Trivia: Born Ernest Frederick McIntyre Bickel in Racine, WI, he aspired to a career in business as a young man, and graduated from the University of Wisconsin with a degree in economics after serving in the First World War as an artillery lieutenant. He entered the banking business in New York in 1920, working at what was then known as First National City Bank (now Citibank), but while recovering from an attack of appendicitis, he decided to give up banking and to try for a career on the stage. March made his debut that same year in Deburau in Baltimore, and also began appearing as an extra in movies being shot in New York City. In 1926, while working in a stock company in Denver, he met an actress named Florence Eldridge. At the very end of that same year, March got his first Broadway leading role, in The Devil in the Cheese. March and Eldridge were married in 1927 and, in lieu of a honeymoon, the two joined the first national tour of the Theatre Guild. Over the next four decades, the two appeared together in numerous theatrical productions and several films. March came along as a leading man just as Hollywood was switching to sound and scrambling for stage actors. His work in a West Coast production of Edna Ferber and George S. Kaufman's satirical stage work The Royal Family in 1929, in which he parodied John Barrymore, got him a five-year contract with Paramount Pictures. March repeated the role to great acclaim (and his first Oscar nomination) in George Cukor's and Cyril Gardner's 1930 screen adaptation, entitled The Royal Family of Broadway. Over the next few years, March established himself as the top leading man in Hollywood, and in 1932, with Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1931), became the first (and only) performer ever to win the Best Actor Academy Award for a portrayal of a monster in a horror film. He excelled in movies such as Design for Living (1933), The Sign of the Cross (1932), Death Takes a Holiday (1934), and The Barretts of Wimpole Street (1934). He showed off his skills to immense advantage in a pair of color productions in 1937, A Star Is Born and Nothing Sacred. In A Star Is Born, March was essentially reprising his Barrymore-based portrayal from The Royal Family of Broadway, but here he added more, most especially a sense of personal tragedy that made this film version of the story the most artistically successful of the four done to date. He received an Oscar nomination for his performance and won the New York Film Critics Circle Award. In the screwball comedy Nothing Sacred, by contrast, March played a brash, slightly larcenous reporter who cons, and is conned by, Carole Lombard, and who ends up running a public relations scam on the entire country. He also did an unexpectedly bold, dashing turn as the pirate Jean Lafitte in Cecil B. DeMille's The Buccaneer (1939). In 1937, March was listed as the fifth highest paid individual in America, earning a half-million dollars. Unfortunately for his later reputation, A Star Is Born, Nothing Sacred, and The Buccaneer, along with his Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, The Barretts of Wimpole Street, Les Miserables, and Smilin' Through, were all the subjects of remakes in the 1940s and '50s that came to supplant the versions in which he had starred in distribution to television; most were out of circulation for decades. March moved between big studio productions and independent producers, with impressive results in Victory (1940), So Ends Our Night (1941), I Married a Witch (1942), The Adventures of Mark Twain, and Tomorrow the World (both 1944). March's performances were the best parts of many of these movies; he was a particularly haunting presence in So Ends Our Night, as an anti-Nazi German aristocrat being hounded across Europe by the Hitler government. Although well-liked by most of his peers, he did have some tempestuous moments off-screen. March didn't suffer fools easily, and had an especially hard time working with neophyte Veronica Lake in I Married a Witch. His relationship with Tallulah Bankhead, with whom he worked in The Skin of Our Teeth in 1942, was also best described in language that -- based on a 1973 interview -- was best left unprinted. In both cases, however, the respective productions were very successful. March's appeal as a romantic lead waned after the Second World War, with a generational change in the filmgoing audience. This seemed only to free March -- then nearing 50 -- to take on more challenging roles and films, starting with Samuel Goldwyn's production of The Best Years of Our Lives (1946), for which he won his second Academy Award, playing a middle-aged World War II veteran coping with the changes in his family and the world that have taken place since he went off to war. His next movie, An Act of Murder (1948), was years ahead of its time, dealing with a judge who euthanizes his terminally ill wife rather than allow her to suffer. March was chosen to play Willy Loman in the 1951 screen adaptation of Death of a Salesman. The movie was critically acclaimed, and he got an Oscar nomination and won the Volpi Cup for Best Actor at the Venice Film Festival, but the film was too downbeat to attract an audience large enough to generate a profit, and it has since been withdrawn from distribution with the lapsing of the rights to the underlying play. He excelled in dramas such as Executive Suite (1954), The Bridges at Toko-Ri (1955), The Desperate Hours (1955), and The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit (1956), and in costume dramas like Alexander the Great (1956).During this post-World War II period, March achieved the highest honor of his Broadway career, winning Tony awards for his work in Years Ago (1947) and Long Day's Journey Into Night (1956), the latter marking the peak of his stage work. March entered the 1960s with a brilliant performance as Matthew Garrison Brady, the dramatic stand-in for the historical William Jennings Bryan, in Stanley Kramer's Inherit the Wind, earning an award at the Berlin Film Festival, although he was denied an Oscar nomination. March's own favorite directors were William Wellman and William Wyler, but late in his career, he became a favorite of John Frankenheimer, a top member of a new generation of directors. (Frankenheimer was born the year that March did The Royal Family of Broadway in Hollywood.) In Frankenheimer's Seven Days in May (1964), he turned in a superb performance as an ailing president of the United States who is forced to confront an attempted military coup, and easily held his own working with such younger, more dynamic screen actors as Burt Lancaster and Kirk Douglas, and veteran scene-stealers like George Macready and Edmond O'Brien. March was equally impressive in Martin Ritt's revisionist Western Hombre (1967), and was one of the best things in Ralph Nelson's racial drama Tick, Tick, Tick (1970), playing the elderly, frightened but well-meaning mayor of a small Southern town in a county that has just elected its first black sheriff. March intended to retire after that film, and surgery for prostate cancer only seemed to confirm the wisdom of that decision. In 1972, however, he was persuaded by Frankenheimer to come out of retirement for one more movie, The Iceman Cometh (1973), playing the role of Harry Hope. The 240-minute film proved to be the capstone of March's long and distinguished career, earning him one more round of glowing reviews. He died of cancer two years later, his acting legacy secure and undiminished across more than 60 movies made over a period of more than 40 years.

Trivia: The son of a Canadian railroad executive, Glenn Ford first toddled on-stage at age four in a community production of Tom Thumb's Wedding. In 1924, Ford's family moved to California, where he was active in high-school theatricals. He landed his first professional theater job as a stage manager in 1934, and, within a year, he was acting in the West Coast company of Lillian Hellman's The Children's Hour. Although he made his film debut in 20th Century Fox's Heaven With a Barbed Wire Fence (1939), Ford was signed by Columbia, which remained his home base for the next 14 years. After an apprenticeship in such B-movies as Blondie Plays Cupid (1940), Ford was promoted to Columbia's A-list. Outwardly a most ordinary and unprepossessing personality, Ford possessed that intangible "something" that connected with audiences. The first phase of his stardom was interrupted by World War II service in the Marines (he retained his officer's commission long after the war, enabling him to make goodwill visits to Korea and Vietnam). Upon his return, Ford had some difficulty jump-starting his career, but, in 1946, he was back on top as Rita Hayworth's co-star in Gilda. While he insisted that he "never played anyone but [himself] onscreen," Ford's range was quite extensive. He was equally effective as a tormented film noir hero (The Big Heat [1953], Human Desire [1954]) as he was in light comedy (Teahouse of the August Moon [1956], The Gazebo[1959]). Nearly half of his films were Westerns, many of which -- The Desperadoes (1943), The Fastest Gun Alive (1956), 3:10 to Yuma (1957), Cowboy (1958) -- were among the best and most successful examples of that highly specialized genre. He was also quite effective at conveying courage under pressure: While it was clear that his characters in such films as The Blackboard Jungle (1955) and Ransom (1956) were terrified by the circumstances surrounding them, it was also obvious that they weren't about to let that terror get the better of them. In 1958, Ford was voted the number one male box-office attraction. Through sagacious career choices, the actor was able to extend his popularity long after the studio system that "created" him had collapsed. In 1971, he joined such film stars as Shirley MacLaine, Anthony Quinn, and Jimmy Stewart in the weekly television grind. While his series Cade's County ended after a single season, in the long run it was more successful than the vintage-like programs of MacLaine, Quinn, et al., and enjoyed a healthy life in syndication. Ford went on to star in another series, The Family Holvak (1975), and hosted a weekly documentary, When Havoc Struck (1978). He also headlined such miniseries as Once an Eagle (1976) and Evening in Byzantium (1978), and delivered a particularly strong performance as an Irish-American patriarch in the made-for-TV feature The Gift (1979). He continued showing up in choice movie supporting roles into the early '90s; one of the best of these was as Clark Kent's foster father in Superman: The Movie (1978).Although illness sharply curtailed his performing activities after that, Ford was still seemingly on call during the 1980s and '90s whenever a cable TV documentary on Hollywood's Golden Era required an eyewitness interview subject. In 1970, Ford published an autobiography, Glenn Ford, RFD Beverly Hills. His first wife was actress Eleanor Powell; He was also married to Kathryn Hays and Cynthia Hayward. His last film appearance was a cameo in 1993's Tombstone; after a series of strokes later that decade, he died in 2006 at the age of 90.

Trivia: Sullavan was born Margaret Brooke. Having studied dance and drama since childhood, she debuted onstage at age 17 with the now-celebrated University Players, a troupe which included several other future stars, including Jimmy Stewart and Henry Fonda. Three years later she made it to Broadway, and in 1933 she signed a lucrative film contract. For most of the next decade she was busy as a lead actress, but she had frequent disputes with her studio so occasionally returned to Broadway. In films she tended to be cast in melodramatic tear-jerkers, although she also proved her talents in straight dramas and sophisticated comedies. For her work in Three Comrades (1938) she won the New York film critics "Best Actress" award. For her work in Broadway's The Voice of the Turtle (1943) she won the Drama Critics Award. She retired from the screen in 1943, returning in only one additional film, No Sad Songs for Me (1950). In the late '40s she began to lose her hearing, and eventually she was nearly deaf; nevertheless, she continued a successful stage career. Her four husbands included actor Henry Fonda, director William Wyler, and producer-agent Leland Hayward. At 49 she took an overdose of barbiturates and died; her death was ruled a suicide. Her daughter, Brooke Hayward, wrote a memoir of the tragic years leading to Sullavan's death called Haywire.

Trivia: Fresh out of the University of Chicago, brunette actress Frances Dee began securing extra roles in Hollywood, and by 1930 was co-starring with Maurice Chevalier (at his personal request) in Playboy in Paris. No winsome lass she, Frances truly came to life in parts calling for headstrong, uninhibited behavior. She was at her all-time best in Blood Money (1933), playing a thrill-seeking socialite with a pronounced masochistic streak. Hollywood saw Frances differently, and persisted in casting her in sedate roles that anyone could have played; it was disheartening, for example, to watch her play straight woman to Clifton Webb in Mister Scoutmaster (1953). Offscreen, Frances Dee was, for nearly sixty years, the wife of film star Joel McCrea, and the mother of actor Jody McCrea. In 2004, Dee passed away due to complications from a stroke.

Trivia: Among the many "new Greta Garbos' " of the '30s, Russian-born actress Anna Sten was the most famous -- or rather, most notorious. Anna's father was a Russian ballet master who died when she was twelve; Anna herself worked as a waitress until she was discovered at age 15 while acting in an amateur play in Kiev. Her discoverer was the influential Russian stage director/instructor Konstantin Stanislavsky, who arranged for her to get an audition at the Moscow Film Academy. She acted in plays and films in Russia, then travelled to Germany to appear in films co-produced by German and Russian studios (this sort of "international" production was common in the years prior to World War II). Making a smooth transition to talking pictures, Anna appeared in such German films as Trapeze (1931) and The Brothers Karamazov (1931) until she came to the attention of American movie mogul Samuel Goldwyn. Goldwyn was looking for a foreign-born actress that he could build up as the rival of (and possible successor to) Garbo. The producer did not plunge into this endeavor half-heartedly; for two years after bringing Ms. Sten to America, Goldwyn had his new star tutored in English and taught Hollywood screen acting methods. He poured a great deal of time and money into Sten's first US film, Nana, a somewhat homogenized version of Emile Zola's scandalous 19th century novel. But Nana did not click with the box office -- nor did her two subsequent Goldwyn films, We Live Again (1934) and The Wedding Night (1935). Reluctantly, Goldwyn dissolved his contract with his "new Garbo." Speculation in recent years that Sten's failure to connect with American movie fans was due to a lack of talent is incorrect: Anna Sten could act quite well, but audiences were resistant to (a) her Hollywood-fabricated "exotic" image and (b) Goldwyn's overenthusiastic publicity campaign. Sten continued making films in the US and England, but none of them were remarkable, and few of them - notably a late-'50s "juvenile delinquent" epic produced at cellar-dwelling American International Pictures - were downright horrible. Happily, Sten did not have to rely on acting to support her comfortable lifestyle; she was married to film producer Eugene Frenke, who flourished in Hollywood after following his wife stateside in 1932. Most of Anna Sten's latter-day film appearances were, in fact, favors to her husband: She had an uncredited bit in the Frenke-produced Heaven Knows Mr. Allison (1957), and a full lead in her final film (also produced by Frenke), The Nun and the Sergeant (1962).

Trivia: The son of a Jewish hat manufacturer, born in Vienna, Erich Oswald Von Stroheim moved from running his father's factory to the pinnacle of the Hollywood community as a director, only to fall hard due to his extravagant approach to filmmaking and end up as a peripheral figure. Von Stroheim came to America during the first decade of the twentieth century and supported himself in various jobs before coming to Hollywood in 1914. He was a bit player in several films, and became a member of D.W. Griffith's stock company, parlaying his experience as a bit player into a job as assistant director and military advisor (he had served briefly in the Austro-Hungarian Army) -- he moved into greater prominence in 1917 with American entry into World War I, portraying villainous Prussian officers. He moved into the director's chair at Universal, where he proved a virtual one-man show at first, providing original story, deigning sets, and starring in several of his own films. He quickly showed a talent for translating sexual subject matter -- not yet taboo in Hollywood--onto the screen in ways that were both witty and ostentatious, and his films Blind Husbands, The Devil's Pass Key, and Foolish Wives, were (and remain) among the most acclaimed sophisticated films of the silent era. His autocratic manner in dealing with the studio, coupled with his painstaking attention to detail, however, resulted in production schedules of as long as a year on his movies. He left Universal for Goldwyn Films, which was merged into Metro Pictures during the production of Greed, a monumental film whose 42 reels represented a high-water mark in Von Stroheim's career, but also its effective end--the studio took over the eight hour film and recut it, shortening it to under two hours, and the final release version was condemned by critics and ignored by audiences. He found similar set-backs with The Merry Widow, and he was dismissed from MGM. He directed Queen Kelly (1928), a bizarre story of white slavery and sexual obsession, for its star/producer Gloria Swanson, which proved the effective end of his career when he was fired during production. He directed Walking Down Broadway (1932-33), which was never released and then settled into character roles. With his bald head and stern visage, Von Stroheim was still a well-known screen presence, and he specialized in complex villainous roles, most notably as the cultured commandant of the P.O.W. camp in Jean Renoir's Grand Illusion (1937). In 1950, he made what was probably his most important screen appearance as an actor in an American movie, as Gloria Swanson's fiercely loyal servant in Billy Wilder's Sunset Boulevard (1950). Although repudiated by Hollywood as a filmmaker, Von Stroheim was honored throughout his life by the European filmmaking community, and in the years after his death his work as a director was rediscovered to fresh appreciation by a new generation, and in the '80s Kino International undertook a major restoration and retrospective of Von Stroheim's silent films. The cut 32 reels of Greed remain among the most speculated upon and sought after lost films in screen history.

Trivia: Joseph Cawthorn launched his seven-decade show business career at age four as a performer in "variety" revues (the precursor to American vaudeville). At age five, Cawthorn was appearing in minstrel shows, and at seven he moved to England, where he became a successful child performer. Back in America, he toured in vaudeville as a "Dutch" comic, fracturing audiences with his Yiddish dialect and hyperkinetic gestures. He first appeared on Broadway in the 1895 musical Excelsior Jr; two years later he got his biggest break when he replaced William Collier as principal comedian in Miss Philadelphia (1897). A popular Broadway attraction for the next 25 years, Cawthorn starred or co-starred in such tuneful extravaganzas as Victor Herbert's The Fortune Teller (1898), Mother Goose (1903, in the title role!), Little Nemo (1910), The Sunshine Girl (1913), The Girl From Utah (1914) and Rudy Friml' s The Blue Kitten (1922). By the time he appeared in the 1925 Marilyn Miller vehicle Sally, however, Cawthorn was being written off as a "fading star. Rather than stubbornly cling to his Broadway fame, Cawthorn moved to Hollywood in 1927, where he began a whole new career as a movie character actor. He revived his old dialect routines as Cornelius Van Horn in Dixiana (1930) and Joe Bruno in Peach o' Reno; both of these films starred Bert Wheeler and Robert Woolsey, who'd known Cawthorn "way back when" in New York (Woolsey in fact had supported Cawthorn in The Blue Kitten). Not always confined to "Dutch" roles, he was effectively cast as Shakespearean suitor Gremio in the Mary Pickford/Doug Fairbanks version of Taming of the Shrew(1929) and as a French physician in Lubitsch's Love Me Tonight (1932). Nor was he limited to comedy parts: he was most persuasive in the largely serious role of Dr. Bruner, the "Van Helsing" counterpart in Bela Lugosi's White Zombie (1932). Because of his celebrated Broadway past, Cawthorn was often cast in period "backstage" musicals, essaying such roles as the title character's father in The Great Ziegfeld (1936) and Leopold Damrosch in Lillian Russell (1940). Joseph Cawthorn died peacefully at his Beverly Hills home in 1949. His wife, actress Queenie Vassar, lived until 1960.

Trivia: Forced to flee his native St. Petersburg after the Bolshevik revolution, Russian-born actor Leonid Kinskey arrived in New York in 1921. At that time, he was a member of the Firebird Players, a South American troupe whose act consisted of dance-interpreting famous paintings; since there was little call for this on Broadway, Kinskey was soon pounding the pavements. The only English words he knew were such translation-book phrases as "My good kind sir," but Kinskey was able to improve his vocabulary by working as a waiter in a restaurant. Heading west for performing opportunities following the 1929 Wall Street Crash, Kinskey joined the road tour of the Al Jolson musical Wonder Bar, which led to a role in his first film Trouble in Paradise (1932). His Slavic dialect and lean-and-hungry look making him ideal for anarchist, artist, poet and impresario roles, Kinskey made memorable appearances in such films as Duck Soup (1933), Nothing Sacred (1937) and On Your Toes (1939). His best known appearance was as Sacha, the excitable bartender at Rick's Cafe Americain in Casablanca (1942). The film's star, Humphrey Bogart, was a drinking buddy of Kinskey's, and when the first actor cast as the barkeep proved inadequate, Bogart arranged for Kinskey to be cast in the role. During the Red Scare of the '50s, Kinskey was frequently cast as a Communist spy, either comic or villainous. In 1956 he had a recurring role as a starving artist named Pierre on the Jackie Cooper sitcom The People's Choice. Kinskey cut down on acting in the '60s and '70s, preferring to write and produce, and help Hollywood distribution companies determine which Russian films were worth importing. But whenever a television script (such as the 1965 "tribute" to Stan Laurel) called for a "crazy Russian", Leonid Kinsky was usually filled the bill.

Trivia: Polish actor Alexander Granach rose to theatrical prominence at the Volksbeinen in Berlin. Granach entered films in 1922; among the most widely exhibited of his silent efforts was Murnau's Nosferatu, in which the actor was cast as Knock, the lunatic counterpart to Dracula's Renfield. He was co-starred in such major early German talkies as Kameradschaft (1931), then fled to the Soviet Union when Hitler came to power. When Russia also proved too inhospitable, he settled in Hollywood, where he made his first American film appearance as Kopalski in Lubitsch's Ninotchka. Granach proved indispensable to big-studio filmmakers during the war years, effectively portraying both dedicated Nazis (he was Julius Streicher in The Hitler Gang) and loyal anti-fascists. His last film appearance was in MGM's The Seventh Cross (1944), in which virtually the entire supporting cast was comprised of prominent European refugees. Alexander Granach's autobiography, There Goes an Actor, was published in 1945, the year of his death.

Trivia: Roman Bohnen studied at the prestigious Munich Business School, then completed his education in his home state at the University of Minnesota. Rechannelled into an acting career, Bohnen worked in many a Broadway and Theatre Guild production before being brought to films by producer Walter Wanger in 1938. Generally cast as rheumy-eyed, defeated old men, Bohnen was brilliant as the pathetic Candy in Of Mice and Men (1939) and the disastrously well-intentioned prison warden in Brute Force (1947). His other screen roles included the title character's father in Song of Bernadette (1943), Captain Ernst Roehm in The Hitler Gang (1944) and Pat Denny in The Best Years of Our Lives. A co-founder of the politically controversial Actors Lab, Roman Bohnen died on stage while appearing in the Lab's production Distant Isle.

Trivia: Born in Germany, actor Sig Rumann studied electro-technology in college before returning to his native Hamburg to study acting. He worked his way up from bits to full leads in such theatrical centers as Stettin and Kiel before serving in World War I. Rumann came to New York in 1924 to appear in German-language plays. He was discovered simultaneously by comedian George Jessel, playwright George S. Kaufman, and critic Alexander Woollcott. He began chalking up an impressive list of stage roles, notably Baron Preysig in the 1930 Broadway production of Grand Hotel (in the role played by Wallace Beery in the 1932 film version). Rumann launched his film career at the advent of talkies, hitting his stride in the mid 1930s. During his years in Hollywood, he whittled down his stage name from Siegfried Rumann to plain Sig Ruman. The personification of Prussian pomposity, Rumann was a memorable foil for the Marx Brothers in A Night at the Opera (1935), A Day at the Races (1937), and A Night in Casablanca (1946). He also was a favorite of director Ernst Lubitsch, appearing in Ninotchka (1939) as a bombastic Soviet emissary and in To Be or Not to Be (1942) as the unforgettable "Concentration Camp Ehrardt." With the coming of World War II, Ruman found himself much in demand as thick-headed, sometimes sadistic Nazis. Oddly, in The Hitler Gang (1944), Rumann was cast in a comparatively sympathetic role, as the ailing and senile Von Hindenburg. After the war, Rumann was "adopted" by Lubitsch admirer Billy Wilder, who cast the actor in such roles as the deceptively good-natured Sgt. Schultz in Stalag 17 (1953) and a marinet doctor in The Fortune Cookie (1966); Wilder also used Rumann's voice to dub over the guttural intonations of German actor Hubert von Meyerinck in One, Two, Three (1961). In delicate health during his last two decades, Rumann occasionally accepted unbilled roles, such as the kindly pawnbroker in O. Henry's Full House (1952). During one of his heartier periods, he had a recurring part on the 1952 TV sitcom Life with Luigi. Rumann's last film appearance was as a shoe-pounding Russian UN delegate in Jerry Lewis' Way... Way Out (1967).

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

Trivia: Polish-born actor Lionel Royce made his American screen bow in 1937. A Teutonic-villain assignment in 1939's Confessions of a Nazi Spy typecast Royce for the rest of his Hollywood career. Among many other assignments, the actor proved to be a memorable menace for Bob Hope in Road to Zanzibar (1941) and My Favorite Blonde (1942). Fans of Republic serials will remember Royce for his dual characterization of a kindly Sultan and the despicable Baron Von Rommer in Secret Service in Darkest Africa (1943). Lionel Royce died while on a U.S.O. tour of the Philippines in 1946.

Trivia: Burly, puffy-cheeked American actor Spencer Charters entered films in 1923, after decades of stage experience. In his first talkie appearances (Whoopee [1930], The Bat Whispers [1931], etc.), Charters was often seen as an ill-tempered authority figure. Traces of this characterization continued into such mid-'30s efforts as Wheeler and Woolsey's Hips Hips Hooray, but before the decade was over Charters was firmly locked into playing such benign types as rustic sheriffs, bucolic hotel clerks and half-asleep justices of the peace. Advancing age and the attendant infirmities made it difficult for Charters to play anything other than one-scene bits by the early '40s. At the age of 68, he ended his life by downing an overdose of sleeping pills and then inhaling the exhaust fumes of his car.

Trivia: On American stages since 1927 and in Hollywood from the mid-'30s, Stuttgart-born Hans Schumm was well situated when the inevitable calls for German-accented actors came at the onset of World War II. With his piercing eyes and sculpted face, Schumm played some of the worst offenders of Nazi atrocities, real or Hollywood-imagined, in scores of war melodramas that included everything from the ludicrous Spy Smasher (1942) to the sensationalistic Hitler's Hangman) (1943), in which he was Heydrich's chief henchman. Roles inevitably got scarcer after the war and Schumm returned to Germany in the 1950s, playing, among other roles, Curd Jürgens' father in Wernher von Braun (1959). His final credited performance came in the low-budget Captain Sindbad (1963), an American production filmed in West Germany.

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: A cabaret artist in his native Holland, Frederick (or Fredrik) Vogedink spent the early years of his screen career in Germany. In 1920, he married American actress Florence Roberts (1871-1927) and co-starred with Dorothy Dalton in Behind Masks (1921), a routine crime drama from Paramount. He appeared in a few other silent films in Hollywood, but Vogedink's screen career began in earnest in 1933, when he made an indelible impression as the grim U-boat captain in Below the Sea. With his stern visage, Vogedink later excelled at playing Nazis and was memorable as the nasty Captain Richter in one of the earliest Hollywood films to openly criticize Hitler's Germany, Confessions of a Nazi Spy (1939). Vogedink's death was attributed to the aftereffects of a heart attack.

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

Trivia: Trained at Iowa's Morningside College for a career as a musician, American actor Emory Parnell spent his earliest performing years as a concert violinist. He worked the Chautauqua and Lyceum tent circuits for a decade before leaving the road in 1930. For the next few seasons, Parnell acted and narrated in commercial and industrial films produced in Detroit. Determining that the oppurtunities and renumeration were better in Hollywood, Emory and his actress wife Effie boarded the Super Chief and headed for California. Endowed with a ruddy Irish countenance and perpetual air of frustration, Parnell immediately landed a string of character roles as cops, small town business owners, fathers-in-law and landlords (though his very first film part in Bing Crosby's Dr. Rhythm [1938] was cut out before release). In roles both large and small, Parnell became an inescapable presence in B-films of the '40s; one of his better showings was in the A-picture Louisiana Purchase, in which, as a Paramount movie executive, he sings an opening song about avoiding libel suits! Parnell was a regular in Universal's Ma and Pa Kettle film series (1949-55), playing small town entrepreneur Billy Reed; on TV, the actor appeared as William Bendix' factory foreman The Life of Riley (1952-58). Emory Parnell's last public appearance was in 1974, when he, his wife Effie, and several other hale-and-hearty residents of the Motion Picture Country Home and Hospital were interviewed by Tom Snyder.

Trivia: A distinguished actor who had made his stage debut in London, tall, dignified Edward Fielding was especially known for his roles in the works of Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen. Although he appeared in the occasional silent film, including as Watson opposite William Gillette's Sherlock Holmes (1916), Fielding did not turn to the screen full-time until the late '30s, when he became a special favorite of British director Alfred Hitchcock, who cast him as the butler Frith in Rebecca (1940), the antique store owner in Suspicion (1941), the doctor on the train in Shadow of a Doubt (1943), and Dr. Edwardes in Spellbound (1945).

Trivia: A former captain of the Life Hussars of the King of Saxony, William von Brincken came to America as a military attaché at the German embassy in Washington. Stranded in the U.S. after WWI, von Brincken moved to Hollywood, where he joined the so-called Elite Guard, a group of former mittel-European officers brought together for film work by director Erich von Stroheim. As a recognized military expert, he served as a technical advisor for such films as Flesh and the Devil (1927) and All Quiet on the Western Front (1930). His film-acting career began in von Stroheim's Queen Kelly (1929); he went on to play such roles as Von Richtofen in Hell's Angels (1930), and during WWII was one of several German expatriates called upon to play Nazis. Whenever it seemed politically expedient to do so, William von Brincken acted under such Anglicized stage names as Roger Beckwith and William Vaughan.

Trivia: At age 12 she began performing in stage productions. She was a major Broadway star in the '10s and '20s and appeared in a dozen or so silent films, most of them released in 1917. She moved to Hollywood in her early 40s, playing a wide variety of major character roles and some leads between 1930-57; she tended to portray aging harlots and fallen women, and could be raucous, vicious, heartbreaking, or commanding in her portrayals. For her work in Primrose Path (1940) she received a Best Supporting Actress Oscar nomination, and was again nominated in that category for Torch Song (1953). She married and divorced Willard Mack, an actor, playwright, and screenwriter.