Trivia: The son of British stage actor Frederick Rains, Claude Rains gave his first theatrical performance at age 11 in Nell of Old Drury. He learned the technical end of the business by working his way up from being a two-dollars-a-week page boy to stage manager. After making his first U.S. appearance in 1913, Rains returned to England, served in the Scottish regiment during WWI, then established himself as a leading actor in the postwar years. He was also featured in one obscure British silent film, Build Thy House. During the 1920s, Rains was a member of the teaching staff at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art; among his pupils were a young sprout named Laurence Olivier and a lovely lass named Isabel Jeans, who became the first of Rains' six wives. While performing with the Theatre Guild in New York in 1932, Rains filmed a screen test for Universal Pictures. On the basis of his voice alone, the actor was engaged by Universal director James Whale to make his talking-picture debut in the title role of The Invisible Man (1933). During his subsequent years at Warner Bros., the mellifluous-voiced Rains became one of the studio's busiest and most versatile character players, at his best when playing cultured villains. Though surprisingly never a recipient of an Academy award, Rains was Oscar-nominated for his performances as the "bought" Senator Paine in Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939), the title character in Mr. Skeffington (1944), the Nazi husband of Ingrid Bergman in Notorious (1946), and, best of all, the cheerfully corrupt Inspector Renault in Casablanca (1942). In 1946, Rains became one of the first film actors to demand and receive one million dollars for a single picture; the role was Julius Caesar, and the picture Caesar and Cleopatra. He made a triumphant return to Broadway in 1951's Darkness at Noon. In his last two decades, Claude Rains made occasional forays into television (notably on Alfred Hitchcock Presents) and continued to play choice character roles in big-budget films like Lawrence of Arabia (1962) and The Greatest Story Ever Told (1965).

Trivia: American actress Priscilla Lane was trained for a musical career at Iowa's Simpson College. Shortly before graduation Priscilla and her sister Rosemary Lane toured as vocalists with the Fred Waring Band. In 1937, both Lane sisters were signed by Warner Bros. to appear in Varsity Show; they were cast as adversaries, with "nice" Priscilla impersonating "nasty" temperamental movie star Rosemary. A third Lane sister, Lola, joined her siblings and actress Gale Page to play the title characters in Warners' Four Daughters (1938), but it was Priscilla who was shown to best advantage by sharing the "fates are against me" scene with costar John Garfield. The actress had the good luck to work with some of Hollywood's top male stars during her Warners' tenure, including Cary Grant (Arsenic and Old Lace [1941]) and James Cagney (The Roaring Twenties [1939]). While on loanout to 20th Century-Fox, Lane was allowed to deliver a sharp comic performance opposite Jack Benny in The Meanest Man in the World (1943). Lane even worked with Hitchcock in Saboteur (1942), though truth to tell she was hardly the director's first choice (he wanted Barbara Stanwyck). Retiring from movies in favor of married life in 1948, Priscilla Lane made a brief professional reappearance in the late '50s as hostess of a daily movie telecast on Boston's WBZ-TV.

Trivia: American actor John Garfield, when judged by looks and attitude alone, seemed more the pugnacious, defiant urban thug than one of Hollywood's most respected dramatic actors of the '30s and '40s. As evidence of his popularity, despite the fact that many insiders considered Garfield's personal ways and beliefs a bit radical, the attendance at his funeral in 1952 broke the records set at Rudolph Valentino's funeral. He was born Julius Garfinkle, the son of poor Jewish immigrants from New York's Lower-East-Side ghettos. Poverty was the norm there, and life was tough. Young Garfield's juvenile delinquent tendencies landed him in a special school for problem children. Still, it was almost inevitable that he would get involved with neighborhood street gangs. He may have remained on those streets struggling to survive, had Garfield not had a special gift for debate, a talent that won him a state-wide contest sponsored by the New York Times. The ensuing scholarship gained him entrance into the Ouspenskaya Drama School and an apprenticeship in repertory theater. Afterward, Garfield hit the road and became a freight-train-hopping hobo and transient worker, but by the late 1930s he returned home to join the Group Theater.Following a role in Odet's production of Golden Boy, Garfield landed a contract with Warners and made his film debut in the melodramatic tragedy Four Daughters (1938). He played a cynical, embittered piano prodigy who finds redemption through a young woman's love, and for her well-being he makes the ultimate sacrifice. It was a powerful multi-textured performance that led to his receiving a nomination for "Best Supporting Actor." Following that success, he appeared in a brief series based on the film and then continued playing assorted angry young men and ill-fated outsiders in such films as Dust Be My Destiny. Though his appearance and demeanor locked him into playing tough outsiders and anti-heroes, Garfield was a versatile actor who unsuccessfully fought with studio heads to play different kinds of roles to demonstrate his true range. Glimpses of it can be seen in such powerful films as Pride of the Marines (1945) in which he plays a real-life war hero who must cope with his battle-caused blindness back home.Beginning with MGM's classic The Postman Always Rings Twice (1946), Garfield began to establish himself in film noir. He is still considered one of the best actors in that genre, with one of his best films being Force of Evil in which he played a corrupt attorney. Following the end of his Warner's contract, Garfield founded Enterprise Productions and began free-lancing. His distinctly leftist views and staunch support of the working class lead to his being labeled a communist sympathizer by the House Committee on Un-American Activities. He did not cooperate at the official hearings and suddenly found it difficult to find work. Though he returned briefly to the theater, Garfield did not flourish. At the age of 39, he died of coronary thrombosis, a condition that some have attributed to the stress the Committee placed upon him. His two surviving children, Julie Garfield and David Patton Garfield (aka John David Garfield or John Garfield Jr.), both became actors during the 1960s.

Trivia: The "middle girl" of Hollywood's Lane Sisters, Rosemary Lane was one of five children of an Indiana dentist. While older sister Lola pursued a career in vaudeville, Rosemary and younger sister Priscilla toured as vocalists with Fred Waring's orchestra. Rosemary made her screen debut in Warner Bros.' Varsity Show (1937), playing a temperamental screen queen who is replaced by the down-to-earth heroine -- played by none other than kid-sister Priscilla. The two siblings were teamed with Lola Lane in Four Daughters (1938) (the fourth daughter was played by Gale Page) and its 1939 spin-off Daughters Courageous. Projecting a more demure demeanor than Lola and a more mature image than Priscilla, Rosemary was the "dramatic" member of the family, playing imperiled heroines opposite James Cagney in The Oklahoma Kid (1939) and Humphrey Bogart in The Return of Dr. X (1939). She was given ample opportunities to display her superb singing voice in such films as The Boys From Syracuse (1940) and in the original Broadway production of Best Foot Forward. Illness forced Lane to give up her show-business career in the mid-1940s. Rosemary Lane was for several years married to makeup specialist Bud M. Westmore.

Trivia: Born Mary Robison. In her late teens she moved to the U.S. with no intention of becoming an actress; a few years later she became a widow, and in 1884 she took up acting to support her three children. She played both leads and supporting roles on the road and on Broadway, and over several decades she became highly respected as a character actress. From 1914-19 she appeared in a few silent films (sometimes billed as Mrs. Stuart Robson), then returned to the screen for good in 1926 and fourished in the subsequent sound era. She was usually cast as crusty, gruff, domineering society matrons or grandmothers. For her portrayal of Damon Runyon's Apple Annie in Frank Capra's Lady for a Day (1933), one of her rare starring roles, she received a Best Actress Oscar nomination. Ultimately she appeared in more than 60 films, the last of which was released the year of her death.

Trivia: Born Dorothy Mullican, she was playing piano at age twelve in cinemas as accompaniment to silent films. She studied at a music conservatory for two years, then went to New York with her sister Leota; they appeared in the Gus Edwards vaudeville revue and debuted on Broadway in Greenwich Village Follies. In 1928 Lola starred opposite George Jessel in Broadway's War Song, after which she was signed to a film contract by Fox; she debuted onscreen in Speakeasy (1929). Until the late '30s she appeared as brassy leads, mostly in minor productions; she became more successful with a string of films in which she was cast with her sisters Priscilla and Rosemary Lane. She retired from the screen in 1946. She was married five times; her husbands included actor Lew Ayres and directors Alexander Hall and Roland West.

Trivia: A former vocalist with the Ted Weems Orchestra, Gale Page was signed to a Warner Bros. contract in 1938. Most of her roles were nondescript leading ladies in such films as Crime School (1938) and Indianapolis Speedway (1939). She was given better career breaks in Four Daughters (1938), in which she and the three Lane sisters (Rosemary, Priscilla, and Lola) played the musically gifted offspring of Claude Rains, and in Knute Rockne, All-American (1940), as Rockne's wife. Gale Page retired from films in 1949, emerging from private life to make one last appearance in 1954's About Mrs. Leslie.

Trivia: Affable "good guy" singer/actor Dick Foran was the son of a U.S. senator. After a tentative stab at a career as a geologist, Foran achieved prominence as a band and radio singer. Billed as Nick Foran, he made his screen debut as a "Paul Revere" type in a surrealistic production number in Fox's Stand Up and Cheer (1934). Signed by Warner Bros., Foran was utilized as that studio's "answer" to Gene Autry in a series of "B" musical westerns; ironically, he also played a devastatingly parodied cowboy star in 1938's Boy Meets Girl. After enjoying nominal stardom in Warners' second-feature product--and incidentally picking up an Oscar nomination for his supporting work in The Petrified Forest (1936)--Foran moved to Universal, where he worked in everything from serials to horror films to Abbott and Costello comedies. In one A&C romp, Ride 'Em Cowboy (1942), Foran introduced what would become his signature theme, the lovely "I'll Remember April." Those who worked with Foran during this period remember him being as likable and uncomplicated offscreen as on; one Universal starlet never tired of recalling the time that Foran invited her into his dressing room then asked quite sincerely if she wanted to play a game of jacks! Dick Foran remained in films and TV as a reliable, pleasantly portly character actor into the 1960s; one of his last films was Donovan's Reef, which starred his longtime friend John Wayne.

Trivia: After his graduation from Bates College, Jeffrey Lynn worked as a high school English and speech teacher. He turned to acting in the mid-'30s and in 1937 was signed to a stock Warner Bros. contract. A bit too lightweight for important roles, he was a fine second-echelon leading man, and before leaving Warners he'd compiled several impressive credits, including such roles as poet Joyce Kilmer in The Fighting 69th (1940) and Henry Mortyn Field in All This and Heaven Too (1940). He also "starred" as Ashley Wilkes in the screen tests of Selznick's Gone With the Wind (1939), feeding lines to such aspiring Scarlett O'Haras as Paulette Goddard and Frances Dee. During WWII, he served as an army intelligence officer, earning a Bronze Star. He returned to films in 1948 in hopes of revitalizing his career, but found more success as a stage and television actor. His TV credits included two series, My Son Jeep (1953) and Star Stage (1955). Jeffrey Lynn retired from acting in 1968 to devote his time to his family and "civilian" business pursuits.

Trivia: At age ten, Frank McHugh began performing in his parent's stock company, side by side with his siblings Matt and Kitty. By age 17, McHugh was resident juvenile with the Marguerite Bryant stock company. Extensive vaudeville experience followed, and in 1925 McHugh made his first Broadway appearance in The Fall Guy; three years later, he made his movie debut in a Vitaphone short. Hired by Warner Bros. for the small role of a motorcycle driver in 1930's The Dawn Patrol, McHugh appeared in nearly 70 Warners films over the next decade. He was often cast as the hero's best pal or as drunken comedy relief; his peculiar trademark was a lightly braying laugh. Highlight performances during his Warners tenure included Jimmy Cagney's pessimistic choreographer in Footlight Parade (1933), "rude mechanical" Quince in A Midsummer Night's Dream (1935), an erstwhile poet and horserace handicapper in Three Men on a Horse (1936) and a friendly pickpocket in One Way Passage (1932) -- a role he'd repeat word-for-word in Till We Meet Again, 1940 remake of Passage. He continued showing up in character roles in such films as Going My Way (1944) and A Tiger Walks (1964) until the late 1960s. McHugh was also a regular on the 1960s TV series The Bing Crosby Show and F Troop.

Trivia: Affectionately described by film historian William K. Everson as "That lovable old wreck of a busybody," actress Vera Lewis was indeed quite lovable in person, even though most of her screen characters were sharp-tongued and spiteful in the extreme. Lewis first appeared in films in 1915, playing bits in such historical spectacles as D.W. Griffith's Birth of a Nation (1915) and Intolerance (1916) and the privately-funded Argonauts of California. By the 1920s, she was well-established in such venomous characterizations as the remonstrative stepmother in the 1926 Colleen Moore starrer Ella Cinders. She continued playing small-town snoops, gimlet-eyed landladies, irksome relatives and snobbish society doyennes well into the talkie era. Even when unbilled, Lewis was unforgettable: in 1933's King Kong, she's the outraged theater patron who mercilessly browbeats an usher upon finding out that the mighty Kong will be appearing in person instead of on film. When all is said and done, Vera Lewis was never better than when she was playing a gorgon-like mother-in-law, as witness her work as Mrs. Nesselrode in W.C. Fields' Man on the Flying Trapeze (1935) and as Andy Clyde's vituperative mom-by-marriage in the 1947 2-reeler Wife to Spare.

Trivia: The brother of country/western singer Roy Acuff, actor Eddie Acuff drifted to Hollywood in the early 1930s, where he almost immediately secured day-player work at Warner Bros. studios. From his 1934 debut in Here Comes the Navy onward, Acuff showed up in film after film as reporters, photographers, delivery men, sailors, shop clerks, and the occasional western comical sidekick. Acuff's most memorable acting stint occured after actor Irving Bacon left Columbia's Blondie series. From 1946 through 1949, Eddie Acuff made nine Blondie appearances as the hapless postman who was forever being knocked down by the eternally late-for-work Dagwood Bumstead (Arthur Lake).

Trivia: Character actor Donald Kerr showed up whenever a gumchewing Runyonesque type (often a reporter or process server) was called for. A bit actor even in two-reelers and "B" pictures, Kerr was one of those vaguely familiar faces whom audiences would immediately recognize, ask each other "Who is that?", then return to the film, by which time Kerr had scooted the scene. The actor's first recorded film appearance was in 1933's Carnival Lady. Twenty-two years later, Donald Kerr concluded his career in the same anonymity with which he began it in 1956's Yaqui Drums.

Trivia: Virile, dignified Canadian actor Wilfred Lucas was a stage veteran when he joined the Biograph movie company in 1907. He played a variety of leading roles in the films of D.W. Griffith, including the title character in Griffith's two-reel adaptation of Enoch Arden. Occasionally turning director himself, Lucas was especially busy in this capacity at the Keystone studios of Mack Sennett. During the 1920s, Lucas played several character roles in major productions and also kept busy as a director and screenwriter. In the talkie era, Wilfred Lucas played innumerable bit parts at Warner Bros., Hal Roach Studios and Paramount; he could occasionally be seen in sizeable roles in such films as Laurel and Hardy's Pardon Us (1931) and A Chump at Oxford (1940), and director James Cruze's I Cover the Waterfront (1933).

Trivia: An officious-looking, often bespectacled character actor of the 1930s, Joe Cunningham played Maxie, the city editor, in the popular Torchy Blane comedies. Making reporters something of his specialty, Cunningham also plied the newspaper trade in Angels With Dirty Faces (1938) and Knute Rockne, All American (1940). He died from coronary occlusion and should not be confused with later British actor Joseph Cunningham.