Trivia: American comedian Bud Abbott was the tall, bullying member of the popular comedy team Abbott and Costello. The son of circus employees, Abbott entered show business as a burlesque show producer, then took to the stage himself as straight man for a number of comedians, finally teaming with fledgling comic Lou Costello in 1936. After working in burlesque, in radio, and on Broadway, Abbott and Costello made their movie debut in One Night in the Tropics (1940). Their first starring picture was Buck Privates (1941), a box-office bonanza which catapulted the team to "top moneymaker" status for the next 15 years; in all, Abbott and Costello made 36 feature films. In 1951, they made their TV debut on Colgate Comedy Hour, and later that year starred in a widely distributed 52-week, half-hour situation comedy series, The Abbott and Costello Show. After the team broke up in 1957, Abbott retired, but was compelled to revive his career due to income tax problems. He appeared solo in a supporting role on a 1961 G.E. Theatre TV drama, then made an unsuccessful comeback attempt as straight man for comedian Candy Candido. Abbott's last performing job was providing the voice of "himself" in a series of 156 Abbott and Costello animated cartoons produced for television by Hanna-Barbera in 1966.

Trivia: American comedian Lou Costello wasn't the most scholarly of lads growing up in Paterson, New Jersey, although he excelled in baseball and basketball. He won an athletic scholarship to Cornwall-on-Hudson Military School, but left before graduation to try a performing career. Reasoning that there'd be a lot of work for a top athlete in Hollywood, Lou travelled westward, but was only able to secure stunt-man work, specializing in the sort of spectacular falls that he'd still be staging during his later starring career. Tired of working anonymously in Hollywood, Costello decided to give stage work a try, and by the mid '30s he'd achieved minor prominence as a burlesque comedian. What he needed was the right straight man, and that man was Bud Abbott, with whom Lou teamed in 1936. Abbott was satisfied in burlesque, but Costello had bigger ambitions; it was he who actively promoted the team into radio and Broadway. In 1940, Lou finally realized his life's ambition to be a movie star when he and Abbott were signed by Universal Pictures. The team's second feature, Buck Privates, launched an amazingly durable film career; for the next ten years, Abbott and Costello were Hollywood's biggest moneymaking team. Though no pushover in real life, Lou became world famous for his portrayal of the hapless, trodden-upon patsy of the conniving, bullying Abbott; his plaintive "I'm a ba-a-ad boy" became a national catchphrase. A serious 1942 bout with rheumatic fever kept Lou out of radio and films for a full year. On the day of his professional return in 1943, an appalling tragedy struck Costello; his infant son drowned in the family's backyard swimming pool. Waving off mourners, Lou performed his comeback radio show that evening on schedule, as funny as ever, and broke down the minute the show signed off, while a visibly shaken Bud Abbott explained the situation to the studio audience. Lou was never quite the same after that, though his career flourished, surviving the occasional falling out with Bud Abbott and unprofitable attempts to change his screen image in such films as Little Giant and The Time of Their Lives (1946). Seldom making a professional misstep -- he moved from films to TV and back again with enormous success. Costello broke up permanently with Bud Abbott in 1956. His solo dates in nightclubs and television were satisfactory, and a starring appearance as a single in The Thirty Foot Bride of Candy Rock (1959) wasn't the disaster it might have been, but Lou Costello was basically unhappy going it alone. Still, he was thriving in show business and seemingly had a rosy future ahead of him in early 1959; sadly, in March of that year Lou Costello lost his lifelong battle with his rheumatic heart and died three days before his 53rd birthday.

Trivia: Born to a peripatetic vaudeville couple, Maggie Reed joined her parents' act as soon as she learned to walk, stopping the show with an energetic rendition of "I Wish I Could Shimmy Like My Sister Kate." After touring in a double act with her brother Bud, she made her Broadway debut in the 1934 revue Calling All Stars, where she was billed for the first time as Martha Raye (at first claiming that she chose the name out of a phone book, she later affirmed that it had been involuntarily foisted upon her by "some idiot" and insisted -- nay, demanded -- that her friends call her Maggie). While appearing as a singer/comedienne at Hollywood's Trocadero, she was selected to appear in Paramount's Rhythm on the Range (1936), in which she introduced her trademark song, "Mr. Paganini." For the next four years she was Paramount's favorite soubrette, overemphasizing her big mouth and gorgeous legs in a series of zany comedy roles. She also proved to be a convincing romantic lead for Bob Hope (a lifelong friend) in such films as Give Me a Sailor (1938) and Never Say Die (1939). Dropped by Paramount in 1940, she moved to Universal, where she was seen to good advantage in The Boys From Syracuse (1940), Abbott and Costello's Keep 'Em Flying (in a dual role in 1941), and Olsen and Johnson's Hellzapoppin' (1941); during this period she also returned to Broadway, co-starring with Al Jolson (with whom she'd previously appeared on radio) in Hold On to Your Hats. During WWII, Raye and her pals Carole Landis, Kay Francis, and Mitzi Mayfair formed a U.S.O. troupe, performing tirelessly under incredibly difficult and dangerous conditions before thousands of enthusiastic G.I.s; the four actresses later starred in a fictionalized retelling of this experience, Four Jills in a Jeep (1944). After the war, she essayed her greatest screen role in Charlie Chaplin's Monsieur Verdoux (1947), playing a brash and very wealthy widow whom wife-killer Chaplin can not murder no matter how hard he tries. From 1953 to 1954 she starred in her own weekly TV variety series and continued to appear in night clubs throughout the '50s. In 1962 she starred in her last major film, Billy Rose's Jumbo, opposite Doris Day and Jimmy Durante, and five years later spent seven months in the title role of the Broadway hit Hello Dolly. Indefatigably resuming her U.S.O. activities during the Vietnam war, she became the troops' favorite performer, earning the affectionate nickname "Boondock Maggie," an honorary commission as Marine Colonel from President Johnson, and the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award at the 1969 Academy Awards ceremony. Unfortunately, her activities in Southeast Asia also incurred the wrath of Hollywood's anti-war activists, who unfairly labeled Raye a "hawk" and "warmonger" and did their best to prevent her finding film or TV work. She was rescued by producer puppeteers Sid and Marty Krofft, who cast her as Boss Witch in the 1970 theatrical feature Pufnstuf and as the aptly named Benita Bizarre in the Saturday morning TV series The Bugaloos. Her later work included a Broadway run in No No Nanette, extensive summer stock and dinner theater tours in the stage farce Everybody Loves Opal, supporting stints on TV's McMillan and Wife and Alice, and a cameo appearance in the feature film Airport 79. Among her six husbands were makeup artist Bud Westmore, orchestra leader David Rose, and dancer Nick Condos (her daughter by this marriage, Melodye Condos, briefly pursued a singing career of her own). In declining health for many years (she lost one of her legs to cancer), Martha Raye died at the age of 78, survived by her much younger seventh husband Mark Harris.

Trivia: Carol Bruce's careers as a leading actress in movies and on television were separated by about 40 years. Born Shirley Levy in Great Neck, NY, she showed considerable musical talent while in her teens, and was barely 20 years old when she was spotted by Irving Berlin, who reportedly wrote a part in the stage musical Louisiana Purchase specifically for her. While appearing in the original Broadway cast of that show, she also became a regular performer on radio at the dawn of the '40s, and later began singing in nightclubs as well. Following the close of Louisiana Purchase, she was signed by Universal Pictures and made her screen debut in the Abbott & Costello vehicle Keep 'Em Flying, playing the love interest for the flashy barnstorming pilot played by Dick Foran -- dark-haired and dark-eyed, she looked sensational, acted up a storm, and also sang the song "I'm Getting Sentimental Over You" in the film. Bruce only appeared in one more movie under her Universal contract, Behind the Eight Ball (1942). She preferred live performance and busied herself over the next few years singing with Red Norvo's band on a series of V-Discs and in concert, and also appearing at major nightspots such as the Copacabana. She won the role of Julie in the acclaimed 1946 revival of Showboat that included Kenneth Spencer and Jan Clayton in the cast. She subsequently appeared in theatrical revivals of One Touch of Venus, Bloomer Girl, Annie Get Your Gun, Lady in the Dark, andPal Joey, and shared a stage with Noel Coward in London. She was a regular performer on comedy and variety shows during the '50s, and also did dramatic performances on anthology shows such as Armstrong Circle Theater and Studio One, but she wasn't seen again in movies until American Gigolo in 1979. Her acting career jumped to the small screen around that same time when she won the role of Mama Carlson, the flinty radio station owner (and mother of general manager Arthur Carlson, portrayed by Gordon Jump) in the series WKRP In Cincinnati. She appeared subsequently in the comedy Planes, Trains & Automobiles, and returned to the WKRP cast when the series was revived as a first run syndication sitcom at the end of the '80s. She continued to perform on stage, in dramatic and musical roles, into her eighties. Bruce died in 2007, at the age of 87.

Trivia: Actor William Gargan began his career in 1924, shortly after leaving high school, and made it to Broadway within a year. In 1932 he won great acclaim for his work in the play The Animal Kingdom, leading to an invitation from Hollywood where he made his film debut in 1932. During the '30s he played high-energy, gregarious leads in many "B"-movies and second leads in major films; later he moved into character roles. For his work in They Knew What They Wanted (1940), he received a "Best Supporting Actor" Oscar nomination. He made few films after 1948, but from 1949 to 1951 he starred in the title role of the TV series Martin Kane, Private Eye then reprised the role in 1957 in The New Adventures of Martin Kane. He was stricken by cancer of the larynx, and in 1960 his voice box was removed in surgery, ending his career. He learned esophageal speech then taught this method for the American Cancer Society; the same group enlisted him as an anti-smoking campaigner. Two years after losing his speech, he gave his final performance, portraying a mute clown on TV in King of Diamonds. He authored an autobiography, Why Me? (1969), recounting his struggle with cancer. His brother was actor Edward Gargan.

Trivia: Affable "good guy" singer/actor Dick Foran was the son of a U.S. senator. After a tentative stab at a career as a geologist, Foran achieved prominence as a band and radio singer. Billed as Nick Foran, he made his screen debut as a "Paul Revere" type in a surrealistic production number in Fox's Stand Up and Cheer (1934). Signed by Warner Bros., Foran was utilized as that studio's "answer" to Gene Autry in a series of "B" musical westerns; ironically, he also played a devastatingly parodied cowboy star in 1938's Boy Meets Girl. After enjoying nominal stardom in Warners' second-feature product--and incidentally picking up an Oscar nomination for his supporting work in The Petrified Forest (1936)--Foran moved to Universal, where he worked in everything from serials to horror films to Abbott and Costello comedies. In one A&C romp, Ride 'Em Cowboy (1942), Foran introduced what would become his signature theme, the lovely "I'll Remember April." Those who worked with Foran during this period remember him being as likable and uncomplicated offscreen as on; one Universal starlet never tired of recalling the time that Foran invited her into his dressing room then asked quite sincerely if she wanted to play a game of jacks! Dick Foran remained in films and TV as a reliable, pleasantly portly character actor into the 1960s; one of his last films was Donovan's Reef, which starred his longtime friend John Wayne.

Trivia: Blunt, burly American actor William B. Davidson was equally at home playing gangster bosses, business executives, butlers and military officials. In films since 1914, Davidson seemed to be in every other Warner Bros. picture made between 1930 and 1935, often as a Goliath authority figure against such pint-sized Davids as James Cagney and Edward G. Robinson. In the early '40s, Davidson was a fixture of Universal's Abbott and Costello comedies, appearing in In the Navy (1941), Keep 'Em Flying (1941) and In Society (1944). In Abbott & Costello's Hold That Ghost (1941), Davidson shows up as Moose Matson, the dying gangster who sets the whole plot in motion. An avid golfer, William B. Davidson frequently appeared in the all-star instructional shorts of the '30s starring legendary golf pro Bobby Jones.

Trivia: Actor Earle Hodgins has been characterized by more than one western-film historian as a grizzled, bucolic Bob Hope type. Usually cast as snake-oil salesmen, Hodgins would brighten up his "B"-western scenes with a snappy stream of patter, leavened by magnificently unfunny wisecracks ("This remedy will give ya a complexion like a peach, fuzz 'n' all..."). When the low-budget western market died in the 1950s, Hodgins continued unabated on such TV series as The Roy Rogers Show and Annie Oakley. He also made appearances in such "A" films as East of Eden (55), typically cast as carnival hucksters and rural sharpsters. In 1961, Earle Hodgins was cast in the recurring role of wizened handyman Lonesome on the TV sitcom Guestward Ho!

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

Trivia: Emil Van Horn was one of Hollywood's "gorilla men," actors and stuntmen whose ownership of -- and ability to convincingly wear -- gorilla suits kept them busy in pictures. Virtually nothing is known of his life before he entered pictures in this capacity, or his personal life, although Lorna Gray, of Perils of Nyoka (1942), in which Van Horn played Satan the Gorilla, recalled in a 1992 interview that the actor's wife would come to the set with his lunch, which the diminutive Van Horn would eat in his costume. Van Horn's performance as Satan, incidentally, is one of the highlights of the movie, though the gorilla never speaks, he is a fairly well-defined character in the chapter-play and enjoyable to watch, and he plays a central role in the Chapter 15 denouement. He was also the gorilla in the W.C. Fields vehicle Never Give A Sucker an Even Break (1941), and according to one recent account, he said in an interview that he and Fields spent a good deal of time off the set imbibing various alcoholic beverages. He was also the gorilla in the Bela Lugosi movie The Ape Man, and appeared in the Abbott & Costello movie Keep 'em Flying as well, in the funhouse sequence. When film work dried up, Van Horn -- who was a handsome but diminutive man with a moustache -- would take his gorilla suit onto the burlesque stage, in various "beauty and the beast" motifs. Accounts of his later life say that he lost his gorilla suit when it was either stolen or a landlady to whom he owed money confiscated it. He did occasional extra work without the suit, on movies shooting where he happened to be living -- Miami and New Orleans were his preferred cities -- but gradually slipped into dire poverty. Supposedly, he was able to cadge drinks by telling stories about Hollywood, and his contacts with W.C. Fields and Clark Gable, amongst others. Van Horn reportedly died in a hospital on New Year's Day 1967.

Trivia: James Seay was groomed for romantic leads by Paramount Pictures beginning in 1940. After several nondescript minor roles, Seay finally earned a major part--not as a hero, but as a villainous gang boss in the Columbia "B" The Face Behind the Mask (1941). Never quite reaching the top ranks, Seay nonetheless remained on the film scene as a dependable general purpose actor, appearing in such small but attention-getting roles as Dr. Pierce, the retirement-home physician who explains the eccentricities of "Kris Kringle" (Edmund Gwenn) in Miracle on 34th Street (1947). In the 1950s, James Seay joined the ranks of horror and sci-fi movie "regulars;" he could be seen in films like The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951), Killers from Space (1954), The Beginning of the End (1957), and--as the luckless military officer who is skewered by a gigantic hypodermic needle--The Amazing Colossal Man (1957).

Trivia: Regis "Reg" Parton started out as a Hollywood stuntman in the 1940s and went on to play roles ranging from cowpokes to space aliens. His early credits include the Abbott and Costello fantasy Keep 'Em Flying (1941) and Backlash (1956). During the '50s, he specialized in westerns and in the '60s, Parton was a stunt coordinator for A.C. Lyles Paramount westerns. In addition to feature-film work, Parton has performed in numerous television series including Rawhide, Branded and The Green Hornet.

Trivia: Baby boomers will recall silver-maned actor William Forrest as Major Swanson, the brusque but fair-minded commander of Fort Apache in the 1950s TV series The Adventures of Rin Tin Tin. This character was but one of many military officers portrayed by the prolific Forrest since the late 1930s. Most of his film appearances were fleeting, and few were billed, but Forrest managed to pack more authority into 30 seconds' film time than many bigger stars were able to manage in an hour and a half. Outside of Rin Tin Tin, William Forrest is probably most familiar as the sinister fifth-columnist Martin Crane in the 1943 Republic serial The Masked Marvel.

Trivia: Working in virtual anonymity throughout his film career, the sharp-featured, gangly character actor Harry Strang was seldom seen in a feature film role of consequence. From 1930 through 1959, Strang concentrated on such sidelines characters as soldiers, sentries, beat cops and store clerks. He was given more to do and say in 2-reel comedies, notably in the output of RKO Radio Pictures, where he appeared frequently in the comedies of Leon Errol and Edgar Kennedy. Harry Strang will be remembered by Laurel and Hardy fans for his role as a desk clerk in Block-Heads (1938), in which he was not once but twice clobbered in the face by an errant football.

Trivia: There was always something slightly sinister about American actor Carleton G. Young that prevented him from traditional leading man roles. Young always seemed to be hiding something, to be looking over his shoulder, or to be poised to head for the border; as such, he was perfectly cast in such roles as the youthful dope peddler in the 1936 camp classic Reefer Madness. Even when playing a relatively sympathetic role, Young appeared capable of going off the deep end at any minute, vide his performance in the 1937 serial Dick Tracy as Tracy's brainwashed younger brother. During the 1940s and 1950s, Young was quite active in radio, where he was allowed to play such heroic leading roles as Ellery Queen and the Count of Monte Cristo without his furtive facial expressions working against him. As he matured into a greying character actor, Young became a special favorite of director John Ford, appearing in several of Ford's films of the 1950s and 1960s. In 1962's The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, it is Young, in the small role of a reporter, who utters the unforgettable valediction "This is the west, sir. When the legend becomes fact...print the legend." Carleton G. Young was the father of actor Tony Young, who starred in the short-lived 1961 TV Western Gunslinger.

Trivia: Richard Crane was recruited by Hollywood in his early twenties, making his screen debut in the 1940 Joan Crawford vehicle Susan and God (1940). Crane coasted on his good looks and pleasant personality throughout the war years, while most of Hollywood's top leading men were in uniform, appearing in 20th Century Fox's Happy Land (1943) and A Wing and a Prayer (1944). By 1951, he was accepting make-work jobs along the lines of the Columbia serial Mysterious Island. His film career in almost total eclipse, Crane briefly rallied as star of the popular syndicated sci-fi TV series Rocky Jones, Space Ranger (1953). He was later seen in the supporting role of Lt. Gene Plethon on TV's Surfside Six (1961-1962). Richard Crane's last big-screen appearance was in Surf Party (1964).

Trivia: American actor Gene O'Donnell played character roles in films of the '40s, '50s, and '60s, primarily working for Republic Studios. He got his start as a radio announcer and made his film debut in the Boris Karloff vehicle The Ape (1940). He served in the Army during WWII and afterward returned to Hollywood to resume his career in both films and television.

Trivia: Well-muscled former 1935 New York City heavyweight boxing champ Mickey Simpson was typically cast as a villain in numerous low-budget actioners, adventures, and Westerns of the '40s, '50s, and '60s. Before making his screen debut with a bit part in Stagecoach, Simpson had been Claudette Colbert's personal chauffeur. He served with the military during WWII and then returned to Hollywood to continue his busy onscreen career.

Trivia: Raspy-voiced, distinguished-looking actor Samuel S. Hinds was born into a wealthy Brooklyn family. Well-educated at such institutions as Philips Academy and Harvard, Hinds became a New York lawyer. He moved to California in the 1920s, where he developed an interest in theatre and became one of the founders of the Pasadena Playhouse. A full-time actor by the early 1930s, Hinds entered films in 1932. Of his nearly 150 screen appearances, several stand out, notably his portrayal of Bela Lugosi's torture victim in The Raven (1935), the dying John Vincey in She (1935), the crooked political boss in Destry Rides Again (1939) and the doctor father of Lew Ayres in MGM's Dr. Kildare series. He frequently co-starred in the films of James Stewart, playing Stewart's eccentric future father-in-law in You Can't Take It With You (1938) and the actor's banker dad in the holiday perennial It's a Wonderful Life (1946). One of Samuel S. Hinds' final film roles was an uncredited supporting part in the 1948 James Stewart vehicle Call Northside 777.