Waterloo Bridge

Vivien Leigh (Actor) .. Myra

Born: November 05, 1913
Died: July 07, 1967
Birthplace: Darjeeling, West Bengal, India

Trivia: Born in India to a British stockbroker and his Irish wife, Vivien Leigh first appeared on stage in convent-school amateur theatricals. Completing her education in England, France, Italy, and Germany, she studied acting at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art; not a particularly impressive pupil, Leigh continued her training with private tutors. In 1932, she briefly interrupted her pursuit of a theatrical career to marry London barrister Herbert Leigh Holman. Leigh made her professional stage bow three years later in The Sash, which never made it to London's West End; still, her bewitching performance caught the eye of producer Sydney Carroll, who cast Leigh in her first London play, The Mask of Virtue. She alternated between stage and film work, usually in flighty, kittenish roles, until being introduced to Shakespeare at The Old Vic. It was there that she met Laurence Oliver, appearing with him on-stage as Ophelia in Hamlet and Titania in A Midsummer Night's Dream, and later together onscreen in 1937's Fire Over England. It was this picture which brought Leigh to the attention of American producer David O. Selznick, who brought his well-publicized search for the "perfect" Scarlett O'Hara to a sudden conclusion when he cast Leigh as the resourceful Southern belle in 1939's Gone With the Wind. The role won Leigh her first Oscar, after which she kept her screen appearances to a minimum, preferring to devote her time to Olivier, who would become her second husband in 1940. Refusing to submit to the Hollywood publicity machine, Leigh and Olivier all but disappeared from view for months at a time. The stage would also forever remain foremost in her heart, and there were often gaps of two to three years between Leigh's films. One of her rare movie appearances during the '50s was as Blanche DuBois in A Streetcar Named Desire (1951), a performance for which she received a second Oscar. In her private life, however, Leigh began developing severe emotional and health problems that would eventually damage her marriage to Olivier (whom she divorced in 1960) and seriously impede her ability to perform on-stage or before the camera. Despite her struggles with manic depression, she managed to turn in first-rate performances in such films as The Roman Spring of Mrs. Stone (1961) and Ship of Fools (1965), and maintained a busy theatrical schedule, including a 1963 musical version of Tovarich and a 1966 Broadway appearance opposite John Gielgud in Ivanov. Leigh was preparing to star in the London production of Edward Albee's A Delicate Balance when she was found dead from tuberculosis in her London apartment in 1967. In tribute to the actress, the lights in London's theater district were blacked out for an hour.

Robert Taylor (Actor) .. Capt. Roy Cronin

Born: August 05, 1911
Died: June 08, 1969
Birthplace: Filley, Nebraska

Trivia: Robert Taylor's cumbersome given name, Spangler Arlington Brugh, can be blamed on his father, a Nebraska doctor. As a high schooler, Taylor participated on the track team, won oratory awards, and played the cello (his first love) in the school band. Attending Pomona College to study music, Taylor became involved in student theatricals, where his uncommonly good looks assured him leading roles. Spotted by an MGM talent scout, the 23-year-old Taylor was signed to a contract with that studio -- though his first film, Handy Andy (1934), would be a loanout to Fox. Taylor was given an extended, publicly distributed "screen test" when he starred in the MGM "Crime Does Not Pay" short, playing a handsome gangster who tries to avoid arrest by purposely disfiguring his face with acid. It was another loanout, to Universal for Magnificent Obsession (1935), that truly put Taylor in the matinee-idol category. Too "pretty" to be taken seriously by the critics, Taylor had to endure some humiliating reviews during his first years in films; even when delivering a perfectly acceptable performance as Armand in Camille (1936), Taylor was damned with faint praise, reviewers commenting on how "surprised" they were that he could act. Nobody liked Taylor but his public and his coworkers, who were impressed by his cooperation and his willingness to give 110 percent of himself and his time on the set. Though never a great actor, Taylor was capable of being a very good one, as even a casual glance at Johnny Eager (1942) and Bataan (1942) will confirm. Taylor's contributions to the war effort included service as an Air Force flight instructor and his narration of the 1944 documentary The Fighting Lady. His film career in eclipse during the 1950s, Taylor starred for three years in the popular weekly police series Robert Taylor's Detectives (1959-1962); and when his friend, Ronald Reagan, opted for a full-time political career in 1965, Taylor succeeded Reagan as host/narrator of the Western anthology Death Valley Days. Robert Taylor was married twice, to actresses Barbara Stanwyck (they remained good friends long after the divorce) and Ursula Theiss.

Lucile Watson (Actor) .. Margaret Cronin

Born: May 27, 1879
Died: June 24, 1962

Trivia: Canadian-born, convent-educated Lucille Watson studied acting in the waning years of the 19th century at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts. On the Broadway stage from 1900, Watson scored her first big hit in the 1902 production The Girl with Green Eyes. She made her first film in 1916, but for the most part avoided Hollywood until after the death of her husband, playwright Louis Shipman, in 1934. Frequently cast as the mother, grandmother or maiden aunt of the hero/heroine, the formidable Ms. Watson was seen in such roles as Louisa Bradley in The Razor's Edge (1946) and Aunt March in the 1949 version of Little Women. In 1943, Lucille Watson earned an Oscar nomination for her portrayal of blinkered Washington D.C. matriarch Fanny Fannelly in Watch on the Rhine.

Maria Ouspenskaya (Actor) .. Mme. Olga Kirowa

Born: July 29, 1876
Died: December 03, 1949

Trivia: One of the most dynamic, and tiniest, of character actresses, Russian-born Maria Ouspenskaya had originally dreamed of an operatic career. She studied in both Warsaw and Moscow until money ran out, then switched gears and decided to concentrate on acting. Though she was past 30 when she entered Adasheff's School of Drama, Mme. Ouspenskaya was the school's most energetic and ambitious pupil; after graduation, she toured Russia in stock company, no mean feat in those pre-airplane days, then starred with the Moscow Art Theatre of Konstantin Stanislavsky. The Revolution and the famine that followed only strengthened her reserve to make something of herself. Remaining as a performing and instructor with the Moscow Art Theatre after the Communist takeover, the actress toured Europe and America, settling in the latter country for good in 1924. A fellow Stansilavsky pupil, Richard Boleslawsky, found work for Ouspenskaya on the faculty of the American Laboratory Theatre; She branched out to form her own acting school in 1929. Maria's role as the wise old mother of a titled fortune hunter in the stage play Dodsworth led to her recreation of the role in Sam Goldwyn's 1936 film version. Thereafter, if a wizened matriarch of any nationality was required for a movie - French, Polish, East Indian - Mme. Oupenskaya was among the first to be called upon. Despite her steady work in A-pictures, it was for a medium-budget horror film that she is best remembered today. In The Wolf Man (1941), it is Ouspenskaya as mournful gypsy woman Maleva who breaks the news that poor Lon Chaney Jr. has been bitten by a werewolf; the actress' chilling recital of the famed Wolf Man curse ("Even a man who is pure at heart, and says his prayers by night") is enough to give adult viewers nightmares. She repeated the role in Frankenstein Meets the Wolfman (1943), to which she brought the same degree of artistry that she invested in such prestigious assignments as King's Row (1942). While her earlier deprivations in Russia had made her nearly impervious to illness and infirmity, Maria Ouspenskaya was unable to survive one of mankind's oldest scourges. In 1949, she fell asleep while smoking a cigarette in bed; the resultant fire led to her death from burns and a stroke at age 73.

C. Aubrey Smith (Actor) .. Duke

Born: July 21, 1863
Died: December 20, 1948

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

Virginia Field (Actor) .. Kitty

Born: November 04, 1917

Leo G. Carroll (Actor) .. Policeman

Born: October 25, 1892
Died: October 16, 1972
Birthplace: Weedon, England

Trivia: Leo G. Carroll was the son of an Irish-born British military officer. The younger Carroll had intended to follow in his father's footsteps, but his World War I experiences discouraged him from pursuing a military career. On the British stage from the age of sixteen, Carroll settled in the U.S. in 1924, playing such plum theatrical roles as the title character in The Late George Apley. In films from 1934, Carroll often portrayed shy, self-effacing Britishers who, in "Uriah-Heep" fashion, used their humility to hide a larcenous or homicidal streak. Reportedly Alfred Hitchcock's favorite actor, Carroll was seen in half a dozen Hithcock films, notably Spellbound (1946) (as the scheming psychiatrist) and North by Northwest (1959) (as the dry-witted CIA agent). A "method actor" before the term was invented, Carroll was known to immerse himself in his roles, frequently confounding strangers by approaching them "in character." Leo G. Carroll was always a welcome presence on American television, starring as Topper in the "ghostly" sitcom of the same name, and co-starring as Father Fitzgibbons in Going My Way (1962) and Alexander Waverly on The Man From UNCLE (1964-68).

Clara Reid (Actor) .. Mrs. Bassett

Steffi Duna (Actor) .. Lydia

Born: February 08, 1913
Died: May 01, 1995

Trivia: Invariably cast as a hot-blooded Latin or tropical temptress, Steffi Duna was actually born in Budapest. By the time she was 13, Steffi was already well known in the rarefied world of the European ballet. In films from 1931, Duna was prominently featured in the pioneering Technicolor projects La Cucaracha (1935) and The Dancing Pirate (1936). She also appeared in the mammoth Anthony Adverse (1936) as the title character's cast-off mistress. In 1935, she performed an unforgettable song and dance in La Cucaracha, a Technicolor short. In 1940, she married actor Dennis O'Keefe and retired from films. They remained married until his death in 1968.

Leonard Mudie (Actor) .. Parker

Born: April 11, 1884
Died: April 14, 1965

Trivia: Gaunt, rich-voiced British actor Leonard Mudie made his stage bow in 1908 with the Gaiety Theater in Manchester. Mudie first appeared on the New York stage in 1914, then spent the next two decades touring in various British repertory companies. In 1932, he settled in Hollywood, where he remained until his death 33 years later. His larger screen roles included Dr. Pearson in The Mummy (1932), Porthinos in Cleopatra (1934), Maitland in Mary of Scotland (1936), and De Bourenne in Anthony Adverse (1936). He also essayed dozen of unbilled bits, usually cast as a bewigged, gimlet-eyed British judge. One of his more amusing uncredited roles was as "old school" actor Horace Carlos in the 1945 Charlie Chan entry The Scarlet Clue, wherein he explained his entree into the new medium of television with a weary, "Well, it's a living!" Active well into the TV era, Leonard Mudie showed up memorably in a handful of Superman video episodes and was a semi-regular as Cmdr. Barnes in the Bomba B-picture series.

Herbert Evans (Actor) .. Commissionaire

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).

Halliwell Hobbes (Actor) .. Vicar

Born: November 16, 1877
Died: February 20, 1962

Trivia: Having been born at Stratford-on-Avon, Halliwell Hobbes would have been remiss if he hadn't given acting a try. On stage from 1898, the imposing, sturdily built Hobbes appeared opposite such immortals as Mrs. Patrick Campbell and Ellen Terry. His first U.S. appearance was in the 1923 Broadway staging of Molnar's The Swan. He made the first of his over 150 films in 1929. Hobbes was most often seen as a diplomatic butler, in films ranging from Here Comes Mr. Jordan (1941) to the East Side Kids' Million Dollar Kid (1943) (in which he was billed as Holliwell Hobbs!). Other notable screen appearances in Halliwell Hobbes' resume include the role of General Carew in the 1931 version of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde and as the "fugitive" iceman, Mr. DePinna, in You Can't Take It With You (1938).

Ethel Griffies (Actor) .. Mrs. Clark

Born: April 26, 1878
Died: September 09, 1975

Trivia: The daughter of actor-manager Samuel Rupert Woods and actress Lillie Roberts, Ethel Griffies began her own stage career at the age of 3. Griffies was 21 when she finally made her London debut in 1899, and 46 when she made her first Broadway appearance in Havoc (1924). Discounting a tentative stab at filmmaking in 1917, she made her movie bow in 1930, repeating her stage role in Old English (1930). Habitually cast as a crotchety old lady with the proverbial golden heart, she alternated between bits and prominently featured roles for the next 35 years. Her larger parts included Grace Poole in both the 1935 and 1944 versions of Jane Eyre, and the vituperous matron who accuses Tippi Hedren of being a harbinger of doom in Hitchcock's The Birds (1963). Every so often, she'd take a sabbatical from film work to concentrate on the stage; she made her last Broadway appearance in 1967, at which time she was England's oldest working actress. Presumably at the invitation of fellow Briton Arthur Treacher, Ethel Griffies was a frequent guest on TV's Merv Griffin Show in the late 1960s, never failing to bring down the house with her wickedly witty comments on her 80 years in show business.

Gilbert Emery (Actor) .. Colonel

Born: June 11, 1875
Died: October 26, 1945

Trivia: Born in New York and raised in England, character actor Gilbert Emery thrived as a stage actor, director and playwright on both sides of the Atlantic in the teens and twenties. In British films from 1929, Emery made his American movie debut (and his talkie debut as well) in Behind That Curtain (1929). Briefly parting company with Hollywood in 1932 and 1933 to concentrate on stage work, he returned to films on a permanent basis in 1934. His better-known roles include the pipe-smoking police inspector in Dracula's Daughter (1936), Mae West's business manager in Goin' to Town (1937), Thomas Jefferson in The Remarkable Andrew (1942) and the self-effacing Mr. Cliveden-Banks in Between Two Worlds (1944). As a screenwriter, he worked on such films as Cuban Love Song (1931), Mata Hari (1932) and Gallant Lady (1934). Gilbert Emery's credits are sometimes combined with those of American bit player Gilbert C. Emery, who died in 1934.

David Clyde (Actor) .. Barnes, the Butler

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.

Janet Shaw (Actor) .. Maureen

Born: January 01, 1919
Died: October 15, 2001

Trivia: Blonde leading-lady Janet Shaw was a teenager when, in 1937, she was signed to Warner Bros. At first billed as Eileen Clancy, Shaw played a variety of minor roles before her first big break as Dee, the daughter of Bette Davis, in The Old Maid (1939). Unfortunately, this assignment led only to a few nondescript heroine roles in such programmers as RKO's Rookie Cop (1939). In 1940, she became a contract player at Universal, playing parts of all sizes, usually small. She was memorable as the girlfriend of alderman Thurston Hall in the opening scenes of Abbott and Costello's Hold That Ghost (1941), and even more so as sluttish waitress Louise in Hitchcock's Shadow of a Doubt (1943). She spent the mid-'40s at Monogram, essaying featured roles in a handful of Charlie Chan pictures, as well as a pleasing cameo in Johnny Doesn't Live Here Anymore. Janet Shaw apparently retired after appearing in RKO's They Won't Believe Me (1947).

Virginia Carroll (Actor) .. Sylvia

Born: December 02, 1913
Died: July 23, 2009

Trivia: A B-Western starlet, Virginia Carroll (née Broberg) sometimes played the heroine -- Oklahoma Terror (1939), opposite Jack Randall, and Johnny Mack Brown's Triggerman (1948) -- but more often than not appeared further down the cast list as the leading lady's sister or a saloon belle. Carroll did her fair share of serials, including G-Men vs. the Black Dragon (1943) and The Crimson Ghost (1946) but, again, never played the heroine. In fact, she was Martha Kent in the 15-chapter Superman (1948). Carroll continued to appear in small roles through 1959. She was married to actor Ralph Byrd, the screen's original Dick Tracy.

Florence Baker (Actor) .. Beatrice

Elsie Prescott (Actor) .. Cockney Woman

Bob Winkler (Actor) .. Boy

Norma Varden (Actor) .. Hostess

Born: January 20, 1898
Died: January 19, 1989

Trivia: The daughter of a retired sea captain, British actress Norma Varden was a piano prodigy. After study in Paris, she played concerts into her teens, but at last decided that this was be an uncertain method of making a living--so she went to the "security" of acting. In her first stage appearance in Peter Pan, Varden, not yet twenty, portrayed the adult role of Mrs. Darling, setting the standard for her subsequent stage and film work; too tall and mature-looking for ingenues, she would enjoy a long career in character roles. Bored with dramatic assignments, Varden gave comedy a try at the famous Aldwych Theatre, where from 1929 through 1933 she was resident character comedienne in the theatre's well-received marital farces. After her talkie debut in the Aldwych comedy A Night Like This (1930), she remained busy on the British film scene for over a decade. Moving to Hollywood in 1941, she found that the typecasting system frequently precluded large roles: Though she was well served as Robert Benchley's wife in The Major and the Minor (1942), for example, her next assignment was the unbilled role of a pickpocket victim's wife in Casablanca (1942). Her work encompassed radio as well as films for the rest of the decade; in nearly all her assignments Norma played a haughty British or New York aristocrat who looked down with disdain at the "commoners." By the '50s, she was enjoying such sizeable parts as the society lady who is nearly strangled by Robert Walker in Strangers on a Train (1951), the bejeweled wife of "sugar daddy" Charles Coburn in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes (1953), and George Sanders' dragonlike mother in Jupiter's Darling (1955). Norma Varden's greatest film role might have been as the mother superior in The Sound of Music (1965), but the producers decided to go with Peggy Wood, consigning Varden to the small but showy part of Frau Schmidt, the Von Trapps' housekeeper. After countless television and film assignments, Norma Varden retired in 1972, spending most of her time thereafter as a spokesperson for the Screen Actors Guild, battling for better medical benefits for older actors.

Fred Sassoni (Actor) .. Newsboy

Kathryn Collier (Actor) .. Barmaid

Denis d'Auburn (Actor) .. Generous Man

Born: January 01, 1890
Died: January 01, 1960

Wilfred Lucas (Actor) .. Elderly Huntsman

Born: January 01, 1871
Died: December 17, 1940

Trivia: Virile, dignified Canadian actor Wilfred Lucas was a stage veteran when he joined the Biograph movie company in 1907. He played a variety of leading roles in the films of D.W. Griffith, including the title character in Griffith's two-reel adaptation of Enoch Arden. Occasionally turning director himself, Lucas was especially busy in this capacity at the Keystone studios of Mack Sennett. During the 1920s, Lucas played several character roles in major productions and also kept busy as a director and screenwriter. In the talkie era, Wilfred Lucas played innumerable bit parts at Warner Bros., Hal Roach Studios and Paramount; he could occasionally be seen in sizeable roles in such films as Laurel and Hardy's Pardon Us (1931) and A Chump at Oxford (1940), and director James Cruze's I Cover the Waterfront (1933).

Janet Waldo (Actor) .. Elsa

Born: February 02, 1920
Died: June 12, 2016

Trivia: Janet Waldo was a star of radio in the mid-1940s (at age 23) in the role of Corliss Archer, a typical American teenager. Twenty years later, Waldo became identified for another generation (or two) as the voice of the quintessential teenage girl Judy Jetson on the prime-time cartoon show The Jetsons. Born in Yakima, WA, in 1918, Waldo had a love of theater and acting from an early age, and while growing up, she participated in plays put on by her church. Her family had an artistic bent on both sides: her mother was a singer trained at the Boston Conservatory while her father, a railroad executive, was a descendant of Ralph Waldo Emerson, and her sister Elizabeth was later a violin virtuoso who also appeared in movies. Waldo attended the University of Washington, where she engaged in student theatricals and won a special award in her freshman year. A distinguished alumnus -- Bing Crosby -- was visiting at the time, and they met when he presented her with the award. With him was a Paramount talent scout, ever on the lookout for new additions to the studio's stable of actors, who got Waldo signed up for a screen test and a role in the Crosby comedy The Star Maker. She was soon a bit player at the studio, but still waiting for her big break. That break ended up coming from radio rather than movies, however, on the Cecil B. DeMille-produced Radio Theatre, working with Merle Oberon and George Brent. Waldo's voice and range as an actress seemed to blossom when heard over the airwaves, and by 1943, at age 23, Waldo was starring or co-starring in Meet Corliss Archer, One Man's Family, The Gallant Heart, and Star Playhouse, as well as playing the cigarette girl on both The Red Skelton Show and People Are Funny; she also played roles on the Edward G. Robinson series The Big Town. Over the ensuing final great decade of radio, she worked on Dr. Christian, Silver Theater, Ozzie & Harriet, and Railroad Hour, although she never took as many roles as she might have. Waldo married writer/director/producer Robert E. Lee, who later achieved renown in the theater as the co-author, with Jerome Lawrence, of Inherit the Wind, First Monday in October, and Auntie Mame. The couple soon had a family to raise, and she turned down a great number of roles after that, even declining the offer to play Corliss Archer when the series jumped to television at the start of the 1950s. Waldo continued working in radio and subsequently did voice-over work in addition to returning to the theater. In the early '60s, as an established voice artist, she was chosen to portray the role of Judy Jetson in the prime-time cartoon series The Jetsons, produced and directed by William Hanna and Joseph Barbera. Waldo took on the role, and has been known to a generation of baby boomer cartoon fans as Judy Jetson ever since, even returning to the role for later episodes of the series shot in the ensuing decades. She also made headlines in 1989, when, in a decision made by Universal Pictures and William Hanna, her voice was wiped from the audio track of Jetsons: The Movie so that she could be replaced by the singer Tiffany. Waldo got in the last word, however, in 2004, when, at age 83, she provided commentary for two episodes on The Jetsons: The Complete First Season DVD set from Warner Home Video. Waldo died in 2016, at age 96.

Leda Nicova (Actor) .. Marie

Marjorie Manning (Actor) .. Mary

Frances McInerney (Actor) .. Violet

Eleanor Stewart (Actor) .. Grace

Born: February 02, 1913
Died: July 04, 2007

Trivia: A model and the winner of a Chicago Tribune screen test competition, brunette Eleanor Stewart signed with MGM in 1936, but made her mark elsewhere as a leading lady of B-movies. A good rider, she braved the wilderness in no less than 15 low-budget Westerns, including three Hopalong Cassidy entries and two films each opposite Tex Ritter, Tom Keene, and Jack Luden. Stewart retired from filmmaking in 1944 to raise her daughter with MGM publicity man Les Peterson.

Jimmy Aubrey (Actor) .. Cockney

Born: October 23, 1887
Died: September 02, 1983

Trivia: Diminutive British knockabout comedian Jimmy Aubrey got his start with the legendary Fred Karno troupe, working alongside such budding stars as Charlie Chaplin and Stan Laurel. Like Charley and Stan, Aubrey flourished as a silent screen comic. He headlined a series of Vitagraph two-reelers in 1919 and 1920, with a young Oliver Hardy lending support. In the mid-1920s, he starred in another comedy series for producer Joe Rock. By 1927, Aubrey's stardom was a thing of the past, and he found himself virtually unemployable. His old colleagues Laurel and Hardy cast Aubrey in supporting roles in three of their starring vehicles, most memorably as the flirtatious drunk in the 1929 2-reeler That's My Wife. Jimmy Aubrey continued taking movie jobs until his retirement in 1952, playing bits and featured roles as drunken sailors, hoboes, store clerks and cowboy sidekicks.

Harry Allen (Actor) .. Taxi Driver

Born: July 10, 1883

Phyllis Barry (Actor) .. Malicious Girl

Born: January 01, 1909

Trivia: A beautiful brunette from England, Phyllis Barry grabbed the choice role of 1932, that of the melancholy shop girl turned mistress in Cynara, the much awaited screen version of E.M. Harwood and Robert Gore-Browne's 1928 play. Based on poet Ernest Dawson's immortal line, "I have been faithful to thee, Cynara, in my fashion," the triangle drama was too downbeat for popular appeal and rather than enjoying instant stardom, Barry was relegated to playing a foil for comics Wheeler and Woolsey in Diplomaniacs and Buster Keaton in What, No Beer? (both 1933). Despite these setbacks, she hung around until the late '40s, playing ever-smaller roles.

Colin Campbell (Actor) .. Groom

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).

Rita Carlyle (Actor) .. Flower Woman

Frank Dawson (Actor) .. Vicar's Butler

Born: June 04, 1870
Died: October 11, 1953

Trivia: A handsome, white-haired supporting actor from England, in Hollywood from 1932, Frank Dawson usually played ministers and what was often termed the "gentleman's gentleman." At his most proper and deferential, Dawson was Barbara Stanwyck's butler in Secret Bride (1935) and later cared for the needs of Genevieve Tobin in Broadway Hostess (1935), as well as those of Cary Grant in Suzy (1936), George Sanders in Four Men and a Prayer (1938), Halliwell Hobbes in Waterloo Bridge (1940), and Dame May Whitty in Crash Dive (1943).

Douglas Gordon (Actor) .. Taxi Driver

Denis Green (Actor) .. Sergeant on Bridge

Born: January 01, 1904
Died: January 01, 1954

Bobby Hale (Actor) .. Taxi Driver

Winifred Harris (Actor) .. Dowager

Born: March 17, 1880

Harold Howard (Actor) .. Ticket Collector

Charles Irwin (Actor) .. Announcer

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).

George Kirby (Actor) .. Waiter

Born: January 01, 1878
Died: January 01, 1953

Eric Lonsdale (Actor) .. Soldier

James May (Actor) .. Cockney

Florine McKinney (Actor) .. Viola

Born: January 01, 1968
Died: January 01, 1975

Charles McNaughton (Actor) .. Mack, the Waiter

Born: January 01, 1877
Died: January 01, 1955

Frank Mitchell (Actor) .. Father

Born: January 01, 1982
Died: January 01, 1991

Tempe Piggott (Actor) .. Cockney

Born: January 01, 1884
Died: October 13, 1962

Trivia: Busy in films from 1921 to 1949, actress Tempe Pigott was generally cast as gabby cockneys. In the talkie era, she could usually be found playing drunken harridans or slovenly slum landladies. Her larger roles include the excitable Mrs. Hawkins in Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1931) and the long-suffering Mrs. Hudson in the 1933 Sherlock Holmes opus A Study in Scarlet (1933). Though her role as Dwight Frye's hateful Auntie Glutz was unfortunately cut from Bride of Frankenstein (1935), Tempe Pigott was well represented in other Universal horror films, notably Murders in the Rue Morgue (1932) and Werewolf of London (1935).

John Power (Actor) .. Toff's Companion

Jean Prescott (Actor) .. Girl

Paul Scardon (Actor) .. Doorman

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.

Wyndham Standing (Actor) .. Toff

Born: August 23, 1880
Died: February 01, 1963

Trivia: In films from 1915 to 1948, British stage veteran Wyndham Standing's heyday was in the silent era. During this time, Standing appeared in stiff-collar, stuffed-shirt roles in films like The Dark Angel and The Unchastened Woman (both 1925). His early-talkie credits include the squadron leader in Hell's Angels (1931) and Captain Pyke in A Study in Scarlet (1933). Thereafter, Standing showed up in such one-scene bits as King Oscar in Madame Curie (1943); he was also one of several silent-screen veterans appearing as U.S. senators in Capra's Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939). Wyndham Standing was the brother of actors Sir Guy Standing and Herbert Standing.

Harry Stubbs (Actor) .. Proprietor of Eating House

Born: January 01, 1874
Died: January 01, 1950

David Thursby (Actor) .. Cockney

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.

Martha Wentworth (Actor) .. Tart on Bridge

Born: June 02, 1889
Died: March 08, 1974

Trivia: Former radio actress Martha Wentworth played the Duchess, Allan Lane's robust-looking aunt, in seven of Republic Pictures' popular Red Ryder Westerns from 1946-1947. The original Duchess, Alice Fleming, had left the series along with William Elliott, who was being groomed for Grade-A Westerns. As the new Duchess, Wentworth joined Lane, Elliott's replacement, and little Bobby Blake (later Robert Blake), the former Our Gang star, who played Indian sidekick Little Beaver in all the Republic Red Ryder films. For a great majority of the series' fans, the Lane-Wentworth-Blake combination turned out the quintessential Red Ryder films, the trio becoming one of the most successful combinations in B-Western history. Republic sold the Red Ryder franchise to low-budget Eagle-Lion in 1948 and four additional films were produced, but Wentworth was replaced with former silent-action heroine Marin Sais. In her later years, Wentworth did quite a bit of voice-over work for Walt Disney.

Eric Wilton (Actor) .. Headwaiter

Born: January 01, 1882
Died: February 23, 1957

Trivia: Actor Eric Wilton made his first screen appearance in Samuel Goldwyn's Arrowsmith (1931) and his last in Paramount's The Joker Is Wild (1957). Usually uncredited, Wilton played such utility roles as ministers, doormen, and concierges. Most often, however, he was cast as butlers. Of his eight film appearances in 1936, for example, Eric Wilton played butlers in five of them.

Robert Winkler (Actor) .. Boy

Born: January 01, 1926
Died: January 01, 1989

Douglas Wood (Actor) .. Vicar

Born: January 01, 1880
Died: January 13, 1966

Trivia: Actor Douglas Wood was the son of 19th century stage actress Ida Jeffreys. After a long stage career of his own, Wood entered films in 1934. His screen roles were plentiful but usually small; most often he could be found playing a judge or city official. He also came in handy as a red herring murder suspect in the many murder mysteries churned out by Hollywood in the war years. Douglas Wood remained active in films until 1956.

Rod Taylor (Actor)

Born: January 11, 1930
Died: January 07, 2015
Birthplace: Lidcombe, New South Wales, Australia

Trivia: A trained painter, Australian-born Rod Taylor switched to acting in his early twenties, toting up Australian stage credits before making his first Aussie film, The Stuart Exposition, in 1951. A villainous stint as Israel Hand in the 1954 Australian/U.S. production Long John Silver gave evidence that Taylor might be able to handle leading roles. However, he was still among the supporting ranks in his first American film, The Virgin Queen (1955). Signed to a nonexclusive contract by MGM in 1957, Taylor was cast in predominantly American roles, and accordingly managed to submerge his Australian accent in favor of a neutral "mid-Atlantic" cadence; even when playing an Englishman in 1960's The Time Machine, he spoke with barely a trace of a discernable accent. His film career peaked in the early to mid 1960s; during the same period he starred in the TV series Hong Kong (1961), the first of several weekly television stints (other series included Bearcats, The Oregon Trail, Masquerade and Outlaws). He was so long associated with Hollywood that, upon returning to Australia to appear in the 1977 film The Picture Show Man, Taylor was cast as an American. In his later career, Taylor thrived in character roles as ageing, but still virile, outdoorsmen, appearing in television shows like The Oregon Trail and Outlaws. He had recurring roles on Falcon Crest, Murder, She Wrote and Walker, Texas Ranger before mostly retiring from acting. In 2009, director Quentin Tarantino lured him out of retirement with the chance to play Winston Churchill in Inglourious Basterds. Taylor died in 2015, at age 84.

11:30 am - 2:00 pm, Friday, February 27 on WTBY Positiv (54.4)