Trivia: His father was a Presbyterian minister who had escaped from slavery in his youth; his mother was a schoolteacher. An outstanding athlete, Robeson attended Rutgers on a scholarship and lettered in baseball, basketball, track, and football; later he played pro football while attending law school. Meanwhile, he performed in an amateur stage production at the Harlem YMCA. His acting was very successful and well received; playwright Eugene O'Neill requested that he star in his plays All God's Chillun Got Wings and The Emperor Jones. Thus he gave up law for the theater, and soon gained much critical praise. Robeson began singing in recitals and appearing in films, soon becoming known as one of the most talented performers of his generation; his fame spread to Europe, where he frequently performed onstage and in concerts. He became especially identified with the song Ole Man River, made famous by his vibrant baritone rendition. In 1934 he visited the Soviet Union, returning several times in subsequent years. Seeking remedies to American civil rights abuses and racism, he became an exponent of leftist politics. In the early '40s he performed on Broadway and in a national tour in Othello. Robeson quit making movies after appearing in Tales of Manhattan (1942), in which ridiculous portrayal of rural blacks made him disgusted with Hollywood stereotypes; he denounced the film and never acted onscreen again. He became increasingly controversial for his political views. In 1946 he denied under oath that he had been a member of the Communist party, but refused to repeat his denial in a later inquiry. In 1950 his passport was revoked by the State Department. In 1952 he was awarded the Stalin Peace Prize, but not until 1958 was he permitted to leave the country to receive it. Although publicity about his political views led to a great reduction in his income, he continued touring Europe until the early '60s, when illness obliged him to return to the U.S. He was the subject of a documentary, Paul Robeson: Portrait of an Artist (1979).

Trivia: British actor Sir Cedric Hardwicke's physician father was resistant to his son's chosen profession; nonetheless, the elder Hardwicke paid Cedric's way through the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts. The actor was fortunate enough to form a lasting friendship with playwright George Bernard Shaw, who felt that Hardwicke was the finest actor in the world (Shaw's other favorites were the Four Marx Brothers). Working in Shavian plays like Heartbreak House, Major Barbara and The Apple Cart throughout most of the 1920s and 1930s in England, Hardwicke proved that he was no one-writer actor with such roles as Captain Andy in the London production of the American musical Show Boat. After making his first film The Dreyfus Case in 1931, Hardwicke worked with distinction in both British and American films, though his earliest attempts at becoming a Broadway favorite were disappointments. Knighted for his acting in 1934, Hardwicke's Hollywood career ran the gamut from prestige items like Wilson (1944), in which he played Henry Cabot Lodge, to low-budget gangster epics like Baby Face Nelson (1957), where he brought a certain degree of tattered dignity to the role of a drunken gangland doctor. As proficient at directing as he was at acting, Hardwicke unfortunately was less successful as a businessman. Always a step away from his creditors, he found himself taking more and more journeyman assignments as he got older. Better things came his way with a successful run in the 1960 Broadway play A Majority of One and several tours with Charles Laughton, Agnes Moorehead and Charles Boyer in the "reader's theatre" staging of Shaw's Don Juan in Hell. A talented writer, Hardwicke wrote two autobiographies, the last of these published in 1961 as A Victorian in Orbit. It was here that he wittily but ruefully observed that "God felt sorry for actors, so he gave them a place in the sun and a swimming pool. The price they had to pay was to surrender their talent."

Trivia: He trained for the stage at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art; in 1908 he made his London debut, and four years later debuted in New York. Remaining in the U.S., he served with the American Army in World War One. He appeared in two silent films in the '20s, but remained primarily a stage actor. With the advent of the sound era, however, he began his screen career in earnest in 1929. He played character comedy parts in many films over the next two decades, usually cast as whimsical, bemused types. He is perhaps best remembered for playing the title role in Topper (1937) and its sequels.

Trivia: Born John Lowe, this tall, aristocratic British leading man often wore tweeds and smoked a pipe in his roles. He served in Gallipoli in World War One, ending up a prisoner of war. First onscreen as an extra (in a dance-party scene) in the German-made Madame Wants No Children (1926), he played leads and second leads in numerous early Hollywood talkies (he was in Paramount's first talkie, The Doctor's Secret [1929]), then became a popular star in '30s British films. When World War Two came to England he returned to Hollywood; there for seven years, he played leads in B-movies and supporting roles in major productions, but never attained the star status he'd enjoyed in Britain. Appeared on Broadway in 1947 and 1950, Loder then returned to England; after several more films he retired to his wife's ranch in Argentina, coming back to the big screen for a film in 1965 and another in 1970. His five wives included actresses Micheline Cheirel (a star in France) and Hedy Lamarr, with whom he costarred in Dishonored Lady (1947), which Lamarr produced. He authored an autobiography, Hollywood Hussar (1977).

Trivia: Born Joanna Winnifrith, Anna Lee was a petite, charming, blond British actress. At age 14 she ran away from home to join a circus. After brief stage experience she began appearing in British films in 1932, playing leads and supporting roles; in 1940 she moved to Hollywood and began making films there. She is best remembered as Bronwyn Morgan, Roddy McDowall's sister-in-law, in How Green was My Valley (1941). Rarely onscreen after the late '60s, she had a regular role as Lila Quartermaine on the TV soap opera General Hospital. She married and divorced director Robert Stevenson. She was the widow of novelist/playwright/poet Robert Nathan and the mother of actors Jeffrey Byron and Venetia Stevenson.

Trivia: A stage actor from 1906, Frederick Leister was well into his fifties when he made his first screen appearance in 1937. For the next quarter century, the distinguished, orotund Leister enlivened British films with his own brand of unassailable dignity. His more memorable screen assignments include the "downsized" auditor-turned-racetrack cashier in The Hundred Pound Window (1943) and the snobbish patriarch in 1945's The Randolph Family (aka Dear Octopus). Frederick Leister's last screen role was the judge in the prologue of the 1961 suspense melodrama The Naked Edge.