Trivia: The son and grandson of actors, Tyrone Power made his stage debut at age seven, appearing with his father in a stage production at San Gabriel Mission. After turning professional, Power supported himself between engagements working as a theater usher and other such odd jobs. Though in films as a bit actor since 1932, Power was not regarded as having star potential until appearing in Katherine Cornell's theatrical company in 1935. Signed by 20th Century Fox in 1936, Power was cast in a supporting role in the Simone Simon vehicle Girl's Dormitory; reaction from preview audiences to Fox's new contractee was so enthusiastic that Darryl F. Zanuck ordered that Power's part be expanded for the final release version. As Fox's biggest male star, Power was cast in practically every major production turned out by the studio from 1936 through 1940; though his acting skills were secondary to his drop-dead good looks, Power was a much better actor than he was given credit for at the time. He also handled his celebrity like an old pro; he was well liked by his co-stars and crew, and from all reports was an able and respected leader of men while serving as a Marine Corps officer during World War II. After the war, Power despaired at the thought of returning to pretty-boy roles, endeavoring to toughen his screen image with unsympathetic portrayals in such films as Nightmare Alley (1947) and Witness for the Prosecution. Though Power's popularity waned in the 1950s, he remained in demand for both stage and screen assignments. Like his father before him, Tyrone Power died "in harness," succumbing to a heart attack on the set of Solomon and Sheba (1958).

Trivia: A former accountant for the Gulf Oil Company, Dana Andrews made his stage debut with the prestigious Pasadena Playhouse in 1935. Signed to a joint film contract by Sam Goldwyn and 20th Century Fox in 1940, Andrews bided his time in supporting roles until the wartime shortage of leading men promoted him to stardom. His matter-of-fact, dead pan acting style was perfectly suited to such roles as the innocent lynching victim in The Ox-Bow Incident (1943) and laconic city detective Mark McPherson in Laura (1944). For reasons unknown, Andrews often found himself cast as aviators: he was the downed bomber pilot in The Purple Heart (1944), the ex-flyboy who has trouble adjusting to civilian life in The Best Years of Our Lives (1946), and the foredoomed airliner skipper in Zero Hour (1957), The Crowded Sky (1960), and Airport 1975 (1974). His limited acting range proved a drawback in the 1950s, and by the next decade he was largely confined to character roles, albeit good ones. From 1963 to 1965, Andrews was president of the Screen Actors Guild, where among other things he bemoaned Hollywood's obsession with nudity and sordidness (little suspecting that the worst was yet to come!). An ongoing drinking problem seriously curtailed his capability to perform, and on a couple of occasions nearly cost him his life on the highway; in 1972, he went public with his alcoholism in a series of well-distributed public service announcements, designed to encourage other chronic drinkers to seek professional help. In addition to his film work, Andrews also starred or co-starred in several TV series (Bright Promise, American Girls, and Falcon Crest) and essayed such TV-movie roles as General George C. Marshall in Ike (1979). Dana Andrews made his final screen appearance in Peter Bogdanovich's Saint Jack.

Trivia: Raised in Bronxville, N.Y., the granddaughter of renowned architect Frank Lloyd Wright, Anne Baxter took up acting at the age of 11 with Maria Ouspenskaya, debuting on Broadway two years later (in Seen but Not Heard); she continued working on Broadway until her screen debut at age 17 in Twenty-Mule Team (1940), a minor Western featuring Wallace Beery and Marjorie Rambeau. Charming if not beautiful, she tended to play shy and innocent types and gave a few outstanding performances, such as that with Bette Davis in All About Eve (1950); she and Davis were both nominated for the Best Actress Oscar, but it went to Judy Holliday. Her "breakthrough" film was Orson Welles's The Magnificent Ambersons (1942), leading to many more roles in the next few years. At home in a variety of parts, she won the Best Supporting Actress Oscar in 1946 for her work in The Razor's Edge. Although she has worked with many of Hollywood's most celebrated and accomplished directors (Welles, Hitchcock, Lang, Mankiewicz, Wilder Wellman), after the mid-'50s she tended to get poor roles in mediocre movies. Baxter left Hollywood in 1961 for an isolated cattle station in Australia, an experience she described in her critically-acclaimed book Intermission: A True Story. She made a few more films, but her major work was as Lauren Bacall's replacement as Margo Channing in Applause, the musical version of All About Eve; having played Eve in the film, she now assumed the role earlier held by Davis. Baxter also did some TV work, including a part in the early '80s series Hotel. She was married from 1946-53 to actor John Hodiak, whom she met while filming Sunday Dinner for a Soldier (1944).

Trivia: Character actor James Gleason usually played tough-talking, world-weary guys with a secret heart-of-gold. He is easily recognized for his tendency to talk out of the side of his mouth. Gleason's parents were actors, and after serving in the Spanish-American War, Gleason joined their stock company in Oakland, California. His career was interrupted by service in World War I, following which he began to appear on Broadway. He debuted onscreen in 1922, but didn't begin to appear regularly in films until 1928. Meanwhile, during the '20s he also wrote a number of plays and musicals, several of which were later made into films. In the early sound era, Gleason collaborated on numerous scripts as a screenwriter or dialogue specialist; he also directed one film, Hot Tip (1935). As an actor, he appeared in character roles in over 150 films, playing a wide range of hard-boiled (and often semi-comic) urban characters, including detectives, reporters, marine sergeants, gamblers, fight managers, and heroes' pals. In a series of films in the '30s, he had a recurring lead role as slow-witted police inspector Oscar Piper. James Gleason was married to actress Lucille Webster Gleason; their son was actor Russell Gleason.

Trivia: The daughter of a Liverpool newspaper editor, British actress Dame May Whitty first stepped on a London stage in 1882. Shortly afterward she was engaged by the St. James Theatre, serving mostly in an understudy capacity. From there, Whitty went into a travelling stock company, finally attaining leading roles. She had been one of the leading lights of the British stage for nearly 25 years when she appeared in her first film, Enoch Arden, in 1914; caring little for the experience, she made only a smattering of silent films thereafter. In 1918, the 53-year-old May Whitty was made a Dame Commander of the British Empire in recognition of her above-and-beyond activities performing before the troops in World War I. After a string of 1930s Broadway successes, Whitty went to Hollywood for the same reasons that many of her British contemporaries had previously done so -- the work was easy and the money, fabulous. In keeping with the regality of her name, Whitty was usually cast in high-born roles, sometimes imperious, often warmhearted. In her first talking picture Night Must Fall (1937), she is the foolhardy invalid who falls for the charms of homicidal Robert Montgomery, and as consequence winds up literally losing her head. In Hitchcock's The Lady Vanishes (1938) she plays the title role, enduring a great deal of physical exertion while never losing her poise and dignity. Whitty was also capable of playing working-class types, such as the dowdy phony psychic in The Thirteenth Chair (1937). She was twice nominated for the Oscar, first for Night Must Fall in 1937, then for Mrs. Miniver in 1942. Despite her advanced age, Whitty became extremely active on the Hollywood social circuit in the 1940s--at least for the benefit of the newsreel photographers. Whitty died at the age of 82, shortly after completing her scenes for Columbia's The Sign of the Ram (1948). She was the wife of London producer Ben Webster, and the mother of actress/playwright Margaret Webster, who wrote a 1969 biography of Whitty, The Same Only Different.

Trivia: One of the most prolific actors in television history -- with starring roles in 11 different television series under his belt -- Harry Morgan is most closely identified with his portrayal of Colonel Sherman Potter on M*A*S*H (1975-83). But his credits go back to the 1930s, embracing theater and film as well as the small screen. Born Harry Bratsberg in Detroit, Michigan, in 1915, he made his Broadway debut with the Group Theatre in 1937 as Pepper White in the original production of Golden Boy, alongside Luther Adler, Phoebe Brand, Howard Da Silva, Lee J. Cobb, Morris Carnovsky, Frances Farmer, Elia Kazan, John Garfield, Martin Ritt, and Roman Bohnen. His subsequence stage appearances between 1939 and 1941 comprised a string of failures -- most notably Clifford Odets' Night Music, directed by Harold Clurman; and Robert Ardrey's Thunder Rock, directed by Elia Kazan -- before he turned to film work. Changing his name to Henry Morgan, he appeared in small roles in The Shores of Tripoli, The Loves of Edgar Allen Poe, and Orchestra Wives, all from 1942. Over the next two years, he essayed supporting roles in everything from war movies to Westerns, where he showed an ability to dominate the screen with his voice and his eyes. Speaking softly, Morgan could quietly command a scene, even working alongside Henry Fonda in the most important of those early pictures, The Ox-Bow Incident (1943). Over the years following World War II, Morgan played ever-larger roles marked by their deceptive intensity. And even when he couldn't use his voice in a role, such as that of the mute and sinister Bill Womack in The Big Clock (1948), he was still able to make his presence felt in every one of his scenes with his eyes and his body movements. He was in a lot of important pictures during this period, including major studio productions such as All My Sons (1948), Down to the Sea in Ships (1949), and Madame Bovary (1949). He also appeared in independent films, most notably The Well (1951) and High Noon (1952). One of the more important of those roles was his portrayal of a professional killer in Appointment With Danger (1951), in which he worked alongside fellow actor Jack Webb for the first time. Morgan also passed through the stock company of director Anthony Mann, working in a brace of notable outdoor pictures across the 1950s. It was during the mid-1950s, as he began making regular appearances on television, that he was obliged to change his professional name to Harry Morgan (and, sometimes, Henry "Harry" Morgan), owing to confusion with another performer named Henry Morgan, who had already established himself on the small screen and done some movie acting as well. And it was at this time that Morgan, now billed as Harry Morgan, got his first successful television series, December Bride, which ran for five seasons and yielded a spin-off, Pete and Gladys. Morgan continued to appear in movies, increasingly in wry, comedic roles, most notably Support Your Local Sheriff (1969), but it was the small screen where his activity was concentrated throughout the 1960s.In 1966, Jack Webb, who had become an actor, director, and producer over the previous 15 years, decided to revive the series Dragnet and brought Morgan aboard to play the partner of Webb's Sgt. Joe Friday. As Officer Bill Gannon, Morgan provided a wonderful foil for the deadpan, no-nonsense Friday, emphasizing the natural flair for comic eccentricity that Morgan had shown across the previous 25 years. The series ran for four seasons, and Morgan reprised the role in the 1987 Dragnet feature film. He remained a busy actor going into the 1970s, when true stardom beckoned unexpectedly. In 1974, word got out that McLean Stevenson was planning on leaving the successful series M*A*S*H, and the producers were in the market for a replacement in the role of the military hospital's commanding officer. Morgan did a one-shot appearance as a comically deranged commanding general and earned the spot as Stevenson's replacement. Morgan worked periodically in the two decades following the series' cancellation in 1983, before retiring after 1999. He died in 2011 at age 96.

Trivia: The son of vaudeville monologist Julius Tannen, Charles Tannen launched his own film career in 1936. For the rest of his movie "life," Tannen was most closely associated with 20th Century Fox, playing minor roles in films both large (John Ford's The Grapes of Wrath) and not so large (Laurel and Hardy's Great Guns). Rarely receiving screen credit, Tannen continued playing utility roles well into the 1960s, showing up in such Fox productions as The Fly (1958) and Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea (1961). Charles Tannen's older brother, William, was also an active film performer during this period.

Trivia: The embodiment of corporate dignity, British actor Frank Conroy nonetheless gave the impression of being a long-trusted executive who was about to abscond with the company funds. During his Broadway career, Conroy frequently achieved above-the-title billing; he never quite managed this in Hollywood, but neither was he ever without work. Conroy made his first film, Royal Family of Broadway, in 1930; uncharacteristically, he plays the ardent suitor of the leading lady (Ina Claire), and very nearly wins the lady before she decides that her stage career comes first. Conroy's respectable veneer allowed him to play many a "hidden killer" in movie mysteries like Charlie Chan in Egypt (1935). He left films periodically for more varied assignments on stage; in 1939, he originated the role of dying millionaire Horace Giddens in Lillian Hellmans The Little Foxes. Returning to Hollywood in the 1940s, it was back to authoritative villainy, notably his role in The Ox-Bow Incident as a martinet ex-military officer who rigidly supervises a lynching, then kills himself when he realizes he's executed three innocent men. More benign roles came Conroy's way in All My Sons (1948), in which he plays an industrialist serving a prison sentence while the guilty man (Edward G. Robinson) walks free; and in Day the Earth Stood Still (1951), wherein Conroy has a lengthy unbilled role as the American diplomat who listens to the demands of outer-space visitor Michael Rennie. Frank Conroy remained a top character player until his retirement in 1960, usually honored with "guest star" billing on the many TV anthologies of the era.

Trivia: Born into a circus family, Florence Lake and her younger brother Arthur Lake (later the star of the Blondie films) were performing on-stage before they knew how to read or write. Florence Lake began playing juvenile roles in films as early as 1916, occasionally appearing with Arthur in the Fox Kiddies series. She made her talkie debut in 1929, at first receiving sizeable supporting roles in such features as The Rogue Song (1930). By 1932, however, she was firmly established in two-reel comedies, appearing as the birdbrained, garrulous wife of Edgar Kennedy in a series of RKO Radio shorts which lasted until 1948. During this period she also essayed innumerable uncredited bits in features, usually playing a woebegone wallflower or motor-mouthed "best friend." In the early '50s, she could occasionally be seen in villainous roles on such TV series as The Lone Ranger. Active until the 1970s, Florence Lake made an unforgettable appearance as the octogenarian blind date of newly divorced Lou Grant (Edward Asner) on a 1973 episode of The Mary Tyler Moore Show.

Trivia: Actor George Holmes appeared in many films between 1942 and the mid '80s.

Trivia: Courtly character actor Minor Watson made his stage debut in Brooklyn in 1911. After 11 years of stock experience, Watson made his Broadway bow in Why Men Leave Home. By the end of the 1920s he was a major stage star, appearing in vehicles specially written for him. Recalling his entree into films in 1931, Watson was fond of saying, "I'm a stage actor by heart and by profession. I was a movie star by necessity and a desire to eat." Though never a true "movie star" per se, he remained gainfully employed into the 1950s in choice character roles. Often called upon to play show-biz impresarios, he essayed such roles as E.F. Albee in Yankee Doodle Dandy (1942) and John Ringling North in Trapeze (1956). One of Minor Watson's largest and most well-rounded screen assignments was the part of cagey Brooklyn Dodgers manager Branch Rickey in 1950's The Jackie Robinson Story.

Trivia: Described by film historian William K. Everson as "that supercilious martyr" (he was of course referring to her on-screen personality), Canadian character actress Kathleen Howard usually comported herself before the cameras in a most operatic fashion. And who with better right? Howard was a Metropolitan opera star from 1916 through 1928, turning to film acting only after her voice broke. She was also an accomplished writer, serving on the executive staff of Harper's Bazaar. She made her first movie appearance, appropriately cast as an Italian grande dame, in Death Takes a Holiday (1934). Generations of W.C. Fields fans have doted upon Howard's full-blooded portrayals of Fields' virago wife in It's a Gift (1934) and The Man on the Flying Trapeze (1935). Toning down her screen mannerisms a bit, Kathleen Howard spent her last decade in films in such supporting roles as the melancholy schoolmistress in Deanna Durbin's First Love (1939) and the wry lady judge in One Night in the Tropics (1940).

Trivia: The son of a Massachusetts lieutenant governor, handsome David Bacon had entered show business with the University Players of West Falmouth, MA, a group that at one time or another also numbered Henry Fonda and James Stewart. He did the obligatory rounds of off-Broadway theater before landing a contract with millionaire turned movie mogul Howard Hughes, who brought him to Hollywood to test for the role of Billy the Kid in The Outlaw. Perhaps too clean-cut to play the notorious outlaw (a part that eventually would go the equally unsuited Jack Buetel), Bacon instead portrayed All-American boys in typical wartime fare, most notably Someone to Remember (1943). He married Austrian émigré chanteuse Greta Keller (who later would perform "Married" in the 1972 screen version of Cabaret) and was hired by Republic Pictures to play one of the young agents in the adventure serial The Masked Marvel. Two weeks after the serial wrapped, Bacon was dead, stabbed in the back while driving with an unidentified young man near Venice, CA. The vicious crime, which came to be known as the "Masked Marvel Murder Case," was never solved but rumors of a homosexual liaison gone wrong persisted.

Trivia: Actor Stanley Andrews moved from the stage to the movies in the mid 1930s, where at first he was typed in steadfast, authoritative roles. The tall, mustachioed Adrews became familiar to regular moviegoers in a string of performances as ship's captains, doctors, executives, military officials and construction supervisors. By the early 1950s, Andrews had broadened his range to include grizzled old western prospectors and ageing sheriffs. This led to his most lasting contribution to the entertainment world: the role of the Old Ranger on the long-running syndicated TV series Death Valley Days. Beginning in 1952, Andrews introduced each DVD episode, doing double duty as commercial pitchman for 20 Mule Team Borax; he also became a goodwill ambassador for the program and its sponsor, showing up at county fairs, supermarket openings and charity telethons. Stanley Andrews continued to portray the Old Ranger until 1963, when the US Borax company decided to alter its corporate image with a younger spokesperson -- a 51-year-old "sprout" named Ronald Reagan.

Trivia: Wizened character actor Paul E. Burns tended to play mousey professional men in contemporary films and unshaven layabouts in period pictures. Bob Hope fans will recall Burns' con brio portrayal of boozy desert rat Ebeneezer Hawkins in Hope's Son of Paleface (1952), perhaps his best screen role. The general run of Burns' screen assignments can be summed up by two roles at both ends of his career spectrum: he played "Loafer" in D.W. Griffith's Abraham Lincoln (1930) and "Bum in Park" in Barefoot in the Park (1967).

Trivia: A former concert violinist from Austria, Gene Rizzi played assorted thugs and henchmen in Hollywood films 1940-1943, notably the young gunslinger challenging Billy the Kid (Jack Buetel) in The Outlaw (1943). Rizzi served in China with the 369th Signal Corps during World War II and did not act professionally again.

Trivia: A handsome, white-haired supporting actor from England, in Hollywood from 1932, Frank Dawson usually played ministers and what was often termed the "gentleman's gentleman." At his most proper and deferential, Dawson was Barbara Stanwyck's butler in Secret Bride (1935) and later cared for the needs of Genevieve Tobin in Broadway Hostess (1935), as well as those of Cary Grant in Suzy (1936), George Sanders in Four Men and a Prayer (1938), Halliwell Hobbes in Waterloo Bridge (1940), and Dame May Whitty in Crash Dive (1943).

Trivia: Stage actor Edward McWade entered films as a screenwriter in 1913. From 1920 until his death, the wizened, wispy-haired McWade showed up in dozens of utility roles, playing professors, doctors, justices of the peace and ministers. In 1936, he essayed the title role in the Perry Mason mystery The Case of the Stuttering Bishop. His last screen assignment was Mr. Gibbs, one of the few "lonely old gentlemen" who isn't slipped a poisoned glass of elderberry wine in Arsenic and Old Lace (1944). Edward McWade was married to actress Margaret McWade, famed as one of the "pixillated" sisters in Mr. Deeds Goes to Town (1936).

Trivia: The living image of the man on the Monopoly cards, Thurston Hall began his six-decade acting career on the New England stock-company circuit. Forming his own troupe, Hall toured America, Africa and New Zealand. On Broadway, he was starred in such venerable productions as Ben-Hur and Mrs. Wiggs of the Cabbage Patch. In films from 1915, Hall appeared in dozens of silents, notably the 1917 Theda Bara version of Cleopatra, in which he played Mark Antony. After 15 years on Broadway, Hall returned to films in 1935, spending the next 20 years portraying many a fatuous businessman, pompous politician, dyspeptic judge or crooked "ward heeler." From 1953 through 1955, Hall was seen as the choleric bank president Mr. Schuyler on the TV sitcom Topper. Towards the end of his life, a thinner, goateed Thurston Hall appeared in several TV commercials as the Kentucky-colonel spokesman for a leading chicken pot pie manufacturer.

Trivia: A former New York model, Trudy Marshall came to Hollywood in 1942 when signed to a 20th Century-Fox contract. Few of her roles at Fox were of much consequence; among the actress' more pleasant memories from this period was her ingenue stint in the Laurel and Hardy comedy The Dancing Masters (1943). After her Fox years, Marshall was best represented as shadowy "other women," notably in the 1947 Red Skelton vehicle The Fuller Brush Man. Trudy Marshall is the mother of actress Deborah Raffin.

Trivia: South African-born actress Cecil Weston came to America with her husband, cinematographer/producer Fred Balshofer, in the early teens. Weston's best-known talkie-film role was Mrs. Thatcher in the 1931 version of Huckleberry Finn. She went on to play scores of minor roles as mothers, dowagers, and nurses. After a few more character parts at 20th Century Fox, Cecil Weston retired in 1962.

Trivia: A circus, vaudeville, and Broadway comedian, actor Charles Grapewin was an unlikely prospect for screen stardom. In fact, he had already retired as an entertainer prior to the advent of sound in films, and before he'd ever even considered appearing in movies. Born in Xenia, OH, in 1869 (although some say 1875), he ran away from home to join a circus at the age of ten, and, by his teens, was a roller-skating acrobat who graduated to be a high-wire performer and trapeze artist. Grapewin made a living at these high-risk activities for a few years, but was later drawn to the footlights, and eventually joined a regional stock company (although he found himself back on the trapeze in the 1880s). He moved between the theater and the circus until the end of the decade, when he landed a role in a New York production of the play Little Puck. He never returned to the circus, although he did lend his skills to vaudeville for a time, writing plays along the way and touring with one of his own productions, The Awakening of Mr. Pipp, for a dozen years. In 1919, Grapewin gave up performing to join General Motors; having invested his money wisely, he retired. One day in late 1929, however, he and his wife Anna awakened to discover that their net worth -- once two million dollars -- had dropped to about 200. He subsequently wrote four books that proved successful enough to earn him some income. At around the same time, the arrival of sound in movies was also creating a demand for actors who could read lines well, and, as he had retired to California, Grapewin decided to give Hollywood a try. He ended up a busy actor throughout the 1930s in increasingly visible roles, including key supporting parts in films such as The Grapes of Wrath. But it was in 1941 that he achieved stardom when he was cast as Lester Jeeter in John Ford's Tobacco Road. That movie made Grapewin into a major screen actor, but, given his advanced age, he never took full advantage of it. He declined to sign a long-term contract, preferring to use his energy at his time of life picking and choosing his roles. He always seemed to be offered the best character parts, and remained busy right to the end of the '40s. Ironically, Tobacco Road dropped out of distribution in later decades, and Grapewin's became best known for playing a part that was probably one of the shortest of his movie career: Dorothy's Uncle Henry in The Wizard of Oz, in which he displayed some of his comedic skills to great advantage in the historic film's opening segment.

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: Appropriately moon-faced and often sporting a rather timid-looking Fu Manchu mustache, Chester Gan played hundreds of rickshaw boys, cooks, café owners, and the ubiquitous Chinese laundry proprietors. Although of Korean descent, Gan more often than not portrayed enemy Japanese during World War II, Hollywood of course counting on the fact that few non-Asians could tell the difference.