Since You Went Away

Claudette Colbert (Actor) .. Anne Hilton

Born: September 13, 1903
Died: July 30, 1996
Birthplace: Paris, France

Trivia: Paris-born actress Claudette Colbert was brought to New York at the age of seven by her banker father. She planned an art career after high school graduation, studying at the Art Student's League. Attending a party with actress Anne Morrison, the 18-year-old was offered a three-line bit in Morrison's new play The Wild Westcotts. That ended her art aspirations, and Colbert embarked on a stage career in 1925, scoring her first big critical success in the 1926 Broadway production of The Barker, in which she played a duplicitous snake charmer. One year later, the actress made her first film at Long Island's Astoria studio, For the Love of Mike (1927), but the film was unsuccessful and she enjoyed neither the experience nor her young director, Frank Capra. So back she went to Broadway, returning to films during the talkie revolution in The Hole in the Wall (1929), which was also the movie-speaking debut of Edward G. Robinson. Once again, Colbert disliked film acting; but audiences responded to her beauty and cultured voice, so she forsook the stage for Hollywood. Colbert's popularity (and salary) skyrocketed after she was cast as "the wickedest woman in history," Nero's unscrupulous wife Poppaea, in the Biblical epic The Sign of the Cross (1932). Colbert expanded her range as a street-smart smuggler's daughter in I Cover the Waterfront and in the pioneering screwball comedy Three-Cornered Moon (both 1933), but it was for a role she nearly refused that the actress secured her box-office stature. Virtually every other actress in Hollywood had turned down the role of spoiled heiress Ellie Andrews in Columbia's It Happened One Night (1934), and when director Frank Capra approached an unenthusiastic Colbert, she wearily agreed to appear in the film on the conditions that she be paid twice her normal salary and that the film be completed before she was scheduled to go on vacation in four weeks. Colbert considered the experience one of the worst in her life -- until the 1935 Academy Awards ceremony, in which It Happened One Night won in virtually all major categories, including a Best Actress Oscar for her. Colbert spent the next decade alternating between comedy and drama, frequently in the company of her most popular co-star, Fred MacMurray. She gained a reputation of giving 110 percent of her energies while acting, which compensated for her occasional imperviousness and her insistence that only one side of her face be photographed (which frequently necessitated redesigning movie sets just to accommodate her phobia about her "bad side"). Colbert remained a top money-making star until her last big hit, The Egg and I (1947), after which she lost some footing, partly because of producers' unwillingness to meet her demands that (under doctor's orders) she could only film a short time each day (her doctor was her husband). She hoped to jump-start her career in the role of Margo Channing in All About Eve, but those plans were squelched when she injured her back and had to relinquish the character to Bette Davis. Traveling the usual "fading star" route, Colbert made films in Europe and a budget Western in the U.S. before returning triumphantly to Broadway, first in 1956's Janus, then in the long-running 1958 comedy Marriage Go Round. The actress also appeared on television, although reportedly had trouble adjusting to live productions. In 1961, she returned to Hollywood as Troy Donahue's mother in Parrish. It would be her last film appearance until the 1987 TV movie, The Two Mrs. Grenvilles -- in which she far outclassed her material. Still a prominent figure in the Hollywood hierarchy, Colbert retired to her lavish home in California, where she frequently entertained her old friends Ronald and Nancy Reagan. Claudette Colbert died in 1996 in Bridgetown, Barbados, at the age of 92.

Jennifer Jones (Actor) .. Jane

Born: March 02, 1919
Died: December 17, 2009
Birthplace: Tulsa, Oklahoma, United States

Trivia: Though often overshadowed by some of her female contemporaries as the years passed, Jennifer Jones came to embody one of the preeminent examples of a Hollywood star. With qualities that transcended preternatural beauty, she projected the sort of charisma that cannot be feigned, courting legions of fans in the process, as she graced one film after another with her presence. And then, just as suddenly as she had risen to greatness, Jones dropped out of the limelight and withdrew into anonymity, spending the last several decades of her life well outside of the public eye. Jennifer Jones began life in Tulsa, OK, as Phyllis Isley, the daughter of vaudeville performers. Ensconced in show business from the beginning, she dreamed of establishing herself as an actress from early childhood. As a young woman, Isley studied at New York's American Academy of Dramatic Arts and revealed incredible promise; during that tenure, she also met and grew enchanted with a young actor named Robert Walker; they did summer stock together, fell deeply in love, married, and parented two children, Robert Walker, Jr., and Michael Ross Walker. Then Hollywood beckoned to Isley, first with a supporting role in a Republic western, and then in the form of a talent agent from megaproducer David O. Selznick, the giant responsible for Gone With the Wind. Though the agent sensed greatness from the ingenue's initial reading and arranged a meeting between Isley and Selznick without hesitation, Isley reportedly felt ashamed by the Republic B picture and attempted to obscure its presence. She needn't have worried; the initial meeting between Selznick and Isley (whom he renamed Jennifer Jones) permanently changed both of their lives and made Jones a household name. For years, film historians have speculated (and fans have gossiped) about the initial exchanges that materialized between Jones and Selznick, the history of their relationship, and some of the tragedies surrounding it. Many of the exact details will never be known, but readily apparent were Selznick's vision of Jones as his next great star, Jones's decision to leave and then divorce Walker and marry Selznick, and Walker's understandable difficulty in handling these events. By all accounts an emotionally fragile individual (though an incredibly kind and sensitive one), Walker himself moved to Hollywood and experienced a brief period of stardom that peaked with a lead role in Hitchcock's 1951 Strangers on a Train, but he could never quite emotionally adjust to the end of his marriage, or the fact that Jones had left him and married the single most powerful and wealthy person in Hollywood. On a note of sad irony, the two appeared opposite one another as former lovers in a blockbuster produced by Selznick, the 1944 Since You Went Away. Tragically, Walker struggled for years to cope with the divorce, and his life ended at the age of 32, when, following a nervous breakdown and an institutionalization, he received a fatal dose of sodium amatol from a psychiatrist.Jones did the bulk of her early work under new husband Selznick's aegis, and for 15-20 years her career thrived. Selznick preferred casting her in romantic material (often with a tragic undercurrent), and his instincts struck a chord with the public. After receiving an Oscar for her turn as the scorned and martyred Catholic saint Bernadette in the 1943 religious drama The Song of Bernadette, she starred opposite Joseph Cotten in the 1948 fantasy romance Portrait of Jennie (also a huge hit), played Emma Bovary in Vincente Minnelli's 1949 Madame Bovary, and the tragic title character in William Wyler's Theodore Dreiser adaptation Carrie (1952). Yet Jones also unveiled a wicked flair for comedy on a number of occasions, notably as an English cockney plumber in Ernst Lubitsch's magnificent 1946 farce Cluny Brown, and as an English lord's wife plagued by pathological lying in the unfairly maligned John Huston comedy Beat the Devil (1953). Jones continued her acting work into the late '60s, and she racked up a series of four additional Oscar nods for various performances, yet her screen appearances grew less and less frequent. Her private life and marriage to Selznick reportedly brought its share of complications, and the couple's first pregnancy ended in a miscarriage; following Selznick's death in June 1965, Jones endured a lengthy period of severe depression. The actress remarried philanthropist Norton Simon in the early '70s, and co-ran a foundation that he chaired, with the assistance of various celebrity friends. The second marriage lasted until Simon's death in the summer of 1993. Jones accepted one of her final screen roles in the 1974 disaster opus The Towering Inferno, a part for which she drew a substantial amount of acclaim. The actress died in December 2009 at the age of 90.

Shirley Temple (Actor) .. Bridget Hilton

Born: April 23, 1928
Died: February 10, 2014
Birthplace: Santa Monica, California, United States

Trivia: The jury is still out as to whether or not curly haired Shirley Temple was the most talented child star in movie history; there is little doubt, however, that she was the most consistently popular. The daughter of non-professionals, she started taking singing and dancing classes at the age of three, and the following year began accompanying her mother on the movie audition circuit. Hired by the two-reel comedy firm of Educational Pictures in 1933, she starred in an imitation Our Gang series called the Baby Burlesks, performing astonishingly accurate impressions of Greta Garbo and Marlene Dietrich; she was also featured in the films of Educational's other stars, including Andy Clyde and Frank Coghlan Jr. In 1934 she was signed by Fox Pictures, a studio then teetering on the verge of bankruptcy. After a handful of minor roles she created a sensation by stopping the show with her rendition of "Baby Take a Bow" in Fox's Stand Up and Cheer. She was promptly promoted to her own starring features, literally saving Fox (and its successor 20th Century Fox) from receivership, and earned a special Oscar in 1934 "in grateful recognition to her outstanding contribution to screen entertainment." With such tailor-made vehicles as Bright Eyes (1934), Curly Top (1935), The Little Colonel (1935), Dimples (1936), and Heidi (1937), Temple was not only America's number one box-office attraction, but a merchandising cash cow, inspiring an unending cascade of Shirley Temple dolls, toys, and coloring books. She also prompted other studios to develop potential Shirley Temples of their own, such as Sybil Jason and Edith Fellows (ironically, the only juvenile actress to come close to Temple's popularity was 20th Century Fox's own Jane Withers, who got her start playing a pint-sized villain in Temples' Bright Eyes). Though the Fox publicity mill was careful to foster the myth that Temple was just a "typical" child with a "normal" life, her parents carefully screened her friends and painstakingly predetermined every move she made in public. Surprisingly, she remained an unspoiled and most cooperative coworker, though not a few veteran character actors were known to blow their stacks when little Temple, possessed of a photographic memory, corrected their line readings. By 1940, Temple had outgrown her popularity, as indicated by the failure of her last Fox releases The Blue Bird and Young People. The following year, MGM, who'd originally wanted Temple to play Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz, cast her in Kathleen, another box-office disappointment which ended her MGM association almost before it began. Under the auspices of producers Edward Small and David O. Selznick, Temple enjoyed modest success as a teenaged actress in such productions as 1942's Miss Annie Rooney (in which Dickie Moore gave her first screen kiss) and 1944's Since You Went Away. Still, the public preferred to remember the Shirley Temple that was, reacting with horror when she played sexually savvy characters in Kiss and Tell (1945) and That Hagen Girl (1947). Perhaps the best of her post-child star roles was spunky army brat Philadelphia Thursday in John Ford's Fort Apache (1947), in which she co-starred with her first husband, actor John Agar (the union broke up after four years when Agar began to resent being labeled "Mr. Shirley Temple"). She returned to 20th Century Fox for her last film, Mr. Belvedere Goes to College (1949), in which played second fiddle to star Clifton Webb. Retiring on her trust fund in 1950, she wed a second time to business executive Charles Black, a marriage that would endure for several decades and produce a number of children. In 1958 she made a comeback as host of The Shirley Temple Storybook, a well-received series of children's TV specials. Her final show business assignment was the weekly 1960 anthology The Shirley Temple Show, which though not a success enabled her to play a variety of character roles -- including a toothless old witch in an hour-long adaptation of Babes in Toyland! The staunchly Republican Temple went into an entirely different field of endeavor when she entered politics in the mid-'60s. The bitter taste of an unsuccessful congressional bid was dissipated in 1968 when she was appointed U.S. ambassador to the United Nations. She went on to serve as U.S. ambassador to Ghana (1974-1976) and Czechoslovakia (1989), and during the Ford and Carter years kept busy as the U.S. Chief of Protocol. In the 1980s, she went public with information about her mastectomy, providing hope and inspiration for other victims of breast cancer. Still one of the most beloved figures in the world, Temple seemingly went to great pains to dispel her goody two-shoes image in her candid 1988 autobiography Child Star, in which she cast a frequently jaundiced eye on her lifelong celebrity status, revealing among other things that several well-known Hollywood moguls had tried and failed to force their manhood upon her once she was of legal age (and even before!). Temple received several lifetime achievement awards towards the end of her life, including the Kennedy Center Honors in 1998 and the SAG life achievement award in 2005. She died in 2014, at the age of 85.

Joseph Cotten (Actor) .. Lt. Anthony Willett

Born: May 15, 1905
Died: February 06, 1994
Birthplace: Petersburg, Virginia, United States

Trivia: Born to a well-to-do Southern family, Joseph Cotten studied at the Hickman School of Expression in Washington D.C., and later sought out theater jobs in New York. He made his Broadway debut in 1930, and seven years later joined Orson Welles' progressive Mercury Theatre company, playing leads in such productions as Julius Caesar and Shoemaker's Holiday. He briefly left Welles in 1939 to co-star in Katharine Hepburn's Broadway comeback vehicle The Philadelphia Story. Cotten rejoinedWelles in Hollywood in 1940, making his feature-film debut as Jed Leland in Welles' Citizen Kane (1941). As a sort of private joke, Jed Leland was a dramatic critic, a profession which Cotten himself had briefly pursued on the Miami Herald in the late '20s. Cotten went on to play the kindly auto mogul Eugene Morgan in Welles' The Magnificent Ambersons in 1942, and both acted in and co-wrote Journey Into Fear, the film that Welles was working on when he was summarily fired by RKO. Cotten remained a close friend of Welles until the director's death in 1985; he co-starred with Welles in Carol Reed's The Third Man (1949) and played an unbilled cameo for old times' sake in the Welles-directed Touch of Evil (1958). A firmly established romantic lead by the early '40s, Cotten occasionally stepped outside his established screen image to play murderers (Alfred Hitchcock's Shadow of a Doubt [1943]) and surly drunkards (Under Capricorn [1949]). A longtime contractee of David O. Selznick, Cotten won a Venice Film Festival award for his performance in Selznick's Portrait of Jennie (1948). Cotten's screen career flagged during the 1950s and '60s, though he flourished on television as a guest performer on such anthologies as Alfred Hitchcock Presents, Fireside Theatre, The Great Adventure, and as host of The 20th Century-Fox Hour (1955), The Joseph Cotten Show (1956), On Trial (1959), and Hollywood and the Stars (1963). He also appeared in several stage productions, often in the company of his second wife, actress Patricia Medina. In 1987, Cotten published his engagingly candid autobiography, Vanity Will Get You Somewhere. He died of pneumonia in 1994 at the age of 88.

Monty Woolley (Actor) .. Col. Smollett

Born: August 17, 1888
Died: May 07, 1963

Trivia: Monty Woolley was born to privilege in New York's Bristol Hotel, an establishment owned by his wealthy father. Growing up in the highest of Manhattan's society circles, the young Woolley was well acquainted with many of the famed personages of the era. At Yale, Woolley's classmate and best friend was the equally well-connected Cole Porter; the two chums formed a thriving theatrical/social clique, which resulted in several wittily assembled student musical reviews. Woolley became president of the Yale Dramatic Association, then transferred to Harvard, returning to Yale after graduation as an English instructor. A member of the National Guard, Woolley served as an intelligence officer in France during World War I. After the war, he commandeered the Yale Experimental Theater, a position he held until 1927. Cole Porter helped Woolley break into professional theater by securing him work as a stage director in the 1930s. Sporting a full professorial beard which emphasized his inbred snobbish intellectualism, Woolley was an ideal "type" for films. After a few years of minor movie roles as doctors and judges, Woolley attained full stardom as the spectacularly insufferable Sheridan Whiteside (a character based on critic/raconteur Alexander Woollcott) in the 1939 Broadway production The Man Who Came to Dinner. He re-created the role for the 1941 screen version of Dinner, then spent the rest of his career playing bombastic variations on Whiteside. When Woolley felt like it, he could be an actor of great range and depth; he was Oscar-nominated for his performances in The Pied Piper (1942) and Since You Went Away (1946). In the 1946 Cole Porter biopic Night and Day, Woolley played himself, and who cared that he was a bit long in the tooth for a Yale undergrad? Though he professed to despise radio, Woolley spent the 1950-1951 season starring in the radio sitcom The Magnificent Montague, portraying a once-famous Shakespearean actor reduced to hosting a simpering kiddie show. Almost exactly the same person offscreen as on, Woolley delighted in insulting and patronizing everyone who crossed his path -- just as much as they probably enjoyed being insulted and patronized. Forced to retire from acting due to ill health, Monty Woolley made his last screen appearance in Kismet (1955), playing an uncharacteristically amiable Omar Khayyam.

Robert Walker (Actor) .. Cpl. William G. Smollett II

Born: October 13, 1918
Died: August 28, 1951

Trivia: This handsome, mustachioed leading man of the 1910s was, of course, not the young actor of the same name who married Jennifer Jones. The earlier Walker began his screen career with pioneering film companies such as Kalem and Thanhouser and reached stardom as Viola Dana's leading man in Blue Jeans (1917), a charming bit of Americana directed by the much-neglected John D. Collins. In the 1920s, having added a dashing mustache and an air of haughty menace, Walker became one of the best "boss villains" in westerns, handsome enough to be a serious rival to the hero -- at least in the first couple of reels. To the everlasting chagrin of film researchers, the two Robert Walkers careers overlap for four years (1935-1939).

Lionel Barrymore (Actor) .. Clergyman

Born: April 28, 1878
Died: November 15, 1954
Birthplace: Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States

Trivia: Like his younger brother John, American actor Lionel Barrymore wanted more than anything to be an artist. But a member of the celebrated Barrymore family was expected to enter the family trade, so Lionel reluctantly launched an acting career. Not as attractive as John or sister Ethel, he was most effectively cast in character roles - villains, military officers, fathers - even in his youth. Unable to save what he earned, Barrymore was "reduced" to appearing in films for the Biograph Company in 1911, where he was directed by the great D.W. Griffith and where he was permitted to write a few film stories himself, which to Lionel was far more satisfying than playacting. His stage career was boosted when cast in 1917 as Colonel Ibbetson in Peter Ibbetson, which led to his most celebrated role, Milt Shanks in The Copperhead; even late in life, he could always count on being asked to recite his climactic Copperhead soliloquy, which never failed to bring down the house. Moving on to film, Barrymore was signed to what would be a 25-year hitch with MGM and begged the MGM heads to be allowed to direct; he showed only moderate talent in this field, and was most often hired to guide those films in which MGM wanted to "punish" its more rebellious talent. Resigning himself to acting again in 1931, he managed to cop an Academy Award for his bravura performance as a drunken defense attorney in A Free Soul (1931), the first in an increasingly prestigious series of movie character parts. In 1937, Barrymore was crippled by arthritis, and for the rest of his career was confined to a wheelchair. The actor became more popular than ever as he reached his sixtieth birthday, principally as a result of his annual radio appearance as Scrooge in A Christmas Carol and his continuing role as Dr. Gillespie in MGM's Dr. Kildare film series. Barrymore was aware that venerability and talent are not often the same thing, but he'd become somewhat lazy (if one can call a sixtyish wheelchair-bound man who showed up on time and appeared in at least three films per year "lazy") and settled into repeating his "old curmudgeon with a heart of gold" performance, save for the occasional topnotch part in such films as It's a Wonderful Life (1946) and Down to the Sea in Ships (1949). Denied access to television work by his MGM contract, Barrymore nonetheless remained active in radio (he'd starred in the long-running series Mayor of the Town), and at one point conducted a talk program from his own home; additionally, the actor continued pursuing his hobbies of writing, composing music, painting and engraving until arthritis overcame him. On the day of his death, he was preparing for his weekly performance on radio's Hallmark Playhouse; that evening, the program offered a glowing tribute to Barrymore, never once alluding to the fact that he'd spent a lifetime in a profession he openly despised.

Hattie McDaniel (Actor) .. Emily Hawkin

Born: June 10, 1892
Died: October 26, 1952
Birthplace: Wichita, Kansas, United States

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.

Agnes Moorehead (Actor) .. Emily Hawkin

Born: December 06, 1900
Died: April 30, 1974
Birthplace: Clinton, Massachusetts, United States

Trivia: At age three Agnes Moorehead first appeared onstage, and at 11 she made her professional debut in the ballet and chorus of the St. Louis Opera. As a teenager she regularly sang on local radio. She earned a Ph.D. in literature and studied theater at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts. She began playing small roles on Broadway in 1928; shortly thereafter she shifted her focus to radio acting, becoming a regular on the radio shows March of Time, Cavalcade of America, and a soap opera series. She toured in vaudeville from 1933-36 with Phil Baker. In 1940 she joined Orson Welles's Mercury Theater Company, giving a great boost to her career. Moorehead debuted onscreen as Kane's mother in Welles' film Citizen Kane (1941). Her second film was Welles' The Magnificent Ambersons (1942), for which she received a Best Supporting Actress Oscar nomination; ultimately she was nominated for an Oscars five times, never winning. In films, she tended to play authoritarian, neurotic, puritanical, or soured women, but also played a wide range of other roles, and was last onscreen in 1972. In the '50s she toured the U.S. with a stellar cast giving dramatic readings of Shaw's Don Juan in Hell. In 1954 she began touring in The Fabulous Redhead, a one-woman show she eventually took to over 200 cities across the world. She was also active on TV; later audiences remember her best as the witch Endora, Elizabeth Montgomery's mother, in the '60s TV sitcom Bewitched. Moorehead's last professional engagement was in the Broadway musical Gigi. She died of lung cancer in 1974. She was married to actors John Griffith Lee (1930-52) and Robert Gist (1953-58).

Craig Stevens (Actor) .. Danny Williams

Born: July 08, 1918
Died: May 10, 2000
Birthplace: Liberty, Missouri

Trivia: Craig Stevens abandoned all plans for a career in dentistry when he became involved in student productions at the University of Kansas. Trained at Pasadena Playhouse and Paramount's acting school, Stevens was signed to a stock Warner Bros. contract in 1941. He was well showcased as a soft-hearted gangster in At the Stroke of Twelve, a 1941 two-reel adaptation of Damon Runyon's The Old Doll's House, but his feature film roles were merely adequate at best. By 1950, Stevens was reduced to playing a standard mustachioed villain in the Bowery Boys epic Blues Busters. His saving turnaround came about when Stevens was cast in the title role of the 1958 Blake Edwards-produced TV private eye series Peter Gunn. Though obviously imitating Cary Grant in the early episodes of this three-season hit, Stevens eventually developed a hard-edged acting style all his own. He later re-created his TV role in the 1967 theatrical feature Gunn. Subsequent TV-series assignments for Stevens included the British-filmed weekly Man of the World (1962) and CBS' Mr. Broadway (1964). Craig Stevens was married to actress Alexis Smith (with whom he toured in such stage productions as Critic's Choice) from 1944 until her death in 1993.

Gordon Oliver (Actor) .. Marine officer

Born: April 27, 1910
Died: January 26, 1995

Trivia: Gordon Oliver entered films in 1936 as a general purpose actor. Oliver started out with lightweight leads and supporting roles as Warner Bros. and Columbia, then settled into character parts at RKO. His credits range from frivolities like Blondie (1938) to film noir exercises like Born to be Bad (1950). Gordon Oliver left films in 1952, re-emerging twenty years later as producer of the Bob Hope comedy Cancel My Reservation (1972).

Guy Madison (Actor) .. Harold Smith

Born: January 19, 1922
Died: February 06, 1996

Trivia: Ex-telephone lineman Guy Madison was serving his country in the Navy at the time he made his screen debut as an extra in David Selznick's Since You Went Away (1944). After the war, Madison was signed by RKO, where he was given the star buildup in such films as Till the End of Time (1946) and Honeymoon (1947). Unpleasant publicity surrounding his stormy marriage to actress Gail Russell very nearly put an end to Madison's burgeoning career. Salvation came in the form of a syndicated TV series, Wild Bill Hickok, which starred Madison in the title role and which ran from 1951 through 1958. Thanks to his Hickok popularity, Madison was able to secure major roles in such "A" pictures as The Charge at Feather River (1953) and On the Threshold of Space (1956). After the cancellation of Wild Bill Hickok in 1958, Guy Madison's star faded somewhat, though he went on to make a good living as a leading man in German and Italian westerns and swashbucklers of the 1960s.

Keenan Wynn (Actor) .. Lt. Solomon

Born: October 14, 1986
Died: October 14, 1986
Birthplace: New York City, New York, United States

Trivia: Actor Keenan Wynn was the son of legendary comedian Ed Wynn and actress Hilda Keenan, and grandson of stage luminary Frank Keenan. After attending St. John's Military Academy, Wynn obtained his few professional theatrical jobs with the Maine Stock Company. After overcoming the "Ed Wynn's Son" onus (his father arranged his first job, with the understanding that Keenan would be on his own after that), Wynn developed into a fine comic and dramatic actor on his own in several Broadway plays and on radio. He was signed to an MGM contract in 1942, scoring a personal and professional success as the sarcastic sergeant in 1944's See Here Private Hargrove (1944). Wynn's newfound popularity as a supporting actor aroused a bit of jealousy from his father, who underwent professional doldrums in the 1940s; father and son grew closer in the 1950s when Ed, launching a second career as a dramatic actor, often turned to his son for moral support and professional advice. Wynn's film career flourished into the 1960s and 1970s, during which time he frequently appeared in such Disney films as The Absent-Minded Professor (1960) and The Love Bug (1968) as apoplectic villain Alonso Hawk. Wynn also starred in such TV series as Troubleshooters and Dallas. Encroaching deafness and a drinking problem plagued Wynn in his final years, but he always delivered the goods onscreen. Wynn was the father of writer/director Tracy Keenan Wynn and writer/actor Edmund Keenan (Ned) Wynn.

Albert Basserman (Actor) .. Dr. Sigmund Gottlieb Golden

Born: September 07, 1867
Died: May 15, 1952

Trivia: In Knute Rockne, All American, chemistry professor Albert Basserman was the all-wise mentor and severest critic of teacher-cum-coach Rockne (Pat O'Brien). In real life, Basserman had himself studied chemistry, but abandoned that science early on to work with Vienesse stage impresario Max Reinhardt. A prominent and popular stage and film actor in his native Germany, Basserman emigrated to Switzerland in 1933 rather than endure the incoming Hitler regime. He worked briefly in the French film industry before coming to America in 1939. Basserman spent the next eight years portraying sagacious elderly Europeans, usually scientists and music teachers. He was nominated for an Academy Award for his dual role in Foreign Correspondent (1940). Basserman's heartfelt, well-defined screen characterizations are all the more impressive when one realizes that he could not speak English, and had to learn his lines phonetically. Albert Basserman journeyed to England in 1948 for his final film assignment, The Red Shoes.

Alla Nazimova (Actor) .. Zosia Koslowska

Born: January 01, 1879
Died: January 01, 1945

Trivia: Alla Nazimova was a legend of the Russian and American stages in the early part of the century who went on to star in numerous Hollywood films. As a child, Nazimova studied music at the St. Petersburg Conservatory and at Odessa where she became an excellent violinist. Later she studied acting with Stanislavsky before emigrating to the U.S. in 1905 to work on Broadway where she became one of the best interpreter's of Ibsen's work. In 1916, Nazimova made her screen debut. Frequently she would produce and her husband would direct her films. Such collaborative efforts created bold and provocative films that bordered on surrealism. In 1925, Nazimova left films to resume her theatrical career; during the 1940s, she returned to film in character roles.

Lloyd Corrigan (Actor) .. Mr. Mahoney

Born: October 16, 1900
Died: November 05, 1969

Trivia: The son of American actress Lillian Elliott, Lloyd Corrigan began working in films as a bit actor in the silent era. But Corrigan's heart was in writing and directing during his formative professional years. He was among Raymond Griffith's writing staff for the Civil War comedy Hands Up (1926), and later penned several of Bebe Daniels' Paramount vehicles. Corrigan worked on the scripts of all three of Paramount's "Fu Manchu" films (1929-30) starring Warner Oland; he also directed the last of the series, Daughter of the Dragon (1930). In contrast to his later light-hearted acting roles, Corrigan's tastes ran to mystery and melodrama in most of his directing assignments, as witness Murder on a Honeymoon (1935) and Night Key (1937). In 1938, Corrigan abandoned directing to concentrate on acting. A porcine little man with an open-faced, wide-eyed expression, Corrigan specialized in likable businessmen and befuddled millionaires (especially in Columbia's Boston Blackie series). This quality was often as not used to lead the audience astray in such films as Maisie Gets Her Man (1942) and The Thin Man Goes Home (1944), in which the bumbling, seemingly harmless Corrigan would turn out to be a master criminal or murderer. Lloyd Corrigan continued acting in films until the mid '60s; he also was a prolific TV performer, playing continuing roles in the TV sitcoms Happy (1960) and Hank (1965), and showing up on a semi-regular basis as Ned Buntline on the long-running western Wyatt Earp (1955-61).

Jackie Moran (Actor) .. Marine Officer

Born: January 26, 1923
Died: September 20, 1990

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.

Jane Devlin (Actor) .. Gladys Brown

Ann Gillis (Actor) .. Becky Anderson

Born: February 12, 1927

Trivia: In films from age nine, red-haired Ann Gillis excelled in spoiled brat roles for nearly a decade. She was somewhat more benignly cast as Becky Thatcher in 1938's The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (though her "mad scene" when trapped in a bat-filled cave was one of the most terrifying scenes ever captured on film) and as the perky title character in 1939's Little Orphan Annie. When adulthood beckoned, Gillis found it hard to secure good roles; perhaps her best showing during her late teen years was as Lou Costello's spunky Irish sweetheart in The Time of Their Lives (1946). Retiring from films in 1947, she made sporadic comeback attempts throughout the next decade. In 1959, she briefly resurfaced on TV as hostess of a nationally telecast presentation of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. Thereafter, Ann Gillis retired to private life in England, save for one final appearance in Kubrick's 2001: Space Odyssey (1968) as the mother of astronaut Gary Lockwood.

Dorothy Garner (Actor) .. Sugar

Byron Foulger (Actor) .. Principal

Born: January 01, 1900
Died: April 04, 1970

Trivia: In the 1959 Twilight Zone episode "Walking Distance," Gig Young comments that he thinks he's seen drugstore counterman Byron Foulger before. "I've got that kind of face" was the counterman's reply. Indeed, Foulger's mustachioed, bespectacled, tremble-chinned, moon-shaped countenance was one of the most familiar faces ever to grace the screen. A graduate of the University of Utah, Foulger developed a taste for performing in community theatre, making his Broadway debut in the '20s. Foulger then toured with Moroni Olsen's stock company, which led him to the famed Pasadena Playhouse as both actor and director. In films from 1936, Foulger usually played whining milksops, weak-willed sycophants, sanctimonious sales clerks, shifty political appointees, and the occasional unsuspected murderer. In real life, the seemingly timorous actor was not very easily cowed; according to his friend Victor Jory, Foulger once threatened to punch out Errol Flynn at a party because he thought that Flynn was flirting with his wife (Mrs. Foulger was Dorothy Adams, a prolific movie and stage character actress). Usually unbilled in "A" productions, Foulger could count on meatier roles in such "B" pictures as The Man They Could Not Hang (1939) and The Panther's Claw (1943). In the Bowery Boys' Up in Smoke (1957), Foulger is superb as a gleeful, twinkly-eyed Satan. In addition to his film work, Byron Foulger built up quite a gallery of portrayals on television; one of his final stints was the recurring role of engineer Wendell Gibbs on the popular sitcom Petticoat Junction.

Edwin Maxwell (Actor) .. Businessman

Born: January 01, 1886
Died: August 12, 1948

Trivia: After a considerable career on stage as an actor and director, Dublin-born Edwin Maxwell made his screen debut as Baptista in the Doug Fairbanks-Mary Pickford version of Taming of the Shrew (1929). The stocky, balding Maxwell spent the 1930s specializing in oily bureaucrats, crooked businessmen and shyster lawyers. Once in a while, he'd play a sympathetic role, notably the scrupulously honest Italian-American detective in Scarface. More often (especially in the films of director Frank Capra), his characters existed merely as an easily deflatable foil. One of Maxwell's most flamboyant performances was as the maniacal serial killer, in Night of Terror(1933), who rose from the dead at fade-out time to warn the audience not to reveal the end of the film or else! Essaying more benign characters in 1940s, he was seen as William Jennings Bryan in Wilson (1944) and as Oscar Hammerstein in The Jolson Story (1946). From 1939 to 1942, Maxwell served as dialogue director for the films of Cecil B. DeMille. Edwin Maxwell holds the distinction of appearing in four Academy Award-winning films: All Quiet on the Western Front (1930), Grand Hotel (1932), The Great Ziegfeld (1936) and You Can't Take It With You (1938).

Florence Bates (Actor) .. Hungry Woman

Born: April 15, 1888
Died: January 31, 1954

Trivia: American actress Florence Bates had been a moderately successful lawyer for two decades when, as a lark, she started acting at California's Pasadena Playhouse in the mid 1930s. After playing a small role in the 1937 film Man In Blue (1937), Bates was "officially" discovered by Hollywood when she was cast as vainglorious dowager Mrs. Van Hopper in Alfred Hitchcock's Oscar-winning Rebecca (1940). From that point onward, Bates became one of Hollywood's favorite "society dragons," most effectively cast in comedies like Heaven Can Wait (1943), as one of Don Ameche's hell-bound old flames, and in The Secret Life of Walter Mitty (1948), as Danny Kaye's terrifying future mother-in-law. Her most significant "straight" part was in I Remember Mama (1948), as the forbiddingly famous author Florence Dana Morehead, whom Irene Dunne, as Mama, timidly approaches on behalf of Dunne's aspiring-writer daughter. Though in fragile health, Florence Bates entered television with the same forcefulness as she'd invaded movies, providing a welcome touch of professionalism to the otherwise atrocious early 1950s situation comedy The Hank McCune Show.

Theodore Von Eltz (Actor) .. Desk Clerk

Born: November 05, 1894
Died: October 06, 1964

Trivia: The son of a Yale language professor, actor Theodore Von Eltz was all geared up for a medical career when he succumbed to the siren song of the theatre. Starting his New York stage career at age 19, Von Eltz became a popular silent film leading man in the '20s. He eased into character roles in the talkie era, and also began appearing with regularity on radio. From 1954 through 1955, Von Eltz played Father Barbour on the TV version of the long-running radio soap opera One Man's Family. One of Theodore Von Eltz' last assignments was as narrator of the 1956 documentary film, Animal World.

Adeline De Walt Reynolds (Actor) .. Elderly Woman

Born: January 01, 1862
Died: January 01, 1961

Trivia: Adeline Reynolds launched her acting career on-stage at age 70, two years after she graduated from college. Nine years later, in the early '40s, she debuted in films and became the oldest thespian in films during the '50s.

Doodles Weaver (Actor) .. Convalescent

Born: May 11, 1912
Died: January 13, 1983

Trivia: Wacky comic actor Doodles Weaver started appearing in films in the late '30s, usually playing country-bumpkin bits. He rose to fame as a musician/comedian with the Spike Jones Orchestra, regaling audiences with his double-talk renditions of such tunes as "The Man on the Flying Trapeze" and "The Whiffenpoof Song." His most popular routine was his mile-a-minute parody of an overly excited sports announcer ("And the winnerrrrrrrr....Bei-del-baum!!!!). So valuable was Weaver to Jones' aggregation that Doodles was the only member of the group who was allowed to drink while on tour. This indulgence, alas, proved to be Weaver's undoing; though he'd scaled the heights as a radio and TV star in the 1940s and 1950s, Doodles had lost most of his comic expertise by the 1960s thanks to his fondness for the bottle. A bitter, broken man in his last years, Weaver died of an apparently self-inflicted gunshot wound at the age of 71. Doodles Weaver was the brother of TV executive Sylvester "Pat" Weaver, and the uncle of actress Sigourney Weaver.

Warren Hymer (Actor) .. Convalescent

Born: February 25, 1906
Died: March 25, 1948

Trivia: Though he appeared to be an illiterate, streetwise plug-ugly, American actor Warren Hymer was actually the son of two affluent stage performers, John B. Hymer and Elsie Hunt. Hymer was also a graduate of Yale University, and a moderately successful Broadway stage actor before coming to Hollywood in 1928. Because of his rough-hewn facial features and his ability to feign incredible stupidity, Hymer was much in demand in gangster parts, from his first talking picture, This Cockeyed World (1929), onward. So popular was Hymer during the early-talkie period that he shared co-starring status with Spencer Tracy in two films, and was billed over Humphrey Bogart in Up the River (1932). Unfortunately, Hymer's love of acting took second place to his love of liquor. Things went from bad to worse as Hymer's condition deteriorated; at one point he began filming a scene, opened his mouth to speak, and collapsed cold on the floor. Producers were willing to overlook this in view of Hymer's talent, but the actor also suffered from an uncontrollable temper. The axe fell on the day that Hymer, arguing with Columbia Pictures chieftan Harry Cohn, punctuated his tirade by urinating on Cohn's desk. After that, Hymer was virtually blackballed from Hollywood, resurfacing from time to time for an unbilled bit or a barely coherent supporting role. Warren Hymer died in 1948, not having worked in two years; he was only 42.

Jonathan Hale (Actor) .. Conductor

Born: January 01, 1891
Died: February 28, 1966

Trivia: Once Canadian-born actor Jonathan Hale became well known for his portrayal of well-to-do businessmen, he was fond of telling the story of how he'd almost been a man of wealth in real life--except for an improvident financial decision by his father. A minor diplomat before he turned to acting, Hale began appearing in minor film roles in 1934, showing up fleetingly in such well-remembered films as the Karloff/Lugosi film The Raven (1935), the Marx Brothers' A Night at the Opera (1935) and the first version of A Star is Born (1937). In 1938, Hale was cast as construction executive J. C. Dithers in Blondie, the first of 28 "B"-pictures based on Chic Young's popular comic strip. Though taller and more distinguished-looking than the gnomelike Dithers of the comics, Hale became instantly synonymous with the role, continuing to portray the character until 1946's Blondie's Lucky Day (his voice was heard in the final film of the series, Beware of Blondie, though that film's on-camera Dithers was Edward Earle). During this same period, Hale also appeared regularly as Irish-brogued Inspector Fernack in RKO's "The Saint" series. After 1946, Hale alternated between supporting roles and bits, frequently unbilled (e.g. Angel on My Shoulder, Call Northside 777 and Son of Paleface); he had a pivotal role as Robert Walker's hated father in Hitchcock's Strangers on a Train (1951), though the part was confined to a smidgen of dialogue and a single long-shot. Hale worked prolifically in television in the '50s, with substantial guest roles in such series as Disneyland and The Adventures of Superman. In 1966, after a long illness, Jonathan Hale committed suicide at the age of 75, just months before the TV release of the Blondie films that had won him prominence in the '30s and '40s.

Eilene Janssen (Actor) .. Sergeant's Child

William B. Davidson (Actor) .. Taxpayer

Born: June 16, 1888
Died: September 28, 1947

Trivia: Blunt, burly American actor William B. Davidson was equally at home playing gangster bosses, business executives, butlers and military officials. In films since 1914, Davidson seemed to be in every other Warner Bros. picture made between 1930 and 1935, often as a Goliath authority figure against such pint-sized Davids as James Cagney and Edward G. Robinson. In the early '40s, Davidson was a fixture of Universal's Abbott and Costello comedies, appearing in In the Navy (1941), Keep 'Em Flying (1941) and In Society (1944). In Abbott & Costello's Hold That Ghost (1941), Davidson shows up as Moose Matson, the dying gangster who sets the whole plot in motion. An avid golfer, William B. Davidson frequently appeared in the all-star instructional shorts of the '30s starring legendary golf pro Bobby Jones.

Ruth Roman (Actor) .. Envious Girl

Born: December 22, 1922
Died: September 06, 1999
Birthplace: Lynn, Massachusetts

Trivia: Roman studied acting at the Bishop Lee Dramatic School and worked on stage before becoming a leading lady of Hollywood films in the mid '40s. (She later moved into character roles.) The film for which she first received good reviews and critical attention was Champion (1949). She tended to play determined, strong-willed characters who are cold externally but inwardly passionate. She is best remembered for her starring role in Hitchcock's Strangers on a Train (1951) opposite Farley Granger. During the rest of the '50s she primarily appeared in routine films. She has also done much TV work, including the series The Long Hot Summer.

Rhonda Fleming (Actor) .. Girl

Born: August 10, 1923

Trivia: Surely Technicolor was invented for the express purpose of showing to fullest advantage the flaming red hair of actress Rhonda Fleming. Born into a theatrical family, Fleming made her film bow while still attending high school. She was briefly under contract to producer David O. Selznick, for whom she played her first important film role, the nymphomaniac mental patient in Hitchcock's Spellbound (1946). While working at Paramount from 1947 through 1957, Fleming played opposite such diverse leading men as Bing Crosby (A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court), Bob Hope (The Great Lover), Ronald Reagan (Hong Kong) and Donald O'Connor (The Buster Keaton Story). She fluctuated between good and bad girl roles throughout her Hollywood years, with most of her staunchest devotees preferring the "bad". Closing out her film career in 1969, Fleming briefly entered the business world before making comeback appearances in Won Ton Ton: The Dog Who Saved Hollywood (1976) and The Nude Bomb (1980). The last two of Rhonda Fleming's five husbands were producer/director Hall Bartlett and theatre-chain executive Ted Mann.

Andrew McLaglen (Actor) .. Former Plowboy

Born: July 28, 1920
Died: August 30, 2014

Trivia: The son of actor Victor McLaglen, McLaglen cut his teeth working on industrial films and by the early '50s was assistant directing for several directors, including Budd Boetticher and John Ford. By the mid '50s he was helming features, as well as episodes of such television shows as Gunsmoke, Perry Mason, and Have Gun Will Travel. His career got a jump start from John Wayne in the early '60s with the sexist slugfest McLintock!; the two went on to make Hellfighters, The Undefeated, Chisum, and Cahill -- United States Marshall. McLaglen also helmed two offbeat character studies starring James Stewart, Shenandoah and Fools' Parade. A solid director of westerns (Bandolero!, The Last Hard Men) and actioners (Mitchell, The Wild Geese), McLaglen can be more fun spoofing his specialties, as in Something Big and Ffolkes (aka North Sea Hijack). He has worked in television since the mid '70s. McLaglen passed away in 2014 at age 94.

Jill Warren (Actor) .. Waitress

Terry Moore (Actor) .. Refugee Child

Born: January 07, 1929

Trivia: Terry Moore was born Helen Koford; during her screen career she was billed as Helen Koford, Judy Ford, Jan Ford, and (from 1949) Terry Moore. She debuted onscreen at age 11 in 1940 and went on to play adolescent roles in a number of films. As an adult actress, the well-endowed Moore fell into the late-'40s/early-'50s "sexpot" mold, and was fairly busy onscreen until 1960; after that her screen work was infrequent, though she ultimately appeared in more than a half-dozen additional films. She claimed she was secretly wed to billionaire Howard Hughes in 1949, and that they were never divorced; for years she sued Hughes's estate for part of his will, and finally was given an undisclosed sum in an out-of-court settlement. She wrote a book detailing her secret life with Hughes from 1947-56, The Beauty and the Billionaire, in 1984. For her work in Come Back, Little Sheba (1952) she received a "Best Supporting Actress" Oscar nomination. She co-produced the film Beverly Hills Brat (1989), in which she also appeared.

Robert Johnson (Actor) .. Black Officer

Dorothy Dandridge (Actor) .. Black Officer's Wife

Born: November 09, 1922
Died: September 08, 1965
Birthplace: Cleveland, Ohio, United States

Trivia: African American actress, singer, dancer Dorothy Dandridge, the daughter of stage and screen actress Ruby Dandridge, began performing professionally in the song-and-dance duo "The Wonder Children" with her sister Vivian at age four; they toured parts of the South, performing at churches, schools, and social gatherings. In the 1930s her family relocated to Los Angeles, and she and her sister appeared briefly in the Marx brothers comedy A Day at the Races (1937). In their teens she and her sister enlisted a third singer and formed a new group, the Dandridge Sisters. They worked with the Jimmie Lunceford Orchestra and Cab Calloway, appeared at the Cotton Club, and turned up with Louis Armstrong and Maxine Sullivan in the film Going Places (1939). Dandridge started performing solo in the early '40s, appearing in a string of musical shorts made in 1941 and 1942; she also performed in several features in the same years, including Sun Valley Serenade (1942), during the production of which she met her first husband, the dancer Harold Nicholas. After her marriage she put her career on hold for a while, but the birth of a severely brain-damaged daughter strained her marriage and it soon ended in divorce, following which she put most of her energy into her career. She became popular and famous as a sultry nightclub entertainer, then began to make her mark in movies with her notable appearance in Tarzan's Peril (1951), in which she played a sexy African princess. For her work in Otto Preminger's Carmen Jones (1954) she received a "Best Actress" Oscar nomination, becoming the first black women to do so. Three years went by before her next role, in Island in the Sun (1957), in which she again made history by being the first black actress cast romantically with a white actor in a film. For her work in Preminger's Porgy and Bess (1959) she won the Golden Globe Award as "Best Actress in a Musical." After a few more years she found it difficult to get lead roles in films, and went back to nightclubs. In 1965 she signed a new film contract, but her rebounding luck was short-lived -- she was found dead from an overdose of anti-depressants.

Johnny Bond (Actor) .. AWOL

Born: June 01, 1915
Died: June 12, 1978

Irving Bacon (Actor) .. Bartender

Born: September 06, 1893
Died: February 05, 1965

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.

George Chandler (Actor) .. Cabbie

Born: June 30, 1898
Died: June 10, 1985

Trivia: Comic actor George Chandler entered the University of Illinois after World War I service, paying for his education by playing in an orchestra. He continued moonlighting in the entertainment world in the early 1920s, working as an insurance salesman by day and performing at night. By the end of the decade he was a seasoned vaudevillian, touring with a one-man-band act called "George Chandler, the Musical Nut." He began making films in 1927, appearing almost exclusively in comedies; perhaps his best-known appearance of the early 1930s was as W.C.Fields' prodigal son Chester in the 1932 2-reeler The Fatal Glass of Beer. Chandler became something of a good-luck charm for director William Wellman, who cast the actor in comedy bits in many of his films; Wellman reserved a juicy supporting role for Chandler as Ginger Rogers' no-good husband in Roxie Hart (1942). In all, Chandler made some 330 movie appearances. In the early 1950s, Chandler served two years as president of the Screen Actors Guild, ruffling the hair of many prestigious stars and producers with his strongly held political views. From 1958 through 1959, George Chandler was featured as Uncle Petrie on the Lassie TV series, and in 1961 he starred in a CBS sitcom that he'd helped develop, Ichabod and Me.

Addison Richards (Actor) .. Maj. Atkins

Born: October 20, 1887
Died: March 22, 1964

Trivia: An alumnus of both Washington State University and Pomona College, Addison Richards began acting on an amateur basis in California's Pilgrimage Play, then became associate director of the Pasadena Playhouse. In films from 1933, Richards was one of those dependable, distinguished types, a character player of the Samuel S. Hinds/Charles Trowbridge/John Litel school. Like those other gentlemen, Richards was perfectly capable of alternating between respectable authority figures and dark-purposed villains. He was busiest at such major studios as MGM, Warners, and Fox, though he was willing to show up at Monogram and PRC if the part was worth playing. During the TV era, Addison Richards was a regular on four series: He was narrator/star of 1953's Pentagon USA, wealthy Westerner Martin Kingsley on 1958's Cimarron City, Doc Gamble in the 1959 video version of radio's Fibber McGee and Molly, and elderly attorney John Abbott on the short-lived 1963 soap opera Ben Jerrod.

Barbara Pepper (Actor) .. Pin Girl

Born: May 31, 1915
Died: July 18, 1969

Trivia: A specialist in hard-boiled dame roles, Barbara Pepper made her first film appearances as a Goldwyn Girl; she was prominent among the nubile slaves who were garbed only in floor-length blonde wigs in Goldwyn's Roman Scandals (1933). Pepper's one shot at stardom came in King Vidor's Our Daily Bread, in which she played the sluttish vamp who led hero Tom Keene astray; unfortunately, the film was not successful enough, nor her performance convincing enough, to lead to larger parts. She spent the next 30 years in supporting roles and bits, most often playing brassy goodtime girls. A radical weight gain in the 1950s compelled Pepper to alter her screen image; she quickly became adept at portraying obnoxious middle-aged tourists, snoopy next-door neighbors, belligerent landladies, and the like. Pepper's best friend in Hollywood was Lucille Ball, another alumna of the Goldwyn Girl ranks. At one point in 1951,Pepper was a candidate for the role of Ethel Mertz on I Love Lucy. In her last decade, Barbara Pepper gained a whole new crop of fans thanks to her recurring appearances as Doris Ziffel on the TV sitcom Green Acres.

Harry Hayden (Actor) .. Conductor

Born: November 08, 1882
Died: July 24, 1955

Trivia: Slight, grey-templed, bespectacled actor Harry Hayden was cast to best advantage as small-town store proprietors, city attorneys and minor bureaucrats. Dividing his time between stage and screen work from 1936, Hayden became one of the busiest members of Central Casting, appearing in everything from A-pictures like Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939) to the RKO 2-reelers of Leon Errol and Edgar Kennedy. Among his better-known unbilled assignments are horn factory owner Mr. Sharp (his partner is Mr. Pierce) in Laurel and Hardy's Saps at Sea (1940) and Farley Granger's harrumphing boss who announces brusquely that there'll be no Christmas bonus in O. Henry's Full House (1951). Hayden's final flurry of activity was in the role of next-door-neighbor Harry on the 1954-55 season of TV's The Stu Erwin Show (aka The Trouble with Father), in which he was afforded the most screen time he'd had in years -- though he remains uncredited in the syndicated prints of this popular series. From the mid '30s until his death in 1955, Harry Hayden and his actress wife Lela Bliss ran Beverly Hills' Bliss-Hayden Miniature Theatre, where several Hollywood aspirants were given an opportunity to learn their craft before live audiences; among the alumni of the Bliss-Hayden were Jon Hall, Veronica Lake, Doris Day, Craig Stevens, Debbie Reynolds, and Marilyn Monroe.

Jimmy Clemons (Actor) .. Boy Caroler

Charles Williams (Actor) .. Man in Cocktail Lounge

Born: September 27, 1898
Died: January 03, 1958

Trivia: Charles Williams looked like a mature Beaver Cleaver. Short of stature, high-pitched of voice, and usually sporting a toothbrush mustache and coke-bottle glasses, Williams was the perfect nerd/buttinsky in many a Hollywood film. Williams began his career at Paramount's New York studios in 1922, dabbling in everything from writing to assistant directing. When talkies arrived, Williams found his true calling as a supporting actor; he was seemingly cast as a nosey reporter or press photographer in every other picture released by Hollywood. In one film, Hold That Co-Ed (1938), gentleman-of-the-press Williams is so obstreperous that, as a comic punchline, he is run over by a car and killed! Charles B. Williams will be instantly recognizable to Yuletide TV viewers as Cousin Eustace in the Frank Capra classic It's a Wonderful Life (1946).

Neil Hart (Actor) .. Minor Role

Robert Anderson (Actor) .. Patron at Bar

Born: July 12, 1920

Shelby Bacon (Actor) .. Black Couple's Son

Aileen Pringle (Actor) .. Woman at Cocktail Lounge

Born: July 23, 1895
Died: December 16, 1989

Trivia: Born into wealth, American actress Aileen Pringle was educated in San Francisco (her home town), Paris, and London. Married to a titled Englishman before the age of twenty, Pringle defied the wishes of her husband and her family to take on a stage career in 1915. The actress worked on stage and in non-Hollywood films until 1922, when she was awarded a major-studio movie contract. She was personally selected by romance novelist Elinor Glyn (one of the great poseurs of the '20s) to star in the 1942 film adaptation of Glyn's steamy Ruritanian bodice-ripper Three Weeks (1924). An apocryphal story popped up during the making of this film, wherein Pringle, being carried into the boudoir by co-star Conrad Nagel, play-acted deep passion while actually whispering to Nagel, "If you drop me, you bastard, I'll break your neck." (Something like this did happen on the set of another film that starred neither Pringle or Nagel). Not well liked by coworkers due to her haughty attitude, Aileen nonetheless became Hollywood's unofficial "Darling of the Intelligentsia," and was regularly sent out by the studios to greet such literary wits as H.L. Mencken upon their arrival in Tinseltown. Indeed, Pringle's second husband was a celebrated writer, James M. Cain (Double Indemnity, The Postman Always Rings Twice), though hardly one of the intellectual elite. Behaving as contrarily as possible due to her disdain of filmmakers, Pringle sabotaged her chances at continuing her starring career in talking pictures; by 1942, she was played unbilled bits in such films as They Died with Their Boots On (1942). Comeback attempts in the '50s were thwarted because of Aileen Pringle's condescention and outspokenness; if the extremely wealthy actress truly wanted stardom, she sure didn't actively court it.

Wallis Clark (Actor) .. Man at Cocktail Lounge

Born: March 02, 1882
Died: February 14, 1961

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).

Rob Johnson (Actor) .. Black Officer

James Carlisle (Actor) .. Sugar's Officer Friend

Leo Mostovoy (Actor) .. Headwaiter at Steak House

Born: November 22, 1908
Died: May 22, 1967

Trivia: A dapper-looking character actor from Russia, Leo Mostovoy played Fydor, one of "the usual suspects" in Casablanca (1942), perhaps an early highlight in a screen career that was spent mainly playing excitable chefs, headwaiters, pawnbrokers, and the like. Mostovoy, who also appeared frequently on early television, played a chef once again in his last credited film, Serenade (1956).

Joyce Horn (Actor) .. Swenson's Girl Friend

John A. James (Actor) .. Friendly Sergeant at Dance

Mary Anne Durkin (Actor) .. Frightened Girl at Dance

Richard C. Wood (Actor) .. Man in Cocktail Lounge

Ruth Valmy (Actor) .. Tony's Friend

Grady Sutton (Actor) .. Soldier Hunting for Susie Fleming

Born: April 05, 1908
Died: September 17, 1995

Trivia: While visiting a high school pal in Los Angeles in 1924, roly-poly Grady Sutton made the acquaintance of his friend's brother, director William A. Seiter. Quite taken by Sutton's bucolic appearance and comic potential, Seiter invited Sutton to appear in his next film, The Mad Whirl. Sutton enjoyed himself in his bit role, and decided to remain in Hollywood, where he spent the next 47 years playing countless minor roles as dimwitted Southerners and country bumpkins. Usually appearing in comedies, Sutton supported such master clowns as Laurel and Hardy and W.C. Fields (the latter reportedly refused to star in 1940's The Bank Dick unless Sutton was given a good part); he also headlined in two short-subjects series, Hal Roach's The Boy Friends and RKO's The Blondes and the Redheads. Through the auspices of Blondes and the Redheads director George Stevens, Sutton was cast as Katharine Hepburn's cloddish dancing partner in Alice Adams (1935), the first of many similar roles. Sutton kept his hand in movies until 1971, and co-starred on the 1966 Phyllis Diller TV sitcom The Pruitts of Southampton. A willing interview subject of the the 1960s and 1970s, Grady Sutton went into virtual seclusion after the death of his close friend, director George Cukor.

Buddy Gorman (Actor) .. Short Private on Dance Floor

Trivia: Slight, squeaky-voiced American actor Buddy Gorman was able to play juvenile roles well into his 30s. Gorman was generally seen as a newsboy, caddy or telegram messenger. He appeared in a remarkable number of musicals (though he never sang), including Higher and Higher (1943), Meet Me in St. Louis (1944), Jolson Story (1946) and It's a Great Feeling (1949). Buddy Gorman is best remembered today for his 19 appearances in the East Side Kids and Bowery Boys films, wherein he was usually cast as "Butch."

Tom Dawson (Actor) .. Tough Bronx Soldier

Patricia Peters (Actor) .. Tall WAC

Walter S. Baldwin (Actor)

Born: January 01, 1887
Died: January 27, 1972

Trivia: Bespectacled American actor Walter Baldwin was already a venerable stage performer at the time he appeared in his first picture, 1940's Angels over Broadway. With a pinched Midwestern countenance that enabled him to portray taciturn farmers, obsequious grocery store clerks and the occasional sniveling coward, Baldwin was a familiar (if often unbilled) presence in Hollywood films for three decades. Possibly Baldwin's most recognizable role was as Mr. Parrish in Sam Goldwyn's multi-Oscar winning The Best Years of Our Lives (1946), for which the actor received thirteenth billing. He also had a prime opportunity to quiver and sweat as a delivery man whose truck is commandeered by homicidal prison escapee Robert Middleton in The Desperate Hours (1955). Seemingly ageless, Walter Baldwin made his last film appearance three years before his death in 1969's Hail Hero.

George Lloyd (Actor) .. Motorcycle Policeman

Born: January 01, 1897

Trivia: Australian-born actor George Lloyd spoke without a trace of accent of any kind in his hundreds of movie appearances. Lloyd's mashed-in mug and caterpillar eyebrows were put to best use in roles calling for roughneck sarcasm. He was often seen as second-string gangsters, escape-prone convicts, acerbic garage mechanics and (especially) temperamental moving men. George Lloyd's film career began in the mid-1930s and petered out by the beginning of the TV era.

Russell Hoyt (Actor) .. One-Armed Sailor

Loudie Claar (Actor) .. Young Mother

Don Marjarian (Actor) .. Baby

Conrad Binyon (Actor) .. Page Boy

Jimmie Dodd (Actor) .. Train Passenger

Born: March 28, 1910
Died: November 10, 1964

Trivia: Although he is perhaps best remembered as the emcee of Walt Disney's The Mickey Mouse Club television show, for which he also wrote the opening theme, curly-haired actor/composer Jimmy Dodd (sometimes given as Jimmie Dodd) played sidekick Lullaby Joslin in the last six entries in Republic Pictures' long-running "Three Mesqueteers" series, replacing Rufe Davis and joining veterans Tom Tyler and Bob Steele. Dodd, however, was probably more city than prairie and spent the remainder of his career playing G.I.'s, elevator boys, and messengers. The people at Disney paid rather more attention to his composing of such tunes as "Rosemary,", "Ginny," and "Meet Me in Monterey" when they signed him to the Mickey Mouse Club, which ran from 1955-1959. Retired and living in Honolulu, Dodd was scheduled to star in yet another Disney venture, The Jimmie Dodd Aloha Show, when he succumbed to a fatal heart attack.

Christopher Adams (Actor) .. Train Passenger

Martha Outlaw (Actor) .. Train Passenger

Verna Knopf (Actor) .. Train Passenger

Robert Cherry (Actor) .. Train Passenger

Trivia: A tall Texas native with a lanky frame, Robert Cherry began acting professionally as a teenager and parlayed his distinct looks into a career as a character actor. Cherry made his film debut at 15 with an uncredited role in the Alexander Hall-directed comedy Good Girls Go To Paris (1939) and went on to play bit parts in numerous films. Memorable appearances include parts in a pair of Abbott & Costello episodes and a role as a zombie in Revenge of the Zombies, starring John Carradine. Cherry's final role was the uncredited part of a bus passenger in Jacques Tourneur's film noir Nightfall (1957).

Kirk Barron (Actor) .. Minor Role

Earl Jacobs (Actor) .. One-Armed Boy

Cecil Ballerino (Actor) .. Patient at Potters Wheel

Jack Gardner (Actor) .. Patient in Wheelchair

Born: December 13, 1902
Died: February 13, 1977

Trivia: One of the busiest supporting players in the 1930s and early '40s, wiry general purpose actor Jack Gardner popped up in such disparate films as The Devil's Squadron (1936), Sinners in Paradise (1938), and Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939). He played a reporter in all three and that profession would become his on-screen stock-in-trade. Whenever a gaggle of inquisitive newspapermen gathered in a film to attack someone with a barrage of questions, chances were good that Jack Gardner and Lynton Brent were among them. Gardner also played his fair share of messenger boys, receptionists, mechanics, and henchmen. He was a wily Japanese spy in the 1943 Universal serial Adventures of Smilin' Jack (1943). Not to be confused with a silent screen actor (1873-1950) and a vaudevillian (1876-1929) of the same name, this Jack Gardner seems to have left films in the mid-'40s.

James Westerfield (Actor) .. Convalescent on Rehab Steps

Born: March 22, 1913
Died: September 20, 1971

Trivia: Character actor James Westerfield made comparatively few films, as his first love was the stage; he produced, directed and acted in a number of Broadway productions, and was the recipient of two New York Drama Critics awards. In films from 1941 (he's easily recognizable as a traffic cop in Orson Welles' The Magnificent Ambersons), he was generally cast as villains, notably as a recurring rapscallion on the 1963 TV series The Travels of Jamie McPheeters. Disney fans will remember Westerfield as the flustered small-town police officer (variously named Hanson and Morrison) in such fanciful farces as The Shaggy Dog (1959), The Absent Minded Professor (1960) and Son of Flubber (1963). James Westerfield was married to actress Fay Tracy.

John Derek (Actor)

Born: August 12, 1926
Died: May 22, 1998

Trivia: John Derek was the son of writer/director Lawson Harris and bit-actress Dolores Johnson. Signed by David O. Selznick in 1943, Derek made his film debut as an extra in Since You Went Away, playing a soldier--which indeed he was at the time. His first starring role was as a death-row juvenile delinquent in Columbia's Knock on Any Door (1949), in which he was given more screen time than nominal star Humphrey Bogart. Most of Derek's subsequent Columbia assignments were in workaday "B" costume pictures and westerns; he enjoyed his best role in years, that of John Wilkes Booth, in 20th Century-Fox's Prince of Players (1954). By 1961, Derek's film career was seriously flagging, obliging him to sign on as one of the stars of the 26-week TV series Frontier Circus. Unhappy with his progress (or lack of it) as an actor, Derek turned director for the 1966 wartime flick Once Before I Die. Derek used many of his directorial efforts as showcases for his various "protege" wives: Ursula Andress, Linda Evans, and Bo Derek. When not playing "Svengali" (an appellation he fully accepted with high good humor, as did his lovely "Trilbys"), John Derek kept busy as a director and cinematographer on such quasi-erotic films as Bolero (1984) and Ghosts Can't Do It (1990). Derek had suffered from heart trouble for many years; on May 20, 1998, the 71-year-old director was found unconscious in his Santa Ynez Valley home. Despite doctor's efforts, the damage to his heart muscle proved too great and on May 22, he passed away.

Neil Hamilton (Actor) .. Tim Hilton - photograph

Born: September 09, 1899
Died: September 24, 1984
Birthplace: Lynn, Massachusetts

Trivia: Classically handsome film leading man Neil Hamilton was trained in stock companies before making his 1918 film bow. He rose to stardom under the guidance of D. W. Griffith, who cast Hamilton in leading roles in The Great Romance (1919), The White Rose (1923), America (1924) and Isn't Life Wonderful? (1924). In an era when sturdy dependability was one of the prerequisites of male stardom, Hamilton was one of the silent screen's most popular personalities, as well suited to the role of faithful Nick Carraway in The Great Gatsby (1925) as he was to the Foreign Legion derring-do of Beau Geste (1927). His pleasant voice and excellent diction enabled Hamilton to make the transition to sound with ease. Unfortunately, he always seemed a bit of a stick in his talkie portrayals, and it wasn't long before he found himself shunted off to "other man" assignments (Tarzan and His Mate) and villainous characterizations (The Saint Strikes Back). By the early 1940s, he had lost both fame and fortune -- and, as he'd ruefully observe later, most of his so-called industry friends. Only the love of his wife and his rock-solid religious convictions saw him through his darkest days. Hamilton made a comeback as a character actor, playing brusque, businesslike types in TV series like Perry Mason and Fireside Theatre. From 1966 through 1968, Neil Hamilton co-starred as poker-faced Commissioner Gordon on the TV series Batman.

Ralph Reed (Actor) .. Convalescent

Born: August 12, 1931
Died: January 21, 1997

Paul Esberg (Actor) .. Convalescent

William Jillson (Actor)

Dorothy Mann (Actor) .. Marine's Girl Friend

Peggy Maley (Actor) .. Marine's Second Girl Friend

Born: January 01, 1926

Dorothy Adams (Actor) .. Nurse

Born: January 01, 1899
Died: March 16, 1988

Trivia: Whenever Ellen Corby or Mary Field weren't available to play a timid, spinsterish film role, chances are the part would go to Dorothy Adams. Though far from a shrinking violet in real life, Ms. Adams was an expert at portraying repressed, secretive women, usually faithful servants or maiden aunts. Her best-remembered role was the overly protective maid of Gene Tierney in Laura (1944). Dorothy Adams was the wife of veteran character actor Byron Foulger; both were guiding forces of the Pasadena Playhouse, as both actors and directors. Dorothy and Byron's daughter is actress Rachel Ames, who played Audrey March on TV's General Hospital.

Derek Harris (Actor)

Eddie Hall (Actor) .. Eager Sailor

Warren Barr (Actor) .. Minor Role

Neyle Marx (Actor)

Betsy Howard (Actor) .. Friend of Envious Girl at Train Station

Terry Revell (Actor) .. Foreman

Steve Wayne (Actor) .. Bearded Sailor

Born: January 01, 1920
Died: September 04, 2004

Walter Baldwin (Actor) .. Train Station Gateman

Born: January 02, 1889

Marilyn Hare (Actor) .. Merchant Marine's Wife

Born: October 13, 1924
Died: October 09, 1981

Trivia: A pert if somewhat homespun vocalist from New York, Marilyn Hare was under contract to Republic Pictures from October 1940 through August of 1942, turning up as Ellen Drew's sidekick in the frozen musical extravaganza Ice-Capades Revue (1942); as the ingénue (opposite equally homey Frank Albertson) in the rustic comedy Shepherd of the Ozarks; and as the girl in the "Three Mesqueteers" Western West of Texas (1943). She later toured as a singer and did television work.

Eric Sinclair (Actor) .. Convalescent Ward

Born: January 13, 1954

Lela Bliss (Actor) .. Gabby Woman on Telephone at Train Station

Born: January 01, 1895
Died: January 01, 1980

Harlan Miller (Actor) .. Military Policeman

Mrs. Roy Feldman (Actor) .. Soldier's Grandmother

10:45 pm - 02:30 am, Monday, November 10 on WHMB FMC (40.4)