Trivia: The daughter of a Massachusetts lawyer, American actress Bette Davis matured with a desire to become an actress upon her graduation from Cushing Academy, but was turned away from Eva LeGallienne's Manhattan Civic Repertory in New York. Undaunted, Davis enrolled in John Murray Anderson's Dramatic School, where everyone (including classmate Lucille Ball) regarded her as the star pupil. After a 1928 summer season with director George Cukor's stock company in Rochester, NY (where she worked with future co-star -- and rival -- Miriam Hopkins), Davis went on to Broadway, starring in Broken Dishes and Solid South before Hollywood called. Dazzling on-stage, Davis was signed to a contract by Universal in 1930. After an unimpressive debut in Bad Sister in 1931, however, Davis was out of work, but picked up by Warner Bros. soon thereafter. Davis applied herself with white-hot intensity to becoming a star with that company, and after a major role in the 1932 George Arliss vehicle The Man Who Played God, a star she became. Still, the films at Warner Bros. were uneven, and it wasn't until the studio loaned out Davis to play the bravura role of Mildred in RKO's Of Human Bondage (1934) that the critics began to take notice. An Oscar nomination seemed inevitable for her performance in Bondage, but Davis was let down by Warner Bros., which didn't like the fact that her best appearance had been in a rival's movie, and it failed to get behind her Oscar campaign (although there was a significant write-in vote for the actress). But, in 1935, Davis excelled as a self-destructive actress in the otherwise turgid film Dangerous, and an Oscar was finally hers. And when Warner Bros. subsequently failed to give Davis the top roles she felt she then merited, the actress went on strike and headed for England. She lost a legal battle with the studio and came back, but it acknowledged her grit and talent by increasing her salary and giving her much better roles. In 1939 alone, Davis starred in Dark Victory, Juarez, The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex, and The Old Maid. But she didn't get the plum role of the season -- Scarlet O'Hara in Gone With the Wind -- because Warner Bros. wouldn't loan her to David O. Selznick unless Errol Flynn was chosen to play Rhett Butler (a piece of casting both Selznick and Davis violently opposed). But Davis had already had her turn at playing a Southern belle in Jezebel (1938), which won her second a Oscar. As her star status increased in the 1940s, Davis found that it would have to be at the expense of her private life -- she would be married and divorced four times, admitting toward the end of her life that her career came first, last, and always. A fling at being her own producer in 1946 was disappointing, and her contract with Warner Bros. petered out in 1949 with a string of unsuccessful films. Davis made a spectacular comeback in 1950 when she replaced an ailing Claudette Colbert in the role of Margot Channing in the Oscar-winning All About Eve. Though suffering from a bone disease that required part of her jaw to be removed, Davis continued to work in films throughout the '50s; but, in 1961, things came to a standstill, forcing the actress to take out a famous job-wanted ad in the trade papers. In 1962, Davis began the next phase of her career when she accepted the role of a whacked-out former child star in What Ever Happened to Baby Jane? This led to a string of gothic horror films that did little to advance Davis' reputation, but kept her in the public eye. It was also in 1962 that Davis penned her thoughtful and honest autobiography The Lonely Life. Working in movies, TV, on-stage and on one-woman lecture tours into the '70s, Davis may have been older but no less feisty and combative; her outspokenness may have unnerved some of her co-stars, but made her an ideal interview subject for young film historians and fans. In 1977, Davis received a Lifetime Achievement Award from the American Film Institute, an honor usually bestowed upon performers who were retired or inactive. Not Davis. She kept at her craft into the '80s, even after a stroke imposed serious limitations on her speech and movement. Amidst many TV movies and talk-show appearances, Davis gave one last memorable film appearance in The Whales of August (1987), in which she worked with another venerable screen legend, Lillian Gish. Though plagued with illness, Davis was formidable to the end -- so much so that when she died in France at the age of 82, a lot of her fans refused to believe it.

Trivia: Athletic, dashing, and heroic onscreen, and a notorious bon vivant in his personal life, Errol Flynn ranked among Hollywood's most popular and highly paid stars from the mid-'30s through the early '40s, and his costume adventures thrilled audiences around the world. Unfortunately, a combination of hard-living, bad financial investments, and scandal brought Flynn's career to a tragic end in 1959. He was born on the isle of Tasmania, the son of distinguished Australian marine biologist/zoologist Prof. Theodore Thomson Flynn. In school, Flynn was more drawn to athletics than academics and he was expelled from a number of exclusive Australian and British schools. At age 15, he found work as a shipping clerk in Sydney, and the following year he sailed to New Guinea to work in the government service, but the daily grind proved not to the adventuresome Flynn's taste, so he took off to prospect for gold. In 1930, Flynn returned to Sydney and purchased a boat, and he and three friends embarked upon a seven-month voyage to New Guinea. Upon arrival, Flynn became the overseer of a tobacco plantation and also wrote a column for the Sydney Bulletin. Flynn's introduction to acting came via an Australian film producer who happened to see photographs of the extraordinarily good-looking young man and had him cast as Fletcher Christian in the low-budget docudrama In the Wake of the Bounty (1933). After a year of stage repertory acting to hone his dramatic skills, Flynn headed to London for film work. Attaining a contract at Warner Bros. in 1935, Flynn languished in tiny parts until star Robert Donat suddenly dropped out of the big-budget swashbuckler Captain Blood (1935). The studio took a chance on Flynn, and the result was overnight stardom. It was also during this year that Flynn married actress Lili Damita. Although he'd make stabs at modern-dress dramas and light comedies, Flynn was most effective in period costume films, leading his men "into the Valley of Death" in Charge of the Light Brigade (1936), trading swordplay and sarcasm with Basil Rathbone in The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938), and even making the West safe for women and children in Dodge City (1939). At his romantic best onscreen, Flynn was king of the rouges, egotistically strutting before such damsels as Olivia de Havilland and Alexis Smith, arrogantly taunting them and secretly thrilling them with his sharp, often cynical wit and his muscular legs. But despite such rapscallion behavior, the ladies and his cohorts loved Flynn because, undisguised in his arresting blue eyes, they could see that he was a man of honor, passion, sincerity, and even a little vulnerability. Thus, an Errol Flynn adventure caused female fans to swoon and male fans to imagine themselves in his place.By the early '40s, Flynn ranked among Warner Bros.' most popular and lucrative stars. It should come as no surprise that the actor, with his potent charisma and obvious zest for life onscreen, was no less a colorful character, albeit a less heroic one, offscreen. His antics with booze, young women, and brawling kept studio executives nervous, PR men busy, and fans titillated for years. In 1942, Flynn was brought up on statutory rape charges involving two teenage girls, but was acquitted. Such allegations could easily have destroyed a lesser star's career, but not in Flynn's case. Instead of finding his career in ruins, he found himself more popular than ever -- particularly with female fans. In fact, the matter inspired a new catch phrase: "In like Flynn." That same year, he divorced Damita. (The couple's son, actor Sean Flynn, a dead ringer for his father, worked as a photojournalist and war correspondent in Southeast Asia where he disappeared in 1970 and was presumed dead.)But while Flynn's pictures continued to score at the box office, the actor, himself, was declining; already demoralized by his inability to fight in World War II due to a variety of health problems -- including recurring malaria, tuberculosis, and a bad heart -- Flynn's drinking and carousing increased, and, although he remained a loyal and good friend to his cronies, the actor's overall behavior became erratic. By the time he starred in The Adventures of Don Juan (1949) -- a role he could have done blindfolded ten years earlier -- Flynn was suffering from short-term memory loss and seemed unsure of himself. He divorced his second wife, Nora Eddington, in 1949 and the following year married actress Patrice Wymore. In 1952, Flynn appeared to have regained his former prowess (but for several injuries during production) in Against All Flags, but the success was short-lived. As his box-office appeal lessened and his debts grew larger, the increasingly bitter Flynn left for Europe to make a few films, including The Master of Ballantrae (1953) and Crossed Swords (1954). The latter was poorly received stateside, something Flynn blamed on the distributor's (United Artists) lack of promotion. The final blow for Flynn came when he lost his entire fortune on an ill-fated, never-completed attempt to film the story of William Tell. To cope with his pain and losses, Flynn took to the sea, sailing about for long periods in his 120-foot ocean-going sailboat, the Zaca. Returning to Hollywood in 1956, Flynn made a final bid to recapture his earlier glory, offering excellent performances in The Sun Also Rises (1957), The Roots of Heaven (1958), and Too Much, Too Soon (1958). Ironically, in the latter film, Flynn played another self-destructive matinee idol, John Barrymore. Strapped for cash during this period, Flynn penned his memoirs, My Wicked, Wicked Ways, which were published after his death in 1959. It was Flynn's third book; the first two were Beam Ends (1937), a description of his voyage to New Guinea in the Scirocco, and Showdown (1946), a novel. His final film was the grade-Z Cuban Rebel Girls (1958), in which he appeared with his girlfriend at the time, 17-year-old Beverly Aadland. Four months after turning 50, Flynn's years of hard living caught up with him and he died of heart failure. According to the coroner's report, his body was so afflicted by various ailments that it looked as if it belonged to a much older man.

Trivia: Born in Japan to a British patent attorney and his actress wife, Olivia de Havilland succumbed to the lure of Thespis while attending high school in Los Gatos, CA, where she played Hermia in an amateur production of A Midsummer Night's Dream. The older sister of actress Joan Fontaine, de Havilland was spotted by famed director Max Reinhardt, who cast her in his legendary Hollywood Bowl production of the play. This led to her part in the Warner Bros. film adaptation of Midsummer in 1935, and being signed to a long-term contract wiht the company. Considering herself a classical actress, de Havilland tried to refuse the traditional ingenue roles offered her by the studio, which countered by telling her she'd be ruined in Hollywood if she didn't cooperate. Loaned out to David O. Selznick, de Havilland played Melanie Hamilton in Gone With the Wind (1939), earning an Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actress in the process. Although she didn't come out on top that year, she would later win two Best Actress Oscars, the first for 1946's To Each His Own, and then again for 1949's The Heiress. De Havilland also made news when she sued Warner Bros. for extending her seven-year contract by tacking on the months she'd been on suspension for refusing to take a part. The actress spent three long years off the screen, but she ultimately won her case, and the "De Havilland Law," as it would become known, effectively destroyed the studios' ability to virtually enslave their contractees by unfairly extending their contract time. After completing The Heiress, de Havilland spent several years on Broadway, cutting down her subsequent film appearances to approximately one per year. In 1955, she moved to France with her second husband, Paris Match editor Pierre Galante; she later recalled her Paris years with the semiautobiographical Every Frenchman Has One. De Havilland showed up in a brace of profitable fading-star horror films in the '60s: Lady in a Cage (1964) and Hush ... Hush, Sweet Charlotte (1965), in which she replaced Joan Crawford. During the next decade, she appeared in a number of TV productions and in such all-star film efforts as Airport '77 (1977) and The Swarm (1978). After a number of TV appearances (if not always starring roles) in the '80s, de Havilland once more found herself in the limelight in 1989, on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of Gone With the Wind. As one of the only surviving stars from this film, she was much sought after for interviews and reminiscences, but graciously refused almost every request.

Trivia: If Donald Crisp had any peer as an actor, it was probably his fellow Scotsman Finlay Currie, who made a virtual star career (albeit mostly in England) playing the same kind of dour roles that Crisp often essayed -- but even that only overlapped with one aspect of Crisp's career. An Oscar-winning character actor whose career spanned three generations, from the 1910s to the 1960s, Crisp was also unique as a director and, before that, an assistant and colleague to such figures as D.W. Griffith -- and none of those activities even touched upon his most influential role in the movie business. Donald Crisp was born in Abberfeldy, Scotland, in 1880, and was educated at Oxford. He served as a trooper in the 10th Hussars in the Boer War, which allowed him to cross paths with a young Winston Churchill, before emigrating to the United States in 1906. While on the boat coming over, he chanced to sing in a ship's concert and impressed John C. Fisher, an opera impresario, sufficiently to offer him a job with his company as both a member of the chorus and a handyman. It was while touring with the company in the United States and Cuba that Crisp became interested in theater. By the end of the first decade of the 20th century, he was working as a stage manager for George M. Cohan, and soon after that he met D.W. Griffith, a former stage actor who had developed a yen for making movies; Crisp accompanied the legendary director to Hollywood in 1912. After serving as Griffith's assistant and watching him work, Crisp -- who portrayed General Ulysses S. Grant in The Birth of a Nation -- became a director in his own right. He later told an interviewer that he gave up directing because he wearied of being forced to do favors for studio production chiefs by employing their relatives in his films, so he returned to acting. In between working for Griffith and producers such as William H. Clune, Crisp managed to return to England to serve in army intelligence during the First World War. After returning to Hollywood, he went to work for Adolph Zukor at his Famous Players company in 1919, which was later to become Paramount Pictures; Zukor employed Crisp as an executive, charged with setting up the studio's operations in Europe. He later worked as a director for Douglas Fairbanks Sr. on such movies as Son of Zorro. Crisp's most visible role to the public during the silent era, however, may well have come right after his military service, as the brutal villain in Griffith's Broken Blossoms (1919). With the advent of sound, Crisp moved into acting entirely, and across the 1930s and '40s he essayed a wide range of roles, most memorably as the taciturn but loving father in John Ford's How Green Was My Valley (1941) (for which he won the Best Supporting Actor Academy Award), one of the put-upon crew in Frank Lloyd's Mutiny on the Bounty (1935), and Doctor Kenneth in William Wyler's Wuthering Heights (1939). Crisp was equally good in lovable or sinister roles; during the same period in which he was playing charming old codgers in National Velvet and Lassie Come Home, he was also memorable as Commander Beach, the tormented presumptive grandfather to Gail Russell's Stella Meredith in Lewis Allen's The Uninvited (1944), who dies at the hands of the vengeful spirit of his own daughter. All of this activity, which included as many as nine movies in a single year, didn't prevent Crisp from contributing to the war effort, once the Second World War came along -- by then, he held the rank of colonel in the U.S. Army reserves. What few people outside of the movie community realized during this period was that, beyond his work as an actor, Crisp was also one of the most influential people in Hollywood, wielding more power than most directors and even more than many producers (most of whom were, in the end, just hired executives). He was one of Hollywood's gatekeepers, one of the responsible adults who worked to make the business side of the industry work while stars of the era paraded their egos and vices before the cameras. Specifically, Crisp's long experience as not only an actor but also as a director and a production and studio executive made him ideal as an advisor to Bank of America -- one of the leading sources of working capital for the movie business (whose life-blood was loans) -- on which movies to make. He was on the bank's advisory board for decades, including a stint as its chairman, and had the ear of its directors, and many of the major movies financed by the bank in the 1930s and '40s got their most important approval from Crisp. He was also, not surprisingly, one of the more well-off members of the acting community, his banker's sobriety and clear-headedness allowing Crisp to make good investments, especially in real estate, across the decades that paid off well for him and his wife of 25 years, screenwriter Jane Murfin. Crisp continued acting right up through 1960 and Walt Disney's Pollyanna (he'd worked for Mary Pickford, who'd played in and produced the silent version of the same story 45 years earlier), mostly because he liked to work. Crisp passed away in 1974 at the ripe old age of 93, one of the most revered and beloved senior members of the acting community.

Trivia: Lean, effete, and sinister, Vincent Price was among the movies' greatest villains as well as one of the horror genre's most beloved and enduring stars. Born May 27, 1911, in St. Louis, MO, Price graduated from Yale University, and later studied fine arts at the University of London. He made his theatrical debut in the Gate Theatre's 1935 production of Chicago, followed by work on Broadway, in stock and with Orson Welles' famed Mercury Theater. Under contract to Universal, Price traveled to Hollywood, making his screen debut in 1938's Service de Luxe, before returning to Broadway for a revival of Outward Bound. His tenure at Universal was largely unsuccessful, and the studio kept him confined to supporting roles. Upon completing his contract, Price jumped to 20th Century Fox, starring in a pair of 1940 historical tales, Brigham Young -- Frontiersman and Hudson Bay. Still, fame eluded him, and in 1941 he began a long Broadway run (in Angel Street) that kept him out of films for three years. Price returned to the West Coast to co-star in 1943's The Song of Bernadette and became a prominent supporting player in a series of acclaimed films, including 1944's Wilson and Laura, and 1946's Leave Her to Heaven. His first starring role was in the low-budget Shock!, portraying a murderous psychiatrist. He next played a sadistic husband opposite Gene Tierney in Dragonwyck. Clearly, Price's niche was as a villain -- everything about him suggested malice, with each line reading dripping with condescension and loathing; he relished these roles, and excelled in them. Still, he was not the star Fox wanted; after 1947's The Web, his contract expired and was not renewed. Price spent the next several years freelancing with a variety of studios and by 1952 had grown so disenchanted with Hollywood that he returned to the stage, performing in a San Francisco production of The Cocktail Party before replacing Charles Laughton in the touring company of Don Juan in Hell.Price then signed on to star in 1953's House of Wax, Warners' 3-D update of their Mystery of the Wax Museum. The picture was one of the year's biggest hits, and one of the most successful horror films ever produced. Price's crazed performance as a vengeful sculptor brought him offers for any number of similar projects, and he next appeared in another 3-D feature, Dangerous Mission. He also made a triumphant return to the stage to appear in Richard III, followed by Black-Eyed Susan. The latter was Price's last theatrical performance for 14 years, however, as he began a very busy and eclectic motion picture schedule. Though he essayed many different types of characters, his forays into horror remained by far his most popular, and in 1958 he co-starred in the hit The Fly as well as William Castle's House on Haunted Hill. By the 1960s, Price was working almost exclusively in the horror genre. For producer Roger Corman, he starred in a series of cult classic adaptations of Edgar Allen Poe stories including 1960's The Fall of the House of Usher, 1963's The Raven, 1964's The Masque of the Red Death, and 1968's The Conqueror Worm. He also appeared in a number of teen movies like 1963's Beach Party, 1965's Dr. Goldfoot and the Bikini Machine, and the 1969 Elvis Presley vehicle The Trouble With Girls. Price began to cut back on his film activities during the 1970s despite hits like 1971's The Abominable Dr. Phibes and its follow-up Dr. Phibes Rises Again. Instead he frequently lectured on art, and even published several books. For disciple Tim Burton, Price co-starred in the 1990 fantasy Edward Scissorhands; apart from voice-over work, it was his last screen appearance. He died in Los Angeles on October 25, 1993.

Trivia: Leo G. Carroll was the son of an Irish-born British military officer. The younger Carroll had intended to follow in his father's footsteps, but his World War I experiences discouraged him from pursuing a military career. On the British stage from the age of sixteen, Carroll settled in the U.S. in 1924, playing such plum theatrical roles as the title character in The Late George Apley. In films from 1934, Carroll often portrayed shy, self-effacing Britishers who, in "Uriah-Heep" fashion, used their humility to hide a larcenous or homicidal streak. Reportedly Alfred Hitchcock's favorite actor, Carroll was seen in half a dozen Hithcock films, notably Spellbound (1946) (as the scheming psychiatrist) and North by Northwest (1959) (as the dry-witted CIA agent). A "method actor" before the term was invented, Carroll was known to immerse himself in his roles, frequently confounding strangers by approaching them "in character." Leo G. Carroll was always a welcome presence on American television, starring as Topper in the "ghostly" sitcom of the same name, and co-starring as Father Fitzgibbons in Going My Way (1962) and Alexander Waverly on The Man From UNCLE (1964-68).

Trivia: Like his fellow character actors C. Aubrey Smith and Sir Guy Standing, the dignified Henry Stephenson was seemingly born with a relief map of the British Empire chiseled on his countenance. Born in the British West Indies, Stephenson was educated at England's Rugby College. He turned to acting in his twenties, touring the provinces before settling into leading roles in London and New York. Though he made a smattering of silent film appearances, Stephenson's movie career did not really begin until 1932, with his supporting appearance in The Animal Kingdom. Virtually always cast as an aristocrat or man of means, Stephenson essayed such roles as Mr. Laurence in Little Women (1933), Sir Joseph Banks in Mutiny on the Bounty (1935), the Duke of Norfolk in The Prince and the Pauper, and Count Matthieu de Lesseps in Suez (1938). Henry Stephenson acted in films until his mid-seventies; his last film assignments included the part of Mr. Brownlow in the David Lean-directed Oliver Twist (1948).

Trivia: With his haughty demeanor and near-satanic features, British actor Henry Daniell was the perfect screen "gentleman villain" in such major films of the 1930s and 1940s as Camille (1936) and The Great Dictator (1940). An actor since the age of 18, Daniell worked in London until coming to America in an Ethel Barrymore play. He co-starred with Ruth Gordon in the 1929 Broadway production Serena Blandish, in which he won critical plaudits in the role of Lord Iver Cream. Making his movie debut in Jealousy (1929)--which co-starred another stage legend, Jeanne Eagels--Daniell stayed in Hollywood for the remainder of his career, most often playing cold-blooded aristocrats in period costume. He was less at home in action roles; he flat-out refused to participate in the climactic dueling scene in The Sea Hawk (1940), compelling star Errol Flynn to cross swords with a none too convincing stunt double. Daniell became something of a regular in the Basil Rathbone-Nigel Bruce Sherlock Holmes films made at Universal in the 1940s--he was in three entries, playing Professor Moriarty in The Woman in Green (1945). Though seldom in pure horror films, Daniell nonetheless excelled in the leading role of The Body Snatcher (1945). When the sort of larger-than-life film fare in which Daniell specialized began disappearing in the 1950s, the actor nonetheless continued to prosper in both films (Man in the Grey Flannel Suit [1956], Witness for the Prosecution [1957]) and television (Thriller, The Hour of St. Francis, and many other programs). While portraying Prince Gregor of Transylvania in My Fair Lady (1964), under the direction of his old friend George Cukor, Daniell died suddenly; his few completed scenes remained in the film, though his name was removed from the cast credits.

Trivia: A stage actor of many years' standing, James Stephenson made his British film debut in 1937. That following year, Stephenson was hired as a contract player by Warner Bros., where he spent most of his time playing suave villains or disgraced gentlemen. He was afforded better roles in films like 1938's Boy Meets Girl (as the movie bit player who "legitimizes" Marie Wilson's baby), 1939's You Can't Get Away With Murder and Elizabeth the Queen, and 1940's The Sea Hawk. His big break came when, ignoring studio resistance, director William Wyler and star Bette Davis insisted upon casting Stephenson as self-sacrificing family lawyer Howard Joyce in the 1940 adaptation of The Letter. This performance earned the actor an Academy Award nomination and, more importantly, the old "star build-up" from the Warners publicity flacks (who proceeded to slice 15 years off Stephenson's age in his "official" studio biography). James Stephenson went on to play the title role in Calling Philo Vance (1940) and above-the-title parts in a handful of programmers until his fatal heart attack at the age of 53.

Trivia: In vaudeville from the age of six, Nanette Fabray made her first film appearance (under her family name Fabares) as one of Bette Davis' ladies-in-waiting in The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex (1939). She established herself as a Broadway star in the 1940s, starring in musicals ranging from 1947's High Button Shoes to 1962's Mister President, winning a brace of Donaldson awards along the way. In 1953, she played her most famous screen role as a Betty Comden-ish playwright in MGM's The Band Wagon (1953). On television, Fabray won three Emmies for her work on Sid Caesar's programs of 1954 and 1955; she also starred in her own 1961 sitcom, The Nanette Fabray Show, and was co-starred as Bonnie Franklin's mother in the 1970s series One Day at a Time. Legally deaf since the 1950s, Fabray has worked tirelessly on behalf of America's hearing impaired, and has been honored for her efforts by several presidents. Nanette Fabray is the widow of screenwriter/director Ranald McDougall, and the aunt of actress Shelley Fabares.

Trivia: The son of British actress Mary Forbes, Ralph Forbes followed in his mother's footsteps, appearing in stage productions as a juvenile and in films from the age of 19. His most successful British starring film was the 1922 version of that old chestnut Comin' Thro' the Rye. He came to Hollywood in 1926 to co-star in the Paramount big-budgeter Beau Geste, then settled into a series of dinner-jacketed leading roles. During his long American film career, Forbes found time to marry two of his leading ladies, Ruth Chatterton and Heather Angel. Ralph Forbes' last years before the camera were spent in such supporting roles as Sir Hugo Baskerville in The Hound of the Baskervilles (1939) and Henry Tudor in Tower of London (1939).

Trivia: A distinguished-looking, often bespectacled supporting actor from England, Guy Bellis lent his considerable presence to several well-remembered costume dramas in the 1930s and '40s, appearing as Buckingham in Cardinal Richelieu (1935), as Lord Charles Howard in The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex (1939), and as a host of typically British domestics. Bellis, whose characterizations often went unbilled, continued his screen career well into the 1950s.

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: Diminuitive Irish actor Forrester Harvey was most often cast as cockney tradesmen, family gardeners and pub hangers-on. He entered films in 1922, but only with the advent of talking pictures were his talents exploited to full advantage. Part subservient, part pugnacious, Harvey became a fixture of Hollywood films set in England, Ireland or Scotland. His better-known film stints included Beamish in Tarzan, the Ape Man (1932) and Meredith the valet in Laurel and Hardy's A Chump at Oxford (1940). So ubiquitous was Forrester Harvey that he managed to appear in a film five years after his death! That film was Frank Capra's Riding High (1950), a remake of Broadway Bill (1934) which utilized extensive footage from the earlier film -- including virtually all of Harvey's scenes as a horse trainer.

Trivia: Formidable stage leading lady Doris Lloyd transferred her activities from British repertory to Hollywood in 1925. She was prominently cast as an alluring spy in George Arliss' first talkie Disraeli (1929); one year later, at the tender age of 30, she was seen as the matronly Donna Lucia D'Alvadorez in Charley's Aunt. Swinging back to younger roles in 1933, Lloyd was cast as the tragic Nancy Sykes in the Dickie Moore version of Oliver Twist. By the late 1930s, Lloyd had settled into middle-aged character roles, most often as a domestic or dowager. Doris Lloyd remained active until 1967, with substantial roles in such films as The Time Machine (1960) and The Sound of Music (1965).

Trivia: In films from 1938, statuesque brunette American actress Maris Wrixon fluctuated from full leads to supporting parts. In many of her films, Wrixon was bumped off in the first or second reel, but in just as many she was permitted to survive to the fadeout. She was starred in several Warner Bros. B-pictures of the 1940s, usually in remakes of earlier Warner A's. Horror fans remember her best as Boris Karloff's daughter in Monogram's The Ape (1941). Maris Wrixon retired in the late '40s following her marriage to film editor Rudi Fehr.

Trivia: With his slight built, narrow face and pencil-thin mustache, I. Stanford Jolley did not exactly look trustworthy, and a great many of his screen roles (more than 500) were indeed to be found on the wrong side of the law. Isaac Stanford Jolley had toured as a child with his father's traveling circus and later worked in stock and vaudeville, prior to making his Broadway debut opposite Charles Trowbridge in Sweet Seventeen (1924). Radio work followed and he arrived in Hollywood in 1935. Pegged early on as a gangster or Western outlaw, Jolley graduated to playing lead henchman or the boss villain in the '40s, mostly appearing for such poverty-row companies as Monogram and PRC. Although Jolley is often mentioned as a regular member of the Republic Pictures' stock company, he was never under contract to that legendary studio and only appeared in 25 films for them between 1936 and 1954. From 1950 on, Jolley worked frequently on television and remained a busy performer until at least 1976. According to his widow, the actor, who died of emphysema at the Motion Picture Country Hospital, never earned more than 100 dollars on any given movie assignment. He was the father of art director Stan Jolley.

Trivia: The son of a patent medicine manufacturer, American actor Alan Hale chose a theatrical career at a time when, according to his son Alan Hale Jr., boarding houses would post signs reading "No Dogs or Actors Allowed." Undaunted, Hale spent several years on stage after graduating from Philadelphia University, entering films as a slapstick comedian for Philly's Lubin Co. in 1911. Bolstering his acting income with odd jobs as a newspaperman and itinerant inventor (at one point he considered becoming an osteopath!), Hale finally enjoyed a measure of security as a much-in-demand character actor in the 1920s, usually as hard-hearted villains. One of his more benign roles was as Little John in Douglas Fairbanks' Robin Hood (1922), a role he would repeat opposite Errol Flynn in 1938 and John Derek in 1950. Talkies made Hale more popular than ever, especially in his many roles as Irishmen, blusterers and "best pals" for Warner Bros. Throughout his career, Hale never lost his love for inventing things, and reportedly patented or financed items as commonplace as auto brakes and as esoteric as greaseless potato chips. Alan Hale contracted pneumonia and died while working on the Warner Bros. western Montana (1950), which starred Hale's perennial screen cohort Errol Flynn.

Trivia: Australian-born Dame Judith Anderson (she was knighted in 1960) was for nearly 70 years one of the foremost Shakespearian actresses of the stage, playing everything from Lady MacBeth to Portia to Hamlet (yes, Hamlet). In films, she was Cruella DeVil--over and over again. Perhaps this is an oversimplification, but it is true that movies seldom took full advantage of Anderson's versatility and rich speaking voice, opting instead to confine her to unsympathetic roles on the basis of her hard, cruel facial features. She made her first film appearance as an incongrously sexy temptress in 1933's Blood Money; seven years later, she essayed her most famous screen role, the obsessed housekeeper Mrs. Danvers in Rebecca (1940). For the rest of her career, she was apparently regarded by Hollywood as an alternate for Gale Sondergaard in roles calling for refined truculence. She played the New York society dragon who "keeps" weak-willed Vincent Price in Laura (1944), the sinister wife of tormented farmer Edward G. Robinson in The Red House (1948), the imperious Queen Herodias in Salome (1953) and the wicked stepmother of Jerry Lewis in Cinderfella (1960). Some of Judith Anderson's later film roles allowed her a modicum of audience empathy, notably the aged Sioux Indian matriarch in A Man Called Horse (1970) and the High Priestess of the Vulcans in Star Trek IV: The Search for Spock (1984).