Trivia: Originally planning to become a lawyer, William Powell chose instead to pursue a career as an actor, dropping out of the University of Kansas to attend the American Academy of Dramatic Arts, where his classmates included Edward G. Robinson and Joseph Schildkraut. He made his Broadway debut in 1912, and within a few years had attained stardom in urbane, sophisticated roles. The sleek, moustachioed young actor entered films in 1922, playing the first of many villainous roles in John Barrymore's Sherlock Holmes. He finally broke out of the bad guy mode when talkies came in; his clipped, precise speech patterns and authoritative demeanor were ideally suited to such "gentleman detective" roles as Philo Vance in The Canary Murder Case, the Kennel Murder Case, and others in the Vance series. In 1933 he moved from Warner Bros. to MGM, where he co-starred with Myrna Loy in Manhattan Melodrama (1934). So well-received was the Powell-Loy screen teaming that the actors were paired together in several subsequent MGM productions, most memorably the delightful Thin Man series and the 1936 blockbuster The Great Ziegfeld, in which Powell played the title character and Loy was cast as Ziegfeld's second wife, Billie Burke. Away from the screen for nearly a year due to a serious illness, Powell returned in 1944, curtailing his film activities thereafter. As he eased into his late fifties he reinvented himself as a character actor, offering superbly etched performances as a lamebrained crooked politician in The Senator Was Indiscreet (1947) and the lovably autocratic Clarence Day Sr. in Life With Father (1947), which earned him his third Academy Award nomination (the others were for The Thin Man and My Man Godfrey). After playing Doc in the 1955 film version of Mister Roberts, he retired to his lavish, air-conditioned home in Palm Springs, insisting that he'd return to films if the right role came along but he turned down all offers. Married three times, Powell's second wife was actress Carole Lombard, with whom he remained good friends after the divorce, and co-starred with in My Man Godfrey (1936); his third marriage to MGM starlet Diana Lewis was a happy union that lasted from 1940 until Powell's death in 1984. It has been said, however, that the great love of William Powell's life was actress Jean Harlow, to whom he was engaged at the time of her premature death in 1936.

Trivia: During the late 1930s, when Clark Gable was named the King of Hollywood, Myrna Loy was elected the Queen. The legendary actress, who started her career as a dancer, moved into silent films and was typecast for a few years as exotic women. Her film titles from those early years include Arrowsmith (1931), Love Me Tonight (1932), The Mask of Fu Manchu (1932), and Manhattan Melodrama (1934), the film that gangster John Dillinger just had to see the night he was killed. Starting in 1934, with The Thin Man, opposite William Powell, she became Hollywood's ideal wife: bright, witty, humorous. She and Powell were often teamed throughout the '30s and '40s, and many of the characters she played were strong, independent, adventurous women. In addition to The Thin Man series, Loy's best appearances included The Great Ziegfeld (1936), Libeled Lady (1936), Wife vs. Secretary (1936), Test Pilot (1938), and Too Hot to Handle (1938). She took a break from filmmaking during WWII to work with the Red Cross, and in her later years she devoted as much time to politics as to acting (among her accomplishments, Loy became the first film star to work with the United Nations). She stands out in The Best Years of Our Lives (1946), Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House (1948), Cheaper by the Dozen (1950), and its sequel Belles on Their Toes (1952). She received an honorary Oscar in 1991, two years before her death.

Trivia: Educated in London and Paris, the breathtakingly beautiful Maureen O'Sullivan was discovered for films by director Frank Borzage while both were attending a horse show in Dublin. She made her screen debut in 1930 opposite Irish tenor John McCormick in Song O' My Heart, which earned her a contract with Fox studios. After appearing in such Fox blockbusters as Just Imagine (1930) and A Connecticut Yankee (1931), she moved to MGM, where her first assignment was the role of Jane Parker in Tarzan the Ape Man (1932). She repeated this characterization in Tarzan and His Mate (1934), causing a minor sensation with her bikini-like costume and a nude swimming scene. Somewhat more modestly garbed, she went on to co-star in four more Tarzan pictures over the next eight years. Though MGM kept her busy in a variety of films, ranging from such costume dramas as The Barretts of Wimpole Street (1934) and David Copperfield (1935) to the Marx Brothers' A Day at the Races (1937), she is best remembered for her appearances as Jane, a fact that has been a source of both pride and irritation for the actress (she liked her co-star Johnny Weissmuller but despised Cheeta the chimpanzee, who bit her more than once). She retired from films in 1942 to devote her time to her husband, director John Farrow, and her many children, two of whom grew up to be actresses Mia Farrow and Tisa Farrow. She returned to the screen in 1948, averaging a film every two years until 1958. An early arrival on TV, she hosted a local children's program in New York and the syndicated series Irish Heritage, and in 1964 was hired by NBC to co-anchor The Today Show (her replacement the following year was Barbara Walters). In 1964 she starred with Paul Ford in the Broadway production Never Too Late, playing a fortysomething suburbanite who suddenly finds herself pregnant; the following year she and Ford repeated their roles in the screen version. Widowed in 1963, she remarried 20 years later, sporadically reviving her screen activities in such films as Hannah and Her Sisters (1985), in which she and Lloyd Nolan played the combative parents of her real-life daughter Mia Farrow. As regally beautiful as ever, Maureen O'Sullivan showed up again on TV in the mid-'90s as one of the interviewees in a Tarzan retrospective.

Trivia: Born in Iowa, Nat Pendleton was raised in New York, where he attended Columbia University. A champion wrestler in his college days, Pendleton joined the U.S. Olympic team in 1920, winning a silver medal for his grappling talents. He turned professional, becoming World's Champion in 1924. Around this time, Pendleton was hired to play a wrestler (what a stretch) in the Broadway play Naughty Cinderella. He decided to switch to acting full-time, heading to Hollywood in 1927. Some of his earlier film roles required him to merely look tough and flex his muscles while the stars around him made funny; as football player McHardie in the Marx Brothers' Horse Feathers (1932), Pendleton isn't even given a screen credit. He finally graduated to leading roles in 1933, playing a wrestler (what, again?) in Deception, for which he wrote the screenplay. Throughout the 1930s and 1940s, Pendleton was one of Hollywood's busiest and best-liked character actors -- still specializing in brawny roles, but at last permitted to get some of the laughs himself rather than simply stooging for others. For his second appearance in a Marx Brothers film, 1939's At the Circus, Pendleton, decked in a handlebar mustache and Harpo-like wig, was prominently billed as crooked strongman Goliath. His best-remembered film roles included thick-eared ambulance driver Joe Wayland in MGM's Dr. Kildare films and blustering cop-turned-drill sergeant Mike Collins in Abbott and Costello's two Buck Privates efforts. Thanks to careful investments, Pendleton was able to retire from filmmaking in 1947, at the age of 52. Nat Pendleton was the brother of another busy character actor, Gaylord (Steve) Pendleton.

Trivia: During her twenty-one year Hollywood career, Minna Gombell was also billed as Winifred Lee and Nancy Carter. By any name, Gombell was usually typecast in brittle, hollow-eyed, hard-boiled character parts. Devoted Late Late Show fans will recall Gombell as one of the secondary murder victims in The Thin Man (1934), as Mrs. Oliver Hardy in Block-Heads (1938), as the Queen of the Beggars in The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1939), and as clubfooted Joan Leslie's mother in High Sierra (1941). In 1935, Minna Gombell was afforded top billing in the above-average Monogram domestic drama Women Must Dress.

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).

Trivia: American actor Henry Wadsworth played juvenile roles in films of the late '20s through the 1930s. He received his education at the University of Kentucky and at Carnegie Tech Drama School. He got his start in vaudeville and the legitimate theater. He retired from films in the early '40s and became a union administrator. He was also the president of the AFL's Film Council and helped administer the Motion Picture Health and Welfare Plan.

Trivia: William (Bill) Henry was eight years old when he appeared in his first film, Lord Jim. During his teen years, Henry dabbled with backstage duties as a technician, but continued taking roles in student productions while attending the University of Hawaii. As an adult actor, Henry was prominently billed in such films as Geronimo (1939), Blossoms in the Dust (1941) and Johnny Come Lately (1943); he also briefly starred in Columbia's "Glove Slingers" 2-reel series. In the last stages of his movie career, William Henry was something of a regular in the films of John Ford appearing in such Ford productions as Mister Roberts (1955), The Last Hurrah (1958), The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962) and Cheyenne Autumn (1964).

Trivia: Given the fact that the mustachioed, beady-eyed Harold Huber looked as though he'd stepped right out of a Damon Runyon story, it's hard to believe that Huber could ever have hoped for a successful career as a lawyer. Yet it is true that Huber, a graduate of the Columbia University law school, did indeed briefly hang out an attorney's shingle. By the time he was in his mid-20s, however, Huber had switched to acting, often in shifty, underhanded roles of various nationalities. He showed up in a handful of Charlie Chan films, usually equipped with an unconvincing comic-opera foreign accent; he was, however, thoroughly convincing as the fast-talking New York police detective in 1937's Charlie Chan on Broadway. A busy radio and television performer, Harold Huber starred on the radio versions of Fu Manchu and Hercule Poirot, and was top-billed as Broadway columnist Johnny Warren on the 1950 TV series I Cover Times Square.

Trivia: Born in New York City to parents of Cuban extraction, American actor Cesar Romero studied for his craft at Collegiate and Riverdale Country schools. After a brief career as a ballroom dancer, the tall, sleekly handsome Romero made his Broadway debut in the 1927 production Lady Do. He received several Hollywood offers after his appearance in the Preston Sturges play Strictly Dishonorable, but didn't step before the cameras until 1933 for his first film The Shadow Laughs (later biographies would claim that Romero's movie bow was in The Thin Man [1934], in which he was typecast as a callow gigolo). Long associated with 20th Century-Fox, Romero occasionally cashed in on his heritage to play Latin Lover types, but was more at home with characters of indeterminate nationalities, usually playing breezily comic second leads (whenever Romero received third billing, chances were he wasn't going to get the girl). Cheerfully plunging into the Hollywood social scene, Romero became one of the community's most eligible bachelors; while linked romantically with many top female stars, he chose never to marry, insisting to his dying day that he had no regrets over his confirmed bachelorhood. While he played a variety of film roles, Romero is best remembered as "The Cisco Kid" in a brief series of Fox programmers filmed between 1939 and 1940, though in truth his was a surprisingly humorless, sullen Cisco, with little of the rogueish charm that Duncan Renaldo brought to the role on television. The actor's favorite movie role, and indeed one of his best performances, was as Cortez in the 1947 20th Century-Fox spectacular The Captain From Castile. When his Fox contract ended in 1950, Romero was wealthy enough to retire, but the acting bug had never left his system; he continued to star throughout the 1950s in cheap B pictures, always giving his best no matter how seedy his surroundings. In 1953 Romero starred in a 39-week TV espionage series "Passport to Danger," which he cheerfully admitted to taking on because of a fat profits-percentage deal. TV fans of the 1960s most closely associate Romero with the role of the white-faced "Joker" on the "Batman" series. While Romero was willing to shed his inhibitions in this villainous characterization, he refused to shave his trademark moustache, compelling the makeup folks to slap the clown white over the 'stache as well (you can still see the outline in the closeups). As elegant and affluent-looking as ever, Romero signed on for the recurring role of Peter Stavros in the late-1980s nighttime soap opera "Falcon Crest." In the early 1990s, he showed up as host of a series of classic 1940s romantic films on cable's American Movie Classics. Romero died of a blood clot on New Year's Day, 1994, at the age of 86.

Trivia: Statuesque, platinum-blonde American actress Natalie Moorhead entered films in 1929; by the end of the next year, she had nearly a dozen movies to her credit. Moorhead was most effectively cast in vampish roles, notably her turn as one of the suspects in The Thin Man (1934). She also proved an excellent foil for such slight-statured comedians as Wheeler and Woolsey (Hook, Line and Sinker, 1930) and Buster Keaton (Parlor Bedroom and Bath, 1931). Natalie Moorhead went on to play lady-outlaw Belle Starr in Heart of Arizona (1938), then continued appearing in supporting roles and bits until the mid-'40s.

Trivia: Silent-film leading man Creighton Hale was brought to America from his native Ireland via a theatrical touring company. While starring in Charles Frohman's Broadway production of Indian Summer, Hale was spotted by a representative of the Pathe film company and invited to appear before the cameras. His first film was the Pearl White serial The Exploits of Elaine, after which he rose to stardom in a series of adventure films and romantic dramas. Director D.W. Griffith used Hale as comedy relief in his films Way Down East (1920) and Orphans of the Storm (1922)--possibly Hale's least effective screen appearances, in that neither he nor Griffith were comedy experts. Despite his comparative failure in these films, Hale remained a popular leading man throughout the 1920s. When talking pictures arrived, Hale's star plummeted; though he had a pleasant, well-modulated voice, he was rapidly approaching fifty, and looked it. Most of Hale's talkie roles were unbilled bits, or guest cameos in films that spotlighted other silent movie veterans (e.g. Hollywood Boulevard and The Perils of Pauline). During the 1940s, Hale showed up in such Warner Bros. productions as Larceny Inc (1941), The Maltese Falcon (1941) and Casablanca (1943); this was due to the largess of studio head Jack Warner, who kept such faded silent favorites as Hale, Monte Blue and Leo White on permanent call. Creighton Hale's final appearance was in Warners' Beyond the Forest (1949).

Trivia: Alternately billed as Phil Tead and Philips Tead, this slight, jug-eared character actor could easily have been taken for a young Walter Brennan (indeed, he has been in some film histories). After playing newspaperman Wilson in the 1931 version of The Front Page, he was thereafter typecast as a nosy reporter. He also portrayed several fast-talking radio commentators, most memorably in the Marx Brothers' Horse Feathers (1932) and Harold Lloyd's The Milky Way (1936). Adopting a doddering comic quaintness in the 1950s, Phil Tead was occasionally seen as the absent-minded Professor Pepperwinkle on TV's Superman series.

Trivia: Born in Michigan, Edward Ellis made his screen debut in Chicago at the age of nine. By the time he was 17, Ellis was an accomplished enough actor to take on the role of Simon Legree in a touring company of Uncle Tom's Cabin. His film career flourished in the 1930s, when Ellis was seen in such plum roles as the elderly convict pal of Paul Muni in I Am a Fugitive From a Chain Gang (1932) and the alcoholic ex-judge in Winterset (1936). In 1934's The Thin Man it was Ellis, who played the role of the film's murder victim. He also starred in a handful of RKO programmers, notably Remember (1936) and A Man Betrayed (1939).

Trivia: Pint-sized, squeaky-voiced actress Gertrude Short was a performer from childhood, touring in vaudeville and stock with her family. Short entered films as a juvenile in 1913, often playing boy's roles. From 1924 to 1925, she starred in a series of Telephone Girl comedies, many of these directed by her husband, Percy Pembroke. She continued in this vein well into the talkie era, generally cast as nosy or intrusive telephone operators. Gertrude Short made her last appearance before a switchboard in Weekend at the Waldorf (1945).

Trivia: Actor Robert Emmett Homans seemingly had the map of Ireland stamped on his craggy face. As a result, Homans spent the better part of his film career playing law enforcement officers of all varieties, from humble patrolmen to detective chiefs. After a lengthy stage career, Homans entered films in 1923. A break from his usual microscopic film assignments occured in Public Enemy (1931), where Homans is given an opportunity to deliver reams of exposition (with a pronounced brogue) during a funeral sequence. And in the 1942 Universal horror programmer Night Monster, Robert Emmett Homans is alotted a sizeable role as the ulcerated detective investigating the supernatural goings-on at the home of seemingly helpless invalid Ralph Morgan.

Trivia: Born and raised in the Greenwich Village section of New York, Douglas Fowley did his first acting while attending St. Francis Xavier Military Academy. A stage actor and night club singer/dancer during the regular theatrical seasons, Fowley took such jobs as athletic coach and shipping clerk during summer layoff. He made his first film, The Mad Game, in 1933. Thanks to his somewhat foreboding facial features, Fowley was usually cast as a gangster, especially in the Charlie Chan, Mr. Moto and Laurel and Hardy "B" films churned out by 20th Century-Fox in the late 1930s and early 1940s. One of his few romantic leading roles could be found in the 1942 Hal Roach "streamliner" The Devil with Hitler. While at MGM in the late 1940s and early 1950s, Fowley essayed many roles both large and small, the best of which was the terminally neurotic movie director in Singin' in the Rain (1952). Fowley actually did sit in the director's chair for one best-forgotten programmer, 1960's Macumba Love, which he also produced. On television, Fowley made sporadic appearances as Doc Holliday in the weekly series Wyatt Earp (1955-61). In the mid-1960s, Fowley grew his whiskers long and switched to portraying Gabby Hayes-style old codgers in TV shows like Pistols and Petticoats and Detective School: One Flight Up, and movies like Homebodies (1974) and North Avenue Irregulars (1979); during this period, the actor changed his on-screen billing to Douglas V. Fowley.

Trivia: American actor Sherry Hall popped up in innumerable bit roles between 1932 and 1951. Hall was typically cast as reporters, bartenders, court clerks, and occasional pianists. He was particularly busy at 20th Century-Fox in the 1940s, nearly always in microscopic parts. Sherry Hall's larger screen assignments included the "TV Scientist" in Dick Tracy Returns (1938), Robert Buelle in The Shadow Returns (1946), John Gilvray in The Prowler (1951), and Mr. Manners in The Well, a 1951 film populated almost exclusively by small-part players.

Trivia: Actor Edward Hearn's Hollywood career extended from 1916 to 1951. A leading man in the silent era, Hearn was seen in such roles as Philip Nolan, the title character in Man without a Country (1925). His first talkie effort was Frank Capra's The Donovan Affair (1929). Capra never forgot Hearn, securing minor roles for the actor when his star faded in the early 1930s. Edward Hearn spent his last two decades in films playing dozens of cops, jurors, and military officers, essaying bits in features and supporting roles in serials and short subjects.

Trivia: The son of an actress, Garry Owen first appeared on-stage with his mother in vaudeville. Owen went on to perform in such Broadway productions as Square Crooks and Miss Manhattan. In films from 1933, Owen was occasionally seen in such sizeable roles as private-eye Paul Drake in the 1936 Perry Mason movie Case of the Black Cat. For the most part, however, he played character bits, most memorably in the films of Frank Capra; in Capra's Arsenic and Old Lace (1944), for example, he plays the monumentally impatient taxi driver who closes the picture with the exclamation, "I'm not a cab driver, I'm a coffee pot!" In addition to his feature-film work, Garry Owen showed up in scores of short subjects for Hal Roach and MGM.

Trivia: A tall, exotic-looking character actor from Naples, Fred Malatesta is today best remembered for a bit as a waiter in Charles Chaplin's Modern Times (1936), a distinctive case of typecasting. Educated in Rome, Malatesta performed a stint in the Italian army prior to embarking on a worldwide stage career that would eventually lead to Broadway. The strapping actor went on to appear in countless action-melodramas and serials throughout the silent era, more often than not playing an exotic villain or a foppish foreigner. His roles grew increasingly smaller after the changeover to sound and he later moonlighted as a set decorator.

Trivia: Dapper character actor Rolfe Sedan was nine times out of ten cast as a foreigner, usually a French maître d' or Italian tradesman. In truth, Sedan was born in New York City. He'd planned to study scientific agriculture, but was sidetracked by film and stage work in New York; he then embarked on a vaudeville career as a dialect comic. Sedan began appearing in Hollywood films in the late '20s, frequently cast in support of such major comedy attractions as Laurel and Hardy, Charlie Chase, the Marx Brothers, and Harold Lloyd. He was proudest of his work in a handful of films directed by Ernst Lubitsch, notably Bluebeard's Eighth Wife (1938). Though distressed that he never made it to the top ranks, Sedan remained very much in demand for comedy cameos into the 1980s. Rolfe Sedan's television work included the recurring role of Mr. Beasley the postman on The Burns and Allen Show, and the part of Chef Boy-Ar-Dee in several TV commercials of the mid-'70s.

Trivia: A music-hall favorite in his native England, dapper, diminutive Leo White was brought to America by theatrical impresario Daniel Frohman. In 1914, White joined the Essanay film company, where he appeared in support of Wallace Beery in the Sweedie comedies. Within a year he was a member in good standing of Charlie Chaplin's stock company, playing a variety of dandies, noblemen, and anarchists. He moved to Hal Roach's "Rollin'" comedies in 1917, where he co-starred with such funmakers as Harold Lloyd, Harry "Snub" Pollard, Bebe Daniels, and Bud Jamison. White showed up in several features of the 1920s, including Lloyd's Why Worry (1923), Valentino's Blood and Sand (1922), and the mighty Ben-Hur (1926, as Sallanbat). In the talkie era, he played supporting roles in Columbia and RKO two-reel comedies, and bits in features: in the Marx Brothers' Night at the Opera, for example, he's one of the three bearded Russian aviators. From 1934 to 1948, he was on call at Warner Bros. for bits and extra roles. Leo White spent his last decade essaying one-scene roles in such Warner features as Yankee Doodle Dandy (1942), Arsenic and Old Lace (1944), and The Fountainhead (1949), and even had a part in the animated Looney Tune Eatin' on the Cuff (1943).

Trivia: Brutish-looking actor Walter Long entered films in 1909 after brief stage experience. He became a valued member of D.W. Griffith's stock company, excelling in roles calling for strong-arm villainy and glowering menace. In Griffith's The Birth of a Nation (1915), Long played Gus, the renegade Negro whose lustful pursuit of virginal Mae Marsh results in the girl's suicidal leap from a precipice; while in the same director's Intolerance, Long was "the musketeer of the slums," a gangster boss whose murder motivates the climactic race to the rescue. He persisted in villainy into the 1920s, providing a formidable foe to such silent heroes as Rudolph Valentino and William Boyd. Despite his on-screen skullduggery, Long enjoyed a reputation as a prince of a fellow; his courtesy and good manners were particularly prized by the leading ladies whom Long's screen characters frequently imperiled. In talkies, Long proved to have a low, guttural voice that matched his movie image perfectly, and he continued unabated to portray thugs, pluguglies and lowlifes. Though many of his talkie roles were bit parts, he was well served in the films of Laurel and Hardy, playing a prison cell-block leader in Pardon Us (1931), a drink-sodden prizefighter in Any Old Port (1932), a vengeful gangster ("I'll break off yer legs and wrap 'em around yer neck") in Going Bye Bye (1934), a shanghaiing sea captain in The Live Ghost (1934), and a Mexican bandido in Pick a Star (1937). During World War II, the fifty-plus Walter Long served as a lieutenant colonel in the Army; upon his discharge, he returned to the stage, where he remained active until his retirement in 1950.

Trivia: Mountainous American actor Bert Roach reportedly launched his film career at the Keystone Studios in 1914. The porcine Mr. Roach remained in comedy during his years of comparative prominence in the '20s, providing jovial support to the romantic leads in such films as Tin Hats (1927). In talkies, Roach occasionally enjoyed a substantial role, notably as Leon Waycoff's whining roomate in Murders in the Rue Morgue (1932). In general, Bert Roach's talkie career consisted of featured and bit parts, often as a sentimental inebriate (e.g. 1932's Night World and 1934's The Thin Man).

Trivia: Canadian stage actor Ben Taggart made a few New York-based films in the mid-teens, but for the most part concentrated on theatrical work. Taggart came to Hollywood in 1931 to play Captain Corcoran in the Marx Brothers' Monkey Business; he also portrayed a theatrical agent in the film's promotional trailer, exchanging rhymed couplets with Groucho, Harpo, and Zeppo. After a bit as a traffic cop in the Marx Brothers' Horse Feathers (1932), he freelanced as a featured player. He showed up in several Charley Chase two-reelers of the 1930s, usually playing Chase's boss or prospective father-in-law. In addition, he could be seen in a handful of serials, including Flash Gordon Conquers the Universe (1940). In his last active years, Ben Taggart was often as not cast as a B-picture prison warden.

Trivia: Charles Williams looked like a mature Beaver Cleaver. Short of stature, high-pitched of voice, and usually sporting a toothbrush mustache and coke-bottle glasses, Williams was the perfect nerd/buttinsky in many a Hollywood film. Williams began his career at Paramount's New York studios in 1922, dabbling in everything from writing to assistant directing. When talkies arrived, Williams found his true calling as a supporting actor; he was seemingly cast as a nosey reporter or press photographer in every other picture released by Hollywood. In one film, Hold That Co-Ed (1938), gentleman-of-the-press Williams is so obstreperous that, as a comic punchline, he is run over by a car and killed! Charles B. Williams will be instantly recognizable to Yuletide TV viewers as Cousin Eustace in the Frank Capra classic It's a Wonderful Life (1946).

Trivia: Two American actors in the twentieth century used the name John Larkin -- an African-American performer whose screen credits may go back to the teens, and a white actor who was mostly known for his radio and television work; to complicate matters even further, there was also John Francis Larkin, a writer/producer/director who was often credited as "John Larkin." The African-American John Larkin was born in Norfolk, VA, in 1873, just eight years after the Civil War, and entered motion pictures in 1911. His surviving confirmed credits date from the sound era, and he appeared in over three dozen movies between 1930 and 1936. In keeping with the custom of the time in film casting, he usually played such roles as stableboys, janitors, porters, and servants -- and slaves -- though he also used his singing voice in at least one movie. Larkin passed away in the late winter of 1936, following his last appearance on-screen in The Great Ziegfeld. That movie and The Thin Man (1934) -- in which he played a porter -- are probably the two best-known pictures in which he worked.

Trivia: A film actor from 1925, Norway native Harry Tenbrook usually played such functionary roles as shore patrolmen, sailors, gangsters, and bartenders. The names of Tenbrook's screen characters ran along the lines of Limpy, Spike, and Squarehead. With his supporting appearance in The Informer (1935), the actor became a member of director John Ford's stock company. Harry Tenbrook's association with Ford ended with 1958's The Last Hurrah.

Trivia: A former professional baseball player, Pat Flaherty was seen in quite a few baseball pictures after his 1934 screen debut. Flaherty can be seen in roles both large and small in Death on the Diamond (1934), Pride of the Yankees (1942), It Happened in Flatbush (1942), The Stratton Story (1949, as the Western All-Stars coach), The Jackie Robinson Story (1950) and The Winning Team (1952, as legendary umpire Bill Klem). In 1948's Babe Ruth Story, Flaherty not only essayed the role of Bill Corrigan, but also served as the film's technical advisor. Outside the realm of baseball, he was usually cast in blunt, muscle-bound roles, notably Fredric March's taciturn male nurse "Cuddles" in A Star is Born (1937). One of Pat Flaherty's most unusual assignments was Wheeler and Woolsey's Off Again, On Again (1937), in which, upon finding his wife (Patricia Wilder) in a compromising position with Bert Wheeler, he doesn't pummel the hapless Wheeler as expected, but instead meekly apologizes for his wife's flirtatiousness!

Trivia: Born in New York City and educated at the University of Virginia, comic actor Edward Brophy entered films as a small part player in 1919. After a few years, he opted for the more financially secure production end of the business, though he never abandoned acting altogether. While working as property master for the Buster Keaton unit at MGM, Brophy was lured before the cameras for a memorable sequence in The Cameraman (1928) in which he and Buster both try to undress in a tiny wardrobe closet. Keaton saw to it that Brophy was prominently cast in two of the famed comedian's talking pictures, and by 1934 Brophy was once again acting full-time. Using his popping eyes, high pitched voiced and balding head to his best advantage, Brophy scored in role after role as funny gangsters and dyspeptic fight managers (he was less effective in such serious parts as the crazed killer in the 1935 horror film Mad Love). In 1940, Brophy entered the realm of screen immortality as the voice of Timothy Mouse in Walt Disney's feature-length cartoon Dumbo (1940). Curtailing his activities in the 1950s, he did his last work for director John Ford. Brophy died during production of Ford's Two Rode Together (1961); according to some sources, the actor's few completed scenes remain in the final release version of that popular western.

Trivia: Thomas Jackson's first stage success was in the role of the non-speaking Property Man in the original 1912 production of Yellow Jacket. He was starring as police detective Dan McCorn in the lavish Broadway production Broadway when he was tapped to repeat his role in the even more spectacular 1929 film version. For the rest of his career, which lasted into the 1960s, Jackson more or less played variations on Dan McCorn, notably as the soft-spoken "copper" Flaherty in 1931's Little Caesar. When he wasn't playing detectives, Thomas Jackson could be seen in dozens of minor roles as newspaper editors, bartenders, doctors and Broadway theatrical agents.