Mr. Smith Goes to Washington

James Stewart (Actor) .. Jefferson Smith

Born: May 20, 1908
Died: July 02, 1997
Birthplace: Indiana, Pennsylvania, United States

Trivia: James Stewart was the movies' quintessential Everyman, a uniquely all-American performer who parlayed his easygoing persona into one of the most successful and enduring careers in film history. On paper, he was anything but the typical Hollywood star: Gawky and tentative, with a pronounced stammer and a folksy "aw-shucks" charm, he lacked the dashing sophistication and swashbuckling heroism endemic among the other major actors of the era. Yet it's precisely the absence of affectation which made Stewart so popular; while so many other great stars seemed remote and larger than life, he never lost touch with his humanity, projecting an uncommon sense of goodness and decency which made him immensely likable and endearing to successive generations of moviegoers.Born May 20, 1908, in Indiana, PA, Stewart began performing magic as a child. While studying civil engineering at Princeton University, he befriended Joshua Logan, who then headed a summer stock company, and appeared in several of his productions. After graduation, Stewart joined Logan's University Players, a troupe whose membership also included Henry Fonda and Margaret Sullavan. He and Fonda traveled to New York City in 1932, where they began winning small roles in Broadway productions including Carrie Nation, Yellow Jack, and Page Miss Glory. On the recommendation of Hedda Hopper, MGM scheduled a screen test, and soon Stewart was signed to a long-term contract. He first appeared onscreen in a bit role in the 1935 Spencer Tracy vehicle The Murder Man, followed by another small performance the next year in Rose Marie.Stewart's first prominent role came courtesy of Sullavan, who requested he play her husband in the 1936 melodrama Next Time We Love. Speed, one of six other films he made that same year, was his first lead role. His next major performance cast him as Eleanor Powell's paramour in the musical Born to Dance, after which he accepted a supporting turn in After the Thin Man. For 1938's classic You Can't Take It With You, Stewart teamed for the first time with Frank Capra, the director who guided him during many of his most memorable performances. They reunited a year later for Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, Stewart's breakthrough picture; a hugely popular modern morality play set against the backdrop of the Washington political system, it cemented the all-American persona which made him so adored by fans, earning a New York Film Critics' Best Actor award as well as his first Oscar nomination.Stewart then embarked on a string of commercial and critical successes which elevated him to the status of superstar; the first was the idiosyncratic 1939 Western Destry Rides Again, followed by the 1940 Ernst Lubitsch romantic comedy The Shop Around the Corner. After The Mortal Storm, he starred opposite Katherine Hepburn and Cary Grant in George Cukor's sublime The Philadelphia Story, a performance which earned him the Best Actor Oscar. However, Stewart soon entered duty in World War II, serving as a bomber pilot and flying 20 missions over Germany. He was highly decorated for his courage, and did not fully retire from the service until 1968, by which time he was an Air Force Brigadier General, the highest-ranking entertainer in the U.S. military. Stewart's combat experiences left him a changed man; where during the prewar era he often played shy, tentative characters, he returned to films with a new intensity. While remaining as genial and likable as ever, he began to explore new, more complex facets of his acting abilities, accepting roles in darker and more thought-provoking films. The first was Capra's 1946 perennial It's a Wonderful Life, which cast Stewart as a suicidal banker who learns the true value of life. Through years of TV reruns, the film became a staple of Christmastime viewing, and remains arguably Stewart's best-known and most-beloved performance. However, it was not a hit upon its original theatrical release, nor was the follow-up Magic Town -- audiences clearly wanted the escapist fare of Hollywood's prewar era, not the more pensive material so many other actors and filmmakers as well as Stewart wanted to explore in the wake of battle. The 1948 thriller Call Northside 777 was a concession to audience demands, and fans responded by making the film a considerable hit. Regardless, Stewart next teamed for the first time with Alfred Hitchcock in Rope, accepting a supporting role in a tale based on the infamous Leopold and Loeb murder case. His next few pictures failed to generate much notice, but in 1950, Stewart starred in a pair of Westerns, Anthony Mann's Winchester 73 and Delmer Daves' Broken Arrow. Both were hugely successful, and after completing an Oscar-nominated turn as a drunk in the comedy Harvey and appearing in Cecil B. De Mille's Academy Award-winning The Greatest Show on Earth, he made another Western, 1952's Bend of the River, the first in a decade of many similar genre pieces.Stewart spent the 1950s primarily in the employ of Universal, cutting one of the first percentage-basis contracts in Hollywood -- a major breakthrough soon to be followed by virtually every other motion-picture star. He often worked with director Mann, who guided him to hits including The Naked Spur, Thunder Bay, The Man From Laramie, and The Far Country. For Hitchcock, Stewart starred in 1954's masterful Rear Window, appearing against type as a crippled photographer obsessively peeking in on the lives of his neighbors. More than perhaps any other director, Hitchcock challenged the very assumptions of the Stewart persona by casting him in roles which questioned his character's morality, even his sanity. They reunited twice more, in 1956's The Man Who Knew Too Much and 1958's brilliant Vertigo, and together both director and star rose to the occasion by delivering some of the best work of their respective careers. Apart from Mann and Hitchcock, Stewart also worked with the likes of Billy Wilder (1957's Charles Lindbergh biopic The Spirit of St. Louis) and Otto Preminger (1959's provocative courtroom drama Anatomy of a Murder, which earned him yet another Best Actor bid). Under John Ford, Stewart starred in 1961's Two Rode Together and the following year's excellent The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance. The 1962 comedy Mr. Hobbs Takes a Vacation was also a hit, and Stewart spent the remainder of the decade alternating between Westerns and family comedies. By the early '70s, he announced his semi-retirement from movies, but still occasionally resurfaced in pictures like the 1976 John Wayne vehicle The Shootist and 1978's The Big Sleep. By the 1980s, Stewart's acting had become even more limited, and he spent much of his final years writing poetry; he died July 2, 1997.

Jean Arthur (Actor) .. Clarissa Saunders

Born: October 17, 1900
Died: June 19, 1991
Birthplace: Plattsburgh, New York, United States

Trivia: The daughter of a commercial artist, Jean Arthur became a model early in life, then went on to work in films. Whatever self-confidence she may have built up was dashed when she was removed from the starring role of Temple of Venus (1923) after a few days of shooting. It was the first of many disappointments for the young actress, but she persevered and, by 1928, was being given co-starring roles at Paramount Pictures. Arthur's curious voice, best described as possessing a lilting crack, ensured her work in talkies, but she was seldom used to full advantage in the early '30s. Dissatisfied with the vapid ingenue, society debutante, and damsel-in-distress parts she was getting (though she was chillingly effective as a murderess in 1930's The Greene Murder Case), Arthur left films for Broadway in 1932 to appear in Foreign Affairs. In 1934, she signed with Columbia Pictures, where, at long last, her gift for combining fast-paced verbal comedy with truly moving pathos was fully utilized. She was lucky enough to work with some of the most accomplished directors in Hollywood: Frank Capra (Mr. Deeds Goes to Town [1936], You Can't Take It With You [1938], Mr. Smith Goes to Washington [1939]); John Ford (The Whole Town's Talking [1935]); and Howard Hawks (Only Angels Have Wings [1937]). Mercurial in her attitudes, terribly nervous both before and after filming a scene -- she often threw up after her scene was finished -- and so painfully shy that it was sometimes difficult for her to show up, she was equally fortunate that her co-workers were patient and understanding with her . Arthur could become hysterical when besieged by fans, and aloof and nonresponsive to reporters. In 1943, she received her only Oscar nomination for The More the Merrier (1943), the second of her two great '40s films directed by George Stevens (Talk of the Town [1942] was the first). After her contract with Columbia ended, she tried and failed to become her own producer. She signed to star in the 1946 Broadway play Born Yesterday -- only to succumb to a debilitating case of stage fright, forcing the producers to replace her at virtually the last moment with Judy Holliday. After the forgettable comedy The Impatient Years in 1944, Arthur made only two more films: Billy Wilder's A Foreign Affair (1948), and George Stevens' classic Shane (1952). She also played the lead in Leonard Bernstein's 1950 musical version of Peter Pan, which co-starred Boris Karloff as Captain Hook. In the early '60s, the extremely reclusive Arthur tentatively returned to show business with a few stage appearances and as an attorney on ill-advised 1966 TV sitcom, The Jean Arthur Show, which was mercifully canceled by mid-season. Surprisingly, the ultra-introverted Arthur later decided to tackle the extroverted profession of teaching drama, first at Vassar College and then the North Carolina School of the Arts; one of her students at North Carolina remembered Arthur as "odd" and her lectures as somewhat whimsical and rambling. Retiring for good in 1972, she retreated to her ocean home in Carmel, CA, steadfastly refusing interviews until her resistance was broken down by the author of a book on her one-time director Frank Capra. She died in 1991.

Claude Rains (Actor) .. Sen. Joseph Harrison Paine

Born: November 10, 1889
Died: May 30, 1967
Birthplace: London, England

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).

Edward Arnold (Actor) .. Jim Taylor

Born: February 18, 1890
Died: April 26, 1956

Trivia: Hearty American character actor Edward Arnold was born in New York to German immigrant parents. Orphaned at 11, Arnold supported himself with a series of manual labor jobs. He made his first stage appearance at 12, playing Lorenzo in an amateur production of The Merchant of Venice at the East Side Settlement House. Encouraged to continue acting by playwright/ journalist John D. Barry, Arnold became a professional at 15, joining the prestigious Ben Greet Players shortly afterward. After touring with such notables as Ethel Barrymore and Maxine Elliot, he did bit and extra work at Chicago's Essanay Film Studios and New Jersey's World Studios during the early 'teens. Hoping to become a slender leading man, Arnold found that his fortune lay in character parts, and accordingly beefed up his body: "The bigger I got, the better character roles I received," he'd observe later. Following several seasons on Broadway, Arnold made his talking picture debut as a gangster in 1933's Whistling in the Dark. He continued playing supporting villains until attaining the title role in Diamond Jim (1935), which required him to add 25 pounds to his already substantial frame; he repeated this characterization in the 1940 biopic Lillian Russell. Other starring roles followed in films like Sutter's Gold (1936), Come and Get It (1936) and Toast of New York (1937), but in 1937 Arnold's career momentum halted briefly when he was labelled "box office poison" by a committee of film exhibitors (other "poisonous" performers were Joan Crawford and Katharine Hepburn!) Undaunted, Arnold accepted lesser billing in secondary roles, remaining in demand until his death. A favorite of director Frank Capra (who frequently chided the actor for the "phony laugh" that was his trademark), Arnold appeared in a trio of Capra films, playing Jimmy Stewart's millionaire father in You Can't Take It With You (1938), a corrupt political boss in Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939), and a would-be fascist in Meet John Doe (1941). Despite the fact that he was not considered a box-office draw, Arnold continued to be cast in starring roles from time to time, notably Daniel Webster in 1941's The Devil and Daniel Webster and blind detective Duncan Maclain in Eyes in the Night (1942) and The Hidden Eye (1945). During the 1940s, Arnold became increasingly active in politics, carrying this interest over into a radio anthology, Mr. President, which ran from 1947 through 1953. He was co-founder of the "I Am an American Foundation," an officer of Hollywood's Permanent Charities Committee, and a president of the Screen Actors Guild. Though a staunch right-wing conservative (he once considered running for Senate on the Republican ticket), Arnold labored long and hard to protect his fellow actors from the persecution of the HUAC "communist witch-hunt." Edward Arnold's last film appearance was in the "torn from today's headlines" potboiler Miami Expose (1956).

Guy Kibbee (Actor) .. Gov. Hopper

Born: March 06, 1882
Died: May 24, 1956

Trivia: It is possible that when actor Guy Kibbee portrayed newspaper editor Webb in the 1940 film version of Our Town, he harked back to his own father's experiences as a news journalist. The cherubic, pop-eyed Kibbee first performed on Mississippi riverboats as a teenager, then matriculated to the legitimate stage. The 1930 Broadway play Torch Song was the production that brought Kibbee the Hollywood offers. From 1931 onward, Kibbee was one of the mainstays of the Warner Bros. stock companies, specializing in dumb politicos (The Dark Horse [1932]), sugar daddies (42nd Street [1933]) and the occasional straight, near-heroic role (Captain Blood [1935]). In 1934, Kibbee enjoyed one of his rare leading roles, essaying the title character in Babbitt (1934), a role he seemed born to play. During the 1940s, Kibbee headlined the Scattergood Baines B-picture series at RKO. He retired in 1949, after completing his scenes in John Ford's Three Godfathers. Kibbee was the brother of small-part play Milton Kibbee, and the father of Charles Kibbee, City University of New York chancellor.

Thomas Mitchell (Actor) .. Diz Moore

Born: July 11, 1892
Died: December 17, 1962

Trivia: The son of Irish immigrants, Thomas Mitchell came from a family of journalists and civic leaders; his nephew, James Mitchell, later became the U.S. Secretary of Labor. Following the lead of his father and brother, Mitchell became a newspaper reporter after high school, but derived more pleasure out of writing comic theatrical skits than pursuing late-breaking scoops. He became an actor in 1913, at one point touring with Charles Coburn's Shakespeare Company. Even when playing leads on Broadway in the 1920s, Mitchell never completely gave up writing; his play Little Accident, co-written with Floyd Dell, would be filmed by Hollywood three times. Entering films in 1934, Mitchell's first role of note was as the regenerate embezzler in Frank Capra's Lost Horizon (1937). Many film fans assume that Mitchell won his 1939 Best Supporting Oscar for his portrayal of Gerald O'Hara in the blockbuster Gone With the Wind; in fact, he won the prize for his performance as the drunken doctor in Stagecoach -- one of five Thomas Mitchell movie appearances in 1939 (his other films that year, classics all, were Only Angels Have Wings, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, and The Hunchback of Notre Dame). Those who watch TV only during the Christmas season are familiar with Mitchell's portrayal of the pathetic Uncle Billy in Capra's It's a Wonderful Life (1946). In the 1950s, Mitchell won an Emmy in 1952, a Tony award (for Wonderful Town) in 1954, and starred in the TV series Mayor of the Town (1954). In 1960, Mitchell originated the role of Lieutant Columbo (later essayed by Peter Falk) in the Broadway play Prescription Murder. Thomas Mitchell died of cancer in December of 1962, just two days after the death of his Hunchback of Notre Dame co-star, Charles Laughton.

Harry Carey (Actor) .. Senate President

Born: January 16, 1878
Died: May 21, 1947

Trivia: Western film star Harry Carey was the Eastern-born son of a Bronx judge. Carey's love and understanding of horses and horsemanship was gleaned from watching the activities of New York's mounted policemen of the 1880s. He worked briefly as an actor in stock, then studied law until a bout of pneumonia forced him to quit the job that was paying for his education. He reactivated his theatrical career in 1904 by touring the provinces in Montana, a play he wrote himself. In 1911, Carey signed with the Bronx-based Biograph film company, playing villain roles for pioneer director D. W. Griffith. Though only in his mid-30s, Carey's face had already taken on its familiar creased, weatherbeaten look; it was an ideal face for westerns, as Carey discovered when he signed with Hollywood's Fox Studios. Under the guidance of fledgling director John Ford, Carey made 26 features and two-reelers in the role of hard-riding frontiersman Cheyenne Harry. Throughout the 1920s, Carey remained an audience favorite, supplementing his acting income with occasional scripting, producing and co-directing assignments. At the dawn of the talkie era, Carey had been around so long that he was considered an old-timer, and had resigned himself to playing supporting parts. His starring career was revitalized by the 1931 jungle epic Trader Horn, in which he appeared with his wife Olive Golden. While he still accepted secondary roles in "A" features (he earned an Oscar nomination for his performance as the Vice President in Frank Capra's Mr. Smith Goes to Washington [1939]), Carey remained in demand during the 1930s as a leading player, notably in the autumnal 1936 western The Last Outlaw and the rugged 1932 serial Last of the Mohicans. In 1940, Carey made his belated Broadway debut in Heavenly Express, following this engagement with appearances in Ah, Wilderness (1944) and But Not Goodbye (1944). By the early 1940s, Carey's craggy face had taken on Mount Rushmore dimensions; his was the archetypal "American" countenance, a fact that director Alfred Hitchcock hoped to exploit. Hitchcock wanted to cast Carey against type as a Nazi ringleader in 1942's Saboteur, only to have these plans vetoed by Mrs. Carey, who insisted that her husband's fans would never accept such a radical deviation from his image. Though Carey and director John Ford never worked together in the 1930s and 1940s, Ford acknowledged his indebtedness to the veteran actor by frequently casting Harry Carey Jr. (born 1921), a personable performer in his own right, in important screen roles. When Carey Sr. died in 1948, Ford dedicated his film Three Godfathers to Harry's memory. A more personal tribute to Harry Carey Sr. was offered by his longtime friend John Wayne; in the very last shot of 1955's The Searchers, Wayne imitated a distinctive hand gesture that Harry Carey had virtually patented in his own screen work.

Eugene Pallette (Actor) .. McGann

Born: July 08, 1889
Died: September 03, 1954

Trivia: It's a source of amazement to those filmgoers born after 1915 -- which is to say, most of us in the early 21st century -- that rotund, frog-voiced, barrel-shaped Eugene Pallette started out in movies as a rough-and-tumble stuntman and graduated to romantic leading man, all in his first five years in pictures. Indeed, Pallette led enough differing career phases and pursued enough activities outside of performing to have made himself a good subject for an adventure story or a screen bio, à la Diamond Jim Brady, except that nobody would have believed it. He was born into an acting family in Winfield, KS, in the summer of 1889; his parents were performing together in a stage production of East Lynne when he came into the world. He grew up on the road, moving from town to town and never really putting down roots until he entered a military academy to complete high school -- which he apparently never quite managed to do. By his teens, Pallette, who was slender and athletic, was working as a jockey and had a winning record, too. Before long, he was part of a stage act involving riding, in a three-horse routine that proved extremely popular. He began acting on the stage as well, and was scraping out a living in the Midwest and West Coast, hoping to make it to New York. At one point, he was allowing a company manager in whose troupe he was working to pocket a major part of his earnings in anticipation of using the sum to finance a trip to New York, only to see the man abscond with the cash and leave him stranded. Pallette turned to movies when he arrived in Los Angeles looking for stage work and found that there was nothing for him. He headed to a nearby studio, where he was told they were looking for riders and took a job as a stuntman for $1.50 a day. He quickly realized that there was a need -- and much more money offered -- for leading men, and he was able to put himself forward in that role. In a matter of a few days, Pallette had managed to make the jump from bit player to lead, and by 1914, he was working opposite the likes of Dorothy Gish. Such was his range that he was just as capable of playing convincingly menacing villains as romantic leads and dashing heroes. He was in D.W. Griffith's The Birth of a Nation in a small role as a wounded soldier. That same year, he played starring roles in three movies by director Tod Browning -- The Spell of the Poppy, The Story of a Story, and The Highbinders -- as, respectively, a drug-addicted pianist, a writer struggling with his conscience, and an abusive Chinese husband of a white woman. In Griffith's Intolerance, he had a much bigger heroic part in that movie's French sequences, while in Going Straight, also made in 1916, he gave a memorable performance as a sadistic villain. Pallette's career was interrupted by the American entry into the First World War, for which he joined the flying corps and served stateside. When he returned to acting in 1919, he discovered that he had to restart his career virtually from square one -- a new generation of leading men had come along during his two years away. He'd also begun putting on weight while in uniform and, with his now bland-seeming features, found that only supporting parts were open to him -- and that's what he got, including an important role in Douglas Fairbanks' 1921 adaptation of The Three Musketeers. For a time, he even gave up acting, pulling his available funds together and heading to the oil fields of Texas, where he made what was then a substantial fortune -- 140,000 dollars in less than a year -- only to see it disappear in a single bad investment. Pallette spent an extended period in seclusion, hospitalized with what would now be diagnosed as severe depression, and then turned back to acting. He reestablished himself during the late silent era in character roles, built on his newly rotund physique and a persona that was just as good at being comical as menacing. Pallette signed with Hal Roach Studios in 1927, where work as a comedy foil was plentiful, and his notable two-reel appearances included the role of the insurance man in the Laurel and Hardy classic The Battle of the Century that same year. It was with the advent of the talkies, however, that he truly came into his own; his croaky but distinctive, frog-like voice -- acquired from time spent as a streetcar conductor calling off stops to his passengers -- completed a picture that made him one of the movies' most memorable, beloved, and highly paid character actors and even a character lead at times. Paramount kept Pallette especially busy, and among his more notable movies were The Virginian, playing "Honey" Wiggin, and The Canary Murder Case and The Greene Murder Case in the studio's Philo Vance series, in which he portrayed Det. Sgt. Heath. He became especially good at portraying excitable wealthy men and belligerent officials. Pallette was a veritable fixture in Hollywood for the next decade and a half, playing prominent roles in every kind of movie from sophisticated screwball comedies such as My Man Godfrey (1936) to the relatively low-brow (but equally funny) Abbott & Costello vehicle It Ain't Hay, with digressions into Preston Sturges' unique brand of comedy (The Lady Eve), fantasy (The Ghost Goes West), musicals (The Gang's All Here, in which he also got to sing as part of the finale), and swashbucklers (The Adventures of Robin Hood). The latter, in which he portrayed Friar Tuck to Errol Flynn's Robin Hood, is probably the movie for which he is best remembered. He was earning more than 2,500 dollars a week and indulged himself freely in his main offscreen hobby: gourmet cooking. He was unique among Hollywood's acting community for having free round-the-clock access to the kitchen of The Ambassador Hotel. Not surprisingly, Pallette's girth increased dramatically between the late '20s and the mid-'40s -- his weight rising to well over 300 pounds -- but it all meant more work and higher fees, right until the middle of the 1940s. He was diagnosed with what he referred to as a throat problem then, and gave up acting. By then, he had a ranch in Oregon where he and his wife lived. Pallette was also extremely pessimistic about the future of the human race, was on record as believing that some catastrophe would wipe us out, and reportedly had stockpiled food and water in a survivalist frame of mind. He died of throat cancer in the late summer of 1954, at age 65.

Buelah Bondi (Actor) .. Ma

H. B. Warner (Actor) .. Majority Leader

Born: October 26, 1876
Died: December 21, 1958

Trivia: H.B. Warner was the son of Charles Warner and the grandson of James Warner, both prominent British stage actors. A tentative stab at studying medicine was abandoned when the younger Warner took drama lessons in Paris and Italy, then joined his father's stock company. After touring the British empire, Warner made his first American stage appearance in 1905. A leading man in his younger days, Warner starred in the first stage and screen versions of that hardy perennial The Ghost Breaker. His most celebrated silent film role was as Christ in Cecil B. DeMille's The King of Kings (1927). Though Warner sometimes complained that this most daunting of portrayals ruined his career, in point of fact he remained extremely busy as a character actor in the 1930s and 1940s. A favorite of director Frank Capra, Warner appeared as Chang in Lost Horizon (1937) (for which he was Oscar-nominated) and as old man Gower in the Christmas perennial It's a Wonderful Life (1946). Warner also played Inspector Nielsen in several of the Bulldog Drummond B-pictures of the 1930s, and had a cameo as one of Gloria Swanson's "waxworks" in Sunset Boulevard. H.B. Warner's final screen appearance was in DeMille's 1956 remake of The Ten Commandments.

Astrid Allwyn (Actor) .. Susan Paine

Born: November 27, 1909
Died: March 31, 1978

Trivia: There was always something calculating about Astrid Allwyn. "Scratch a chilly 'other woman' and if she were not Helen Vinson, she usually turned out to be Astrid Allwyn," as one commentator put it. Allwyn was certainly "chilly" toward little defenseless Shirley Temple when their paths crossed in both Dimples (1936) and Stowaway (1936) and you could hardly blame freshman senator James Stewart for running the other way when he encountered a slightly predatory Astrid in Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939). Allwyn had made her stage bow in Elmer Rice's Street Scene back in 1929 and her screen debut three years later. She was busiest in the 1930s and retired in 1944 to raise her family with second husband Charles O. Fee, a brood that included future actresses Melinda O. Fee and Vicki Fee Steele. An earlier marriage, to screen actor Robert Kent, had ended in divorce in 1941.

Ruth Donnelly (Actor) .. Mrs. Emma Hopper

Born: May 17, 1896
Died: November 17, 1982

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

Grant Mitchell (Actor) .. Sen. MacPherson

Born: June 17, 1875
Died: May 01, 1957

Trivia: The son of a general and a graduate of Yale College and Harvard Law School, Ohioan Grant Mitchell was a lawyer (he certainly looked the part) for several years before going into acting. He made his stage bow at the age of 27, and spent the next quarter of a century as a leading player, often billed above the title of the play. Mitchell was a special favorite of showman George M. Cohan, who wrote a vehicle specifically tailored to Mitchell's talents, The Baby Cyclone, in 1927. Though he reportedly appeared in a 1923 film, Mitchell's movie career officially began in 1932, first in bits (the deathhouse priest in If I Had a Million), then in sizeable supporting roles at Warner Bros. Often cast as the father of the heroine, Mitchell socked across his standard dyspeptic-papa lines with a delivery somewhat reminiscent of James Cagney (leading one to wonder if the much-younger Cagney didn't take a few pointers from Mitchell during his own formative years). While he sparkled in a variety of secondary roles as businessmen, bank clerks and school principals, Mitchell was occasionally honored with a B-picture lead, as in 1939's Father is a Prince. With years of theatrical experience behind him, Mitchell was shown to best advantage in Warners' many adaptations of stage plays, notably A Midsummer Night's Dream (1935) and The Man Who Came to Dinner (1942). Freelancing in the mid '40s, Grant Mitchell occasionally showed up in unbilled one-scene cameos (Leave Her to Heaven [1945]) and in reprises of his small-town bigwig characterizations in such B-films as Blondie's Anniversary (1947) and Who Killed Doc Robbin? (1948).

Porter Hall (Actor) .. Sen. Monroe

Born: April 11, 1911
Died: October 06, 1953
Birthplace: Cincinnati, Ohio, United States

Trivia: After working his way through the University of Cincinnati, Porter Hall slaved away as a Pennsylvania steel worker, then turned to acting, spending nearly 20 years building a solid reputation as a touring Shakespearean actor. Hall was 43 when he made his first film, Secrets of a Secretary. Never entertaining thoughts of playing romantic leads, Hall was content to parlay his weak chin and shifty eyes into dozens of roles calling for such unattractive character traits as cowardice, duplicity and plain old mean-spiritedness. Cast as a murder suspect in The Thin Man (1934), Hall's guilt was so transparent that it effectively ended the mystery even before it began. In DeMille's The Plainsman (1936), Hall played Jack McCall, the rattlesnake who shot Wild Bill Hickok in the back (his performance won Hall a Screen Actors Guild award). In the rollicking Murder He Says (1944), Hall portrays the whacked-out patriarch of a family of hillbilly murderers. And in Miracle on 34th Street (1947), Hall is at his most odious as the neurosis-driven psychiatrist who endeavors to commit jolly old Kris Kringle (Edmund Gwenn) to the booby hatch. Even with only one scene in Going My Way (1944), Hall manages to pack five reels' worth of venom into his role of a loudmouthed atheist. In real life, Hall was the exact opposite of his screen image: a loyal friend, a tireless charity worker, and a deacon at Hollywood's First Presbyterian Church. Porter Hall died at age 65 in 1953; his last film, released posthumously, was Return to Treasure Island (1954).

Pierre Watkin (Actor) .. Sen. Barnes

Born: December 29, 1889
Died: February 03, 1960

Trivia: Actor Pierre Watkin looked as though he was born to a family of Chase Manhattan executives. Tall, imposing, imbued with a corporate demeanor and adorned with well-trimmed white mustache, Watkin appeared to be a walking Brooks Brothers ad as he strolled through his many film assignments as bankers, lawyers, judges, generals and doctors. When director Frank Capra cast the actors playing US senators in Mr Smith Goes to Washington (1939) using as criteria the average weight, height and age of genuine senators, Watkin fit the physical bill perfectly. Occasionally Watkin could utilize his established screen character for satirical comedy: in W.C. Fields' The Bank Dick, he portrayed Lompoc banker Mr. Skinner, who extended to Fields the coldest and least congenial "hearty handclasp" in movie history. Serial fans know Pierre Watkin as the actor who originated the role of bombastic Daily Planet editor Perry White in Columbia's two Superman chapter plays of the late '40s.

Charles Lane (Actor) .. Nosey

Born: January 26, 1905
Died: July 09, 2007

Trivia: Hatchet-faced character actor Charles Lane has been one of the most instantly recognizable non-stars in Hollywood for more than half a century. Lane has been a familiar figure in movies (and, subsequently, on television) for 60 years, portraying crotchety, usually miserly, bad-tempered bankers and bureaucrats. Lane was born Charles Levison in San Francisco in 1899 (some sources give his year of birth as 1905). He learned the ropes of acting at the Pasadena Playhouse during the middle/late '20s, appearing in the works of Shakespeare, Chekhov, and Noel Coward before going to Hollywood in 1930, just as sound was fully taking hold. He was a good choice for character roles, usually playing annoying types with his high-pitched voice and fidgety persona, encompassing everything from skinflint accountants to sly, fast-talking confidence men -- think of an abrasive version of Bud Abbott. His major early roles included the stage manager Max Jacobs in Twentieth Century and the tax assessor in You Can't Take It With You. One of the busier character men in Hollywood, Lane was a particular favorite of Frank Capra's, and he appeared in Mr. Deeds Goes to Town, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, Arsenic and Old Lace, It's a Wonderful Life -- with a particularly important supporting part in the latter -- and State of the Union. He played in every kind of movie from screwball comedy like Ball of Fire to primordial film noir, such as I Wake Up Screaming. As Lane grew older, he tended toward more outrageously miserly parts, in movies and then on television, where he turned up Burns & Allen, I Love Lucy, and Dear Phoebe, among other series. Having successfully played a tight-fisted business manager hired by Ricky Ricardo to keep Lucy's spending in line in one episode of I Love Lucy (and, later, the U.S. border guard who nearly arrests the whole Ricardo clan and actor Charles Boyer at the Mexican border in an episode of The Lucy-Desi Comedy Hour), Lane was a natural choice to play Lucille Ball's nemesis on The Lucy Show. Her first choice for the money-grubbing banker would have been Gale Gordon, but as he was already contractually committed to the series Dennis the Menace, she hired Lane to play Mr. Barnsdahl, the tight-fisted administrator of her late-husband's estate during the first season of the show. Lane left the series after Gordon became available to play the part of Mr. Mooney, but in short order he moved right into the part that came very close to making him a star. The CBS country comedy series Petticoat Junction needed a semi-regular villain and Lane just fit the bill as Homer Bedloe, the greedy, bad-tempered railroad executive whose career goal was to shut down the Cannonball railroad that served the town of Hooterville. He became so well-known in the role, which he only played once or twice a season, that at one point Lane found himself in demand for personal appearance tours. In later years, he also turned up in roles on The Beverly Hillbillies, playing Jane Hathaway's unscrupulous landlord, and did an excruciatingly funny appearance on The Odd Couple in the mid-'70s, playing a manic, greedy patron at the apartment sale being run by Felix and Oscar. Lane also did his share of straight dramatic roles, portraying such parts as Tony Randall's nastily officious IRS boss in the comedy The Mating Game (1959), the crusty River City town constable in The Music Man (1962) (which put Lane into the middle of a huge musical production number), the wryly cynical, impatient judge in the James Garner comedy film The Wheeler-Dealers (1963), and portraying Admiral William Standley in The Winds of War (1983), based on Herman Wouk's novel. He was still working right up until the late '80s, and David Letterman booked the actor to appear on his NBC late-night show during the middle of that decade, though his appearance on the program was somewhat disappointing and sad; the actor, who was instantly recognized by the studio audience, was then in his early nineties and had apparently not done live television in many years (if ever), and apparently hadn't been adequately prepped. He seemed confused and unable to say much about his work, which was understandable -- the nature of his character parts involved hundreds of roles that were usually each completed in a matter or two or three days shooting, across almost 60 years. Lane died at 102, in July 2007 - about 20 years after his last major film appearance.

William Demarest (Actor) .. Carl Cook

Born: February 27, 1892
Died: December 28, 1983

Trivia: Famed for his ratchety voice and cold-fish stare, William Demarest was an "old pro" even when he was a young pro. He began his stage career at age 13, holding down a variety of colorful jobs (including professional boxer) during the off-season. After years in carnivals and as a vaudeville headliner, Demarest starred in such Broadway long-runners as Earl Carroll's Sketch Book. He was signed with Warner Bros. pictures in 1926, where he was briefly paired with Clyde Cook as a "Mutt and Jeff"-style comedy team. Demarest's late-silent and early-talkie roles varied in size, becoming more consistently substantial in the late 1930s. His specialty during this period was a bone-crushing pratfall, a physical feat he was able to perform into his 60s. While at Paramount in the 1940s, Demarest was a special favorite of writer/director Preston Sturges, who cast Demarest in virtually all his films: The Great McGinty (1940); Christmas in July (1940); The Lady Eve (1941); Sullivan's Travels (1942); The Palm Beach Story (1942); Hail the Conquering Hero (1944); Miracle of Morgan's Creek (1944), wherein Demarest was at his bombastic best as Officer Kockenlocker; and The Great Moment (1944). For his role as Al Jolson's fictional mentor Steve Martin in The Jolson Story (1946), Demarest was Oscar-nominated (the actor had, incidentally, appeared with Jolie in 1927's The Jazz Singer). Demarest continued appearing in films until 1975, whenever his increasingly heavy TV schedule would allow. Many Demarest fans assumed that his role as Uncle Charlie in My Three Sons (66-72) was his first regular TV work: in truth, Demarest had previously starred in the short-lived 1960 sitcom Love and Marriage.

Dick Elliott (Actor) .. Bill Griffith

Born: April 30, 1886
Died: December 22, 1961

Trivia: Short, portly, and possessed of a high-pitched laugh that cuts through the air like a buzzsaw, Massachussetts-born Dick Elliott had been on stage for nearly thirty before making his screen bow in 1933. Elliott was a frequent visitor to Broadway, enjoying a substantial run in the marathon hit Abie's Irish Rose. Physically and vocally unchanged from his first screen appearance in the '30s to his last in 1961, Elliott was most generally cast in peripheral roles designed to annoy the film's principal characters with his laughing jags or his obtrusive behavior; in this capacity, he appeared as drunken conventioneers, loud-mouthed theatre audience members, and "helpful" pedestrians. Elliott also excelled playing small-scale authority figures, such as stage managers, truant officers and rural judges. Still acting into his mid 70s, Dick Elliott appeared regularly as the mayor of Mayberry on the first season of The Andy Griffith Show, and was frequently cast as a department-store Santa in the Yuletide programs of such comics as Jack Benny and Red Skelton.

H.V. Kaltenborn (Actor) .. Broadcaster

Born: July 09, 1878

Ken Carpenter (Actor) .. Announcer

Jack Carson (Actor) .. Sweeney

Born: October 27, 1910
Died: January 02, 1963

Trivia: Actor Jack Carson was born in Canada but raised in Milwaukee, which he always regarded as his hometown. After attending Carroll College, Carson hit the vaudeville trail in an act with his old friend Dave Willock (later a prominent Hollywood character actor in his own right). Carson's first movie contract was at RKO, where he spent an uncomfortable few years essaying bits in "A" pictures and thankless supporting parts in "B"s. His fortunes improved when he moved to Warner Bros. in 1941, where after three years' apprenticeship in sizeable secondary roles he achieved his first starring vehicle, Make Your Own Bed (44); he was cast in this film opposite Jane Wyman, as part of an effort by Warners to create a Carson-Wyman team. While the studio hoped that Carson would become a comedy lead in the manner of Bob Hope, he proved himself an able dramatic actor in films like The Hard Way (43) and Mildred Pierce. Still, he was built up as Warners' answer to Hope, especially when teamed in several films with the studio's "Bing Crosby", Dennis Morgan. Continuing to alternate comic and dramatic (sometimes villainous) roles throughout the 1950s, Carson starred in his own Jack Benny-style radio series, appeared successfully as a stand-up comedian in Las Vegas, and was one of four rotating hosts on the 1950 TV variety series All-Star Revue. Carson was married four times (once to Lola Albright) Shortly after completing his role in the Disney TV comedy Sammy the Way Out Seal, Carson died of stomach cancer on January 2, 1963 (the same day that actor/producer Dick Powell succumbed to cancer).

Maurice Costello (Actor) .. Diggs

Born: February 22, 1877
Died: October 29, 1950

Trivia: Though many have followed in his illustrious foot-steps, Maurice Costello, known as the "Dimpled Darling," was one of the first big Broadway stars to appear in movies. Prior to making the switch, he was a theatrical star for 15 years. In film, he first worked with Edison until 1908 when he began working for Vitagraph. Costello's best-known movie role was that of Sydney Carton in A Tale of Two Cities. He continued playing leads through the mid-1920s when he became a character actor until he retired in the early 1940s. Occasionally, he directed his own films.

Allan Cavan (Actor) .. Ragner

Born: March 25, 1880

Fred Hoose (Actor) .. Senator

Born: March 04, 1868
Died: March 12, 1952

Trivia: White-haired character actor Fred Hoose worked almost exclusively for low-budget company Monogram, where he also functioned as production manager on series Westerns starring Tom Keene and the Trailblazers (Ken Maynard and Hoot Gibson). As a character actor, Hoose played the marshal in Lone Star Law Men (1941), the judge in Riding the Sunset Trail (1941), and a beleaguered rancher in Where the Trails End (1942).

Joseph King (Actor) .. Summers

Born: February 09, 1883

Paul Stanton (Actor) .. Flood

Born: December 21, 1884
Died: October 09, 1955

Trivia: Conservatively attired in a three-piece suit and Hoover collar, with a pince-nez firmly perched on his upper nose, American actor Paul Stanton was the very model of a small-town rotarian, banker, or school principal. After a brief fling at films in 1915, Stanton began his movie career proper in 1934, remaining before the cameras until 1949. He spent most of the '30s at 20th Century Fox, with such occasional side trips as Columbia's The Awful Truth (1937), in which he played the nonplused judge presiding over Irene Dunne and Cary Grant's divorce. At MGM in the 1940s, he served as an excellent foil for the undignified antics of the Marx Brothers (The Big Store, 1941) and Laurel and Hardy (Air Raid Wardens, 1943). Usually a pillar of respectability, Paul Stanton turned in a surprising characterization in the Universal comedy-mystery She Gets Her Man (1945), playing a genial general practitioner whose hobby is homicide.

Russell Simpson (Actor) .. Allen

Born: January 01, 1878
Died: December 12, 1959

Trivia: American actor Russell Simpson is another of those character players who seemed to have been born in middle age. From his first screen appearance in 1910 to his last in 1959, Simpson personified the grizzled, taciturn mountain man who held strangers at bay with his shotgun and vowed that his daughter would never marry into that family he'd been feudin' with fer nigh on to forty years. It was not always thus. After prospecting in the 1898 Alaska gold rush, Simpson returned to the States and launched a career as a touring actor in stock -- most frequently cast in romantic leads. This led to a long association with Broadway impresario David Belasco. Briefly flirting with New York-based films in 1910, Simpson returned to the stage, then chose movies on a permanent basis in 1917. Of his hundreds of motion picture and TV appearances, Russell Simpson is best known for his participation in the films of director John Ford, most memorably as Pa Joad in 1940's The Grapes of Wrath.

Stanley Andrews (Actor) .. Sen. Hodges

Born: August 28, 1891
Died: June 23, 1969

Trivia: Actor Stanley Andrews moved from the stage to the movies in the mid 1930s, where at first he was typed in steadfast, authoritative roles. The tall, mustachioed Adrews became familiar to regular moviegoers in a string of performances as ship's captains, doctors, executives, military officials and construction supervisors. By the early 1950s, Andrews had broadened his range to include grizzled old western prospectors and ageing sheriffs. This led to his most lasting contribution to the entertainment world: the role of the Old Ranger on the long-running syndicated TV series Death Valley Days. Beginning in 1952, Andrews introduced each DVD episode, doing double duty as commercial pitchman for 20 Mule Team Borax; he also became a goodwill ambassador for the program and its sponsor, showing up at county fairs, supermarket openings and charity telethons. Stanley Andrews continued to portray the Old Ranger until 1963, when the US Borax company decided to alter its corporate image with a younger spokesperson -- a 51-year-old "sprout" named Ronald Reagan.

Walter Soderling (Actor) .. Sen. Pickett

Born: April 13, 1872
Died: April 10, 1948

Trivia: Walter Soderling never evinced an interest in drama while attending the University of Chicago, Northwestern, or Harvard. After graduation, however, Soderling plunged into the theater world with a vengeance, chalking up credits with Chicago's Dearborn and Hopkins stock companies before making his turn-of-the-century Broadway debut. He came to films late in life -- to be exact, he was 63 -- but made up for lost time by working steadily in Hollywood until his death in 1948. Playing characters with names like Old Muck, Abner Thriffle, and Grumpy Andrews, the balding, pickle-pussed Walter Soderling was one of filmdom's foremost grouches.

Frank Jaquet (Actor) .. Sen. Byron

Born: March 16, 1885
Died: May 11, 1958

Trivia: Actor Frank Jaquet's screen career extended from 1934 to the mid-1950s. Seldom playing a major role, Jaquet essayed dozens of bit parts as senators, judges, doctors, and politicians. As a pompous small-town mayor, he served as a "human punch line" in the 1938 "Our Gang" comedy Party Fever. Among his larger assignments was the part of murder suspect Paul Hawlin in the 1944 Charlie Chan entry Black Magic. One of Frank Jaquet's last roles was the kindly butcher in the "Gift of the Magi" sequence in O. Henry's Full House (1952).

Ferris Taylor (Actor) .. Sen. Carlisle

Born: January 01, 1887
Died: March 06, 1961

Trivia: In films from 1933, American character actor Ferris Taylor excelled in "official" roles. Taylor played the Mayor in a couple of Paramount's Henry Aldrich films, and elsewhere was cast as governors, senators, and at least one president. His bombastic characterizations were enhanced by the patently phony toupee he wore on occasion. Ferris Taylor spent his last few film years in short subjects, overacting to his heart's content, opposite the likes of Andy Clyde and the Three Stooges.

Carl Stockdale (Actor) .. Sen. Burdette

Born: January 01, 1873
Died: January 01, 1953

Trivia: Like his fellow character actors Donald Meek, John Qualen, and Maudie Prickett, Carl Stockdale looked like someone who'd be named Carl Stockdale. The gangly, cadaverous Stockdale entered films in 1914 as an Essanay Studios stock player, in support of such stars as Broncho Billy Anderson and Charlie Chaplin. He moved into features, where until his retirement in 1942 he played such baleful character roles as backwoods patriarchy undertakers and "machine" politicians. Of his many silent film parts, several stand out, including the role of Monks in both the 1916 and 1922 versions of Oliver Twist and Mabel Normand's misanthropic screen-test director in The Extra Girl (1923). In talkies, Carl Stockdale played bits in features and supporting roles in serials and short subjects; his later work included several entries in the Charley Chase and "Crime Does Not Pay" two-reelers.

Alan Bridge (Actor) .. Sen. Dwight

Born: February 26, 1891

Edmund Cobb (Actor) .. Sen. Gower

Born: June 23, 1892
Died: August 15, 1974

Trivia: The grandson of a governor of New Mexico, pioneering screen cowboy Edmund Cobb began his long career toiling in Colorado-produced potboilers such as Hands Across the Border (1914), the filming of which turned tragic when Cobb's leading lady, Grace McHugh, drowned in the Arkansas River. Despite this harrowing experience, Cobb continued to star in scores of cheap Westerns and was making two-reelers at Universal in Hollywood by the 1920s. But unlike other studio cowboys, Cobb didn't do his own stunts -- despite the fact that he later claimed to have invented the infamous "running w" horse stunt -- and that may actually have shortened his starring career. By the late '20s, he was mainly playing villains. The Edmund Cobb remembered today, always a welcome sign whether playing the main henchman or merely a member of the posse, would pop up in about every other B-Western made during the 1930s and 1940s, invariably unsmiling and with a characteristic monotone delivery. When series Westerns bit the dust in the mid-'50s, Cobb simply continued on television. In every sense of the word a true screen pioneer and reportedly one of the kindest members of the Hollywood chuck-wagon fraternity, Edmund Cobb died at the age of 82 at the Motion Picture Country House and Hospital in Woodland Hills, CA.

Frederick Burton (Actor) .. Sen. Dearhorn

Born: October 20, 1871
Died: October 23, 1957

Trivia: A former opera singer, tall, dignified Frederick Burton began making films in 1919. One of Burton's better early movie roles was Matthew Cuthbert in the silent version of Anne of Green Gables (1919). In the first years of the talkie era, he was seen in such sizeable roles as Pa Basom in The Big Trail (1930) and Samuel Griffiths in An American Tragedy(1931). Thereafter, Frederick Burton was often as not confined to one-scene assignments, playing scores of doctors, reverends, judges, senators, governors, newspaper editors and murder victims.

Vera Lewis (Actor) .. Mrs. Edwards

Born: January 10, 1873
Died: February 08, 1956

Trivia: Affectionately described by film historian William K. Everson as "That lovable old wreck of a busybody," actress Vera Lewis was indeed quite lovable in person, even though most of her screen characters were sharp-tongued and spiteful in the extreme. Lewis first appeared in films in 1915, playing bits in such historical spectacles as D.W. Griffith's Birth of a Nation (1915) and Intolerance (1916) and the privately-funded Argonauts of California. By the 1920s, she was well-established in such venomous characterizations as the remonstrative stepmother in the 1926 Colleen Moore starrer Ella Cinders. She continued playing small-town snoops, gimlet-eyed landladies, irksome relatives and snobbish society doyennes well into the talkie era. Even when unbilled, Lewis was unforgettable: in 1933's King Kong, she's the outraged theater patron who mercilessly browbeats an usher upon finding out that the mighty Kong will be appearing in person instead of on film. When all is said and done, Vera Lewis was never better than when she was playing a gorgon-like mother-in-law, as witness her work as Mrs. Nesselrode in W.C. Fields' Man on the Flying Trapeze (1935) and as Andy Clyde's vituperative mom-by-marriage in the 1947 2-reeler Wife to Spare.

Dora Clement (Actor) .. Mrs. McGann

Born: May 30, 1891

Trivia: Dora Clement (sometimes credited as Dora Clemant) spent most of her professional acting career in the far west of the United States, where she was born, in Spokane, WA, in 1891. The tall, elegant actress -- who made one think of Frieda Inescourt -- was in almost 700 plays before making her Broadway debut in November 1944 in the original cast of Harvey as Betty Chumley (the role played by Nana Bryant in the 1950 movie). By that time, she was no longer doing movies, having been in some 73 of them (usually in uncredited roles) between 1934 and 1942. Most of her movie work involved small roles with no more than a day -- or, at most, a few days' -- shooting at a time, and Clement was able to squeeze them in around acting in the theater and also lecturing and teaching about theater. She usually played smaller roles that required dignity and distinctly middle-aged beauty -- mothers, society matrons, middle-level female executives, and secretaries -- in bigger movies, such as a saleslady in Mitchell Leisen's Easy Living (1937) or the woman under the sunlamp in George Cukor's The Women (1939). She was called by all of the major studios at one time or another, including Fox, MGM, Paramount, and Columbia, but she seemed to get some of her best roles at Universal, most notably in Buck Privates (1941), Abbott & Costello's debut starring vehicle. She actually had three major scenes in that picture (one of them excellent) as Miss Durling, the woman in charge of the camp hostesses (which include co-stars Jane Frazee and the Andrews Sisters). And Clement's most important movie role in terms of plot -- also at Univeral -- was in one of the lowest budgeted vehicles in which she ever appeared, as Ann Zorka, the beloved wife of Bela Lugosi's mad scientist Alex Zorka, in the serial The Phantom Creeps (1939). Her character's death, caused accidentally by her husband in the second chapter -- when he disables a plane carrying the government agents pursuing him (on which his wife, unbeknownst to him, also happens to be traveling) -- pushes Zorka over the edge, to seek revenge on the entire world for the next 10 chapters. In the early '50s, she made a few appearances in various early television dramas and on anthology shows such as Philco Television Playhouse and Goodyear Television Playhouse, but she had retired from that medium, as well, by the middle of the decade. She reportedly passed away a quarter century later in Washington, D.C.

Laura Treadwell (Actor) .. Mrs. Taylor

Born: January 01, 1878
Died: January 01, 1960

Ann Doran (Actor) .. Paine's Secretary

Born: July 28, 1911
Died: September 19, 2000
Birthplace: Amarillo, Texas

Trivia: A sadly neglected supporting actress, Ann Doran played everything from Charley Chase's foil in Columbia two-reelers of the late '30s to James Dean's mother in Rebel Without a Cause (1955) and also guest starred in such television shows as Superman, Petticoat Junction, Bewitched, and The A Team. A former child model and the daughter of silent screen actress Rose Allen (1885-1977), Doran made her screen bow in Douglas Fairbanks' Robin Hood (1922) but then spent the next 12 years or so getting herself an education. She returned to films in 1934 and joined the Columbia short subject department two years later. While with Columbia, Doran worked on all of Frank Capra's films save Lost Horizon (1937) and she later toiled for both Paramount and Warner Bros., often receiving fine reviews but always missing out on the one role that may have made her a star. Appearing in more than 500 films and television shows (her own count), Doran worked well into the 1980s, often unbilled but always a noticeable presence.

Douglas Evans (Actor) .. Francis Scott Key

Born: January 01, 1903
Died: January 01, 1968

Trivia: Douglas Evans was a versatile American supporting actor who during his 30-year career appeared in close to 100 films. He also worked on stage and in radio.

Lloyd Whitlock (Actor) .. Schultz

Born: January 02, 1891
Died: January 08, 1966

Trivia: The quintessential silent screen villain, tall (6'1"), mustachioed Lloyd Whitlock is perhaps best remembered as one of the kidnappers in Mary Pickford's Sparrows (1926) and for playing innumerable blackguards in B-Westerns and serials of the 1930s and 1940s. Trained as a civil engineer, Whitlock toured with several stock companies prior to making his screen debut with New York's Biograph company in the very early 1910s. By the mid-1910s, he had become a featured actor for Kleine, Kalem, and Universal and was already more often than not cast as lecherous blackmailers, crooked lawyers, medical hacks, and the like. He made the transition to sound with ease but quickly began showing up in Poverty Row productions and is memorable as the airline manager in the John Wayne serial Hurricane Express (1932) and as the boss villain in four of Wayne's Lone Star Westerns for Monogram. Although his roles greatly diminished in importance from the mid-'30s on, Whitlock remained a busy supporting actor through the 1940s.

Myonne Walsh (Actor) .. Jane Hopper

Byron Foulger (Actor) .. Hopper's Secretary

Born: January 01, 1900
Died: April 04, 1970

Trivia: In the 1959 Twilight Zone episode "Walking Distance," Gig Young comments that he thinks he's seen drugstore counterman Byron Foulger before. "I've got that kind of face" was the counterman's reply. Indeed, Foulger's mustachioed, bespectacled, tremble-chinned, moon-shaped countenance was one of the most familiar faces ever to grace the screen. A graduate of the University of Utah, Foulger developed a taste for performing in community theatre, making his Broadway debut in the '20s. Foulger then toured with Moroni Olsen's stock company, which led him to the famed Pasadena Playhouse as both actor and director. In films from 1936, Foulger usually played whining milksops, weak-willed sycophants, sanctimonious sales clerks, shifty political appointees, and the occasional unsuspected murderer. In real life, the seemingly timorous actor was not very easily cowed; according to his friend Victor Jory, Foulger once threatened to punch out Errol Flynn at a party because he thought that Flynn was flirting with his wife (Mrs. Foulger was Dorothy Adams, a prolific movie and stage character actress). Usually unbilled in "A" productions, Foulger could count on meatier roles in such "B" pictures as The Man They Could Not Hang (1939) and The Panther's Claw (1943). In the Bowery Boys' Up in Smoke (1957), Foulger is superb as a gleeful, twinkly-eyed Satan. In addition to his film work, Byron Foulger built up quite a gallery of portrayals on television; one of his final stints was the recurring role of engineer Wendell Gibbs on the popular sitcom Petticoat Junction.

Margaret Mann (Actor) .. Nun

Born: April 04, 1868
Died: February 04, 1941

Trivia: According to a 1928 Fox Studios press release, Scottish actress Margaret Mann's own life was as difficult and tragic as those of her screen characters. Reportedly born into a poverty-stricken family, Mann was widowed early on, forced to take whatever jobs she could to keep her family fed. While this may have been mere press-agent puffery, it is certainly true that the characters she portrayed were required to endure more than the usual ration of suffering. In films from 1918, Mann's best showing during the silent era was the much-put-upon Ma Bernle in John Ford's Four Sons (1928). In talkies, she was generally consigned to bit roles as maids, nursing-home residents and comforting mothers. Margaret Mann holds a special place in the hearts of "Our Gang" fans for her portrayal of the frail-looking but iron-willed granny in the 1931 two-reelers Helping Grandma and Fly My Kite.

Billy Watson (Actor) .. Peter Hopper

Born: January 01, 1924

Delmar Watson (Actor) .. Jimmie Hopper

Born: July 01, 1926
Died: October 26, 2008

John Russell (Actor) .. Otis Hopper

Born: January 03, 1921
Died: January 19, 1991
Birthplace: Los Angeles, California, United States

Trivia: Two things American actor John Russell was not: he was not cinematographer John L. Russell, nor was he the Johnny Russell who appears as Shirley Temple's brother in 20th Century-Fox's The Blue Bird (1940). He was however, a contract juvenile at Fox from 1937 through 1941. Interrupting his career for war service, Russell emerged from his tour of duty as a highly decorated marine. Busy in postwar films and TV as a secondary lead and utility villain, Russell was given costar billing with Chick Chandler in the 1955 syndicated TV adventure series Soldiers of Fortune. Four years later, Russell (now sporting a mustache) was cast as Marshal Dan Troop on the Warner Bros. weekly western series Lawman. This assignment lasted three years, after which Russell became a journeyman actor again. John Russell was well served with character parts in 1984's Honkytonk Man and 1985's Pale Rider, both directed by and starring another ex-TV-cowboy, Clint Eastwood.

Harry Watson (Actor) .. Hopper Boy

Born: January 01, 1922
Died: June 08, 2001

Garry Watson (Actor) .. Hopper Boy

Larry Simms (Actor) .. Hopper Boy

Born: October 01, 1934

Trivia: A child model from age two, Larry Simms was discovered by a Hollywood talent scout when he appeared in a 1937 Saturday Evening Post advertisement. The three-year-old, curly haired Simms made his screen debut as the infant son of Jimmy Stewart and Rose Stradner in MGM's The Last Gangster. He was then hired by Columbia to play Baby Dumpling in the 1938 cinemadaptation of Chic Young's comic strip Blondie. Simms remained with the Blondie series until its cessation in 1950, billed onscreen as Baby Dumpling until his character name was formalized as Alexander Bumstead. During this period, he also made a few "outside" appearances in films like Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939) and Madame Bovary (1949). Though his career as a child star was a pleasant experience (and, at 750 dollars per week, a lucrative one), Simms wasn't all that interested in acting; the technical end of moviemaking was more fascinating to him. In 1950, he quit show business to join the Navy, then studied aeronautical engineering at California Polytech. Larry Simms was then hired as an engineer at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, where he remained until his retirement.

Clyde Dilson (Actor) .. Reporter

Born: May 07, 1899

William 'Billy' Newell (Actor) .. Reporter

Born: January 06, 1894
Birthplace: Millville, New Jersey, USA

Trivia: In films from 1935 to 1964, American character actor William "Billy" Newell was nearly always seen with his hat tilted backward and with a spent cigarette or wad of gum in his mouth. This is because Newell was usually cast as a wise-lipped reporter or news photographer. One of his largest assignments in this vein was as news-hound Speed Martin in the 1940 Republic serial Mysterious Dr. Satan. William Newell also essayed countless functional bit roles, such as the liquor-store proprietor in the 1945 Oscar-winner The Lost Weekend. Hal Erickson, Rovi

George Chandler (Actor) .. Reporter

Born: June 30, 1898
Died: June 10, 1985

Trivia: Comic actor George Chandler entered the University of Illinois after World War I service, paying for his education by playing in an orchestra. He continued moonlighting in the entertainment world in the early 1920s, working as an insurance salesman by day and performing at night. By the end of the decade he was a seasoned vaudevillian, touring with a one-man-band act called "George Chandler, the Musical Nut." He began making films in 1927, appearing almost exclusively in comedies; perhaps his best-known appearance of the early 1930s was as W.C.Fields' prodigal son Chester in the 1932 2-reeler The Fatal Glass of Beer. Chandler became something of a good-luck charm for director William Wellman, who cast the actor in comedy bits in many of his films; Wellman reserved a juicy supporting role for Chandler as Ginger Rogers' no-good husband in Roxie Hart (1942). In all, Chandler made some 330 movie appearances. In the early 1950s, Chandler served two years as president of the Screen Actors Guild, ruffling the hair of many prestigious stars and producers with his strongly held political views. From 1958 through 1959, George Chandler was featured as Uncle Petrie on the Lassie TV series, and in 1961 he starred in a CBS sitcom that he'd helped develop, Ichabod and Me.

Evalyn Knapp (Actor) .. Reporter Asking 'What Do You Think of the Girls in This Town

Born: June 17, 1906

Dub Taylor (Actor) .. Reporter

Born: February 26, 1907
Died: September 03, 1994

Trivia: Actor Dub Taylor, the personification of grizzled old western characters, has been entertaining viewers for over 60 years. Prior to becoming a movie actor, Taylor played the harmonica and xylophone in vaudeville. He used his ability to make his film debut as the zany Ed Carmichael in Capra's You Can't Take it With You (1938). He next appeared in a small role in the musical Carefree(1938) and then began a long stint as a comical B-western sidekick for some of Hollywood's most enduring cowboy heroes. During the '50s he became a part of The Roy Rogers Show on television. About that time, he also began to branch out and appear in different film genres ranging from comedies, No time for Sergeants (1958) to crime dramas, Crime Wave (1954). He has also played on other TV series such as The Andy Griffith Show and Please Don't Eat the Daisies. One of his most memorable feature film roles was as the man who brought down the outlaws in Bonnie and Clyde. From the late sixties through the nineties Taylor returned to westerns.

Jack Gardner (Actor) .. Reporter

Born: December 13, 1902
Died: February 13, 1977

Trivia: One of the busiest supporting players in the 1930s and early '40s, wiry general purpose actor Jack Gardner popped up in such disparate films as The Devil's Squadron (1936), Sinners in Paradise (1938), and Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939). He played a reporter in all three and that profession would become his on-screen stock-in-trade. Whenever a gaggle of inquisitive newspapermen gathered in a film to attack someone with a barrage of questions, chances were good that Jack Gardner and Lynton Brent were among them. Gardner also played his fair share of messenger boys, receptionists, mechanics, and henchmen. He was a wily Japanese spy in the 1943 Universal serial Adventures of Smilin' Jack (1943). Not to be confused with a silent screen actor (1873-1950) and a vaudevillian (1876-1929) of the same name, this Jack Gardner seems to have left films in the mid-'40s.

Donald Kerr (Actor) .. Reporter

Born: January 01, 1891
Died: January 25, 1977

Trivia: Character actor Donald Kerr showed up whenever a gumchewing Runyonesque type (often a reporter or process server) was called for. A bit actor even in two-reelers and "B" pictures, Kerr was one of those vaguely familiar faces whom audiences would immediately recognize, ask each other "Who is that?", then return to the film, by which time Kerr had scooted the scene. The actor's first recorded film appearance was in 1933's Carnival Lady. Twenty-two years later, Donald Kerr concluded his career in the same anonymity with which he began it in 1956's Yaqui Drums.

Eddie Kane (Actor) .. Reporter

Born: August 12, 1889
Died: April 30, 1969

Trivia: Tall, distinguished-looking Eddie Kane was never remotely a star in movies or television, but he played just about every kind of important supporting and bit role that there was to portray in a Hollywood career that stretched over a quarter century. Born in 1889, Kane entered show business by way of vaudeville and rose to the top of that field as a member of the team of Kane & Herman. Hollywood beckoned with the coming of sound and his first role was typical of the kind of work that he would do for the next 25 years. In MGM's The Broadway Melody, although uncredited, Kane played the important supporting role of Francis Zanfield (a thin burlesque of Ziegfeld), the theatrical producer whose interest in one of the two sisters, played by Anita Page and Bessie Love, gets the backstage plot rolling. In later films, the actor's parts varied from anonymous head waiters and hotel managers to essential supporting roles, small but telling in the plot. He was apparently at least a nodding acquaintance of James Cagney, playing important bit parts in two of Cagney's movies: in Something To Sing About, Kane portrayed the San Francisco theater manager who shelters Cagney from the crowds swarming around him on his return from an ocean voyage; in Yankee Doodle Dandy he played the actor in Little Johnny Jones who tells Cagney's George M. Cohan, in the title role of Jones, of the plan to fire a rocket from the ship when the evidence clearing him has been found. Kane's range of roles ran from business executives and impressarios to maitre d's and as he grew older and more distinguished-looking, his delivery grew even sharper onscreen. Kane is probably best known to audiences from the 1950s and beyond for his portrayal (uncredited, as usual) of Mr. Monahan, Ralph Kramden's boss at the Gotham Bus Company, in The Honeymooners' episode in which Kramden impersonates a bus company executive to impress an old rival. Kane retired from movies and television after the 1950s and died in 1969 of a heart attack at his home.

George McKay (Actor) .. Reporter

Born: April 15, 1886
Died: December 03, 1945

Trivia: A veteran performer, George McKay (born George Reuben) began his long show business career as a bareback rider with the Harris Nickel Plate Circus, toured vaudeville with the Gus Edwards troupe, and appeared in the 1913, 1914, and 1915 editions of the Ziegfeld Follies. One of the founders of National Vaudeville Artists, McKay later formed a duo with comedian Johnny Cantwell, touring both America and Europe as McKay & Cantwell. In 1933, he signed a longtime contract with Columbia Pictures, turning up in scores of supporting roles and bit parts, sometimes playing pillars-of-society villains but more often than not appearing as rather untrustworthy characters bearing names like "Sluggy," "Spudsy," and "Brains McGillicuddy."

Gene Morgan (Actor) .. Reporter

Born: January 01, 1892
Died: August 13, 1940

Trivia: Pudgy character actor Gene Morgan started out as a utility player in Pathe's Folly comedies in the late teens, then worked for several years at Hal Roach studios. From 1935 to 1940, Morgan was under contract to Columbia Pictures, where he was usually cast as a perplexed cop or city detective. He was fleetingly but memorably seen in such Columbia's as She Couldn't Take It (1935), Meet Nero Wolfe (1936), The Devil's Playground (1937), and Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939). Gene Morgan made his last appearance in Warner Bros.' Meet John Doe (1941) under the direction of another longtime Columbia contractee, Frank Capra.

Matt McHugh (Actor) .. Reporter

Born: January 01, 1894
Died: February 22, 1971

Trivia: Actor Matt McHugh was born into a show business family, joining his parents, his brother Frank, and his sister Kitty in the family stock company as soon as he learned to talk. Matt came to Hollywood to repeat his stage role in the 1931 film adaptation of Elmer Rice's Broadway hit Street Scene. He continued to have sizeable film assignments for the next few years (notably the bourgeois Italian bridegroom Francesco in Laurel and Hardy's The Devil's Brother [1933]) before settling into bits and minor roles. A dead ringer for his more famous brother Frank McHugh, Matt projected an abrasive, sardonic screen image; as such, he was utilized in such rough-edged roles as cab drivers, bartenders and mechanics. Matt McHugh's best screen opportunities in the '40s came with his supporting roles in the 2-reel comedy output of Columbia Pictures; he appeared in the short comedies of Andy Clyde, Hugh Herbert, Walter Catlett, The Three Stooges and many others, most often cast as a lazy or caustic brother-in-law.

William Arnold (Actor) .. Senate Reporter

Born: January 01, 1892
Died: January 01, 1940

Hal Cooke (Actor) .. Senate Reporter

James McNamara (Actor) .. Reporter

Jack Egan (Actor) .. Senate Reporter

Born: May 27, 1878

Eddy Chandler (Actor) .. Senate Reporter

Born: March 12, 1894
Died: March 23, 1948

Trivia: Stocky character actor Eddy Chandler's movie career stretched from 1915 to 1947. In 1930, Chandler was afforded a large (if uncredited) role as Blondell, partner in crime of villain Ralf Harolde, in the RKO musical extravaganza Dixiana. Thereafter, he made do with bit parts, usually playing cops or military officers. His brief appearance in Frank Capra's It Happened One Night as the bus driver who begins singing "The Man on a Flying Trapeze"--and plows his bus into a ditch as a result--assured him choice cameos in all future Capra productions. Chandler can also be seen as the Hospital Sergeant in 1939's Gone with the Wind. One of Eddy Chandler's few billed roles was Lewis in Monogram's Charlie Chan in the Secret Service (1944).

Eddie Fetherston (Actor) .. Senate Reporter

Born: September 09, 1896

Ed Randolph (Actor) .. Senate Reporter

Born: November 10, 1889

Milton Kibbee (Actor) .. Senate Reporter

Born: January 27, 1896

Vernon Dent (Actor) .. Senate Reporter

Born: February 16, 1895
Died: November 05, 1963

Trivia: Actor Vernon Dent launched his career in stock companies and as one-third of a singing cabaret trio. Silent comedian Hank Mann, impressed by Dent's girth (250 pounds) and comic know-how, helped Vernon enter films in 1919. Dent starred in a 2-reel series at the Pacific Film Company, then settled in at Mack Sennett studios as a supporting player, generally cast as a heavy. During his Sennett years, Dent was most often teamed with pasty-faced comedian Harry Langdon, who became his lifelong friend and co-worker. Remaining with Sennett until the producer closed down his studio in 1933, Dent moved to Educational Pictures, where he was afforded equal billing with Harry Langdon; and when Langdon moved to Columbia Pictures in 1934, Dent followed, remaining a mainstay of the Columbia 2-reel stock company until 1953. Here he was featured with such comic luminaries as Andy Clyde, Buster Keaton, Hugh Herbert, Vera Vague, and especially the Three Stooges. Among Dent's dozens of talkie feature-film credits were W.C. Fields' Million Dollar Legs (1932) and You're Telling Me (1934); in one of his rare feature starring roles, Dent played a boisterous, wife-beating sailor in the 1932 "B" Dragnet Patrol. Well-connected politically in the Los Angeles area, Dent supplemented his acting income by running the concession stand at Westlake Park. Vernon Dent retired in the mid-1950s, due to total blindness brought about by diabetes; the ever-upbeat actor was so well-adjusted to his handicap that many of Dent's close friends were unaware that he was blind.

Craig Stevens (Actor) .. Senate Reporter

Born: July 08, 1918
Died: May 10, 2000
Birthplace: Liberty, Missouri

Trivia: Craig Stevens abandoned all plans for a career in dentistry when he became involved in student productions at the University of Kansas. Trained at Pasadena Playhouse and Paramount's acting school, Stevens was signed to a stock Warner Bros. contract in 1941. He was well showcased as a soft-hearted gangster in At the Stroke of Twelve, a 1941 two-reel adaptation of Damon Runyon's The Old Doll's House, but his feature film roles were merely adequate at best. By 1950, Stevens was reduced to playing a standard mustachioed villain in the Bowery Boys epic Blues Busters. His saving turnaround came about when Stevens was cast in the title role of the 1958 Blake Edwards-produced TV private eye series Peter Gunn. Though obviously imitating Cary Grant in the early episodes of this three-season hit, Stevens eventually developed a hard-edged acting style all his own. He later re-created his TV role in the 1967 theatrical feature Gunn. Subsequent TV-series assignments for Stevens included the British-filmed weekly Man of the World (1962) and CBS' Mr. Broadway (1964). Craig Stevens was married to actress Alexis Smith (with whom he toured in such stage productions as Critic's Choice) from 1944 until her death in 1993.

Ed Brewer (Actor) .. Senate Reporter

Anne Cornwall (Actor) .. Senate Reporter

Born: January 17, 1897
Died: March 02, 1980

Trivia: Brunette, baby-faced screen actress Anne Cornwall managed to remain in the "ingenue" category for nearly ten years after her film debut in 1919. Cornwall's most celebrated silent-screen appearance was as Buster Keaton's co-ed girlfriend in College (1927). She made her talking picture bow as one of the two flirtatious lassies picked up by sailors Laurel and Hardy in Men O' War (1929). Thereafter, her film appearances were scattered and generally minor. Anne Cornwall briefly reappeared before the public eye in 1957, when she made the personal-appearance rounds with her old co-star Buster Keaton on the occasion of the Paramount biopic The Buster Keaton Story.

James Millican (Actor) .. Senate Reporter

Born: January 01, 1910
Died: November 24, 1955

Trivia: Signed up by MGM's dramatic school directly after graduating from the University of Southern California, American actor James Millican was groomed for that studio's stable of young leading men. Instead, he made his first film, Sign of the Cross (1932), at Paramount, then moved on to Columbia for his first important role in Mills of the Gods (1934). Possessor of an athletic physique and Irish good looks, Millican wasn't a distinctive enough personality for stardom, but came in handy for secondary roles as the hero's best friend, the boss' male secretary, and various assorted military adjutants. According to his own count, Millican also appeared in 400 westerns; while such a number is hard to document, it is true that he was a close associate of cowboy star "Wild Bill" Elliott, staging a number of personal-appearance rodeos on Elliott's behalf. Fans of baseball films will recall James Millican's persuasive performance as Bill Killefer in the Grover Cleveland Alexander biopic The Winning Team.

Mabel Forrest (Actor) .. Senate Reporter

Born: November 05, 1894
Died: July 05, 1967

Trivia: The brunette actress-wife of silent screen matinee-idol Bryant Washburn, Mabel Forrest played a couple of leading roles in programmers in the early '20s, including three with her husband: Other Men's Daughters, Mine to Keep, and The Love Trap (all 1923). She later worked on the stage, played bits in such films as Hollywood Boulevard (1936; again with Bryant Washburn), and appeared on such television series as The Twilight Zone and Petticoat Junction. Her son, Bryant Washburn Jr. (1915-1960), played bit parts in films of the 1930s.

Nick Copeland (Actor) .. Senate Reporter

Born: January 01, 1894
Died: January 01, 1940

Dulce Daye (Actor) .. Senate Reporter

Fred 'Snowflake' Toones (Actor) .. Porter

Born: January 05, 1905
Died: February 13, 1962

Trivia: During Hollywood's pre-"politically correct" era, it was not uncommon for African-American performers to be saddled with such demeaning professional monikers as "G. Howe Black," "Stepin Fetchit," and "Sleep 'n' Eat." One of the more egregious racially oriented nicknames was bestowed upon a talented black character actor named Fred Toones. From 1931 until his retirement in 1948, Toones was usually billed as "Snowflake," often playing a character of the same name. His standard characterization, that of a middle-aged "colored" man with high-pitched voice and childlike demeanor, was nearly as offensive as his character name. True to the Hollywood typecasting system of the 1930s and 1940s, "Snowflake" was generally cast as redcaps, bootblacks, and janitors. He appeared in dozens of two-reelers (including the Three Stooges' first Columbia effort, 1934's Woman Haters) and scores of B-Westerns. During the early '40s, Fred Toones was a semi-regular in the zany comedies of producer/director/writer Preston Sturges.

Charles Moore (Actor) .. Porter

Born: January 01, 1892
Died: January 01, 1947

Trivia: African American actor Charles Moore was sometimes billed as Charles R. Moore. In films from 1929, Moore played a variety of supporting roles and was evidently a favorite of writer/director Preston Sturges, as he appeared in four of Sturges' films, delivering one of the funniest single lines in 1941's The Palm Beach Story (to repeat the line out of context would kill the joke). Unfortunately, Charles Moore's skills as a dancer seldom got a workout during his 25-year screen career.

Frances Gifford (Actor) .. Hopper Girl

Born: December 07, 1920
Died: January 22, 1994

Trivia: Fresh out of high school, statuesque brunette actress Frances Gifford played bits and extra roles until landing the lead in the low-budget Mercy Plane (1939), in which she was cast opposite her first husband James Dunn. Two years later she was seen as Robert Benchley's guide through the Disney animation studios in The Reluctant Dragon (1941), and, more importantly, as the fetchingly unclad, endlessly resourceful Nyoka in the Republic serial Jungle Girl (1941). The popularity of the serial might have typecast her forever in such roles, but Gifford's ambition was to star in features. Through the sponsorship of an MGM executive, she landed a contract at that most prestigious of studios, playing leading roles in such films as Our Vines Have Tender Grapes (1945) and She Went to the Races (1945). Her best showing at MGM was as the tormented heroine of Arch Oboler's The Arnelo Affair (1947). On the verge of bigger things, Gifford suffered a series of profound personal setbacks in the late '40s, not least of which was an automobile accident that nearly killed her. She made a few comeback attempts in the 1950s, but spent most of the decade in and out of mental institutions. After nearly 25 years of treatment, Frances Gifford was finally able to start her life over in 1983, devoting the rest of her days to charitable work.

Adrian Booth (Actor)

Born: July 26, 1918

Trivia: As a teenager, Virginia Mae "Ginger" Pound was hired as a vocalist with the Roger Pryor band. Signed to a Columbia Pictures contract in 1939, Ginger Pound was transformed into Lorna Gray. Under this cognomen, she played leads in B's like The Man They Could Not Hang (1939) and bits in A's like Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939). She was especially noticeable in Columbia's two-reel product, playing opposite the likes of Buster Keaton (Pest From the West) and the Three Stooges (Three Sappy People, Rockin' Thru the Rockies, You Nazty Spy!). She moved on to Republic, alternating as a serial heroine (Captain America) and villainess (The Perils of Nyoka). In 1946, Lorna Gray underwent a second name change, reemerging as Adrian Booth. While she was well received by the public in films like Valley of the Zombies (1946), Oh! Susanna (1950), and The Sea Hornet (1951), she never truly reached the top ranks of stardom, and retired in 1954. Adrian Booth is the widow of actor David Brian.

Dorothy Comingore (Actor) .. Woman at Station

Born: January 01, 1918
Died: January 01, 1971

Trivia: After playing Susan Alexander, a key role in Orson Welle's magnum opus Citizen Kane, it seemed that American actress Dorothy Comingore was destined to finally become a star. Although her performance won considerable acclaim, Comingore only made three more films. Before the film, she had worked in stock theater and during the 1930s, appeared in many Columbia comedy shorts billed as Linda Winters. She also worked with The Three Stooges, played leads in a few cheap westerns, and had several bit parts.

Mary Gordon (Actor) .. Woman

Born: May 16, 1882
Died: August 23, 1963

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

June Gittelson (Actor) .. Woman at Station

Born: May 06, 1910

Dave Willock (Actor) .. Senate Guard

Born: August 13, 1909

Florence Wix (Actor) .. Committeewoman (uncredited)

Born: January 01, 1882
Died: January 01, 1956

Harlan Briggs (Actor) .. Mr. Edwards- Howling Citizen (uncredited)

Born: January 01, 1880
Died: January 26, 1952

Trivia: Diminutive American character actor Harlan Briggs was a vaudeville and stage performer since the turn of the century. After spending three years on Broadway appearing with Walter Huston in the stage adaptation of Sinclair Lewis' Dodsworth, Briggs was brought to Hollywood in 1935 to re-create his role. Because of post-production delays, movie audiences first saw Briggs not in Dodsworth but in Selznick's The Garden of Allah (1936). In films until 1952's Carrie, Harlan Briggs most often portrayed small-town big-wigs, usually with an oversized pipe clamped between his teeth; his most memorable role was as the eminently bribeable Doctor Stall in W.C. Fields' The Bank Dick (1940).

Count Stefanelli (Actor) .. Foreign Diplomat (uncredited)

Arthur Thalasso (Actor) .. Doorman

Born: January 01, 1883
Died: January 01, 1954

Evelyn Knapp (Actor) .. Reporter

Born: June 17, 1906
Died: June 10, 1981

Trivia: A graduate of the American Academy of Dramatic Arts, blonde Evelyn Knapp made her Broadway debut in Channing Pollock's Mr. Moneypenny (1928). With a proven track record of more than 20 Vitaphone short subjects and a series of comedy two-reelers with George LeMaire, she was awarded a contract with Warner Bros. and made an auspicious screen debut opposite Grant Withers in Sinner's Holiday (1930). The secondary team of James Cagney and Joan Blondell ran away with most of the notices but at least one critic thought Knapp gave a "credible performance" as a naive girl caught between rum runners and a young carnival barker.In typical Warner fashion, Knapp was hurried from one project to another with very little thought to the appropriateness of the vehicles. From a muscular Northwest adventure with Charles Bickford, River's End (1931), she was rushed into playing George Arliss' refined daughter in The Millionaire (1931) with barely a chance to shift gears. In all her films, Knapp was pleasant and unobtrusive and in 1932, motion picture advertisers voted her a WAMPAS Baby Star. Being inconspicuous, however, was not exactly a star-making trait and Warners dropped her option, despite a starring role opposite John Wayne in the 1933 . Freelancing, she reportedly beat 50 actresses for the title role in Universal's remake of The Perils of Pauline (1934) and although Knapp was hardly in a league with the original Pauline, silent serial queen Pearl White, the chapterplay has proven the production for which she is best remembered. It was downhill from there, alas, and Knapp spent her remaining years in films in low-budget fare.

Beulah Bondi (Actor) .. Ma Smith

Born: May 03, 1888
Died: January 11, 1981

Trivia: American actress Beulah Bondi entered the theatre at age 7, playing the male role of Little Lord Fauntleroy; it would be her last role "in drag" and one of the very few times that she'd play a character her own age. Upon graduation from Valparaiso University, she joined a stock company, working throughout the US until her 1925 Broadway debut in Wild Birds. Even in her late twenties and early thirties, Bondi specialized in playing mothers, grandmothers and society dowagers. She made her first film, Street Scene, in 1931, concentrating on movies thereafter. She is best known to modern film fans for her role as James Stewart's mother in the Christmastime favorite It's a Wonderful Life (1946). It was but one of several occasions (among them Vivacious Lady [1938] and Mr. Smith Goes to Washington [1939]) that the actress played Stewart's mother; as late as 1971, Bondi was essaying the same role in the short-lived sitcom The Jimmy Stewart Show. Even after her "official" screen retirement - her last film was Tammy and the Doctor (1963), in which, not surprisingly, she played a wealthy old invalid - Bondi kept herself open for television roles, including an Emmy-winning 1977 performance on the dramatic TV series The Waltons.

Johnny Russell (Actor) .. Larry Simms

Born: January 25, 1933

Harry A. Bailey (Actor) .. Senator Hammett

Erville Alderson (Actor) .. Handwriting expert

Born: January 01, 1882
Died: August 04, 1957

Trivia: In films from 1921 through 1952, white-maned American character actor Erville Alderson was most closely associated with D.W. Griffith in his early movie years. Alderson played major roles in Griffith's The White Rose (1932), America (1924) and Isn't Life Wonderful (1924). In D.W.'s Sally of the Sawdust (1926), Alderson performed double duty, playing the merciless Judge Foster in front of the cameras and serving as assistant director behind the scenes. During the talkie era, the actor showed up in "old codger" roles as sheriffs, court clerks and newspaper editors. You might remember Erville Alderson as the crooked handwriting expert (he was crooked, not the handwriting) in Frank Capra's Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939) and as Jefferson Davis in the Errol Flynn starrer Santa Fe Trail (1940).

Eddie Fetherstone (Actor) .. Senate reporter

Born: January 01, 1896
Died: June 12, 1965

Trivia: American vaudevillian Eddie Fetherstone (sometimes spelled Fetherston) started popping up in films around 1925. A perfect "working-stiff" type (he usually wore cap and overalls on screen), Fetherstone became a favorite of star comedian Harold Lloyd, appearing in the Lloyd talkies Movie Crazy (1932), Cat's Paw (1934) and The Milky Way (1936). Elsewhere, Fetherston played dozens of bit roles as reporters, cabbies and crooks. Larger roles came his way in such "B"'s as Republic's Sky Bandits and in the two-reel efforts of The Three Stooges, Buster Keaton and Harry Langdon at Columbia. Eddie Fetherstone can currently be seen on TV on an annual basis, playing a bank teller in Frank Capra's It's a Wonderful Life (1946).

Sam Ash (Actor) .. Senator Lancaster

Born: August 28, 1884
Died: October 20, 1951

Trivia: A veteran vaudeville performer from Kentucky, wavy-haired Sam Ash was fairly busy in Broadway musicals of the 1910s and 1920s, including the hugely successful Katrinka (1915), Some Party (1922; with Jed Prouty and De Wolf Hopper), and The Passing Show of 1922. Third-billed in his screen debut as one of the suspects in the Craig Kennedy mystery Unmasked (1929), Ash went on to play literally hundreds of bit parts as waiters, news vendors, ship stewards, reporters, and the like. He was popular with the Republic Pictures serial units in the 1940s, playing one of the reporters swooping down on poor Louise Currie in The Masked Marvel (1944) and a florist in Captain America (1944), to mention but two of many chapterplay roles. His final film, the Warner Bros. Western The Big Sky (1952), was released posthumously.

Frank Austin (Actor) .. Inventor

Born: October 09, 1877
Died: May 13, 1954

Trivia: His hangdog expression gracing scores of Hollywood films from 1925 to 1950, Frank Austin (born George Francis Austin) portrayed Abraham Lincoln in the 1928 Jack Holt film Court-Martial. Adept at comedy as well as drama, Austin is memorable as the sinister butler in The Laurel and Hardy Murder Case (1930), the prisoner with the sore tooth in the team's Pardon Us (1931), and the diner with high blood pressure in W.C. Fields' Never Give a Sucker an Even Break (1941). Making his mark on B-Westerns as well, Austin delivered standout performances as the coroner in Reb Russell's Outlaw Rule (1935), the ill-fated Chuckwalla in the serial Riders of Death Valley (1941), and the assayer in Whip Wilson's Arizona Territory (1950), his final screen performance.

Wade Boteler (Actor) .. Family man

Born: January 01, 1891
Died: May 07, 1943

Trivia: In films from 1919 onward, stocky American actor Wade Boteler hit his stride in talking pictures. Blessed with a pit-bull countenance, Boteler was in practically every other "B" western made between 1930 and 1935, often cast as a hard-hearted sheriff or crooked land baron. Affecting an Irish brogue, Boteler was also in demand for policeman roles, notably as Inspector Queen in the 1936 Ellery Queen opus The Mandarin Mystery. His most effective lovable-Irishman stint was as conclusion-jumping cop Michael Axford in the 1940 serial The Green Hornet; in fact, when fans of the Green Hornet radio version would ask Detroit station WXYZ for a picture of Axford, the station would send off an autographed photo of Boteler, even though Gil O'Shea essayed the part on radio. Frequently on call for bit parts at 20th Century-Fox studios, Boteler was seen in such Fox productions as In Old Chicago (1938) and A-Haunting We Will Go (1942). Wade Boteler's final film was Warner Bros.' prophetically titled The Last Ride (1944), released one year after Boteler's death.

Al Bridge (Actor) .. Sen. Dwight

Born: February 26, 1891
Died: December 27, 1957

Trivia: In films from 1931, Alan Bridge was always immediately recognizable thanks to his gravel voice, unkempt moustache and sour-persimmon disposition. Bridge spent a lot of time in westerns, playing crooked sheriffs and two-bit political hacks; he showed up in so many Hopalong Cassidy westerns that he was practically a series regular. From 1940's Christmas in July onward, the actor was one of the most ubiquitous members of writer/director Preston Sturges' "stock company." He was at his very best as "The Mister," a vicious chain-gang overseer, in Sturges' Sullivan's Travels, and as the political-machine boss in the director's Hail the Conquering Hero, shining brightly in an extremely lengthy single-take scene with blustery Raymond Walburn. Alan Bridge also essayed amusing characterizations in Sturges' Sin of Harold Diddlebock (1946), Unfaithfully Yours (1948, as the house detective) and the director's final American film, The Beautiful Blonde From Bashful Bend (1949).

Maurice Cass (Actor) .. Handwriting expert

Born: October 12, 1884
Died: June 08, 1954

Trivia: With his shock of snow-white hair and his inevitable pince-nez, Lithuanian-born character actor Maurice Cass was destined to play stage managers, theatrical impresarios, school principals and absent-minded professors. Cass's theatrical voice provided an amusing contrast to his tiny, birdlike frame. Cass's film characters were always well along in years, at least seventy or thereabouts; thus, he was able to keep working until he was really approaching seventy (an age which, alas, he missed by some four months). In his last year on earth, Maurice Cass could be seen on a weekly basis as Professor Newton on the TV serial Rocky Jones, Space Ranger.

John Ince (Actor) .. Senator Fernwick

Born: January 01, 1877
Died: April 10, 1947

Trivia: John Ince was the older brother of producer/directors Tom Ince and Ralph Ince. Like his siblings, John was a stage actor from childhood. Despite his huge, fleshy frame, Ince found work as a leading man when entered films in 1913; he also directed and scripted several of his own vehicles. Concentrating almost exclusively on directing from 1915 through 1928, Ince returned before the cameras as a character actor in the early years of the talkies. While many of assignments were bit roles, John Ince could always be counted on to make his scenes important; he was quite memorable as Major Bowes clone "Colonel Crowe" in the 1935 Buster Keaton two-reeler Grand Slam Opera, and as the real-life Monogram producer Sam Katzman (whom Ince resembled not in the slightest) in the Bela Lugosi chiller Voodoo Man (1944).

George Cooper (Actor) .. Waiter

Born: December 12, 1892
Died: December 09, 1943

Jack Cooper (Actor) .. Photographer

Born: January 01, 1888
Died: January 12, 1970

Gino Corrado (Actor) .. Barber

Born: February 09, 1893
Died: December 23, 1982

Trivia: Enjoying one of the longer careers in Hollywood history, Gino Corrado is today best remembered as a stocky bit-part player whose pencil-thin mustache made him the perfect screen barber, maître d', or hotel clerk, roles he would play in both major and Poverty Row films that ranged from Citizen Kane (1941) and Casablanca (1942) to serials such as The Lost City (1935) and, perhaps his best-remembered performance, the Three Stooges short Micro Phonies (1945; he was the bombastic Signor Spumoni).A graduate of his native College of Strada, Corrado finished his education at St. Bede College in Peru, IL, and entered films with D.W. Griffith in the early 1910s, later claiming to have played bit parts in both Birth of a Nation (1915) and Intolerance (1916). By the mid-1910s, he was essaying the "other man" in scores of melodramas, now billed under the less ethnic-sounding name of Eugene Corey. He became Geno Corrado in the 1920s but would work under his real name in literally hundreds of sound films, a career that lasted well into the 1950s and also included live television appearances. In a case of life imitating art, Corrado reportedly supplemented his income by working as a waiter in between acting assignments.

Alec Craig (Actor) .. Speaker

Born: January 01, 1885
Died: June 25, 1945

Trivia: In films from 1935, Scottish character actor Alec Craig perpetuated the stereotype of the penny-pinching Highlander for nearly 15 years. Craig's wizened countenance and bald head popped up in quite a few mysteries and melodramas, beginning with his appearance as the inept defense attorney in the embryonic "film noir" Stranger on the Third Floor. He essayed small but memorable roles in a handful of Val Lewton productions, notably the zookeeper in Cat People (1942). Later, he was a general hanger-on in Universal's horror films and Sherlock Holmes entries. Craig's showiest assignment was his dual role in RKO's A Date with the Falcon. The legions of fans of Lubitsch's To Be or Not to Be know Alec Craig best as the Scottish farmer who, upon being confronted by Hitler look-alike Tom Dugan, mutters to his fellow farmer James Finlayson "First it was Hess...now it's him."

Beatrice Curtis (Actor) .. Paine's secretary

Born: January 01, 1906
Died: January 01, 1963

Robert Walker (Actor) .. Senator Holland

Born: October 13, 1918
Died: August 28, 1951

Trivia: This handsome, mustachioed leading man of the 1910s was, of course, not the young actor of the same name who married Jennifer Jones. The earlier Walker began his screen career with pioneering film companies such as Kalem and Thanhouser and reached stardom as Viola Dana's leading man in Blue Jeans (1917), a charming bit of Americana directed by the much-neglected John D. Collins. In the 1920s, having added a dashing mustache and an air of haughty menace, Walker became one of the best "boss villains" in westerns, handsome enough to be a serious rival to the hero -- at least in the first couple of reels. To the everlasting chagrin of film researchers, the two Robert Walkers careers overlap for four years (1935-1939).

Victor Travers (Actor) .. Senator Grainger

Born: January 01, 1886
Died: January 01, 1948

Rev. Neal Dodd (Actor) .. Senate chaplain

Born: September 06, 1878
Died: May 26, 1966

Trivia: The screen's favorite minister, the Rev. Neal Dodd had established his first Hollywood church in a storefront in 1918. Two years later, he was functioning as technical advisor on The Furnace (1920) and, in 1921, became a founding member of a relief fund to aid film workers in need. A lifelong supporter of the industry, Dodd made himself available whenever a film needed a pastor and ended up making more than 300 screen appearances. In 1924, he became a founding member of the Motion Picture Relief Fund of America (later Motion Picture and Television Fund), the charitable organization that today runs the Motion Picture Country House and Hospital in Woodland Hills, CA, a facility catering to retired motion picture and television personnel.

Helen Jerome Eddy (Actor) .. Paine's secretary

Born: February 25, 1897
Died: January 27, 1990

Trivia: Born in New York and raised in California, Helen Jerome Eddy went into films while a student at Berkeley. Her patrician demeanor enabled Helen to play young women of untold wealth throughout the silent era, first at Vitagraph and later at virtually every other major studio. A character actress in the talkie era, Eddy essayed such roles as the beneficent society matron in Our Gang's first talking short Small Talk (1929) and the kindly, terminally ill missionary whom Mae West impersonates in Klondike Annie (1936). Helen Jerome Eddy retired in 1940, ever afterward remaining available for interviews concerning Hollywood's "Golden" era.

Harry Hayden (Actor) .. Speaker

Born: November 08, 1882
Died: July 24, 1955

Trivia: Slight, grey-templed, bespectacled actor Harry Hayden was cast to best advantage as small-town store proprietors, city attorneys and minor bureaucrats. Dividing his time between stage and screen work from 1936, Hayden became one of the busiest members of Central Casting, appearing in everything from A-pictures like Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939) to the RKO 2-reelers of Leon Errol and Edgar Kennedy. Among his better-known unbilled assignments are horn factory owner Mr. Sharp (his partner is Mr. Pierce) in Laurel and Hardy's Saps at Sea (1940) and Farley Granger's harrumphing boss who announces brusquely that there'll be no Christmas bonus in O. Henry's Full House (1951). Hayden's final flurry of activity was in the role of next-door-neighbor Harry on the 1954-55 season of TV's The Stu Erwin Show (aka The Trouble with Father), in which he was afforded the most screen time he'd had in years -- though he remains uncredited in the syndicated prints of this popular series. From the mid '30s until his death in 1955, Harry Hayden and his actress wife Lela Bliss ran Beverly Hills' Bliss-Hayden Miniature Theatre, where several Hollywood aspirants were given an opportunity to learn their craft before live audiences; among the alumni of the Bliss-Hayden were Jon Hall, Veronica Lake, Doris Day, Craig Stevens, Debbie Reynolds, and Marilyn Monroe.

Louis Jean Heydt (Actor) .. Soapbox speaker

Born: April 17, 1905
Died: January 29, 1960

Trivia: It was once said of the versatile Louis Jean Heydt that he played everything except a woman. Born in New Jersey, the blonde, chiseled-featured Heydt attended Worcester Academy and Dartmouth College. He briefly served as a reporter on the New YorkWorld before opting for a stage career. Among his Broadway appearances was the lead in Preston Sturges' Strictly Dishonorable, establishing a long working relationship with Sturges that would extend to the latter's film productions The Great McGinty (1940) and The Great Moment (1942). Heydt's film characters often seemed destined to be killed off before the fourth reel, either because they were hiding something or because they'd just stumbled upon important information that could prove damaging to the villains. He was knocked off in the first three minutes of Charlie Chan at Treasure Island (1939) and was shot full of holes just before revealing an important plot point to Humphrey Bogart in The Big Sleep (1946) (this after an unforgettable interrogation scene in which Heydt is unable to look Bogart straight in the eye). Heydt's many other assignments include the hungry soldier in Gone with the Wind (1939), Mentor Graham in Abe Lincoln in Illinois (1940), a frustrated general practitioner in Tortilla Flat (1941), a squadron leader in Gung Ho (1943) and a loquacious rural family man in Come to the Stable (1949). Our Gang fans will recall Heydt as Bobby Blake's stepfather in the MGM "Gang" shorts Dad For a Day (1939) and All About Hash (1940). A ubiquitous TV actor, Louis Jean Heydt was seen on many anthology series, and as a semi-regular on the 1958 syndicated adventure weekly MacKenzie's Raiders.

Olaf Hytten (Actor) .. Butler

Born: January 01, 1888
Died: March 21, 1955

Trivia: Piping-voice, hamster-faced Scottish character actor Olaf Hytten left the British stage for films in 1921. By the time the talkie era rolled around, Hytten was firmly established in Hollywood, playing an abundance of butlers and high-society gentlemen. The actor was primarily confined to one or two-line bits in such films as Platinum Blonde (1931), The Sphinx (1933), Bonnie Scotland (1935), Beloved Rebel (1936), The Howards of Virginia (1940) and The Bride Came COD (1941). He was a semi-regular of the Universal B-unit in the '40s, appearing in substantial roles as military men and police official in the Rathbone/Bruce Sherlock Holmes series and as burgomeisters and innkeepers in the studio's many horror films (Ghost of Frankenstein, House of Frankenstein, etc.) Olaf Hytten was active until at least 1956; one of his more memorable assignments of the '50s was as the larcenous butler who participates in a scheme to drive Daily Planet editor Perry White crazy in the "Great Caesar's Ghost" episode of the TV series Adventures of Superman.

Lloyd Ingraham (Actor) .. Committeeman

Born: November 30, 1874
Died: April 04, 1956

Trivia: An important screen director in the 1910s, Illinois-born Lloyd Ingraham had been a stock manager for California entrepreneur Oliver Morosco prior to entering films directing Broncho Billy Westerns for Essanay in the early 1910s. He went on to direct some of the silent era's biggest stars, including Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks, and would specialize in robust outdoor adventures and Westerns. An equally busy supporting player who appeared in scores of silent films ranging from Intolerance (1916) to Scaramouche (1923), the white-haired, ascetic-looking veteran became an actor for hire after the advent of sound, appearing mostly in low-budget Westerns and almost always playing the heroine's father or a lawman. Spending his final years as a resident of the Motion Picture Country House and Hospital in Woodland Hills, CA, Ingraham's death was attributed to pneumonia.

Dick Jones (Actor) .. Page boy

Born: February 25, 1927
Died: July 07, 2014

Robert Emmett Keane (Actor) .. Editor

Born: March 04, 1883
Died: July 02, 1981

Trivia: The embodiment of businesslike dignity, actor Robert Emmett Keane was active in films from his 1929 debut in the talkie short Gossip through the 1956 second feature When Gangland Strikes. Because of his distinguished, above-reproach demeanor, Keane was often effectively cast as confidence men, shady attorneys and mystery murderers: after all, if he can convince the gullible folks people on-screen that he's honest, it's likely the audience will fall for the same line. Keane is warmly remembered by Laurel and Hardy fans for his roles in three of the team's 20th Century-Fox films of the '40s, playing con artists in two of them (A-Haunting We Will Go and Jitterbugs). In the early '50s, Keane played Captain Brackett in the national touring company of Rodgers and Hammerstein's musical triumph South Pacific. In private life, Robert Emmett Keane was the husband of Claire Whitney.

Milt Kibbee (Actor) .. Senate reporter

Born: January 01, 1896
Died: April 21, 1970

Trivia: Milton Kibbee was the younger brother of prominent stage and screen character actor Guy Kibbee. Looking like a smaller, skinnier edition of his brother, Milton followed Guy's lead and opted for a show business career. The younger Kibbee never reached the professional heights enjoyed by Guy in the '30s and '40s, but he was steadily employed in bit parts and supporting roles throughout the same period. Often cast as desk clerks, doctors and park-bench habitues, Milton Kibbee was most frequently seen as a pencil-wielding reporter, notably (and very briefly) in 1941's Citizen Kane.

Wyndham Standing (Actor) .. Senator Ashman

Born: August 23, 1880
Died: February 01, 1963

Trivia: In films from 1915 to 1948, British stage veteran Wyndham Standing's heyday was in the silent era. During this time, Standing appeared in stiff-collar, stuffed-shirt roles in films like The Dark Angel and The Unchastened Woman (both 1925). His early-talkie credits include the squadron leader in Hell's Angels (1931) and Captain Pyke in A Study in Scarlet (1933). Thereafter, Standing showed up in such one-scene bits as King Oscar in Madame Curie (1943); he was also one of several silent-screen veterans appearing as U.S. senators in Capra's Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939). Wyndham Standing was the brother of actors Sir Guy Standing and Herbert Standing.

Wright Kramer (Actor) .. Senator Carlton

Born: January 01, 1869
Died: January 01, 1941

Arthur Loft (Actor) .. Chief clerk

Born: May 25, 1897
Died: January 01, 1947

Trivia: Character actor Arthur Loft was active in films from 1933 until his death in 1947. A fussy-looking man who appeared as though he been weaned on a lemon, Loft was usually cast as pushy types. He was seen in prominent officious roles in two Edward G. Robinson/Fritz Lang collaborations of the mid-1940s, The Woman in the Window (44) and Scarlet Street (45). Other typical fleeting Arthur Loft assignments included a carpetbagger in Prisoner of Shark Island (36) and an abrasive reporter in Blood on the Sun (45).

Hank Mann (Actor) .. Photographer

Born: January 01, 1888
Died: November 25, 1971

Trivia: American comedian Hank Mann was a product of the turbulent tenement district of New York in the 1880s, where a kid had better learn to be handy with his fists or lose all his teeth by the age of 12. Putting his physical prowess to practical use, Mann became a circus acrobat, then headed westward for a job at Mack Sennett's Keystone studios. His junkyard-dog face was softened a bit by a huge paintbrush mustache, which emphasized his expressive, almost wistful eyes. Seldom a star comedian at Sennett, Mann quickly learned how to "catch flies" -- steal scenes, that is. In the most famous example of this, Mann played the foreman of a jury where Chester Conklin was on trial for his life; as Conklin energetically pleaded his case, Mann grabbed the audience's attention by silently yanking up his necktie in a hanging motion. Mann left Keystone for his own starring series at Fox, thence to a career as a character comic in feature films. He had the potential to be one of the top comedy stars of the era, but bad management and worse judgment left him broke by the late '20s. Mann was given a good break as Charlie Chaplin's contemptuous boxing opponent in City Lights (1931), and was provided with a meaty role as a house detective in the 1935 two-reeler Keystone Hotel, which reunited such former Sennett headliners as Ford Sterling, Ben Turpin, Chester Conklin and Marie Prevost. But Mann's talkie career consisted primarily of bit parts. He worked steadily in the films of Frank Capra, a friend from the silent days, and appeared prominently in two Three Stooge comedies, 1934's Men in Black (as a long-suffering janitor) and 1937's Goofs and Saddles (performing some bone-crushing pratfalls as a confused cattle rustler). Mann also showed up briefly in the two-reelers of such Columbia contractees as Andy Clyde, Buster Keaton and El Brendel. When jobs were scarce, Mann farmed out his services as a makeup artist, and also ran a small California malt shop. During the '50s, Hank Mann could always be relied upon for newspaper interviews about the good old days, and he was cast along with other silent comedy vets in such nostalgic feature films as Abbott and Costello Meet the Keystone Kops (1955) and Man of a Thousand Faces (1957).

Philo McCullough (Actor) .. Senator Albert

Born: June 16, 1893
Died: June 05, 1981

Trivia: Actor Philo McCullough began his movie career at the Selig Company in 1912. At first, McCullough specialized in light comedy roles, often playing cads and bounders. After a brief stab at directing with 1921's Maid of the West, he found his true niche as a mustachioed, oily-haired, jack-booted heavy. During the 1920s he appeared in support of everyone from Fatty Arbuckle to Rin Tin Tin. Talkies reduced him to such bit parts as the "Assistant Exhausted Ruler" in Laurel & Hardy's Sons of the Desert (1933) and Senator Albert in Frank Capra's Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939). One of his few roles of consequence in the 1930s was the principal villain in the 1933 serial Tarzan the Fearless. Philo McCullough remained active until 1969, when he appeared with several other silent-screen veterans in They Shoot Horses, Don't They?.

Lafe McKee (Actor) .. Civil War veteran

Born: January 23, 1872
Died: August 10, 1959

Trivia: White-haired Lafe McKee (real name, Lafayette McKee) was seemingly born old, dignified, and kind. Already playing old codgers by the mid-1910s, McKee delivered one of the funniest and most improbable moments in B-Western history, when, disguised as a bedraggled señorita, he sprang Ken Maynard from prison in Range Law (1931). "The Grand Old Man of Westerns," as film historian William K. Everson called him, retired in the early '40s after more than three decades of yeoman work opposite every cowboy hero on the Hollywood range, from Franklyn Farnum to Gary Cooper.

Robert Middlemass (Actor) .. Speaker

Born: September 03, 1885
Died: September 10, 1949

Trivia: Actor/writer Robert Middlemass was most closely associated with George M. Cohan during his Broadway years, appearing in such Cohan productions as Seven Keys to Baldpate and The Tavern. Before the 1920s were over, Middlemass had written or co-written several plays and one-act sketches, the most famous of which was The Valiant. Though he appeared in the 1918 feature film 5000 a Week, his screen career proper didn't begin in 1934, when he showed up as a foil for the Ritz Brothers in the New York-filmed comedy short Hotel Anchovy. For the next decade, Middlemass was based in Hollywood, essaying various authority figures in approximately two dozen films. Robert Middlemass' better screen roles include the flustered sheriff in the Marx Bros. Day at the Races (1937) and impresario Oscar Hammerstein in The Dolly Sisters (1945).

Alex Novinsky (Actor) .. Foreign diplomat

Born: January 01, 1878
Died: January 01, 1960

Frank O'Connor (Actor) .. Senator Alfred

Born: April 11, 1888
Died: November 22, 1959

Trivia: A onetime stage actor, Frank O'Connor was a prolific writer/director in the silent era. During his busiest period as a director (1921-1929), he wrote and helmed such enjoyable time-fillers as Lawful Cheaters (1926). Returning to acting when sound came in, he played innumerable bit roles as cops, commissioners, clerks, and such until his retirement in 1953. This Frank O'Connor should not be confused with the thesp of the same name who was married to novelist Ayn Rand.

Frank Puglia (Actor) .. Handwriting expert

Born: January 01, 1892
Died: October 25, 1975

Trivia: Sicilian actor Frank Puglia started his career with a travelling operetta company at age 13. He and his family moved to the US in 1907, where he worked in a laundry until he hooked up with an Italian-language theatrical troupe based in New York. In 1921, Puglia was appearing as Pierre Frochard in a revival of the old theatrical warhorse The Two Orphans when he was spotted by film director D.W. Griffith. Puglia was hired to repeat his role for Griffith's film version of the play, retitled Orphans of the Storm; while Pierre Frochard was slated to die at the end of the film, preview-audience reaction to the death was so negative that Griffith called Puglia back to reshoot his final scenes, allowing him to survive for the fade-out. For the rest of his long film career, Puglia essayed a wide variety of ethnic supporting parts, portraying priests, musicians, diplomats and street peddlers. In 1942's Casablanca, Puglia has a memorable bit as a Morroccan rug merchant who automatically marks down his prices to any friends of Rick Blaine (Humphrey Bogart). Frank Puglia played a larger and less likable role as a treacherous minion to sultan Kurt Katch in Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves (1944); when the film was remade as Sword of Ali Baba in 1965, so much stock footage from the 1944 film was utilized that Puglia was hired to replay his original part.

Jack Richardson (Actor) .. Senator Manchester

Born: November 18, 1883
Died: November 01, 1957

Trivia: A veteran stage actor, Jack Richardson began his screen career at the American Film Manufacturing Company opposite his then-wife Louise Lester, the studio's comic "Calamity Anne." One of the better "Boss Heavies" around, Richardson even starred in a couple of low-budget Westerns in the 1920s, but was not really suitable hero material. Today he is perhaps best remembered for playing the brutal servant -- in blackface, no less -- in Thomas H. Ince's justly infamous Free and Equal (1915, released 1925). Richardson's career lasted through the 1940s, but mostly in minor roles.

10:15 pm - 12:30 am, Thursday, January 1 on Turner Classic Movies ()