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

Trivia: One of Hollywood's most luminous actresses, Gene Tierney remains best remembered for her performance in the title role of the 1944 mystery classic Laura. Born November 20, 1920, in Brooklyn, NY, Tierney was the daughter of a wealthy insurance broker, and was educated in Connecticut and Switzerland; she traveled in social circles, and at a party met Anatole Litvak, who was so stunned by her beauty that he requested she screen test at Warner Bros. The studio offered a contract, but the salary was so low that her parents dissuaded her from signing; instead, Tierney pursued a stage career, making her Broadway debut in 1938's Mrs. O'Brien Entertains. A six-month contract was then offered by Columbia, which she accepted. However, after the studio failed to find her a project, she returned to New York to star on-stage in The Male Animal. The lead in MGM's National Velvet was offered her, but when the project was delayed Tierney signed with Fox, where in 1940 she made her film debut opposite Henry Fonda in the Fritz Lang Western The Return of Frank James.A small role in Hudson's Bay followed before Tierney essayed her first major role in John Ford's 1940 drama Tobacco Road. She then starred as the titular Belle Starr. Fox remained impressed with her skills, but critics consistently savaged her work. Inexplicably and wholly inappropriately, she was cast as a native girl in three consecutive features: Sundown, The Shanghai Gesture, and Son of Fury. Closer to home was 1942's Thunder Birds, in which Tierney starred as a socialite; however, she was just as quickly returned to more exotic fare later that same year for China Girl. A supporting turn in Ernst Lubitsch's classic 1943 comedy Heaven Can Wait signalled an upward turn in Tierney's career, however, and the following year she starred as the enigmatic Laura in Otto's Preminger's masterful mystery. After 1945's A Bell for Adano, she next appeared as a femme fatale in the melodrama Leave Her to Heaven, a performance which won her a Best Actress Academy Award nomination -- her most successful film to date.Tierney continued working at a steady pace, and in 1946 co-starred with Tyrone Power in an adaptation of the W. Somerset Maugham novel The Razor's Edge. The 1947 The Ghost and Mrs. Muir was her last major starring role; from 1948's The Iron Curtain onward, she appeared primarily in smaller supporting performances in projects including the 1949 thriller Whirlpool and Jules Dassin's classic 1950 noir Night and the City. After 1952's Way of a Gaucho, Tierney's Fox contract expired, and at MGM she starred with Spencer Tracy in Plymouth Adventure, followed by the Clark Gable vehicle Never Let Me Go. The latter was filmed in Britain, and she remained there to shoot Personal Affair. While in Europe, Tierney also began a romance with Aly Khan, but their marriage plans were met by fierce opposition from the Aga Khan; dejectedly she returned to the U.S., where she appeared in 1954's Black Widow.After 1955's The Left Hand of God, Tierney's long string of personal troubles finally took their toll, and she left Hollywood and relocated to the Midwest, accepting a job in a small department store; there she was rediscovered in 1959, and Fox offered her a lead role in the film Holidays for Lovers. However, the stress of performing proved too great, and days into production Tierney quit to return to the clinic. In 1960 she married Texas oil baron Howard Lee. Two years later, Fox announced her for the lead role in Return to Peyton Place, but she became pregnant and dropped out of the project. Finally, Tierney returned to screens in 1962's Advise and Consent, followed a year later by Toys in the Attic. After 1964's The Pleasure Seekers, she again retired, but in 1969 starred in the TV movie Daughter of the Mind. Remaining out of the public eye for the next decade, in 1979 Tierney published an autobiography, Self-Portrait, and in 1980 appeared in the miniseries Scruples; the performance was her last -- she died in Houston on November 6, 1991.

Trivia: American actor Jackie Cooper was in movies at the age of three; his father had abandoned the family when Jackie was two, forcing his mother to rely upon the boy's acting income to keep food on the table. Shortly after earning his first featured part in Fox Movietone Follies of 1929. Cooper was hired for producer Hal Roach's "Our Gang" two-reeler series, appearing in 15 shorts over the next two years. The "leading man" in many of these comedies, he was most effective in those scenes wherein he displayed a crush on his new teacher, the beauteous Miss Crabtree. On the strength of "Our Gang," Paramount Pictures signed Cooper for the title role in the feature film Skippy (1931), which earned the boy an Oscar nomination. A contract with MGM followed, and for the next five years Cooper was frequently co-starred with blustery character player Wallace Beery. Cooper outgrew his preteen cuteness by the late 1930s, and was forced to accept whatever work that came along, enjoying the occasional plum role in such films as The Return of Frank James (1940) and What a Life! (1941). His priorities rearranged by his wartime Naval service, Cooper returned to the states determined to stop being a mere "personality" and to truly learn to be an actor. This he did on Broadway and television, notably as the star of two popular TV sitcoms of the 1950s, The People's Choice and Hennessey. Cooper developed a taste for directing during this period (he would earn an Emmy for his directorial work on M*A*S*H in 1973), and also devoted much of his time in the 1960s to the production end of the business; in 1965 he was appointed vice-president in charge of production at Screen Gems, the TV subsidiary of Columbia Pictures. From the early 1970s onward, Cooper juggled acting, producing and directing with equal aplomb. Modern audiences know Cooper best as the apoplectic Perry White in the Christopher Reeve Superman films. In 1981, Cooper surprised (and sometimes shocked) his fans with a warts-and-all autobiography, Please Don't Shoot My Dog. Cooper died in May 2011 at the age of 88 following a sudden illness.

Trivia: Henry Hull, the son of a Louisville drama critic, made his Broadway acting debut in either 1909 or 1911, depending on which "official" biography one reads. After leaving the stage to try his luck as a gold prospector and mining engineer, Hull was back on the boards in 1916, the same year that he made his first film at New Jersey's World Studios. While his place of honor in the American Theater is incontestable (among his many Broadway appearances was Tobacco Road, in which he created the role of Jeeter Lester), Hull's reputation as film actor varies from observer to observer. An incredibly mannered movie performer, Hull was a bit too precious for his leading roles in One Exciting Night (1922) and The Werewolf of London (1935); he also came off as shamelessly hammy in such character parts as the crusading newspaper editor in The Return of Frank James (1940). Conversely, his calculated mannerisms and gratuitous vocal tricks served him quite well in roles like the obnoxious millionaire in Hitchcock's Lifeboat (1944) and the Ernie Pyle-like war correspondent in Objective Burma (1945). A playwright as well as an actor, Hull worked on such plays as Congratulations and Manhattan. One of Henry Hull's last film appearances was the typically irritating role of a small-town buttinsky in The Chase (1966).

Trivia: Though best known to modern filmgoers as a horror star, cadaverous John Carradine was, in his prime, one of the most versatile character actors on the silver screen. The son of a journalist father and physician mother, Carradine was given an expensive education in Philadelphia and New York. Upon graduating from the Graphic Arts School, he intended to make his living as a painter and sculptor, but in 1923 he was sidetracked into acting. Working for a series of low-paying stock companies throughout the 1920s, he made ends meet as a quick-sketch portrait painter and scenic designer. He came to Hollywood in 1930, where his extensive talents and eccentric behavior almost immediately brought him to the attention of casting directors. He played a dizzying variety of distinctive bit parts -- a huntsman in Bride of Frankenstein (1935), a crowd agitator in Les Miserables (1935) -- before he was signed to a 20th Century Fox contract in 1936. His first major role was the sadistic prison guard in John Ford's Prisoner of Shark Island (1936), which launched a long and fruitful association with Ford, culminating in such memorable screen characterizations as the gentleman gambler in Stagecoach (1939) and Preacher Casy ("I lost the callin'!") in The Grapes of Wrath (1940). Usually typecast as a villain, Carradine occasionally surprised his followers with non-villainous roles like the philosophical cab driver in Alexander's Ragtime Band (1938) and Abraham Lincoln in Of Human Hearts (1938). Throughout his Hollywood years, Carradine's first love remained the theater; to fund his various stage projects (which included his own Shakespearean troupe), he had no qualms about accepting film work in the lowest of low-budget productions. Ironically, it was in one of these Poverty Row cheapies, PRC's Bluebeard (1944), that the actor delivered what many consider his finest performance. Though he occasionally appeared in an A-picture in the 1950s and 1960s (The Ten Commandments, Cheyenne Autumn), Carradine was pretty much consigned to cheapies during those decades, including such horror epics as The Black Sleep (1956), The Unearthly (1957), and the notorious Billy the Kid Meets Dracula (1966). He also appeared in innumerable television programs, among them Twilight Zone, The Munsters, Thriller, and The Red Skelton Show, and from 1962 to 1964 enjoyed a long Broadway run as courtesan-procurer Lycus in A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum. Though painfully crippled by arthritis in his last years, Carradine never stopped working, showing up in films ranging from Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex But Were Afraid to Ask (1972) to Peggy Sue Got Married (1984). Married four times, John Carradine was the father of actors David, Keith, Robert, and Bruce Carradine.

Trivia: Born in Hungary, actor J. Edward Bromberg moved with his family to the US while still an infant. Bromberg was certain from an early age that he would pursue an acting career, taking several odd jobs (silk salesman, candy maker, laundry worker) to finance his training. He studied with the Moscow Art Theatre, then made his American stage bow at age 23 at the Greenwich Village Playhouse. The corpulent Bromberg conveyed a perpetual air of ulcerated, middle-aged tension, allowing him to play characters much older than himself. He worked extensively with the Theatre Guild, coming to Hollywood's attention for his work in the 1934 Pulitzer Prize winning play Men in White. With 1936's Under Two Flags, Bromberg began his long association with 20th Century-Fox, playing a vast array of foreign villains, blustering buffoons and the occasional gentle philosopher. He made a triumphant return to Broadway in 1948 as a Louis Mayer-like movie mogul in Clifford Odets' The Big Knife, but the euphoria would not last. Accused of being a Communist sympathizer, Bromberg was blacklisted from Hollywood and forced to seek work in England. Though only 47 when he fled the country, Bromberg looked twenty years older due to the strain of withstanding the accusations of the witchhunters. J. Edward Bromberg died in London in 1951, at age 48; the reason given was "natural causes," since a broken heart is not officially regarded as a fatal condition.

Trivia: For nearly two decades in Hollywood, Scottish-born actor Donald Meek lived up to his name by portraying a series of tremulous, shaky-voiced sycophants and milquetoasts -- though he was equally effective (if not more so) as nail-hard businessmen, autocratic schoolmasters, stern judges, compassionate doctors, small-town Babbitts, and at least one Nazi spy! An actor since the age of eight, Meek joined an acrobatic troupe, which brought him to America in his teens. At 18 Meek joined the American military and was sent to fight in the Spanish-American War. He contracted yellow fever, which caused him to lose his hair -- and in so doing, secured his future as a character actor. Meek made his film bow in 1928; in the early talkie era, he starred with John Hamilton in a series of New York-filmed short subjects based on the works of mystery writer S. S. Van Dyne. Relocating to Hollywood in 1933, Meek immediately found steady work in supporting roles. So popular did Meek become within the next five years that director Frank Capra, who'd never worked with the actor before, insisted that the gratuitous role of Mr. Poppins be specially written for Meek in the film version of You Can't Take It With You (1938) (oddly, this first association with Capra would be the last). Meek died in 1946, while working in director William Wellman's Magic Town; his completed footage remained in the film, though he was certainly conspicuous by his absence during most of the proceedings.

Trivia: While studying for the ministry, George Barbier participated in a seminary pageant, and thereafter worshipped at the altar of acting. He was a stage actor of some 40-years' standing when he made his first film in 1930. Barbier was usually cast as corpulent business executives and flustered fathers. You might remember him as the theatrical agent of Faye Templeton (Irene Manning) in 1942's Yankee Doodle Dandy; he's the fellow who described George M. Cohan as "the whole United States wrapped up in one pair of pants." Barbier also played the small-town doctor with literary aspirations in The Man Who Came to Dinner (1942). George Barbier died at age 80, shortly after finishing his last film, Lucky Night.

Trivia: The son of vaudeville monologist Julius Tannen, Charles Tannen launched his own film career in 1936. For the rest of his movie "life," Tannen was most closely associated with 20th Century Fox, playing minor roles in films both large (John Ford's The Grapes of Wrath) and not so large (Laurel and Hardy's Great Guns). Rarely receiving screen credit, Tannen continued playing utility roles well into the 1960s, showing up in such Fox productions as The Fly (1958) and Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea (1961). Charles Tannen's older brother, William, was also an active film performer during this period.

Trivia: The son of American actress Lillian Elliott, Lloyd Corrigan began working in films as a bit actor in the silent era. But Corrigan's heart was in writing and directing during his formative professional years. He was among Raymond Griffith's writing staff for the Civil War comedy Hands Up (1926), and later penned several of Bebe Daniels' Paramount vehicles. Corrigan worked on the scripts of all three of Paramount's "Fu Manchu" films (1929-30) starring Warner Oland; he also directed the last of the series, Daughter of the Dragon (1930). In contrast to his later light-hearted acting roles, Corrigan's tastes ran to mystery and melodrama in most of his directing assignments, as witness Murder on a Honeymoon (1935) and Night Key (1937). In 1938, Corrigan abandoned directing to concentrate on acting. A porcine little man with an open-faced, wide-eyed expression, Corrigan specialized in likable businessmen and befuddled millionaires (especially in Columbia's Boston Blackie series). This quality was often as not used to lead the audience astray in such films as Maisie Gets Her Man (1942) and The Thin Man Goes Home (1944), in which the bumbling, seemingly harmless Corrigan would turn out to be a master criminal or murderer. Lloyd Corrigan continued acting in films until the mid '60s; he also was a prolific TV performer, playing continuing roles in the TV sitcoms Happy (1960) and Hank (1965), and showing up on a semi-regular basis as Ned Buntline on the long-running western Wyatt Earp (1955-61).

Trivia: Trained in prep school for a career as a businessman, Baltimore-born Russell Hicks chucked his predestined lifestyle for a theatrical career, over the protests of his family. As an actor, Hicks came full circle, spending the bulk of his career playing businessmen! Though he claimed to have appeared in D.W. Griffith's Birth of a Nation (1915) and Intolerance (1916), Hicks' earliest recorded Hollywood job occured in 1920, when he was hired as an assistant casting director for Famous Players (later Paramount). Making his stage debut in It Pays to Smile, Hicks acted in stock companies and on Broadway before his official film bow in 1934's Happiness Ahead. The embodiment of the small-town business booster or chairman of the board, the tall, authoritative Hicks frequently used his dignified persona to throw the audience off guard in crooked or villainous roles. He was glib confidence man J. Frothingham Waterbury in W.C. Fields' The Bank Dick (1940) ("I want to be honest with you in the worst way!"), and more than once he was cast as the surprise killer in murder mysteries. Because of his robust, athletic physique, Hicks could also be seen as middle-aged adventurers, such as one of The Three Musketeers in the 1939 version of that classic tale, and as the aging Robin Hood in 1946's Bandit of Sherwood Forest (1946). Russell Hicks continued accepting film assignments until 1956's Seventh Cavalry.

Trivia: New Jersey-born Victor Kilian drove a laundry truck before joining a New England repertory company when he was 18. His first break on Broadway came with the original 1924 production of Eugene O'Neill's Desire Under the Elms. After making a few scattered appearance in East Coast-produced films, Kilian launched his Hollywood career in 1936. Often cast as a brutish villain (notably "Pap" in the 1939 version of Huckleberry Finn) Kilian duked it out with some of moviedom's most famous leading men; while participating in a fight scene with John Wayne in 1942's Reap the Wild Wind, Kilian suffered an injury that resulted in the loss of an eye. Victimized by the Blacklist in the 1950s, Kilian returned to TV and film work in the 1970s. Fans of the TV serial satire Mary Hartman Mary Hartman will have a hard time forgetting Kilian as Mary's grandpa, a.k.a. "The Fernwood Flasher." In March of 1979, Victor Kilian was murdered in his apartment by intruders, a scant few days after a similar incident which culminated in the death of another veteran character actor, Charles Wagenheim.

Trivia: Stage actor Edward McWade entered films as a screenwriter in 1913. From 1920 until his death, the wizened, wispy-haired McWade showed up in dozens of utility roles, playing professors, doctors, justices of the peace and ministers. In 1936, he essayed the title role in the Perry Mason mystery The Case of the Stuttering Bishop. His last screen assignment was Mr. Gibbs, one of the few "lonely old gentlemen" who isn't slipped a poisoned glass of elderberry wine in Arsenic and Old Lace (1944). Edward McWade was married to actress Margaret McWade, famed as one of the "pixillated" sisters in Mr. Deeds Goes to Town (1936).

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: 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: Tall, imposing American actor Frank Shannon made his screen debut in 1913's The Prisoner of Zenda. Shannon then returned to the stage until beckoned back to Hollywood in the early '30s. Though mostly confined to bit roles until his retirement in 1943, Shannon managed to play a few substantial supporting parts, including Captain McTavish in Warner Bros.' Torchy Blaine series. Frank Shannon is most fondly remembered as the brilliant, bearded Dr. Zarkov in the three Flash Gordon serials produced by Universal between 1936 and 1940.

Trivia: A specialist in hard-boiled dame roles, Barbara Pepper made her first film appearances as a Goldwyn Girl; she was prominent among the nubile slaves who were garbed only in floor-length blonde wigs in Goldwyn's Roman Scandals (1933). Pepper's one shot at stardom came in King Vidor's Our Daily Bread, in which she played the sluttish vamp who led hero Tom Keene astray; unfortunately, the film was not successful enough, nor her performance convincing enough, to lead to larger parts. She spent the next 30 years in supporting roles and bits, most often playing brassy goodtime girls. A radical weight gain in the 1950s compelled Pepper to alter her screen image; she quickly became adept at portraying obnoxious middle-aged tourists, snoopy next-door neighbors, belligerent landladies, and the like. Pepper's best friend in Hollywood was Lucille Ball, another alumna of the Goldwyn Girl ranks. At one point in 1951,Pepper was a candidate for the role of Ethel Mertz on I Love Lucy. In her last decade, Barbara Pepper gained a whole new crop of fans thanks to her recurring appearances as Doris Ziffel on the TV sitcom Green Acres.

Trivia: Kentucky-born Louis Mason enjoyed a long stage and screen career playing a vast array of rustic characters. In films from 1933, Mason could often as not be found portraying feuding hillbillies, backwood preachers, moonshiners and other assorted rubes. When he was given a character name, it was usually along the lines of Elmo and Lem. An off-and-on member of John Fords stock company, Mason showed up in Ford's Judge Priest (1934), Steamboat Round the Bend (1935) and Young Mr. Lincoln (1939), among others. Louis Mason remained active at least until 1953.

Trivia: The son of a Los Angeles minister, three-year-old Matthew Beard won out of 350 kids to replace Allen "Farina" Hoskins as the resident black child in Hal Roach's Our Gang comedies. Nicknamed Hercules in his first two-reeler, Teacher's Pet (1930), Beard was thereafter known as Stymie because of his innocent offscreen habit of confounding his elders. Wearing an oversized derby hat (borrowed from Roach comedian Stan Laurel), the clever, resourceful, eternally grinning Stymie quickly became one of the most popular Our Gang kids. After appearing in 36 Our Gang shorts, Beard began freelancing in 1935, playing small roles in big films like Captain Blood (1935), Jezebel (1938), The Great Man Votes (1939), and Stormy Weather (1943). Alas, after dropping out of high school in 1945, he fell into a bad crowd, spending the next two decades in and out of jails for committing crimes to feed his drug habit. Miraculously, Beard completely turned his life around in the mid-'60s when he entered the drug rehab organization Synanon. Looking remarkably like the eternally optimistic Stymie of old, Matthew Beard made a successful show business comeback in the 1970s, appearing in such films as The Buddy Holly Story (1978) and such weekly TV series as Good Times and The Jeffersons.

Trivia: Stage actor William Pawley made his movie bow in 1931's Over the Hill. Especially busy in crime melodramas, Pawley essayed tough-guy roles in such films as I Am a Fugitive From a Chain Gang (1932), Bullets or Ballots (1936), San Quentin (1937), and a handful of two-reelers in MGM's Crime Does Not Pay series. He occasionally forsook double-breasted suits and snap-brim hats for the garb of a hillbilly (1934's Kentucky Kernels) or cowboy (he played a stage actor impersonating the recently deceased Jesse James in 1941's The Return of the Frank James). Active until 1942, William Pawley worked steadily for 20th Century Fox during the last months of his screen career.

Trivia: American character actor Frank Sully worked as a vaudeville and Broadway comedian before drifting into movies in 1935. Often typecast as musclebound, doltish characters, the curly-haired, lantern-jawed Sully was seen in a steady stream of hillbilly, GI and deputy sheriff roles throughout the '40s and '50s. He was prominently cast as Noah in John Ford's memorable drama The Grapes of Wrath (1940), one of the few times he essayed a non-comic role. During the '50s, Sully accepted a number of uncredited roles in such westerns as Silver Lode (1954) and was a member in good standing of the Columbia Pictures 2-reel "stock company," appearing as tough waiters, murderous crooks and jealous boyfriends in several short comedies, including those of the Three Stooges (Fling in the Ring, A Merry Mix-Up etc.) Frank Sully's last screen appearance was a bit as a bartender in Barbra Streisand's Funny Girl (1968).

Trivia: From 1931's Vice Squad onward, American character actor Davison Clark could be seen onscreen as scores of lawyers, doctors and big-city officials. One of Clark's meatier assignments (albeit still a minor one) was as Horace Greeley in The Mighty Barnum. As an member of Cecil B. DeMille's unofficial stock company, Clark essayed bits in DeMille's The Plainsman (1936), The Buccaneer (1938), Union Pacific (1939), The Story of Dr. Wassell (1947), Unconquered (1948) and Samson and Delilah (1949). Davison Clark made his last film appearance in the 1951serial Zombies of the Stratosphere.

Trivia: Dignified British-born stage actor Edmund Elton appeared in the original Broadway production of Rex Beach's The Spoilers back in 1908. Moonlighting in movies between stage work, Elton also played Capulet in the Metro version of Romeo and Juliet (1916), but his main screen career came in the 1930s and '40s when he turned up in such diverse fare as Stella Dallas (1937), Abe Lincoln in Illinois (1940, as Rutledge), and even Gene Autry's Back in the Saddle (1941). Elton's final Broadway appearance came in 1931, when he supported Helen MacKellar in the short-lived Bloody Laughter. He retired in 1941 and passed away a decade later.

Trivia: American actor Sherry Hall popped up in innumerable bit roles between 1932 and 1951. Hall was typically cast as reporters, bartenders, court clerks, and occasional pianists. He was particularly busy at 20th Century-Fox in the 1940s, nearly always in microscopic parts. Sherry Hall's larger screen assignments included the "TV Scientist" in Dick Tracy Returns (1938), Robert Buelle in The Shadow Returns (1946), John Gilvray in The Prowler (1951), and Mr. Manners in The Well, a 1951 film populated almost exclusively by small-part players.

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: Irish-born Robert McKenzie was already a theatrical showman of some renown by the time he made his first film appearance in 1921. The barrel-chested, snaggle-toothed McKenzie appeared in dozens of westerns and comedies, usually as a bombastic lawman or backwoods con artist. Even when he played bits (which was often), his raspy voice and hyena-like laugh always identified him. His more memorable feature-film roles included W. C. Fields' drinking buddy Charlie Bogle in You're Telling Me (1934), larcenous Judge Roy Dean in Gene Autry's Sing, Cowboy, Sing (1937), and the jolly captain who rents Laurel & Hardy a broken-down boat in Saps at Sea (1940). In addition, he appeared in hundreds of short subjects, playing opposite the likes of Our Gang, Andy Clyde, Charley Chase and the Three Stooges. In 1927, McKenzie tried his hand at screenwriting with the low-budget western The White Outlaw. Robert McKenzie and his actress-wife Eva had three daughters, all of whom acted in films at one time or another; their daughter Ella was the wife of comedian Billy Gilbert.

Trivia: Adrian Morris was the son of prominent Broadway actors William Morris and Etta Hawkins, and the younger brother of stage and film star Chester Morris. Adrian launched his own film career in 1931, spending the next decade playing minor roles as cops, sheriffs, gangsters, and the like. He played the loquacious carpetbagger who promised a gathering of freed slaves that they'd each receive "40 acres and a mule" in Gone With the Wind (1939), and was seen as the heartless hiring agent who delivers impossible ultimatums to the transient "Okies" in The Grapes of Wrath (1940). Adrian Morris died unexpectedly at the age of 38.

Trivia: A tall character actress turned dress extra and a fixture in Hollywood films 1929-1948, Almeda Fowler was a schoolteacher prior to embarking on a long stage career that included appearances opposite the legendary Nora Bayes in Ladies First and Her Family Tree, Mrs. Leslie Carter in Stella Dallas, Frank Craven in 19th Hole, and the Marx Brothers in Cocoanuts. Fowler made her screen debut in Party Girl (1930) and would be found near the bottom of cast lists for the next two decades, often playing nurses, receptionists, and chair women. More often than not, her credit would simply read "woman" or "bystander."

Trivia: A University of Florida football star, Dale Van Sickel entered films in the very early '30s as an extra. Playing hundreds of bit parts at almost every studio in Hollywood, Van Sickel earned his true fame as one of Republic Pictures' famous stuntmen, specializing in fisticuffs and car stunts. He appeared in nearly all the studio's serials in the 1940s, including The Tiger Woman (1944), The Purple Monster Strikes (1945), and The Black Widow (1947), almost always playing several bit roles as well. Often the studio cast their leading men because of their resemblance to Van Sickel and the other members of the serial stunt fraternity that included Tom Steele, Dave Sharpe, and Ted Mapes. A founding member and the first president of the Stuntmen's Association of Motion Pictures, Van Sickel later performed in innumerable television shows as well as such diverse feature films as Spartacus (1960), It's a Mad Mad Mad Mad World (1963), and The Love Bug (1969).

Trivia: Character actor Frank Melton was under contract at Fox Studios from 1933 until the early 1940s. Apparently a favorite of humorist Will Rogers, Melton was prominently cast in six of Rogers' movie vehicles. In other films, he could usually be found in bit roles, often playing displaced Southerners in the Big City. Before his retirement in 1944, Frank Melton free-lanced at Columbia and Warner Bros.

Trivia: General purpose actor Lester Dorr kept himself busy in every size role there was in Hollywood, in a screen career lasting nearly 35 years. Born in Massachusetts in 1893, he was working on Broadway in the late 1920s, including the cast of Sigmund Romberg's New Moon (1928). The advent of talking pictures brought Dorr to Hollywood, where, working mostly as a day-player, he began turning up in everything from two-reel shorts (especially from Hal Roach) in the latter's heyday) to major features (including Michael Curtiz's Female and Raoul Walsh's The Bowery, both 1933), in which he usually had tiny parts, often in crowd scenes, with an occasional line or two of dialogue -- in the mid-1930s he was literally appearing in dozens of movies each year, though usually with scarcely more than a minute's screen time in any one of them. Dorr was also one of the founding members of the Screen Actors Guild.He was almost as busy after World War II, and starting in 1951 he also started working in television, ranging from westerns to anthology series. He slowed down significantly in the 1960s, by which time he was in his seventies. Among his rare screen credits are two of his most oft-repeated large- and small-screen appearances -- in W. Lee Wilder's Killers From Space, the public domain status of which has made it a ubiquitous presence on cable television and low-priced VHS and DVD releases, he is the gas station attendant who spots fugitive scientist Peter Graves' car; and in The Adventures of Superman episode The Mind Machine, repeated for decades as part of the ever-popular series, Dorr plays the hapless but well-intention school bus driver whose vehicle (with three kids inside) is stolen by mentally unhinged mob witness Harry Hayden. His last three appearances were in full-blown feature films: Richard Quine's Hotel (1967), Gene Kelly's Hello Dolly (1969), and Peter Bogdanovich's At Long Last Love (1975).

Trivia: The brother of western star Ken Maynard, Kermit Maynard was a star halfback on the Indiana University college team. He began his career as a circus performer, billed as "The World's Champion Trick and Fancy Rider." He entered films in 1926 as a stunt man (using the stage name Tex Maynard), often doubling for his brother Ken. In 1927, Kermit starred in a series for Rayart Films, the ancestor of Monogram Pictures, then descended into minor roles upon the advent of talking pictures, taking rodeo jobs when things were slow in Hollywood. Independent producer Maurice Conn tried to build Kermit into a talkie western star between 1931 and 1933, and in 1934 launched a B-series based on the works of James Oliver Curwood, in which the six-foot Maynard played a Canadian mountie. The series was popular with fans and exhibitors alike, but Conn decided to switch back to straight westerns in 1935, robbing Maynard of his attention-getting gimmick. Kermit drifted back into supporting roles and bits, though unlike his bibulous, self-indulgent brother Ken, Kermit retained his muscular physique and square-jawed good looks throughout his career. After his retirement from acting in 1962, Kermit Maynard remained an active representative of the Screen Actors Guild, lobbying for better treatment and safer working conditions for stuntpersons and extras.

Trivia: With a flattened proboscis that ended just above his upper lip, James Lew Meehan was a highly visible presence in budget Westerns from the very early '20s to at least 1944. A lead villain in silent oaters starring lesser-known cowboys like Lester Cuneo, Bill Patton, and Al Hoxie, Meehan's florid acting style can be enjoyed today in such silents as Blazing Arrows (1922) and Red Blood (1926) -- the now veteran actor usually found himself demoted to that of anonymous henchman after the advent of sound. He remained busy, though, clocking in at a total of 121 sound Westerns and 11 serials between 1929 and 1944.

Trivia: Kernan Cripps was recruited from the Broadway stage to play Trask in the early talkie melodrama Alibi (1929). This proved to be Cripps' most extensive screen role; thereafter, he was consigned to bits and minor roles, usually as muscle-bound cops, bodyguards and bartenders. Looking quite comfortable in uniform, he essayed such roles as the umpire in the baseball comedy Ladies Day (1943) and the train conductor in the noir classic Double Indemnity (1944). Kernan Cripps also proved to be a handy man to have around in such action-packed fare as the Republic serial Federal Operator 99.

Trivia: Tall, wiry, and with a bushy mustache, Missouri native Nelson McDowell usually played ranchers, homesteaders, and, increasingly emaciated, comic undertakers, and did it so well that he remains a favorite of B-Western fans everywhere. Often cast as a comic sidekick during the silent era, McDowell also played the music teacher in The Last of the Mohicans twice, in 1920 and 1932, and was Sowerberry in Monogram's version of Oliver Twist (1933). Although the parts grew increasingly smaller, McDowell remained a welcome addition to any B-Western cast until ill health forced his retirement in 1940. Sadly, the veteran actor ended his own life, reportedly with a gun he had used in many of his Western roles. At the time of his death, McDowell was functioning as a caretaker for a Hollywood apartment building in which he also resided.

Trivia: At age 4, joined his local drama club.Appeared in ads for Sunny D, Legos and Warbutons when he was a kid.His performance in When Did You Last See Your Father? (2007) earned him multiple recognitions, including being named A Star of Tomorrow by Screen International, Trailblazer by the Edinburgh International Film Festival, and nominations for Best Newcomer at the British Independent Film Awards and the Evening Standard British Film Awards.As a model, has worked with brands like Burberry and Prada.His college thesis had a psychoanalytical angle.Arrived in Vienna two weeks before filming of Vienna Blood started to explore the city.Featured in Teen Vogue's October 2008 Young Hollywood issue.

Trivia: Veteran Broadway actor Arthur Byron came to Hollywood at the dawn of the talkie era, when his clear, precise vocal intonations proved to be a sound recordist's dream. Generally cast as high-ranking politicos and business executives, Byron's best screen assignments included the reform-minded warden in 20,000 Years in Sing Sing (1932) and the title character in The President Vanishes (1934). He could also use his veneer of respectability for dishonest purposes, as witness his Depression-era profiteer in Stand Up and Cheer (1934). Already well-on in years when he entered films, Arthur Byron retired after playing Mr. Erickson in John Ford's Prisoner of Shark Island (1936).

Trivia: Milton Kibbee was the younger brother of prominent stage and screen character actor Guy Kibbee. Looking like a smaller, skinnier edition of his brother, Milton followed Guy's lead and opted for a show business career. The younger Kibbee never reached the professional heights enjoyed by Guy in the '30s and '40s, but he was steadily employed in bit parts and supporting roles throughout the same period. Often cast as desk clerks, doctors and park-bench habitues, Milton Kibbee was most frequently seen as a pencil-wielding reporter, notably (and very briefly) in 1941's Citizen Kane.

Trivia: Bald-pated, raspy-voiced stage and vaudeville comedian James C. Morton came to films in 1930. Working almost exclusively in short subjects, Morton spent the better part of his movie career with the Hal Roach and Columbia comedy units. He provided support for such two-reel funsters as Laurel and Hardy, the Three Stooges, Andy Clyde, Charley Chase, ZaSu Pitts, Thelma Todd, Patsy Kelly, Leon Erroll, and Our Gang. His film roles ran the gamut from bartenders to high-ranking military officers; he was frequently decked out with a lavish toupee, which inevitably ended up on the floor in a mangled heap. He was at his best as the cunning woodchopper who talks bandits Laurel and Hardy out of their money in The Devil's Brother (1933); as Paul Pain, "the heartthrob of millions," in Three Stooges' A Pain in the Pullman (1936), and frontier sharpster Quackenbush in Gene Autry's Public Cowboy No. One (1937), one of his handful of Western-feature assignments. Reportedly, James C. Morton served as director of the 1918 film A Daughter of Uncle Sam.

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