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: American actor Douglas Fairbanks Jr. was the son of film star Douglas Fairbanks Sr. Fairbanks Jr. made his acting debut in 1923's Stephen Steps Out, which was remarkable only in how quickly it went out of circulation. Young Fairbanks was more impressive as Lois Moran's fiancé in 1926's Stella Dallas, though it did give Fairbanks Sr. pause to see his teenaged son sporting a Fairbanksian mustache. Even as a youth, Fairbanks' restlessness would not be satisfied by mere film work; before he was 20 he'd written an amusing article about the Hollywood scene for Vanity Fair magazine. In 1927, Fairbanks appeared in a stage play, Young Woodley, which convinced detractors that he truly had talent and was not merely an appendage to his father's fame. When talking pictures came in, he demonstrated a well-modulated speaking voice and as a result worked steadily in the early 1930s. Married at that time to actress Joan Crawford, Fairbanks was a fixture of the Tinseltown social whirl, but he had a lot more going for him than suspected; in 1935 he offered the earliest evidence of his sharp business savvy by setting up his own production company, Criterion Films--the first of six such companies created under the Fairbanks imprimatur. Fairbanks had his best role in 1937's The Prisoner of Zenda, in which he was alternately charming and cold-blooded as the villainous Rupert of Hentzau. Upon his father's death in 1939, Fairbanks began to extend his activities into politics and service to his country. He helped to organize the Hollywood branch of the William Allen White Committee, designed to aid the allied cause in the European war. From 1939 through 1944, Fairbanks, ever an Anglophile, headed London's Douglas Voluntary Hospitals, which took special care of war refugees. Fairbanks was appointed by President Roosevelt to act as envoy for the Special Mission to South America in 1940, and one year later was commissioned as a lieutenant j.g. in the Navy. In 1942 he was chief officer of Special Operations, and in 1943 participated in the allied invasion of Sicily and Elba. Fairbanks worked his way up from Navy lieutenant to commander and finally, in 1954 to captain. After the war's end, the actor spent five years as chairman of CARE, sending food and aid to war-torn countries. How he had time to resume his acting career is anybody's guess, but Fairbanks was back before the cameras in 1947 with Sinbad the Sailor, taking up scriptwriting with 1948's The Exile; both films were swashbucklers, a genre he'd stayed away from while his father was alive (Fairbanks Sr. had invented the swashbuckler; it wouldn't have been right for his son to bank on that achievement during the elder Fairbanks' lifetime). Out of films as an actor by 1951 (except for a welcome return in 1981's Ghost Story), Fairbanks concentrated on the production end for the next decade; he also produced and starred in a high-quality TV anthology, Douglas Fairbanks Jr. Presents (1952-55), which belied its tiny budget with excellent scripts and superior actors. Evidently the only setback suffered by Fairbanks in the last forty years was his poorly received appearance as Henry Higgins in a 1968 revival of My Fair Lady; otherwise, the actor managed to retain his status as a respected and concerned citizen of the world, sitting in with the U.S. delegation at SEATO in 1971 and accruing many military and humanitarian awards. He also published two autobiographies, The Salad Days in 1988 and A Hell of a War in 1993. Fairbanks, Jr. died on May 7, 2000, of natural causes.

Trivia: Left fatherless at the age of four, American actress Lucille Ball developed a strong work ethic in childhood; among her more unusual jobs was as a "seeing eye kid" for a blind soap peddler. Ball's mother sent the girl to the Chautauqua Institution for piano lessons, but she was determined to pursue an acting career after watching the positive audience reaction given to vaudeville monologist Julius Tannen. Young Ball performed in amateur plays for the Elks club and at her high school, at one point starring, staging, and publicizing a production of Charley's Aunt. In 1926, Ball enrolled in the John Murray Anderson American Academy of Dramatic Art in Manhattan (where Bette Davis was the star pupil), but was discouraged by her teachers to continue due to her shyness. Her reticence notwithstanding, Ball kept trying until she got chorus-girl work and modeling jobs; but even then she received little encouragement from her peers, and the combination of a serious auto accident and recurring stomach ailments seemed to bode ill for her theatrical future. Still, Ball was no quitter, and, in 1933, she managed to become one of the singing/dancing Goldwyn Girls for movie producer Samuel Goldwyn; her first picture was Eddie Cantor's Roman Scandals (1933). Working her way up from bit roles at both Columbia Pictures (where one of her assignments was in a Three Stooges short) and RKO Radio, Ball finally attained featured billing in 1935, and stardom in 1938 -- albeit mostly in B-movies. Throughout the late 1930s and '40s, Ball's movie career moved steadily, if not spectacularly; even when she got a good role like the nasty-tempered nightclub star in The Big Street (1942), it was usually because the "bigger" RKO contract actresses had turned it down. By the time she finished a contract at MGM (she was dubbed "Technicolor Tessie" at the studio because of her photogenic red hair and bright smile) and returned to Columbia in 1947, she was considered washed up. Ball's home life was none too secure, either. She'd married Cuban bandleader Desi Arnaz in 1940, but, despite an obvious strong affection for one another, they had separated and considered divorce numerous times during the war years. Hoping to keep her household together, Ball sought out professional work in which she could work with her husband. Offered her own TV series in 1950, she refused unless Arnaz would co-star. Television was a godsend for the couple; and Arnaz discovered he had a natural executive ability, and was soon calling all the shots for what would become I Love Lucy. From 1951 through 1957, it was the most popular sitcom on television, and Ball, after years of career stops and starts, was firmly established as a megastar in her role of zany, disaster-prone Lucy Ricardo. When her much-publicized baby was born in January 1953, the story received more press coverage than President Eisenhower's inauguration. With their new Hollywood prestige, Ball and Arnaz were able to set up the powerful Desilu Studios production complex, ultimately purchasing the facilities of RKO, where both performers had once been contract players. But professional pressures and personal problems began eroding the marriage, and Ball and Arnaz divorced in 1960, although both continued to operate Desilu. Ball gave Broadway a try in the 1960 musical Wildcat, which was successful but no hit, and, in 1962, returned to TV to solo as Lucy Carmichael on The Lucy Show. She'd already bought out Arnaz's interest in Desilu, and, before selling the studio to Gulf and Western in 1969, Ball had become a powerful executive in her own right, determinedly guiding the destinies of such fondly remembered TV series as Star Trek and Mission: Impossible. The Lucy Show ended in the spring of 1968, but Ball was back that fall with Here's Lucy, in which she played "odd job" specialist Lucy Carter and co-starred with her real-life children, Desi Jr. and Lucie. Here's Lucy lasted until 1974, at which time her career took some odd directions. She poured a lot of her own money in a film version of the Broadway musical Mame (1974), which can charitably be labeled an embarrassment. Her later attempts to resume TV production, and her benighted TV comeback in the 1986 sitcom Life With Lucy, were unsuccessful, although Ball, herself, continued to be lionized as the First Lady of Television, accumulating numerous awards and honorariums. Despite her many latter-day attempts to change her image -- in addition to her blunt, commandeering off-stage personality -- Ball would forever remain the wacky "Lucy" that Americans had loved intensely in the '50s. She died in 1989.

Trivia: American actress Peggy Conklin was first a popular star on Broadway during the early 1930s before she tried to make it in the film industry. She only appeared in a few films such as The Devil Is a Sissy (1936) before returning to the theater.

Trivia: Bowman attended the American Academy of Dramatic Arts and began a career as a stage actor and radio singer in the '30s. Beginning with his debut in Internes Can't Take Money (1937), he spent seven years playing second leads, often as a playboy thanks to his suave, elegant style and dapper, handsome looks. Bowman hit his stride in the mid '40s, notably in Smash-Up (1947) opposite Susan Hayward. Never a major star, he began concentrating more on his stage work in the late '40s. He briefly starred in the TV series The Adventures of Ellery Queen (1950-51). After the mid '50s Bowman retired from the screen (except for a role in Youngblood Hawke in 1964), after which he went on to become the radio and TV consultant for the Republican Senatorial and Congressional Committee in Washington and later for Bethlehem Steel, coaching politicians and businessmen in speaking and on-camera techniques.

Trivia: Little Eunice Quedens' first brush with the performing arts came at age seven, when she won a WCTU medal for her recital of the pro-temperance poem "No Kicka My Dog." After graduating from high school, she became a professional actress on the California stock company circuit. Still using her given name, she played a blonde seductress in the 1929 Columbia talkie Song of Love then joined a touring repertory theater. After another brief film appearance in 1933's Dancing Lady, she was urged by a producer to change her name for professional purposes. Allegedly inspired by a container of Elizabeth Arden cold cream, Eunice Quedens reinvented herself as Eve Arden. Several successful appearances in the annual Ziegfeld Follies followed, and in 1937 Arden returned to films as a young character actress. From Stage Door (1937) onward, she was effectively typecast as the all-knowing witheringly sarcastic "best friend" who seldom got the leading man but always got the best lines. Her film roles in the 1940s ranged from such typical assignments as sophisticated magazine editor "Stonewall" Jackson in Cover Girl (1944) to such hilariously atypical performances as athletic Russian sniper Natalia Moskoroff in The Doughgirls (1944). In 1945, she earned an Oscar nomination for her portrayal of Joan Crawford's sardonic but sympathetic business partner in Mildred Pierce. In July of 1948, she launched the popular radio situation comedy Our Miss Brooks, earning a place in the hearts of schoolteachers (and sitcom fans) everywhere with her award-winning portrayal of long-suffering but ebullient high school teacher Connie Brooks. Our Miss Brooks was transferred to television in 1952, running five successful seasons. Less successful was the 1957 TVer The Eve Arden Show, in which the star played authoress Liza Hammond. This failure was neutralized by her subsequent stage tours in such plays as Auntie Mame and Hello, Dolly! and her well-received film appearances in Anatomy of a Murder (1959) and Dark at the Top of the Stairs (1960). In 1967, she returned to TV to co-star with Kaye Ballard on the chucklesome The Mothers-in-Law which lasted two years. And in 1978, she became a favorite of a new generation with her performance as Principal McGee in the phenomenally successful film version of Broadway's Grease. In 1985, Eve Arden came out with her autobiography, The Three Phases of Eve.

Trivia: A model prior to her screen debut in 1934, minor-league dumb blonde comedienne Dorothea Kent usually turned up as the star's squeaky-voiced girlfriend. But unlike the better remembered Marie Wilson or Joyce Compton, Kent was mainly relegated to programmers, often of the poverty row variety. In 1936, she enjoyed a rare starring role -- as an heiress, no less -- in Carnival Queen, a Universal potboiler with Robert Wilcox, but her dumb blonde looks worked against her and she almost immediately returned to supporting roles.

Trivia: Hollywood has seen the coming and going of many comic geniuses, but only a select few have been as universally beloved as gentle, low-key Red Skelton and his cavalcade of characters that included the clown Freddie the Freeloader, the goofy Clem Kadiddlehopper, and his seagulls Gertrude and Heathcliffe. That many of his best characters were clowns comes as no surprise for Skelton's father was a circus clown who died two months before Skelton was born Bernard Richard Skelton in Vincennes, IN. Skelton's mother was a charwoman and barely earned enough for them to get by. They were so poor that the comedian began singing for pennies on the street when he was only seven. At age ten, Skelton quit school and joined a traveling medicine show. He gained further experience on the burlesque and vaudeville circuits and on showboats. He became a standup comic in the early '30s, playing one-night gigs in small nightclubs.His big break came after he developed a mimed donut-dunking routine that led to his employment at the Paramount Theater and then to a successful radio career and a long-running show during which he developed most of his characters. Skelton made his screen debut playing Itchy Falkner in Having a Wonderful Time (1938). He billed himself as Richard "Red" Skelton. Contracted to MGM during the '40s and '50s, Skelton played character roles and the occasional lead in numerous films, many of which were musicals and comedies. In 1951, Skelton launched a variety show that would alternately air on CBS and NBC until 1971. It was there that Skelton developed his characters and gained his most devoted following. Each show would begin with Skelton holding an unlit cigar and offering a warm greeting and doing a brief monologue; it would also contain a "silent spot" in which Skelton demonstrated his mastery of pantomime. All of the characters he created on radio made regular appearances, as did a brand new one, Freddy the Freeloader, a silent clown who could be as pathetic as he was funny. Musical accompaniment was provided by David Rose and his orchestra. Rose had been with Skelton since his radio days. From the series' beginning to its end, Skelton would finish his show with a heartfelt "Good night and God Bless." Throughout the program's long, extraordinarily successful (it was never out of the Top Ten in the Nielsen ratings-run), Skelton occasionally appeared in feature films. In 1953, he played a rare dramatic role in The Clown, which was a remake of The Champ. Skelton had his final starring role in Public Pigeon No. One (1957). After that he made cameos and guest star appearances in films such Those Magnificent Men in Their Flying Machines (1965). In addition to performing, Skelton excelled at several other interests. That he was a renowned oil painter of clowns is well known, but he also designed dishes and was an expert at creating bonsai trees. Skelton also composed about 8,000 songs, including the theme for the film Made in Paris (1966). For his lifetime of contributions in entertainment he was awarded an honorary Doctorate of Literature from Emerson College of Boston, a Doctor of Human Letters from Vincennes University, and a doctorate of Theater Arts at Indiana State University. Skelton was a 33rd Degree Mason, the order's highest possible level. He also frequently contributed to children's charities. Though no longer a regular in films and television, Skelton continued performing live until his death from pneumonia at age 84.

Trivia: For nearly two decades in Hollywood, Scottish-born actor Donald Meek lived up to his name by portraying a series of tremulous, shaky-voiced sycophants and milquetoasts -- though he was equally effective (if not more so) as nail-hard businessmen, autocratic schoolmasters, stern judges, compassionate doctors, small-town Babbitts, and at least one Nazi spy! An actor since the age of eight, Meek joined an acrobatic troupe, which brought him to America in his teens. At 18 Meek joined the American military and was sent to fight in the Spanish-American War. He contracted yellow fever, which caused him to lose his hair -- and in so doing, secured his future as a character actor. Meek made his film bow in 1928; in the early talkie era, he starred with John Hamilton in a series of New York-filmed short subjects based on the works of mystery writer S. S. Van Dyne. Relocating to Hollywood in 1933, Meek immediately found steady work in supporting roles. So popular did Meek become within the next five years that director Frank Capra, who'd never worked with the actor before, insisted that the gratuitous role of Mr. Poppins be specially written for Meek in the film version of You Can't Take It With You (1938) (oddly, this first association with Capra would be the last). Meek died in 1946, while working in director William Wellman's Magic Town; his completed footage remained in the film, though he was certainly conspicuous by his absence during most of the proceedings.

Trivia: Actor Jack Carson was born in Canada but raised in Milwaukee, which he always regarded as his hometown. After attending Carroll College, Carson hit the vaudeville trail in an act with his old friend Dave Willock (later a prominent Hollywood character actor in his own right). Carson's first movie contract was at RKO, where he spent an uncomfortable few years essaying bits in "A" pictures and thankless supporting parts in "B"s. His fortunes improved when he moved to Warner Bros. in 1941, where after three years' apprenticeship in sizeable secondary roles he achieved his first starring vehicle, Make Your Own Bed (44); he was cast in this film opposite Jane Wyman, as part of an effort by Warners to create a Carson-Wyman team. While the studio hoped that Carson would become a comedy lead in the manner of Bob Hope, he proved himself an able dramatic actor in films like The Hard Way (43) and Mildred Pierce. Still, he was built up as Warners' answer to Hope, especially when teamed in several films with the studio's "Bing Crosby", Dennis Morgan. Continuing to alternate comic and dramatic (sometimes villainous) roles throughout the 1950s, Carson starred in his own Jack Benny-style radio series, appeared successfully as a stand-up comedian in Las Vegas, and was one of four rotating hosts on the 1950 TV variety series All-Star Revue. Carson was married four times (once to Lola Albright) Shortly after completing his role in the Disney TV comedy Sammy the Way Out Seal, Carson died of stomach cancer on January 2, 1963 (the same day that actor/producer Dick Powell succumbed to cancer).

Trivia: Evidently weaned on a diet of pickles and vinegar, wizened screen sourpuss Clarence H. Wilson grimaced and glowered his way through over 100 films from 1920 until his death in 1941. Clarence Hummel Wilson was born in Cincinnati, OH. He began his 46-year acting career in Philadelphia in 1895, in a stock company, and spent years touring the United States and Canada in various road shows. On stage in New York, he later played supporting roles to such stars as James K. Hackett, Virginia Harned, Marguerite Clark, Amelia Bingham, Charles Cherry, and Wilton Lackaye. He entered motion pictures in 1920 and ultimately moved to Hollywood. With the coming of sound, his bald, mustachioed, stoop-shouldered persona, topped by a distinctive and annoying high, whining voice, and coupled with his broad approach to acting, made him an ideal villain. Wilson, whose slightly squinty yet hovering gaze seemed to invoke bad fortune upon whomever it landed, played dozens of irascible judges, taciturn coroners, impatient landlords, flat-footed process servers, angry school superintendents, miserly businessmen, and cold-hearted orphanage officials. Whenever he smiled, which wasn't often, one could almost hear the creak of underused facial muscles. Though he generally played bits, he was occasionally afforded such larger roles as the drunken sideshow-impresario father of heroine Helen Mack in Son of Kong (1933), with his pathetic trained animal act. He was the perfect over-the-top villain, a nastier male equivalent to Margaret Hamilton, and indispensable to comedy films, in which he served brilliantly as the humorless foil of such funmakers as W.C. Fields, Wheeler & Woolsey, Charley Chase, and especially the Our Gang kids. Although he appeared in such major films as the 1931 version of The Front Page (playing the corrupt sheriff) and the aforementioned Son of Kong, Wilson's most prominent screen roles for modern audiences were in a pair of short subjects in the Our Gang series of films: first as Mr. Crutch, the greedy orphanage manager who is undone when a pair of adults get transformed into children by a magical lamp in Shrimps for a Day (1934); and, at the other end of the series' history, as nasty schoolboard chairman Alonzo K. Pratt in Come Back, Miss Pipps (1941), his penultimate film release.

Trivia: While visiting a high school pal in Los Angeles in 1924, roly-poly Grady Sutton made the acquaintance of his friend's brother, director William A. Seiter. Quite taken by Sutton's bucolic appearance and comic potential, Seiter invited Sutton to appear in his next film, The Mad Whirl. Sutton enjoyed himself in his bit role, and decided to remain in Hollywood, where he spent the next 47 years playing countless minor roles as dimwitted Southerners and country bumpkins. Usually appearing in comedies, Sutton supported such master clowns as Laurel and Hardy and W.C. Fields (the latter reportedly refused to star in 1940's The Bank Dick unless Sutton was given a good part); he also headlined in two short-subjects series, Hal Roach's The Boy Friends and RKO's The Blondes and the Redheads. Through the auspices of Blondes and the Redheads director George Stevens, Sutton was cast as Katharine Hepburn's cloddish dancing partner in Alice Adams (1935), the first of many similar roles. Sutton kept his hand in movies until 1971, and co-starred on the 1966 Phyllis Diller TV sitcom The Pruitts of Southampton. A willing interview subject of the the 1960s and 1970s, Grady Sutton went into virtual seclusion after the death of his close friend, director George Cukor.

Trivia: A wild-haired character comedian from Poland, Shimen Ruskin popped up in scores of Hollywood films and television shows from 1938-1975. Having begun his screen career playing bits and performing odd jobs in Yiddish-language films made in New York, Ruskin turned to acting full-time in the 1940s, usually playing excitable types such as headwaiters, bartenders, store keepers, haberdashery salesmen, and the like. Late in life, he appeared as Meyer, the waiter on the short-lived television series The Corner Bar (1972-1973) and played Mordcha in the screen version of Fiddler on the Roof (1971).

Trivia: Never a Hollywood glamour girl, brunette Brooklynite Dorothy Tree was a versatile general purpose actress, playing everything from a middle-class housewife to a Nazi spy. After graduating from Cornell and working extensively on Broadway, Tree came to Hollywood for a part in the Fox musical comedy Just Imagine (1930). She remained in films for the next twenty years, appearing in such roles as Elizabeth Edwards in Abe Lincoln in Illinois (1940) and Teresa Wright's mother in The Men (1950) (Marlon Brando's first film). Given her expertise at dialects and subtleties of intonations, it isn't surprising that Dorothy Tree later became a top vocal coach, writing a public-speaking guide titled A Woman's Voice.

Trivia: Diminutive American character actor Harlan Briggs was a vaudeville and stage performer since the turn of the century. After spending three years on Broadway appearing with Walter Huston in the stage adaptation of Sinclair Lewis' Dodsworth, Briggs was brought to Hollywood in 1935 to re-create his role. Because of post-production delays, movie audiences first saw Briggs not in Dodsworth but in Selznick's The Garden of Allah (1936). In films until 1952's Carrie, Harlan Briggs most often portrayed small-town big-wigs, usually with an oversized pipe clamped between his teeth; his most memorable role was as the eminently bribeable Doctor Stall in W.C. Fields' The Bank Dick (1940).

Trivia: In films from 1930, comely actress Inez Courtney fluctuated between substantial second leads and bit parts for nearly a decade. While she had plenty of screen time in films like 1933's Hold Your Man, Courtney conversely played more than a few if-you-blink-you-miss-her parts in pictures like 1937's Hurricane (she's the well-dressed lady to whom Thomas Mitchell relates the film's plot in the opening scene). Under contract to Columbia from 1934 through 1940, Courtney appeared in everything from 2-reelers (Andy Clyde's It's the Cats) to series programmers (1939's Blondie Meets the Boss). Apparently, Inez Courtney and the film industry parted company in 1940.

Trivia: Billed Baby Jane in her earliest films, this Hollywood-born-and-bred moppet actress was the sister of 1940s teenage star Rita Quigley. Although the younger of the two, Juanita entered films first, usually playing the leading lady as a young girl. But unlike Bette Davis' psychotic former child star, this Baby Jane left films to enter a convent. After several years as a nun, Quigley realized that she had made a mistake, left the vocation, and married. She returned to the entertainment industry as an adult and can be spotted as an extra in (of all things) Porky's II: The Next Day (1983).

Trivia: Tall, handsome, wavy-haired character actor George Meeker was never in the upper echelons of Hollywood stardom; off-camera, however, he was highly regarded and much sought after -- as an expert polo player. Meeker switched from stage to screen in the silent era, playing leading roles in such important features as Four Sons (1928). In talkies, Meeker seemingly took every part that was tossed his way, from full secondary leads to one-line bits. In his larger roles, Meeker was frequently cast as a caddish "other man," a spineless wastrel who might be (but seldom was) the mystery killer, or the respectable businessman who's actually a conniving crook. He showed up frequently in the films of Humphrey Bogart, most memorably as the white-suited gent in Casablanca (1942) who turns to Bogart after the arrest of Peter Lorre and sneers "When they come to get me, Rick, I hope you'll be more of a help." Other significant George Meeker credits include the role of Robespierre in Marie Antoinette (1938) (cut down to a sniff and a single line -- "Guilty!" -- in the final release print), the supercilious dude who wins Mary Beth Hughes away from Henry Fonda in The Ox-Bow Incident (1943), and the smarmy would-be bridegroom of heiress Dorothy Lamour in The Road to Rio (1947).

Trivia: The angular victim of an abscessed molar in W.C. Fields uproarious The Dentist (1932) -- in order to pull the tooth, Fields is forced to carry her around in a manner that, for all the world, looks like a frenetic case of coitus -- Elise Cavanna shared a birthplace with the great comedian (Philadelphia) and had appeared in his abortive Broadway-bound The Comic Supplement in 1925. The famously loyal Fields would demand the former dancer's services whenever he could, and the statuesque Cavanna was equally memorable as a typical overbearing Fields wife in The Barber Shop (1933). Offscreen, Cavanna was married to the art critic Merle Armitage and was herself known for a fine series of abstract oil paintings, one of which, Elevation, is exhibited at the Whitney Museum of American Art. Shortly before her death from cancer in 1963, Cavanna, with second husband James Barrett Welton, wrote the cookbook Gourmet Cookery for a Low Fat Diet.

Trivia: In the latter stages of her long career, musical comedy star Ann Miller spent much of her time thanking her colleagues for not revealing a secret concerning her early days in Hollywood. According to Miller, she was but 14 years old when she began receiving sizeable screen roles in such RKO films as New Faces of 1937 (1937), Having Wonderful Time (1938), and Room Service (1938), thus it was illegal for her to appear on the set without a guardian or tutor. Perhaps the reason that her co-stars conspired to keep her age a secret was because she was doing so; Miller was in fact 18 when she signed her RKO contract. Not that any of this bears the slightest relevance to Ms. Miller's dazzling terpsichorean talent (in one of her Columbia-starring vehicles, she set a world record for taps-per-minute) nor her stellar contributions to such MGM Technicolor musicals as Easter Parade (1948), On the Town (1949), and Kiss Me Kate (1953). More famous for her winning personality and shapely stems than her acting ability, Miller tended to flounder a bit in her non-singing and non-dancing appearances; thus, when the MGM brand of musicals went out of fashion in the mid-'50s, her film career came to a standstill. Continuing to prosper on the nightclub circuit, Miller made a return before the cameras in a celebrated 1970 TV soup commercial, produced and directed by Stan Freberg and choreographed by Hermes Pan in the all-stops-out manner of a Busby Berkeley spectacular. During that same period, Miller played to SRO crowds in the touring company of Mame. In the mid-'70s, she enjoyed a personal triumph when she co-starred with Mickey Rooney in the Broadway musical Sugar Babies. Ann Miller is the author of two autobiographies, 1974's Miller's High Life (which details her three marriages in an engagingly cheeky fashion) and 1990's Tapping the Force (which dwelt upon her fascination with the Occult).

Trivia: Mustachioed Hooper Atchley was one of Hollywood's better "brains villains," one of those suspicious yet nattily dressed saloon owners, assayers, or cattle barons calling the shots in B-Westerns of the '30s and '40s. He came to films in 1928 after a long stage career that included Broadway appearances opposite Marie Dressler in The Great Gambol (1913). Onscreen Atchley came into his own in talkies where his distinguished stage-trained voice lent credence to numerous bad deeds opposite the likes of Ken Maynard and Tim McCoy. The actor's screen career waned in the latter part of the '30s; a fact that may have contributed to his 1943 suicide by a gunshot.

Trivia: An Ohio farm boy, Dean Jagger dropped out of school several times before attending Wabash College. He was a schoolteacher for several years before opting to study acting at Chicago's Lyceum Art Conservatory. By the time he made his first film in 1929, Jagger had worked in stock, vaudeville and radio. At first, Hollywood attempted to turn Jagger into a standard leading man, fitting the prematurely balding actor with a lavish wig and changing his name to Jeffrey Dean. It wasn't long before the studios realized that Jagger's true calling was as a character actor. One of his few starring roles after 1940 was as the title character in Brigham Young, Frontiersman--though top billing went to Tyrone Power, cast as a fictional Mormon follower. Jagger won an Academy Award for his sensitive performance in Twelve O'Clock High (1949) as one of General Gregory Peck's officers (and the film's narrator). Physically and vocally, Jagger would have been ideal for the role of Dwight D. Eisenhower, but he spent his career studiously avoiding that assignment. Having commenced his professional life as a teacher, Dean Jagger came full circle in 1964 when cast as Principal Albert Vane on the TV series Mr. Novak.

Trivia: Of Anglo/French parentage, birdlike comic actor Etienne Girardot was an established theatrical favorite long before the turn of the century. One of Girardot's best-loved stage roles was Lord Fancourt Babberly in Charley's Aunt; a production photo of the actor in female drag appeared for years in the Collier's Encyclopedia entry on "Theatre." He entered films in 1912 as star of Vitagraph's The Violin of Monsieur. Then it was back to the stage, where in 1933 he scored a personal success as balmy self-styled millionaire Mr. Clark in Hecht and MacArthur's Twentieth Century. It was this role that brought Girardot back to movies on a full-time basis, where he remained until his death in 1939. Etienne Girardot's film roles included crabby coroner Dr. Doremus in two "Philo Vance" mysteries; orphanage official Wyckoff in Curly Top (1935), who endures the indignity of being imitated (quite well) by star Shirley Temple; and King Louis' senile physician in The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1939).

Trivia: Fresh out of high school, statuesque brunette actress Frances Gifford played bits and extra roles until landing the lead in the low-budget Mercy Plane (1939), in which she was cast opposite her first husband James Dunn. Two years later she was seen as Robert Benchley's guide through the Disney animation studios in The Reluctant Dragon (1941), and, more importantly, as the fetchingly unclad, endlessly resourceful Nyoka in the Republic serial Jungle Girl (1941). The popularity of the serial might have typecast her forever in such roles, but Gifford's ambition was to star in features. Through the sponsorship of an MGM executive, she landed a contract at that most prestigious of studios, playing leading roles in such films as Our Vines Have Tender Grapes (1945) and She Went to the Races (1945). Her best showing at MGM was as the tormented heroine of Arch Oboler's The Arnelo Affair (1947). On the verge of bigger things, Gifford suffered a series of profound personal setbacks in the late '40s, not least of which was an automobile accident that nearly killed her. She made a few comeback attempts in the 1950s, but spent most of the decade in and out of mental institutions. After nearly 25 years of treatment, Frances Gifford was finally able to start her life over in 1983, devoting the rest of her days to charitable work.

Trivia: An exotic-looking brunette leading lady of silent B-pictures, Peggy Montgomery is often confused with silent child star Baby Peggy, whose family name is Montgomery.

Trivia: Wesley Barry was 11 years old when he made his film debut, playing one of Mary Pickford's brothers in Amarilly of Clothesline Alley (1918). He was launched on a busy film career as a supporting actor that would last until the late '30s. In the 1940s, Barry became a director and producer of B-movies, such as The Steel Fist (1952) and Racing Blood (1954). He directed his last film, Creation of the Humanoids, in 1962.

Trivia: A peppy presence at Paramount during World War II, Betty Jane Rhodes had been a teenage radio vocalist ("California Melodies," "Birth of the Blues") and nightclub singer prior to entering films in 1936. At first billed plain Jane Rhodes or Betty Rhodes, she seems to have grazed all of Paramount's wartime musicals, providing an energetic addition to such films as The Fleet's In (1942), Priorities on Parade (1942), Star Spangled Rhythm (1942; the "Swing Shift" number in particular), and Salute for Three (1943). Rhodes later signed with Decca Records and RCA Victor, finally hitting the charts in 1946 with "Rumors Are Flying" by George Weiss and Benny Benjamin. She returned in 1948 with "Button and Bows," from the Bob Hope hit The Paleface, her bright rendition of the popular song remaining at the top of the charts for nearly three months.

Trivia: An established stage actress, Margaret Seddon made the transition to films in 1915. During the silent era, Seddon alternated between motherly roles and haughty matronly types; one of her best parts of the 1920s was Miss Trafalgar Gowes in The Actress, a 1927 adaptation of Arthur Wing Pinero's Trelawny of the Wells. Active until 1951, she essayed minor roles in everything from Gone With the Wind (1939) to the Dr. Kildare films. Margaret Seddon earned an honored spot in the annals of film history as Jane Faulkner, one of the two "pixilated" Faulkner sisters, in Frank Capra's Mr. Deeds Goes to Town (1936); she later toured with her Deeds co-star Margaret McWade in a vaudeville act called "the Pixilated Sisters."

Trivia: A lovely brunette starlet with RKO from 1935-1939, Kay Sutton married and divorced millionaire Daniel Reid Topping and cinematographer Edward Cronjager. She worked steadily through the 1930s and '40s, most notably in The Bank Dick (1940). Sutton last appeared in Pajama Party in 1964. She died in 1988 at the age of 72.

Trivia: A handsome bit part player, onscreen from 1937, William Corson played Ramon, the masked avenger's second-in-command in the Republic Pictures serial Zorro's Fighting Legion (1939). Although overshadowed by the star, Reed Hadley, Corson cut a fine figure and should have gone on to bigger and better things. But serial fame rarely carried over into mainstream fare and Corson left the screen soon after.

Trivia: The son of actors James and Lucille Gleason, Russell Gleason started his own career as a juvenile in several of his parents' stage productions. Russell made the transition to films in 1929's The Sophomore; the following year, he scored a personal and critical success as Private Muller in the Oscar-winning All Quiet on the Western Front. His subsequent screen assignments included the role of perennial boyfriend Herbert Thompson in 20th Century-Fox's "Jones Family" series, and Republic's "Higgins Family" outings, in which he co-starred with his mother and father. Russell Gleason was 37 years old when he died in an accidental fall from a hotel window; his widow was radio and screen actress Cynthia Lindsay, who in 1975 wrote Dear Boris, an affectionate memoir of the Gleason family's close friend Boris Karloff.

Trivia: Born into a circus family, Florence Lake and her younger brother Arthur Lake (later the star of the Blondie films) were performing on-stage before they knew how to read or write. Florence Lake began playing juvenile roles in films as early as 1916, occasionally appearing with Arthur in the Fox Kiddies series. She made her talkie debut in 1929, at first receiving sizeable supporting roles in such features as The Rogue Song (1930). By 1932, however, she was firmly established in two-reel comedies, appearing as the birdbrained, garrulous wife of Edgar Kennedy in a series of RKO Radio shorts which lasted until 1948. During this period she also essayed innumerable uncredited bits in features, usually playing a woebegone wallflower or motor-mouthed "best friend." In the early '50s, she could occasionally be seen in villainous roles on such TV series as The Lone Ranger. Active until the 1970s, Florence Lake made an unforgettable appearance as the octogenarian blind date of newly divorced Lou Grant (Edward Asner) on a 1973 episode of The Mary Tyler Moore Show.

Trivia: Born Harold Albershart, he played football and modeled before working as a stage actor in the late '20s. He debuted onscreen in Not Quite Decent (1929), playing the romantic lead; he had similar roles in 25 films made during the '30s at various studios. He began starring in serials in 1940. In 1944 he made his first starring Western, and for almost a decade he was a Western star, twice appearing (1951 and 1953) on the Top Ten Western Money-makers list and appearing in over 100 features and serials, often with his "wonder" horse Blackjack; he portrayed Red Ryder in eight films, then adopted the name "Rocky" Lane in 1947. After B-movie Westerns fizzled out in 1953 his career came to a virtual halt, and he had supporting roles in just three more films. In the '60s he was the dubbed voice of the talking horse on the TV sitcom Mr. Ed.

Trivia: Russia-born actress Vera Nemirou got her start on stage as a child. In 1904 she and her family emigrated to New York where she began working in Yiddish theater, and from there she began working in British and U.S. vaudeville. Nemirou started her film career in 1920 when she played a variety of character roles. She was frequently cast as Jewish mothers up through 1946.

Trivia: American actor Douglas Fairbanks Sr., instilled with a love of dramatics by his Shakespearean-scholar father, was never fully satisfied with theatrical work. A born athlete and extrovert, Fairbanks felt the borders of the stage were much too confining, even when his theatrical work allowed him to tour the world. The wide-open spaces of the motion picture industry were more his style, and in 1915 Fairbanks jumped at the chance to act in the film version of the old stage perennial The Lamb. Fairbanks became the top moneymaker for the Triangle Film Company, starring in an average of 10 pictures a year for a weekly salary of $2000. He specialized in comedies--not the slapstick variety, but free-wheeling farces in which he usually played a wealthy young man thirsting for adventure. Fairbanks was a savvy businessman, and in 1919 he reasoned that he could have more control--and a larger slice of the profits -- if he produced as well as starred in his pictures. Working in concert with his actress-wife Mary Pickford (a star in her own right, billed as "America's Sweetheart"), his best friend Charlie Chaplin, and pioneer director D. W. Griffith, Fairbanks formed a new film company, United Artists. The notion of actors making their own movies led one film executive to wail, "The lunatics have taken over the asylum!", but Fairbanks' studio was a sound investment, and soon other actors were dabbling in the production end of the business. Still most successful in contemporary comedies in 1920, Fairbanks decided to try a momentary change of pace, starring in the swashbuckling The Mark of Zorro (1920). The public was enthralled, and for the balance of his silent career Fairbanks specialized in lavish costume epics with plenty of fast-moving stunt work and derring-do. While several of these films still hold their fascination today, notably The Thief of Baghdad (1924) and The Black Pirate (1926), some historians argue that Fairbanks' formerly breezy approach to moviemaking became ponderous, weighed down in too much spectacle for the Fairbanks personality to fully shine. When talkies came, Fairbanks wasn't intimidated, since he was stage-trained and had a robust speaking voice; unfortunately, his first talking picture, 1929's Taming of the Shrew (in which he co-starred with Mary Pickford), was an expensive failure. Fairbanks' talking pictures failed to click at the box office; even the best of them, such as Mr. Robinson Crusoe (1932), seemed outdated rehashes of his earlier silent successes. Fairbanks' last film, the British-made Private Life of Don Juan (1934), unflatteringly revealed his advanced years and his flagging energy. Marital difficulties, unwise investments and health problems curtailed his previously flamboyant lifestyle considerably, though he managed to stave off several takeover bids for United Artists and retained the respect of his contemporaries. Fairbanks died in his sleep, not long after he'd announced plans to come out of retirement. He was survived by his actor son Douglas Fairbanks Jr., who'd inherited much of his dad's professional panache and who after his father's death began a successful career in film swashbucklers on his own.