Trivia: Born to middle-class British parents (his father was an import merchant), actor Ronald Colman was raised to be as much a gentleman as any "high born" Englishman, and strove to maintain that standard both on and off screen all his life. Acting was merely a hobby to Colman while he attended the Hadley School at Littlehampton, Sussex, but after a few years' drudgery as a bookkeeper with the British Steamship Company, the theatre seemed a more alluring (if not more lucrative) life's goal. After a brief service in WWI (during which he was wounded and then discharged), Colman eventually went into acting full-time, making his debut in a tiny role in the play The Maharanee of Arakan (1916). A subsequent better role in a production of Damaged Goods led to Colman's being hired to star in a two-reel film drama, The Live Wire. The film was never released, which is why Colman's "official" debut is often listed as his first feature film The Toilers (1919). The money wasn't good in the British film industry of the period--in fact it was a step away from starvation wages - so Colman arrived in New York City with about $37 to his name, making his American movie debut in Handcuffs or Kisses? (1920). His next film was also his Big Break: The White Sister (1923), directed in Italy by Henry King, in which Colman was co-starred opposite prestigious actress Lillian Gish. The association with King and Gish was Colman's entry into Hollywood, and by 1925 he'd begun his nine-year association with producer Sam Goldwyn. Most of Colman's silent films were lush romantic costume dramas, in which he usually co-starred with the lovely Vilma Banky. This sort of glorious nonsense was rendered anachronistic by the advent of talking pictures, but Goldwyn wisely cast Colman in a sophisticated up-to-date adventure, Bulldog Drummond (1929), for the actor's talkie debut. Colman scored an instant hit with his beautifully modulated voice and his roguishly elegant manner, and was one of the biggest and most popular screen personalities of the 1930s. A falling out with Goldwyn in 1934 prompted Colman to avoid long-term contracts for the rest of his career. As good as his pre-1935 films were, Colman was even more effective as a free-lancer in such films as Tale of Two Cities (1935), Lost Horizon (1937), The Prisoner of Zenda (1937), The Light That Failed (1939) and Talk of the Town (1942). The actor also began a fruitful radio career during this period, first as host of an intellectual celebrity round-robin discussion weekly The Circle in 1939; ten years later, he and his actress wife Benita Hume starred in a witty and well-written sitcom about a college professor and his spouse, The Halls of Ivy, which became a TV series in 1954. Perhaps the most famous of Colman's radio appearance were those he made on The Jack Benny Program as Jack's long-suffering next door neighbor. Colman won an Academy Award for his atypical performance in A Double Life (1947) as an emotionally disturbed actor who becomes so wrapped up in his roles that he commits murder. Curtailing his film activities in the 1950s, Colman planned to write his autobiography, but was prevented from doing so by ill health -- and in part by his reluctance to speak badly of anyone. Colman died shortly after completing his final film role as the Spirit of Man in The Story of Mankind (1957), a laughably wretched extravaganza from which Colman managed to emerge with his dignity and reputation intact.

Trivia: Endearing herself to television audiences as the devoted sitcom wife of Robert Young on Father Knows Best, petite brunette actress Jane Wyatt also essayed frequent big-screen roles highlighted by memorable performances in such films as Lost Horizon (1937), in which she plays Sondra, the lover of Robert Conway (Ronald Colman). Born in Campgaw, NJ, on August 12, 1910, to an investment banker father and a drama critic mother, and raised as a Manhattanite from age three, Wyatt received her formal education at the Chapin School and -- very briefly -- at New York City's Barnard College, where she spent two listless years. Following the irresistible call of the stage, Wyatt bucked university life in favor of honing her acting skills at Berkshire Playhouse in the western Massachusetts community of Stockbridge. Shortly after this, she accepted a position as understudy to Rose Hobart in a Broadway production of Trade Winds. Universal soon took note of Wyatt's talents and offered her a film role, in Frankenstein director James Whale's One More River (1934). Wyatt embarked on a lucrative screen career following her impressive debut, and many consider the performance in Lost Horizon her crowning achievement, though additional cinematic work throughout the 1940s proved both steady and rewarding. Following memorable performances in Clifford Odets' None But the Lonely Heart (1944) (alongside Cary Grant) and Elia Kazan's Gentleman's Agreement (1947, with Gregory Peck and Dorothy McGuire), the now-established actress transitioned smoothly into television in the early '50s, given her standing role as the matriarch of the Anderson family (mother of Bud, Princess, and Kitten, and wife of Jim) on the long-running CBS sitcom Father Knows Best. Wyatt deservedly won three Emmys for that role, and remained with the program over the course of its six-year run of original episodes. (Riding the crest of high ratings, CBS stretched prime-time reruns into the spring of 1963.) This marked the only major recurring prime-time role of Wyatt's career, though (alongside the work of others such as Barbara Billingsley and Harriet Nelson) it did much to establish the now-iconic image of the "archetypal 1950s sitcom mother," and earned the actress a beloved spot in American pop-culture history. In addition to this, Wyatt made occasional appearances, during the Father Knows Best run, on a dramatic anthology series headlined by her small-screen husband, Robert Montgomery Presents (NBC, 1950-1957). Six years after new episodes of Father wrapped, Star Trek landed on NBC, and Wyatt turned up occasionally on that program, as Mr. Spock's mother, Amanda Spock. She also made a guest appearance, alongside the late Bob Cummings, on the early-'70s comedic anthology series Love, American Style (the two play parents who are overanxious about their daughter's decision to embark on a European "swingers' holiday" with a boyfriend). If the preponderance of Wyatt's roles in the '70s, '80s, and '90s were largely supporting turns, it certainly said nothing about the actress' talent. She remained in the public eye as a fixture of such made-for-television features as You'll Never See Me Again (1973) and Amelia Earhart (1976). Though she entered semi-retirement in the late '70s, Wyatt later appeared (very infrequently) as an occasional supporting character in television's St. Elsewhere and reprised her role as Spock's mother in Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home (1986).On October 20, 2006, after years of inactivity, Jane Wyatt died of natural causes in her sleep, at her home in Bel Air, CA. She was 96.

Trivia: Born Marie Marguerita Guadalupe Teresa Estela Bolado Castilla y O'Donnell, she began dancing professionally at age nine, receiving coaching from Eduardo Cansino, Rita Hayworth's father. Her uncle was Xavier Cugat, and she appeared with his band in Mexican nightclubs and traveled with them to New York; as their dancer, she helped the band in its triumphant introduction of the rumba to America. She began appearing on Broadway and in films in 1934. She danced in two or three of her films, but otherwise was usually cast as a tragic character. Somewhat busy as a screen actress from 1934-44, her film appearances afterwards were sporadic; altogether, she appeared in only 15 films. From 1937-40 Margo was married to actor Francis Lederer. From 1945 she was married to actor Eddie Albert; she was the mother of actor Edward Albert. In 1974 she was appointed Commissioner of Social Services for Los Angeles.

Trivia: Few actors were more beloved of audiences across multiple generations -- and from more different fields of entertainment -- than Edward Everett Horton. For almost 70 years, his work delighted theatergoers on two coasts (and a lot of the real estate in between) and movie audiences, first in the silents and then in the talkies, where he quickly became a familiar supporting player and then a second lead, often essaying comically nervous "fuddy-duddy" parts, and transcended the seeming limitations of character acting to rival most of the leading men around him in popularity; he subsequently moved into television, both as an actor and narrator, and gained a whole new fandom for his work as the storyteller in the animated series "Fractured Fairy Tales." Edward Everett Horton was born in Brooklyn, NY, in 1886 -- when it was a separate city from New York City -- the son of Edward Everett Horton and Isabella Diack Horton. His grandfather was Edward Everett Hale, the author of the story The Man Without a Country. He attended Boys High School and later studied at the Brooklyn Polytechnic Institute and at Oberlin College in Ohio, and Columbia University in Manhattan. His path to graduation was thwarted when he joined the university's drama club -- despite his 6'2" build, his first role had him cast as a woman. He never did graduate from Columbia, but he embarked on a performing career that was to keep him busy for more than six decades. In those days, he also sang -- in a baritone -- and joined the Staten Island-based Dempsey Light Opera Company for productions of Michael Balfe's The Bohemian Girl and Gilbert & Sullivan's The Mikado. His singing brought him to the Broadway stage as a chorus member, and he subsequently spent three years with the Louis Mann company honing his acting skills while playing in stock -- Horton made his professional acting debut in 1908 with a walk-on role in The Man Who Stood Still. By 1911, he was working steadily and regularly, and often delighting audiences with his comedic talents, and remained with the Mann company for another two years. He was a leading man in the Crescent Theatre stock company, based in Brooklyn, and spent the remainder of the teens playing leading roles in theater companies across the United States, eventually basing himself in Los Angeles. Horton entered movies in 1918, and became well known to screen audiences with his performance in the 1923 version of Ruggles of Red Gap. He was identified almost entirely with comedic work after that, and by the end of the '20s had starring roles in a string of comedic shorts. It was after the advent of sound, however, that he fully hit his stride on the big screen. Horton's first talking feature was The Front Page (1931), directed by Lewis Milestone, based on the hit play by Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur, in which he played fidgety reporter Roy Bensinger. Starting in the early '20s, Horton based most of his stage work on the West Coast, producing as well as acting. He leased the Majestic Theater in Los Angeles and found success with works such as The Nervous Wreck, in which he worked with Franklin Pangborn, a character actor who would also -- like Horton -- specialize in nervous, fidgety roles (though Pangborn, unlike Horton, never rose beyond character actor and supporting player status in features). In 1932, he leased the Hollywood Playhouse, which he subsequently operated for a season starring in Benn Wolfe Levy's Springtime for Henry, in which he performed more than 3000 times, making enough money from that play alone to buy his summer home in the Adirondacks. Horton fit in his movie work in between productions of Springtime for Henry (which was filmed in 1934, without Horton), and was always in demand. Amid his many roles over the ensuing decade, Horton worked in a half-dozen of the Fred Astaire/Ginger Rogers musicals at RKO. His other notable roles onscreen during the 1930s included a portrayal of The Mad Hatter in the 1933 Alice in Wonderland, and a neurotic paleontologist (who first appears disguised as a woman) in Frank Capra's Lost Horizon (1937). He worked in at least six movies a year from the early '30s through the end of the 1940s, and there were occasional serious variations in his roles -- Horton played an unusually forceful part in Douglas Sirk's Summer Storm (1944), and he delivered a comedic tour de force (highlighted by a delightful scene with Carmen Miranda) in Busby Berkeley's The Gang's All Here (1943). Horton kept busy for more than 60 years, and not just in acting -- along with his brother George he bought up property in the San Fernando Valley from the 1920s onward, eventually assembling Beleigh Acres, a 23-acre development where he lived with his mother (who passed away at age 102). His hobbies included antiques, and at the time of his death in 1970, he had a collection with an estimated value of a half million dollars. He was busy on television throughout the 1950s and '60s, not only in onscreen work but also voice-overs for commercials, and he even hosted the Westminster Kennel Club dog show at Madison Square Garden. Horton was a regular cast member on the comedy Western series F Troop, playing Roaring Chicken (also referred to as Running Chicken), the Hekawi indian tribe medicine man. But his most enduring work from the 1960s was as the narrator of "Fractured Fairy Tales," the Jay Ward-produced co-feature to Rocky & Bullwinkle, in which he was prominently billed in the opening credits of every episode. That engagement endeared him to millions of baby boomers and their parents, and his work in those cartoons continues to gain Horton new fans four decades after his death. He grew frail in appearance during the 1960s, and was not averse to playing off of that reality on series such as Dennis the Menace, where he did a guest-star spot in one episode as Uncle Ned, a health-food and physical-culture fanatic. Horton never married, and shared a home later in life with his sister, Hannabelle Grant. He was hospitalized weeks before his death from cancer in September 1970, and was so busy that during that hospitalization he showed up as a guest star in two episodes of the sitcom The Governor and J.J., His final big-screen appearance was in the Bud Yorkin/Norman Lear comedy Cold Turkey, which wasn't released until the following year.

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 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: H.B. Warner was the son of Charles Warner and the grandson of James Warner, both prominent British stage actors. A tentative stab at studying medicine was abandoned when the younger Warner took drama lessons in Paris and Italy, then joined his father's stock company. After touring the British empire, Warner made his first American stage appearance in 1905. A leading man in his younger days, Warner starred in the first stage and screen versions of that hardy perennial The Ghost Breaker. His most celebrated silent film role was as Christ in Cecil B. DeMille's The King of Kings (1927). Though Warner sometimes complained that this most daunting of portrayals ruined his career, in point of fact he remained extremely busy as a character actor in the 1930s and 1940s. A favorite of director Frank Capra, Warner appeared as Chang in Lost Horizon (1937) (for which he was Oscar-nominated) and as old man Gower in the Christmas perennial It's a Wonderful Life (1946). Warner also played Inspector Nielsen in several of the Bulldog Drummond B-pictures of the 1930s, and had a cameo as one of Gloria Swanson's "waxworks" in Sunset Boulevard. H.B. Warner's final screen appearance was in DeMille's 1956 remake of The Ten Commandments.

Trivia: Nature obviously intended for Sam Jaffe to spend much of his screen career playing eccentric scientists and peppery little old men. As a child, Jaffe appeared in Yiddish stage productions with his mother, a prominent actress. He gave up the theater to study engineering at Columbia University, then served for several years as a mathematics teacher in the Bronx. He returned to acting in 1915 and never left, despite efforts by the more rabid communist-hunters of the 1950s to prevent the gently liberal-minded Jaffe from earning a living. Jaffe's now-familiar shock of wild, white hair was first put on view before the cameras in 1934's The Scarlet Empress, in which he played the insane Grand Duke Peter (several critics compared Jaffe's erratic behavior and bizarre appearance to Harpo Marx). Still only in his mid-40s, Jaffe went on to play the centuries-old High Lama in Capra's Lost Horizon (1937). In 1939, he essayed the title character in Gunga Din, though Hollywood protocol dictated that top billing go to Cary Grant, Victor McLaglen and Douglas Fairbanks Jr. Jaffe was Oscar-nominated for his performance as Doc, the "brains" in the 1950 crime film The Asphalt Jungle. His resemblance to Albert Einstein (minus the bushy moustache, of course) led to Jaffe being cast in Einsteinlike roles in Gentleman's Agreement (1947) and The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951). Jaffe was the lifelong best friend of Edward G. Robinson, with whom he appeared in the made-for-TV film The Old Man Who Cried Wolf (1971). TV viewers with long memories will recall Sam Jaffe as snowy-haired father-figure Dr. Zorba on the 1960s TV series Ben Casey, in which Jaffe was co-starred with his second wife, Bettye Ackerman.

Trivia: Veteran British stage actor Lawrence Grant entered films in 1918, when his marked resemblance to Germany's Kaiser Wilhelm made him a "natural" for such epics as To Hell with the Kaiser. An acknowledged expert in American Indian lore, Grant also took time in 1918 to produce an experimental color film about Native Americans. Sound proved no obstacle to Grant's film career, as he proved in his first talkie role, the scurrilous Dr. Lakington in Bulldog Drummond (1929). He later appeared with his Drummond co-star Ronald Colman in such films as The Unholy Garden (1931) and Lost Horizon (1937). Usually a villain, Grant enjoyed a sizeable sympathetic role as Sir Lionel Barton, the luckless aristocrat tortured to death by the insidious Boris Karloff, in The Mask of Fu Manchu (1932). Active until 1945, Lawrence Grant could be seen in minor roles (often unbilled) in such horror efforts as Ghost of Frankenstein (1942) and The Living Ghost (1944).

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

Trivia: A long-nosed character comedian from Australia, in Hollywood from around 1924, John T. Murray was the husband of buxom comedian Vivian Oakland, with whom he appeared in scores of two-reel comedies, including Andy Clyde's Mr. Clyde Goes to Broadway (1940). Earlier, Murray had played the notorious Jack the Kisser, to whom poor Andy was handcuffed in Caught in the Act (1936), and fans of the Three Stooges may remember him as the professor in Violent Is the Word for Curly (1938). Equally busy in feature films, Murray played Talleyrand in Alexander Hamilton (1931), Pilate's servant in The Last Days of Pompeii (1935), the city editor in The Golden Arrow (1936), and various bit parts in MGM's venerable Andy Hardy series. Retired since the early '40s, Murray died at the Motion Picture Country House and Hospital in Woodland Hills, CA.

Trivia: According to his official studio bio, Boyd Irwin appeared for 17 years on stages in both his native England and Australia. He embarked on a screen career in the latter country in 1915, as a leading man with J.C. Williamson Prod., Southern Cross Feature Film Co., and Haymarket Pictures Corp. In America from 1919, Irwin was relegated to character roles, often villainous in nature, and can be seen as Rochefort in Douglas Fairbanks' The Three Musketeers (1921). He also played the Duc de Guise in Norma Talmadge's Ashes of Vengeance (1923) and Levasseur in Vitagraph's Captain Blood (1924) before returning to Australia. Irwin was back in Hollywood after the changeover to sound, however, lending his ramrod-straight presence to playing scores of military officers, noblemen, and even hotel clerks in films ranging from Madam Satan (1930) to Forever Amber (1947).

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.

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.

Trivia: Born in Missouri, Noble Johnson was raised in Colorado Springs, Colorado where he was a classmate of future film-star Lon Chaney Sr., who became one of his closest friends. At 15, Johnson dropped out of school to help his horse-trainer father. The 6'2", 225-pound teenager had little trouble finding "man-sized" employment, and at various junctures he worked as a miner and a rancher. In 1909, he made his motion picture debut, playing an American Indian (the first of many). Seven years later, Johnson and his brother George formed the Lincoln Motion Picture Company, the first American film studio exclusively devoted to the production of all-black feature films. Business was poor, however; by 1918, the studio had failed, and Johnson returned to acting in other's films. During the silent era, he essayed such roles as Friday in Robinson Crusoe (1922) and Uncle Tom in Topsy and Eva (1927), and also began a longtime professional relationship with producer/director Cecil B. DeMille. His talkie roles included Queequeg in Moby Dick (1930) and the Native Chieftan in King Kong (1933); he also played important parts in Murders in the Rue Morgue (1932), Mystery Ranch (1932) and The Mummy (1932). Launching the 1940's with a vivid portrayal of a zombie in Bob Hope's The Ghost Breakers (1940), Johnson spent the rest of the decade playing Africans, Indians, Mexicans, Arabs and South Sea Islanders, one of the few black performers in Hollywood to be permitted any sort of versatility. Noble Johnson retired in 1950.

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.

Trivia: Best known for having posed for the famous Indian head nickel, Chief John Big Tree (real name Isaac John) enjoyed a screen career lasting 1915-1950. Among his countless Westerns, large and small, Big Tree played important roles in the controversial The Spirit of '76 (1917) and such epics as The Big Trail (1930), Drums Along the Mohawk (1939), and She Wore a Yellow Ribbon (1949).

Trivia: Though he was the personification of the cruel, calculating Japanese military officer in many a wartime propaganda film, Richard Loo was actually born in Hawaii of Chinese parents. The holder of a Business Studies degree from the University of California, Loo ran a successful importing firm until his assets were wiped out in the 1929 stock market crash. He launched his acting career in 1931, first in California-based stock companies, then in films, beginning with Frank Capra's Dirigible (1931). His movie career picked up momentum after the attack on Pearl Harbor, with villainous roles in such films as Wake Island (1942) and The Purple Heart (1944). In all, Richard Loo toted up some 200 film appearances in his five-decade career.

Trivia: Though various sources list his birth date as anywhere between 1865 and 1870, Scottish actor David Torrence was "officially" born in 1880, which would make him two years younger than his more famous brother, character star Ernest Torrence. Like his brother, David went from stage to screen in the early part of the 20th century. Unlike Ernest, David abandoned acting for the life of a Mexican rancher, but a series of reverses compelled him to return before the cameras. While Ernest specialized in villains and rogues, David conveyed a more respectable landed-gentry image, and as such was principally cast as bankers, merchants and attorneys. In his first talkie, Disraeli (1929), David played a sternfaced anti-Semitic head of the Bank of England, whose refusal to finance the Suez canal results in drastic action from Prime Minister Disraeli George Arliss. Most of David's film roles were of shorter duration, as witness his fleeting appearances in such productions as Lost Horizon (1937) and Rulers of the Sea (1939). Comedy fans are most familiar with David Torrence for his performance as Scots attorney Mr. Miggs, executor to the estate of Angus Ian MacLaurel in the 1935 Laurel and Hardy comedy Bonnie Scotland.

Trivia: An honor student in high school, American actor John Howard was also an accomplished pianist, and, in this capacity, won a position in the musical department at Cleveland radio station WHK. While appearing in a stage production at Case Western Reserve University, Howard was spotted by a Paramount talent scout and signed for films. Looking much older than his 26 years, the actor assumed the role of suave adventurer Bulldog Drummond in a series of seven B-movies beginning in 1937. The first actor to play Drummond in sound pictures was Ronald Colman, and it was with him whom Howard co-starred in his most famous film, Lost Horizon (1937). Howard played Colman's younger brother, whose recklessness led to the classic scene in which Margo, playing a woman spirited away from Shangri-La by Howard, aged 50 years before viewers' eyes. Modern day audiences watching the film aren't always very kind to the actor, laughing uproariously at his fevered histrionics; but he was the first to admit in latter-day interviews that he was overacting -- in fact, he was rougher on himself than any audience had been. Otherwise, Howard's film roles were played competently, if not colorfully, although he certainly deserved some credit for convincingly reacting to and making love with the Invisible Woman in the 1941 film comedy of the same name. Howard also became a pioneer of sorts when, in 1947, he starred in Public Prosecutor, the first filmed television series. Eight years later, the actor enjoyed a two-season run on the syndicated hospital drama Dr. Hudson's Secret Journal, in which all traces of the Lost Horizon ham were completely obliterated by his calm, persuasive performance. He starred in a third TV series filmed in 1958, Adventures of the Sea Hawk, but it wasn't aired until 1961 and turn out to be a flop. Howard was philosophical about his acting career, noting that he was always somewhat indifferent about stardom (although he did dearly covet the role of Ashley Wilkes in Gone With the Wind [1939], which ultimately went to Leslie Howard). The actor was, however, justifiably proud of his performance as Katharine Hepburn's wealthy, stuffed-shirt fiancé in The Philadelphia Story (1940) and his 1953 Broadway debut in Hazel Flagg. The next 30 years of his career were divided between mostly unremarkable movies and television productions. Completely out of the film business by the mid-'70s, Howard taught Drama and English at a private high school in Brentwood, CA, for the rest of his life. He died in 1995.

Trivia: Chinese character actor Willie Fung spent his entire Hollywood career imprisoned by the Hollywood Stereotype Syndrome. During the silent era, Fung was the personification of the "Yellow Peril," never more fearsome than when he was threatening Dolores Costello's virtue in Old San Francisco (1927). In talkies, Fung was a buck-toothed, pigtailed, pidgin-English-spouting comedy relief, usually cast as a cook or laundryman.

Trivia: A handsome, mustachioed supporting player, Wedgewood Nowell entered films in 1915, according to his official studio bio, "after 15 years of stage work." A classically trained musician as well, the actor moonlighted as a composer of original music, his scores accompanying the screenings of such popular melodramas as The Disciple (1915) and The Deserter (1916). Very busy throughout the silent era -- mostly playing slightly degenerate noblemen and various bluenoses -- Nowell became a dress extra and bit player after the changeover to sound.

Trivia: American actress Ruth Robinson made a solitary screen appearance in 1911 before returning to the stage. She resumed her film activities in 1936, playing a minor part in the Boris Karloff melodrama The Walking Dead. For the next two decades, she showed up in such stern-faced roles as missionaries, housekeepers, prison matrons, and society spouses. In 1956, Ruth Robinson appeared fleetingly as the title character in the speculative The Search for Bridey Murphy.

Trivia: Like his fellow character actors Donald Meek, John Qualen, and Maudie Prickett, Carl Stockdale looked like someone who'd be named Carl Stockdale. The gangly, cadaverous Stockdale entered films in 1914 as an Essanay Studios stock player, in support of such stars as Broncho Billy Anderson and Charlie Chaplin. He moved into features, where until his retirement in 1942 he played such baleful character roles as backwoods patriarchy undertakers and "machine" politicians. Of his many silent film parts, several stand out, including the role of Monks in both the 1916 and 1922 versions of Oliver Twist and Mabel Normand's misanthropic screen-test director in The Extra Girl (1923). In talkies, Carl Stockdale played bits in features and supporting roles in serials and short subjects; his later work included several entries in the Charley Chase and "Crime Does Not Pay" two-reelers.

Trivia: Actor Victor Wong's first important role was Charlie the cook in King Kong (1933); though this unbilled appearance was to have been confined to a single scene, producer/directors Ernest Schoedsack and Willis O'Brien enjoyed the actor's work and expanded his role during shooting. He returned as Charlie -- this time with featured billing -- in the hastily assembled sequel Son of Kong (1933). For the rest of his Hollywood career, Wong was generally confined to bit roles, such as the bandit leader in Frank Capra's Lost Horizon. Victor Wong's screen credits are sometimes confused with those of contemporary Chinese-American character actor Victor Wong (Dim Sum: A Little Bit of Heart, Shanghai Surprise, The Last Emperor, etc.).