Mrs. Miniver

Greer Garson (Actor) .. Kay Miniver

Born: September 29, 1904
Died: April 06, 1996
Birthplace: Manor Park, Essex, England

Trivia: Irish-born actress Greer Garson graduated with honors from the University of London and finished her post-grad work at the University of Grenoble in France. For many years, she worked efficiently as supervisor of an advertising firm, spending her spare time working in community theater. By age 24, Garson decided to take a risk and try a full-time acting career. She was accepted by the Birmingham Repertory, making her first stage appearance as an American Jewish tenement girl in Street Scene. Her London debut came in 1934 in The Tempest, after which she headlined several stage plays and musicals. While vacationing in London, MGM mogul Louis B. Mayer happened to see Garson in Old Music; entranced by her elegant manner and flaming red hair, Mayer signed the actress to an MGM contract, showcasing her in the Anglo-American film production Goodbye, Mr. Chips (1939).Garson became MGM's resident aristocrat, appearing most often as co-star of fellow contractee Walter Pidgeon. It was with Pidgeon that she appeared in Mrs. Miniver (1942), a profitable wartime morale-booster which won Oscars for Garson, for supporting actress Teresa Wright, and for the picture itself. Legend has it that Garson's acceptance speech at the Academy Awards ceremony rambled on for 45 minutes; in fact, it wasn't any more than five or six minutes, but the speech compelled the Academy to limit the time any actor could spend in accepting the award. Though not overly fond of being so insufferably ladylike in her films, Garson stayed at MGM until her contract expired in 1954; it was surprising but at the same time refreshing to see her let her hair down in the 1956 Western Strange Lady in Town. In 1960, Garson received her seventh Oscar nomination for her astonishingly accurate portrayal of Eleanor Roosevelt in Sunrise at Campobello. After that, Garson was given precious few opportunities to shine in films, though she was permitted to exhibit her still-vibrant singing voice in her last picture, 1967's The Happiest Millionaire. Following her marriage to Texas oil baron Colonel EE. "Buddy" Fogelson, Garson retired to a ranch in Santa Fe, NM, where she involved herself with various charities. Occasionally Garson returned to make guest appearances on television in ventures ranging from Hollywood Squares, to The Crown Matrimonial, a Hallmark Hall of Fame production. She had to give up even these performances in the early '80s due to chronic heart problems. In 1988, Garson underwent quadruple-bypass surgery. She died of heart failure in Dallas on April 6, 1996.

Walter Pidgeon (Actor) .. Clem Miniver

Born: September 23, 1897
Died: September 25, 1984
Birthplace: Saint John, New Brunswick, Canada

Trivia: MGM's resident "perfect gentleman," Canadian-born Walter Pidgeon was the son of a men's furnishing store owner. Young Walter Pidgeon planned to follow his brothers into a military career, but was invalided out of the service after a training accident. Pidgeon moved to Boston in 1919, where he worked as a banker until the death of his first wife. He gave up the world of finance to study singing at the New England Conservatory of Music, then in 1924 joined E.E. Clive's acting company. With the help of his friend Fred Astaire, Pidgeon (using the stage name Walter Verne) was hired as the touring partner of musical comedy star Elsie Janis; this led to his first Broadway appearance in Puzzles of 1925. Pidgeon was signed by film producer Joseph Schenck for a string of silent-film leading-man assignments in 1926, making his talkie debut in Universal's Melody of Love (1928). He starred or co-starred in several First National/Warner Bros. musicals of the early-talkie era, but this stage of his movie career ended when the musical craze petered out in 1931. Deciding to switch professional gears, Pidgeon returned to Broadway in order to establish himself as a dramatic actor. He returned to Hollywood in 1936, spending most of the next two decades at MGM, where he was cast opposite such stellar leading ladies as Jean Harlow, Myrna Loy, Rosalind Russell, and Hedy Lamarr. His most famous screen teammate was Greer Garson; the sophisticated twosome co-starred in seven films, including the Oscar-winning Mrs. Miniver. In the early '40s, MGM made the most of Pidgeon's popularity by loaning him out to other studios. It was on one of these loanouts to 20th Century Fox that the actor was cast in one of his favorite films, How Green Was My Valley (the 1941 Oscar winner). In 1955, the same year that he starred in the sci-fi favorite Forbidden Planet, Pidgeon hosted his home studio's TV anthology series The MGM Parade. After ending his 20-year association with MGM, Pidgeon returned to Broadway, where he starred in The Happiest Millionaire and Take Me Along. He continued accepting character assignments that intrigued him into the 1970s, notably the brief role of Florenz Ziegfeld in Funny Girl (1968). When asked if he minded that most of his screen and TV assignments were secondary ones in his last two decades, Walter Pidgeon replied that he always strove to follow the advice given to him by Lionel Barrymore: even when your character has nothing to do, do nothing magnificently.

Teresa Wright (Actor) .. Carol Beldon Miniver

Born: October 27, 1918
Died: March 06, 2005
Birthplace: New York, New York, United States

Trivia: After apprenticing at the Wharf Theater in Provincetown, MA, she debuted on Broadway in 1938 as the lead's understudy in Our Town; the following year her performance in the ingénue part in Life With Father caught film mogul Samuel Goldwyn's attention, and he signed her to a screen contract. Wright debuted onscreen in The Little Foxes (1941), for which she received a Best Supporting Actress Oscar nomination. The following year she was nominated in both the Best Actress and Best Supporting Actress categories for her third and fourth films, The Pride of the Yankees and Mrs. Miniver, respectively; she won the Best Supporting Actress Oscar. She remained busy onscreen through 1959, after which she appeared in only a handful of films during the next three decades. From 1942 to 1952, she was married to novelist and screenwriter Niven Busch; later she married, divorced, and remarried playwright Robert Anderson. In the '70s, she appeared in TV dramas. Her later stage work included Mary, Mary (1962) and the Broadway revival of Death of a Salesman (1975).

Richard Ney (Actor) .. Vin Miniver

Born: November 12, 1915
Died: July 18, 2004

Trivia: A Columbia University grad with an economics degree, American actor Richard Ney was sidetracked into stage and films. For his movie debut, Ney was cast as Greer Garson's eldest son in the Oscar-winning Mrs. Miniver (1942). He later married Garson, ten years his senior, accruing negative publicity during their 1947 divorce proceedings when it was alleged that he had derided her for being old. One does not malign an icon like Greer Garson, and Ney suffered for the divorce with a series of inferior films made both in Hollywood and Europe, the nadir being 1953's horrendous Babes in Baghdad. Ney forsook acting for good in 1961 to become a prominent stock market analyst and financial consultant. He gained nationwide fame in 1962 for accurately predicting the stock market crash of that year. He also wrote several best-selling books on the subject of Wall Street, and was a frequent talk-show guest and financial-advice show host.

May Whitty (Actor) .. Lady Beldon

Born: June 19, 1865
Died: May 29, 1948

Trivia: The daughter of a Liverpool newspaper editor, British actress Dame May Whitty first stepped on a London stage in 1882. Shortly afterward she was engaged by the St. James Theatre, serving mostly in an understudy capacity. From there, Whitty went into a travelling stock company, finally attaining leading roles. She had been one of the leading lights of the British stage for nearly 25 years when she appeared in her first film, Enoch Arden, in 1914; caring little for the experience, she made only a smattering of silent films thereafter. In 1918, the 53-year-old May Whitty was made a Dame Commander of the British Empire in recognition of her above-and-beyond activities performing before the troops in World War I. After a string of 1930s Broadway successes, Whitty went to Hollywood for the same reasons that many of her British contemporaries had previously done so -- the work was easy and the money, fabulous. In keeping with the regality of her name, Whitty was usually cast in high-born roles, sometimes imperious, often warmhearted. In her first talking picture Night Must Fall (1937), she is the foolhardy invalid who falls for the charms of homicidal Robert Montgomery, and as consequence winds up literally losing her head. In Hitchcock's The Lady Vanishes (1938) she plays the title role, enduring a great deal of physical exertion while never losing her poise and dignity. Whitty was also capable of playing working-class types, such as the dowdy phony psychic in The Thirteenth Chair (1937). She was twice nominated for the Oscar, first for Night Must Fall in 1937, then for Mrs. Miniver in 1942. Despite her advanced age, Whitty became extremely active on the Hollywood social circuit in the 1940s--at least for the benefit of the newsreel photographers. Whitty died at the age of 82, shortly after completing her scenes for Columbia's The Sign of the Ram (1948). She was the wife of London producer Ben Webster, and the mother of actress/playwright Margaret Webster, who wrote a 1969 biography of Whitty, The Same Only Different.

Henry Travers (Actor) .. Mr. Ballard

Born: March 05, 1874
Died: October 18, 1965

Trivia: A stage actor in the British Isles from 1894, Henry Travers settled permanently in America in 1901. Even as a comparative youngster, the pudding-faced, wispy-voiced Travers specialized in portraying befuddled old men. He was brought to Hollywood in 1933 to recreate his stage role as Father Krug in Robert E. Sherwood's Reunion in Vienna. Though often cast in amiable, self-effacing roles, Travers was perfectly capable of meatier stuff: as a downtrodden Chinese farmer in Dragon Seed (1944), he delivers a terse monologue describing how he has regained his self respect by beating his shrewish wife! Travers' best-remembered movie assignments included his Oscar-nominated portrayal of British postman Mr. Ballard in Mrs. Miniver (1942); his amusing turn as bank clerk and mystery-magazine fanatic Joseph Newton in Hitchcock's Shadow of a Doubt (1943); and, of course, his matchless performance as wingless guardian angel Clarence Oddbody in the Yuletide perennial It's a Wonderful Life (1946). After several years in retirement, Henry Travers died of arteriosclerosis at the age of 91.

Reginald Owen (Actor) .. Foley

Born: August 05, 1887
Died: November 05, 1972

Trivia: British actor Reginald Owen was a graduate of Sir Herbert Beerbohm Tree's Academy of Dramatic Arts. He made his stage bow in 1905, remaining a highly-regarded leading man in London for nearly two decades before traversing the Atlantic to make his Broadway premiere in The Swan. His film career commenced with The Letter (1929), and for the next forty years Owen was one of Hollywood's favorite Englishmen, playing everything from elegant aristocrats to seedy villains. Modern viewers are treated to Owen at his hammy best each Christmas when local TV stations run MGM's 1938 version of The Christmas Carol. As Ebeneezer Scrooge, Owen was a last-minute replacement for an ailing Lionel Barrymore, but no one in the audience felt the loss as they watched Owen go through his lovably cantankerous paces. Reginald Owen's film career flourished into the 1960s and 1970s. He was particularly amusing and appropriately bombastic as Admiral Boom, the cannon-happy eccentric neighbor in Disney's Mary Poppins (1964).

Henry Wilcoxon (Actor) .. Vicar

Born: September 08, 1905
Died: March 06, 1984
Birthplace: Roseau, Dominica, British West Indies

Trivia: Chiselled-featured leading man Henry Wilcoxon was born in the West Indies to British parents. He cut his theatrical teeth with the prestigious Birmingham Repertory Theater, then went on to play several leads in London. While starring in the stage play Eight Bells, Wilcoxon was selected to play Marc Antony in Cecil B. DeMille's Cleopatra (1934). Thus began a 25-year association with DeMille, during which time Wilcoxon functioned as actor, casting director, associate producer, producer, and close friend. When asked by interviewer Leonard Maltin about his experiences with C.B., Wilcoxon replied genially, "Does your tape last about ten hours?" Outside of the DeMille orbit, Henry Wilcoxon played leading and character parts in such films as The Last of the Mohicans (1936), If I Were King (1938), Tarzan Finds a Son (1939), Mrs. Miniver (1942) (as the jingoistic minister), A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court (1949), The War Lord (1965), and FIST (1978); he also worked extensively in television, guest starring on such programs as I Spy and Marcus Welby, M.D..

Clare Sandars (Actor) .. Judy Miniver

Christopher Severn (Actor) .. Toby Miniver

Born: August 21, 1935

Brenda Forbes (Actor) .. Gladys, the Housemaid

Born: January 14, 1909
Died: September 11, 1996

Trivia: Actress Brenda Forbes had two film careers; the first as young leading and supporting lady during the '30s and '40s, and the second as an elderly character actress of the '80s and '90s. The London-born Forbes was the daughter of actress Mary Forbes. Her brother, Ralph Forbes, acted too. Forbes launched her own acting career shortly after she moved to Hollywood with her mother. The pretty teen made her debut on the Southern California stage. Forbes' early film credits include The Perfect Gentleman (1935) and The White Cliffs of Dover (1944). When film offers slowed, Forbes turned to the stage. She returned to sporadically appear in films in the mid-'80s. Credits from that period include a trio of television films in which she starred opposite Katharine Hepburn. Laura Lansing Slept Here (1988) is among that trilogy.

Rhys Williams (Actor) .. Horace Perkins

Born: January 01, 1892
Died: May 28, 1969

Trivia: Few of the performers in director John Ford's How Green Was My Valley (1941) were as qualified to appear in the film as Rhys Williams. Born in Wales and intimately familiar from childhood with that region's various coal-mining communities, the balding, pug-nosed Williams was brought to Hollywood to work as technical director and dialect coach for Ford's film. The director was so impressed by Williams that he cast the actor in the important role of Welsh prize fighter Dai Bando. Accruing further acting experience in summer stock, Rhys Williams became a full-time Hollywood character player, appearing in such films as Mrs. Miniver (1942), The Spiral Staircase (1946), The Inspector General (1949), and Our Man Flint (1966).

Marie de Becker (Actor) .. Ada, the Cook

Born: June 13, 1880

Helmut Dantine (Actor) .. German Flier

Born: October 07, 1917
Died: May 03, 1982

Trivia: Darkly handsome Austrian-born leading man, Helmut Dantine had finely chiseled features and deep-set eyes. A fugitive from the German Anschluss of Austria, he moved to California in 1938. Soon thereafter he joined the Pasadena Community Players, gaining enough acting experience to make his film-debut playing a Nazi in International Squadron (1941) with Ronald Reagan. Soon he had cornered the market on young Nazi characters in Hollywood films, particularly after his popular performance as a downed and wounded Luftwaffe pilot in Mrs. Miniver (1942), his third film. Later Dantine was promoted to stardom by Warner Brothers, who gave him his first lead role in Edge of Darkness (1943). He went on to play leads and second leads in many films of the '40s and '50s, but made few films after 1958. In 1958 he directed the unmemorable film Thundering Jets. After marrying the daughter of Nicholas M. Schenck, the former president of Loew's Inc., he became the vice president of the Schenck Enterprises film production and distribution organization in 1959; in 1970 he became its president. In the '70s Dantine was the executive producer of three films, two of which he appeared in.

Mary Field (Actor) .. Miss Spriggins

Born: June 10, 1909

Trivia: Actress Mary Field kept her private life such a well-guarded secret that not even her most devoted fans (including several film historians who've attempted to write biographies of the actress) have ever been able to find out anything about her background. So far as anyone can ascertain, she entered films around 1937; her first important assignment was the dual role of the mothers of the title characters in The Prince and the Pauper (1937). Viewers may not know the name but they have seen the face: too thin and sharp-featured to be beautiful, too soft and kindly to be regarded as homely. Mary Field is the actress who played Huntz Hall's sister in the 1941 Universal serial Sea Raiders; the spinsterish sponsor of Danny Kaye's doctoral thesis in A Song of Born (1947); the nice lady standing in Macy's "Santa Claus" line with the little Dutch girl in Miracle on 34th Street (1947); the long-suffering music teacher in Cheaper by the Dozen (1950); and Harold Peary's bespectacled vis-a-vis in The Great Gildersleeve (1942)--to name just four films among hundreds.

Tom Conway (Actor) .. Man

Born: September 15, 1904
Died: April 22, 1967

Trivia: Born in St. Petersburg, Russia, Tom Conway was the son of a British rope manufacturer. After the Bolshevik revolution, Conway's family returned to England, where he attended a succession of boarding schools before graduating from Brighton college. Aimlessly wandering from job to job, Conway was working as a rancher when his older brother, George Sanders, achieved success as a film actor. Deciding this might be suitable work for himself, Conway gleaned some stage experience in a Manchester repertory company. Upon arriving in Hollywood in 1940, Conway was taken under the wing of brother George, who helped him find film work. When George quit the Falcon "B"-picture series at RKO in 1941, he recommended Tom as his replacement; the transition was cleverly handled in The Falcon's Brother (1942), with Tom taking over after George had been "killed." Achieving popularity as the Falcon, Conway continued in private-detective roles, playing Sherlock Holmes on radio and Mark Sabre on television. Though he reportedly amassed a fortune in excess of one million dollars during his Hollywood years, personal problems sent Conway into a downward spiral. Tom Conway died in 1967 at the age of 63; his brother George Sanders committed suicide five years later.

Paul Scardon (Actor) .. Nobby

Born: May 06, 1874
Died: January 17, 1954

Trivia: As the 19th century became the 20th, Paul Scardon enjoyed a thriving career as an actor, producer, and director on both the Australian and New York stage. Scardon entered films with the Majestic company in 1911; he went on to play such authoritative roles as General Grant in The Battle Cry of Peace. From 1912 until the end of the silent era, he was a prolific director of romantic dramas, some of which starred his wife, actress Betty Blythe. Retiring when talkies came in, Paul Scardon returned to films as an actor in 1940, essaying bit roles until he left show business permanently in 1948.

Ben Webster (Actor) .. Ginger

Born: January 01, 1864
Died: January 01, 1947

Aubrey Mather (Actor) .. George, the Innkeeper

Born: December 17, 1885
Died: January 16, 1958

Trivia: Character actor Aubrey Mather launched his stage career in 1905, touring the British provinces until his 1909 London debut in Brewster's Millions. Ten years later, Mather made his first Broadway appearance in Luck of the Navy. In British films from 1931, he essayed such supporting roles as Corin in As You Like It. Moving to Hollywood in 1940, he worked with regularity at 20th Century-Fox, playing roles like Colonel Dent in Jane Eyre (1943), the Scotland Yard chief inspector in The Lodger (1944), and, best of all, mild-mannered Nazi spy Mr. Fortune in Careful Soft Shoulders (1942). Other assignments included Professor Peagram, one of the "seven dwarfs" in Goldwyn's Ball of Fire (1941), and James Forsyte in That Forsyte Woman (1949). Like his fellow Britons Arthur Treacher and Charles Coleman, Aubrey Mather is fondly remembered for his butler roles, notably Merriman in the British The Importance of Being Earnest (1952).

Forrester Harvey (Actor) .. Huggins

Born: January 01, 1889
Died: December 14, 1945

Trivia: Diminuitive Irish actor Forrester Harvey was most often cast as cockney tradesmen, family gardeners and pub hangers-on. He entered films in 1922, but only with the advent of talking pictures were his talents exploited to full advantage. Part subservient, part pugnacious, Harvey became a fixture of Hollywood films set in England, Ireland or Scotland. His better-known film stints included Beamish in Tarzan, the Ape Man (1932) and Meredith the valet in Laurel and Hardy's A Chump at Oxford (1940). So ubiquitous was Forrester Harvey that he managed to appear in a film five years after his death! That film was Frank Capra's Riding High (1950), a remake of Broadway Bill (1934) which utilized extensive footage from the earlier film -- including virtually all of Harvey's scenes as a horse trainer.

John Abbott (Actor) .. Fred, the Porter

Born: June 05, 1905
Died: May 24, 1996

Trivia: While studying art in his native London, John Abbott relaxed between classes by watching rehearsals of a student play. When one of the actors fell ill, Abbott was invited to replace him, and at that point he switched majors. He became a professional actor in 1934, joined the Old Vic in 1936, and made his first film, Mademoiselle Docteur, in 1937; later that same year he made his first BBC television appearance. Turned down for military service during World War II, Abbott joined the Foreign Office, working as a decoder in the British Embassy in Stockholm and working in similar capacities in Russia and Canada. In 1941, he took a vacation in New York, leaving his resumé and photo with various producers, just in case something turned up. On the very last day of his vacation, he was hired for a small role in Josef von Sternberg's The Shanghai Gesture (1941), thus launching the Hollywood phase of his career. Generally cast as a fussy eccentric, Abbott was seen at his very best as whining hypochondriac Frederick Fairlie in Warner Bros.' The Woman in White (1948). He also received at least one bona fide starring role in the 1943 quickie London Blackout Murders. In the late '40s, Abbott began amassing some impressive Broadway credits in such productions as He Who Gets Slapped, Monserrat, and Waltz of the Toreadors. He also appeared in 1950's Auto da Fe, which was specifically written for him by Tennessee Williams. Though still active in films and TV into the 1980s (he played Dr. Frankenstein in the ill-fated 1984 cinemadaptation of Kurt Vonnegut's Slapstick), John Abbott spent most of his twilight years as an acting teacher. Abbott died in a Los Angeles hospital on May 24, 1996, after a prolonged illness.

Connie Leon (Actor) .. Simpson, the Maid

Born: January 01, 1880
Died: January 01, 1955

Billy Bevan (Actor) .. Conductor

Born: September 29, 1887
Died: November 26, 1957

Trivia: Effervescent little Billy Bevan commenced his stage career in his native Australia, after briefly attending the University of Sydney. A veteran of the famous Pollard Opera Company, Bevan came to the U.S. in 1917, where he found work as a supporting comic at L-KO studios. He was promoted to stardom in 1920 when he joined up with Mack Sennett's "fun factory." Adopting a bushy moustache and an air of quizzical determination, Bevan became one of Sennett's top stars, appearing opposite such stalwart laughmakers as Andy Clyde, Vernon Dent and Madelyn Hurlock in such belly-laugh bonanzas as Ice Cold Cocos (1925), Circus Today (1926) and Wandering Willies (1926). While many of Bevan's comedies are hampered by too-mechanical gags and awkward camera tricks, he was funny and endearing enough to earn laughs without the benefit of Sennett gimmickry. He was particularly effective in a series of "tired businessman" two-reelers, in which the laughs came from the situations and the characterizations rather than slapstick pure and simple. Bevan continued to work sporadically for Sennett into the talkie era, but was busier as a supporting actor in feature films like Cavalcade (1933), The Lost Patrol (1934) and Dracula's Daughter (1936). He was frequently cast in bit parts as London "bobbies," messenger boys and bartenders; one of his more rewarding talkie roles was the uncle of plumbing trainee Jennifer Jones (!) in Ernst Lubitsch's Cluny Brown (1946). Among Billy Bevan's final screen assignments was the part of Will Scarlet in 1950's Rogues of Sherwood Forest.

Florence Wix (Actor) .. Woman With Dog

Born: January 01, 1882
Died: January 01, 1956

Bobby Hale (Actor) .. Old Man

Alice Monk (Actor) .. Lady Passenger

Ottola Nesmith (Actor) .. Saleslady

Born: January 01, 1888
Died: February 07, 1972

Trivia: Seemingly placed on this earth to play hatchet-faced busybodies and spinsters, American actress Ottola Nesmith made her first film appearance in 1915's Still Waters. After a handful of subsequent films, Nesmith returned to the stage, then came back to Hollywood in 1935, where she remained until her retirement in 1965. Her screen roles include Lady Jane in Becky Sharp (1935), Mrs. Robinson in My Name Is Julia Ross (1946), and Mrs. Tugham in Cluny Brown (1946), as well as scores of anonymous nurses, governesses, maids, matrons, and senior-citizen-home residents. Ottola Nesmith's last appearance was in the Natalie Wood starrer Inside Daisy Clover (1967).

Douglas Gordon (Actor) .. Porter

Gerald Oliver Smith (Actor) .. Car Dealer

Born: June 26, 1892
Died: May 28, 1974

Trivia: A reliable British stage, screen, and radio actor, Gerald Oliver Smith came to Hollywood in 1937 and played scores of bit parts, often proper English gentlemen complete with monocle and haughty demeanor. Smith, who played the butler in Deanna Durbin's One Hundred Men and a Girl (1937), Colonel Fitzwilliam in Pride and Prejudice (1940), and Constance Bennett's major domus in As Young as You Feel (1951), retired in the mid-'50s. At the time of his death, Smith was a resident at the Motion Picture House and Hospital in Woodland Hills, CA.

Alec Craig (Actor) .. Joe

Born: January 01, 1885
Died: June 25, 1945

Trivia: In films from 1935, Scottish character actor Alec Craig perpetuated the stereotype of the penny-pinching Highlander for nearly 15 years. Craig's wizened countenance and bald head popped up in quite a few mysteries and melodramas, beginning with his appearance as the inept defense attorney in the embryonic "film noir" Stranger on the Third Floor. He essayed small but memorable roles in a handful of Val Lewton productions, notably the zookeeper in Cat People (1942). Later, he was a general hanger-on in Universal's horror films and Sherlock Holmes entries. Craig's showiest assignment was his dual role in RKO's A Date with the Falcon. The legions of fans of Lubitsch's To Be or Not to Be know Alec Craig best as the Scottish farmer who, upon being confronted by Hitler look-alike Tom Dugan, mutters to his fellow farmer James Finlayson "First it was Hess...now it's him."

Clara Reid (Actor) .. Mrs. Huggins

Harry Allen (Actor) .. William

Born: July 10, 1883

Leslie Vincent (Actor) .. Dancing Partner

Born: September 06, 1909

John Burton (Actor) .. Halliday

Born: April 06, 1904
Died: September 29, 1987

Trivia: A debonair British-born supporting player in Hollywood films from 1936, John Burton usually played men of wealth and prestige, such as Lord Nelson in Lloyds of London, Lafayette in Marie Antoinette (1938), and a Scotland Yard inspector in Phantom Raiders (1940), the latter an entry in MGM's brief "Nick Carter" series. During World War II, he was often cast as RAF officers and also did quite a bit of narration work for wartime short subjects. Burton's final film seems to have been Attack of the Mayan Mummy (1963), a Jerry Warren atrocity filmed in Mexico.

Leonard Carey (Actor) .. Haldon's Butler

Born: February 25, 1886
Died: September 11, 1977

Trivia: From his talking picture debut in Laughter (1930), British actor Leonard Carey nearly always played butlers. His more notable family-retainer assignments included The Awful Truth (1937), Heaven Can Wait (1943, a rare billed role) and Alfred Hitchcock's Strangers on a Train (1951). In an earlier Hitchcock effort, the Oscar-winning Rebecca, Carey was seen as feeble-minded beach hermit Ben, whose very presence gives heroine Joan Fontaine (and most of the audience) a good case of the creeps. In the latter stages of his career (he retired in the mid-1950s and lived to be ninety), Leonard Carey was typed in "doctor" roles in such films as Snows of Kilimanjaro (1952) and Thunder in the East (1953).

Eric Lonsdale (Actor) .. Marston

Guy Bellis (Actor) .. Barman

Born: October 24, 1886
Died: October 30, 1980

Trivia: A distinguished-looking, often bespectacled supporting actor from England, Guy Bellis lent his considerable presence to several well-remembered costume dramas in the 1930s and '40s, appearing as Buckingham in Cardinal Richelieu (1935), as Lord Charles Howard in The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex (1939), and as a host of typically British domestics. Bellis, whose characterizations often went unbilled, continued his screen career well into the 1950s.

Charles Irwin (Actor) .. Mac

Born: January 01, 1888
Died: January 12, 1969

Trivia: Before turning to films, Irish-born Charles Irwin enjoyed a long career as a music hall and vaudeville monologist. Irwin's talking-picture debut was the appropriately titled 1928 short subject The Debonair Humorist. Two years later, he proved a dapper and agreeable master of ceremonies for Universal's big-budget Technicolor musical The King of Jazz (1930). As the 1930s wore on, his roles diminished into bits and walk-ons; he fleetingly showed up as a green-tinted "Ozite" in The Wizard of Oz (1939) and appeared as the British racetrack announcer describing the progress of "Little Johnny Jones" in Yankee Doodle Dandy (1942). Before his retirement in 1959, Charles Irwin essayed such one-scene assignments as territorial representative Andy Barnes in the first few Bomba the Jungle Boy pictures and Captain Orton in The King and I (1956).

Ian Wolfe (Actor) .. Dentist

Born: November 04, 1896
Died: January 23, 1992

Trivia: Ian Wolfe was determined to become an actor even as a youth in his hometown of Canton, IL. His Broadway debut was in the warhorse Lionel Barrymore vehicle The Claw. While acting with Katherine Cornell in The Barretts of Wimpole Street in 1934, Wolfe was spotted by MGM producer Irving Thalberg, who brought the actor to Hollywood to re-create his Barretts role. Though not yet 40, Wolfe had the receding hairline and lined features necessary for aged character roles. By his own count, Wolfe appeared in over 200 films, often uncredited assignments in the roles of judges, attorneys, butlers, and shopkeepers. Some of his best screen moments occurred in producer Val Lewton's Bedlam (1946), wherein Wolfe played an 18th century scientist confined to a mental asylum for proposing the invention of motion pictures. Because his actual age was difficult to pinpoint, Wolfe kept working into the 1990s (and his nineties); he was a particular favorite of TV's MTM productions, appearing on such sitcoms as The Mary Tyler Moore Show, The Bob Newhart Show, and Rhoda. Co-workers during this period noted affectionately that, despite his many years as a professional, Wolfe was always seized with "stage fright" just before walking on the set. Though often cast in timid roles, Ian Wolfe was quite outspoken and fiercely defensive of his craft; when asked what he thought of certain method actors who insist upon playing extensions of "themselves," Wolfe snapped that he became an actor to pretend to be other people.

David Thursby (Actor) .. Farmer

Born: February 28, 1889
Died: April 20, 1977

Trivia: Short, stout Scottish actor David Thursby came to Hollywood at the dawn of the talkie era. Thursby was indispensable to American films with British settings like Werewolf of London and Mutiny on the Bounty (both 1935). He spent much of his career at 20th Century Fox, generally in unbilled cameos. Often as not, he was cast as a London bobby (vide the 1951 Fred Astaire musical Royal Wedding, in which he was briefly permitted to sing). David Thursby remained active until the mid-60s.

Charles Bennett (Actor) .. Milkman

Born: March 11, 1889

Arthur Wimperis (Actor) .. Sir Henry

Born: December 03, 1874
Died: October 14, 1953

Trivia: Educated at London's University College, Arthur Wimperis served in both the Boer War and WWI. In between his military obligations, Wimperis established himself as a newspaper illustrator and music-comedy librettist: One of his better-known stage assignments was the popular operetta The Arcadians. His film career began in the early '30s under the auspices of Alexander Korda. Frequently writing in collaboration with Lajos Biro, Wimperis contributed to the screenplays of such Korda productions as Private Life of Henry VIII (1933), Catherine the Great (1934), The Scarlet Pimpernel (1934), and The Drum (1938), and also wrote the lyrics for the songs heard in the Paul Robeson starrer Sanders of the River (1936). From 1941 until his death, Arthur Wimperis was employed in Hollywood by MGM, sharing an Academy Award for his scriptwork on 1942's Mrs. Miniver (in which he also acted) and an Oscar nomination for Random Harvest (1942).

David Clyde (Actor) .. Carruthers

Born: January 01, 1888
Died: May 17, 1945

Trivia: The older brother of film actors Andy and Jean Clyde, David Clyde was an actor/director/theatre manger in his native Scotland. Clyde came to Hollywood in 1934, by which time his brother Andy was firmly established as a screen comedian. Though the older Clyde never scaled the professional heights enjoyed by Andy, he found steady work in films for nearly a decade. His more sizeable roles included T. P. Wallaby in W.C. Fields' Man on the Flying Trapeze (1935) and Canadian constable Thompson in the excellent Sherlock Holmes opus The Scarlet Claw (1944). David Clyde was the husband of actress Fay Holden, of Andy Hardy fame.

Colin Campbell (Actor) .. Bickles

Born: March 20, 1883
Died: March 25, 1966

Trivia: Of the many movie-industryites bearing the name "Colin Campbell," the best known was the Scots-born silent film director listed below. Emigrating to the U.S. at the turn of the century, Campbell barnstormed as a stage actor and director before settling at the Selig studios in 1911. The best-remembered of his Selig directorial efforts was 1914's The Spoilers, a crude but ruggedly realistic Alaskan adventure film climaxed by a brutal fistfight. It was during his Selig years that Campbell helped to nurture the talents of future western star Tom Mix. Considered an "old-timer" and has-been by the early 1920s, Colin Campbell ended his career with such plodding time-fillers as Pagan Passions (1924) and The Bowery Bishop (1924).

Herbert Clifton (Actor) .. Doctor

Born: January 01, 1883
Died: January 01, 1947

Leslie Francis (Actor) .. Doctor

David Dunbar (Actor) .. Man in Store

Born: September 14, 1886
Died: November 07, 1953

Trivia: A busy B-Western villain of the 1920s, Australian-born David Dunbar menaced the likes of Bob Custer, Buzz Barton, and Tom Tyler. He became a riding extra after the advent of sound and died at the Motion Picture Country House and Hospital in Woodland Hills, CA.

Art Berry Sr. (Actor) .. Man in Store

Sidney D'Albrook (Actor) .. Man in Store

Born: May 03, 1886
Died: May 30, 1948

Trivia: A tough-looking actor from Chicago who was onscreen from the early 1910s, Sidney D'Albrook could play Native Americans as well as boxers, gangsters, crooked aristocrats, and the occasional lawman. D'Albrook, who sometimes spelled his first name "Sydney," later portrayed Thomas in Cecil B. DeMille's King of Kings (1927). After the changeover to sound, D'Albrook slipped into bit parts, more often than not unbilled: as one of the trustees in You Can't Take It With You (1938), "man in store" in Mrs. Miniver (1942), a reporter in The Perils of Pauline (1947), and a waiter in Julia Misbehaves (1948) -- his final film.

Gene Byram (Actor) .. Glee Club Member

Virginia Bassett (Actor) .. Glee Club Member

Aileen Carlyle (Actor) .. Glee Club Member

Irene Denny (Actor) .. Glee Club Member

Herbert Evans (Actor) .. Glee Club Member

Born: April 16, 1882
Died: February 10, 1952

Trivia: In American films from 1917, British actor Herbert Evans played countless butlers, bobbies, store clerks, porters and pursers. Evans usually differentiated between his high-born and "common" characters through the simple expedient of sporting a monocle. Only a handful of his characters actually had names; among the few that did were Count von Stainz in MGM's Reunion in Vienna (1933) and Seneschal in Warners' The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938). Towards the end of his career, Herbert Evans exhibited a heretofore untapped skill for farce comedy in a brace of Three Stooges shorts, Who Done It? (1949) and Vagabond Loafers (1949).

Eula Morgan (Actor) .. Glee Club Member

Vernon Steele (Actor) .. Glee Club Member

Born: January 01, 1882
Died: January 01, 1955

Vivie Steele (Actor) .. Glee Club Member

Marek Windheim (Actor) .. Glee Club Member

Born: January 01, 1895
Died: December 01, 1960

Trivia: A former operatic tenor, diminutive (about five feet tall) Polish-born character comedian Marek Windheim usually portrayed excitable characters, such as headwaiters and hotel clerks, often sporting a fake French accent. Making his Hollywood debut as the ballet master in Shall We Dance? (1937), Windheim popped up in countless, usually unbilled bit parts until at least 1946.

Tudor Williams (Actor) .. Glee Club Member

Kitty Watson (Actor) .. Contestant

Hugh Greenwood (Actor) .. Contestant

Sybil Bacon (Actor) .. Contestant

Flo Benson (Actor) .. Contestant

Harold Howard (Actor) .. Judge

Billy Engle (Actor) .. Townsman

Born: January 01, 1888
Died: January 01, 1966

Louise Bates (Actor) .. Miniver Guest

Edward Cooper (Actor) .. Waiter

Born: January 01, 1882
Died: January 01, 1956

Walter Byron (Actor) .. Man in Tavern

Born: June 11, 1901
Died: January 01, 1972

Trivia: In films from 1926, British leading man Walter Byron was of the George Brent school of actors. That is, Byron was handsome and virile enough for romantic leads, but not so dominating a screen presence that he deflected focus from his glamorous leading ladies. His first major role was opposite Gloria Swanson in the ill-fated Erich Von Stroheim film Queen Kelly (1929). Of his early talkie roles, one stands out: the humorless Frink in The Last Flight (1931), who disapproves of the hedonism of "lost generation" revelers Johnny Mack Brown, Elliott Nugent, and David Manners, but has no qualms about attempting to rape their mutual lady friend Helen Chandler. Later on, Byron could be seen in starched-collar character parts like Walshingham in Mary of Scotland (1936). Still only in his thirties, Walter Byron disappeared from film in 1939.

Ted Billings (Actor) .. Man in Tavern

Born: January 01, 1879
Died: January 01, 1947

Dan Maxwell (Actor) .. Man in Tavern

Frank Atkinson (Actor) .. Man in Tavern

Born: January 01, 1893
Died: January 01, 1963

Trivia: Lancashire-born character actor Frank Atkinson appeared in at least 130 films in the 33 years between the advent of sound in 1930 and his death in 1963. His work extended to both sides of the Atlantic -- although he worked primarily in his native England, he did go over to Hollywood in the mid-1930's, where he seemed to keep busy at Fox. He was often in roles too small to be credited, but that didn't stop him from doing a memorable turn (or two) in pictures. Tall and slender, and with gaunt facial features that lent themselves to looks of eccentricity, and with a highly cultured speaking voice, he could melt unobtrusively into a scene, as an anonymous bit-player, or could, with the utterance of a few words or a look, transform himself into a wryly comedic presence -- he played everything from jailers, guards, garage attendants, and soldiers to upper-class twits, and, in a manner unique to his era, sometimes got into some gender-bending portrayals. His most interesting attributes were shown off in a pair of Raoul Walsh-directed features: Sailor's Luck (1933), starring James Dunn and Sally Eilers, in which Atkinson plays an overtly gay swimming pool attendant in an important scene in the middle of the picture; and in Me And My Gal (1932), an excellent romantic comedy/thriller starring Spencer Tracy and Joan Bennett, in which he turns in a brief (but wonderfully rewarding) comedic tour-de-force as the funniest of a trio of effete, drunken waterfront tavern patrons, debating the matter of the type of fish with which one of them has been assaulted. His roles were usually not named, but Atkinson was highly regarded enough so that in The Green Cockatoo, he gets some memorable lines as a wry-toned butler named Provero, whose name becomes a comical issue. Atkinson also wrote screenplays and scripts for various British films in the 1930's, in genres ranging from light comedy to thrillers. Toward the end of his career, he also worked extensively in British television, on series such as Z-Cars and The Saint, and in 1963, the year of his death -- at age 69 -- he was in three television episodes as well as chalking up an uncredit appearance in Murder At the Gallop. In more recent years, thanks to the activity of various researches and scholars, and revivals of Fox's pre-Code features, especially Sailor's Luck, Atkinson has been mentioned in articles and books dealing with gay images and personae in Hollywood films.

Henry King (Actor) .. Man in Tavern

Born: June 24, 1888
Died: June 29, 1982

Trivia: After a start as a stage actor, Henry Kingbegan appearing in films in 1912, and by 1915 was directing. King made numerous dramas, westerns, and actioners over the teens, achieving special distinction with his 1919 comedy 23-1/2 Hours Leave. Two years later he co-wrote, produced, and directed the landmark rural drama Tol'able David; his other important works of the '20s include The White Sister (1923), Romola (1925), and The Winning of Barbara Worth (1926). A prolific and reliable craftsman, King made numerous handsome films into the early 1960s, most notably two outstanding films with Gregory Peck: a psychological drama of World War II, Twelve O'Clock High (1942), and the moody, intelligent western The Gunfighter (1950). King's career is also notable for his feeling for Americana, as found in 1930s projects as different as State Fair (1933), Jesse James (1939), and In Old Chicago (1938), as well as in such later films as Remember the Day (1941) and Wait 'Til the Sun Shines, Nellie (1952). He was also skilled at helming historical dramas (Lloyds of London [1936], The Song of Bernadette [1943]) and adventure tales (The Black Swan [1942], Prince of Foxes [1949]).

Gil Perkins (Actor) .. Man in Tavern

Born: January 01, 1899
Died: March 28, 1999

Trivia: Born in Northern Australia, Gil Perkins distinguished himself in his teen years as a champion athlete, trackman and swimmer. Perkins left his homeland at age 18 to go to sea; nearly a decade later he found himself in Hollywood, where he sought out acting roles, the first of which was in The Divine Lady (1928). Though a personable screen presence, he found that his true forte was stunt work. Over a period of thirty years, he doubled for dozens of male stars, from William Boyd ("Hopalong Cassidy") to Red Skelton (whom he closely resembled). While he was willing to tackle the riskiest of stunts, Perkins was far from reckless, always working out in advance the safest and least painful method of pulling off his "gags." He was especially in demand for slapstick comedies, eventually receiving so many pies in the face that the very sight of the pastry made him physically ill. Perkins did more acting than stunting in the latter stages of his career (he can be seen as Jacob of Bethlehem in 1965's The Greatest Story Ever Told), and also kept busy as a stunt coordinator. A most engaging and candid interview with Gil Perkins can be found in Bernard Rosenberg and Harry Silverstein's 1970 book of Hollywood reminiscences, The Real Tinsel.

John Power (Actor) .. Man in Tavern

Thomas Louden (Actor) .. Mr. Verger

Born: September 03, 1874
Died: March 15, 1948

Trivia: An elderly character actor from Belfast, Northern Ireland, white-haired, distracted-looking Thomas Louden began popping up in Hollywood movies in the late '30s, playing the priest in Prison Break (1938), Madeleine Carroll's butler in Honeymoon in Bali (1939), Mr. Verger in Mrs. Miniver (1942), Old Tom in The Corn Is Green (1946), and Barbara Stanwyck's butler in The Strange Case of Martha Ivers (1946). He died of a stroke in his Hollywood home.

Peter Lawford (Actor) .. Pilot

Born: September 07, 1923
Died: December 24, 1984
Birthplace: London, England

Trivia: Peter Lawford was a bushy-browed, slender, aristocratic, good-looking British leading man in Hollywood films. At age eight he appeared in the film Poor Old Bill (1931); seven years later he visited Hollywood and appeared in a supporting role as a Cockney boy in Lord Jeff (1938). In 1942 he began regularly appearing onscreen, first in minor supporting roles; by the late 1940s he was a breezy romantic star, and his studio promised him (incorrectly) that he would be the "new Ronald Colman." His clipped British accent, poise, looks, and charm made him popular with teenage girls and young women, but he outgrew his typecast parts by the mid '50s and spent several years working on TV, starring in the series Dear Phoebe and The Thin Man. Off screen he was known as a jet-setter playboy; a member of Frank Sinatra's "Rat Pack," he married Patricia Kennedy and became President John F. Kennedy's brother-in-law. From the 1960s he appeared mainly in character roles; his production company, Chrislaw, made several feature films, and he was credited as executive producer of three films, two in co-producer partnership with Sammy Davis Jr. In 1971-72 he was a regular on the TV sitcom The Doris Day Show. He divorced Kennedy in 1966 and later married the daughter of comedian Dan Rowan. He rarely acted onscreen after the mid-'70s.

Stanley Mann (Actor) .. Workman

Born: January 01, 1883
Died: January 01, 1953

Leslie Sketchley (Actor) .. Policeman

Born: January 01, 1901
Died: January 01, 1972

Emerson Fisher-Smith (Actor) .. Policeman

Frank Baker (Actor) .. Policeman

Born: October 11, 1892
Died: December 30, 1980

Trivia: Onscreen from 1912, Australian-born Frank Baker was the brother of that country's foremost silent-screen action hero, Snowy Baker. Like Snowy, Frank settled in Hollywood in the 1920s and embarked on a long career as a stuntman and bit player. Rarely onscreen for more than minutes, Baker later portrayed Major Martling in the 1935 serial The New Adventures of Tarzan, George Davis in Clark Gable's Parnell (1937), Lord Dunstable in That Forsyte Woman (1949), and even General Robert E. Lee in Run of the Arrow (1957). Retiring in the mid-'60s, Frank Baker spent his final years at the Motion Picture Country House and Hospital. He died in 1980 at the age of 88.

Colin Kenny (Actor) .. Policeman

Born: January 01, 1888
Died: December 02, 1968

Trivia: Irish actor Colin Kenny was in films from 1917. Kenny was seen as Cecil Greystoke, Tarzan's romantic rival, in Tarzan of the Apes (1918) and its sequel The Romance of Tarzan (1918). In talkies, Kenny was consigned to such single-scene roles as the Talking Clock in Alice in Wonderland (1933) and Sir Baldwin in The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938); he also showed up as British-India military officers and Scotland Yard operatives. Colin Kenny kept working until 1964, when he and dozens of his fellow British expatriates appeared in My Fair Lady (1964).

Louise M. Bates (Actor) .. Miniver Guest

St. Luke's Choristers (Actor) .. Chorus

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