Trivia: Dublin-born Barry Fitzgerald discounted his family's insistence that he was a descendant of 18th-century Irish patriot William Orr, but he readily admitted to being a childhood acquaintance of poet James Joyce. Educated at Civil Service College, Fitzgerald became a junior executive at the Unemployment Insurance Division, while moonlighting as a supernumerary at Dublin's famed Abbey Theatre. His first speaking role was in a 1915 production; his only line was "'Tis meet it should," which unfortunately emerged as "'Tis sheet it mould." A gust of laughter emanated from the audience, and Fitzgerald became a comedian then and there (at least, that was his story). By 1929, Fitzgerald felt secure enough as an actor to finally quit his day job with Unemployment Insurance; that same year, he briefly roomed with playwright Sean O'Casey, who subsequently wrote The Silver Tassle especially for Fitzgerald. In 1936, Fitzgerald was brought to Hollywood by John Ford to repeat his stage role in Ford's film version of The Plough and the Stars. It was the first of several Ford productions to co-star Fitzgerald; the best of these were How Green Was My Valley (1941) and The Quiet Man (1952). In 1944, Fitzgerald (a lifelong Protestant) was cast as feisty Roman Catholic priest Father Fitzgibbon in Leo McCarey's Going My Way, a role which won him an Academy Award. He spent the rest of his career playing variations on Fitzgibbon, laying on the Irish blarney rather thickly at times. His last film role was as a 110-year-old poacher in the Irish-filmed Broth of A Boy (1959). Barry Fitzgerald was the brother of character actor Arthur Shields, whose resemblance to Barry bordered on the uncanny.

Trivia: Canadian-born actor Walter Huston enjoyed an early theatrical life of roller-coaster proportions which he doggedly pursued, despite a lifelong suffering of "stage fright." Taking nickel and dime performing jobs, quitting to pursue "real" work -- an engineering job came to an end when his inept attempts to fix a town's reservoir nearly resulted in a flood -- then returning to bit roles were all part of Huston's early days. Before 1910, Huston had toured in vaudeville, worked in stock companies, tried to maintain a normal married life, and fathered a son whose life was twice as tempestuous as Walter's: future director John Huston. The barnstorming days ended when Huston got his first major Broadway role in Mr. Pitt (1924), which led to several successful New York seasons for the actor in a variety of plays. His stage and vaudeville training made him an excellent candidate for talkies; Huston launched his movie career with Gentlemen of the Press (1929), and spent the 1930s playing everything from a Mexican bandit to President Lincoln. Returning to Broadway in 1938 for the musical comedy Knickerbocker Holiday, Huston, in the role of 17th century New Amsterdam governor Peter Minuit, achieved theatrical immortality with his poignant rendition of the show's top tune, "September Song," the recording of which curiously became a fixture of the Hit Parade after Huston's death in 1950. Throughout the 1940s, Huston offered a gallery of memorable screen portrayals, from the diabolical Mr. Scratch in All That Money Can Buy (1941) to George M. Cohan's father in Yankee Doodle Dandy (1942). Still, it was only after removing his expensive false teeth and trading his fancy duds for a dusty bindlestiff's outfit that the actor would win an Academy Award, for his portrayal of the cackling old prospector Howard in The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948), directed by his son. At the time of his death, Huston was preparing to take on the part of the "world's oldest counterfeiter" in Mister 880, a role ultimately played by fellow Oscar winner Edmund Gwenn.

Trivia: Born in South Africa, roguishly handsome leading man Louis Hayward was educated in England and the Continent. Hayward briefly managed a London nightclub before he went on stage as a protégé of playwright Noel Coward. He co-starred in the London stage productions of several Broadway plays, among them Dracula and Another Language, and in 1933 made his screen bow in the British Self Made Lady. Hayward came to Broadway in 1935 to star in Point Verlaine (1935), which won him a Hollywood contract. His first American film role of note was as the hero's father in the prologue of Warner Bros.' Anthony Adverse (1936). Hayward went on to play both heroes and heels, and sometimes a charming combination thereof. He starred as Leslie Charteris' soldier-of-fortune Simon Templar in the first and the last entries in the "Saint" "B"-picture series. He also thrived in costume swashbucklers, appearing twice as the Count of Monte Cristo and once each as D'Artagnan, Captain Blood and Dick Turpin. In 1941, he was cast in a pivotal role in Orson Welles' The Magnificent Ambersons, but his part ended up on the cutting room floor. Serving as a Marine during World War II, Hayward supervised the filming of the battle of Tarawa, winning a Bronze Star for his courage under fire. After the war, he developed one of first percentage-of-profits deals, ensuring him a steady income in perpetuity for both the theatrical and TV releases of his post-1949 films. In 1954, Hayward produced and starred in the 39-week TV series The Lone Wolf (aka Streets of Danger), after buying exclusive rights to several of Louis Joseph Vance's original "Lone Wolf" stories. His later TV projects included the British series The Pursuers (1966) and the American The Survivors (1970). The first of Louis Hayward's three wives was actress Ida Lupino; the others were Peggy Morrow and June Blanchard.

Trivia: He trained for the stage at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art; in 1908 he made his London debut, and four years later debuted in New York. Remaining in the U.S., he served with the American Army in World War One. He appeared in two silent films in the '20s, but remained primarily a stage actor. With the advent of the sound era, however, he began his screen career in earnest in 1929. He played character comedy parts in many films over the next two decades, usually cast as whimsical, bemused types. He is perhaps best remembered for playing the title role in Topper (1937) and its sequels.

Trivia: June Duprez (pronounced "Du-Pray") seemed to live a charmed life for her first 22 years. Born in London in 1918 (some sources said 1921), she was the daughter of Fred Duprez, an American comedian who made his career in England's music halls. She was a natural musician, with a proficiency at the piano that seemed to make her destined for a career in the concert hall. But at 17, she decided to aim for a theatrical career instead; she joined the Coventry Repertory Company and spent eight months on the stage. In 1938, she reportedly paid for her own screen test and arranged for producer Alexander Korda, the founder and head of London Films, to see it. As a result, she was cast in two movies: a small but important role in Michael Powell's The Spy in Black (1939) and as Ethne, the romantic lead, in The Four Feathers (1939). The latter -- shot in Technicolor -- was among the largest-scale adventure films of the 1930s. Those roles led to Duprez's being cast as the Princess in Korda's grandest production of the decade, The Thief of Bagdad (1940), which proved a defining role for the actress. Her haunting beauty and understated elegance, coupled with the exotic setting of the Arabian Nights fantasy epic, made her one of the more memorable elements in a movie that was brimming over with visual splendors. As a result of the outbreak of the Second World War and Korda's financial situation, the production was moved from London to Hollywood in the spring of 1940, and when shooting was finished in September of that year, Duprez remained in Hollywood. Although she was under contract to Korda, the producer was unable to sustain a full-time independent production company in the United States, and Duprez soon found herself stranded in the film capital. Duprez was unable to get work in films initially because of her contract with Korda, and his demands (echoed by her own agent) for a very high price for her work (reportedly 50,000 dollars a picture). Once he released her, it was no less difficult for her -- The Thief of Bagdad had made such an impact that she found herself typecast in exotic Oriental roles. She couldn't find anything more than bit parts and roles in decidedly lower-ranking productions such as the serial Don Winslow of the Coast Guard. Additionally, she had lost her father just before shooting on The Thief of Bagdad had started, and all of the family's money was frozen in England, a situation that only became worse when her mother passed away soon after a voyage to Australia. (According to some contemporary accounts, her family situation was further complicated by the plight of her brother Charles, a pilot who, after being turned down by the Royal Air Force because of a vision problem, joined the Finnish Air Force. That led to his flying missions against the Soviets, but when the Germans became allied with Finland, Charles Duprez was arrested as an enemy alien and imprisoned; he managed to escape and make his way to Iceland before returning to England.) Stranded and impoverished -- and divorced, having parted with her first husband -- June Duprez would periodically hock pieces of jewelry to sustain herself, and was working at a sales job to earn enough to eat, when she crossed paths with the wife of actor Nigel Bruce. The Bruces took matters into their hands by giving the actress the couple's daughter's room to live in. She became a part of the family's extended circle, and through them she chanced to meet Cary Grant, who was a guest for dinner one night in their home. He was in the process of putting together a movie that he hoped would redefine his image on a more serious level, None But the Lonely Heart, based on a novel by Richard Llewellyn (How Green Was My Valley), and arranged for her to take a screen test. That led not only to her being cast as the female lead, but to a contract with RKO. Duprez followed that up with the starring role in And Then There Were None (1945), but she was never really comfortable with Hollywood or its demands, or its tendency to type actors, and in 1946 she joined the American Repertory Theater. She spent a major part of her career working on-stage, including a stint with Margaret Webster's drama company, and appeared in three Broadway productions, Henry VIII, What Every Woman Knows, and Androcles and the Lion. She married a second time in the late '40s and had two daughters. In later life, she lived in Rome and later in London.

Trivia: Australian-born Dame Judith Anderson (she was knighted in 1960) was for nearly 70 years one of the foremost Shakespearian actresses of the stage, playing everything from Lady MacBeth to Portia to Hamlet (yes, Hamlet). In films, she was Cruella DeVil--over and over again. Perhaps this is an oversimplification, but it is true that movies seldom took full advantage of Anderson's versatility and rich speaking voice, opting instead to confine her to unsympathetic roles on the basis of her hard, cruel facial features. She made her first film appearance as an incongrously sexy temptress in 1933's Blood Money; seven years later, she essayed her most famous screen role, the obsessed housekeeper Mrs. Danvers in Rebecca (1940). For the rest of her career, she was apparently regarded by Hollywood as an alternate for Gale Sondergaard in roles calling for refined truculence. She played the New York society dragon who "keeps" weak-willed Vincent Price in Laura (1944), the sinister wife of tormented farmer Edward G. Robinson in The Red House (1948), the imperious Queen Herodias in Salome (1953) and the wicked stepmother of Jerry Lewis in Cinderfella (1960). Some of Judith Anderson's later film roles allowed her a modicum of audience empathy, notably the aged Sioux Indian matriarch in A Man Called Horse (1970) and the High Priestess of the Vulcans in Star Trek IV: The Search for Spock (1984).

Trivia: Tweedy, eccentric character actor Richard Haydn failed at several professions -- including music hall entertainer and overseer of a Jamaican banana plantation -- before latching onto a touring British theatre troupe. While performing on radio, Haydn created the character of nerdish, nasal "fish expert" Edwin Carp, a role which earned him a spot in the American variety revue Set to Music and later resulted in several satirical books written by the actor (he would reprise the Edwin Carp character on a memorable 1964 episode of The Dick Van Dyke Show). Signed to a 20th Century-Fox film contract in 1940, Haydn's first film assignment was the comparatively straight role of Charley Wyckham in Charley's Aunt (1941). Versatile to a fault, Haydn's film roles ranged from normal, sobersided types like the schoolteacher in the Green Years (1946), to the despicable British nobleman in Forever Amber (1946). His most enjoyable performances were as fey, prissy, often mother-dominated types: Cluny Brown (1946) and Sitting Pretty (1947) were his best assignments in this vein. Haydn directed three films for Paramount, playing small roles in each (under such pseudonyms as Richard Rancyd): Miss Tatlock's Millions (1947), Dear Wife (1948) and Mr, Music (1950), The biggest hit with which Haydn was associated was 1965's The Sound of Music (1965), in which he played the vacillating theatrical entrepreneur Max Detweiller. He also sparkled in TV roles on such series as Lassie, The Man From UNCLE and Bonanza. His last film role (heavily cut before release) was a tiny expository part at the beginning of Mel Brooks' Young Frankenstein (1974). Almost as mercurial offscreen as on, Richard Haydn was averse to granting interviews, usually making comments like "There is no Richard Haydn. It is probably something you ate".

Trivia: Actor C. Aubrey Smith was, so far as many American moviegoers were concerned, the very personification of the British Empire. Even so, when young English journalist Alistair Cooke first travelled to Hollywood in the early 1930s to interview Smith, it was not to discuss the actor's four decades in show business, but to wax nostalgic on his athletic career. The son of a London surgeon, Smith played soccer for the Corinthians and cricket for Cambridge. For four years, "Round the Corner Smith" (so named because of his unique playing style) was captain of the Sussex County Cricket Club, playing championship matches throughout the Empire. When time came to choose a "real" vocation, Smith dallied with the notion of following in his dad's footsteps, then worked as a teacher and stockbroker. In 1892, at the age of 29, he finally decided to become an actor (not without family disapproval!), launching his stage career with the A. B. Tappings Stock Company. He made his London debut in 1895, and the following year scored his first significant success as Black Michael in The Prisoner of Zenda; also in 1896, he married Isobel May Wood, a union that endured for over fifty years. His subsequent stage triumphs included Shaw's Pygmalion, in which he succeeded Sir Herbert Beerbohm-Tree as Professor Henry Higgins. Despite the theatrical community's disdainful attitude towards the "flickers", Smith enthusiastically launched his film career in 1914. He was one of the co-founders of the short-lived but energetic Minerva Film Company, and by 1915 had begun making movies in America. It was his 1928 stage hit Bachelor Father that led to Smith's phenomenally successful career in talking pictures. For 18 years, he was perhaps Hollywood's favorite "professional Englishmen." He was at his best in martinet military roles, most memorably in a brace of 1939 productions: The Sun Never Sets, in which he used a wall-sized map to dutifully mark off the far-flung locations where his progeny were serving the Empire, and The Four Feathers, wherein he encapsulated his generation by crustily declaring "War was war in my day, sir!" Other notable roles in the Smith canon included Jane's father in Tarzan the Ape Man (1932), a close-minded aristocrat who turns out to be an out-of-work actor in Bombshell (1933), the intensely loyal Colonel Zapt in The Prisoner of Zenda (1937) and an outraged murder-victim-to-be in Ten Little Indians (1945). Smith briefly returned to the stage in 1941, and throughout the war years could be seen in roles ranging from single-scene cameos (The Adventures of Mark Twain, Unconquered) to full leads (1945's Scotland Yard Inspector). A recipient of the Order of the British Empire in 1938, he was knighted by King George VI in 1944, largely because of the positive image of Mother England that the actor invariably projected. The undisputed leader of Tinseltown's "British Colony," Smith also organized the Hollywood Cricket Club, taking great pride in the fact that he hadn't missed a weekend match for nearly sixty years. Sir C. Aubrey Smith was still in harness when he died of pneumonia at the age of 85; his last film appearance as Mr. Lawrence in Little Women was released posthumously in 1949.

Trivia: British music-hall performer Queenie Leonard made her film bow in 1937's The Show Goes On. Possessed of a wicked wit and boundless energy, Leonard quickly became a "pet" of Hollywood's British colony when she moved to the U.S. in 1940. With the exception of The Lodger (1944), few of her film appearances captured her natural effervescence; for the most part, she was cast as humorless domestics in such films as And Then There Were None (1944) and Life with Father (1947). In the 1950s and 1960s, she provided delightful voiceovers for such Disney cartoon features as Peter Pan (1953) and 101 Dalmatians (1961). Queenie Leonard was married twice, to actor Tom Conway and to art director Lawrence Paul Williams.

Trivia: The screen's foremost "Mad Russian" (though he was more dour than demented in most of his movie appearances), Mischa Auer was the son of a Russian navy officer who died in the Russo-Japanese war. Auer's family scattered during the Bolshevik revolution, forcing the 12-year-old Mischa to beg, borrow, and steal to survive. Orphaned during a typhus epidemic, Auer moved to New York where he lived with his maternal grandfather, violinist Leopold Auer. Inspired by the elder Auer to become a musician, Mischa entered the Ethical Culture School in New York, where he developed an interest in acting. Playing small parts on Broadway and with Eva LeGalleine's company, Auer persisted until his roles increased in size and importance. While appearing with the Bertha Kalich Company in Los Angeles, Auer was hired by Hollywood director Frank Tuttle for a minor role in the Esther Ralston comedy Something Always Happens (1927). During his first nine years in films, the tall, foreboding Auer was typecast as sinister foreigners, often playing villainous Hindu priests, Arab chieftains, and feverish anarchists. His comic gifts were finally tapped by improvisational director Gregory La Cava, who cast Auer as society matron Alice Brady's free-loading "protege" in My Man Godfrey (1936). Thereafter, the actor flourished in eccentric comedy roles in such films as 100 Men and a Girl (1937), You Can't Take It With You (1938) (in which he popularized the catchphrase "Confidentially, it stinks!"), Destry Rides Again (1939), and Hellzapoppin' (1941). During the 1940s, Auer starred in the radio series Mischa the Magnificent and headlined several Broadway flops. The following decade, he spent most of his time in Europe, playing aging oddballs in films like Orson Welles' Mister Arkadin (1955). Among Mischa Auer's last professional engagements was a 1964-1965 revival of The Merry Widow -- one of his few successful stage ventures.