Trivia: Born Sophie Kosow, Sidney was an intense, vulnerable, waif-like leading lady with a heart-shaped face, trembling lips, and sad eyes. The daughter of Jewish immigrants from Russia, she made her professional acting debut at age 16 in Washington after training at the Theater Guild School. The following year she made her first New York appearance and quickly began to land lead roles on Broadway. She debuted onscreen as a witness in a courtroom drama, Through Different Eyes (1929). In 1931 she was signed by Paramount and moved to Hollywood. In almost all of her roles she was typecast as a downtrodden, poor but proud girl of the lower classes -- a Depression-era heroine. Although she occasionally got parts that didn't conform to this type, her casting was so consistent that she had tired of film work by the late '40s and began devoting herself increasingly to the stage; she has since done a great deal of theater work, mostly in stock and on the road. After three more screen roles in the '50s, Sidney retired from the screen altogether; seventeen years later she made one more film, Summer Wishes, Winter Dreams (1973), for which she received a Best Supporting Actress Oscar nomination, the first Oscar nomination of her career. In 1985 she portrayed a dying woman in the TV movie Finnigan, Begin Again. Her first husband was publisher Bennett Cerf and her second was actor Luther Adler.

Trivia: One of the cinema's most enduring actors, Henry Fonda enjoyed a highly successful career spanning close to a half century. Most often in association with director John Ford, he starred in many of the finest films of Hollywood's golden era. Born May 16, 1905, in Grand Island, NE, Fonda majored in journalism in college, and worked as an office boy before pursuing an interest in acting. He began his amateur career with the Omaha Community Playhouse, often performing with the mother of Marlon Brando. Upon becoming a professional performer in 1928, Fonda traveled east, tenuring with the Provincetown Players before signing on with the University Players Guild, a New England-based ensemble including up-and-comers like James Stewart, Margaret Sullavan, and Joshua Logan. Fonda's first Broadway appearance followed with 1929's The Game of Life and Death. He also worked in stock, and even served as a set designer. In 1931, Fonda and Sullavan were married, and the following year he appeared in I Loved You Wednesday. The couple divorced in 1933, and Fonda's big break soon followed in New Faces of '34. A leading role in The Farmer Takes a Wife was next, and when 20th Century Fox bought the film rights, they recruited him to reprise his performance opposite Janet Gaynor, resulting in his 1935 screen debut. Fonda and Gaynor were slated to reunite in the follow-up, Way Down East, but when she fell ill Rochelle Hudson stepped in. In 1936 he starred in The Trail of the Lonesome Pine (the first outdoor Technicolor production), the performance which forever defined his onscreen persona: Intense, insistent, and unflappable, he was also extraordinarily adaptable, and so virtually impossible to miscast. He next co-starred with Sullavan in The Moon's Our Home, followed by Wings of the Morning (another Technicolor milestone, this one the first British feature of its kind). For the great Fritz Lang, Fonda starred in 1937's You Only Live Once, and the following year co-starred with Bette Davis in William Wyler's much-celebrated Jezebel. His next critical success came as the titular Young Mr. Lincoln, a 1939 biopic directed by John Ford. The film was not a commercial sensation, but soon after Fonda and Ford reunited for Drums Along the Mohawk, a tremendous success. Ford then tapped him to star as Tom Joad in the 1940 adaptation of John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath, a casting decision which even Steinbeck himself wholeheartedly supported. However, 20th Century Fox's Darryl Zanuck wanted Tyrone Power for the role, and only agreed to assign Fonda if the actor signed a long-term contract. Fonda signed, and Zanuck vowed to make him the studio's top star -- it didn't happen, however, and despite the success of The Grapes of Wrath (for which he scored his first Best Actor Academy Award nomination), his tenure at Fox was largely unhappy and unproductive.The best of Fonda's follow-up vehicles was the 1941 Preston Sturges comedy The Lady Eve, made at Paramount on loan from Fox; his co-star, Barbara Stanwyck, also appeared with him in You Belong to Me. After a number of disappointing projects, Fox finally assigned him to a classic, William Wellman's 1943 Western The Ox-Bow Incident. Studio executives reportedly hated the film, however, until it won a number of awards. After starring in The Immortal Sergeant, Fonda joined the navy to battle in World War II. Upon his return, he still owed Fox three films, beginning with Ford's great 1946 Western My Darling Clementine. At RKO he starred in 1947's The Long Night, followed by Fox's Daisy Kenyon. Again at RKO, he headlined Ford's The Fugitive, finally fulfilling his studio obligations with Ford's Fort Apache, his first unsympathetic character. Fonda refused to sign a new contract and effectively left film work for the next seven years, returning to Broadway for lengthy runs in Mister Roberts, Point of No Return, and The Caine Mutiny Court Martial. Outside of cameo roles in a handful of pictures, Fonda did not fully return to films until he agreed to reprise his performance in the 1955 screen adaptation of Mister Roberts, one of the year's biggest hits. Clearly, he had been greatly missed during his stage exile, and offers flooded in. First there was 1956's War and Peace, followed by Alfred Hitchcock's The Wrong Man. In 1957, Fonda produced as well as starred in the Sidney Lumet classic Twelve Angry Men, but despite a flurry of critical acclaim the film was a financial disaster. In 1958, after reteaming with Lumet on Stage Struck, Fonda returned to Broadway to star in Two for the Seesaw, and over the years to come he alternated between projects on the screen (The Man Who Understood Women, Advise and Consent, The Longest Day) with work on-stage (Silent Night, Lonely Night, Critic's Choice, Gift of Time). From 1959 to 1961, he also starred in a well-received television series, The Deputy.By the mid-'60s, Fonda's frequent absences from the cinema had severely hampered his ability to carry a film. Of his many pictures from the period, only 1965's The Battle of the Bulge performed respectably at the box office. After 1967's Welcome to Hard Times also met with audience resistance, Fonda returned to television to star in the Western Stranger on the Run. After appearing in the 1968 Don Siegel thriller Madigan, he next starred opposite Lucille Ball in Yours, Mine and Ours, a well-received comedy. Fonda next filmed Sergio Leone's Once Upon a Time in the West; while regarded as a classic, the actor so loathed the experience that he refused to ever discuss the project again. With his old friend, James Stewart, he starred in The Cheyenne Social Club before agreeing to a second TV series, the police drama Smith, in 1971. That same year, he was cast to appear as Paul Newman's father in Sometimes a Great Notion.After a pair of TV movies, 1973's The Red Pony and The Alpha Stone, Fonda began a series of European productions which included the disastrous Ash Wednesday and Il Mio Nome è Nessuno. He did not fare much better upon returning to Hollywood; after rejecting Network (the role which won Peter Finch an Oscar), Fonda instead appeared in the Sensurround war epic Midway, followed by The Great Smokey Roadblock. More TV projects followed, including the miniseries Roots -- The Next Generation. Between 1978 and 1979, he also appeared in three consecutive disaster movies: The Swarm, City on Fire, and Meteor. Better received was Billy Wilder's 1978 film Fedora. A year later, he also co-starred with his son, Peter Fonda, in Wanda Nevada. His final project was the 1981 drama On Golden Pond, a film co-starring and initiated by his daughter, Jane Fonda; as an aging professor in the twilight of his years, he finally won the Best Actor Oscar so long due him. Sadly, Fonda was hospitalized at the time of the Oscar ceremony, and died just months later on August 12, 1982.

Trivia: Given that Fred MacMurray built a successful film career as the quintessential nice guy, it's rather ironic that some of his strongest and best-remembered performances cast him against type. While remaining known as a fixture of light comedies and live-action Disney productions, his definitive roles nonetheless were those which found him contemplating murder, adultery, and other villainous pursuits. Born August 30, 1908, in Kankakee, IL, MacMurray, the son of a concert violinist, was educated at a military academy and later studied at the Chicago Art Institute. His original goal was to become a professional saxophonist, and toward that aim he worked with a variety of bands and even recorded with Gus Arnheim. MacMurray's musical aspirations eventually led him to Hollywood, where he frequently worked as an extra. He later joined the California Collegians and with them played Broadway in the 1930 revue Three's a Crowd, where he joined Libby Holman on a duet of "Something to Remember Me By." He subsequently appeared in productions of The Third Little Show and Roberta. The story behind MacMurray's return to Hollywood remains uncertain -- either a Paramount casting scout saw him on-stage, or he simply signed up with Central Casting -- but either way, he was under contract by 1934. At Paramount, he rose to fame in 1935's The Gilded Lily, a romantic comedy which pit him against Claudette Colbert. Seemingly overnight he was among the hottest young actors in town, and he quickly emerged as a favorite romantic sparring partner with many of Hollywood's leading actresses. After Katherine Hepburn requested his services for Alice Adams, MacMurray joined Carole Lombard in Hands Across the Table before reuniting with Colbert in The Bride Comes Home, his seventh film in 12 months. He kept up the frenetic pace, appearing in 1936's The Trail of the Lonesome Pine alongside Henry Fonda, reteaming with Lombard in The Princess Comes Across. After settling a contract dispute with Paramount, MacMurray again starred with Colbert in the 1937 swashbuckler Maid of Salem, one of the first films to move him away from the laid-back, genial performances on which he'd risen to success.Along with Colbert, Lombard remained the actress with whom MacMurray was most frequently paired. They reunited in 1937's Swing High, Swing Low and again that same year in True Confession. After starring with Bing Crosby in Sing You Sinners, he also began another onscreen partnership with Madeleine Carroll in 1939's Cafe Society, quickly followed by a reunion in Invitation to Bali. While not the superstar that many predicted he would become, by the 1940s MacMurray had settled comfortably into his leading man duties, developing an amiable comic style perfectly suited to his pictures' sunny tone. While occasionally appearing in a more dramatic capacity, as in the Barbara Stanwyck drama Remember the Night, the majority of his pictures remained light, breezy affairs. However, in 1944 he and Stanwyck reunited in Billy Wilder's superb Double Indemnity, which cast MacMurray as a murderous insurance salesman. The result was perhaps the most acclaimed performance of his career, earning him new respect as a serious actor.However, MacMurray soon returned to more comedic fare, appearing with Colbert in 1944's Practically Yours. After the following year's farcical Murder He Says, his contract with Paramount ended and he moved to 20th Century Fox, where he starred in the historical musical Where Do We Go From Here? His co-star, June Haver, became his wife in 1954. MacMurray then produced and starred in Pardon My Past, but after announcing his displeasure with Fox he jumped to Universal to star in the 1947 hit The Egg and I. During the 1940s and early '50s, he settled into a string of easygoing comedies, few of them successful either financially or artistically. His star began to wane, a situation not helped by a number of poor career choices; in 1950, he even turned down Wilder's classic Sunset Boulevard. In 1954, however, MacMurray returned to form in The Caine Mutiny, where he appeared as a duplicitous naval officer. As before, cast against type he garnered some of the best notices of his career, but this time he continued the trend by starring as a dirty cop in The Pushover. Despite recent critical acclaim, MacMurray's box-office clout remained diminished, and throughout the mid-'50s he appeared primarily in low-budget action pictures, most of them Westerns. In 1959, however, he was tapped by Walt Disney to star in the live-action comedy The Shaggy Dog, which became one of the year's biggest hits. MacMurray appeared as a callous adulterer in Wilder's Oscar-winning 1960 smash The Apartment before moving to television to star in the family sitcom My Three Sons; a tremendous success, it ran until 1972. He then returned to the Disney stable to essay the title role in 1961's The Absent-Minded Professor and remained there for the following year's Bon Voyage and 1963's Son of Flubber. However, after two more Disney features -- 1966's Follow Me Boys and 1967's The Happiest Millionaire -- both flopped, MacMurray remained absent from the big screen for the rest of the decade, and only resurfaced in 1973 in Disney's Charley and the Angel. After a pair of TV movies, MacMurray made one last feature, 1978's The Swarm, before retiring. He died in Santa Monica, CA, on November 5, 1991.

Trivia: Fred Stone, celebrated in his twilight years as "The Grand Old Man of Broadway," kicked off his professional career at age 10 in a tightrope act with his brother Ed. As the century turned, Stone teamed with David Montgomery for a string of musical-comedy extravaganzas. In 1903's The Wizard of Oz (which allegedly introduced the popular catch-phrase "He's a whiz!") Stone appeared as the Scarecrow opposite Montgomery' s Tin Man, while in Victor Herbert's The Red Mill, Montgomery and Stone stole the proceedings as a pair of disguise-happy detectives. After Montgomery's death, Fred Stone flourished as a solo actor. Stone was a great pal of Will Rogers, who named one of his sons Fred; occasionally, Rogers would substitute on stage for an ailing Stone, and vice versa. While the bulk of his work was on stage, Stone flirted with films from 1917 onward, starring in a series of westerns for Jesse Lasky and then sporadically showing up in silent-film character parts. He set up shop in Hollywood permanently in 1935, when he was cast as Katharine Hepburn's father in Alice Adams. This led to a contract with RKO; the studio planned to turn Stone into a "second Will Rogers," hoping to corral the fans that Rogers had left behind after his sudden death in 1935. Unfortunately, RKO's Fred Stone vehicles were for the most part undemanding programmers like Grand Jury (1936) and Hideaway (1937), which added little to the reputation of either the star or the studio. Following his appearance in Sam Goldwyn's The Westerner (1940), Fred Stone settled into a long and richly deserved retirement. All three of Stone's daughters had brief film careers, but only Dorothy Stone achieved any kind of prominence.

Trivia: Though a British subject through and through, actor Nigel Bruce was born in Mexico while his parents were on vacation there. His education was interrupted by service in World War I, during which he suffered a leg injury and was confined to a wheelchair for the duration. At the end of the war, Bruce pursued an acting career, making his stage debut in The Creaking Door (1920). A stint in British silent pictures began in 1928, after which Bruce divided his time between stage and screen, finally settling in Hollywood in 1934 (though he continued to make sporadic appearances in such British films as The Scarlet Pimpernel). Nigel's first Hollywood picture was Springtime for Henry (1934), and soon he'd carved a niche for himself in roles as bumbling, befuddled middle-aged English gentlemen. It was this quality which led Bruce to being cast as Sherlock Holmes' companion Dr. Watson in The Hound of the Baskervilles (1939), a pleasurable assignment in that the film's Holmes, Basil Rathbone, was one of Bruce's oldest and closest friends. While Bruce's interpretation of Watson is out of favor with some Holmes purists (who prefer the more intelligent Watson of the original Conan Doyle stories), the actor played the role in 14 feature films, successfully cementing the cinema image of Sherlock's somewhat slower, older compatriot - even though he was in fact three years younger than Rathbone. Bruce continued to play Dr. Watson on a popular Sherlock Holmes radio series, even after Rathbone had deserted the role of Holmes in 1946. Bruce's last film role was in the pioneering 3-D feature, Bwana Devil (1952). He fell ill and died in 1953, missing the opportunity to be reunited with Basil Rathbone in a Sherlock Holmes theatrical production.

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.

Trivia: American actor Spanky McFarland (born George Emmett McFarland in Forth Worth, TX) was the most popular member of the Our Gang children's comedy troupe. He got his start while still a baby as an advertising model for a bakery in Dallas because he looked so fat and happy. It was his pudginess as a toddler that led him to the Our Gang series of shorts when he was hired to replace Joe Cobb as the tubby child. In addition to appearing in that series, McFarland also appeared in a few feature films and in other shorts. By the mid-'40s, his acting career was over and he found gainful employment elsewhere.

Trivia: To western fans, the nickname "Fuzzy" invokes fond memories of two first-rate comedy sidekicks: Al "Fuzzy" St. John and John Forest "Fuzzy" Knight. Knight inaugurated his career at age 15 with a tent minstrel troupe. His skill as a musician enabled him to work his way through West Virginia University, after which he headed his own band. Among Knight's theatrical credits in the '20s was the 1927 edition of Earl Carroll's Vanities and the 1928 "book" musical Here's How. Mae West caught Knight's act on the Keith vaudeville circuit and cast the bucolic entertainer in her 1933 film vehicle She Done Him Wrong; he would later show up playing West's country cousin in the actress' last important film, My Little Chickadee (1940). Usually essaying comedy roles, Knight was effective in the his dramatic scenes in Paramount's Trail of the Lonesome Pine (1936), wherein he tearfully sings a mountain ballad at the funeral of little Spanky McFarland. Knight's B-western comedy sidekick activity peaked in the mid '40s (he appeared most often with Johnny Mack Brown), after which his film roles diminished as his fondness for the bottle increased. Promising to behave himself (at least during filming), Fuzzy Knight signed on in 1955 for Buster Crabbe's popular TV adventure series Captain Gallant of the Foreign Legion; for the next two years, Knight played a semi-serious legionnaire -- named Private Fuzzy Knight.

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.

Trivia: An alumnus of the Yale School of Drama, Alan Baxter came to films in 1935 after three seasons' stage work. Though occasionally cast in a leading role, Baxter was more convincing as a character actor, usually playing roles with sinister undertones. Hitchcock devotees will remember Baxter as the bespectacled, implicitly homosexual Nazi spy in the Hoover Dam sequences of Saboteur (1942). Alan Baxter continued accepting supporting roles into the 1970s, often portraying big-time gangsters or disreputable politicians.

Trivia: Enjoying one of the longest careers in screen history, Canadian-born character actress Ricca Allen came to films in 1914 after decades on the legitimate stage. Specializing in playing spinsters, Allen also portrayed a witch in swimming star Annette Kellerman's Daughter of the Gods (1916) and menaced Viola Dana in Aladdin's Other Lamb (1917). There were many other such roles in the 1920s and Allen continued her busy career well into the sound era, often playing stern housekeepers or schoolteachers. By the 1940s, she rarely achieved onscreen billing but can be spotted as Mrs. Thing in Carole Lombard's They Knew What They Wanted (1940) and as one of the rock people in Hal Roach's One Million B.C. (1940).

Trivia: Most of character actress Fern Emmett's early appearances were in westerns, where she played scores of maiden aunts, hillbilly wives, town spinsters, ranch owners and stagecoach passengers. When she moved into contemporary films, she was most often seen as a landlady or gossip. She enjoyed a rare breakaway from this established screen persona when she played a screaming murder victim in the 1943 Universal thriller Captive Wild Women. Seldom given more than a few lines in "A" features, Emmett was better-served in programmers and 2-reel comedies. Emmett so closely resembled "Wicked Witch of the West" Margaret Hamilton that some historians have lumped their credits together, even though Emmett began her film career in 1930, three years before Hamilton ever stepped before a camera. Fern Emmett was the wife of actor Henry Rocquemore.

Trivia: Dignified, shiny-domed American actor/playwright Richard Carle acted in both the U.S. and England for several decades before making his first film in 1916. Usually fitted with a pince-nez and winged collar, Carle was perfect for roles calling for slightly faded dignity. Comedy fans will recall Carle as the genially mad scientist in the Laurel and Hardy 2-reeler Habeas Corpus (1928) and as the besotted ship's captain who takes six months to travel from New York to Paris in Wheeler and Woolsey's Diplomaniacs (1933). He went on to appear as college deans, bankers and judges until his death in 1941, a year in which he showed up in no fewer than eight films. What might have been Richard Carle's finest screen role, the eccentric Father William in the 1933 version of Alice in Wonderland, was cut from the final release print of that film.

Trivia: Born Henry Kleinbach, the name under which he appeared until 1936, Brandon was a tall man with black curly hair; he occasionally played the handsome lead but was more often typecast to play villains. As the latter, he appeared as white, Indian, German, and Asian men. Brandon's film career began with Babes in Toyland (1934) and went on to span fifty years. He played villains whom the audiences loved to hate in serials in the '30s and '40s, such as the Cobra in Jungle Jim, the mastermind criminal Blackstone in Secret Agent X-9, Captain Lasca in Buck Rogers Conquers the Universe (1939), and a sinister Oriental in Drums of Fu Manchu. Brandon played Indian chiefs no fewer than 26 times, notably in two John Ford westerns. He had occasional leading roles on New York stage, such as in a 1949 revival of Medea in which he played a virile Jason opposite Judith Anderson.

Trivia: In films after 1915, hatchet-faced Robert Kortman claimed to have served in the U.S. Cavalry prior to going on-stage. With producer Thomas H. Ince in the mid-1910s, the menacing actor often supported the era's great Western icon William S. Hart (he was one of the rowdy townsmen in 1916's Hell's Hinges) and was equally busy in the '20s. Kortman, however, came into his own in sound serials, especially at Mascot and its successor Republic Pictures, where his menacing visage turned up everywhere, from playing Magua in Last of the Mohicans (1932) to portraying One-Eye Chapin in Adventures of Red Ryder (1940). His roles grew increasingly smaller, and Kortman continued to play mostly villains until at least 1951. He died of cancer.

Trivia: Blonde American actress Charlotte Wynters made her talkie debut as Nina in D.W. Griffith's final film, The Struggle (1931). Wynters spent the rest of her career freelancing at every major studio, and not a few of the minor ones. Either by accident or design, she essayed supporting parts in several B-film series, including Warners' Nancy Drew, MGM's Andy Hardy, RKO's The Falcon, and Columbia's Ellery Queen. Charlotte Wynters retired in 1955.

Trivia: Balding, long-necked character actor Frank Rice made his earliest screen appearance in 1922. In talkies, Rice often appeared in comic bit roles, many of which -- notably the butler in Laurel and Hardy's Pack up Your Troubles (1932) -- afforded him the opportunity of performing his rolling-eyeballs specialty. From 1931 onward, he successfully pursued a career as a Western comedy sidekick, appearing opposite such sagebrush stars as John Wayne and Buck Jones. Frank Rice died prematurely at age 44 of complications ensuing from nephritis and hepatitis.

Trivia: Skinny but tough, Baltimore native Hilda Vaughn could convincingly play an English Cockney, which she did in her screen debut, Three Live Ghosts (1929). A fixture at MGM in the early '30s, Vaughn made her greatest impact as Jean Harlow's blackmailing domestic in Dinner at Eight. Although it is the performance for which she will be remembered, she also shone as the ambulance corps worker in Today We Live (1933), as a slavey in Chasing Yesterday (1935), and one of the suspects in Charlie Chan at the Wax Museum (1940). The latter was Vaughn's final film but she continued to act on radio, stage, and television.

Trivia: Diminutive actress Clara Blandick was technically a U.S. citizen, since she was born aboard an American ship docked in the harbor of Hong Kong. She remained in Hong Kong with her family, making her stage debut in Richard Lovelace with visiting actor E. H. Sothern. Blandick made her first film in 1910, but she preferred the theatre, where she could count on being cast in leading roles. Nearly fifty when talkies came in, Blandick slipped easily into such character roles as Aunt Polly in Tom Sawyer (1930) and Huckleberry Finn (1931). By the mid 1930s she was a day player, appearing in unbilled bits and supporting parts in a number of top productions including A Star is Born (1937). In 1939, she was cast in her most memorable role, as Auntie Em in The Wizard of Oz (1939). Ironically, many Wizard of Oz fans of the 1950s and 1960s didn't know the real name of the actress portraying Auntie Em; Ms. Blandick's name does not appear in the opening credits, while the film's closing cast list (in which she is billed last, below Pat Walshe as the head flying monkey) was never telecast during the ten years that CBS owned the TV rights to Wizard. After her week's work as Auntie Em, Blandick went back to playing tiny uncredited roles in "A" pictures like One Foot in Heaven (1941) and The Big Store (1941), as well as good supporting parts in such "B" efforts as Pillow of Death (1945) and Philo Vance Returns (1947) -- playing a cold-blooded killer in the latter film. Clara Blandick retired in 1950; 12 years later, suffering from arthritis and encroaching blindness, she committed suicide in her modest Hollywood apartment.

Trivia: Irving Bacon entered films at the Keystone Studios in 1913, where his athletic prowess and Ichabod Crane-like features came in handy for the Keystone brand of broad slapstick. He appeared in over 200 films during the silent and sound era, often playing mailmen, soda jerks and rustics. In The Amazing Dr. Clitterhouse (1938) it is Irving, as a flustered jury foreman, who delivers the film's punchline. In the late 1930s and early 1940s, Irving played the recurring role of Mr. Crumb in Columbia's Blondie series; he's the poor postman who is forever being knocked down by the late-for-work Dagwood Bumstead, each collision accompanied by a cascade of mail flying through the air. Irving Bacon kept his hand in throughout the 1950s, appearing in a sizeable number of TV situation comedies.

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: Tall, commanding actor Frank McGlynn Sr. made his 1896 stage debut in The Gold Bug. Eleven years later, McGlynn entered films as a member of the Edison Company. His professional future was secured when, in 1919, he starred on Broadway in John Drinkwater's play Abraham Lincoln. Thereafter, McGlynn was best known as Hollywood's foremost Lincoln impersonator. He was cast as Honest Abe in Are We Civilized? (1934), Hearts in Bondage (1935), The Littlest Rebel (1935), Prisoner of Shark Island (1936), The Plainsman (1936), Wells Fargo (1937), The Lone Ranger (1939) and the Warner Bros. historical short Lincoln at the White House (1939). The actor's non-Lincoln screen roles included David Gamut in Last of the Mohicans (1920) and Patrick Henry in D.W. Griffith's America. In the 1930 musical Good News, McGlynn was afforded a rare opportunity to play comedy as a sarcastic college dean. Frank Glynn Sr.'s son Frank McGlynn Jr. was also a busy film actor, usually seen in hillbilly roles.

Trivia: Lee Phelps was a longtime resident of Culver City, California, the home of several film studios, including MGM and Hal Roach. Whenever the call went out for street extras, Phelps was always available; his Irish face and shiny pate can be easily spotted in such silent 2-reelers as Laurel and Hardy's Putting Pants on Phillip. Phelps was active in films from 1921 through 1953, often in anonymous bit or atmosphere parts, usually playing a cop or a delivery man. Lee Phelps has found his way into several TV movie-compilation specials thanks to his participation in two famous films of the early '30s: Phelps played the cowering speakeasy owner slapped around by Jimmy Cagney in The Public Enemy (1931), and also portrayed the waterfront waiter to whom Greta Garbo delivers her first talking-picture line ("Gif me a viskey, baby...etc.") in Anna Christie (1930).

Trivia: A heavyweight presence during most of the silent era, 6'2," 225-pound, black-haired, mustachioed Jack Curtis entered films in 1915 after a varied career in musical comedy and vaudeville, where, according to at least one report, he directed his own shows. Usually cast as a dyed-in-the-wool villain, Curtis could also play the heroine's kindly father and was busiest in the 1920s. Perhaps most memorable as Gibson Gowland's father in Greed (1925), Curtis continued his screen career unabated well into the sound era. The roles got increasingly smaller but the veteran actor hung in there and played his fair share of bartenders, lawmen, and store clerks. He was a printer's devil in Citizen Kane (1941) and a card player in his last identifiable film appearance, The Exile (1947).

Trivia: American actress Betty Farrington worked in Hollywood from 1929 to 1949, mostly at Paramount and mostly in minor roles. Farrington's screen appearances frequently went uncredited, even when she played such pivotal roles as the malevolent ghost of Mary Meredith in The Uninvited (1943). She occasionally enjoyed larger assignments at other studios like Republic and 20th Century-Fox. For example, Betty Farrington was given ample screen time as Mrs. Al Smith in Fox's The Dolly Sisters (1945).

Trivia: American actor James Burke not only had the Irish face and brogueish voice of a New York detective, but even his name conjured up images of a big-city flatfoot. In Columbia's Ellery Queen series of the late 1930s and early 1940s, Burke was cast exquisitely to type as the thick-eared Sergeant Velie, who referred to the erudite Queen as "Maestro." Burke also showed up as a rural law enforcement officer in such films as Nightmare Alley (1947), in which he has a fine scene as a flint-hearted sheriff moved to tears by the persuasive patter of carnival barker Tyrone Power. One of the best of James Burke's non-cop performances was as westerner Charlie Ruggles' rambunctious, handlebar-mustached "pardner" in Ruggles of Red Gap (135), wherein Burke and Ruggles engage in an impromptu game of piggyback on the streets of Paris.

Trivia: In films from 1935, American actor Norman Willis was almost invariably cast as a villain. With his eternal half-sneer, pencil mustache, and nasal, insinuating voice, Willis was a convincing menace in Westerns, serials, and detective melodramas. One of his most typical roles was Spider Webb (no kidding) in the 1937 serial Tim Tyler's Luck. He also showed up in several short subjects, including the Three Stooges' Out West (1947), Our Gang's Little Miss Pinkerton (1943), and a handful of MGM's Crime Does Not Pay entries. Active until 1957, Norman Willis occasionally billed himself as Jack Norman.

Trivia: Of Danish extraction (born Ruud Hjorth), amiable George Ernest was one of many hopefuls to earn a spot or two with the Our Gang kids (Fly My Kite and Shiver My Timbers [both 1931]), but Ernest was really too earnest for the pandemonium of Our Gang and would instead pop up in every other 1930s melodrama playing someone as a child. In 1936, he was cast as Roger Evers, the middle son in Every Saturday Night, a domestic comedy advertised by 20th Century Fox as featuring the typical American family. During the production, the powers that be at Fox decided to inaugurate a low-budget series about the Everses, now renamed the Jones Family. In fact, Every Saturday Night was released as "featuring the Jones Family," despite retaining the name Evers. With Kenneth Howell and Ernest providing the juvenile antics, the 17-installment series lasted until 1940 and became Fox's more plebeian answer to MGM's immensely popular Hardy Family films.

Trivia: When actor Robert H. Barrat moved from stage to films in the early 1930s, he found himself twice blessed: He was dignified-looking enough to portray business and society types, but also athletic enough to get down and dirty in barroom-brawl scenes. An ardent physical-fitness advocate in real life, Barrat was once described by his friend and frequent co-worker James Cagney as having "a solid forearm the size of the average man's thigh"; as a result, the usually cautious Cagney was extra careful during his fight scenes with the formidable Barrat. The actor's size and menacing demeanor served him well when pitted against such comparatively pint-sized comedians as the Marx Bros. (in Go West). When not intimidating one and all with his muscle power, the actor was fond of playing roles that called for quaint, colorful accents, notably his Lionel Barrymore-ish turn as a suicidal baron in the 1934 Grand Hotel derivation Wonder Bar. Robert H. Barrat's last film appearance was in the rugged western Tall Man Riding (55).

Trivia: A dapper-looking supporting comic from St. Louis, Otto H. Fries came to films in the early 1910s with a varied background in medicine shows and vaudeville. By 1915, he was with Keystone and a lifelong friendship with Stan Laurel led to appearances in that star comedian's early films for Bronco Billy Anderson. Not surprisingly, Fries later landed at Roach, where he supported not only Laurel & Hardy and Charley Chase but also such lesser lights as Max Davidson and James Finlayson. Sound proved no hindrance and Fries would appear in many of Roach's German-language talkies. Often cast as inebriates, Fries played scores of bit parts and walk-ons in grade-A films until the year of his death. A German actor with a similar surname (Otto Friese) acted in British films of the 1950s.

Trivia: From his first film, Don Quickshot of the Rio Grande (1923), to his last, Fancy Pants (1950) American supporting player Hank Bell specialized in westerns. While still relatively young, Bell adopted the "grizzled old desert rat" characterization, that sustained him throughout his career, simply by removing his teeth and growing a thick, inverted handlebar mustache. Though occasionally given lines to speak, he was usually consigned to "atmosphere roles:" if you'll look closely at the jury in the Three Stooges 2-reeler Disorder in the Court, you'll see Bell in the top row on the left, making swimming motions when Curly douses the jurors with a fire hose. A fixture of "B"-pictures, Hank Bell occasionally surfaced in "A" films like Abraham Lincoln (1930), Trail of the Lonesome Pine (1936), The Plainsman (1936), Geronimo (1939) and My Little Chickadee (1940).

Trivia: Lanky, Montana-born Fred Burns, a former bronco-buster for the Buffalo Bill and Miller 101 Wild West shows, played Western leads opposite Lillian Gish at Biograph in the very early 1910s and later rode in The Birth of a Nation (1915). Like brother Bob Burns, the distinguished-looking, gray-haired Fred eventually drifted into supporting and bit roles, almost always portraying a sheriff or deputy. He seems to have retired after Gene Autry's Barbed Wire (1952), in which, unbilled as usual, he played a rancher.

Trivia: One of the more effective Western thugs of the 1920s and 1930s, hatchet-faced, mustachioed Jim Corey menaced every cowboy hero around, from Art Acord at Universal to Tom Tyler at FBO, but had a special fondness for irritating the good-natured Hoot Gibson. Corey was never the main opposition (he usually left that position to more polished performers like Duke R. Lee or Harry Woods), but the term "henchman" could easily have been coined with him in mind. Usually lurking in the background, Corey is easily identifiable by wearing his gun holster on his left.

Trivia: In films from 1935, American character actor Bud Geary showed up in fleeting roles as chauffeurs, sailors and cops at a variety of studios. Geary was signed to a 20th Century-Fox contract in 1942, but nothing really came of it. He finally blossomed as an actor when he hitched up with Republic in the mid-1940s. One of the best "action" heavies in the business, Geary convincingly menaced everyone in sight in such Republic serials as Haunted Harbor (1944), The Purple Monster Strikes (1945) and King of the Texas Rangers (1946). Bud Geary was on the verge of bigger things when he was killed in a car accident at the age of 47.

Trivia: White-maned, saintly American actor Edward LeSaint became a familiar figure in B-westerns of the '30s. He was almost invariably cast as the frail but courageous father of the heroine, who refused to sell his land (water, oil, gold) rights to the villains -- and equally invariably received a bullet in the back for his brave stance. A stage actor since the 19th century and in films since at least 1915, LeSaint was engaged as a staff director by the Fox Studios in 1918, where he was billed as E.J. LeSaint. Switching back to acting in the talkie era, LeSaint showed up in brief roles as college professors, judges, generals, city officials and the like. Edward LeSaint is best known to modern viewers as one of the "yes-men" professors in The Marx Brothers' Horse Feathers, and as judges in both the Three Stooges' Disorder in the Court (1936) and the anti-pot camp classic Reefer Madness (1936).

Trivia: To six decades' worth of filmgoers, Kentucky-born character actor Charles B. Middleton was Ming the Merciless, the megalomaniac ruler of the planet Mongo in three 1930s serials based on Alex Raymond's comic strip Flash Gordon. Beginning his career in circuses and carnivals in the South, Middleton worked in vaudeville and stock companies before his 1927 entree into films. With his hatchet face, bad teeth, and rolling-toned voice, Middleton was ideally cast as stern judges, cruel orphanage officials, backwater sheriffs, and small town bigots. Outside of his extensive work in serials and Westerns, he was used to best advantage in the films of Laurel and Hardy and Will Rogers. In a far less villainous vein, Charles Middleton was cast as Tom Lincoln, father of the 16th president, in Abe Lincoln in Illinois (1940); he also portrayed the Great Emancipator himself on several occasions -- while in 1937's Stand-In, Middleton was hilariously cast as an unsuccessful actor who dresses like Lincoln in hopes of landing a movie role.

Trivia: Burly vaudeville monologist/comedian Russell J. Powell made his first film in 1920. It wasn't until the advent of talkies, however, that Powell's gift for dialects and bizarre vocal sound effects could truly be appreciated. His more memorable screen roles included the Afghan Ambassador in Lubitsch's The Love Parade (1929) and his blackface turn as the Kingfish in the Amos and Andy vehicle Check and Double Check (1930). So far as many film aficionados are concerned, Russell J. Powell achieved immortality as the dockhand in the opening scene of King Kong (1933), who launches into a stream of fluent exposition with the quizzical "Say, you goin' on this craaazy voyage?"