934 launched a B-series based on the works of James Oliver Curwood, in which the six-foot Maynard played a Canadian mountie. The series was popular with fans and exhibitors alike, but Conn decided to switch back to straight westerns in 1935, robbing Maynard of his attention-getting gimmick. Kermit drifted back into supporting roles and bits, though unlike his bibulous, self-indulgent brother Ken, Kermit retained his muscular physique and square-jawed good looks throughout his career. After his retirement from acting in 1962, Kermit Maynard remained an active representative of the Screen Actors Guild, lobbying for better treatment and safer working conditions for stuntpersons and extras.

Trivia: Born into a family of travelling show folk, Lyle Talbot toured the hinterlands as a teen-aged magician. Talbot went on to work as a regional stock-company actor, pausing long enough in Memphis to form his own troupe, the Talbot Players. Like many other barnstorming performers of the 1920s, Talbot headed to Hollywood during the early-talkie era. Blessed with slick, lounge-lizard good looks, he started out as a utility lead at Warner Bros. Talbot worked steadily throughout the 1930s, playing heroes in B pictures and supporting parts in A pictures. During a loanout to Monogram Pictures in 1932, he was afforded an opportunity to co-star with Ginger Rogers in a brace of entertaining mysteries, The 13th Guest and The Shriek and the Night, which were still making the double-feature rounds into the 1940s. In 1935, Talbot and 23 other film players organized the Screen Actors Guild; to the end of his days, he could be counted upon to proudly display his SAG Card #4 at the drop of a hat. As his hairline receded and his girth widened, Talbot became one of Hollywood's busiest villains. He worked extensively in serials, playing characters on both sides of the law; in 1949 alone, he could be seen as above-suspicion Commissioner Gordon in Batman and Robin and as duplicitous Lex Luthor in Atom Man Vs. Superman. He remained in harness in the 1950s, appearing on Broadway and television. Two of his better-known assignments from this period were Joe Randolph on TV's The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet and as Bob Cummings' lascivious Air Force buddy Paul Fonda on Love That Bob. Seemingly willing to work for anyone who met his price, Talbot had no qualms about appearing in the dregs of cheapo horror films of the fifties. He was prominently cast in two of the estimable Edward D. Wood's "classics," Glen or Glenda (1953) and Plan Nine From Outer Space (1955). When asked what it was like to work for the gloriously untalented Wood, Talbot would recall with amusement that the director never failed to pay him up front for each day's work with a handful of stained, crinkly ten-dollar bills. Though he made his last film in 1960, Lyle Talbot continued touring in theatrical productions well into the late 1970s, regaling local talk-show hosts with his bottomless reserve of anecdotes from his three decades in Hollywood.

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

Trivia: A dark-haired WAMPAS Baby Star of 1934, the last year that selection was held, Ann Hovey had been in the chorus of some of the popular Warner Bros. musicals, including 42nd Street and Gold Diggers of 1933. She appeared with the other 12 WAMPAS Babies (i.e., starlets) in both Kiss and Make Up and Young and Beautiful (both 1934), and played the leading man's snobbish sister in Circus Shadows (1935). That was about it for Ann Hovey, who drifted out of films in 1938.