Trivia: Entertainer Judy Garland was both one of the greatest and one of the most tragic figures in American show business. The daughter of a pushy stage mother, Garland and her sisters were forced into a vaudeville act called the Gumm Sisters (her real name), which appeared in movie shorts and at the 1933 Chicago World's Fair. It was clear from the outset that Judy was the star of the act, and, as such, was signed by MGM as a solo performer in 1936. The studio adored Garland's adult-sounding singing but was concerned about her puffy facial features and her curvature of the spine. MGM decided to test both Garland and another teenage contractee, Deanna Durbin, in a musical "swing vs. the classics" short subject entitled Every Sunday (1936). The studio had planned to keep Durbin and drop Garland, but, through a corporate error, the opposite took place. Nevertheless, MGM decided to allow Garland her feature film debut in another studio's production, just in case the positive audience response to Every Sunday was a fluke. Loaned to 20th Century Fox, Garland was ninth-billed in Pigskin Parade (1936), but stole the show with her robust renditions of "Balboa" and "Texas Tornado." Garland returned to MGM in triumph and was given better opportunities to show her stuff: the "Dear Mr. Gable" number in Broadway Melody of 1938, "Zing Went the Strings of My Heart" in Listen, Darling (1938), and so on. When MGM planned to star 20th Century Fox's Shirley Temple in The Wizard of Oz, Garland almost didn't get her most celebrated role, but the deal fell through and she was cast as Dorothy. But even after this, the actress nearly lost her definitive screen moment when the studio decided to cut the song "Over the Rainbow," although finally kept the number after it tested well in previews. The Wizard of Oz made Garland a star, but MGM couldn't see beyond the little-girl image and insisted upon casting her in "Hey, kids, let's put on a show" roles opposite Mickey Rooney (a life-long friend). Garland proved to the world that she was a grown-up by marrying composer David Rose in 1941, after which MGM began giving her adult roles in such films as For Me and My Gal (1942) -- although still her most successful film of the early '40s was in another blushing-teen part in Meet Me in St. Louis (1944). Once very popular on the set due to her infectious high spirits, in the mid-'40s Garland became moody and irritable, as well as undependable insofar as showing up on time and being prepared. The problem was an increasing dependency upon barbiturates, an addiction allegedly inaugurated in the 1930s when the studio had Garland "pepped up" with prescription pills so that she could work longer hours. Garland also began drinking heavily, and her marriage was deteriorating. In 1945, she married director Vincente Minnelli, with whom she had a daughter, Liza, in 1946. By 1948, Garland's mood swings and suicidal tendencies were getting the better of her, and, in 1950, she had to quit the musical Annie Get Your Gun. That same year, she barely got through Summer Stock, her health problems painfully evident upon viewing the film. Before 1950 was half over, Garland attempted suicide, and, after recovering, was fired by MGM. Garland and Vincente Minnelli divorced in 1951, whereupon she married producer Sid Luft, who took over management of his wife's career and choreographed Garland's triumphant comeback at the London Palladium, a success surpassed by her 1951 appearance at New York's Palace Theatre. Luft strong-armed Warner Bros. to bankroll A Star Is Born (1954), providing Garland with her first film role in four years. It was Garland's best film to date, earned her an Oscar nomination for Best Actress, and allowed her a wealth of songs to sing and a full range of emotions to play.Riding high once more, Garland was later reduced to the depths of depression when she lost the Oscar to Grace Kelly. Her subsequent live appearances were wildly inconsistent, and her film performances ranged from excellent (Judgment at Nuremberg [1961]) to appallingly undisciplined (A Child Is Waiting [1963]). Her third marriage on the rocks, Garland nonetheless pulled herself together for an unforgettable 1961 appearance at Carnegie Hall, which led indirectly to her 1963 weekly CBS series, The Judy Garland Show. As with most of the significant moments in Garland's life, much contradictory information has emerged regarding the program and her behavior therein; the end result, however, was its cancellation after one year, due less to the inconsistent quality of the series (it began poorly, but finished big with several "concert" episodes) as to the competition of NBC's Bonanza. Garland's marriage to Sid Luft, which produced her daughter Lorna, ended in divorce in 1965, and, from there on, Garland's life and career made a rapid downslide. She made a comeback attempt in London in 1968, but audiences ranged from enthusiastic to indifferent -- as did her performances. A 1969 marriage to discotheque manager Mickey Deems did neither party any good, nor did a three-week engagement at a London nightclub, during which Garland was booed off the stage. On June 22, 1969, Judy Garland was found dead in her London apartment, the victim of an ostensibly accidental overdose of barbiturates. Despite (or perhaps because of) the deprivations of her private life, Garland has remained a show business legend. As to her untimely demise, Ray Bolger summed it up best in his oft-quoted epitaph: "Judy didn't die. She just wore out."

Trivia: The son of a house painter, American actor/dancer Ray Bolger grew up in a middle-class Boston neighborhood called Dorchester. Bolger knew what he wanted to do in life the moment he saw Broadway entertainer Fred Stone literally bounce on stage in a Boston production of Jack O'Lantern. "That moment opened up a whole new world for me" Bolger would remember; after a relatively aimless childhood, he determined to become a performer himself. Starting out in vaudeville as a dancer, Bolger developed a loose-limbed ad lib style that would win him starring spots in such 1930s Broadway musicals as Life Begins at 8:40 and On Your Toes; in the latter, Bolger introduced Richard Rodgers' "Slaughter on Tenth Avenue". Signed by MGM in 1936 for a featured solo in The Great Ziegfeld, Bolger was given a $3,000 per week contract and was expected to take whatever part was assigned him. But Bolger balked when he was cast as the Tin Man in the studio's Wizard of Oz. He felt the role was too confining for his talents, so Bolger convinced the film's Scarecrow, Buddy Ebsen, to switch parts with him. This move, of course, assured film immortality for Bolger, but wasn't so beneficial for Ebsen, whose allergic reaction to the Tin Man's silver makeup forced him to drop out of the film and be replaced by Jack Haley. Bolger's movie career pretty much took second place to his Broadway work in the 1940s. In 1948, Bolger was awarded the lead in a musical version of Charley's Aunt titled Where's Charley? It was when the daughter of one of the production people began singing his lyrics back to him during out-of-town tryouts that Bolger, in league with composer Frank Loesser, developed the "everybody sing" chorus for the song "Once in Love With Amy". Bolger repeated his role in the 1952 filmization of Where's Charley (1952), then continued his Broadway career with intermittent film appearances into the 1960s. He also starred in a 1953 TV series, alternately titled The Ray Bolger Show and Where's Raymond?, which was so bad that even he was uncharacteristically putting himself down before the inevitable cancellation. Bolger suffered a few career setbacks on stage in the early 1960s, and his villain role in Disney's Babes in Toyland (1961) hardly showed him to best advantage, but the performer prospered as a nightclub performer during the rest of the decade in a nostalgic (if slightly lachrymose) act which recalled his past song hits. Bolger charmed live audiences with his still-athletic hoofing skills into the 1970s. In the twilight of his career, Bolger was allowed to sparkle in guest spots on such TV programs as The Partridge Family, The Love Boat, Baretta, and even PBS's Evening at the Pops.

Trivia: "How many lion parts are there?" Thus did Bert Lahr, a major comedy star on Broadway, sum up his occasionally interesting but largely unfulfilling film career. Dropping out of school at 15 to join a juvenile vaudeville act, Lahr worked his way up from second comic to top banana on the Columbia Burlesque Circuit. Along the way, he married his first wife Mercedes Delpino, who was also his onstage partner. Lahr gained popularity with lowbrows and the intelligentsia alike with his grotesque facial expressions, his apparently ad-libbed one-liners, and his plaintive expletive "gnaang, gnaang gnaang!" He graduated from vaudeville to Broadway in 1927, going on to star in such fondly remembered musicals as Hold Everything, Flying High, and Life Begins at 8:40, performing such classic routines as "Stop in the name of the station house!" and "Woodman, Spare That Tree!" Lahr made his starring film debut in the 1931 movie adaptation of Flying High, but never truly caught on as a screen personality, possibly because his gestures and reactions were too broad for the comparatively intimate medium of films. Lahr's greatest screen performance -- indeed, one of the greatest performances ever captured on celluloid -- was as the Cowardly Lion in the perennial favorite The Wizard of Oz (1939). In the mid-1950s, Lahr gained a latter-day reputation as a sensitive dramatic actor when he was co-starred with E.G. Marshall in the first New York staging of Samuel Beckett's Waiting for Godot. For all his onstage buffoonery, Lahr was an intensely troubled, unhappy man, a fact driven home in Notes on a Cowardly Lion, a biography written by Lahr's son, theatre critic John Lahr. After making more money than he'd ever seen in his life as star of a series of potato chip commercials, Bert Lahr was cast as Professor Spats in the nostalgic 1967 film The Night They Raided Minsky's; Lahr died of cancer during production, forcing the producers to use a double for the actor in several scenes.

Trivia: A kindergarten teacher in her native Cleveland, Margaret Hamilton began her acting career there in community theatre and with the prestigious Cleveland Playhouse. In 1933, Hamilton was invited to repeat her stage role of the sarcastic daughter-in-law in the Broadway play Another Language for the MGM film version. Though only in her early '30s, the gloriously unpretty Hamilton subsequently played dozens of busybodies, gossips, old maids, and housekeepers in films bearing such titles as Hat, Coat and Glove (1934), Way Down East (1935) and These Three (1936). She proved an excellent foil for such comedians as W.C. Fields (in 1940's My Little Chickadee) and Harold Lloyd (in 1946's The Sin of Harold Diddlebock). Her most famous film assignment was the dual role of Elvira Gulch and the Wicked Witch of the West in the imperishable 1939 gem The Wizard of Oz -- a role which nearly cost her her life when her green copper makeup caught fire during one of her "disappearance" scenes. She played several smaller but no less impressive roles at 20th Century-Fox, including the first-scene plot motivator in People Will Talk (1951) and Carrie Nation in Wabash Avenue (1950). She alternated her film work with stage assignments in the 1950s and 1960s, frequently returning to her home base at the Cleveland Playhouse. Achieving "icon" status in the 1970s by virtue of The Wizard of Oz, Hamilton sometimes found herself being cast for "camp" effect (e.g. Robert Altman's Brewster McCloud), but also enjoyed some of her best-ever parts, including the role of professorial occult expert in the 1972 TV movie The Night Strangler. Despite her menacing demeanor, Hamilton was a gentle, soft-spoken woman; she was especially fond of children, and showed up regularly on such PBS programs as Sesame Street and Mister Rogers. In the 1970s, Margaret Hamilton added another sharply etched portrayal to her gallery of characters as general-store proprietor Cora on a popular series of Maxwell House coffee commercials -- one of which ran during a telecast of The Wizard of Oz!

Trivia: Years before he played The Wizard (and four other roles) in The Wizard of Oz (1939), Frank Morgan had a long career in silent film and was nominated for a Best Actor Oscar for The Affairs of Cellini (1934). Although adept at flustered and bewildered comic roles, Morgan was also an excellent dramatic actor; he was an ever-present figure in many of MGM's classiest films of the period. Highlights of his career include: Hallelujah, I'm a Bum (1931), When Ladies Meet (1933), Bombshell (1933), Cat and the Fiddle (1934), The Good Fairy (1935), Naughty Marietta (1935), Dimples (1936), The Last of Mrs. Cheyney (1937), Saratoga (1937), Rosalie (1937), Boom Town (1940), Broadway Melody of 1940 (1940), and The Three Musketeers (1948). He was especially effective in The Shop Around the Corner (1940), The Mortal Storm (1940), The Human Comedy (1943) and Summer Holiday (1948), the musical remake of Thornton Wilder's Ah, Wilderness. Morgan died while filming Annie Get Your Gun, in which he would have played Buffalo Bill. The most famous anecdote about Morgan is that while rehearsing for The Wizard of Oz, he went looking for a coat to help him feel like Prof. Marvel; the one he found in a second-hand shop turned out to have originally belonged to Wizard author L. Frank Baum.

Trivia: The daughter of a circus clown, American actress Billie Burke became a musical comedy star in the early 1900s under the aegis of two powerful Broadway producers: Charles K. Frohman and Florenz Ziegfeld. Burke's career soared after her marriage to Ziegfeld, which was both a blessing and a curse in that some newspaper critics, assuming she wouldn't have reached the heights without her husband's patronage, gave her some pretty rough reviews. Actually, she had a very pleasant singing voice and ingratiating personality, not to mention natural comic gift that transferred well to the screen for her film debut in Peggy (1915). She had no qualms about adjusting to characters roles upon reaching 40, but she was devoted to the stage and didn't intend to revive her film career - until the crippling debts left behind by Ziegfeld after his death in 1932 forced her to return full-time to Hollywood. At first concentrating on drama, Burke found that her true strength lay in comedy, particularly in portraying fey, birdbrained society ladies. She worked most often at MGM during the sound era, with rewarding side trips to Hal Roach studios, where she appeared as Mrs. Topper in the three Topper fantasy films, played Oliver Hardy's wife in Zenobia (1939) and earned an academy award nomination for her performance in Merrily We Live (1938). A tireless trouper, Burke appeared in virtually every sort of film, from rugged westerns like Sgt. Rutledge (1960) to a pair of surprisingly good two-reel comedies for Columbia Pictures in the late 1940s. If she had done nothing else worthwhile in her seven-decade career, Burke would forever be remembered for her lighthearted portrayal of Glinda the Good Witch in the matchless The Wizard of Oz (1939). In addition to her many film portrayals, Burke was herself portrayed in two filmed biographies of Flo Ziegfeld: Myrna Loy played her in The Great Ziegfeld (1936), while Samantha Eggar took the role in the TV-movie Ziegfeld: The Man and His Women (1978).

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

Trivia: Comic actor and acrobat George Ministeri performed on-stage with a trio and as a solo act. He also appeared in a few films such as The Wizard of Oz and The Terror of Tiny Town.

Trivia: Diminutive actor Jerry Maren achieved his first coup as a performer (and an incredible one at that) in 1939, when cast as one of the Munchkins in Victor Fleming's seminal The Wizard of Oz. He subsequently built up a remarkably extensive resumé, from the early '40s through the late '90s, with portrayals of midgets, gremlins, mole men, and any other character parts that called for thespians of small stature. Seinfeld aficionados may recall Maren as the aging circus performer father of Kramer's buddy Mickey in "The Yada Yada," a 1997 episode of that sitcom. Maren made headlines in 2007, when -- after a period of onscreen inactivity -- he was selected for his own star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

Trivia: Stage actor Tyler Brooke was signed to a movie contract by Hollywood producer Hal Roach in 1926. One of Brooke's first assignments was a role opposite fading movie queen Theda Bara in the nonsensical two-reeler Madame Mystery. He ended his association with Roach on a discordant note, suing fellow contractee Oliver Hardy for $100,000 in 1929, claiming that Hardy had fractured his arm during an overzealous game of pool. Brooke made the transition to talkies as a society rake in Cecil B. DeMille's first sound films, Dynamite (1929) and Madam Satan (1930). Throughout the 1930s, Brooke showed up in several period pictures like Belle of the Nineties (1934) and Alexander Graham Bell (1939), usually cast as a handlebar-mustached quartet singer or musical hall comedian. He was quite amusing as the young Gay-90s swain in the prologue of 1940's Kitty Foyle. Tyler Brooke was 51 when he died of self-inflicted carbon monoxide poisoning.

Trivia: St. Louis native Mickey Carroll started learning the ins and outs of showbusiness when he was just a child, taking dance lessons at a local theater at age seven. Within a few years, he was booking professional jobs in Hollywood, lending his voice to radio for ads like the "Call for Philip Morris" series. Standing at only 4'7", Carroll's size made him a natural fit for casting as one of the Munchkins in 1939's The Wizard of Oz. However, after appearing in the little person ensemble, the actor would largely retire from show business, providing only occasional interviews about his experiences working on the film over the decades to come. In 2009, Carroll passed away at the age of 89.

Trivia: The career of American comic actor Billy Bletcher stretched from the silent era through the late 1960s. He began performing in vaudeville at age 19 and began his screen career at the Vitagraph Studios, Brooklyn in 1913. While there, he sometimes directed John Bunny comedies. He and his wife Arline came to Hollywood in 1917 where he became a stock comic for Mack Sennett's troupe and played in many two-reelers. Bletcher's career didn't really take off until the early 1920s when he teamed up with Billy Gilbert. Together they appeared in a number of Hal Roach two-reelers. Bletcher later appeared as Spanky's father in the "Our Gang" shorts. He also provided voices for Disney cartoon characters and in features such as The Wizard of Oz (as a Munchkin). Bletcher also did voiceovers on television. His last film appearance was in 1969.

Trivia: Born to normal-sized parents, American midget actor Billy Curtis avoided the usual onus of freak-show employment as a youth, opting for a mainstream job as a shoe clerk. Encouraged by stock company actress Shirley Booth (later the star of the TV sitcom Hazel) to take a little person role in a stage production, Curtis soon became a professional actor, with numerous Broadway musical productions to his credit. Curtis' big movie season was 1938-39: he was cast as the Mayor of the Munchkin City in The Wizard of Oz (albeit with voice dubbed by Pinto Colvig) and as the cowboy hero of the all-midget western Terror of Tiny Town (1938). This last epic was one of the few instances that Curtis was cast as a good guy; many of his screen characters were ill-tempered and pugnacious, willing to bite a kneecap if unable to punch out an opponent. Seldom accepting a role which demeaned or patronized little people, Curtis played an obnoxious vaudeville performer compelled to sit on Gary Cooper's lap in Meet John Doe (1941), a suspicious circus star willing to turn Robert Cummings over to the cops in Saboteur (1942), and one of the many fair-weather friends of "The Incredible Shrinking Man" in the 1957 film of the same name. Billy Curtis' career thrived into the 1970s, notably with solid parts in the Clint Eastwood western High Plains Drifter (1973) and the crime-caper meller Little Cigars (1973), in which he had second billing as a diminutive criminal mastermind. Billy Curtis retired in the 1980s, except for the occasional interview or Wizard of Oz cast reunion.

Trivia: Ken Darby was a distinguished American composer noted for his excellent film adaptations of Broadway musicals. He shared Oscars with Alfred Newman for his work with The King and I (1956), Camelot (1967), and with Andre Previn for Porgy and Bess (1959). Darby has also written original songs for films during the mid 1950s. He started working with films in the 1940s. Other films he has worked with include South Pacific (1958) and How the West Was Won (1963).

Trivia: Although he had already established himself as a substantial vaudeville, Broadway and film star, congenial light comedian and singer Jack Haley will forever be remembered as the Tin Woodsman in 1939's The Wizard of Oz. Look for him opposite Shirley Temple in The Poor Little Rich Girl (1936) and Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm (1938), Alice Faye in Wake Up and Live (1937) and Alexander's Ragtime Band (1938) and Judy Garland in an early role in Pigskin Parade (1936). Retired from the screen in the '50s, he started a highly successful second career in real estate. His son, producer Jack Haley, Jr., not only became an important film-history documentarian but was also briefly married to Liza Minnelli, daughter of his father's Oz co-star Judy Garland.

Trivia: A circus, vaudeville, and Broadway comedian, actor Charles Grapewin was an unlikely prospect for screen stardom. In fact, he had already retired as an entertainer prior to the advent of sound in films, and before he'd ever even considered appearing in movies. Born in Xenia, OH, in 1869 (although some say 1875), he ran away from home to join a circus at the age of ten, and, by his teens, was a roller-skating acrobat who graduated to be a high-wire performer and trapeze artist. Grapewin made a living at these high-risk activities for a few years, but was later drawn to the footlights, and eventually joined a regional stock company (although he found himself back on the trapeze in the 1880s). He moved between the theater and the circus until the end of the decade, when he landed a role in a New York production of the play Little Puck. He never returned to the circus, although he did lend his skills to vaudeville for a time, writing plays along the way and touring with one of his own productions, The Awakening of Mr. Pipp, for a dozen years. In 1919, Grapewin gave up performing to join General Motors; having invested his money wisely, he retired. One day in late 1929, however, he and his wife Anna awakened to discover that their net worth -- once two million dollars -- had dropped to about 200. He subsequently wrote four books that proved successful enough to earn him some income. At around the same time, the arrival of sound in movies was also creating a demand for actors who could read lines well, and, as he had retired to California, Grapewin decided to give Hollywood a try. He ended up a busy actor throughout the 1930s in increasingly visible roles, including key supporting parts in films such as The Grapes of Wrath. But it was in 1941 that he achieved stardom when he was cast as Lester Jeeter in John Ford's Tobacco Road. That movie made Grapewin into a major screen actor, but, given his advanced age, he never took full advantage of it. He declined to sign a long-term contract, preferring to use his energy at his time of life picking and choosing his roles. He always seemed to be offered the best character parts, and remained busy right to the end of the '40s. Ironically, Tobacco Road dropped out of distribution in later decades, and Grapewin's became best known for playing a part that was probably one of the shortest of his movie career: Dorothy's Uncle Henry in The Wizard of Oz, in which he displayed some of his comedic skills to great advantage in the historic film's opening segment.

Trivia: Diminutive American character actor Harlan Briggs was a vaudeville and stage performer since the turn of the century. After spending three years on Broadway appearing with Walter Huston in the stage adaptation of Sinclair Lewis' Dodsworth, Briggs was brought to Hollywood in 1935 to re-create his role. Because of post-production delays, movie audiences first saw Briggs not in Dodsworth but in Selznick's The Garden of Allah (1936). In films until 1952's Carrie, Harlan Briggs most often portrayed small-town big-wigs, usually with an oversized pipe clamped between his teeth; his most memorable role was as the eminently bribeable Doctor Stall in W.C. Fields' The Bank Dick (1940).

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).

Trivia: Enjoying a much longer career than almost all of her contemporaries, Lois January not only became a favorite guest speaker at B-Western reunions of the 1980s and 1990s, but continued to appear in films and on television well into her seventies. A dancer from the age of two, January was discovered performing in a high school play by a talent scout from Universal. That was apparently in the very early '30s, but she did little more than cheesecake layouts until 1933, when she began turning up with some frequency in Columbia comedy shorts. She became a star in B-Westerns, however, of which she did a total of 12 within a span of only two years (1935-1937). At posh MGM, January reportedly sang with Judy Garland in The Wizard of Oz (1939), though if true, her footage must have been left on the cutting-room floor. A stunning redhead, January is easily identifiable, however, as a woman carrying a cat in the Emerald City scenes. By 1940, she had switched her not inconsiderable energy to Broadway, appearing with Sophie Tucker in High Kickers, but is perhaps best remembered for headlining her own radio show, Revelle Sweetheart, broadcast by CBS from 1941 to 1946. From radio it was only a short step to early television, and in addition to becoming a semi-regular on My Three Sons, January also appeared on such shows as Marcus Welby, Police Story, Barnaby Jones, and The Rockford Files. She even popped up in a Ringo Starr variety special and appeared, as late as 1987, in the made-for-television movie Double Agent. In addition to her show business career, January was a noted Los Angeles businesswoman in the field of public relations.

Trivia: Husky actor Mitchell Lewis attended Annapolis and Syracus University before making his stage debut in 1902. Lewis went on tour with such theatrical heavyweights as William Collier, Dustin Farnum and Alla Nazimova. He made his film bow in 1914 at the old Thanhouser Company. Specializing in ethnic roles, Lewis spent both the silent and talkie era playing menacing gypsies (The Cuckoos, The Bohemina Girl), Arab potentates (he was horse-loving Sheik Iderim in the 1926 version of Ben-Hur), East Indian warriors and Native American chiefs. He even donned blackface to portray "Tambo" in Al Jolson's Big Boy (1930). In 1937, Lewis was signed to an MGM lifetime contract, which assured him steady if not always stellar work for the next eighteen years. One of his many MGM bit-part assignments was the green-skinned Winkie Captain ("You've killed her! She's dead! Long live Dorothy!") in The Wizard of Oz (1939). Active throughout his career in charitable pursuits, Mitchell Lewis served on the original board of the Motion Picture Relief Fund.

Trivia: A major star of silent serials, often in tandem with the fearless Allene Ray, handsome, dark-haired Walter Miller had begun his professional career with various stock companies operating out of Jersey City, NJ. Onscreen with the American Mutoscope and Biograph Company from as early as 1912, Miller appeared in supporting roles in such melodramas as the still extant The Musketeers of Pig Alley (1912), in which he played Lillian Gish's young husband, and later specialized in "other man" roles. Stardom came at the Pathé company in the 1920s, where he most fortuitously was teamed with the era's great serial queen Allene Ray in one popular chapterplay after another, ten in all, the team battling their way through such wild and woolly adventures as Sunken Silver (1925), their first, The Green Archer (1925), Hawk of the Hills (1927), and The Black Book (1929). Ray did not fare well in talkies and retired but Miller found a berth with serial newcomer Mascot, who starred him in King of the Kongo (1929), The Lone Defender (1930), and King of the Wild (1930). But he floundered without Miss Ray by his side and since there was always something slightly sinister about his looks, which a deep voice only acerbated, Miller spent the remainder of his career on the wrong side of the law, appearing in countless B-movies, Westerns and crime yarns alike, until his death from a heart attack in 1940. He left a widow, Eileen Schofield, who had played a bit part in her husband's 1930 effort King of the Wild.

Trivia: Not to be confused with lachrymose child actor Bobs Watson (1931-1999), Robert "Bobby" Watson was a musical comedy actor who came to films in 1925. At the advent of talkies, the short, ebullient Watson played a few leads in such musicals as Syncopation (1929), then spent the 1930s essaying bit roles as glib reporters and fey "pansy" types. For a while, he emulated Broadway star Bobby Clark, adopting horn-rimmed glasses, a wide-brimmed hat, and a perpetual air of bug-eyed lechery. Watson found his true niche in the 1940s, when his startling resemblance to Adolf Hitler assured him plenty of screen work. He alternately portrayed Der Führer as a raving madman in such serious films as The Hitler Gang (1942) and as a slapsticky buffoon in such comedies as The Devil With Hitler (1942) and That Nazty Nuisance (1943). Legend has it that he faced so much hostility on the set while made up as Hitler that he had to remain locked in his dressing room between takes. After the war, Watson fell from prominence, playing a few sizeable character roles in films like The Paleface (1948) and Red, Hot and Blue (1949) before settling into such uncredited minor parts as the voice coach ("Moses supposes his toeses are roses") in Singin' in the Rain (1952). Until the end of his life, Bobby Watson remained "on call" for one-scene appearances as Hitler in films ranging from The Story of Mankind (1957) to Danny Kaye's On the Double (1961).

Trivia: Gus Wayne was among the over 120 little people who appeared as Munchkins in The Wizard of Oz (1939). Those remembering old-time radio, may recognize Wayne as the diminutive red bellhop who would holler out "Caaall for Philip Morris." Wayne also spent time as one of the little Sunshine Bakers representing the Sunshine Baking Company. He became "Mr. Lucky," the official representative of the Lucky Casino in Las Vegas during the 1960s. In the early '70s, Wayne abandoned acting and began working for Piper Aircraft. He remained with the company through his retirement in 1980. Wayne was married to actress Olive Brasno for 37 years. Wayne and Brans died within two days of each other in early 1998.

Trivia: Actor Clarence Swensen was best known for his role as one of the iconic Munchkins in the Hollywood classic The Wizard of Oz. Swensen broke into show business in the late '30s as a performer in the Stanley R. Graham All Midget Circus Troupe (based in the Dallas area), which led to his discovery by MGM. The studio reportedly paid Swensen $700 for his performance. Unduly proud of his association with the film, Swensen spent years attending Wizard of Oz festivals and resumed his role when the Munchkins received their star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. Swensen suffered a stroke in 2005 and died four years later. He was 91.