Trivia: The son of British stage actor Frederick Rains, Claude Rains gave his first theatrical performance at age 11 in Nell of Old Drury. He learned the technical end of the business by working his way up from being a two-dollars-a-week page boy to stage manager. After making his first U.S. appearance in 1913, Rains returned to England, served in the Scottish regiment during WWI, then established himself as a leading actor in the postwar years. He was also featured in one obscure British silent film, Build Thy House. During the 1920s, Rains was a member of the teaching staff at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art; among his pupils were a young sprout named Laurence Olivier and a lovely lass named Isabel Jeans, who became the first of Rains' six wives. While performing with the Theatre Guild in New York in 1932, Rains filmed a screen test for Universal Pictures. On the basis of his voice alone, the actor was engaged by Universal director James Whale to make his talking-picture debut in the title role of The Invisible Man (1933). During his subsequent years at Warner Bros., the mellifluous-voiced Rains became one of the studio's busiest and most versatile character players, at his best when playing cultured villains. Though surprisingly never a recipient of an Academy award, Rains was Oscar-nominated for his performances as the "bought" Senator Paine in Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939), the title character in Mr. Skeffington (1944), the Nazi husband of Ingrid Bergman in Notorious (1946), and, best of all, the cheerfully corrupt Inspector Renault in Casablanca (1942). In 1946, Rains became one of the first film actors to demand and receive one million dollars for a single picture; the role was Julius Caesar, and the picture Caesar and Cleopatra. He made a triumphant return to Broadway in 1951's Darkness at Noon. In his last two decades, Claude Rains made occasional forays into television (notably on Alfred Hitchcock Presents) and continued to play choice character roles in big-budget films like Lawrence of Arabia (1962) and The Greatest Story Ever Told (1965).

Trivia: Born in India to a British stockbroker and his Irish wife, Vivien Leigh first appeared on stage in convent-school amateur theatricals. Completing her education in England, France, Italy, and Germany, she studied acting at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art; not a particularly impressive pupil, Leigh continued her training with private tutors. In 1932, she briefly interrupted her pursuit of a theatrical career to marry London barrister Herbert Leigh Holman. Leigh made her professional stage bow three years later in The Sash, which never made it to London's West End; still, her bewitching performance caught the eye of producer Sydney Carroll, who cast Leigh in her first London play, The Mask of Virtue. She alternated between stage and film work, usually in flighty, kittenish roles, until being introduced to Shakespeare at The Old Vic. It was there that she met Laurence Oliver, appearing with him on-stage as Ophelia in Hamlet and Titania in A Midsummer Night's Dream, and later together onscreen in 1937's Fire Over England. It was this picture which brought Leigh to the attention of American producer David O. Selznick, who brought his well-publicized search for the "perfect" Scarlett O'Hara to a sudden conclusion when he cast Leigh as the resourceful Southern belle in 1939's Gone With the Wind. The role won Leigh her first Oscar, after which she kept her screen appearances to a minimum, preferring to devote her time to Olivier, who would become her second husband in 1940. Refusing to submit to the Hollywood publicity machine, Leigh and Olivier all but disappeared from view for months at a time. The stage would also forever remain foremost in her heart, and there were often gaps of two to three years between Leigh's films. One of her rare movie appearances during the '50s was as Blanche DuBois in A Streetcar Named Desire (1951), a performance for which she received a second Oscar. In her private life, however, Leigh began developing severe emotional and health problems that would eventually damage her marriage to Olivier (whom she divorced in 1960) and seriously impede her ability to perform on-stage or before the camera. Despite her struggles with manic depression, she managed to turn in first-rate performances in such films as The Roman Spring of Mrs. Stone (1961) and Ship of Fools (1965), and maintained a busy theatrical schedule, including a 1963 musical version of Tovarich and a 1966 Broadway appearance opposite John Gielgud in Ivanov. Leigh was preparing to star in the London production of Edward Albee's A Delicate Balance when she was found dead from tuberculosis in her London apartment in 1967. In tribute to the actress, the lights in London's theater district were blacked out for an hour.

Trivia: British actor Stewart Granger, born James Stewart, studied acting at the Webber-Douglas School of Dramatic Art and began getting work as an extra in British films in 1933. In the late '30s he adopted his professional name to avoid confusion with recent star James Stewart. He worked with various stage companies before getting his first lead role onscreen in So This Is London (1939). In the '40s Granger was one of British films' two top romantic leading men (along with James Mason) and a steady box-office draw, attracting the interest of Hollywood. He signed with MGM in 1950, and for the next seven years played a variety of virile "he-man" types such as romantic swashbucklers and white hunters. After becoming a U.S. citizen in 1956, Granger began free-lancing, appearing again in British films as well as in international productions in the following decade. He began accepting starring roles on TV in the early '70s. From 1950-60 Stewart Granger was married to actress Jean Simmons, the second of his three wives.

Trivia: She was a Bronze Medalist graduate from the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts, meanwhile debuting onstage at age 19. She was outstanding character player in both classic and modern plays on London's West End, and occasionally appeared on Broadway. She entered films in 1931, and worked in Hollywood from 1939-46. For her work in Saratoga Trunk she received a Best Supporting Actress Oscar nomination. While remaining a prominent stage actress, she continued appearing in films intermittently until the early '80s. In recognition of her long, distinguished career, in 1960 she was made a Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire.

Trivia: Often unfairly dismissed as a "second-string Sydney Greenstreet," immense British character actor Francis L. Sullivan was in fact a prominent stage and movie actor long before Greenstreet's years of film stardom. A Shakespeare buff from childhood, Sullivan made his Old Vic debut at age 18 in Richard III. His film career began in 1932 and ended in 1955, the year before his death; he is perhaps best known for his portrayal of Mr. Jaggers in both the 1934 and 1946 versions of Great Expectations. Some of Francis L. Sullivan's latter-day fame rests on a story that may well be apochryphal: while portraying an airplane passenger in a live television drama, Sullivan forgot his lines, ad-libbed "Excuse me, this is my stop," stepped off the "plane," and disappeared from the proceedings.

Trivia: On the British stage from the age of 15, Basil Sydney first toured the U.S. in 1914, just before his army service in World War I. During the postwar years, Sydney established himself as a dependable leading man, rising to matinee idol status with the London stage hit Romance. It was this property which also launched his screen career in 1920. Though he spent most of the 1930s in America, Sydney avoided film work in Hollywood because the producers would not honor his request that he only appear in movie versions of Shakespeare and Shaw. He resettled in England in the early '40s, where he appeared in such roles as Rufio in the 1945 filmization of Shaw's Caesar and Cleopatra, Claudius in Laurence Olivier's 1948 film version of Hamlet, and Captain Smollett in Walt Disney's British-filmed Treasure Island (1950). In 1956, Basil Sydney, together with several of his fellow British thespians, played an amusing cameo in Mike Todd's all-star Around the World in 80 Days.

Trivia: Sandpaper-voiced British character actor Cecil Parker was able to channel his stuffy, aristocratic demeanor into characters of both authority and menace. Kicking off his stage career after World War I, Parker made his stage bow in 1922 and his first film appearance seven years later. In his film roles, he was frequently addressed as "Colonel," "Your Majesty," or "Your Lordship," though these titles were not always an indication of his character's basic integrity. American filmgoers of the 1930s were most familiar with Parker's portrayal of the philandering, cowardly businessman in Hitchcock's The Lady Vanishes (1938). He played leads in such post-World War II films as Captain Boycott (1947), The Weaker Sex (1948), The Amazing Mr. Beecham (1949), Tony Draws a Horse (1950), and I Believe in You (1952). He also played such prominent supporting roles as Britannus in Caesar and Cleopatra (1946), the usurping king in Danny Kaye's The Court Jester (1956), Lord Loam in The Admirable Crichton (1957), and Jarvis Lorry in A Tale of Two Cities (1958). Cecil Parker's last film appearance was a comedy cameo in Oh, What a Lovely War (1969).

Trivia: A stage actor by the early '40s, Harvey appeared in the 1945 film Caesar and Cleopatra, and by the end of the decade was working as an editor. Harvey cut such notable films as John Boulting's I'm All Right, Jack, Bryan Forbes' The L-Shaped Room and The Whisperers, Stanley Kubrick's Lolita and Dr. Strangelove, and Martin Ritt's The Spy Who Came in from the Cold. He debuted as a director in 1967 with Dutchman, an adaptation of LeRoi Jones' two-character play, which he also edited. Harvey had his first popular success with his second film, the historical drama The Lion in Winter, with Peter O'Toole and Katharine Hepburn; he also guided Hepburn in a television film of Tennessee Williams' The Glass Menagerie and the black comedy Grace Quigley (aka The Ultimate Solution of Grace Quigley). Among his other theatrical features are They Might Be Giants and Richard's Things; his notable television films include The Disappearance of Aimee, Svengali and The Patricia Neal Story.

Trivia: British entertainer Stanley Holloway tried to make a go of his first job as a clerk in a Billingsgate fish market, but the call of the theatre was loud and strong. Originally planning an operatic career, Holloway studied singing in Milan, but this came to an end when World War One began. Finishing up his service with the infantry, Holloway headed for the stage again, making his London premiere in 1919's Kissing Time. His first film was The Rotters (1921), and the first time the public outside the theatres heard his robust voice was on radio in 1923. Holloway toured the music hall-revue circuit with his comic monologues, usually centered around his self-invented characters "Sam Small" and "The Ramsbottoms." Holloway's entree into talking pictures was with a 1930 film version of his stage success, The Co-Optimist. The British film industry of the '30s was more concerned in turning out "quota quickies" so that Hollywood would send over an equal number of American films, but Holloway was able to survive in these cheap pictures, occasionally rising to the heights of such productions as Squibs (1935) and The Vicar of Bray (1937). In 1941, Holloway was cast in one of the prestige films of the season, George Bernard Shaw's Major Barbara; this led to top-drawer film appearances throughout the war years, notably This Happy Breed (1944), The Way to the Stars (1945) and Brief Encounter (1947). Though he'd had minimal Shakespearian experience, Holloway was selected by Laurence Olivier to play the Gravedigger in Olivier's filmization of Hamlet (1947), a role he'd forever be associated with and one he'd gently parody in 1969's Private Life of Sherlock Holmes. Gaining an American audience through repeated showings of his films on early-'50s TV, Holloway took New York by storm as Alfred P. Doolittle in the stage smash My Fair Lady - a role he'd repeat in the 1964 film version (after James Cagney had turned it down), and win an Oscar in the bargain. Continuing his activities in all aspects of British show business -- including a 1960 one-man show, Laughs and Other Events -- Holloway decided he'd take a whack at American TV as the butler protagonist of the 1962 sitcom Our Man Higgins. It's difficult to ascertain the quality of this series, since it had the miserable luck of being scheduled opposite the ratings-grabbing Beverly Hillbillies. Stanley Holloway perservered with stage, movie, and TV appearances into the '70s; in honor of one of his two My Fair Lady songs, he titled his 1981 autobiography Wiv a Little Bit of Luck.

Trivia: Michael Rennie always claimed that he "turned actor" to escape becoming an executive for his family's wool business. The Cambridge-educated Rennie haunted the casting offices until he was hired by Alfred Hitchcock for his first film, The Secret Agent (1936). Handsome but hollow, Rennie decided that if he was to be a film star, he'd better learn to act, thus he spent several seasons with the York Repertory. Serving in World War II as a flying officer in the RAF, Rennie came to the United States for the first time to be a training instructor in Georgia. Small roles in postwar British films led to a 20th Century Fox contract. It was during his stay at Fox that Rennie truly began to blossom with major roles in 1951's The Day the Earth Stood Still (as Klaatu), 1952's Les Miserables (as Jean Valjean), 1953's The Robe, and many other films. On television, Michael Rennie spent two years and 76 episodes portraying suave soldier of fortune Harry Lime on the syndicated series The Third Man. Rennie died of emphysema on June 10, 1971.

Trivia: Smooth, refined British star Leo Genn is known for his relaxed charm and "black velvet" voice. Before becoming an actor, he received a law degree at Cambridge and worked as a barrister in the early '20s. In 1930 he debuted onstage; for several years he continued earning money with legal services, meanwhile gaining experience in both plays and films. In 1939 he finally gave up the law to make his Broadway debut. He served with the Royal Artillery during World War II; in 1943 he was promoted to lieutenant colonel, and in 1945 he was awarded the Croix de Guerre. On several occasions during the war he was granted leave to appear in films. At war's end he became one of Britain's investigators of war crimes at the Belsen concentration camp and went on to be an assistant prosecutor for the Belsen trial. After his small but noteworthy role as the Constable of France in Laurence Olivier's film Henry V (1944), he was invited to the U.S., where he had a great theatrical triumph in the 1946 Broadway production of Lillian Hellman's Another Part of the Forest. His stage and screen career flourished afterwards in both the U.S. and England. Onscreen he was usually cast in smart, likable, subtle character leads and supporting roles. For his portrayal of Gaius Petronius, Nero's counselor, in Quo Vadis (1951), he received a "Best Supporting Actor" Oscar nomination.

Trivia: A former Canadian Mountie (at least that was his story), British comic actor Ronald Shiner made his stage debut in 1928, and his film bow six years later. After years of supporting roles, Shiner began securing leads in the mid-'50s. He starred or co-starred in such nonsense as Keep It Clean (1956), Dry Rot (1956), Operation Bullshine (1959), and The Night We Got the Bird (1961). Reportedly, Ronald Shiner insured his huge nose with Lloyds of London for 30,000 dollars.

Trivia: Bantam-weight Scotsman John Laurie abandoned a career in architecture when he first stepped on stage in 1921. Laurie spent most of the next five decades playing surly, snappish types: the taciturn farmer who betrays fugitive Robert Donat in Hitchcock's The 39 Steps (1935), the repugnant Blind Pew in Disney's Treasure Island (1950) et. al. A friend and favorite of Laurence Olivier, Laurie showed up in all three of Olivier's major Shakespearean films. He played Captain Jamie in Henry V (1944), Francisco ("For this relief, much thanks") in Hamlet (1948) and Lord Lovel in Richard III (1955). Intriguingly, Olivier and Laurie portrayed the same historical character in two entirely different films. Both portrayed the Mahdi, scourge of General "Chinese" Gordon: Laurie essayed the part in The Four Feathers (1939), while Olivier played the role in Khartoum (1965). Millions of TV fans worldwide have enjoyed Laurie in the role of Fraser on the BBC sitcom Dad's Army. One of John Laurie's few starring assignments was in the 1935 film Edge of the World, set on the remote Shetland isle of Foula; 40 years later, a frail-looking Laurie was one of the participants in director Michael Powell's "reunion" documentary Return to the Edge of the World (1978).

Trivia: British actor Felix Aylmer may not be popularly known in the United States, but his was one of the longest and most prestigious careers in the 20th-century British theatre. Aylmer's first stage work was done with another theatrical giant, Sir Seymour Hicks, in 1911. Two years later, Aylmer was engaged by the then-new Birmingham Repertory, premiering as Orsino ("If music be the food of love...") in Shakespeare's Twelfth Night. After World War I service, Aylmer established himself as one of the foremost interpreters of the works of George Bernard Shaw; he also concentrated on the London productions of such American plays as Abraham Lincoln and Robert E. Lee (no partisanship here!) Aylmer made his Broadway bow in a production of Galsworthy's Loyalties, periodically returning to the states in such plays as Flashing Stream, wherein he played First Lord of the Admiralty Walter Hornsby, which some regard as his finest performance. Like most British actors, Aylmer acted in plays to feed his soul and films to pay his bills. His motion picture debut was in Escape (1930), after which he averaged a picture a year. Aylmer was seen by American audiences in such internationally popular films as The Citadel (1938), Henry V (1944), Hamlet (1948), Quo Vadis (1951) and Separate Tables (1958). The actor was something of a hero to his fellow actors for his efforts in their behalf during his long tenure as president of British Equity, the performers' trade union; in 1965 Aylmer was knighted for his accomplishments. Active until his eighties, Sir Felix Aylmer made one of his last film appearances as the Judge in The Chalk Garden (1964), a role he'd originated on stage eight years earlier.

Trivia: Ivor Barnard was a busy actor for 40 years on stage and screen, with dozens of plays and more than 60 movies to his credit. In England, he was respected enough, and got leading roles right into his sixties, including the part of Mr. Murdoch in the 1948 London production of Brigadoon. If there was a sad element to his career, it was that he had to wait until the final year of his life -- at the age of 66, in the role of would-be assassin Major Ross in John Huston's Beat the Devil -- to finally get noticed by American film critics, who thought him delightful. Barnard was almost too good at what he did, melting into the character roles that were his forte onscreen. Apart from a bit part in a 1920 silent, he confined his work on the stage until the dawn of the sound era. He was very active with the Birmingham Repertory Theatre Company in the teens, and was established in London by the early '20s. Barnard's movie career began with a small part in Alfred Hitchcock's adaptation of John Galsworthy's play The Skin Game. Two years later, he got one of the more prominent movie roles of his career when he played Dr. Falke, the character who sets the story in motion when he is the victim of a practical joke, in William Thiele's screen adaptation of Johann Strauss' Die Fledermaus. Most of the parts that Barnard portrayed, however, were much smaller, with as little as a single line of dialogue, though he often made them memorable, such as his performance as the sarcastic bystander in the opening scene of Anthony Asquith and Leslie Howard's Pygmalion (1938). Asquith thought enough of Barnard to use him in The Importance of Being Earnest 14 years later. Barnard also played small but memorable parts in David Lean's Great Expectations and Oliver Twist. It fell to John Huston to give him the most prominent screen time of his career, however, as the diminutive Ross in Beat the Devil, in which Barnard managed to hold his own in a cast that included Humphrey Bogart, Robert Morley, and Peter Lorre.

Trivia: British actor Valentine Dyall was a well-known radio performer of the '40s, introducing a weekly "scare" series with "This is your storyteller....the Man in Black." In films, Dyall looked more like a bank president than the voice of doom, and was cast accordingly. On stage since 1930 and films since 1942, Dyall remained busy into the '80s. Some of Dyall's best-known films include The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp (1943), Henry V (1945) (as the Duke of Burgundy), Caesar and Cleopatra (1946), Brief Encounter (1946), The Haunting (1963), The Wrong Box (1967) and Casino Royale (1967). Valentine Dyall made many of his final appearances where he began, on radio: he was indispensable to many Halloween broadcasts of the '70s and '80s, sometimes nostalgically recreating "The Man in Black."

Trivia: Emaciated British character actor Gibb McLaughlin spent years as a music hall monologist, telling morbid jokes about his many imagined illnesses. McLaughlin also performed a "protean act," playing all the roles with rapid costume changes. Making his film debut in 1921, the prune-visaged McLaughlin showed up in comic supporting roles for the next 36 years. Gibb McLaughlin's larger screen assignments included such roles as the Duke of York in Nell Gwynne (1926), the pretentious French executioner in Private Life of Henry VIII (1933), and sour-pussed Sowerberry the undertaker in Oliver Twist (1948).

Trivia: A luminous beauty, Jean Simmons was a star in her native Britain and in the U.S. who first appeared onscreen at age 14 in Give Us the Moon (1944), but did not become a true star until she played Estella in David Lean's Great Expectations (1946). In 1948, she was handpicked by Laurence Olivier to play the doomed Ophelia in his classic version of Hamlet and won a Best Actress award at the Venice Film Festival and an Academy Award nomination for her efforts. Simmons traveled to Hollywood in 1950 after marrying Stewart Granger. Their marriage lasted a decade and Simmons then became Mrs. Richard Brooks in 1960, the year he starred her in Elmer Gantry. During the '50s and '60s, Simmons had an extremely busy film career appearing in everything from costume epics to romances to musicals to straight dramas. Simmons received an Oscar nomination in 1969 for The Happy Ending. By the mid-'70s, Simmons started working less frequently and divided her time between features and television work. In the late '80s, she had a burst of character roles, but thereafter, her forays into acting became increasingly sporadic. She died at age 80 in January 2010.

Trivia: One of the most revered directors of his era, Elia Kazan was also one of the most -- arguably the most -- controversial. In addition to making his mark on film history with masterpieces such as A Streetcar Named Desire, On the Waterfront, and East of Eden, Kazan made a more dubious mark with his involvement in the House Committee on UnAmerican Activities (HUAC)'s anti-Communist witchhunt of the 1950s; his decision to name alleged industry Communists earned him the ire of many of his peers, resulting in what was essentially his own Hollywood blacklisting. Thus, any biography of Kazan cannot be written without mention of his political involvement, in tandem with the many cinematic contributions he made throughout a long and illustrious career. An Anatolian Greek, Kazan was born Elia Kazanjoglou in Istanbul (then Constantinople), Turkey, on September 7, 1909. In 1913, he emigrated with his parents to New York City, where his father sold rugs for a living. After an undergraduate education at Williams College and drama study at Yale, Kazan joined New York's left-leaning Group Theatre as an actor and assistant manager. During the 1930s, when Kazan was an active member, the theater was under the leadership of Harold Clurman, Cheryl Crawford, and Lee Strasberg. A focal point of New York artistic life during the decade, the Group Theatre also was a center for radical thought and activity; Kazan himself was a member of the Communist party from 1934 until 1936, when he quit the party in what he claimed was "disgust." He did continue to maintain close relations with many in and around the Stalinist movement, only terminating these relations in 1952 when he testified before HUAC. In addition to acting in such plays as Clifford Odets' Waiting for Lefty and Golden Boy, Kazan began directing in 1935. He went on to become one of the leading figures on Broadway during the next decade, directing debut productions of Thornton Wilder's Skin of Our Teeth, Tennessee Williams' A Streetcar Named Desire, Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman, and Williams' Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. Hollywood took notice of the director's talent and in 1945 Kazan had a memorable directing debut with A Tree Grows in Brooklyn. Two years later, he found further success with Gentleman's Agreement, Sea of Grass, and Boomerang!. Although the latter two were considerable accomplishments, it was Gentleman's Agreement -- a bold exploration of anti-Semitism starring Gregory Peck and John Garfield -- that won Kazan his greatest accolades: the film was nominated for eight Academy Awards, winning Best Picture, Best Supporting Actress for Celeste Holm, and Best Director for Kazan. The same year, he co-founded the famed Actor's Studio with Strasberg; the school would serve as a training ground for legions of famous actors, including Marlon Brando. In 1949, the director found acclaim with the interracial love story Pinky, which received three Oscar nominations. Following 1950's Panic in the Streets, a tale of efforts to contain a New Orleans plague epidemic that mirrored the Communist scare taking hold in the U.S., Kazan scored his next major success with a film adaptation of A Streetcar Named Desire. Featuring a sensuous, explosive Marlon Brando in the role of Stanley Kowalski, the film garnered 12 Oscar nominations (eventually winning four, including Best Actress for Vivien Leigh), and made a star of Brando. The following year, Kazan and Brando collaborated again on Viva Zapata!, a biopic of Mexican revolutionary leader and President Emiliano Zapata. It was at this time that Kazan's offscreen life became irretrievably enmeshed with his cinematic work. In January 1952, the director was called before HUAC regarding his involvement with the Communist Party and the Group Theatre. During his hearing, he denied that the group was a "front" for Communist activity and that its three directors were Communists. He also refused to supply HUAC with the names of other Communists in the Group Theatre. However, it was not long before Kazan changed his testimony: in the spring of the same year, after being told by 20th Century Fox President Spyros P. Skouras that he would never work in Hollywood again if he refused to disclose names, Kazan once again testified before the committee. In his hearing, he supplied HUAC with several names, including those of writer Clifford Odets (who himself would later "name names"), Lillian Hellman, John Garfield, and Paula and Lee Strasberg. After his testimony, Kazan was scorned by many of his peers. Arthur Miller, who had once been a close friend, spoke out against him in a letter to the New York Post. However, the attitude greeting the clash between Kazan's dubious offscreen activities and his inarguable onscreen talents was summed up by Brando, who was quoted as saying: "that was a terrible thing [Kazan] did in Washington. I'm not going to work with him anymore. But he's good for me. Maybe I'll work with him a couple more times, at least once." He did so, collaborating with the director on the 1954 classic On the Waterfront. The film -- which was considered by many viewers to be Kazan and screenwriter Budd Schulberg's elaborate defense of an informer's rationale -- won almost universal acclaim, netting 12 Academy Award nominations and winning Best Picture, Best Actor for Brando, Best Supporting Actress for Eva Marie Saint, and another Best Director award for Kazan. Kazan's next effort, East of Eden, was also greeted with enthusiasm, netting him another Oscar nomination for Best Director. Aside from the critical acclaim it garnered, the film was notable for being James Dean's first starring vehicle; in directing the actor, Kazan helped him produce the type of nuanced tough-sensitive performance that he famously elicited from other actors such as Brando, John Garfield, and Montgomery Clift. Such performances became known as hallmarks of Kazan's films. In 1956, the director made Baby Doll, another Williams adaptation, which was memorable not so much for its quality (or lack thereof) as for the controversy its content inspired. Chock-full of steamy sexual suggestion and lots of thumb-sucking, the film was the first major motion picture ever to be publicly condemned by the Legion of Decency, the Catholic organization responsible for instituting the repressive Production Code. Somewhat less controversy surrounded Kazan's Wild River, a 1960 film starring Montgomery Clift, and the director found further success with his 1961 Splendor in the Grass. Starring Natalie Wood and Warren Beatty as ill-fated lovers, the film provided an interesting exploration of lust and insanity, and Wood was rewarded with a Best Actress Oscar nomination for her role as the girl who literally goes crazy over Beatty (screenwriter William Inge won a Best Original Screenplay Oscar for his work on the film). Kazan next made America, America, a 1963 film based on the early life of his Greek uncle, and thereafter became largely absent from the film industry, occasionally making acting appearances. In 1998, the 89-year-old director once again found himself at the center of controversy, this time due to the decision of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to present him with a Lifetime Achievement Award. A deep divide appeared in Hollywood, between those who supported the decision, maintaining that the director's body of work made him worthy, and those who didn't, maintaining that Kazan's offscreen activities amounted to a betrayal of his peers, thus making him an unfit award recipient. The Academy went ahead and presented the award regardless, honoring a director who, political actions aside, had made an indelible contribution to his chosen field.

Trivia: The first star ever spawned by Hammer Films, Don Stannard enjoyed a brief career as a leading man before his tragic death at the age of 34. Born in Westcliffe-on-Sea in Essex, Stannard was the son of a banker and was interested in acting from childhood. He studied at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art and initially got work as a stand-in for Robert Donat. His first real break came when he was spotted by MGM head Louis B. Mayer while the latter was visiting England. After being given a screen test, Stannard was signed by the studio, initially to work in the Robert Taylor vehicle A Yank at Oxford. Stannard had small roles in a few other Hollywood productions before returning to England in 1939. When the Second World War started that year, he joined the Royal Navy, serving for five years. He made his British screen debut in 1944, playing a small role in Maclean Rogers' feature Don Chicago. The following year, he played John Bevan in Robert Hamer's period crime melodrama Pink String and Sealing Wax (produced at Ealing by Michael Balcon) and donned the uniform of a Roman centurion in Gabriel Pascal's gargantuan production of Caesar and Cleopatra. Stannard went on to appear in ever larger roles, including the part of Detective Charlesworth in Lionel Tomlinson's 1947 thriller Death in High Heels, based on the debut novel of renowned mystery author Christianna Brand. That same year, Hammer Films licensed the movie rights to the character of Dick Barton, a two-fisted secret agent (created by Norman Collins for the BBC) in one of the most popular serials on British radio. Although the actor who did the voice of Barton on the air, Noel Johnson, was considered for the movie role, Hammer eventually went with the virtually unknown and less expensive Stannard. With his strong features and low-key yet commanding manner, Stannard fit the part well, though initially it was difficult for fans to discern his qualities. The Dick Barton movies got off to a rocky start with the first of them, Dick Barton, Special Agent (1948), which had too much comic relief and terrible pacing. The series was really established the next year, however, with Dick Barton Strikes Back, which was far more exciting and a much better made movie in every possible respect. Unfortunately, even before the sequel's release, the series was effectively dead, and so was Stannard. On July 9, 1949, the actor was traveling in a car with his wife and a pair of performers (one of them Sebastian Cabot) after attending a party when the vehicle went out of control. Stannard was killed in the crash, and Hammer, unable to recast the role, canceled production of the planned fourth Barton movie, Dick Barton in Darkest Africa. Stannard's final film was Oswald Mitchell's The Temptress in 1949; the Dick Barton series ended with Dick Barton at Bay, filmed in 1948 but issued in England in October 1950. In late 2003, Hammer Films and DD/DD Video re-released the three Dick Barton feature films in England in a heavily annotated, Region 2 DVD box set.

Trivia: A graduate of the University of California, Ronald Davidson tried to make a go as a rancher prior to entering the literary field as a short story writer. He turned to motion pictures in 1936 and went on to provide screenplays for a host of low-budget Westerns until appointed story director of Republic Pictures' serial division in 1943. From 1944 on, Davidson was also listed as associate producer on nearly all of the company's classic chapterplays, remaining with the serial unit until 1955 and King of the Carnival, the last chapterplay produced by Republic.

Trivia: British lead actress, onscreen from the '40s.

Trivia: The granddaughter of musical comedy star Marie Kendall, daughter of vaudevillian Terry Kendall, British actress Kay Kendall prepared for her own career by studying ballet. Her earliest professional engagement was a music-hall tour in an act with her sister Kim. She made her film bow in the notorious British flop London Town (1944). After this disastrous movie debut, Kendall was abruptly told off by one powerful British producer: "You're ugly, you have no talent, you're too tall and you photograph badly. Go marry some nice man, settle down and have a family." Refusing to listen to the dreadful man, Kendall went back to Square One with regional repertory work. As for her "ugliness," Kendall's principal claim to fame was her stunning natural beauty -- so stunning that virtually every man who crossed her path proposed marriage on the spot (or seriously considered doing so). Though unusually tall for a leading lady (5'9"), few male stars exhibited any qualms about acting opposite the delightful Kendall. She made her film comeback with a choice comedy role in Genevieve (1953), which secured her subsequent superstardom in films like Les Girls and The Reluctant Debutante. She married actor Rex Harrison in 1957; according to legend, he knew that she was dying of leukemia, but kept her from finding out. Kay Kendall succumbed to her illness at 33, shortly after co-starring with Yul Brynner in Once More With Feeling (1960).

Trivia: British actress Cathleen Nesbitt took the first step toward a career that would span nine decades when she made her stage debut in the 1910 London revival of Pinero's The Cabinet Minister. While appearing with the Irish Players, Nesbitt made her first journey to America in 1915, where she would star in the Broadway premiere of Playboy of the Western World. After four years in the U.S., Nesbitt returned to England in 1919, where she concentrated on classic roles and where she would make her first film in 1922. Hundreds of stage roles later, Ms. Nesbitt appeared in her first American movie, 1954's Three Coins in the Fountain. Two years later, she played Mrs. Higgins in the Broadway hit My Fair Lady. When she accepted a co-starring role as William Windom's mother in the 1963 TV sitcom The Farmer's Daughter, some observers opined that this would be the capper of her long career. Not so: Cathleen Nesbitt had over 15 years of work still in her, including the demanding role of an octogenarian drug addict in The French Connection II. And in 1981, at the age of 92, Ms. Nesbitt again portrayed Mrs. Higgins in the Broadway revival of My Fair Lady. Cathleen Nesbitt wrote her autobiography, A Little Love and Good Company, in 1973.

Trivia: British character actress and comedienne Marie Ault is best remembered for her fingernail-on-the-chalkboard portrayal of Rummy Mitchens in 1941's Major Barbara. In addition to appearing in feature films, Ault also played on the British stage. She was born Mary Cragg.

Trivia: Educated in Greece and London, Cyprus-born Michael Caccoyannis launched his professional career as a lawyer. Having had a taste of the arts by producing Greek-language programs for the BBC during the war, Caccoyannis forsook the legal world for the theatre, joining the Old Vic as an actor and director. When he ran into difficulty securing directing jobs in the British film industry, Caccoyannis returned to Greece, where he made his first film, Windfall in Athens, in 1953. The director was instrumental in the success of Greek superstar Melina Mercouri, guiding her through the multi-award-winning Stella (1955). Caccoyannis' first significant international success was Electra (1961), a fluid adaptation of the venerable Euripides play. His biggest hit was Zorba the Greek (1964), which fully demonstrated the influence that the Italian neorealist movement had had in the director's work. Unfortunately, Caccoyannis' next film, The Day the Fish Came Out (1967), was an expensive disaster, though he more than compensated for this set-back with his critically acclaimed The Trojan Women (1971) (he'd previously directed the well-received Broadway stage version of this ancient drama in 1963). After a long absence from the screen, Michael Caccoyannis directed the 1986 film Sweet Country, which received negative criticism at the time, but looks better with each passing year. He made his last picture in 1999 - a screen adaptation of Chekhov's The Cherry Orchard, co-starring Alan Bates and Charlotte Rampling -- then spent his last decade in inactivity, and died of a heart attack at age 89 in July 2011.

Trivia: H.F. Maltby was a prolific stage actor, director and playwright long before his 1933 film debut. Many of Maltby's stage plays, notably The Rotters and The Right Age to Marry, were successfully adapted to the screen. As a film actor, he excelled in roles calling for brusque pomposity: magistrates, politicians, and the like. As a screenwriter, he turned out several Todd Slaughter melodramas of the 1930s, as well as such lighter fare as 1944's Over the Garden Wall. Busy though he was in films, he managed to find time to write for radio during the war years. In 1950, H. F. Maltby published his autobiography, Ring Up the Curtain.

Trivia: Usually billed as Anthony Holles, this prolific British character actor made his first movie appearance in 1921. Holles' more sizeable film roles of the 1930s included "Bonzo" in Star Reporter (1932), and a female-impersonator turn in Hotel Splendide (1932). The war years found Holles playing working-class types like Roy Todd in Thursday's Child (1943) and Sgt. Bassett in A Canterbury Tale (1946). Otherwise, Antony Holles was seen in fleeting, functional roles, most of which didn't even have character names: in his last film, The Rocking Horse Winner (1950), Holles is identified only as "Bowler Hat."

Trivia: Gaunt -- nay, skeletal -- British actor Ernst Thesiger had originally studied to be an artist. While he retained his delicate manual skills for the rest of his days (he wrote several books on needlepoint), Thesiger cast his lot with Thespis when he made his first stage appearance in 1909, at the tender age of 30. He scored a personal and professional triumph as star of the stage farce A Little Bit of Fluff, which opened in 1915 and ran for several years. In 1916, he made the first of a handful of silent film appearances, and in 1924 he played the Dauphin in the original production of Shaw's St. Joan. Thesiger was well enough known in 1927 to write an autobiography, Practically True; he hadn't an inkling that his greatest acting days still lay ahead of him. In 1932, he made his talkie debut in James Whale's The Old Dark Horse, creating an indelible impression as Horace Femm, the imperious, condescending lord of the forbidding domicile of the title. Whale took full advantage of Thesiger's cadaverous features and his sneering erudition, while the actor made a meal of such simple lines as "Have a potato." Even better was the next Whale-Thesiger collaboration The Bride of Frankenstein, wherein the actor had the role of a lifetime as prissy, posturing mad scientist Dr. Praetorious. With such notable exceptions as the Whale films and the British melodramas The Ghoul (1933) and They Drive By Night (1938), most of Thesiger's screen characters were more snobbish than sinister. All of his film roles, however, can be regarded as extensions of the actor's real-life personality; from all accounts, the line between Thesiger's screen self and real self was thin indeed, as demonstrated by his disdainful public comments regarding his profession and his co-workers. Witheringly patronizing to the end, Ernest Thesiger made his final stage and screen appearances in 1960, the year before his death at age 81.

Trivia: Renee Ashershon made her stage bow at age 15 in John Gielgud's theatrical troupe. The most fondly remembered of her film appearances was the French-speaking princess Katherine in the climactic scenes of Olivier's Henry V (1945). Renee Ashershon was the widow of actor Robert Donat, whom she married in 1953.