Trivia: In an industry of prima donnas, actress Barbara Stanwyck was universally recognized as a consummate professional; a supremely versatile performer, her strong screen presence established her as a favorite of directors, including Cecil B. De Mille, Fritz Lang, and Frank Capra. Born Ruby Stevens July 16, 1907, in Brooklyn, NY, she was left orphaned at the age of four and raised by her showgirl sister. Upon quitting school a decade later, she began dancing in local speakeasies and at the age of 15 became a Ziegfeld chorus girl. In 1926, Stanwyck made her Broadway debut in The Noose, becoming a major stage star in her next production, Burlesque. MGM requested a screen test, but she rejected the offer. She did, however, agree to a supporting role in 1927's Broadway Nights, and after completing her stage run in 1929 appeared in the drama The Locked Door. With her husband, comedian Frank Fay, Stanwyck traveled to Hollywood. After unsuccessfully testing at Warner Bros., she appeared in Columbia's low-budget Mexicali Rose, followed in 1930 by Capra's Ladies of Leisure, the picture which shot her to stardom. A long-term Columbia contract was the result, and the studio soon loaned Stanwyck to Warners for 1931's Illicit. It was a hit, as was the follow-up Ten Cents a Dance. Reviewers were quite taken with her, and with a series of successful pictures under her belt, she sued Columbia for a bigger salary; a deal was struck to share her with Warners, and she split her time between the two studios for pictures including Miracle Woman, Night Nurse, and Forbidden, a major hit which established her among the most popular actresses in Hollywood. Over the course of films like 1932's Shopworn, Ladies They Talk About, and Baby Face, Stanwyck developed an image as a working girl, tough-minded and often amoral, rarely meeting a happy ending; melodramas including 1934's Gambling Lady and the following year's The Woman in Red further established the persona, and in Red Salute she even appeared as a student flirting with communism. Signing with RKO, Stanwyck starred as Annie Oakley; however, her contract with the studio was non-exclusive, and she also entered into a series of multi-picture deals with the likes of Fox (1936's A Message to Garcia) and MGM (His Brother's Wife, co-starring Robert Taylor, whom she later married).For 1937's Stella Dallas, Stanwyck scored the first of four Academy Award nominations. Refusing to be typecast, she then starred in a screwball comedy, Breakfast for Two, followed respectively by the downcast 1938 drama Always Goodbye and the caper comedy The Mad Miss Manton. After the 1939 De Mille Western Union Pacific, she co-starred with William Holden in Golden Boy, and with Henry Fonda she starred in Preston Sturges' outstanding The Lady Eve. For the 1941 Howard Hawks comedy Ball of Fire, Stanwyck earned her second Oscar nomination. Another superior film, Capra's Meet John Doe, completed a very successful year. Drama was the order of the day for the next few years, as she starred in pictures like The Gay Sisters and The Great Man's Lady. In 1944, she delivered perhaps her most stunning performance in Billy Wilder's classic noir Double Indemnity. Stanwyck's stunning turn as a femme fatale secured her a third Oscar bid and helped make her, according to the IRS, the highest-paid woman in America. It also won her roles in several of the decade's other great film noirs, including 1946's The Strange Love of Martha Ivers and 1949's The File on Thelma Jordon. In between, Stanwyck also starred in the 1948 thriller Sorry, Wrong Number, her final Academy Award-nominated performance. The 1950s, however, were far less kind, and strong roles came her way with increasing rarity. With Anthony Mann she made The Furies and with Lang she appeared opposite Marilyn Monroe in 1952's Clash by Night, but much of her material found her typecast -- in 1953's All I Desire, she portrayed a heartbroken mother not far removed from the far superior Stella Dallas, while in 1954's Blowing Wild she was yet another tough-as-nails, independent woman. Outside of the all-star Executive Suite, Stanwyck did not appear in another major hit; she let her hair go gray, further reducing her chances of winning plum parts, and found herself cast in a series of low-budget Westerns. Only Samuel Fuller's 1957 picture Forty Guns, a film much revered by the Cahiers du Cinema staff, was of any particular notice. It was also her last film for five years. In 1960, she turned to television to host The Barbara Stanwyck Show, winning an Emmy for her work.Stanwyck returned to cinemas in 1962, portraying a lesbian madam in the controversial Walk on the Wild Side. Two years later, she co-starred with Elvis Presley in Roustabout. That same year, she appeared in the thriller The Night Walker, and with that, her feature career was over. After rejecting a role in Hush...Hush, Sweet Charlotte, she returned to television to star in the long-running Western series The Big Valley, earning another Emmy for her performance as the matriarch of a frontier family. Upon the show's conclusion, Stanwyck made a TV movie, The House That Would Not Die. She then appeared in two more, 1971's A Taste of Evil and 1973's The Letters, before vanishing from the public eye for the remainder of the decade. In 1981, she was awarded an honorary Oscar; two years later, she was also the recipient of a Lincoln Center Life Achievement Award. Also in 1983, Stanwyck returned to television to co-star in the popular miniseries The Thorn Birds. Two years later, she headlined The Colbys, a spin-off of the hugely successful nighttime soap opera Dynasty. It was her last project before retiring. Stanwyck died January 20, 1990.

Trivia: The niece of character actress Fay Bainter, Dorothy Burgess was a professional dancer in her mid-teens and a Broadway leading lady at 17. She made her film bow in the early talkie western In Old Arizona (1929), playing the double-dealing Mexican paramour of the roguish Cisco Kid (Warner Baxter). While she continued working in the major studios throughout the 1930s, Dorothy's bid for screen stardom never really took hold. After 1935's The Village Tale, Dorothy Burgess returned to the stage, infrequently accepting character roles in such lower-berth programmers as Universal's I Want a Divorce (1940) and PRC's Girls in Chains (1943).

Trivia: Born Lillian Rutstein, she began working in show business at the age of six; appearing in films, plays, and revues, she was billed as "Broadway's youngest star." In the late '20s and early '30s she starred onstage in Earl Carroll's Vanities and Ziegfeld's Midnight Frolics, meanwhile also starring in a number of successful Hollywood films. However, by the late 30's her career declined and she no longer performed anywhere. In 1953 she told her story on the TV series This Is Your Life; a year later she released her autobiography, I'll Cry Tomorrow, which became an international best seller and was made into a hit film starring Susan Hayward (1955). She made a modest comeback in nightclubs, onstage (she appeared in the Broadway shows I Can Get It For You Wholesale and 70 Girls 70), and on TV, and in 1977 she appeared in the film Communion. She was married eight times.

Trivia: Canadian character actress Maude Eburne studied elocution in Toronto, gleaning a talent for dialects. She carried over this skill into her earliest stage work in Ontario and upstate New York. Eburne's first Broadway appearance was as a love-hungry cockney maid in the 1914 stage farce A Pair of Sixes; she spent the next fifteen years specializing in comic servants on stage. She came to films in 1931, as the eternally frightened companion of mystery authoress Grayce Hampton in The Bat Whispers (1931). Most of her film roles can best be described as "eccentric," ranging from dotty aristocrats to pipe-smoking harridans. Among her more prominent roles were Fay Wray's tremulous aunt in Vampire Bat (1933), a rambunctious frontierswoman in Ruggles of Red Gap (1935), half-mad recluse Borax Betty in Glamour Boy (1941), Susan Hayward's slatternly mother in Among the Living (1942), and Jean Hersholt's housekeeper in six Dr. Christian (all "B "films of the 1930s and 1940s). Maude Eburne retired from the screen after appearing in the religious semi-epic The Prince of Peace (1951).

Trivia: The daughter of a New Jersey newspaper reporter/ critic/ editor, Ruth Donnelly made her first stage appearance at 17, in the chorus of the touring show The Quaker Girl. Shortly afterward, she essayed the first of hundreds of comedy roles in a theatrical piece called Margie Pepper. Her Broadway debut occurred in 1914's A Scrap of Paper, which brought her to the attention of showman George M. Cohan, who cast Ruth in choice comic-relief roles for the next five years. Her first film was 1927's Rubber Heels, but Ruth didn't pursue a Hollywood career until the Wall Street crash reduced her opportunities in "live" theatre. From 1932's Blessed Event onward, Ruth was one of Tinseltown's favorite wisecracking matrons, brightening many a sagging scene in such films as Wonder Bar (1934), Mr. Deeds Goes to Town (1936) and Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939). She was proudest of her performance as a lively middle-aged nun in Leo McCarey's The Bells of St. Mary's; unfortunately, most of that performance ended up on the cutting-room floor. Closing out her film career with Autumn Leaves (1956) and her stage career with The Riot Act (1963), Ruth Donnelly retired to a Manhattan residential hotel, politely but firmly refusing all offers to appear in TV commercials and soap operas.

Trivia: Given the fact that the mustachioed, beady-eyed Harold Huber looked as though he'd stepped right out of a Damon Runyon story, it's hard to believe that Huber could ever have hoped for a successful career as a lawyer. Yet it is true that Huber, a graduate of the Columbia University law school, did indeed briefly hang out an attorney's shingle. By the time he was in his mid-20s, however, Huber had switched to acting, often in shifty, underhanded roles of various nationalities. He showed up in a handful of Charlie Chan films, usually equipped with an unconvincing comic-opera foreign accent; he was, however, thoroughly convincing as the fast-talking New York police detective in 1937's Charlie Chan on Broadway. A busy radio and television performer, Harold Huber starred on the radio versions of Fu Manchu and Hercule Poirot, and was top-billed as Broadway columnist Johnny Warren on the 1950 TV series I Cover Times Square.

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: Statuesque, foghorn-voiced comedienne Cecil Cunningham at one time pursued an operatic career. After extensive training, Cunningham made her stage debut in the chorus of a Fritzi Scheff musical. She played her first important role in the 1911 production Will o' the Wisp, then enjoyed her greatest success as a serious singer in the 1913 operetta Pink Lady. Alas, nervous tension robbed Cunningham of her glorious singing voice, whereupon she cut her losses and went into comedy. For many years she was a headliner in vaudeville, performing first-rate material written for her by her then-husband Jean Havez. When vaudeville went into decline in 1930, she headed to Hollywood. Signed by Paramount, she played roles of varying sizes, usually portraying a mannish society matron or show-business diva. Cunningham can be seen as a brutally frank party hostess in Paramount on Parade (1930), as supercilious opera star Madame Swempski in the Marx Brothers' Monkey Business (1932), as a outraged dowager whose beauty treatment has left her totally bald in Kiss and Make Up (1934) and as Jack Benny's dry-witted secretary in Artists and Models (1937). Comedy fans hold a special place in their hearts for two of Cunningham's 1930s appearances: in If I Had a Million, she plays the haughty ex-trapeze artist who is put down in short order by W.C. Fields; and in Leo McCarey's The Awful Truth, she enjoys one of her juiciest parts as Irene Dunne's waspish Aunt Patsy. Even in her briefest appearances, Cecil Cunningham managed to draw attention to herself, usually through such simple expedients as a firmly planted tongue in cheek and a withering, all-knowing glare.

Trivia: One of the silent era's busiest character actresses, both on and offscreen, Helen Ware specialized in playing grande dames. A veteran stage performer, Ware entered films in 1934 along with her husband, character actor Frederick Burt. In between screen assignments, she became a noted acting coach and was twice elected to the board of Actors Equity, a forerunner of the Screen Actors Guild.

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

Trivia: Stocky, stiff-backed actor DeWitt C. Jennings made his film bow in Cecil B. DeMille's The Warrens of Virginia (1915). After scores of silents, Jennings made a seamless transition to talkies, appearing in half a dozen films in 1929 alone. He was usually cast as gruff police captains or baffled suburban fathers (he was Harold Lloyd's dad in 1932's Movie Crazy). Generally dignified and reserved, DeWitt C. Jennings was afforded a rare opportunity to tear a passion to tatters as the "mystery" murderer (one of the most obvious in movie history) in 1934's Death on the Diamond.

Trivia: Diminutive Scottish stage and screen actress Mary Gordon was seemingly placed on this earth to play care-worn mothers, charwomen and housekeepers. In films from the silent area (watch for her towards the end of the 1928 Joan Crawford feature Our Dancing Daughters), Gordon played roles ranging from silent one-scene bits to full-featured support. She frequently acted with Laurel and Hardy, most prominently as the stern Scots innkeeper Mrs. Bickerdyke in 1935's Bonnie Scotland. Gordon was also a favorite of director John Ford, portraying Irish, Scottish, Welsh and Englishwomen with equal aplomb (and sometimes with the same accent). She was the screen mother of actors as diverse as Jimmy Cagney, Leo Gorcey and Lou Costello; she parodied this grey-haired matriarch image in Olsen and Johnson's See My Lawyer (1945), wherein her tearful court testimony on behalf of her son (Ed Brophy) is accompanied by a live violinist. Mary Gordon is most fondly remembered by film buffs for her recurring role as housekeeper Mrs. Hudson in the Sherlock Holmes films of 1939-46 starring Basil Rathbone and Nigel Bruce, a role she carried over to the Holmes radio series of the '40s.

Trivia: Preston S. Foster's first public appearance was in the church choir in his home town of Ocean City, New Jersey. Gifted with a robust singing voice and muscular physique, Foster was one of the most prominent members of Pittsburgh's Pennsylvania Grand Opera Company. After Broadway experience, Foster entered films in 1929, at first specializing in such unsympathetic roles as the rebellious death-row inmate in The Last Mile (1932). He offered strong, complex performances in roles like the Irish rebel leader in The Informer (1935), the blacksmith-turned-gladiator in Last Days of Pompeii (1935), and pompous sharpshooter Frank Butler in Annie Oakley (1935). He played the title character in 1943's Roger Touhy Gangster, which barely made it to the screen thanks to severe censorial cuts. From 1954 through 1955, Preston Foster starred as tugboat skipper/ adventurer/ family man Cap'n John Herrick on the popular syndicated TV series Waterfront.