Trivia: American actress Janet Gaynor, born Laura Gainor, was a star of the late silent era and early talkies who was able to project vulnerability and naiveté in any role. She attended high school in San Francisco; hoping to find work in films, she moved to L.A. shortly after graduation, supporting herself through odd jobs while appearing as an extra. This led her to some bit roles in Hal Roach comedy shorts and a lead in a two-reel western. Signed to a contract by Fox, Gaynor had her first significant role in The Johnstown Flood (1926). She soon went on to appear in two successful films, Murnau's masterpiece Sunrise and Borzage's hit Seventh Heaven (both 1927); as a result, within a year she was Fox's biggest star. At the very first Academy Awards ceremony Gaynor won the "Best Actress" Oscar for her work in several films in 1927-28 (the early Oscars were often given for cumulative work). Her charming, gentle voice was ideally suited to talkies, and she made the transition to the sound era with great success. Often co-starring with romantic idol Charles Farrell, their popularity as a team was at its peak in the early '30s when they were known as "America's favorite lovebirds." Gaynor was Hollywood's top box-office attraction in 1934. She retired from the screen in 1939, around the time of her marriage to Hollywood's most renowned costume designer, Gilbert Adrian, and much of her later years were spent on a Brazilian ranch. In the '50s she came back occasionally to work on radio and TV and had a role in one more film, Bernardine (1957). Widowed in 1959, she married producer Paul Gregory in 1964. She also took up painting, and in 1976 her still-lifes were exhibited in a New York gallery. In the early '80s she appeared in the Broadway show Harold and Maude.

Trivia: Born Ernest Frederick McIntyre Bickel in Racine, WI, he aspired to a career in business as a young man, and graduated from the University of Wisconsin with a degree in economics after serving in the First World War as an artillery lieutenant. He entered the banking business in New York in 1920, working at what was then known as First National City Bank (now Citibank), but while recovering from an attack of appendicitis, he decided to give up banking and to try for a career on the stage. March made his debut that same year in Deburau in Baltimore, and also began appearing as an extra in movies being shot in New York City. In 1926, while working in a stock company in Denver, he met an actress named Florence Eldridge. At the very end of that same year, March got his first Broadway leading role, in The Devil in the Cheese. March and Eldridge were married in 1927 and, in lieu of a honeymoon, the two joined the first national tour of the Theatre Guild. Over the next four decades, the two appeared together in numerous theatrical productions and several films. March came along as a leading man just as Hollywood was switching to sound and scrambling for stage actors. His work in a West Coast production of Edna Ferber and George S. Kaufman's satirical stage work The Royal Family in 1929, in which he parodied John Barrymore, got him a five-year contract with Paramount Pictures. March repeated the role to great acclaim (and his first Oscar nomination) in George Cukor's and Cyril Gardner's 1930 screen adaptation, entitled The Royal Family of Broadway. Over the next few years, March established himself as the top leading man in Hollywood, and in 1932, with Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1931), became the first (and only) performer ever to win the Best Actor Academy Award for a portrayal of a monster in a horror film. He excelled in movies such as Design for Living (1933), The Sign of the Cross (1932), Death Takes a Holiday (1934), and The Barretts of Wimpole Street (1934). He showed off his skills to immense advantage in a pair of color productions in 1937, A Star Is Born and Nothing Sacred. In A Star Is Born, March was essentially reprising his Barrymore-based portrayal from The Royal Family of Broadway, but here he added more, most especially a sense of personal tragedy that made this film version of the story the most artistically successful of the four done to date. He received an Oscar nomination for his performance and won the New York Film Critics Circle Award. In the screwball comedy Nothing Sacred, by contrast, March played a brash, slightly larcenous reporter who cons, and is conned by, Carole Lombard, and who ends up running a public relations scam on the entire country. He also did an unexpectedly bold, dashing turn as the pirate Jean Lafitte in Cecil B. DeMille's The Buccaneer (1939). In 1937, March was listed as the fifth highest paid individual in America, earning a half-million dollars. Unfortunately for his later reputation, A Star Is Born, Nothing Sacred, and The Buccaneer, along with his Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, The Barretts of Wimpole Street, Les Miserables, and Smilin' Through, were all the subjects of remakes in the 1940s and '50s that came to supplant the versions in which he had starred in distribution to television; most were out of circulation for decades. March moved between big studio productions and independent producers, with impressive results in Victory (1940), So Ends Our Night (1941), I Married a Witch (1942), The Adventures of Mark Twain, and Tomorrow the World (both 1944). March's performances were the best parts of many of these movies; he was a particularly haunting presence in So Ends Our Night, as an anti-Nazi German aristocrat being hounded across Europe by the Hitler government. Although well-liked by most of his peers, he did have some tempestuous moments off-screen. March didn't suffer fools easily, and had an especially hard time working with neophyte Veronica Lake in I Married a Witch. His relationship with Tallulah Bankhead, with whom he worked in The Skin of Our Teeth in 1942, was also best described in language that -- based on a 1973 interview -- was best left unprinted. In both cases, however, the respective productions were very successful. March's appeal as a romantic lead waned after the Second World War, with a generational change in the filmgoing audience. This seemed only to free March -- then nearing 50 -- to take on more challenging roles and films, starting with Samuel Goldwyn's production of The Best Years of Our Lives (1946), for which he won his second Academy Award, playing a middle-aged World War II veteran coping with the changes in his family and the world that have taken place since he went off to war. His next movie, An Act of Murder (1948), was years ahead of its time, dealing with a judge who euthanizes his terminally ill wife rather than allow her to suffer. March was chosen to play Willy Loman in the 1951 screen adaptation of Death of a Salesman. The movie was critically acclaimed, and he got an Oscar nomination and won the Volpi Cup for Best Actor at the Venice Film Festival, but the film was too downbeat to attract an audience large enough to generate a profit, and it has since been withdrawn from distribution with the lapsing of the rights to the underlying play. He excelled in dramas such as Executive Suite (1954), The Bridges at Toko-Ri (1955), The Desperate Hours (1955), and The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit (1956), and in costume dramas like Alexander the Great (1956).During this post-World War II period, March achieved the highest honor of his Broadway career, winning Tony awards for his work in Years Ago (1947) and Long Day's Journey Into Night (1956), the latter marking the peak of his stage work. March entered the 1960s with a brilliant performance as Matthew Garrison Brady, the dramatic stand-in for the historical William Jennings Bryan, in Stanley Kramer's Inherit the Wind, earning an award at the Berlin Film Festival, although he was denied an Oscar nomination. March's own favorite directors were William Wellman and William Wyler, but late in his career, he became a favorite of John Frankenheimer, a top member of a new generation of directors. (Frankenheimer was born the year that March did The Royal Family of Broadway in Hollywood.) In Frankenheimer's Seven Days in May (1964), he turned in a superb performance as an ailing president of the United States who is forced to confront an attempted military coup, and easily held his own working with such younger, more dynamic screen actors as Burt Lancaster and Kirk Douglas, and veteran scene-stealers like George Macready and Edmond O'Brien. March was equally impressive in Martin Ritt's revisionist Western Hombre (1967), and was one of the best things in Ralph Nelson's racial drama Tick, Tick, Tick (1970), playing the elderly, frightened but well-meaning mayor of a small Southern town in a county that has just elected its first black sheriff. March intended to retire after that film, and surgery for prostate cancer only seemed to confirm the wisdom of that decision. In 1972, however, he was persuaded by Frankenheimer to come out of retirement for one more movie, The Iceman Cometh (1973), playing the role of Harry Hope. The 240-minute film proved to be the capstone of March's long and distinguished career, earning him one more round of glowing reviews. He died of cancer two years later, his acting legacy secure and undiminished across more than 60 movies made over a period of more than 40 years.

Trivia: Andy Devine was born in Kingman, Arizona, where his father ran a hotel. During his youth, Devine was a self-confessed hellraiser, and stories of his rowdy antics are still part of Kingman folklore (though they've undoubtedly improved in the telling). His trademarked ratchety voice was the result of a childhood accident, when he fell while carrying a stick in his mouth, resulting in permanent vocal-chord injuries. A star football player at Santa Clara University, Andy decided to break into movies in 1926; he was almost immediately cast in Universal's two-reel series The Collegians. When talkies came, Devine was convinced that his voice was unsuitable for the microphone. He reportedly became so despondent at one point that he attempted to commit suicide by asphyxiation, only to discover that his landlady had turned off the gas! Devine needn't have worried; his voice became his greatest asset, and from 1930 until his retirement, he was very much in demand for bucolic comedy roles. In 1937 he became a regular on Jack Benny's radio program, his howl of "Hiya, Buck!" becoming a national catchphrase. During the late 1940s and early 1950s, he was a popular comedy sidekick in the western films of Roy Rogers. Later film assignments included his atypical performance as a corrupt Kansas City cop in Jack Webb's Pete Kelly's Blues (1955). Most baby boomers retain fond memories of Devine's TV appearances as Jingles Jones on the long-running western series Wild Bill Hickock, and as host of the Saturday morning kid's program Andy's Gang. In his later years, Devine cut down his performing activities, preferring to stay on his Van Nuys (California) ranch with his wife and children. Made a very wealthy man thanks to real estate investments, Andy Devine abandoned moviemaking in 1970, resurfacing only to provide voices for a brace of Disney cartoon features; he remained active in civic and charitable affairs, at one juncture serving as honorary mayor of Van Nuys.

Trivia: Born Mary Robison. In her late teens she moved to the U.S. with no intention of becoming an actress; a few years later she became a widow, and in 1884 she took up acting to support her three children. She played both leads and supporting roles on the road and on Broadway, and over several decades she became highly respected as a character actress. From 1914-19 she appeared in a few silent films (sometimes billed as Mrs. Stuart Robson), then returned to the screen for good in 1926 and fourished in the subsequent sound era. She was usually cast as crusty, gruff, domineering society matrons or grandmothers. For her portrayal of Damon Runyon's Apple Annie in Frank Capra's Lady for a Day (1933), one of her rare starring roles, she received a Best Actress Oscar nomination. Ultimately she appeared in more than 60 films, the last of which was released the year of her death.

Trivia: Irish-born Owen Moore came to America at age 11, along with his three brothers, Matt, Tom, and Joe -- actors all. At 19, Moore began his theatrical career, abandoning the stage in 1908 to work with D.W. Griffith at the Biograph film studio. Here he met ingénue Mary Pickford, whom he married in secret (a secret that didn't last very long), then divorced in 1920 when both he and Mary found others to fulfill their private lives. Owen Moore's later career was not as successful, though he staged some worthwhile comeback attempts throughout the talkie era: co-starring with his brothers, Matt and Tom, in 1929's Side Street, offering a bizarre and unsettling performance as Mae West's imprisoned ex-boyfriend in She Done Him Wrong, and convincingly portraying a cold-sober movie director in Selznick's A Star Is Born (1937).

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: Born in Brooklyn, NY, Peggy Wood was the daughter of a popular Manhattan columnist. Gifted with a lilting soprano voice, she began her stage career in musicals and operettas. Her chief Broadway fame rested in multilayered dramatic roles, though she was also an expert comedienne when the occasion arose. In her heyday, Wood was a member of the New York "intellectual" circuit, making occasional lunchtime stopovers at the Algonquin Round Table. A star on stage, Wood seldom appeared in anything larger than supporting roles in films; for example, she had only one scene as the sympathetic central-casting secretary in David O. Selznick's A Star Is Born (1937). From 1949 through 1957, Wood starred on the popular TV series Mama, reportedly exerting a great deal of script and casting control. Peggy Wood's last screen appearance was as the Mother Abbess in the Oscar-winning musical The Sound of Music (1965); sadly, her once beautiful singing voice was a thing of the past, and she had to be dubbed.

Trivia: American actor Franklin Pangborn spent most of his theatrical days playing straight dramatic roles, but Hollywood saw things differently. From his debut film Exit Smiling (1926) to his final appearance in The Story of Mankind (1957), Pangborn was relegated to almost nothing but comedy roles. With his prissy voice and floor-walker demeanor, Pangborn was the perfect desk clerk, hotel manager, dressmaker, society secretary, or all-around busybody in well over 100 films. Except for a few supporting appearances in features and a series of Mack Sennett short subjects in the early 1930s, most of Pangborn's pre-1936 appearances were in bits or minor roles, but a brief turn as a snotty society scavenger-hunt scorekeeper in My Man Godfrey (1936) cemented his reputation as a surefire laugh-getter. The actor was a particular favorite of W.C. Fields, who saw to it that Pangborn was prominently cast in Fields' The Bank Dick (1940) (as hapless bank examiner J. Pinkerton Snoopington) and Never Give a Sucker An Even Break (1941). Occasionally, Pangborn longed for more dramatic roles, so to satisfy himself artistically he'd play non-comic parts for Edward Everett Horton's Los Angeles-based Majestic Theatre; Pangborn's appearance in Preston Sturges' Hail the Conquering Hero (1942) likewise permitted him a few straight, serious moments. When jobs became scarce in films for highly specialized character actors in the 1950s, Pangborn thrived on television, guesting on a number of comedy shows, including an appearance as a giggling serial-killer in a "Red Skelton Show" comedy sketch. One year before his death, Pangborn eased quietly into TV-trivia books by appearing as guest star (and guest announcer) on Jack Paar's very first "Tonight Show."

Trivia: American comic actor Edgar Kennedy left home in his teens, smitten with the urge to see the world. He worked a number of manual labor jobs and sang in touring musical shows before returning to his native California in 1912 to break into the infant movie industry. Hired by Mack Sennett in 1914, Kennedy played innumerable roles in the Keystone comedies. He would later claim to be one of the original Keystone Kops, but his specialty during this period was portraying mustache-twirling villains. By the early 1920s, Kennedys screen image had mellowed; now he most often played detectives or middle-aged husbands. He joined Hal Roach Studios in 1928, where he did some of his best early work: co-starring with Laurel and Hardy, Charlie Chase and Our Gang; directing two-reelers under the stage name E. Livingston Kennedy; and receiving top billing in one of Roach's most enduring comedies, A Pair of Tights (1928). Kennedy was dropped from the Roach payroll in a 1930 economy drive, but he'd already made a satisfactory talkie debut -- even though he'd had to lower his voice to his more familiar gravelly growl after it was discovered that his natural voice sounded high-pitched and effeminate. During his Roach stay, Kennedy developed his stock-in-trade "slow burn," wherein he'd confront a bad situation or personal humiliation by glowering at the camera, pausing, then slowly rubbing his hand over his face. In 1931, Kennedy was hired by RKO studios to star in a series of two-reelers, unofficially titled "Mr. Average Man." These films, precursors to the many TV sitcoms of the 1950s, cast Kennedy as head of a maddening household consisting of his dizzy wife (usually Florence Lake, sister of Arthur "Dagwood" Lake), nagging mother-in-law and lazy brother-in-law. Kennedy made six of these shorts per year for the next 17 years, taking time out to contribute memorable supporting roles in such film classics as Duck Soup (1933), San Francisco (1936), A Star Is Born (1937) and Anchors Aweigh (1944). Some of Kennedy's most rewarding movie assignments came late in his career: the "hidden killer" in one of the Falcon B mysteries, the poetic bartender in Harold Lloyd's Sin of Harold Diddlebock (1946), and the classical music-loving private detective in Unfaithfully Yours (1948), which like Diddlebock was directed by Preston Sturges. On November 9, 1948, shortly after completing his 103rd "Average Man" two-reeler and 36 hours before a Hollywood testimonial dinner was to be held in his honor, Kennedy died of throat cancer; his last film appearance as Doris Day's Uncle Charlie in My Dream is Yours (1949) was released posthumously.

Trivia: Stage actor/director Arthur Hoyt first stepped before the movie cameras in 1916. During the silent era, Hoyt played sizeable roles in such major productions as Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (1921) and The Lost World (1925). In sound films, he tended to be typecast as a henpecked husband or downtrodden office worker. One of his mostly fondly remembered talkie performances was as befuddled motel-court manager Zeke in It Happened One Night (1934). Despite advancing age, he was busy in the late 1930s, appearing in as many as 12 pictures per year. In his last active decade, Arthur Hoyt was a member of writer/director Preston Sturges' unofficial stock company, beginning with The Great McGinty (1940) and ending with The Sin of Harold Diddlebock (1947).

Trivia: Nicknamed "Big Boy" by his friend and frequent coworker Will Rogers, beefy Western star Guinn Williams was the son of a Texas congressman. After attending North Texas State College, Williams played pro baseball and worked as a rodeo rider before heading to Hollywood in his teens to try his luck in films. While he starred in several inexpensive silent and sound Westerns, Williams is better known for his comedy relief work in such films as Private Worlds (1935), A Star Is Born (1937), Professor Beware (1938), and Santa Fe Trail (1940). "Big Boy" Williams is also a familiar name to devotees of Orson Welles; it was Williams who once accosted Welles in a parking lot and cut off the "boy wonder's" necktie.

Trivia: Vince Barnett was the son of Luke Barnett, a well-known comedian who specialized in insulting and pulling practical jokes on his audiences (Luke's professional nickname was "Old Man Ribber"). Vince remained in the family business by hiring himself out to Hollywood parties, where he would insult the guests in a thick German accent, spill the soup and drop the trays--all to the great delight of hosts who enjoyed watching their friends squirm and mutter "Who hired that jerk?" The diminutive, chrome-domed Barnett also appeared in the 1926 edition of Earl Carroll's Vanities. He began appearing in films in 1930, playing hundreds of comedy bits and supporting parts until retiring in 1975. Among Vince Barnett's more sizeable screen roles was the moronic, illiterate gangster "secretary" in Scarface (1931).

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

Trivia: The younger brother of actress Jobyna Howland, Olin Howland established himself on Broadway in musical comedy. The actor made his film debut in 1918, but didn't really launch his Hollywood career until the talkie era. Generally cast as rustic characters, Howland could be sly or slow-witted, depending on the demands of the role. He showed up in scores of Warner Bros. films in the 1930s and 1940s, most amusingly as the remonstrative Dr. Croker (sic) in The Case of the Lucky Legs (1934). A favorite of producer David O. Selznick, Howland played the laconic baggage man in Nothing Sacred (1937), the grim, hickory-stick wielding schoolmaster in The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1938) and an expansive Yankee businessman in Gone with the Wind (1939). During the 1940s, he could often as not be found at Republic, appearing in that studio's westerns and hillbilly musicals. One of his best screen assignments of the 1950s was the old derelict who kept shouting "Make me sergeant in charge of booze!" in the classic sci-fier Them (1954). Howland made several TV guest appearances in the 1950s, and played the recurring role of Swifty on the weekly Circus Boy (1956). In the latter stages of his career, Olin Howland billed himself as Olin Howlin; he made his final appearance in 1958, as the first victim of The Blob.

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: Once Canadian-born actor Jonathan Hale became well known for his portrayal of well-to-do businessmen, he was fond of telling the story of how he'd almost been a man of wealth in real life--except for an improvident financial decision by his father. A minor diplomat before he turned to acting, Hale began appearing in minor film roles in 1934, showing up fleetingly in such well-remembered films as the Karloff/Lugosi film The Raven (1935), the Marx Brothers' A Night at the Opera (1935) and the first version of A Star is Born (1937). In 1938, Hale was cast as construction executive J. C. Dithers in Blondie, the first of 28 "B"-pictures based on Chic Young's popular comic strip. Though taller and more distinguished-looking than the gnomelike Dithers of the comics, Hale became instantly synonymous with the role, continuing to portray the character until 1946's Blondie's Lucky Day (his voice was heard in the final film of the series, Beware of Blondie, though that film's on-camera Dithers was Edward Earle). During this same period, Hale also appeared regularly as Irish-brogued Inspector Fernack in RKO's "The Saint" series. After 1946, Hale alternated between supporting roles and bits, frequently unbilled (e.g. Angel on My Shoulder, Call Northside 777 and Son of Paleface); he had a pivotal role as Robert Walker's hated father in Hitchcock's Strangers on a Train (1951), though the part was confined to a smidgen of dialogue and a single long-shot. Hale worked prolifically in television in the '50s, with substantial guest roles in such series as Disneyland and The Adventures of Superman. In 1966, after a long illness, Jonathan Hale committed suicide at the age of 75, just months before the TV release of the Blondie films that had won him prominence in the '30s and '40s.

Trivia: Mainly remembered for offering younger brother John Ford his first opportunities in the movie business, Francis Ford (born Feeney) was a touring company actor before entering films with Thomas Edison in 1907. In the early 1910s, he served a tumultuous apprenticeship as a director/star for producer Thomas Ince -- who in typical Ince fashion presented many of Ford's accomplishments as his own -- before moving over to Carl Laemmle's Universal in 1913. A true auteur, Ford would direct, write, and star in his own Westerns and serials, often opposite Grace Cunard, the studio's top action heroine. Contrary to popular belief they never married, but their onscreen partnership resulted in such popular action serials as Lucille Love -- Girl of Mystery (1914), The Broken Coin (1915), and The Adventures of Peg o' the Ring (1916). Both Ford's and Cunard's careers declined in the 1920s, with Ford directing mostly poverty row productions. He kept working in films as a supporting actor through the early '50s, mainly due to the influence of John, who often made Francis Ford and Victor McLaglen supply the corny Irish humor for which he exhibited a lifelong fondness. Francis Ford's son, Philip Ford, also became a director of Westerns, and also like his father, mainly of the poverty row variety.

Trivia: Born in the Arizona Territory to Mexican parents, Chris-Pin Martin developed a reputation as a laughgetter at an early age. He made his earliest film appearance in 1911, playing an Indian. During his heyday of the 1930s and 1940s, Martin earned his salary perpetuating a stereotype that nowadays would be the ultimate in political incorrectness: the lazy, dull-witted Hispanic comic foil. Chris-Pin Martin appeared in several Cisco Kid programmers, playing sidekick Pancho (sometimes named Gorditor) to such screen Ciscos as Warner Baxter, Cesar Romero, Gilbert Roland and Duncan Renaldo.

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

Trivia: American director Marshall "Mickey" Neilan was the General Billy Mitchell of movies; he was undeniably brilliant, but alienated too many important people by reminding them of his brilliance. Neilan dropped out of school at age 11 when his father died, helping to support his mother with a variety of odd jobs. Intrigued by the theatre, the teenaged Neilan appeared often as a stock company juvenile. In 1911 he became the chauffeur to Biograph director D. W. Griffith, who cast the dashingly handsome Neilan in small roles. Directing his first picture at the American Film Company in 1913, Neilan continued fluctuating between acting and directing until the late teens; one of his most frequent leading ladies was Mary Pickford, who was both costarred with and directed by Neilan. After his marriage to film star Blanche Sweet, Neilan concentrated totally on directing, gaining critical adulation for such artistic triumphs as Bits of Life (1921) (a multipart drama in which ethnic stereotypes were treated with rare dignity) and The Lotus Eater (1921). He directed his wife in a number of films, the best of which was Tess of the D'Ubervilles (1924), for which Neilan filmed two endings: one tragic (as in the Thomas Hardy novel) and one artificially happy, so that distributors could choose which one they preferred. Though Neilan made a successful transition to sound with Pathe's The Awful Truth (1929), too many of his early talkies were box-office bombs (the Rudy Vallee vehicle Vagabond Lover [1929] being a particularly noxious example). Any other director might have been allowed to regain his lost footing, but Neilan's enemies were legion by the early '30s, and they had long been waiting for an opportunity to slap him down. At best, Neilan's talkies were programmers that any competent director could have handled, such as The Lemon Drop Kid (1934); at worst, they were poverty-row products like the Pinky Tomlin musicals Sing While You're Able (1936) and Swing It Professor (1937). By 1937, the former boy wonder was a 46-year-old hasbeen. Some took pity on this Neilan by giving him small jobs with outsized salaries. One such assignment was drenched with irony: playing an uncredited Santa Anita spectator in A Star is Born, Neilan could be seen snubbing Fredric March, who was playing a once-great star who'd drunk himself into oblivion. In 1957, one year before his death, Marshall Neilan played his last minor role in Elia Kazan's aptly titled A Face in the Crowd (1957).

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

Trivia: American actor Jed Prouty got his first taste of show business as a teenaged performer at Austin Stone's Museum (a sort of flea circus-variety show concern) in his native Boston. Working for years as a vaudeville song and dance man, Prouty made it to Broadway in 1921, appearing occasionally in silent films. The actor was prominently cast as a stuttering actor's agent Uncle Jed in his first talking picture, the Oscar-winning Broadway Melody (1929), though he found it expedient to drop the stammer for his subsequent films. Most often in bits and character roles in A-pictures -- as, for example, the unctuous columnist in A Star is Born (1937) -- Prouty was firmly in the lead in the Jones Family series of B-comedies filmed by 20th Century-Fox. Prouty played the Jones paterfamilias, with Spring Byington as his wife, in nearly all seventeen pictures in the Jones series. Jed Prouty is also familiar to Alice Faye fans for his antic appearance in Ms. Faye's Hollywood Cavalcade (1939), wherein he was made up to resemble silent comedian Ford Sterling for the film's slapstick chase sequences.

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

Trivia: Hefty vaudeville performer Trixie Friganza (born Delia O'Callahan) enjoyed some success in films in the 1920s. Once describing herself a "perfect 46," Friganza rose from the chorus to headlining at the New York Palace, mainly by delivering an endless stream of self-deprecating "fat girl" jokes. Her screen performances in such comedies as The Whole Town's Talking (1926) and Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1928) were purely a matter of whether the audience found making fun of overweight women a hoot. Friganza can be seen as Lon Chaney's customer in The Unholy Three (1930), as Big Jo in the Paramount Western Wanderer of the Wasteland (1935), and, as herself, in a bizarre Dwain Esper short entitled How to Undress in Front of Your Husband (1937). Her career was cut short by crippling arthritis.

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: 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: Gangly American comic Billy Dooley was discovered on the vaudeville circuit by producer Al Christie, who brought Dooley and his stage partner Frances Lee to Hollywood in 1925. Somewhat reminiscent of whiteface comic Larry Semon, Dooley played dumb sailors and other service men in a series of two-reel comedies with explanatory titles such as A Goofy Gob (1925), A Briny Boob (1926), the inevitable Sailor Beware (1927), and A Dizzy Diver (1928). Never able to stand out in a crowded field of two-reel comedy performers, Dooley left Christie and played minor roles in talkies until his death from a heart attack.

Trivia: A tallish (5'7") blonde leading lady of the 1920s, Helene Chadwick had taken her professional name from the town in upstate New York where she was born. In films from 1917 after a brief stint on the legitimate stage, Sam Goldwyn cast her as the heroine in such melodramas as Heartsease (1919) and The Cup of Fury (1920) and she also filmed for Paramount and Fox. She earned some notoriety for marrying and divorcing upcoming director William Wellman but although the trade-paper Harrison's Reports applauded her "fine acting" in an early talkie, Father and Son (1929), Chadwick was relegated to bits and walk-ons thereafter. Her early death was ascribed to injuries from a fall.

Trivia: American actress Jean Acker acquired more notoriety for being the estranged wife of Rudolph Valentino than she did as a leading actress. According to Tinseltown legend, she married him in 1919 while he was still an unknown. She left him on their wedding night and the marriage was apparently never consummated. Still Valentino was rumored to have begged for Acker to return. She never did and in 1921 filed for a legal separation. In 1924, Acker had the gall to use the name Mrs. Rudolph Valentino as a screen credit.

Trivia: Looking far younger than his true age, blonde, curly haired Ken Howell played Jack Jones in the mildly popular 20th Century Fox situation comedy series The Jones Family, which played neighborhood theaters with some regularity in the late '30s. He was later one of the Junior G-Men in the 1940 Universal serial of the same name but "old age" basically killed his screen career and he joined the U.S. Navy Medical Corps in 1942. A still very youthful-looking Howell attempted a screen comeback playing a spoiled rich kid in the 1951 Roy Rogers Western In Old Amarillo, but it remained his final film. His early death in 1966 was reportedly a suicide.

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

Trivia: Veteran British stage actor and director Claude King made his first film in 1923, playing Lord Charles Chetwyn in the historical drama Six Days. Brought to America by MGM, the most "British" of Hollywood's studios, King essayed aristocratic roles in such films as Lon Chaney's London After Midnight (1927) and Mr. Wu (1928). One of his earliest talkie assignments was the plum role of Sir John Petrie in Paramount's The Mysterious Dr. Fu Manchu. He spent the 1930s as in general-purpose "English gentleman" assignment. Curiously, some of his better roles, notably General Fletcher in Bonnie Scotland (1935) and the Hollywood producer who reacts in mute astonishment as Janet Gaynor launches into a Garbo imitation in A Star is Born (1937), were unbilled. Claude King ended his Hollywood career where it began, at MGM.

Trivia: Handsome, wavy-haired actor David Newell was signed by Paramount Pictures during the industry switchover to talkies. Newell played large roles in such Paramount productions as Hole in the Wall and Dangerous Curves (1929), and made a guest appearance in the all-star Paramount on Parade (1930). For obscure reasons, he failed to catch on, and by the end of the 1930s was making do with bits and extra roles. One of his more famous uncredited assignments was as murder-victim Geoffrey Hammond in the 1940 remake of The Letter; director William Wyler forced the actor to tumble down a flight of stairs ten times then edited the scene so severely that all the audience saw of Newell were his feet. In 1954, David Newell gave up performing to become a makeup artist at Walt Disney studios, where he worked on such productions as Westward Ho, the Wagons! (1956), The Great Locomotive Chase (1956), Johnny Tremain (1957), and TV's The Mickey Mouse Club (1955-1959).

Trivia: Evidently weaned on a diet of pickles and vinegar, wizened screen sourpuss Clarence H. Wilson grimaced and glowered his way through over 100 films from 1920 until his death in 1941. Clarence Hummel Wilson was born in Cincinnati, OH. He began his 46-year acting career in Philadelphia in 1895, in a stock company, and spent years touring the United States and Canada in various road shows. On stage in New York, he later played supporting roles to such stars as James K. Hackett, Virginia Harned, Marguerite Clark, Amelia Bingham, Charles Cherry, and Wilton Lackaye. He entered motion pictures in 1920 and ultimately moved to Hollywood. With the coming of sound, his bald, mustachioed, stoop-shouldered persona, topped by a distinctive and annoying high, whining voice, and coupled with his broad approach to acting, made him an ideal villain. Wilson, whose slightly squinty yet hovering gaze seemed to invoke bad fortune upon whomever it landed, played dozens of irascible judges, taciturn coroners, impatient landlords, flat-footed process servers, angry school superintendents, miserly businessmen, and cold-hearted orphanage officials. Whenever he smiled, which wasn't often, one could almost hear the creak of underused facial muscles. Though he generally played bits, he was occasionally afforded such larger roles as the drunken sideshow-impresario father of heroine Helen Mack in Son of Kong (1933), with his pathetic trained animal act. He was the perfect over-the-top villain, a nastier male equivalent to Margaret Hamilton, and indispensable to comedy films, in which he served brilliantly as the humorless foil of such funmakers as W.C. Fields, Wheeler & Woolsey, Charley Chase, and especially the Our Gang kids. Although he appeared in such major films as the 1931 version of The Front Page (playing the corrupt sheriff) and the aforementioned Son of Kong, Wilson's most prominent screen roles for modern audiences were in a pair of short subjects in the Our Gang series of films: first as Mr. Crutch, the greedy orphanage manager who is undone when a pair of adults get transformed into children by a magical lamp in Shrimps for a Day (1934); and, at the other end of the series' history, as nasty schoolboard chairman Alonzo K. Pratt in Come Back, Miss Pipps (1941), his penultimate film release.

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

Trivia: Of Polish and Norwegian descent, Carole Landis moved with her mother and siblings from Wisconsin to California, where at age seven she made her inauspicious stage debut in an amateur talent show. Within five years, Carole began winning beauty contests. In high school, she was only interested in athletics, organizing a girl's football team which was dissolved by the principal on the grounds that it was "unladylike." Married at 15 and separated a few weeks later, Carole dropped out of school to pursue an acting career. She was principal singer and star hula dancer at the Royal Hawaiian club in San Francisco. Entering films in 1937 as a bit actress, Carole played a thankless leading role in the 1939 serial Daredevils of the Red Circle. Later that year, she was selected to play the prehistoric heroine of Hal Roach's One Million BC; according to Roach, she won the role on the basis of her athletic prowess and running ability. Signed at Roach, Carole was dubbed "The Ping Girl" in the studio's publicity, appearing in comedy leads in Turnabout, Road Show, and Topper Returns (all 1941). In 1941, half of Carole's Roach contract was purchased by 20th Century-Fox. She received good reviews for her performances in such Fox films as I Wake Up Screaming (1941), Orchestra Wives (1942) and My Gal Sal (1942). In 1942, Carole joined Martha Raye, Kay Francis and Mitzi Mayfair for a Hollywood Victory Committee tour of the British isles. She wrote a book on the subject of this tour, Four Jills in A Jeep, which in 1944 was filmed by Fox with the four actresses starring. Carole was one of the most tireless performers on the USO circuit, at one point contracting malaria but insisting upon maintaining her hectic schedule. On the home front, she was a principal fundraiser for the American Cancer Society. After briefly appearing in a 1945 Broadway musical, Carole returned to films, but her star had eclipsed and she had to make do with B pictures. In 1948, Carole Landis committed suicide.

Trivia: Rotund, ruddy-faced character actor Ferdinand Munier first showed up in films around 1923. Blessed with a rich, rolling voice that perfectly matched his portly frame, Munier flourished in the talkie era, playing scores of pompous foreign ambassadors, gouty aristocrats, and philandering businessmen. His many screen assignments included King Louis XIII in The Count of Monte Cristo (1934) and the aptly named Prince Too-Much-Belly in Diamond Horseshoe. A perfect Santa Claus type, Ferdinand Munier was frequently cast as Saint Nick, most amusingly in Laurel and Hardy's Babes in Toyland (1934) and Hope and Crosby's Road to Utopia (1945).

Trivia: Boasting a colorful show-biz background as a circus and vaudeville performer, Robert Emmet O'Connor entered films in 1926. Blessed with a pudgy Irish mug that could convey both jocularity and menace, O'Connor was most often cast as cops and detectives, some of them honest and lovable, some of them corrupt and pugnacious. His roles ranged from such hefty assignments as the flustered plainclothesman Henderson in Night at the Opera (1935) to such bits as the traffic cop who is confused by Jimmy Cagney's barrage of Yiddish in Taxi! (1932). One of his most famous non-cop roles was warm-hearted bootlegger Paddy Ryan in Public Enemy. During the 1940s, O'Connor was a contract player at MGM, showing up in everything from Our Gang comedies to the live-action prologue of the Tex Avery cartoon classic Who Killed Who? (1944). Robert Emmet O'Connor's last film role was Paramount studio-guard Jonesy in Sunset Boulevard (1950). Twelve years later, he died of injuries sustained in a fire.

Trivia: One of the most glamorous superstars of Hollywood's golden era, Lana Turner was born February 8, 1921, in Wallace, ID. At the age of 15, while cutting school, she was spotted by Hollywood Reporter staffer Billy Wilkinson in a Hollywood drugstore; enchanted by her beauty, he escorted her to the offices of the Zeppo Marx Agency, resulting in a bit part in 1937's A Star Is Born. Rejected by RKO, Fox, and any number of other studios, Turner next briefly showed up in They Won't Forget. Mervin LeRoy, the picture's director, offered her a personal contract at 50 dollars a week, and she subsequently appeared fleetingly in a series of films at Warner Bros. When LeRoy moved to MGM, Turner followed, and the usual series of bit parts followed before she won her first lead role in the 1939 B-comedy These Glamour Girls. Dancing Co-Ed, a vehicle for bandleader Artie Shaw, followed that same year, and after starring in 1940's Two Girls on Broadway, she and Shaw married. Dubbed "the Sweater Girl" by the press, Turner was touted by MGM as a successor to Jean Harlow, but audiences did not take her to heart; she did, however, become a popular pin-up, especially with American soldiers fighting overseas. In 1941 she starred opposite Clark Gable in Honky Tonk, her first major hit. They again teamed in Somewhere I'll Find You the next year. Upon separating from Shaw, Turner married actor Stephen Crane, but when his earlier divorce was declared invalid, a media frenzy followed; MGM chief Louis B. Mayer was so incensed by the debacle that he kept the now-pregnant Turner off movie screens for a year. Upon returning in 1944's Marriage Is a Private Affair, Turner's stardom slowly began to grow, culminating in her most sultry and effective turn to date as a femme fatale in 1946's The Postman Always Rings Twice. The film was a tremendous success, and it made Turner one of Hollywood's brightest stars. Both 1947's Green Dolphin Street and Cass Timberlane were hits, but a 1948 reunion with Gable in Homecoming failed to re-create their earlier sparks. After appearing in The Three Musketeers, she disappeared from screens for over a year, resurfacing in the George Cukor trifle A Life of Her Own. Turner's box-office stock was plummeting, a situation which MGM attempted to remedy by casting her in musicals; while the first, 1951's Mr. Imperium, was an unmitigated disaster, 1952's The Merry Widow was more successful. However, a string of failures followed, and after 1955's Diane, MGM opted not to renew her contract.When Turner's next project, The Rains of Ranchipur, also failed to ignite audience interest, she again took a sabbatical from movie-making. She returned in 1957 with Peyton Place, director Mark Robson's hugely successful adaptation of Grace Metalious' infamous best-seller about the steamy passions simmering beneath the surface of small-town life. Turner's performance won an Academy Award nomination, and the following year she made international headlines when her lover, gangster Johnny Stampanato, was stabbed to death by her teenage daughter, Cheryl Crane; a high-profile court trial followed, and although Crane was eventually acquitted on the grounds of justifiable homicide, Turner's reputation took a severe beating. The 1959 Douglas Sirk tearjerker Imitation of Life was Turner's last major hit, however, and after a string of disappointments culminating in 1966's Madame X, she did not reappear in films for three years, returning with The Big Cube. Also in 1969, she and George Hamilton co-starred in the short-lived television series The Survivors. After touring in a number of stage productions, Turner starred in the little-seen 1974 horror film Persecution, followed in 1976 by Bittersweet Love. Her final film, Witches' Brew, a semi-comic remake of the 1944 horror classic Weird Woman, was shot in 1978 but not widely released until 1985. In 1982, she published an autobiography, Lana: The Lady, the Legend, the Truth, and also began a stint as a semi-regular on the TV soap opera Falcon Crest. After spending the majority of her final decade in retirement, Lana Turner died June 29, 1995, at the age of 74.

Trivia: Born Edward Flanagan, O'Keefe was a lithe, brash, charming, tall, rugged lead actor. The son of vaudevillians, he began appearing onstage in his parents' act while still a toddler. By age 16 he was writing scripts for "Our Gang" comedy shorts. He attended some college and did more work on vaudeville before entering films in the early '30s, appearing in bit roles in more than 50 films under the name Bud Flanagan. His work in a small role in the film Saratoga (1937) impressed Clark Gable, who recommended that he be cast in leads. MGM agreed, so he changed his name to Dennis O'Keefe and went on to play leads in numerous films, beginning with Bad Man of Brimstone (1938). Besides many light action-oriented films, he also appeared in numerous '40s comedies, and later specialized in tough-guy parts. Later in his career he directed a film or two and also wrote mystery stories. In the late '50s O'Keefe starred in the short-lived TV series "The Dennis O'Keefe Show." He was in only two films in the '60s. He died at 60 of lung cancer. His widow is actress Steffi Duna.

Trivia: With his slight built, narrow face and pencil-thin mustache, I. Stanford Jolley did not exactly look trustworthy, and a great many of his screen roles (more than 500) were indeed to be found on the wrong side of the law. Isaac Stanford Jolley had toured as a child with his father's traveling circus and later worked in stock and vaudeville, prior to making his Broadway debut opposite Charles Trowbridge in Sweet Seventeen (1924). Radio work followed and he arrived in Hollywood in 1935. Pegged early on as a gangster or Western outlaw, Jolley graduated to playing lead henchman or the boss villain in the '40s, mostly appearing for such poverty-row companies as Monogram and PRC. Although Jolley is often mentioned as a regular member of the Republic Pictures' stock company, he was never under contract to that legendary studio and only appeared in 25 films for them between 1936 and 1954. From 1950 on, Jolley worked frequently on television and remained a busy performer until at least 1976. According to his widow, the actor, who died of emphysema at the Motion Picture Country Hospital, never earned more than 100 dollars on any given movie assignment. He was the father of art director Stan Jolley.