Trivia: In an industry of prima donnas, actress Barbara Stanwyck was universally recognized as a consummate professional; a supremely versatile performer, her strong screen presence established her as a favorite of directors, including Cecil B. De Mille, Fritz Lang, and Frank Capra. Born Ruby Stevens July 16, 1907, in Brooklyn, NY, she was left orphaned at the age of four and raised by her showgirl sister. Upon quitting school a decade later, she began dancing in local speakeasies and at the age of 15 became a Ziegfeld chorus girl. In 1926, Stanwyck made her Broadway debut in The Noose, becoming a major stage star in her next production, Burlesque. MGM requested a screen test, but she rejected the offer. She did, however, agree to a supporting role in 1927's Broadway Nights, and after completing her stage run in 1929 appeared in the drama The Locked Door. With her husband, comedian Frank Fay, Stanwyck traveled to Hollywood. After unsuccessfully testing at Warner Bros., she appeared in Columbia's low-budget Mexicali Rose, followed in 1930 by Capra's Ladies of Leisure, the picture which shot her to stardom. A long-term Columbia contract was the result, and the studio soon loaned Stanwyck to Warners for 1931's Illicit. It was a hit, as was the follow-up Ten Cents a Dance. Reviewers were quite taken with her, and with a series of successful pictures under her belt, she sued Columbia for a bigger salary; a deal was struck to share her with Warners, and she split her time between the two studios for pictures including Miracle Woman, Night Nurse, and Forbidden, a major hit which established her among the most popular actresses in Hollywood. Over the course of films like 1932's Shopworn, Ladies They Talk About, and Baby Face, Stanwyck developed an image as a working girl, tough-minded and often amoral, rarely meeting a happy ending; melodramas including 1934's Gambling Lady and the following year's The Woman in Red further established the persona, and in Red Salute she even appeared as a student flirting with communism. Signing with RKO, Stanwyck starred as Annie Oakley; however, her contract with the studio was non-exclusive, and she also entered into a series of multi-picture deals with the likes of Fox (1936's A Message to Garcia) and MGM (His Brother's Wife, co-starring Robert Taylor, whom she later married).For 1937's Stella Dallas, Stanwyck scored the first of four Academy Award nominations. Refusing to be typecast, she then starred in a screwball comedy, Breakfast for Two, followed respectively by the downcast 1938 drama Always Goodbye and the caper comedy The Mad Miss Manton. After the 1939 De Mille Western Union Pacific, she co-starred with William Holden in Golden Boy, and with Henry Fonda she starred in Preston Sturges' outstanding The Lady Eve. For the 1941 Howard Hawks comedy Ball of Fire, Stanwyck earned her second Oscar nomination. Another superior film, Capra's Meet John Doe, completed a very successful year. Drama was the order of the day for the next few years, as she starred in pictures like The Gay Sisters and The Great Man's Lady. In 1944, she delivered perhaps her most stunning performance in Billy Wilder's classic noir Double Indemnity. Stanwyck's stunning turn as a femme fatale secured her a third Oscar bid and helped make her, according to the IRS, the highest-paid woman in America. It also won her roles in several of the decade's other great film noirs, including 1946's The Strange Love of Martha Ivers and 1949's The File on Thelma Jordon. In between, Stanwyck also starred in the 1948 thriller Sorry, Wrong Number, her final Academy Award-nominated performance. The 1950s, however, were far less kind, and strong roles came her way with increasing rarity. With Anthony Mann she made The Furies and with Lang she appeared opposite Marilyn Monroe in 1952's Clash by Night, but much of her material found her typecast -- in 1953's All I Desire, she portrayed a heartbroken mother not far removed from the far superior Stella Dallas, while in 1954's Blowing Wild she was yet another tough-as-nails, independent woman. Outside of the all-star Executive Suite, Stanwyck did not appear in another major hit; she let her hair go gray, further reducing her chances of winning plum parts, and found herself cast in a series of low-budget Westerns. Only Samuel Fuller's 1957 picture Forty Guns, a film much revered by the Cahiers du Cinema staff, was of any particular notice. It was also her last film for five years. In 1960, she turned to television to host The Barbara Stanwyck Show, winning an Emmy for her work.Stanwyck returned to cinemas in 1962, portraying a lesbian madam in the controversial Walk on the Wild Side. Two years later, she co-starred with Elvis Presley in Roustabout. That same year, she appeared in the thriller The Night Walker, and with that, her feature career was over. After rejecting a role in Hush...Hush, Sweet Charlotte, she returned to television to star in the long-running Western series The Big Valley, earning another Emmy for her performance as the matriarch of a frontier family. Upon the show's conclusion, Stanwyck made a TV movie, The House That Would Not Die. She then appeared in two more, 1971's A Taste of Evil and 1973's The Letters, before vanishing from the public eye for the remainder of the decade. In 1981, she was awarded an honorary Oscar; two years later, she was also the recipient of a Lincoln Center Life Achievement Award. Also in 1983, Stanwyck returned to television to co-star in the popular miniseries The Thorn Birds. Two years later, she headlined The Colbys, a spin-off of the hugely successful nighttime soap opera Dynasty. It was her last project before retiring. Stanwyck died January 20, 1990.

Trivia: Given that Fred MacMurray built a successful film career as the quintessential nice guy, it's rather ironic that some of his strongest and best-remembered performances cast him against type. While remaining known as a fixture of light comedies and live-action Disney productions, his definitive roles nonetheless were those which found him contemplating murder, adultery, and other villainous pursuits. Born August 30, 1908, in Kankakee, IL, MacMurray, the son of a concert violinist, was educated at a military academy and later studied at the Chicago Art Institute. His original goal was to become a professional saxophonist, and toward that aim he worked with a variety of bands and even recorded with Gus Arnheim. MacMurray's musical aspirations eventually led him to Hollywood, where he frequently worked as an extra. He later joined the California Collegians and with them played Broadway in the 1930 revue Three's a Crowd, where he joined Libby Holman on a duet of "Something to Remember Me By." He subsequently appeared in productions of The Third Little Show and Roberta. The story behind MacMurray's return to Hollywood remains uncertain -- either a Paramount casting scout saw him on-stage, or he simply signed up with Central Casting -- but either way, he was under contract by 1934. At Paramount, he rose to fame in 1935's The Gilded Lily, a romantic comedy which pit him against Claudette Colbert. Seemingly overnight he was among the hottest young actors in town, and he quickly emerged as a favorite romantic sparring partner with many of Hollywood's leading actresses. After Katherine Hepburn requested his services for Alice Adams, MacMurray joined Carole Lombard in Hands Across the Table before reuniting with Colbert in The Bride Comes Home, his seventh film in 12 months. He kept up the frenetic pace, appearing in 1936's The Trail of the Lonesome Pine alongside Henry Fonda, reteaming with Lombard in The Princess Comes Across. After settling a contract dispute with Paramount, MacMurray again starred with Colbert in the 1937 swashbuckler Maid of Salem, one of the first films to move him away from the laid-back, genial performances on which he'd risen to success.Along with Colbert, Lombard remained the actress with whom MacMurray was most frequently paired. They reunited in 1937's Swing High, Swing Low and again that same year in True Confession. After starring with Bing Crosby in Sing You Sinners, he also began another onscreen partnership with Madeleine Carroll in 1939's Cafe Society, quickly followed by a reunion in Invitation to Bali. While not the superstar that many predicted he would become, by the 1940s MacMurray had settled comfortably into his leading man duties, developing an amiable comic style perfectly suited to his pictures' sunny tone. While occasionally appearing in a more dramatic capacity, as in the Barbara Stanwyck drama Remember the Night, the majority of his pictures remained light, breezy affairs. However, in 1944 he and Stanwyck reunited in Billy Wilder's superb Double Indemnity, which cast MacMurray as a murderous insurance salesman. The result was perhaps the most acclaimed performance of his career, earning him new respect as a serious actor.However, MacMurray soon returned to more comedic fare, appearing with Colbert in 1944's Practically Yours. After the following year's farcical Murder He Says, his contract with Paramount ended and he moved to 20th Century Fox, where he starred in the historical musical Where Do We Go From Here? His co-star, June Haver, became his wife in 1954. MacMurray then produced and starred in Pardon My Past, but after announcing his displeasure with Fox he jumped to Universal to star in the 1947 hit The Egg and I. During the 1940s and early '50s, he settled into a string of easygoing comedies, few of them successful either financially or artistically. His star began to wane, a situation not helped by a number of poor career choices; in 1950, he even turned down Wilder's classic Sunset Boulevard. In 1954, however, MacMurray returned to form in The Caine Mutiny, where he appeared as a duplicitous naval officer. As before, cast against type he garnered some of the best notices of his career, but this time he continued the trend by starring as a dirty cop in The Pushover. Despite recent critical acclaim, MacMurray's box-office clout remained diminished, and throughout the mid-'50s he appeared primarily in low-budget action pictures, most of them Westerns. In 1959, however, he was tapped by Walt Disney to star in the live-action comedy The Shaggy Dog, which became one of the year's biggest hits. MacMurray appeared as a callous adulterer in Wilder's Oscar-winning 1960 smash The Apartment before moving to television to star in the family sitcom My Three Sons; a tremendous success, it ran until 1972. He then returned to the Disney stable to essay the title role in 1961's The Absent-Minded Professor and remained there for the following year's Bon Voyage and 1963's Son of Flubber. However, after two more Disney features -- 1966's Follow Me Boys and 1967's The Happiest Millionaire -- both flopped, MacMurray remained absent from the big screen for the rest of the decade, and only resurfaced in 1973 in Disney's Charley and the Angel. After a pair of TV movies, MacMurray made one last feature, 1978's The Swarm, before retiring. He died in Santa Monica, CA, on November 5, 1991.

Trivia: American actress Beulah Bondi entered the theatre at age 7, playing the male role of Little Lord Fauntleroy; it would be her last role "in drag" and one of the very few times that she'd play a character her own age. Upon graduation from Valparaiso University, she joined a stock company, working throughout the US until her 1925 Broadway debut in Wild Birds. Even in her late twenties and early thirties, Bondi specialized in playing mothers, grandmothers and society dowagers. She made her first film, Street Scene, in 1931, concentrating on movies thereafter. She is best known to modern film fans for her role as James Stewart's mother in the Christmastime favorite It's a Wonderful Life (1946). It was but one of several occasions (among them Vivacious Lady [1938] and Mr. Smith Goes to Washington [1939]) that the actress played Stewart's mother; as late as 1971, Bondi was essaying the same role in the short-lived sitcom The Jimmy Stewart Show. Even after her "official" screen retirement - her last film was Tammy and the Doctor (1963), in which, not surprisingly, she played a wealthy old invalid - Bondi kept herself open for television roles, including an Emmy-winning 1977 performance on the dramatic TV series The Waltons.

Trivia: Famed for his country-bumpkin features and fruity vocal intonations, American actor Sterling Holloway left his native Georgia as a teenager to study acting in New York City. Working through the Theatre Guild, the young Holloway was cast in the first Broadway production of songwriters Rodgers and Hart, Garrick Gaieties. In the 1925 edition of the revue, Holloway introduced the Rodgers-Hart standard "I'll Take Manhattan;" in the 1926 version, the actor introduced another hit, "Mountain Greenery." Hollywood beckoned, and Holloway made a group of silent two-reelers and one feature, the Wallace Beery vehicle Casey at the Bat (1927), before he was fired by the higher-ups because they deemed his face "too grotesque" for movies. Small wonder that Holloway would insist in later years that he was never satisfied with any of the work Hollywood would throw his way, and longed for the satisfaction of stage work. When talkies came, Holloway's distinctive voice made him much in demand, and from 1932 through the late '40s he became the archetypal soda jerk, messenger boy, and backwoods rube. His most rewarding assignments came from Walt Disney Studios, where Holloway provided delightful voiceovers for such cartoon productions as Dumbo (1941), Bambi (1942), Alice in Wonderland (1951), Ben and Me (1954) and The Jungle Book (1967). Holloway's most enduring role at Disney was as the wistful voice of Winnie the Pooh in a group of mid-'60s animated shorts. On the "live" front, Holloway became fed up of movie work one day when he found his character being referred to as "boy" - and he was past forty at the time. A few satisfactory film moments were enjoyed by Holloway as he grew older; he starred in an above-average series of two reel comedies for Columbia Pictures from 1946 to 1948 (in one of these, 1948's Flat Feat, he convincingly and hilariously impersonated a gangster), and in 1956 he had what was probably the most bizarre assignment of his career when he played a "groovy" hipster in the low-budget musical Shake, Rattle and Rock (1956). Holloway worked prodigiously in TV during the '50s and '60s as a regular or semi-regular on such series as The Life of Riley, Adventures of Superman and The Baileys of Balboa. Edging into retirement in the '70s, Sterling Holloway preferred to stay in his lavish hilltop house in San Laguna, California, where he maintained one of the most impressive and expensive collections of modern paintings in the world.

Trivia: When young Elizabeth Patterson announced her intention to become an actress, her father, a Tennessee judge, couldn't have been less pleased. Despite family objections, Patterson joined Chicago's Ben Greet Players in the last decade of the 19th century. The gawky, birdlike actress played primarily Shakespearean roles until reaching middle age, when she began specializing in "old biddy" roles. Her Broadway debut came about when she was personally selected by Booth Tarkington to appear in his play Intimate Strangers. After a false start in 1928, Ms. Patterson commenced her Hollywood career at the dawn of the talkie era. Among her more prominent film assignments were So Red the Rose (1935), The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1938), Remember the Night (1940), and Tobacco Road (1941). Approaching her eighties, Elizabeth Patterson gathered a whole new flock of fans in the 1950s with her recurring role of the Ricardos' neighbor/ babysitter, Mrs. Trumbull, on television's I Love Lucy.

Trivia: A New Year's baby, actor Willard Robertson grew up in Texas, where he became a successful lawyer. Reportedly he was offered an opportunity to become a federal judge, but he turned it down because of a sudden interest in acting. Since he looked the part of a prosperous attorney, however, Robertson frequently found himself playing a member of the very profession he'd left behind. The actor also showed up as sheriffs, mayors, city councilmen and stern father figures during his quarter-centry film career. While Preston Sturges buffs pinpoint Robertson's flamboyant defense attorney in Remember the Night? (1940) as his best performance, the actor is equally fondly recalled for his portrayal of Jackie Cooper's outwardly stern, inwardly loving father in Skippy (1931) and Sooky (1931). By the mid '40s, Willard Robertson's roles were usually of one scene's duration or less, but he still carried plenty of authority, notably as the sheriff in the grim The Ox-Bow Incident (1943); Robertson's icy remonstration to a lynch mob, "The Lord better have mercy on you...you won't get it from me," still chills the blood after fifty years.

Trivia: American actor Paul Guilfoyle was a familiar Broadway presence in the years 1928 through 1934, most often seen in musicals and comedies. Switching his activities to filmmaking in 1935, Guilfoyle continued playing comedy relief roles, often as the best friend and severest critic of the hero. In the 1940s, Guilfoyle began settling into villainy; his furtive features made him the "perfect" gangland hanger-on or snivelling stoolie. In this latter characterization, Guilfoyle was most memorable as the prison informer who is "ventilated" by James Cagney in White Heat (1949) and as the communist party flunkey who is deep-sixed by cell leader Thomas Gomez in I Married a Communist (1949). In the 1950s, Guilfoyle turned to directing, helming such programmers as Captain Scarface (1953) and Tess of the Storm Country (1961). Paul Guilfoyle's son, also named Paul, went on to become an actor, as well.

Trivia: Indiana native Charles Arnt attended Princeton University, where he was president of the Triangle Club and where he earned a geological engineering degree. Short, balding and with an air of perpetual suspicion concerning his fellow man, Arnt seemed far older than his 30 years when he was featured in the original Broadway production of Knickerbocker Holiday. In the movies, Arnt was often cast as snoopy clerks, inquisitive next-door neighbors or curious bystanders. Charles Arnt was seen in such films as The Falcon's Brother (1942), The Great Gildersleeve (1943) and That Wonderful Urge (1948); he also played one top-billed lead, as an obsessive art dealer in PRC's Dangerous Intruder (1946).

Trivia: Lovers of '30s films enjoy pointing out their favorite obscure character actors and identifying them by name. One such actor, Philadelphia-born John Wray, is almost instantly recognizable for his grim countenance, piggish eyes, and chunky frame. He was one of the many Broadway actors to descend on Hollywood in the aftermath of the sound revolution, and as such, made an indelible impression on moviegoers. Though seldom playing anything more than a bit or minor role, Wray was lucky enough to have several indelible screen performances to his credit. In 1930, he played Himmelstoss, the meek postman who becomes a cruel Army drill instructor in the opening scenes of All Quiet on the Western Front; restored prints of this Oscar-winning classic have revealed that Wray's part was originally much larger, including a colorful "mad scene" when the sadistic Himmelstoss finds himself under enemy fire for the first time.Wray also played the Arnold Rothstein-like gangster in The Czar of Broadway (1930); and the contortionist the Frog in the remake of The Miracle Man (1932). Wray's portrayals of proletarian nastiness grew increasingly smaller as the decade progressed but he was very visible as the starving farmer threatening to kill Gary Cooper for throwing his money away in mid-Depression in Mr. Deeds Goes to Town (a scene that ends with Wray breaking down sobbing apologetically, inspiring Deeds to set up a financial incentive program to put down-and-outers back on their feet). Avid cinephiles may also remember Wray's portrayal of the warden in Fritz Lang's You Only Live Once (1937). This Wray is not to be confused with the American silent film director and playwright John Griffith Wray of the 1920s.

Trivia: During Hollywood's pre-"politically correct" era, it was not uncommon for African-American performers to be saddled with such demeaning professional monikers as "G. Howe Black," "Stepin Fetchit," and "Sleep 'n' Eat." One of the more egregious racially oriented nicknames was bestowed upon a talented black character actor named Fred Toones. From 1931 until his retirement in 1948, Toones was usually billed as "Snowflake," often playing a character of the same name. His standard characterization, that of a middle-aged "colored" man with high-pitched voice and childlike demeanor, was nearly as offensive as his character name. True to the Hollywood typecasting system of the 1930s and 1940s, "Snowflake" was generally cast as redcaps, bootblacks, and janitors. He appeared in dozens of two-reelers (including the Three Stooges' first Columbia effort, 1934's Woman Haters) and scores of B-Westerns. During the early '40s, Fred Toones was a semi-regular in the zany comedies of producer/director/writer Preston Sturges.

Trivia: American actor Tom Kennedy at first entertained no notions of becoming a performer. An honor student in college, Tom excelled as an athlete; he played football, wrestled, and won the national amateur heavyweight boxing title in 1908. Eschewing a job with the New York City police force for a boxing career, Kennedy didn't have anything to do with movies until he was hired as Douglas Fairbanks Sr.'s trainer in 1915. Shortly afterward, he was hired for small parts at the Keystone Studios and remained primarily a bit actor throughout the silent period. Graduating to supporting roles in talkies, he was often cast as a dumb cop or an easily confused gangster. In 1935, Kennedy achieved star billing by teaming with comedian Monty Collins in a series of 11 Columbia two-reelers. In most of these, notably the hilarious Free Rent (1936), Tom was cast as a lummox whose density caused no end of trouble to the sarcastic Collins. Outside of his short subject work, Tom's most memorable screen appearances occured in Warner Bros' Torchy Blaine B-pictures, in which he was cast as the cretinous, poetry-spouting detective Gahagan. Tom Kennedy stayed active in films into the early '60s, looking and sounding just about the same as he had in the '30s; his most conspicuous screen bits in his last years were in Billy Wilder's Some Like It Hot (1959) and Stanley Kramer's It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World (1963).

Trivia: Georgia Caine is best remembered today by film buffs for her work in most of Preston Sturges's classic films for Paramount Pictures, as well as the movies he subsequently made independently and at 20th Century Fox. She was practically born on stage, the daughter of George Caine and the former Jennie Darragh, both of whom were Shakespearean actors. As an infant and toddler, she was kept in the company of her parents as they toured the United States. Bitten by the theatrical bug, she left school before the age of 17 to become an actress and she started out in Shakespearean repertory. Caine quickly shifted over to musical comedy, however, and became a favorite of George M. Cohan, appearing in his plays Mary, The O'Brien Girls, and The Silver Swan, among others. In 1914, she also starred in a stage production of The Merry Widow in London. Caine was a favorite subject of theater columnists during the teens and '20s. By the end of that decade, however, after 30 years on stage, her star had begun to fade, and that was when Hollywood beckoned. The advent of talking pictures suddenly created a demand for actors and actresses who could handle spoken dialogue. She moved to the film Mecca at the outset of the 1930s, and Caine worked in more than 60 films over the next 20 years, usually playing mothers, aunts, and older neighbors. She also occasionally broke out of that mold to do something strikingly different, most notably in Camille (1937), in which she portrayed a streetwalker. Starting with Christmas in July in 1940, she was a regular member of Preston Sturges' stock company of players (even portraying a bearded lady in The Sin of Harold Diddlebock), appearing in most of his movies right up to his directorial swan song, The Beautiful Blonde From Bashful Bend (1949).

Trivia: Stern-visaged American actress Virginia Brissac was a well-established stage actress in the early part of the 20th century. For several seasons in the 1920s, she headed a travelling stock company bearing her name. Once Brissac settled down in Hollywood in 1935, she carved a niche in authoritative parts, spending the next twenty years playing a steady stream of schoolteachers, college deans, duennas and society matrons. Once in a while, Virginia Brissac was allowed to "cut loose" with a raving melodramatic part: in Bob Hope's The Ghost Breakers, she dons a coat of blackface makeup and screams with spine-tingling conviction as the bewitched mother of zombie Noble Johnson.

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: For two decades, the diminutive American actor ChesterClute played a seemingly endless series of harassed clerks, testy druggists, milquetoast husbands, easily distracted laboratory assistants and dishevelled streetcar passengers. A New York-based stage actor, Clute began his movie career at the Astoria studios in Long Island, appearing in several early-talkie short subjects. He moved to the West Coast in the mid '30s, remaining there until his final film appearance in Colorado Territory (1952). While Chester Clute seldom had more than two or three lines of dialogue in feature films, he continued throughout his career to be well-served in short subjects, most notably as Vera Vague's wimpish suitor in the 1947 Columbia 2-reeler Cupid Goes Nuts.

Trivia: A stage actor, Melford began appearing in films in 1909 and was directing by the early teens. Notable among his silent films are the Rudolph Valentino vehicles The Sheik and Moran of the Lady Letty; the standout among his talkies is the Spanish-language version of Dracula, which he shot on the sets of Tod Browning's 1931 film. In the late '30s Melford left directing and returned to acting, and appeared in several major films of the '40s, including the comedy My Little Chickadee with W.C. Fields and Mae West; Preston Sturges' classic farces The Miracle of Morgan's Creek and Hail the Conquering Hero; and Elia Kazan's debut feature A Tree Grows in Brookly.

Trivia: American actor James Flavin was groomed as a leading man when he first arrived in Hollywood in 1932, but he balked at the glamour treatment and was demonstrably resistant to being buried under tons of makeup. Though Flavin would occasionally enjoy a leading role--notably in the 1932 serial The Airmail Mystery, co-starring Flavin's wife Lucille Browne--the actor would devote most of his film career to bit parts. If a film featured a cop, process server, Marine sergeant, circus roustabout, deckhand or political stooge, chances are Jimmy Flavin was playing the role. His distinctive sarcastic line delivery and chiselled Irish features made him instantly recognizable, even if he missed being listed in the cast credits. Larger roles came Flavin's way in King Kong (1933) as Second Mate Briggs; Nightmare Alley (1947), as the circus owner who hires Tyrone Power; and Abbott and Costello Meet the Killer, Boris Karloff (1949), as a long-suffering homicide detective. Since he worked with practically everyone, James Flavin was invaluable in later years as a source of on-set anecdotes for film historians; and because he evidently never stopped working, Flavin and his wife Lucille were able to spend their retirement years in comfort in their lavish, sprawling Hollywood homestead.

Trivia: A master of the delayed, dull-witted double take, American actor George Guhl spent several decades in vaudeville as a member of the Guhl Brothers and Guhl and Adams comedy teams. He entered films in 1935, remaining active until his death eight years later. Fans of Hal Roach's "Our Gang" comedies will remember Guhl as gimlet-eyed truant officer Smithers in Arbor Day (1936). George Guhl's best feature-film assignment was the recurring role of dim-bulbed desk sergeant Graves in Warner Bros.' "Torchy Blane" series.

Trivia: To western fans, the nickname "Fuzzy" invokes fond memories of two first-rate comedy sidekicks: Al "Fuzzy" St. John and John Forest "Fuzzy" Knight. Knight inaugurated his career at age 15 with a tent minstrel troupe. His skill as a musician enabled him to work his way through West Virginia University, after which he headed his own band. Among Knight's theatrical credits in the '20s was the 1927 edition of Earl Carroll's Vanities and the 1928 "book" musical Here's How. Mae West caught Knight's act on the Keith vaudeville circuit and cast the bucolic entertainer in her 1933 film vehicle She Done Him Wrong; he would later show up playing West's country cousin in the actress' last important film, My Little Chickadee (1940). Usually essaying comedy roles, Knight was effective in the his dramatic scenes in Paramount's Trail of the Lonesome Pine (1936), wherein he tearfully sings a mountain ballad at the funeral of little Spanky McFarland. Knight's B-western comedy sidekick activity peaked in the mid '40s (he appeared most often with Johnny Mack Brown), after which his film roles diminished as his fondness for the bottle increased. Promising to behave himself (at least during filming), Fuzzy Knight signed on in 1955 for Buster Crabbe's popular TV adventure series Captain Gallant of the Foreign Legion; for the next two years, Knight played a semi-serious legionnaire -- named Private Fuzzy Knight.

Trivia: When he died in early 1965, Julius Tannen rated an obituary in Variety covering the better part of a page. That may surprise anyone who is wondering "Who was Julius Tannen?" -- viewers who have seen Stanley Donen's Singin' in the Rain, or the sophisticated comedies of Preston Sturges, however, have likely delighted in Tannen's work, even if they didn't know who he was. Born in Chicago and raised in a Jewish orphanage in Rochester, NY, Julius Tannen became one of the most celebrated and successful theatrical performers of his day, in a career that took him from the vaudeville stage into some of the most important movies ever made, and on to television before a return to the stage in his twilight years. Tannen didn't intend to become a performer -- he was making a living as a salesman, and his pitch to customers proved so engaging and funny, that he received offers to entertain at parties. He made his professional debut on the vaudeville stage in 1901, at age 21, and developed a particular comedic specialty as what was then called a "monologist" -- he would stand there and talk (today, it's called standup comedy). Among many techniques that he devised, one of his most popular was that of presenting a comic story and ending it before the payoff, leaving the audience to fill in the blank space. Tannen was the first successful modern practitioner of what is now known as the comedy monolog. He was also responsible for creating the exit phrase, "My father thanks you, my mother thanks you, my sister thanks you, and I thank you" -- certainly ironic in view of his background as an orphan, this phrase, heard by a young George M. Cohan (who was then performing with the Four Cohans), was adopted by him as his bow-off signature for the rest of his career, and immortalized in the movie Yankee Doodle Dandy. Tannen played the Palace Theater in New York more often than almost any other performer, and he subsequently made the jump to legitimate theater during the 1920s, performing in Earl Carroll's Vanities and the George White Scandals. He'd already been performing professionally for three decades when the advent of talking pictures created a need for actors who could handle spoken dialogue. His first film was Lady By Choice, starring Carole Lombard, in which he played a small role. Over the next 15 years, Tannen portrayed dozens of lawyers, clerks, journalists, and police detectives, usually (but not always) unnamed in the credits. He started getting bigger roles in the late '30s, in everything from light comedies to serious dramas such as Frank Borzage's The Mortal Storm (1940). He joined the stock company of director/writer Preston Sturges with the latter's second movie, Christmas in July, and was aboard for The Lady Eve, Sullivan's Travels, and The Palm Beach Story, and he enjoyed still larger roles in the director's final Paramount films. He continued working with Sturges right up through Unfaithfully Yours. It was with director Stanley Donen, however, that Tannen scored what may have been his most prominent screen appearance, in the movie Singin' in the Rain. Tannen appears in the opening section of the movie, as the man in the short film shown at the Hollywood party, introducing sound movies ("This is a talking picture...") -- to anyone knowing the man and the history, the in joke was priceless, the world's best stage monologist debuting talking pictures. Tannen subsequently worked in the Elvis Presley film Loving You (1957) and was apparently a favorite of director John Sturges, who used him in The People Against O'Hara (1952) and The Last Train From Gun Hill (1959). Tannen retained his comic edge and melodious voice into his seventies -- on December 2, 1954, he appeared on The George Gobel Show (in a program available on video) in a sketch where he ran circles around the star, and he earned a special curtain call from Gobel. He continued performing until 1964 when he suffered a stroke at the age of 84; he died the following year. His son, Charles Tannen (1915-1980), who looked like an identical but younger version of Julius Tannen, was a very busy character actor in his own right, with film credits dating from the mid-'30s to the early '60s, before he joined CBS as an executive.

Trivia: Dignified British-born stage actor Edmund Elton appeared in the original Broadway production of Rex Beach's The Spoilers back in 1908. Moonlighting in movies between stage work, Elton also played Capulet in the Metro version of Romeo and Juliet (1916), but his main screen career came in the 1930s and '40s when he turned up in such diverse fare as Stella Dallas (1937), Abe Lincoln in Illinois (1940, as Rutledge), and even Gene Autry's Back in the Saddle (1941). Elton's final Broadway appearance came in 1931, when he supported Helen MacKellar in the short-lived Bloody Laughter. He retired in 1941 and passed away a decade later.

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

Trivia: Walter Soderling never evinced an interest in drama while attending the University of Chicago, Northwestern, or Harvard. After graduation, however, Soderling plunged into the theater world with a vengeance, chalking up credits with Chicago's Dearborn and Hopkins stock companies before making his turn-of-the-century Broadway debut. He came to films late in life -- to be exact, he was 63 -- but made up for lost time by working steadily in Hollywood until his death in 1948. Playing characters with names like Old Muck, Abner Thriffle, and Grumpy Andrews, the balding, pickle-pussed Walter Soderling was one of filmdom's foremost grouches.

Trivia: Vaudeville and stage performer Pat O'Malley was a mere lad of seventeen (or thereabouts) when he inaugurated his film career at the Edison company in 1907. A dependable "collar-ad" leading man possessed of an athlete's physique, O'Malley rose to stardom at the Kalem Studios during the teens. From 1918 to 1927, O'Malley hopscotched around Hollywood, appearing at Universal, First National, Vitagraph and Paramount; he starred in war films (Heart of Humanity [1918]), westerns (The Virginian [1922]) and adaptations of bestsellers (Brothers Under the Skin [1922]). His talkie debut in 1929's Alibi would seem to have heralded a thriving sound career, but O'Malley had aged rather suddenly, and could no longer pass as a romantic lead. He worked in some 400 films in bits and supporting roles, frequently showing up in "reunion" films in the company of his fellow silent screen veterans (Hollywood Boulevard [1936], and A Little Bit of Heaven [1941]). O'Malley remained "on call" into the early '60s for such TV shows as The Twilight Zone and such films as The Days of Wine and Roses (1962). Pat O'Malley's film credits are often confused with those of Irish comedian/dialectian J. Pat O'Malley (1901-1985) and Australian performer John P. O'Malley (1916-1959).

Trivia: Handsome American silent-screen comic Harry Depp starred for producer Al Christie in two-reel situation comedies such as Girl in the Box (1918) and 'Twas Henry's Fault (1919), both opposite pretty Elinor Field. He later showed a talent for female impersonation in several Universal comedies of the 1920s and continued to play bit parts through the late 1940s. In the talkie era, however, Depp was better known as an artists' representative.

Trivia: American silent-film actress Julia Faye made her film bow in The Lamb (1915), which also represented the first film appearance of Douglas Fairbanks Sr. Though she photographed beautifully, Faye's acting skills were limited. It's possible she would have quickly faded from the scene without the sponsorship of producer/director Cecil B. DeMille. Faye appeared in sizeable roles in most of DeMille's extravaganzas of the '20s; her assignments ranged from the supporting part of an Aztec handmaiden in The Woman God Forgot (1918) to the wife of Pharoah in The Ten Commandments (1923). Offscreen, Faye became DeMille's mistress. The actress continued to work in DeMille's films into the sound era, at least until the personal relationship dissolved. By the '40s, Faye was washed up in films and hard up financially. DeMille responded generously by putting Faye on his permanent payroll, casting her in minor roles in his films of the '40s and '50s, and seeing to it that she was regularly hired for bit parts at the director's home studio of Paramount. Julia Faye's final appearance was in 1958's The Buccaneer, which also happened to be the last film ever produced by Cecil B. DeMille (it was directed by DeMille's son-in-law, Anthony Quinn).

Trivia: American actress Jean Acker acquired more notoriety for being the estranged wife of Rudolph Valentino than she did as a leading actress. According to Tinseltown legend, she married him in 1919 while he was still an unknown. She left him on their wedding night and the marriage was apparently never consummated. Still Valentino was rumored to have begged for Acker to return. She never did and in 1921 filed for a legal separation. In 1924, Acker had the gall to use the name Mrs. Rudolph Valentino as a screen credit.

Trivia: Slick-haired utility actor Brooks Benedict held down several odd jobs in Hollywood before turning to acting in the early 1920s. Benedict's first role of note was "The Campus Cad" in Harold Lloyd's The Freshman (1925), one of several supporting assignments for producer/star Lloyd. In 1926, he shared a memorable scene on a bus with another legendary comedian, Harry Langdon, in The Strong Man. Except for such sizeable early-talkie roles as George Mason in 1932's Girl Crazy, Brooks Benedict was largely confined to bits and extra work until his retirement in the mid-1950s.

Trivia: From 1930 to 1934, American actress Ruth Warren was a contractee at Fox Studios. A slight woman with wide eyes and pursed lips, Warren essayed sizeable character roles in such Fox films as Lightnin' (1930), Six Cylinder Love (1931), and Zoo in Budapest (1933). She played bit roles from 1935 until her retirement in 1958. Laurel and Hardy buffs will remember Ruth Warren as the gossip-dispensing Mrs. Addlequist in Our Relations (1936).