Trivia: Richard Barthelmess endeavored to follow the family tradition established by his actress mother Carolyn Harris, appearing in amateur theatricals while attending Trinity College in Hartford, Connecticut. In 1916, the 21-year-old Barthelmess was invited to appear in films by a family friend, actress Alla Nazimova. His first film was the silent serial Gloria's Romance (1916). He joined D.W. Griffith's company in 1918 at the behest of Dorothy Gish, appearing opposite Dorothy's sister Lillian in the 1919 Griffith classic Broken Blossoms. Though he played a Chinese holy man in this film, Barthelmess was generally found in all-American roles; many historians consider his portrayal of a backwoods teen-aged mail carrier in Tol'able David (1921) (produced by Barthelmess' own Inspiration Film Co.) to be his finest effort. During the 1920s, Barthelmess was one of the biggest stars at First National Studios, pulling down $375,000 per year for such vehicles as The Patent Leather Kid and The Drop Kick (both 1927). He remained with First National when it was absorbed by Warner Bros. in 1928, continuing to star in such early talkies as The Dawn Patrol (1930) and Cabin in the Cotton (1932). Despite possessing a high, reedy voice, Barthelmess made a successful transition to sound; but after so many years on top, his popularity inevitably began to wane in the early 1930s. His last film performances were in character roles, often unsympathetic in nature; he was particularly effective as the disgraced pilot in Howard Hawks' Only Angels Have Wings (1939). After serving as a lieutenant commander in World War II, Richard Barthelmess retired to a wealthy, comfortable existence, thanks to wise real-estate investments in the Long Island area.

Trivia: With her pale almost translucent eyes and seemingly permanent air of exhaustion, blonde Helen Chandler was perfectly cast as Dracula's near-tragic Mina Seward, and if translated into a parable on addiction, which the Gothic horror classic often is, the role also eerily mirrored the actress' real life.A graduate of New York's Professional Children's School (where one of her classmates was the equally star-crossed Lillian Roth of I'll Cry Tomorrow fame), Chandler made her Broadway bow in Barbara (1917) and three years later played the doomed Prince Richard to John Barrymore's homicidal Richard III. She was Ophelia opposite Basil Sydney in the famous 1925 modern-dress version of Hamlet and was fast becoming one of Broadway's most talked about young ingenues when Hollywood came knocking on the door. Having made an inauspicious debut in the New York-lensed The Music Master (1927), Helen Chandler found herself perfectly cast in the ethereal Outward Bound (1930), as the suicide victim who finds herself on a cruise ship to destiny. Mina Seward in Dracula was just another contract assignment for the actress, who rather saw herself playing the title role in Alice in Wonderland (a role that, three years later, instead went to the much less talented Charlotte Henry). Few realized it at the time, but Chandler had already begun her lifelong battle with alcoholism, a tragic predilection only facilitated by her new husband, the hard-drinking British playwright Cyril Hume.Due to its latter-day cult status, Dracula remains Chandler's most revered film assignment, but she was also effective as the mail-order bride opposite Walter Huston in A House Divided (1931) and as Colin Clive's daughter in Christopher Strong (1933). At the time, however, most of the attention was lavished on her Broadway returns: Helen Bennett in Pride and Prejudice (1935), the heroine in Bella Spewack's Hollywood satire Boy Meets Girl (1936-1937), and especially a repeat performance as the ghostly traveler in the 1938 revival of Outward Bound. Divorced from Hume, she married her co-star in these and several other stage productions, British actor Bramwell Fletcher.By 1940, however, Chandler's drug and alcohol dependency had briefly landed her in a sanitarium, and continued ill health forced her to retire completely from performing after a stint opposite Joe E. Brown in a Los Angeles production of The Show Off (1941). In his unpublished autobiography, Bramwell Fletcher blamed Chandler's alcoholism for their 1940 divorce (ironically, he would later marry the equally dependent Diana Barrymore), after which her life seems to have spiraled out of control. In November of 1950, Chandler was badly burned in a Hollywood apartment fire -- newspaper accounts vividly described how her once so beautiful face had been mercilessly scarred -- and her death from cardiac arrest in April of 1965 was reported by almost no one. Sadly, Helen Chandler's ashes remain unclaimed at a Venice, CA, cemetery.If nothing else, Helen Chandler will forever be remembered for playing Dracula's most prominent victim. Even though the more recent discovery of the Spanish-language version of the classic thriller features a much more vibrant Lupita Tovar in a production perhaps more to the taste of modern-day sensibilities, for most genre fans, Chandler remains the quintessential virgin despoiled.

Trivia: Former All-American halfback Johnny Mack Brown was a popular screen cowboy during the 1930s. Already in the public eye for his athletic prowess, Brown was persuaded by a friend to give Hollywood a try after graduating from the University of Alabama. In 1927, the muscular macho man was signed by MGM where he played in a number of leading roles opposite popular actresses such as Garbo, Pickford, and Crawford for several years. But Brown never really found his acting niche until he starred in King Vidor's Billy the Kid (1930). From then on he was happily typecast as a cowboy actor, and became a hero to millions of American boys, appearing in over 200 B-grade Westerns over the next two decades. From 1942-50 he was consistently among the screen's ten most popular Western actors. Brown formally retired from movies in 1953 but made occasional return appearances as a "nostalgia" act.

Trivia: A descendant of William the Conqueror (or so his studio publicity claimed), Canadian actor David Manners was brought to films by director James Whale, who cast the personable, aristocratic-looking young man in the 1930 filmization of Journey's End. It was Manners' thankless task to be the handsome but ineffectual hero of many a horror film: he was forever being knocked out, locked out, or otherwise detained from promptly rescuing the heroine in such films as Dracula (1931), The Mummy (1932) and The Black Cat (1934). He was better served as one of the Hemingwayesque heroes in The Last Flight (1931) and the unfortunate title character in The Mystery of Edwin Drood (1935). Manners quit film acting in 1936 to pursue a satisfying career as stage performer and novelist. Living in wealthy retirement in his 80s, David Manners was frequently an interview subject for books about his famous Hollywood associates (John Barrymore, Tod Browning, Boris Karloff et. al.); his recollections were always crystal clear, always amusing, and always unadorned (to Mr. Manners, Dracula star Bela Lugosi was nothing more or less than "a pain in the ass").

Trivia: The son of American actor/producer/playwright J.C. Nugent, Elliott Nugent began walking in his dad's mocassins from childhood. Elliott appeared with his parents and his sister Ruth in vaudeville, taking time off for his college career at Ohio State University, where he befriended future humorist James Thurber. Making his Broadway debut in the 1921 George S. Kaufman/Marc Connelly play Dulcy, Nugent followed this personal triumph with the 1922 production Kempy, which he co-authored with his father J.C. Ten more Elliott/J.C. Nugent collaborations followed throughout the '20s; Elliott capped the decade by making his film bow in 1929's So This is College, with his old friend Robert Montgomery. In the first few years of talking pictures, Nugent showed up in intriguing juvenile roles: He was wrongly accused of murder in Lon Chaney Sr.'s The Unholy Three (1930), and tooled around Paris ingesting mysterious "controlled substance" pills in The Last Flight (1931). He tired of film acting in the early '30s and decided to concentrate on writing and directing, though he'd occasionally play cameo roles in the films he directed (e.g. Welcome Stranger [1947]). Preferring to make comedies, Nugent became one of Bob Hope's favorite directors, and also guided Danny Kaye through his feature film debut, Up in Arms (1944); he got along less well with "control freak" Harold Lloyd, whom he directed in Professor Beware (1938). On the Broadway stage, Nugent continued his acting career throughout the '30s; he starred in 1940's The Male Animal, which he co-wrote with college chum James Thurber and which he'd direct for the movies in 1942, with Henry Fonda in the lead. Retiring in 1957, Elliott Nugent spent his last years with his wife Norma Lee in their posh Manhattan apartment; in 1965, he wrote a frank, no-holds-barred autobiography, Events Leading Up to the Comedy.

Trivia: In films from 1926, British leading man Walter Byron was of the George Brent school of actors. That is, Byron was handsome and virile enough for romantic leads, but not so dominating a screen presence that he deflected focus from his glamorous leading ladies. His first major role was opposite Gloria Swanson in the ill-fated Erich Von Stroheim film Queen Kelly (1929). Of his early talkie roles, one stands out: the humorless Frink in The Last Flight (1931), who disapproves of the hedonism of "lost generation" revelers Johnny Mack Brown, Elliott Nugent, and David Manners, but has no qualms about attempting to rape their mutual lady friend Helen Chandler. Later on, Byron could be seen in starched-collar character parts like Walshingham in Mary of Scotland (1936). Still only in his thirties, Walter Byron disappeared from film in 1939.

Trivia: Spanish-born character actor Luis Alberni spent most of his Hollywood career playing excitable Italians: waiters, janitors, stagehands, and shop proprietors. A short, elfish man usually decked out in a string tie and frock coat, Alberni worked on stage in Europe before heading for Broadway (and the movies) in 1921. He was busiest in the early-talkie era, appearing twice in large, juicy supporting roles opposite John Barrymore. In Svengali, Alberni is Barrymore's long-suffering assistant, while in Mad Genius, he's a dope-addicted stage manager who murders Barrymore in a baroque climax. During World War II, Alberni kept busy playing Italian mayors and peasants, both fascist and partisan. Luis Alberni's final film appearance was as the great-uncle of a "compromised" French peasant girl in John Ford's remake of What Price Glory? (1952)