Trivia: Born in India to a British railway clerk, Margaret Lockwood was educated at London's Italia Conti School. After training for an acting career at RADA (several years after her official stage debut at age 12), she made her first film in 1935, billed as Margie Day. After a series of inconsequential ingenues, Lockwood was given a role with teeth in Hitchcock's The Lady Vanishes (1938). She had a brief Hollywood career (two films' worth) in 1939, then returned to England, where throughout the 1940s she specialized in beautiful but diabolical adventuresses. She left the screen in favor of the stage in 1955, then made a long overdue return to films in The Slipper and the Rose (1976). Books on Lockwood's career include her own autobiography Lucky Star (1955) and Hilton Tims' Once a Wicked Lady (1989). Margaret Lockwood was the mother of British film actress Julia Lockwood.

Trivia: Debonair and distinguished British star of stage and screen for more than 50 years, Sir Rex Harrison is best remembered for playing charming, slyly mischievous characters. Born Reginald Carey in 1908, he made his theatrical debut at age 16 with the Liverpool Repertory Theater, remaining with that group for three years. Making his British stage and film debut in 1930, Harrison made the first of many appearances on Broadway in Sweet Aloes in 1936. He became a bona fide British star that same year when he appeared in the theatrical production French Without Tears, in which he showed himself to be very skilled in black-tie comedy. He served as a flight lieutenant in the RAF during World War II, although this interruption in his career was quickly followed by several British films. Harrison moved to Hollywood in 1945, where his career continued to prosper. Among his many roles was that of the king in the 1946 production of Anna and the King of Siam. Harrison was perhaps best known for his performance as Professor Henry Higgins in the musical My Fair Lady, a character he played on Broadway from 1956-1958 (winning a Tony award in 1957) and again in its 1981 revival, as well as for a year in London in the late '50s; in 1964, he won an Oscar for his onscreen version of the role. He had previously received a Best Actor Oscar nomination for his portrayal of Julius Caesar in Cleopatra (1963). Harrison continued to act on both the stage and screen in the 1970s and into the '80s. He published his autobiography, Rex, in 1975, and, four years later, edited and published an anthology of poetry If Love Be Love. Knighted in 1989, he was starring in the Broadway revival of Somerset Maugham's The Circle (with Stewart Granger and Glynis Johns) until one month before he died of pancreatic cancer in 1990. Three of Harrison's six marriages were to actressesLilli Palmer, Kay Kendall, and Rachel Roberts.

Trivia: Some sources list actor Paul Henreid's birthplace as Italy, but at the time of his birth, Henreid's hometown of Trieste was still part of the Austro-Hungarian empire. Of aristocratic stock, Henreid felt drawn to theatrical activities while attending college. He briefly supported himself as a translator before Max Reinhardt's assistant Otto Preminger officially discovered him and launched his stage career. Still billed under his given name of Von Hernreid, he made his film debut in a 1933 Moroccan production. Relocating to England in 1935, he was often as not cast as Teutonic villains, most memorably in the 1940 melodrama Night Train. In 1940, Henreid became an American citizen--and, at last, a leading man. Henreid's inbred Continental sophistication struck a responsive chord with wartime audiences. He spent his finest years as an actor at Warner Bros., where he appeared as Jerry Durrance in Bette Davis' Now Voyager (1942), as too-good-to-be-true resistance leader Victor Laszlo in Casablanca (1942), and as troubled medical student Philip Carey in the 1946 remake of Of Human Bondage (1946). Henreid exhibited a great deal of vivacity in such swashbucklers as The Spanish Main (1945), Last of the Buccaneers (1950) and The Siren of Bagdad (1953); in the latter film, the actor engagingly spoofed his own screen image by repeating his lighting-two-cigarettes bit from Now Voyager with an ornate water pipe. He was also an effective villain in Hollow Triumph (1948, which he also produced) and Rope of Sand (1949).Henreid's star faded in the 1950s, a fact he would later attribute (in his 1984 autobiography Ladies Man) to the Hollywood Blacklist. He turned to directing, helming such inexpensive but worthwhile dramas as For Men Only (a 1951 indictment of the college hazing process) and A Woman's Devotion (1954). One of his best directorial efforts was the 1964 meller Dead Ringer, starring his former Warners co-star (and longtime personal friend) Bette Davis. In addition, Henreid directed dozens of 30- and 60-minute installments of such TV series as Alfred Hitchcock Presents and Maverick. His last on-camera appearance was as "The Cardinal" in Exorcist 2: The Heretic (1977). Henreid married Elizabeth Gluck in 1936, with whom he had two daughters, Monika Henreid and Mimi Duncan. On March 29, 1992, he died of pneumonia, following a stroke, in Santa Monica, California.

Trivia: Actor Basil Radford was on the British stage from 1922 in twittish, tweedy comedy roles. His first film appearance was in 1929's Barnum Was Right. International fame came Radford's way when he and Naunton Wayne originated the roles of cricket-obsessed Charters and Caldicott in Alfred Hitchcock's The Lady Vanishes (1938). Radford and Wayne continued to play these roles (or facsimiles thereof) in such films as Night Train (1940), Crooks Tour (1941), Next of Kin (1942), Millions Like Us (1945), and Dead of Night (1945). They were supposed to revive Charters and Caldicott once more for Sir Carol Reed's The Third Man (1949), but their roles were streamlined into a solo part for Wilfred Hyde-White. The best of Radford's later roles included the blindsided British bureaucrat in Tight Little Island (1948). Basil Radford died of a heart attack at age 55, shortly after co-starring in White Corridors (1951).

Trivia: On stage from 1920, Welsh actor Naunton Wayne made his film bow in 1931. Wayne was catapulted to worldwide fame in 1937, when he and Basil Radford were teamed as cricket-happy British tourists Charters and Caldicott (Wayne was Caldicott) in Hitchcock's The Lady Vanishes. The two actors would continue to essay these roles, or reasonable facsimiles, in such films as Night Train (1939), Crook's Tour (1941) and Dead of Night (1948). Wayne was also seen in such popular Ealing comedies as Passport to Pimlico (1949) and The Titfield Thunderbolt (1953). Still essaying light comedy role into his sixties, Naunton Wayne made his last screen appearance in 1964's Double Bunk.

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

Trivia: Royal Academy of Dramatic Art graduate and ex-Royal Air Force pilot Roland Culver quietly pursued a stage career from 1925 and a film career from 1930, reliably if unspectacularly playing a steady stream of leading roles. By the mid-'40s, Culver developed into a dry-witted, low-key character actor turning in memorable work in such films as On Approval (1943) and Dead of Night (1945). He moved to Hollywood in 1946, where for the next five years he essayed such "dependable" gentlemanly characterizations as Heavenly emissary Mr. Jordan in Down to Earth (1947). Back in England in the early '50s, he continued to play prominent parts in films like The Holly and the Ivy (1953). Working regularly in TV, he could be seen as Menenius in Spread of the Eagle, a 1962 BBC series based on the Roman plays of Shakespeare. Roland Culver persevered in small but impressive roles until his retirement in 1982.

Trivia: Slight, unobtrusive-looking British actor Eliot Makeham made his first film appearance in 1932. Makeham was most effectively cast as put-upon clerks or henpecked husbands. He played a handful of leads in the 1930s, then settled into supporting and featured roles. No matter the size of his part, he always made the most of what he was given; an excellent example was his performance as Schwab in Carol Reed's Night Train to Munich. Married three times, Eliot Makeham's third wife was another familiar British character player, Betty Shale.

Trivia: Actor Raymond Huntley made his first professional appearance with the Birmingham Repertory at age 18. In 1927, Huntley played the title character in the original London production of Dracula; he tested for the film version, but lost out to Bela Lugosi. Top-billed in his stage efforts, Huntley's film career was largely limited to supporting roles. He played many a Nazi and/or fascist during the war years, then portrayed an abundance of condescending officials, brusque business executives and club-car boors. On television, Raymond Huntley gained worldwide fame as lawyer Geoffrey Dillon on Upstairs Downstairs; he was also featured as Emmanuel Holroyd in the 1973 British TV comedy series That's Your Funeral.

Trivia: Born in Ireland and educated in Switzerland, Austin Trevor fought for the British during WWI, then made his stage debut in America. In films from the early talkie era onward, Trevor gained a fan following with his appearances as Agatha Christie's dapper Belgian sleuth Hercule Poirot in Alibi (1930) and Lord Edgeware Dies (1931). He also played A.E.W. Mason's Inspector Hanaud (a character very much in the Poirot mold) in the 1930 version of Mystery at the Villa Rose. Trevor's gift for foreign dialects kept him busy during the war years and after: In 1947, he played Vronsky in the Vivien Leigh version of Anna Karenina. On TV, he played Fowler in the sci-fi serial Quatermass 2. Austin Trevor remained active until 1966.

Trivia: Beefy British character actor Wally Patch did a little bit of this, a little bit of that in show business before his 1920 film bow. Patch resumed his stage work after this debut, returning to films in earnest in 1927. Most of his appearances were in cockney comedy vignettes in such ribticklers as Get Off My Foot (1935) and Gasbags (1940); he had some of his finest screen moments as a confused constable in director Carol Reed's Bank Holiday (1938). Wally Patch was active into his eighth decade, making his final appearance in 1967's Poor Cow.

Trivia: As was the case of many German-born actors relocated in Britain, Albert Lieven often as not was cast as humorless military types. His characters weren't all Nazis, though many of them behaved as though their first words as infants had been "Seig heil." In truth, Lieven, an actor on the Berlin stage since 1928, fled the Fatherland in 1933, just as Hitler was coming to power, so the cruel edge of his villainous characterizations grew from his own dislike of Nazism. Albert Lieven's best-known roles were the Austrian gigolo in Jeannie (1941), Talleyrand in The Young Mister Pitt (1941), Rommel in Foxhole in Cairo (1960), and Commander Meusel in The Guns of Navarrone (1961).

Trivia: Well-padded British actor/playwright David Horne entered films in 1935, making his mark in pompous, self-satisfied characterizations. Seldom seen in large roles, he was indispensable in such utility parts as desk clerks, newspaper editors, police officials, lawyers, and doctors. Lutheran filmgoers will recall Horne as Duke Frederick in the church basement perennial Martin Luther (1953). David Horne remained active until 1968.

Trivia: Not to be confused with the famed espionage novelist of the same name, Australian-born actor Ian Fleming was one of the best and longest-established character players in British films. On stage since the age of sixteen, Fleming made his first film, Second to None in 1926--and his last, Return of Mr. Moto, in 1965. The actor's cinematic stock in trade was a fussy dignity who disguised hidden strength. In this, Ian Fleming was an ideal Dr. Watson opposite Arthur Wontner in a series of British Sherlock Holmes films produced in the mid '30s.

Trivia: The son of a Viennese drama critic, John Wengraf enjoyed an extensive -- and expensive -- theatrical training. Wengraf made his stage debut in repertory in 1920, then graduated to the Vienna Volkstheater. He flourished as an actor and director in Berlin until the Nazis came to power in 1933. Moving to England, he appeared in a few films there, and also participated in some of the first BBC live-television presentations. In 1941, he made his Broadway bow, and in 1942 launched his Hollywood career. An imposing-looking fellow who somewhat resembled British actor Leo G. Carroll, Wengraf was frequently cast as erudite Nazi officials; after the war, he specialized in portraying mittel-European doctors and psychiatrists. From the 1950s until his retirement in 1963, John Wengraf made several TV appearances, including two guest-star gigs on The Untouchables.

Trivia: One of British filmdom's most beloved interpreters of cockneys and eccentrics, pleasantly plump Irene Handl didn't begin her acting career until she was approaching middle age. For nearly five decades, Handl delighted her fans in a multitude of plays, films, and TV series. Her first movie was 1937's Believed Married, and her last was 1980's Hound of the Baskervilles; in between, she sparkled in such productions as Millions Like Us (1943), Great Day (1946), Adam and Evelyne (1949), Meet Mr. Lucifer (1953), Brothers in Law (1958) and Next to No Time (1960). She even found time to write two popular novels. On British television, Irene Handl starred in the weekly efforts For Love of Amy (1970-72) and Maggie and Her (1978-79).

Trivia: Torin Thatcher came out of a military family in India to become a top stage actor in England and a well-known character actor in international films and television. Born Torin Herbert Erskine Thatcher in Bombay, India, in 1905, he was the great-grandson and grandson of generals -- one of whom had fought with Clive -- but he planned for a quieter life; educated at Bedford School, he originally intended to become a teacher before being bitten by the acting bug. Instead, he attended the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art, and later worked in every kind of theatrical production there was, from Greek tragedy to burlesque. Thatcher made his London debut in 1927 as Tranio in a production of The Taming of the Shrew with the Old Vic Company, and he subsequently portrayed both the Ghost and Claudius in Hamlet with the same company. In the years that followed, Thatcher was in more than 50 Shakespearean productions and 20 plays by George Bernard Shaw. The outbreak of the Second World War took Thatcher into uniform, and he served for six years in the army, achieving the rank of lieutenant colonel before he returned to civilian life in 1946. In 1944, Thatcher had made his first acquaintance of the theater world in New York when he found himself on leave in the city with only ten shillings in his pocket -- he spent it sparingly and discovered that Allied servicemen, even officers, were accorded a great many perks in those days; he was also amazed and delighted when he was recognized while on his way into a play in New York by a theatergoer who was able to name virtually every movie that he'd done in England over the preceding decade. He got a firsthand look at the city's generosity and also made sure to meet a number of people associated with the New York theater scene, contacts that served him in good stead when he returned to New York in 1946, as a civilian eager to pick up his career. He starred in two plays opposite Katharine Cornell, First Born and That Lady, and portrayed Claggart in a stage adaptation of Billy Budd, but his big success was in Noel Langley and Robert Morley's Edward My Son. Thatcher had been in movies in England since 1933, in small roles, occasionally in major and important films such as Alfred Hitchcock's Young and Innocent (1937) and Michael Powell's The Spy in Black (1939); his British career had peaked with a superb performance in a small but important role in Carol Reed's The Fallen Idol (1948). After moving to the United States, however, Thatcher quickly moved up to starring and major supporting roles in Hollywood movies, beginning with Affair in Trinidad (1952). He was busy at 20th Century Fox, Universal, and Warner Bros. over the next decade, moving between their American and British units, and stood out in such hit movies as The Crimson Pirate (1952) (as the pirate Humble Bellows) and Love Is a Many-Splendored Thing (1955). Although Thatcher could play benevolent characters, his intense expression and presence and imposing physique made him more natural as a villain, and he spent his later career in an array of screen malefactors, of whom the best known was the sorcerer Sokurah in The 7th Voyage of Sinbad (1958), directed by Nathan Juran. Thatcher and Juran were close friends and the director loved to use him -- the two became a kind of double act together for a time, turning up in "The Space Trader" episode of Lost in Space, guest-starring Thatcher and directed by Juran.

Trivia: Maurice Ostrer was a producer in British cinema during a very busy decade, from the end of the 1930s until the end of the 1940s. He was one of the more reliable in-house producers at the Rank Organization (or, as it was known then, General Film Distributors), releasing a string of respected movies that made money in England, and generated at least one genre classic, The Wicked Lady (1945), that ended up bringing a halt to his career. Ostrer was born in the East End of London in 1896, the youngest son in a family of Ukrainian Jewish immigrants; his father was a jewelry salesman, but Maurice and two of his brothers, Mark and Isadore, were bent on doing something more, and by the 1920s had established a chain of 350 theaters around England. With the coming of sound, their investment in the industry deepened and expanded to encompass film production, through the Gaumont-British Picture Corporation, which, under production chief Michael Balcon, enjoyed great success in the early and mid-'30s. Maurice Ostrer held an executive position at Gaumont-British, but after the departure of Balcon in 1936, he took over as executive in charge of production -- as his credit read on many films -- starting with the Will Hay comedy Ask a Policeman (1939). Ostrer retained his position at Gaumont-British even after he and his family sold out their shares in the company to J. Arthur Rank, a Methodist flour magnate who saw movies as a morally uplifting force, in 1941. Ostrer was responsible for producing such staid, respectable early '40s titles as The Young Mr. Pitt (1942) and We Dive at Dawn (1943), but he and Rank came to loggerheads, ironically enough, over a small group of extremely popular movies known as Gainsborough romances (named for the studio division that generated them). In 1943, director Leslie Arliss had made the first of them, The Man in Grey, a melodrama set in the 17th century, depicting a lusty illicit relationship between two characters (portrayed by Margaret Lockwood and James Mason), which did exceptionally good business. It was the follow-up effort, The Wicked Lady (1945), that caused the split with Rank -- the movie made a fortune on both sides of the Atlantic (though the American censors insisted that some scenes be reshot with less revealing costumes for the women), its provocative portrayals and overtly frank (for the time) sexual references being a tonic for the dreariness of four years (or six, for the British) of wartime devotion to duty. But Rank, devout religious man that he was, couldn't abide the movie's overheated lustiness and sexuality, and forbade any further films of that type, allowing the next of the Gainsborough romances, Madonna of the Seven Moons (1945), to die on the vine, rather than cultivate the same audience that The Wicked Lady had drawn to theaters. Ostrer and Rank went their separate ways in early 1946, and Ostrer next formed his own film company, Premier Productions. He got Arliss back and provided the financing for his next movie, Idol of Paris (1948). The latter (co-authored by one of Ostrer's relatives) was produced well enough and delivered a lot of the same salacious thrills as the earlier Wicked Lady. As with most independent companies, however, the single film failed to generate sufficient profits to sustain its producers to their next movie, and Premier was closed by 1949. Ostrer exited the movie industry and spent the remainder of his professional life as a textiles magnate. He died in 1975 and, thus, never saw Michael Winner's even more overheated remake of The Wicked Lady (to a screenplay by Arliss), starring Faye Dunaway. He might've gotten a good laugh at the expense of the departed Rank, over the fact that the newer movie also ran afoul of censors, this time in the U.K., not for its lustiness so much as a fight between two women wielding carriage whips, which, itself, had been lifted by Arliss out of the Ostrer-produced Idol of Paris.