Trivia: The son of an Ohio oil driller and farmer, American actor Clark Gable had a relatively sedate youth until, at age 16, he was talked into traveling to Akron with a friend to work at a tire factory. It was in Akron that Gable saw his first stage play, and, from that point on, he was hooked. Although he was forced to work with his father on the oil fields for a time, Gable used a 300-dollar inheritance he'd gotten on his 21st birthday to launch a theatrical career. Several years of working for bankrupt stock companies, crooked theater managers, and doing odd jobs followed, until Gable was taken under the wing of veteran actress Josephine Dillon. The older Dillon coached Gable in speech and movement, paid to have his teeth fixed, and became the first of his five wives in 1924. As the marriage deteriorated, Gable's career built up momentum while he appeared in regional theater, road shows, and movie extra roles. He tackled Broadway at a time when producers were looking for rough-hewn, down-to-earth types as a contrast to the standard cardboard stage leading men. Gable fit this bill, although he had been imbued with certain necessary social graces by his second wife, the wealthy (and, again, older) Ria Langham. A 1930 Los Angeles stage production of The Last Mile starring Gable as Killer Mears brought the actor to the attention of film studios, though many producers felt that Gable's ears were too large for him to pass as a leading man. Making his talkie debut in The Painted Desert (1931), the actor's first roles were as villains and gangsters. By 1932, he was a star at MGM where, except for being loaned out on occasion, he'd remain for the next 22 years. On one of those occasions, Gable was "punished" for insubordination by being sent to Columbia Studios, then a low-budget factory. The actor was cast by ace director Frank Capra in It Happened One Night (1934), an amiable comedy which swept the Academy Awards in 1935, with one of those Oscars going to Gable. After that, except for the spectacular failure of Gable's 1937 film Parnell, it seemed as though the actor could do no wrong. And, in 1939, and despite his initial reluctance, Gable was cast as Rhett Butler in Gone With the Wind, leading him to be dubbed the "King of Hollywood." A happy marriage to wife number three, Carole Lombard, and a robust off-camera life as a sportsman and athlete (Gable enjoyed a he-man image created by the MGM publicity department, and perpetuated it on his own) seemed to bode well for the actor's future contentment. But when Lombard was killed in a 1942 plane crash, a disconsolate Gable seemed to lose all interest in life. Though far beyond draft age, he entered the Army Air Corps and served courageously in World War II as a tail-gunner. But what started out as a death wish renewed his vitality and increased his popularity. (Ironically, he was the favorite film star of Adolf Hitler, who offered a reward to his troops for the capture of Gable -- alive). Gable's postwar films for MGM were, for the most part, disappointing, as was his 1949 marriage to Lady Sylvia Ashley. Dropped by both his wife and his studio, Gable ventured out as a freelance actor in 1955, quickly regaining lost ground and becoming the highest paid non-studio actor in Hollywood. He again found happiness with his fifth wife, Kay Spreckels, and continued his career as a box-office champ, even if many of the films were toothless confections like Teacher's Pet (1958). In 1960, Gable was signed for the introspective "modern" Western The Misfits, which had a prestigious production lineup: co-stars Marilyn Monroe, Montgomery Clift, and Eli Wallach; screenwriter Arthur Miller; and director John Huston. The troubled and tragic history of this film has been well documented, but, despite the on-set tension, Gable took on the task uncomplainingly, going so far as to perform several grueling stunt scenes involving wild horses. The strain of filming, however, coupled with his ever-robust lifestyle, proved too much for the actor. Clark Gable suffered a heart attack two days after the completion of The Misfits and died at the age of 59, just a few months before the birth of his first son. Most of the nation's newspapers announced the death of Clark Gable with a four-word headline: "The King is Dead."

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.

Trivia: Son of a London stockbroker, British actor Leslie Howard worked as a bank clerk after graduating from London's Dulwich School. Serving briefly in World War I, Howard was mustered out for medical reasons in 1918, deciding at that time to act for a living. Working in both England and the U.S. throughout the 1920s, Howard specialized in playing disillusioned intellectuals in such plays as Outward Bound, the film version of which served as his 1930 film debut. Other films followed on both sides of the Atlantic, the best of these being Howard's masterful star turn in The Scarlet Pimpernel (1934). In 1935, Howard portrayed yet another disenchanted soul in The Petrified Forest, which co-starred Humphrey Bogart as a gangster patterned after John Dillinger. Howard was tapped for the film version, but refused to make the movie unless Bogart was also hired (Warner Bros. had planned to use their resident gangster type, Edward G. Robinson). Hardly a candidate for "Mr. Nice Guy" -- he was known to count the lines of his fellow actors and demand cuts if they exceeded his dialogue -- Howard was nonetheless loyal to those he cared about. Bogart became a star after The Petrified Forest, and in gratitude named his first daughter Leslie Bogart. Somehow able to hide encroaching middle-age when on screen, Howard played romantic leads well into his late 40s, none more so than the role of -- yes -- disillusioned intellectual Southern aristocrat Ashley Wilkes in the 1939 classic Gone with the Wind. In the late 1930s, Howard began dabbling in directing, notably in his starring films Pygmalion (1938) and Pimpernel Smith (1941). Fiercely patriotic, Howard traveled extensively on behalf of war relief; on one of these trips, he boarded a British Overseas Airways plane in 1943 with several other British notables, flying en route from England to Lisbon. The plane was shot down over the Bay of Biscay and all on board were killed. Only after the war ended was it revealed that Howard had selflessly taken that plane ride knowing it would probably never arrive in Lisbon; it was ostensibly carrying Prime Minister Winston Churchill, and was sent out as a decoy so that Churchill's actual plane would be undisturbed by enemy fire.

Trivia: Born in Japan to a British patent attorney and his actress wife, Olivia de Havilland succumbed to the lure of Thespis while attending high school in Los Gatos, CA, where she played Hermia in an amateur production of A Midsummer Night's Dream. The older sister of actress Joan Fontaine, de Havilland was spotted by famed director Max Reinhardt, who cast her in his legendary Hollywood Bowl production of the play. This led to her part in the Warner Bros. film adaptation of Midsummer in 1935, and being signed to a long-term contract wiht the company. Considering herself a classical actress, de Havilland tried to refuse the traditional ingenue roles offered her by the studio, which countered by telling her she'd be ruined in Hollywood if she didn't cooperate. Loaned out to David O. Selznick, de Havilland played Melanie Hamilton in Gone With the Wind (1939), earning an Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actress in the process. Although she didn't come out on top that year, she would later win two Best Actress Oscars, the first for 1946's To Each His Own, and then again for 1949's The Heiress. De Havilland also made news when she sued Warner Bros. for extending her seven-year contract by tacking on the months she'd been on suspension for refusing to take a part. The actress spent three long years off the screen, but she ultimately won her case, and the "De Havilland Law," as it would become known, effectively destroyed the studios' ability to virtually enslave their contractees by unfairly extending their contract time. After completing The Heiress, de Havilland spent several years on Broadway, cutting down her subsequent film appearances to approximately one per year. In 1955, she moved to France with her second husband, Paris Match editor Pierre Galante; she later recalled her Paris years with the semiautobiographical Every Frenchman Has One. De Havilland showed up in a brace of profitable fading-star horror films in the '60s: Lady in a Cage (1964) and Hush ... Hush, Sweet Charlotte (1965), in which she replaced Joan Crawford. During the next decade, she appeared in a number of TV productions and in such all-star film efforts as Airport '77 (1977) and The Swarm (1978). After a number of TV appearances (if not always starring roles) in the '80s, de Havilland once more found herself in the limelight in 1989, on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of Gone With the Wind. As one of the only surviving stars from this film, she was much sought after for interviews and reminiscences, but graciously refused almost every request.

Trivia: Although her movie career consisted almost entirely of playing stereotypic maids and other servants, Hattie McDaniel was in fact the first black woman to sing on the radio and the first black performer to win an Academy Award, for her portrayal of Mammy in Gone with the Wind (1939). Before coming to Hollywood, she had been a blues singer and had toured as Queenie in Show Boat, later playing the same role in the 1936 Irene Dunne version of the film. Her considerable film credits include Blonde Venus (1932) with Marlene Dietrich, I'm No Angel (1933) with Mae West, Nothing Sacred (1937) with Carole Lombard and Fredric March, The Shopworn Angel (1938) with Margaret Sullavan, They Died with Their Boots On (1941), James Thurber's story The Male Animal (1942), Thank Your Lucky Stars (1943), Since You Went Away (1944), and Mr. Blandings Builds His Dream House (1948). She starred in the Beulah series on radio and was scheduled to take over the role from Ethel Waters for the television series, which would have reunited her with Gone with the Wind co-star Butterfly McQueen, when she became ill and was replaced by Louise Beavers.

Trivia: The son of Irish immigrants, Thomas Mitchell came from a family of journalists and civic leaders; his nephew, James Mitchell, later became the U.S. Secretary of Labor. Following the lead of his father and brother, Mitchell became a newspaper reporter after high school, but derived more pleasure out of writing comic theatrical skits than pursuing late-breaking scoops. He became an actor in 1913, at one point touring with Charles Coburn's Shakespeare Company. Even when playing leads on Broadway in the 1920s, Mitchell never completely gave up writing; his play Little Accident, co-written with Floyd Dell, would be filmed by Hollywood three times. Entering films in 1934, Mitchell's first role of note was as the regenerate embezzler in Frank Capra's Lost Horizon (1937). Many film fans assume that Mitchell won his 1939 Best Supporting Oscar for his portrayal of Gerald O'Hara in the blockbuster Gone With the Wind; in fact, he won the prize for his performance as the drunken doctor in Stagecoach -- one of five Thomas Mitchell movie appearances in 1939 (his other films that year, classics all, were Only Angels Have Wings, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, and The Hunchback of Notre Dame). Those who watch TV only during the Christmas season are familiar with Mitchell's portrayal of the pathetic Uncle Billy in Capra's It's a Wonderful Life (1946). In the 1950s, Mitchell won an Emmy in 1952, a Tony award (for Wonderful Town) in 1954, and starred in the TV series Mayor of the Town (1954). In 1960, Mitchell originated the role of Lieutant Columbo (later essayed by Peter Falk) in the Broadway play Prescription Murder. Thomas Mitchell died of cancer in December of 1962, just two days after the death of his Hunchback of Notre Dame co-star, Charles Laughton.

Trivia: Born to a blue-blooded New England family, Barbara O'Neil was 21 when she made her first Broadway appearance. During the summer season, she acted with the Provincetown Players, often in the company of her first husband, producer Joshua Logan. She made her film debut in 1937, marking time in traditional leading lady roles until cast as Scarlett O'Hara's mother in Gone With the Wind (1939), delivering an utterly convincing performance despite the fact that she was exactly three years older than her "daughter" Vivien Leigh. Her finest screen showing was as Charles Boyer's spiteful, dangerously neurotic wife in All This and Heaven Too (1940), for which she earned an Oscar nomination. Barbara O'Neil made only a handful of film appearances after that, retiring from show business after a successful run in the Broadway production Little Moon of Alban.

Trivia: Ex-nightclub chorine Evelyn Keyes was 18 when she was put under contract by Hollywood producer/director Cecil B. DeMille. Keyes played passive roles in DeMille's The Buccaneer (1938) and Union Pacific (1939) and a handful of Paramount "B"s. Her best opportunity came from outside the DeMille fold, when she was cast as the eternally jilted Suellen O'Hara in Gone With the Wind (1939). In 1940, she signed with Columbia, where she was featured in a handful of interesting "B"s like Boris Karlof's Before I Hang (1940) and Peter Lorre's Face Behind the Mask (1941, in which Keyes was terrific in a brief role as a blind girl). She was promoted to "A" leads with Here Comes Mr. Jordan (1941), and with 1947's Mating of Millie she finally got a film vehicle all her own. She also played the Ruby Keeler counterpart (named Julie Benson) in Columbia's The Jolson Story (1946). Like many 1940s leading ladies, Keyes found the going rough in the 1950s, save for a few worthwhile (if fleeting) parts such as Tom Ewell's vacationing wife in The Seven Year Itch (1955). She retired in 1956, making an unexpected return before the cameras in a brace of late-1980s Gothic melodramas. In sum total, Keyes' screen career was dwarfed by her colorful private life. Her four husbands included directors Charles Vidor and John Huston, and bandleader Artie Shaw. In 1971 she turned to writing. Her first book was a novel, I Am as Billboard; she followed this with two very candid autobiographies, Scarlet O'Hara's Younger Sister (1977) and I'll Think About That Tomorrow (1991). Keyes died in July 2008 of uterine cancer

Trivia: Brunette Canadian leading lady Ann Rutherford had the sort of button-cute baby face that allowed her to play ingénues into her thirties. The daughter of an opera tenor and a stage actress, Rutherford was performing on-stage from childhood. She was still a teenager when she made her first film appearances as leading lady to such Western heroes as John Wayne and Gene Autry. At MGM from 1937, Ms. Rutherford gained minor stardom as Polly Benedict in the studio's Andy Hardy series. She was allowed to display her perky comic gifts in a trio of 1940s mystery-comedies co-starring Red Skelton (Whistling in the Dark, Whistling in Dixie, Whistling in Brooklyn), and was quite appealing as Careen O'Hara in Gone With the Wind (1939). She closed out her film career in 1950 to devote more time to her private life; for many years, she was the wife of 20th Century Fox executive William Dozier. Ann Rutherford returned to the screen in 1972 to join several fellow MGM alumni in They Only Kill Their Masters, thereafter confining most of her professional activity to her annual appearances as Suzanne Pleshette's mother on TV's The Bob Newhart Show (1972-1978).

Trivia: In his youth, George Reeves aspired to become a boxer, but gave up this pursuit because his mother was worried that he'd be seriously injured. Attracted to acting, Reeves attended the Pasadena Playhouse, where he starred in several productions. In 1939, Reeves was selected to play one of the Tarleton twins in the Selznick superproduction Gone With the Wind (1939). He made an excellent impression in the role, and spent the next few years playing roles of varying sizes at Warner Bros., 20th Century Fox, and Paramount. He was praised by fans and reviewers alike for his performances in Lydia (1941) and So Proudly We Hail (1943); upon returning from WWII service, however, Reeves found it more difficult to get good roles. He starred in a few "B"'s and in the title role of the Columbia serial The Adventures of Sir Galahad (1949), but for the most part was shunted away in ordinary villain roles. In 1951, he starred in the Lippert programmer Superman vs. the Mole Men, playing both the Man of Steel and his bespectacled alter ego, Clark Kent. This led to the immensely popular Superman TV series, in which Reeves starred from 1953 through 1957. While Superman saved Reeves' career, it also permanently typecast him. He made an appearance as wagon train leader James Stephen in Disney's Westward Ho, the Wagons! (1956), though the producer felt it expeditious to hide Reeves behind a heavy beard. While it is now commonly believed that Reeves was unable to get work after the cancellation of Superman in 1957, he was in fact poised to embark on several lucrative projects, including directing assignments on two medium-budget adventure pictures and a worldwide personal appearance tour. On June 16, 1959, Reeves died of an apparently self-inflicted gunshot wound. The official ruling was suicide -- and, since he left no note, it was assumed that Reeves was despondent over his flagging career. Since that time, however, there has been a mounting suspicion (engendered by the actor's friends and family) that George Reeves was murdered.

Trivia: Born in Tampa, where her father worked as a stevedore and her mother as a maid, Thelma McQueen determined early in life to become a dancer. By age 13 she was living in Harlem performing with a dance troupe and theater company. While appearing in a 1935 production of A Midsummer Night's Dream, she danced in the Butterfly Ballet, earning her professional name of Butterfly McQueen in the process (she hated the name Thelma and later had her new moniker legalized). Her first Broadway appearance in the 1937 George Abbott production Brown Sugar led to an even better assignment in the long-running stage comedy What a Life! This in turn led to her discovery by film producer David O. Selznick, who cast McQueen as the simple-minded slave Prissy ("I don't know nuthin' 'bout birthin' no babies!") in his super-production Gone With the Wind (1939). Though the role earned her worldwide fame, it also typecast her as screechy-voiced, hysterical domestics. Even so, she delivered memorable performances in such '40s productions as Cabin in the Sky (1943), Mildred Pierce (1945), and Selznick's Duel in the Sun (1946). Her inability to get along with most of her co-stars, coupled with her unhappiness over the film roles assigned her, prompted the actress to quit the movies in 1947. The ensuing two decades were not easy ones for McQueen; she was obliged to accept a dizzying series of clerical and domestic jobs, occasionally resurfacing in short-running stage productions and briefly co-starring as Oriole on TV's Beulah series. At one point, she served as hostess at the Stone Mountain Civil War Memorial Museum in Atlanta, GA. She returned to Broadway in 1964, and four years later scored a personal success with a tailor-made role in the off-Broadway musical spoof Curley McDimple. She came back to films in 1974 while pursuing a Political Science degree at New York's City College. In 1980, she won an Emmy for her performance in the TV special The Seven Wishes of a Rich Kid, and in 1986 made her final screen appearance (looking and sounding pretty much as she did back in 1939!) in Peter Weir's The Mosquito Coast. Butterfly McQueen was 85 when she died of burns sustained in a fire caused by a faulty kerosene heater.

Trivia: After a rough-and-tumble adolescence, Victor Jory attended high school in California, studying acting with Gilmor Brown at the Pasadena Playhouse. Jory's subsequent tenure at the University of California lasted all of one year before he was bitten by wanderlust; he joined the coast guard, where he distinguished himself as a champion in several contact sports. Sharp-featured, muscular, and possessed of a rich theatrical voice, Jory made his New York stage bow in 1929, and one year later co-starred in the original Broadway production of Berkeley Square. Inaugurating his film career with Renegades (1930), Jory spent the next five decades in roles ranging from romantic leads to black-hearted villains. Highlights in his screen career include a sinister but strangely beautiful performance as Oberon in A Midsummer Night's Dream (1935); the vicious Injun Joe in The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1938); white-trash carpetbagger Jonas Wilkerson in Gone With the Wind (1939); Texas patriot William Travis in Man of Conquest (1939); the hissable, crippled patriarch in The Fugitive Kind (1960); the taciturn father of Helen Keller in The Miracle Worker (1962); and the ancient South American Indian chief in Papillon (1973). In 1940, Jory starred in the Columbia serial The Shadow (1940), essaying the dual role of the mind-clouding Shadow and his alter ego Lamont Cranston (with several disguise sequences along the way). The outspoken Jory was supremely confident of his talents, remarking on several occasions that he was "damn good" -- though he was tougher than any movie critic in assessing his lesser performances. He was also more than generous with young up-and-coming actors (except for self-involved "method" performers), and was a veritable fountain of Broadway and Hollywood anecdotes, some of which were actually true. An occasional theatrical director and playwright, Jory wrote the Broadway production Five Who Were Mad. On TV, Jory starred in the popular syndicated detective series Manhunt (1959-1960) and guested on dozens of other programs. Long married to actress Jean Innes, Victor Jory was the father of Jon Jory, who for many years was artistic director of the Actors Theatre of Louisville.

Trivia: Stately stage leading man Howard C. Hickman entered films through the auspices of producer Thomas H. Ince. Hickman starred as Count Ferdinand, the Messianic protagonist of Ince's Civilization (1916). He co-starred with his actress wife Bessie Barriscale in several productions before returning to the theatre. In the talkie era, he accepted innumerable featured and bit roles as doctors, judges, ministers, senators, and executives. Generations of filmgoers will remember Howard Hickman for his brief appearance as John Wilkes, father of Ashley Wilkes and father-in-law of Melanie Hamilton, in Gone with the Wind (1939).

Trivia: Gangly L.A.-born Rand Brooks made his first film appearance in 1938. The following year, he gained a small niche in film history with his performance as Charles Hamilton, ill-fated first husband of Scarlett O'Hara (Vivien Leigh), in Gone With the Wind (1939). He spent the next several years in Westerns, most frequently appearing as Lucky Jenkins in the Hopalong Cassidy series. On television, Brooks was seen as Corporal Boone on The Adventures of Rin Tin Tin (1956-1958). Rand Brooks was at one time married to comedian Stan Laurel's daughter Lois, with whom he operated a successful emergency ambulance service. As the 1970s wound to a close, Brooks disappeared entirely from the screen.On September 1, 2003, the man who gave legendary bombshell Marilyn Monroe her first screen kiss died of cancer at his Santa Ynez, CA home. He was 84.

Trivia: The daughter of an actress and a backstage carpenter, Laura Hope Crews entered the theatre in 1883 at the tender age of four. She left the stage to complete her education, then returned to play ingenue roles. A firmly entrenched character actress by the '20s, Laura fought hard to retain her place in the spotlight, and brooked no nonsense from anyone who didn't take the theatre seriously; at one point, she called for the dismissal of a frivolous newcomer named Bette Davis (Ironically, Crews' last movie role--which had to be cut because the film was running overtime--was in The Man Who Came to Dinner [1941], which top-billed Bette Davis). Laura arrived in Hollywood in 1929, not as an actress, but as a vocal coach for untrained silent-film stars. Easing into films in maternal roles, Crews scored a personal success as the selfish mother in The Silver Cord (1933). The comparative subtlety of her performance in this film is in direct contrast to her outrageously overplayed roles in such pictures as Camille (1936) and The Blue Bird (1940). But Laura Hope Crews was merely giving her fans, and her indulgent directors, what they expected when she commenced to chew the scenery while playing one of her many society matrons, gossips or hypochondriacs.

Trivia: Harry Davenport was descended from a long and illustrious line of stage actors who could trace their heritage to famed 18th-century Irish thespian Jack Johnson. Davenport made his own stage bow at the age of five, racking up a list of theatrical credits that eventually would fill two pages of Equity magazine. He started his film career at the age of 48, co-starring with Rose Tapley as "Mr. and Mrs. Jarr" in a series of silent comedy shorts. He also directed several silent features in the pre-World War I era. Most of his film activity was in the sound era, with such rich characterizations as Dr. Mead in Gone With the Wind (1939) and Louis XI in The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1939) to his credit. He also essayed a few leading film roles, notably as a lovable hermit in the 1946 PRC programmer The Enchanted Forest. At the time of his final screen performance in Frank Capra's Riding High (1950), much was made in the press of the fact that this film represented Davenport's seventy-eighth year in show business. Married twice, Harry Davenport was the father of actors Arthur Rankin and Dorothy Davenport.

Trivia: American actress Jane Darwell was the daughter of a Missouri railroad executive. Despite her father's disapproval, she spent most of her youth acting in circuses, opera troupes and stock companies, making her film debut in 1912. Even in her early thirties, Darwell specialized in formidable "grande dame" roles, usually society matrons or strict maiden aunts. Making an easy transition to talking pictures, Darwell worked primarily in small character parts (notably as governesses and housekeepers in the films of Shirley Temple) until 1939, when her role as the James Brothers' mother in Jesse James began a new career direction--now she was most often cast as indomitable frontierswomen, unbending in the face of hardship and adversity. It was this quality that led Darwell to be cast in her favorite role as Ma Joad in The Grapes of Wrath (1940), for which she won an Oscar. Darwell continued to work until illness crept upon her in the late 1950s. Even so, Darwell managed to essay a handful of memorable parts on TV and in movies into the 1960s; her last film role was as the "Bird Woman" in Disney's Mary Poppins (1964).

Trivia: Sixteen-year-old Alabaman Mary Anderson made her first screen appearance as Maybelle Meriweather in Gone With the Wind (1939). As a 20th Century-Fox contractee in the mid-1940s, she was seen in Hitchcock's Lifeboat (1943) and in the lavish biopic Wilson (1944). She ended her film career in 1953, occasionally reemerging on television, notably in the role of Catherine Harrington on the prime-time soaper Peyton Place. Mary Anderson was married to cinematographer Leon Shamroy, whom she met on the set of Wilson. She passed away three days after turning 96, in 2014.

Trivia: An English literature major while in school, American actress Ona Munson forsook academia to work in a variety of show business jobs, ranging from ballet dancer to vaudeville sketch work. Ona made her first film, Head of the Family, in 1928, but it wasn't until 1933 that she would cease juggling film and theater work to settle in Hollywood for good. Adept at comedy, Ms. Munson was nonetheless mired in heavy drama in most of her films, often as the "other woman" in romantic triangles. Before leaving films in 1947 (she committed suicide in 1955 after several years of illness and personal reverses), Munson left behind two indelible cinematic portrayals: Belle Watling, the lady of the evening with the requisite golden heart in Gone With the Wind (1939), and Mother Gin Sling, proprietress of the euphemistically labelled "gambling house" in the exotic melodrama The Shanghai Gesture (1941).

Trivia: American actor Ward Bond was a football player at the University of Southern California when, together with teammate and lifelong chum John Wayne, he was hired for extra work in the silent film Salute (1928), directed by John Ford. Both Bond and Wayne continued in films, but it was Wayne who ascended to stardom, while Bond would have to be content with bit roles and character parts throughout the 1930s. Mostly playing traffic cops, bus drivers and western heavies, Bond began getting better breaks after a showy role as the murderous Cass in John Ford's Young Mr. Lincoln (1939). Ford cast Bond in important roles all through the 1940s, usually contriving to include at least one scene per picture in which the camera would favor Bond's rather sizable posterior; it was an "inside" joke which delighted everyone on the set but Bond. A starring role in Ford's Wagonmaster (1950) led, somewhat indirectly, to Bond's most lasting professional achievement: His continuing part as trailmaster Seth Adams on the extremely popular NBC TV western, Wagon Train. No longer supporting anyone, Bond exerted considerable creative control over the series from its 1957 debut onward, even seeing to it that his old mentor John Ford would direct one episode in which John Wayne had a bit role, billed under his real name, Marion Michael Morrison. Finally achieving the wide popularity that had eluded him during his screen career, Bond stayed with Wagon Train for three years, during which time he became as famous for his offscreen clashes with his supporting cast and his ultra-conservative politics as he was for his acting. Wagon Train was still NBC's Number One series when, in November of 1960, Bond unexpectedly suffered a heart attack and died while taking a shower.

Trivia: When American actor Paul Hurst became the comedy sidekick in the Monte Hale western series at Republic in the early '50s, he came by the work naturally; he had been born and bred on California's Miller and Lux Ranch. While in his teens, Hurst attained his first theatre job as a scenery painter in San Francisco, making his on-stage debut at age 19. In 1911, Hurst ventured into western films, wearing three hats as a writer, director and actor. He worked ceaselessly in character roles throughout the '20s, '30s and '40s, most often in comedy parts as dim-witted police officers and muscle-headed athletes. He also showed up in leading roles in 2-reelers, notably as a punchdrunk trainer in Columbia's Glove Slingers series. On at least two memorable occasions, Hurst eschewed comedy for villainy: in 1943's The Ox-Bow Incident, he's the lynch-mob member who ghoulishly reminds the victims what's in store for them by grabbing his collar and making choking sounds. And in Gone with the Wind, Hurst is Hell personified as the Yankee deserter and would-be rapist whom Scarlet O'Hara (Vivien Leigh) shoots in the face at point blank range. Paul Hurst kept busy into the early '50s; at the age of 65, he ended his career and his life in suicide.

Trivia: Born and raised on a Wyoming ranch, American actress Isabel Jewell would only rarely be called upon to play a "Western" type during her career. For the most part, Isabel -- who made her screen debut in Blessed Event (1932) -- was typecast as a gum-chewing, brassy urban blonde, or as an empty-headed gun moll. Jewell's three best remembered film performances were in Tale of Two Cities (1935), where she was atypically cast as the pathetic seamstress who is sentenced to the guillotine; Lost Horizon (1937), as the consumptive prostitute who finds a new lease on life when she is whisked away to the land of Shangri-La; and Gone with the Wind (1939), where she appears briefly as "poor white trash" Emmy Slattery. In 1946, Isabel finally got to show off the riding skills she'd accumulated in her youth in Wyoming when she was cast as female gunslinger Belle Starr in Badman's Territory. Denied starring roles because of her height (she was well under five feet), Isabel Jewell worked as a supporting player in films until the '50s and in television until the '60s.

Trivia: Yakima Canutt was the most innovative stunt performer and coordinator ever to risk life and limb for the art of Hollywood illusion. Cheating death at every turn, many of the tricks of the trade he first developed in the Westerns of the silent era remain fixtures of the craft even today. Born Enos Edward Canutt on November 29, 1895, in Colfax, WA, he began working on ranches while in his youth and at the age of 17 signed on as a trick rider with a Wild West show, where he ultimately won the title of Rodeo World Champion. Billing himself as Eddie Canutt, "the Man From Yakima," in 1917 he met Hollywood cowboy star Tom Mix, who recruited him as a stunt man. Quickly he became one of the leading fall guys in the industry, with a knack for horse spills and wagon wrecks. Over and over again, Canutt brought Western reelers to a rousing finale by doubling as the hero as he leapt from his horse to tackle a villain attempting to flee from the long arm of the law. In 1920, Canutt first earned billing for his work in The Girl Who Dared. Soon his name was appearing in the credits of several Westerns each year, all highlighted by his daredevil antics. His reputation rested on his ability to mastermind larger-than-life sequences -- cattle stampedes, covered-wagon races, and the like -- as well as intricate battles between frontier settlers and their Indian rivals. He could also be counted on to leap from a cliff's top while on horseback, or from a stagecoach onto its runaway horse team. For his elaborately choreographed fight scenes, Canutt developed a new, more realistic method of throwing punches, positioning the action so that the camera filmed over the shoulder of the actor receiving the blow, with the punch itself coming directly toward the lens. With the addition of sound effects, the illusion of fisticuffs was complete, and the practice remains an essential component of the stunt man's craft today. Under Canutt's supervision, a number of rules and guidelines designed to improve stunt safety were established, all of them becoming industry standards. Indeed, to his credit no one was ever seriously injured in any of his films. Many of Canutt's most important innovations involved his use of rigging: In one such attempt to minimize the possibility of broken bones, he carefully rigged his stirrups to break open to allow his feet to release at the proper moment. He also rigged cable mechanisms to trigger stunt action, maintaining more control over his scenes to eliminate the possibility of catastrophe. Gene Autry, Roy Rogers -- nearly every major Western star -- owed much of his success to Canutt's daring; eventually, his mastery of the craft was such that scripts were penned without detailed descriptions of their fight scenes or chases, and "Action by Yakima Canutt" was simply written instead.By the mid-'20s, Canutt was starring in Westerns as well as handling stunts. However, as the sound era dawned he suffered an illness which stripped the resonance from his voice, effectively ending his career as a leading man and reducing him to turns as sidekicks and heavies. In 1932's serial The Shadow of the Eagle, he was cast alongside John Wayne, beginning a partnership that was to endure for many years; their most notable collaboration was the 1939 classic Stagecoach, where Canutt not only came aboard as the stunt supervisor but also appeared onscreen to take falls as a cowboy, an Indian, and even as a woman. In addition to keeping peace between Wayne and director John Ford, Canutt also performed one of the most legendary stunts in film history, a pulse-pounding pass under a moving stagecoach: Doubling as an Indian, he rode his horse ahead of the coach before attempting to leap over to its lead team and dropping to the ground; after a brief moment, he then released his grip and allowed the horses and the coach to pass over his body. As Canutt grew older, injuries began to take their toll, and he cut back on his rigorous schedule, making the transition from stunt performer to coordinator to, ultimately, director. However, he still found time to appear onscreen in noteworthy films like 1939's Gone With the Wind, not only standing in for Clark Gable during his wagon drive through the burning streets of Atlanta but also playing the renegade soldier who attacks Scarlett O'Hara and tumbles backward down a flight of steps. In his later years Canutt also served as a second-unit director, most notably aiding William Wyler on 1959's Ben-Hur, where he helped supervise the choreography of the famed chariot race (a sequence two years in the making). Canutt also oversaw the many animal action scenes in Old Yeller, as well as the car chase in The Flim-Flam Man.In 1966, Canutt received a special Academy Award for his lifetime of excellence as a stunt performer, winning kudos "for creating the profession of stunt man as it exists today and for the development of many safety devices used by stunt men everywhere." In 1975, he was also inducted into the Cowboy Hall of Fame in Oklahoma City. Canutt remained active in films until 1976, ending his career as a consultant on Equus. His son later carried on in the family business. In 1979, Canutt published his memoirs, Stunt Man: The Autobiography of Yakima Canutt. Yakima Canutt died in Hollywood on May 24, 1986, at the age of 90.

Trivia: After playing a minor role in 1936's Valiant is the Word for Carrie, gangling juvenile actor Jackie Moran was "discovered" by producer David O. Selznick. Put under contract by Selznick, Moran landed the prize role of Huckleberry Finn in 1938's The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. His subsequent Selznick films included Gone with the Wind (1939, as Phil Meade) and Since You Went Away (1944, as Johnny Mahoney). During this period, Jackie was frequently loaned out to other studios: most of his "outside" projects were routine, with the exception of the 1939 Universal serial Buck Rogers. Jackie Moran retired from acting in 1947.

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: 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: Athletically inclined, Tyler entered films at age 21 as a stuntman and extra. He went on to play supporting roles in several late silents, then signed a contract to star in Westerns. He soon became a popular screen cowboy, often accompanied by sidekick Frankie Darro; he survived the transition to sound, going on to star in a number of serials in the early '30s. He remained popular through the early '40s and occasionally played supporting roles in major films. In 1943 he was struck by a crippling rheumatic condition; although he appeared in a handful of additional films throughout the next decade, his career was effectively ended as he was relegated to minor roles. By the early '50s he was broke. He died of a heart attack at age 50.

Trivia: William Bakewell began playing film juveniles at the age of 17. Bakewell enjoyed a flurry of activity in the early talkie era, with substantial roles in such major films as All Quiet on the Western Front (1930). By the end of the 1930s, his career had by-and-large diminished to minor roles, such as the chivalrous mounted officer in the evacuation scenes in Gone With the Wind (1939). During the next decade, Bakewell fluctuated between one-scene bits and stuffed-shirt character parts, notably James Stewart's rival for the affections of Lana Turner in You Gotta Stay Happy (1948). The baby-boomer generation will always remember Bakewell as Tobias Norton in Disney's ratings-grabbing Davy Crockett episodes of the 1950s; he also played the condescending stage manager on the prime-time version of The Pinky Lee Show (1950). William Bakewell spent most of the last half of his life as a successful California Realtor.

Trivia: After years on the circus and vaudeville circuits, Si Jenks came to films in 1931. Virtually always cast as a grizzled, toothless old codger, Jenks was a welcome presence in dozens of westerns. In Columbia's Tim McCoy series of the early 1930s, Jenks was often teamed with another specialist in old-coot roles, Walter Brennan (17 years younger than Jenks). In non-westerns, Si Jenks played town drunks, hillbillies and Oldest Living Citizens usually with names like Homer and Zeke until his retirement at the age of 76.

Trivia: Emerson Treacy is best remembered for his work in a pair of Little Rascals/Our Gang shorts from the year 1933, portraying the father of Spanky McFarland. In point of fact, he was a successful, light leading man and character actor on-stage, in movies, and on radio and television, with a career that lasted more than 30 years, and took him from comedy on Broadway to roles in the movies of such directors as George Cukor, Joseph Losey, and Alfred Hitchcock. Of slightly diminutive size and with a ready smile, he could also do a good slow burn and turn comically pugnacious, and he had a gift for slapstick comedy as well, all attributes that went into his most well-remembered role, as Spanky's father in the Little Rascals/Our Gang shorts Bedtime Worries and Wild Poses. As the well-meaning but harried husband and father, he was teamed in both films with Gay Seabrook, the dark-haired, mousy-voiced, zany actress who played Spanky's mother. Treacy and Seabrook were actually a well-known double-act on radio and in theater during the early '30s, and their casting as Spanky's parents would have been something of an "in" joke at the time. Together they comprised a kind of slightly lower-rent version of George Burns and Gracie Allen. Onscreen, they made a delightfully goofy couple, like a slightly twisted Blondie and Dagwood Bumstead; and Treacy was superb as Spanky's father, indulgent and enthusiastic at the start of both films, but slowly showing ever more annoyance and impatience over his son's incessant chatter ("Why does he have to ask so many questions?" he asks, in convincing fatigue about four minutes into Bedtime Worries, as his son inquires as to the nature of his job as a shipping clerk). And in Wild Poses, Treacy found his perfect screen nemesis in Franklin Pangborn, playing a prissy, nervous portrait photographer (named Otto Focus) who spends an entire day trying to get one picture of Spanky, while the latter's parents attempt to help. Treacy played in dozens of other feature films, including small roles in Adam's Rib and The Wrong Man, as well as on television programs such as Perry Mason. In Elliott Nugent's rural drama Two Alone (1934), he's sinister as Milt, the smirking, brutish son-in-law to A. S. Byron's lecherous, taciturn Slag, threatening to maim the fleeing young couple as he confronts them, holding a monkey wrench; and in Joseph Losey's The Prowler (1951), Treacy is almost a comically tragic figure as the good-natured brother of a murder victim who unwittingly helps his killer initially escape justice. But those two Little Rascals shorts - in which his character was named Emerson Treacy and Seabrook used her real first name - are what he is remembered for, thanks to 40 years or more of their being steadily re-shown on television.

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: Lovers of '30s films enjoy pointing out their favorite obscure character actors and identifying them by name. One such actor, Philadelphia-born John Wray, is almost instantly recognizable for his grim countenance, piggish eyes, and chunky frame. He was one of the many Broadway actors to descend on Hollywood in the aftermath of the sound revolution, and as such, made an indelible impression on moviegoers. Though seldom playing anything more than a bit or minor role, Wray was lucky enough to have several indelible screen performances to his credit. In 1930, he played Himmelstoss, the meek postman who becomes a cruel Army drill instructor in the opening scenes of All Quiet on the Western Front; restored prints of this Oscar-winning classic have revealed that Wray's part was originally much larger, including a colorful "mad scene" when the sadistic Himmelstoss finds himself under enemy fire for the first time.Wray also played the Arnold Rothstein-like gangster in The Czar of Broadway (1930); and the contortionist the Frog in the remake of The Miracle Man (1932). Wray's portrayals of proletarian nastiness grew increasingly smaller as the decade progressed but he was very visible as the starving farmer threatening to kill Gary Cooper for throwing his money away in mid-Depression in Mr. Deeds Goes to Town (a scene that ends with Wray breaking down sobbing apologetically, inspiring Deeds to set up a financial incentive program to put down-and-outers back on their feet). Avid cinephiles may also remember Wray's portrayal of the warden in Fritz Lang's You Only Live Once (1937). This Wray is not to be confused with the American silent film director and playwright John Griffith Wray of the 1920s.

Trivia: American actor Trevor Bardette could truly say that he died for a living. In the course of a film career spanning three decades, the mustachioed, granite-featured Bardette was "killed off" over 40 times as a screen villain. Entering movies in 1936 after abandoning a planned mechanical engineering career for the Broadway stage, Bardette was most often seen as a rustler, gangster, wartime collaborator and murderous backwoodsman. His screen skullduggery carried over into TV; one of Bardette's best remembered video performances was as a "human bomb" on an early episode of Superman. Perhaps being something of a reprobate came naturally to Trevor Bardette -- or so he himself would claim in later years when relating a story of how, as a child, he'd won ten dollars writing an essay on "the evils of tobacco," only to be caught smoking behind the barn shortly afterward.

Trivia: A minor actor -- in physical stature as well as importance -- Tom Seidel played scores of bit parts all through the 1940s without making much of a mark. The exception was the 1943 Hopalong Cassidy Western False Colors, in which he played a dual role and did it quite well. Retiring from acting in 1950 to go into the contracting business, Seidel was the husband of MGM star Jean Hagen.

Trivia: From 1932 until his retirement sometime in the early 1950s, American general purpose actor James Bush trafficked in faceless minor roles: Bush played one of the Twelve Oaks party guests in Gone With the Wind (1939). In W.C. Fields' You Can't Cheat an Honest Man (1939), wherein Bush was cast as Constance Moore's dishwater-dull fiance Roger Bel-Goodie. Evidently, he struck a responsive chord with the team of Laurel and Hardy: he was prominently cast in three of the team's 20th Century-Fox vehicles, A-Haunting We Will Go (1942), Jitterbugs (1943, as the gangster who expands and levitates to the ceiling after consuming one of Hardy's "gas pills") and The Big Noise (1944). One of James Bush's more noticeable post-war screen roles was Dr. Ernest O. Lawrence in The Beginning or the End (1947), MGM's dramatization of the Manhattan Project.

Trivia: American entertainer Cliff Edwards, the son of a Hannibal, Missouri railroad worker, was born early enough to remember seeing Hannibal's own Mark Twain during the eminent author's many visits. Dropping out of school at 14, Edwards tackled several odd jobs before securing work singing for "illustrated slide" shows at the local movie house. He continued picking up small change as an itinerant singer until he teamed with pianist Bobby Carleton; together Edwards and Carleton penned a popular song, "Ja Da," made even more popular by Edwards' scat-singing rendition. While performing at a Chicago cafe, Edwards was given the lasting soubriquet "Ukelele Ike," in honor of Edward's musical instrument of choice. A top recording artist of the late '20s, Edwards--or Ike--made an easy transition to talking pictures; it was he who introduced the tune "Singin' in the Rain" in MGM's Hollywood Revue of 1929. A few Buster Keaton comedies aside, few of Edwards' early movie appearances were as memorable as this one, though he was an efficient comedy relief in several westerns and a popular radio performer. Edwards' latter-day fame rests on his vocal portrayal of Jiminy Cricket in the Disney cartoon feature Pinocchio (1940), a role he'd repeat in theatrical cartoons and on TV's Mickey Mouse Club and Disneyland.

Trivia: It was once said of the versatile Louis Jean Heydt that he played everything except a woman. Born in New Jersey, the blonde, chiseled-featured Heydt attended Worcester Academy and Dartmouth College. He briefly served as a reporter on the New YorkWorld before opting for a stage career. Among his Broadway appearances was the lead in Preston Sturges' Strictly Dishonorable, establishing a long working relationship with Sturges that would extend to the latter's film productions The Great McGinty (1940) and The Great Moment (1942). Heydt's film characters often seemed destined to be killed off before the fourth reel, either because they were hiding something or because they'd just stumbled upon important information that could prove damaging to the villains. He was knocked off in the first three minutes of Charlie Chan at Treasure Island (1939) and was shot full of holes just before revealing an important plot point to Humphrey Bogart in The Big Sleep (1946) (this after an unforgettable interrogation scene in which Heydt is unable to look Bogart straight in the eye). Heydt's many other assignments include the hungry soldier in Gone with the Wind (1939), Mentor Graham in Abe Lincoln in Illinois (1940), a frustrated general practitioner in Tortilla Flat (1941), a squadron leader in Gung Ho (1943) and a loquacious rural family man in Come to the Stable (1949). Our Gang fans will recall Heydt as Bobby Blake's stepfather in the MGM "Gang" shorts Dad For a Day (1939) and All About Hash (1940). A ubiquitous TV actor, Louis Jean Heydt was seen on many anthology series, and as a semi-regular on the 1958 syndicated adventure weekly MacKenzie's Raiders.

Trivia: Stocky character actor Eddy Chandler's movie career stretched from 1915 to 1947. In 1930, Chandler was afforded a large (if uncredited) role as Blondell, partner in crime of villain Ralf Harolde, in the RKO musical extravaganza Dixiana. Thereafter, he made do with bit parts, usually playing cops or military officers. His brief appearance in Frank Capra's It Happened One Night as the bus driver who begins singing "The Man on a Flying Trapeze"--and plows his bus into a ditch as a result--assured him choice cameos in all future Capra productions. Chandler can also be seen as the Hospital Sergeant in 1939's Gone with the Wind. One of Eddy Chandler's few billed roles was Lewis in Monogram's Charlie Chan in the Secret Service (1944).

Trivia: American actor John Arledge, played second leads and character roles during the '30s. Prior to coming to films he performed on vaudeville and on stage.

Trivia: Mississippi-born Roscoe Ates spent a good portion of his childhood overcoming a severe stammer. Entering show business as a concert violinist, the shriveled, pop-eyed Ates found the money was better as a vaudeville comedian, reviving his long-gone stutter for humorous effect. In films from 1929, Ates appeared in sizeable roles in such films as The Champ (1931), Freaks (1932) and Alice in Wonderland (1933), and also starred in his own short subject series with RKO and Vitaphone. Though his trademarked stammer is something of an endurance test when seen today, it paid off in big laughs in the 1930s, when speech impediments were considered the ne plus ultra of hilarity. By the late 1930s Ates's popularity waned, and he was reduced to unbilled bits in such films as Gone with the Wind (1939) and Dixie (1942). His best showing during the 1940s was as comic sidekick to singing cowboy Eddie Dean in a series of 15 low-budget westerns. Remaining busy in films and on TV into the 1960s, Roscoe Ates made his last appearance in the 1961 Jerry Lewis comedy The Errand Boy.

Trivia: Recruited for films right out of Columbia University, American actor Eric Linden cornered the early-'30s market in portraying sensitive, intellectual, slightly weak-willed juveniles. He made an auspicious movie debut with RKO's Are These Our Children? (1931), in which he played a callow teenager whose minor flirtation with thievery leads to his execution for killing an elderly shop owner. The scenes in which Linden struggles to come to grips with the enormity of his crime and the inevitability of his punishment still pack a wallop when seen today. He continued playing first and second leads, mostly in programmers, throughout the '30s, sometimes costarring with Cecilia Parker in an off-and-on series of rural romances. Linden's career suffered a major setback when he accepted the cameo role of an amputation victim in Gone With the Wind (1939). Due to the horrific elements of his bloody leg operation, Linden's screen time was whittled down to little more than 30 seconds. The industry perception was that Eric Linden's status had slipped to the extent that he was willing to accept a bit part; as a consequence, he appeared in only a handful of B-pictures before leaving Hollywood for the business world in 1941.

Trivia: A pleasant-looking, dark-haired young actor from Oregon, George Hackathorne played Sid Sawyer opposite Jack Pickford's Tom in both Tom Sawyer (1917) and Huck and Tom (1918), personally chosen for the role by Jack's powerful sister Mary, who also cast the young ex-vaudevillian as Amarilly's brother in her own Amarilly of Clotheline Alley (1918). Hackathorne later played the title role in the 1922 screen version of Barrie's The Little Minister and was Bartholomew Gruber in Universal's troubled Merry-Go-Round (1925), but most of his subsequent films were minor. Hackathorne did not fare too well after the changeover to sound and was unbilled in his final films, including 1939's Gone With the Wind, in which he played a wounded soldier.

Trivia: Born in Connecticut and raised in Los Angeles, Frank Coghlan Jr. began appearing in films at age 3; his meager income helped to pay his father's way through chiropractic college. Though his mother was reluctant to allow her son to appear before the cameras, young Frank took to performing with ease, playing bits in 2-reel comedies. Placed under contract to Cecil B. DeMille, who considered the boy "the perfect example of a homeless waif," Frank became a popular juvenile performer. Billed as Junior Coghlan, he appeared prominently in such major silent films as The Yankee Clipper (1926), Let 'Er Go Gallegher (1927) and Slide, Kelly, Slide (1927). During the early talkie era, Coghlan was co-starred with fellow child actor Leon Janney in Penrod and Sam (1930) and played James Cagney as a boy in Public Enemy (1931). As a free-lancer, Coghlan appeared in several serials, including 1941's The Adventures of Captain Marvel, in which he was top-billed as the Captain's youthful alter ego Billy Batson. He also showed up in many bit roles, usually playing a Western Union messenger boy. With the onslaught of World War II, Coghlan began his 23-year Navy career as an aviator. He rose to the rank of Commander, and from 1952 through 1954 was in charge of the movie section of the Pentagon's Office of Information, acting as liaison and technical advisor for such films as The Caine Mutiny (1954) and Bridges of Toko-Ri (1955). He was later in charge of the navy's Hollywood office, coordinating official naval cooperation for films like In Harm's Way (1964) and TV series like Hennessey. After retiring from the Navy, Coghlan worked in public relations for the Los Angeles Zoo and the Port of Los Angeles. He also resumed his acting career, spending seven years as commercial spokesman for Curtis Mathes. As of 1995, Frank Coghlan Jr. was still very active on the nostalgia-convention circuit, and still as unfailingly courteous and likeable as ever.

Trivia: "A very funny guy -- funnier than most gave him credit for," as one director described him, lanky, slow-moving Guy Wilkerson is fondly remembered for playing comedy sidekick Panhandle Perkins in the 1942-1945 PRC Texas Rangers film series, a low-rent competition for Republic Pictures' popular Three Mesquiteers Westerns. As Panhandle, Wilkerson's comedy was never intrusive and often used merely as a slow-witted counterpoint to the action. In Hollywood from at least 1937 (some sources claim he appeared onscreen as early as the 1920s), Wilkerson had honed his skills in minstrel shows, burlesque, and vaudeville, but away from his sidekick duties at PRC, he was usually seen playing less humorous characters, notably ministers or undertakers. Appearing in hundreds of feature films and television series over three decades, Guy Wilkerson was last seen in the crime thriller The Todd Killings in 1971, the year of his death from cancer.

Trivia: American actor Frank Faylen was born into a vaudeville act; as an infant, he was carried on stage by his parents, the song-and-dance team Ruf and Clark. Traveling with his parents from one engagement to another, Faylen somehow managed to complete his education at St. Joseph's Prep School in Kirkwood, Missouri. Turning pro at age 18, Faylen worked on stage until getting a Hollywood screen test in 1936. For the next nine years, Faylen played a succession of bit and minor roles, mostly for Warner Bros.; of these minuscule parts he would later say, "If you sneezed, you missed me." Better parts came his way during a brief stay at Hal Roach Studios in 1942 and 1943, but Faylen's breakthrough came at Paramount in 1945, where he was cast as Bim, the chillingly cynical male nurse at Bellevue's alcoholic ward in the Oscar-winning The Lost Weekend. Though the part lasted all of four minutes' screen time, Faylen was so effective in this unpleasant role that he became entrenched as a sadistic bully or cool villain in his subsequent films. TV fans remember Faylen best for his more benign but still snarly role as grocery store proprietor Herbert T. Gillis on the 1959 sitcom Dobie Gillis. For the next four years, Faylen gained nationwide fame for such catch-phrases as "I was in World War II--the big one--with the good conduct medal!", and, in reference to his screen son Dobie Gillis, "I gotta kill that boy someday. I just gotta." Faylen worked sporadically in TV and films after Dobie Gillis was canceled in 1963, receiving critical plaudits for his small role as an Irish stage manager in the 1968 Barbra Streisand starrer Funny Girl. The actor also made an encore appearance as Herbert T. Gillis in a Dobie Gillis TV special of the 1970s, where his "good conduct medal" line received an ovation from the studio audience. Faylen was married to Carol Hughes, an actress best-recalled for her role as Dale Arden in the 1939 serial Flash Gordon Conquers the Universe, and was the father of another actress, also named Carol.

Trivia: American actor Tommy Kelly had a very brief career during the late '30s through the mid '40s as a child actor. He is best remembered for playing the title role in The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. It is said that David O. Selznick handpicked Kelly for the role. Kelly died in 2016, at age 90.

Trivia: British stage actor William Stack made his first film appearance in 1918's The Girl From Downing Street. Stack then went back to the stage, steering clear of films until 1930. For the next 11 years, he popped up in minor roles as judges, doctors, generals, and priests. One of William Stack's more prestigious assignments during this period was Ruthven in John Ford's Mary of Scotland (1936).

Trivia: British actor Wallis Clark was a fixture of American films from at least 1916, when he played Pencroft in the first cinemazation of Jules Verne's 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. In talkies, Clark busied himself in utility roles as lawyers, city commissioners, foreign noblemen and doctors (he's the medico who warns Warner Baxter that he's courting heart failure in 1933's 42nd Street. During the mid-1930s, he was most often found in the "B" product of Columbia Pictures. In 1939, he was briefly seen as the poker-playing Yankee captain in Gone with the Wind. Wallis Clark's resemblance to Teddy Roosevelt enabled him to portray old Rough 'n' Ready in several films, including Yankee Doodle Dandy (1942) and Jack London (1943).

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: Irish actor J. M. Kerrigan was a stalwart of Dublin's Abbey Players, though from time to time he'd make the crossing to America to appear in such films as Little Old New York (1923) and Song O' My Heart (1930) (His film debut was 1916's Food of Love). Kerrigan settled in Hollywood permanently in 1935 when he was brought from Ireland with several other Abbey performers to appear in John Ford's The Informer. Kerrigan was given a generous amount of screen time as the barfly who befriends the suddenly wealthy Victor McLaglen, then drops his "pal" like a hot potato when the money runs out. Not all of Kerrigan's subsequent Hollywood performances were this meaty, and in fact the actor did a lot of day-player work, sometimes showing up for only one or two scenes. It was in one of these minor roles that J. M. Kerrigan shone in Gone with the Wind (1939), playing Johnny Gallegher, the seemingly jovial mill owner who whips his convict labor into "cooperation."

Trivia: The younger brother of actress Jobyna Howland, Olin Howland established himself on Broadway in musical comedy. The actor made his film debut in 1918, but didn't really launch his Hollywood career until the talkie era. Generally cast as rustic characters, Howland could be sly or slow-witted, depending on the demands of the role. He showed up in scores of Warner Bros. films in the 1930s and 1940s, most amusingly as the remonstrative Dr. Croker (sic) in The Case of the Lucky Legs (1934). A favorite of producer David O. Selznick, Howland played the laconic baggage man in Nothing Sacred (1937), the grim, hickory-stick wielding schoolmaster in The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1938) and an expansive Yankee businessman in Gone with the Wind (1939). During the 1940s, he could often as not be found at Republic, appearing in that studio's westerns and hillbilly musicals. One of his best screen assignments of the 1950s was the old derelict who kept shouting "Make me sergeant in charge of booze!" in the classic sci-fier Them (1954). Howland made several TV guest appearances in the 1950s, and played the recurring role of Swifty on the weekly Circus Boy (1956). In the latter stages of his career, Olin Howland billed himself as Olin Howlin; he made his final appearance in 1958, as the first victim of The Blob.

Trivia: Working in virtual anonymity throughout his film career, the sharp-featured, gangly character actor Harry Strang was seldom seen in a feature film role of consequence. From 1930 through 1959, Strang concentrated on such sidelines characters as soldiers, sentries, beat cops and store clerks. He was given more to do and say in 2-reel comedies, notably in the output of RKO Radio Pictures, where he appeared frequently in the comedies of Leon Errol and Edgar Kennedy. Harry Strang will be remembered by Laurel and Hardy fans for his role as a desk clerk in Block-Heads (1938), in which he was not once but twice clobbered in the face by an errant football.

Trivia: African American comic actor Eddie Anderson was born into a show-business family: his father was a minstrel performer, and his mother a circus tightrope walker. Anderson entered show business at 14, teaming with his brother Cornelius in a song-and-dance act. His movie career began with a lengthy uncredited part as Lowell Sherman's valet in 1932's What Price Hollywood? The best of his earliest film assignments was the part of Noah in the 1936 cinemazation of Marc Connelly's all-black Broadway production The Green Pastures. On Easter Day of 1937, Anderson was engaged to play a one-shot role as a railway porter nicknamed Rochester on radio's The Jack Benny Program. Response was so overwhelmingly positive to Anderson's sandpaper voice and razor-sharp comic timing that the actor was hired as a regular on Benny's program, cast as Jack's know-it-all butler; it was an association which would last until Benny's death in 1974. In addition to his weekly radio duties, Anderson was co-starred with Benny in such films as Man About Town (1939), Buck Benny Rides Again (1940) Love Thy Neighbor (1941) and The Meanest Man in the World (1942); he also continued in the Rochester role on Benny's TV series, which ran until 1965. Outside of his work with Benny, Anderson played various tremulous chauffeurs and handymen in many other films, sometimes in a stereotypical fashion, but nearly always on equal footing with his white co-stars; indeed, his relationship with his screen "boss" Dennis O'Keefe in 1945's Brewster's Millions was so casual that the film was banned in lily-white Mississippi. In 1943, Anderson was afforded top billing in the MGM musical Cabin in the Sky, sharing screen time with such stellar black talent as Lena Horne, Ethel Waters, Rex Ingram and Louis Armstrong. One of the wealthiest black entertainers in the business, Anderson enhanced his film, radio and TV earnings with shrewd real estate investment. He suffered a stroke in the early 1960s which forced him to cut down his activities, though he was always available to work with Jack Benny in the latter's television specials. A prized "social awareness" moment occurred on a Benny special of the late 1960s when Jack invited "Rochester" to portray his servant once more. "But, boss," Eddie Anderson raspily responded, "we don't do that any more!"

Trivia: Born in Puerto Rico, actor Alberto Morin received his education in France. While in that country he worked briefly for Pathe Freres, a major film distribution firm, then studied theatre at the Escuela de Mimica in Mexico. Upon the advent of talking pictures, Morin was signed by Fox Pictures to make Spanish-language films for the South American market. He remained in Hollywood as a character actor, seldom getting much of a part but nearly always making an impression in his few seconds of screen time. Morin also worked steadily in radio and on such TV weeklies as Dobie Gillis and Mr. Roberts, sometimes billed as Albert Morin. During his five decades in Hollywood, Alberto Morin contributed uncredited performances in several of Tinseltown's most laudable achievements: he played Rene Picard in the Bazaar sequence in Gone With the Wind (1939), was a French military officer at Rick's Cafe Americain in Casablanca (1942), and showed up as a boat skipper in Key Largo (1947).

Trivia: As a child actress, Marjorie Goodspeed was featured in such silent films as Scaramouche (1923). As a preteen, she acted and danced under the name Marjorie Moore in musicals like Collegiate (1935). Billed as Marjorie Reynolds from 1937 onward, she played bits in A-pictures like Gone With the Wind (1939) and co-starred in several bread-and-butter epics produced by such minor studios as Monogram and Republic. Her first leading role of consequence was as the dauntless girl reporter in Monogram's Mr. Wong series. Lightening her hair to blonde, Reynolds was signed by Paramount in 1942, getting off to a good start in Holiday Inn as the girl to whom Bing Crosby sings "White Christmas." She was also shown to good advantage in the Fritz Lang thriller Ministry of Fear (1944) before Paramount dropped her option in 1946. Her oddest assignment in her immediate post-Paramount years was as a Revolutionary-era ghost in Abbott and Costello's The Time of Their Lives (1946). In 1953, she replaced Rosemary DeCamp in the role of Mrs. Riley in the popular sitcom The Life of Riley, remaining with the series until its cancellation in 1958. After this lengthy engagement, Marjorie Reynolds was seen in character parts in such TV series as Leave It to Beaver and Our Man Higgins. Reynolds died of congestive heart failure in Manhattan Beach, CA, at the age of 76.

Trivia: Tall, handsome, wavy-haired character actor George Meeker was never in the upper echelons of Hollywood stardom; off-camera, however, he was highly regarded and much sought after -- as an expert polo player. Meeker switched from stage to screen in the silent era, playing leading roles in such important features as Four Sons (1928). In talkies, Meeker seemingly took every part that was tossed his way, from full secondary leads to one-line bits. In his larger roles, Meeker was frequently cast as a caddish "other man," a spineless wastrel who might be (but seldom was) the mystery killer, or the respectable businessman who's actually a conniving crook. He showed up frequently in the films of Humphrey Bogart, most memorably as the white-suited gent in Casablanca (1942) who turns to Bogart after the arrest of Peter Lorre and sneers "When they come to get me, Rick, I hope you'll be more of a help." Other significant George Meeker credits include the role of Robespierre in Marie Antoinette (1938) (cut down to a sniff and a single line -- "Guilty!" -- in the final release print), the supercilious dude who wins Mary Beth Hughes away from Henry Fonda in The Ox-Bow Incident (1943), and the smarmy would-be bridegroom of heiress Dorothy Lamour in The Road to Rio (1947).