Trivia: The most well-known filmmaker to the public this side of Alfred Hitchcock, Orson Welles was the classic example of the genius that burns bright early in life only to flicker and fade later. The prodigy son of an inventor and a musician, Welles was well-versed in literature at an early age -- particularly Shakespeare -- and, through the unusual circumstances of his life (both of his parents died by the time he was 12, leaving him with an inheritance and not many family obligations), he found himself free to indulge his numerous interests, which included the theater. He was educated in private schools and traveled the world, even wangling stage work with Dublin's Gate Players while still a teenager. He found it tougher to get onto the Broadway stage, and traveled the world some more before returning to get a job with Katharine Cornell, with help from such notables as Alexander Woollcott and Thornton Wilder. He later became associated with John Houseman, and, together, the two of them set the New York theater afire during the 1930s with their work for the Federal Theatre Project, which led to the founding of the Mercury Theater. The Mercury Players later graduated to radio, and their 1938 "War of the Worlds" broadcast made history when thousands of listeners mistakenly believed aliens had landed on Earth. In 1940, Hollywood beckoned, and Welles and company went west to RKO, where he began his short-lived reign over the film world. Working as director, producer, co-author, and star, he made Citizen Kane (1941), the most discussed -- if not the greatest -- American movie ever created. It made striking use of techniques that had been largely forgotten or overlooked by other American filmmakers, and Welles was greatly assisted on the movie by veteran cinematographer Gregg Toland. Kane, himself, attracted more attention than viewers, especially outside the major cities, and a boycott of advertising and coverage by the newspapers belonging to William Randolph Hearst -- who had served as a major model for the central figure of Charles Foster Kane -- ensured that it racked up a modest loss. Welles second film, The Magnificent Ambersons, ran into major budget and production problems, which brought down the studio management that had hired him. With the director overextending himself, the situation between Welles and RKO deteriorated. Faced with a major loss on a picture that was considered unreleasable, RKO gained control of the film and ordered it recut without Welles' consent or input, and the result is considered a flawed masterpiece. However, it was a loss for RKO, and soon after the Mercury Players were evicted from RKO, word quickly spread through the film community of Welles' difficulty in adhering to shooting schedules and budgets. His career never fully recovered, and, although he directed other films in Hollywood, including The Stranger (1946), Macbeth (1948), and Touch of Evil (1958), he was never again given full control over his movies. European producers, however, were more forgiving, and with some effort and help from a few well-placed friends, Welles was able to make such pictures as Othello (1952), Chimes at Midnight (1967), and The Trial (1963). He also remained highly visible as a personality -- he discovered in the mid-'40s that, for 100,000 dollars a shot, he could make money as an actor to help finance his films and his fairly expensive lifestyle, which resulted in Welles' appearances in The Third Man (1949), The Roots of Heaven (1958), and Catch-22 (1970), among other pictures. He also made television appearances, did voice-overs and recordings, and occasional commercials until his death in 1985. Despite his lack of commercial success, Welles remains one of the most well-known, discussed, and important directors in the history of motion pictures.

Trivia: The definitive femme fatale of the 1940s, Rita Hayworth was the Brooklyn-born daughter of Spanish dancer Eduardo Cansino and Ziegfeld Follies showgirl Volga Haworth. She joined the family dancing act in her early teens and made a few '30s films under her real name, Margarita Cansino, and with her real hair color (black), including Charlie Chan in Egypt (1935) and Meet Nero Wolfe (1936). Over the next few years -- at the urging of Columbia Studios and her first husband -- she reshaped her hairline with electrolysis, dyed her hair auburn, and adopted the name Rita Hayworth. Following her performance in Only Angels Have Wings (1939), she became a major leading lady to most of the big stars, including Tyrone Power, Fred Astaire, Charles Boyer, Gene Kelly, and her second and soon to be ex-husband Orson Welles in The Lady From Shanghai (1948). Hayworth then became involved in a tempestuous romance with married playboy Aly Khan, son of the Pakistani Muslim leader Aga Khan III, and they married in 1949. Following their divorce two years later, she was married to singer Dick Haymes from 1953 to 1955, and then for three years to James Hill, the producer of her film Separate Tables (1958). Her career had slowed down in the '50s and came to a virtual standstill in the '60s, when rumors of her supposed erratic and drunken behavior began to circulate. In reality, Hayworth was suffering from the first symptoms of Alzheimer's disease. For years, she would be cared for by her daughter Princess Yasmin Khan, and her death from the disease in 1987 gave it public attention that led to increased funding for medical research to find a cure.

Trivia: Manhattan-born Everett Sloane first set foot on-stage at age seven, in the role of Puck in a school production of A Midsummer Night's Dream. At 18, he dropped out of the University of Pennsylvania to join a stock company. Poor reviews convinced Sloane that his future did not lie in the theater, so he secured a job as a Wall Street runner -- only to return to acting after the 1929 crash. He went into radio, playing anything and everything (he was the standard voice of Adolph Hitler on "The March of Time"), then made his Broadway bow with Orson Welles' Mercury Theater. Welles brought Sloane to Hollywood in 1940 to play the wizened Mr. Bernstein in the cinema classic Citizen Kane; Sloane remained a Mercury associate until 1947, when he played the crippled attorney Bannister in Welles' Lady From Shanghai. Outside of the Welles orbit, Sloane was seen in the 1944 Broadway hit A Bell for Adano, and starred as the ruthless business executive in both the television and screen versions of Rod Serling's Patterns. Sloane's additional TV work included a 39-week starring stint on the syndicated series Official Detective, the voice of Dick Tracy in a batch of 130 cartoons produced in 1960 and 1961, and several episodic-TV directorial credits. Reportedly depressed over his encroaching blindness, Everett Sloane committed suicide at the age of 55.

Trivia: Beginning his professional career in vaudeville, actor Glenn Anders made his legitimate New York debut in Just Around the Corner in 1919. A distinguished presence on Broadway for three decades, Anders appeared in the original productions of Sidney Howard's They Knew What They Wanted (1924) and Eugene O'Neill's Strange Interlude (1928). Making an auspicious film debut as the acrobat Leon in D.W. Griffith's Sally of the Sawdust (1925), Anders would only make the occasional screen appearance thereafter, most notably as Rose Hobart's husband in the Bob Hope farce Nothing But the Truth (1941) and as the lawyer George Grisby in Orson Welles' The Lady from Shanghai (1948). Retired to Guadalajara, Mexico, the veteran actor returned to the United States in the late '70s and died at the Actors' Home in Englewood, NJ.

Trivia: Before his motion picture career DeCorsia was a radio actor ("March of Time," "That Hammer Guy," "The Shadow"). He made his film debut in 1948 with The Lady from Shanghai. DeCorsia generally played lead villain roles (Enforcer, Naked City, Slightly Scarlet) or he occasionally parodied those villainous types (Kettles in the Ozarks, Dance With Me Henry).

Trivia: Legend has it that Orson Welles saw his first theatrical production at age seven, when a touring company of Mr. Pim Passes By played in Welles' hometown of Kenosha, WI. Invited backstage, young Welles was effusively greeted by the play's leading man, Erskine Sanford, whose kind and encouraging words inspired Welles to pursue an acting career himself. Whether this story is true or not, the fact remains that, in 1936, Erskine Sanford left the Theatre Guild after a 15-year association to join Orson Welles' experimental Mercury Theatre. When Welles took the Mercury Players to Hollywood in 1940 to film Citizen Kane, Sanford was assigned the small but plum role of Herbert Carter, the sputtering, apoplectic former editor of the New York Inquirer. The actor went on to appear prominently in such Welles-directed films as The Magnificent Ambersons (1942, as Mr. Bronson), Lady From Shanghai (1947, as the judge), and MacBeth (1948, as King Duncan). Outside of his Mercury Theatre activities, Erskine Sanford played featured roles in such mainstream Hollywood productions as Ministry of Fear (1943) and Angel on My Shoulder (1946) before his retirement in 1950.

Trivia: A product of vaudeville and burlesque, gerbil-faced comic actor Gus Schilling hit the big time when he joined the Earl Carroll Vanities in the 1930s. He moved on to Orson Welles' Mercury Theatre troupe, appearing in several Mercury radio shows and in the Welles-directed films Citizen Kane (1940), Magnificent Ambersons (1942), The Lady From Shanghai (1947), and MacBeth (1948). He also showed up in such comedy characterizations as the harried orchestra leader in Hellzapoppin' (1941) and the nervous TV repairman in Our Very Own (1950). From 1945 through 1950, Schilling teamed with Dick Lane in a lively series of 11 Columbia Pictures two-reelers; appearing in nearly all of these shorts was Schilling's burlesque partner, Judy Malcolm, who'd invariably pop up out of nowhere, slap Schilling's face, and shout, "How dare you look like someone I hate?" A heavy smoker, Schilling looked terribly drawn and haggard in his last film appearances. Gus Schilling died at the age of 49 of a reported heart attack, though many of those close to him were of the opinion that he killed himself.

Trivia: A stagestruck 15-year-old Michigan farm boy, Harry Shannon succumbed to the lure of greasepaint upon joining a traveling repertory troupe. Developing into a first-rate musical comedy performer, Shannon went on to work in virtually all branches of live entertainment, including tent shows, vaudeville, and Broadway. By the 1930s, Shannon was a member of Joseph Schildkraut's Hollywood Theater Guild, which led to film assignments. Though he was busiest playing Irish cops and Western sheriffs, Harry Shannon is best remembered as Charles Foster Kane's alcoholic father ("What that kid needs is a good thrashin'!") in Orson Welles' masterpiece Citizen Kane (1941).

Trivia: The bulk of Sam Nelson's career was spent at Columbia Pictures as an assistant director. In this capacity, Nelson worked side by side with Frank Capra (Dirigible, 1931), Orson Welles (Lady from Shanghai, 1947), Robert Rossen (the Oscar-winning All the King's Men, 1949), John Ford (The Last Hurrah 1958) and Budd Boetticher (Comanche Station 1960). And when Billy Wilder rented space at Columbia in 1958 to film Some Like It Hot, Nelson was on hand once more. In addition, Sam Nelson dabbled in acting (Rio Rita, 1929), screenwriting (The Last Man, 1932) and producing (The Menace 1932); he also directed several Columbia "B" westerns from 1938 to 1941.

Trivia: A kind-looking character actress from the Broadway stage (Salt Water [1929], After Tomorrow [1931], and many others), Edythe Elliott entered films in 1935 and played scores of housekeepers, nurses, housewives, and mothers. Very busy at RKO Radio in the 1940s, Elliott later turned up in a host of television guest spots in the 1950s.

Trivia: Burly Jack Baxley had been a side show barker and played that in most of his early films, including Anna Christie (1930), Dancing Lady (1933) and O'Shaughnessey's Boy (1935). Long at MGM, Baxley also portrayed salesmen, bartenders, process servers, and reporters -- in other words men not necessarily all that trustworthy. He was a member of Screen Extras Guild until his death in 1950.

Trivia: In films from 1936, Dorothy Vaughan spent the next 14 years playing scores of bits and featured roles. Vaughan was at one time or another practically everyone's "mom" or "grandma," devoting the rest of the time to playing nurses, maids, governesses, and charwomen. In Westerns, she could be seen playing such no-nonsense matriarchs as the Commodore in Trail to San Antone (1947). From 1939 to 1942, Dorothy Vaughan was a regular in The Glove Slingers, a two-reel comedy series produced at Columbia.

Trivia: It is perhaps superfluous to note that actor Philip Morris was no relation to the cigarette-manufacturing family of the same name. In films from 1935 to 1948, Morris was generally cast as a cop, doorman, cabbie, or truck driver. He can be glimpsed near the end of The Magnificent Ambersons (1942) as the traffic cop investigating George Minafer's auto accident, and in High, Wide and Handsome (1937) as one of the sweating teamsters. One of Philip Morris' few screen characters to be given a name was Howard Ross in the 1948 Western Whirlwind Raiders.

Trivia: Beginning his stage career in his native Holland in 1927, Phil Van Zandt moved to America shortly afterward, continuing to make theatrical appearances into the late '30s. From his first film (Those High Gray Walls [1939]) onward, the versatile Van Zandt was typed as "everyday" characters whenever he chose not to wear his mustache; with the 'stache, however, his face took on a sinister shade, and he found himself playing such cinematic reprobates as evil caliphs, shady attorneys, and heartless Nazis. Because of deliberately shadowy photography, the audience barely saw Van Zandt's face at all in one of his best roles, as the Henry Luce-like magazine editor Rawlston in Orson Welles' Citizen Kane (1941). Though many of his feature-film assignments were bits, Van Zandt was permitted generous screen time in his many appearances in two-reel comedies. Beginning with the Gus Schilling/Dick Lane vehicle Pardon My Terror (1946), Van Zandt was a fixture at the Columbia Pictures short subjects unit, usually playing crooks and mad scientists at odds with the Three Stooges. He established his own acting school in Hollywood in the 1950s, though this and other ventures ultimately failed. Philip Van Zandt died of a drug overdose at the age of 54.

Trivia: So eager was Neighborhood Playhouse-trained William Alland to become a on-stage member of Orson Welles' Mercury Theatre in the late 1930s that he locked himself in Welles' dressing room and wouldn't come out until Orson had heard his audition. He functioned as an actor and stage manager with the Mercury on Broadway, and as assistant director on the troupe's radio series. When Welles took his players to Hollywood in 1940 to make Citizen Kane, Alland went along as dialogue director; he also appeared in the film as the shadowy reporter Thompson, and was heard as the stentorian narrator in the "News on the March" sequence. He remained with Welles into the late 1940s, acting in Lady from Shanghai (1947) and MacBeth (1948) (as one of the murderers) and wearing several hats behind the camera. In 1952, Allan was engaged as a staff producer at Universal-International. Among his best-known productions were the science fiction classics It Came From Outer Space (1953), Creature From the Black Lagoon (1954) and This Island Earth (1955). In 1961, William Alland made his film directorial debut with the juvenile-delinquency melodrama Look in Any Window. Alland died at the age of 81 following complications from heart disease.

Trivia: American character actor Alvin Hammer performed in vaudeville, on stage, in nightclubs, on television, and in many films between the '40s and the late '80s.

Trivia: Enjoying a screen career that began in 1908 and lasted until the early '50s, Edward Peil Sr. remains one of those faces every lover of classic Hollywood movies knows so well but just cannot quite place. A barnstormer of the old school, Peil supported legendary stage diva Helena Modjeska in road companies of such theatrical classics as The Witching Hour and Brewster's Millions. Although he had dabbled in motion picture acting as early as 1908 (probably with the Philadelphia-based Lubin company), Peil came into his own with D.W. Griffith, who cast him as Evil Eye in Broken Blossoms (1919) and Swan Way in Dream Street (1921), not exactly characterizations that will endear him to modern, more politically correct moviegoers. Peil, whose last name was often misspelled "Piel," performed more evil-doing later in the decade, although age had a mellowing effect and he increasingly began playing gentleman ranchers, the heroine's father/uncle, decent lawmen, and the like, carving out a whole new career for himself in the field of B-Westerns. According to genre expert Les Adams, Peil made a total of 104 sound Westerns and 11 serials, adding the "Sr." to his name when his namesake son dropped his previous moniker of Johnny Jones. Father and son made one film together: the 1941 aviation drama I Wanted Wings. Edward Peil Sr. died in 1958 at the age of 76.

Trivia: A distinguished gray-haired stage actor, John Elliott appeared sporadically in films from around 1920. But Elliott became truly visible after the advent of sound, when he found his niche in B-Westerns. As versatile as they come, he could play the heroine's harassed father with as much conviction as he would "boss heavies." Doctors, lawyers, assayers, prospectors, clergymen -- John Elliott played them all in a screen career that lasted until 1956, the year of his death. His final screen appearance was in Perils of the Wilderness (1956) which, coincidentally, was the second-to-last action serial produced in the United States.

Trivia: Onscreen from 1938, balding American comedian Joe Palma (sometimes billed Joseph Palma) became a fixture in Columbia Pictures short subjects, earning a reported 55 dollars a day supporting everybody from "Woo-Woo" Hugh Herbert to Vera Vague to the Three Stooges. Along with Johnny Kascier and the veteran Al Thompson, Palma played bit parts and did stunt work in virtually all the Stooges comedies of the 1940s and early '50s. When Shemp Howard died suddenly of a heart attack in November 1955, Palma doubled him in four comedies before producer/director Jules White finally settled on Joe Besser as the third Stooge. The studio kept up the charade by filming Palma, as Shemp, from the back or having him carry heavy loads of props that completely obscured his face. Joe Palma outlasted the Columbia short subject department, retiring from screen work in 1965.

Trivia: Fresh from the University of Denver, American actor Richard Wilson headed to Chicago and then New York, for the hectic life of a radio actor. He befriended fellow performer Orson Welles while both were making the radio-network rounds. In 1937, Welles invited Wilson to join his Mercury Theatre stage troupe, where Wilson functioned as actor, adaptor, production associate and assistant director. When Welles moved his Mercury troupe to Hollywood in 1940 for Citizen Kane, Wilson went along as jack-of-all-trades; if you look closely, you can see the angular Mr. Wilson as one of the shadowy reporters in Kane's closing scenes. After working as a production assistant on Welles' followup film The Magnificent Ambersons (1942), Wilson joined Welles in Rio de Janeiro to work on the ill-fated Technicolor documentary It's All True (1942). Stories involving this disaster-prone effort have fallen into the realm of legend, making it difficult for the historian to separate fact from fancy in reporting on the film. Indeed, so many falsehoods concerning It's All True were repeated as gospel in one 1970 book on Welles that Wilson was moved to write a rebuttal article for Sight and Sound magazine, titled "It's Not Quite All True." While many of Welles' Mercury associates had scattered by the late '40s, Wilson remained loyal, acting as associate producer for Welles' The Lady From Shanghai (1947) and Macbeth (1948). On his own as a staff producer at Universal in the '50s, Wilson helmed everything from swashbucklers to Ma and Pa Kettle pictures. He began directing in the '50s, mostly program westerns like Man with the Gun (1955). Wilson did what he could to draw a performance from a burned-out Errol Flynn in The Big Boodle (1957), and coaxed a convincingly dramatic turn from aquatic star Esther Williams in Raw Wind in Eden (1958). Wilson deservedly won critical plaudits for his handling of a brace of brutal Allied Artists gangster pictures, Al Capone (1960) and Pay or Die (1961). Richard Wilson retired in 1968, making an unexpected return to the cameras in 1989 as an actor in the British satire How to Get Ahead in Business.

Trivia: Norman Thomson may not be a name instantly recognizable by the vast majority of the moviegoing public, nor should it be, for his contributions to the medium were no more or less important than any other actor. In theater, however, Thomson has a bit more significance. He was a founding member of Orson Welles' Mercury Theatre troupe, performing alongside some of the most famous and talented actors in the history of American theater. He also took part in the historic radio broadcast of H.G. Wells' science fiction story, War of the Worlds. His professional acting career lasted until World War II, after which he was assigned by the U.S. Department of Defense to the post of entertainment supervisor for all U.S. bases in the Far East. Thomson held the position, which had him stationed in Tokyo, Japan, for a little over 30 years; at the same time he was earning more success as a novelist. Under the nom de plume Earl Norman, Thomson wrote a total of ten novels. In 1978, the actor/novelist returned to the United States and continued to write. In early 2000, Thomsondied at the age of 84.

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