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

Trivia: American actor James Dunn's early career embraced bit parts in silent pictures, vaudeville, and Broadway before he made his talking picture bow in Bad Girl (1931). For the next several years, Dunn appeared in sentimental "lovable scamp" leading roles; he also helped introduce Shirley Temple to feature films by co-starring with the diminutive dynamo in Stand Up and Cheer, Baby Take a Bow, and Bright Eyes, all released in 1934. When Fox merged with 20th Century Pictures in 1935, the type of domestic comedy-dramas and free-wheeling musicals in which Dunn specialized came to an end; by the end of the 1930s Dunn's appearance were confined to "B" pictures and poverty-row quickies. Dunn was given a comeback chance as Peggy Ann Garner's irresponsible alcoholic father in the 1945 drama A Tree Grows in Brooklyn. The actor won an Academy Award for his performance. Eight years passed before Dunn would be seen in films again, though he found occasional solace in TV work, including his tenure as the star of a 1955 sitcom, It's a Great Life. Dunn's final movie role, filmed two years before his death, was a minor part as an agent in the all-star "trash classic" The Oscar (1966).

Trivia: Trevor was born Claire Wemlinger. After attending Columbia and the American Academy of Dramatic Arts, she began her acting career in the late '20s in stock. By 1932 she was starring on Broadway; that same year she began appearing in Brooklyn-filmed Vitaphone shorts. She debuted onscreen in feature films in 1933 and soon became typecast as a gang moll, a saloon girl, or some other kind of hard-boiled, but warm-hearted floozy. Primarily in B movies, her performances in major productions showed her to be a skilled screen actress; nominated for Oscars three times, she won the Best Supporting Actress Oscar for her work in Key Largo (1948). In the '50s she began to appear often on TV; in 1956 she won an Emmy for her performance in Dodsworth opposite Fredric March.

Trivia: Brawny, round-faced character actor Alan Dinehart liked to bill himself as Hollywood's most versatile villain. He was certainly justified to think of himself in such hyperbolic terms: from 1931 to 1944, Dinehart appeared in dozens of bad guy (or, at the very least, "suspicious guy") roles, most often in the "B" product of 20th Century-Fox. He was most often seen as a shifty businessman or respectability-seeking racketeer, and showed up with equal frequency as either the much-hated victim or "surprise" killer in murder mysteries. Alan Dinehart's namesake son and grandson were also actors; both were especially active as voiceover artists with the Hanna-Barbera cartoon operation of the 1970s and 1980s.

Trivia: Lightweight American leading man Ray Walker moved from stage work to films in 1933. While he would occasionally earn a lead in a big-studio film -- he was Alice Faye's vis-à-vis in Music Is Magic (1935) -- Walker could usually be found heading the cast of programmers filmed at Hollywood's B-picture outfits. One of Walker's best screen roles was in Monogram's The Mouthpiece (1935), in which he was ideally cast as a swell-headed radio personality, brought down to earth by the loss of both his sponsor and his girlfriend (Jacqueline Wells). By the early '40s, Walker had eased into minor and supporting roles, even accepting the occasional short subject (he shows up as Vera Vague's ex-husband in the 1946 two-reeler Reno-Vated). Still, Ray Walker's previous reputation assured him a comfortable living; for his single scene as luggage shop proprietor Joe in Frank Capra's It's a Wonderful Life, Walker received his standard asking price of 1,000 dollars per day.

Trivia: The best way to physically describe actor Ralf Harolde is to note his striking resemblance to Zeppo Marx. However, Harolde projected a far more sinister image than Marx, beginning with his film debut as the "gentlemanly" villain in Bebe Daniels' Dixiana (1930). Often cast as a low-life crook, he played an escaped convict who hid behind his wife and children in Picture Snatcher (1933) and the erstwhile kidnapper of little Shirley Temple in Baby Take a Bow (1934). He also showed up in such minor roles as a Tribunal prosecutor in Tale of Two Cities (1935) and a tuxedoed society gangster in Laurel and Hardy's Our Relations (1936). Harolde's film career came to a screeching halt when, in 1937, he was involved in a traffic accident that resulted in the death of fellow actor Monroe Owsley. When he re-emerged on screen in 1941, it was clear that the tragedy had taken its toll: Harolde's facial features had taken on a gaunt, haunted look, and his hair had turned completely white. Remaining active until the mid-1950s, Ralf Harolde still had a few good screen characterizations left in him, most notably the sleazy sanitarium doctor in Murder My Sweet (1944).

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: Prosperous-looking American actor Richard Tucker went from the stage to the Edison Company in 1913, where he played romantic leads before the cameras. Even in his youth, the tall, regal Tucker exuded the air of corporate success, and was best suited to roles as bankers and stockbrokers. After World War I service, Tucker resumed his film career as a character man. In talkies, the newly mustachioed, grey-haired Tucker was seen in innumerable small authoritative roles. His two best-known assignments from this period were in the 1936 serial Flash Gordon, in which he played Flash's scientist father; and in the 1932 Laurel and Hardy feature Pack Up Your Troubles, wherein Tucker was the bank president who turned out to be Mr. Smith, the grandfather of the orphan girl Stan and Ollie were protecting. Actor Richard Tucker's hundreds of film credits are often erronously attributed to latter-day Metropolitan Opera star Richard Tucker, who was born several years after the earlier Tucker had already established himself.

Trivia: A Graduate of New York's Sargent School of Acting, brunette Olive Tell appeared in stock in such plays as The Intruder and Under Pressure prior to making her screen bow with the Mutual company in 1917. She became a star later that year in The Unforseen, a hoary old melodrama in which she eloped with a bounder who later commits suicide. Stardom proved fleeting, however, and by 1920 she was playing the "Other Woman." A busy bit player in the sound era as well, Tell is probably best remembered for playing Princess Johanna, Marlene Dietrich's mother in Joseph Von Sternberg's The Scarlet Empress (1934). Her younger sister, Alma, was also in films.

Trivia: Portly, penguin-shaped actor John Alexander was brought to Hollywood in 1941 to recreate the stage role of Teddy Brewster in Frank Capra's film version of Arsenic and Old Lace. Alexander entered the comedy-movie hall of fame in this role of a demented, middle-aged fellow who imagined himself to be Teddy Roosevelt, and who frequently disrupted his household by yelling "CHAAAARGE!" and rushing up "San Juan Hill" (aka the staircase). Alexander would repeat the Teddy Brewster role in later stage and TV revivals of Arsenic for the rest of his career; he also occasionally played the real Teddy Roosevelt in such films as Fancy Pants (1950). Outside of his Roosevelt impersonations, Alexander was memorable as one of Bette Davis' earnest suitor in Mrs. Skeffington (1947), and as minstrel impresario Lew Dockstader in The Jolson Story (1946). Before his retirement in the mid-1960s, John Alexander appeared in several Broadway plays and musicals, and was an occasional guest star on such Manhattan-filmed TV series as Car 54, Where Are You?

Trivia: Stately stage leading man Howard C. Hickman entered films through the auspices of producer Thomas H. Ince. Hickman starred as Count Ferdinand, the Messianic protagonist of Ince's Civilization (1916). He co-starred with his actress wife Bessie Barriscale in several productions before returning to the theatre. In the talkie era, he accepted innumerable featured and bit roles as doctors, judges, ministers, senators, and executives. Generations of filmgoers will remember Howard Hickman for his brief appearance as John Wilkes, father of Ashley Wilkes and father-in-law of Melanie Hamilton, in Gone with the Wind (1939).

Trivia: American character actor Paul McVey was a Fox contract player from 1934 to 1939. McVey had a substantial role in the 1934 Will Rogers vehicle Judge Priest, then settled into bit parts as detectives, stage manager and express agents. One of his meatier roles of the 1940s was "The Excellency Zanoff" in the 1941 Republic serial King of the Royal Mounted (1941). Before his retirement in 1953, Paul McVey appeared in a supporting part in the first-ever 3-D feature film, Bwana Devil (1952).

Trivia: Stocky, officious American actor Guy Usher made a spectacular film debut in The Penguin Pool Murder (1932), playing the drowned victim of the titular crime. Many of Usher's subsequent roles required a great deal of fluster and bluster: As land-developer Harry Payne Bosterly in It's a Gift (1934), he dismissed W.C. Fields by bellowing, "You're drunk!," whereupon Fields put him in his place by responding, "And you're crazy. But tomorrow I'll be sober, and you'll always be crazy." Usher also appeared as D.A. Hamilton Burger in the 1934 Perry Mason adaptation The Case of the Black Cat. In the late '30s-early '40s, Guy Usher was a mainstay at Monogram Pictures, again specializing in murder victims.