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Errol Flynn was born to adventuress Marrelle Young and respected biologist Theodore Flynn. Young Flynn was a rambunctious child who was always sure to find trouble, and he managed to get himself ejected from every school in which he was enrolled. In his late teens he set out to find gold, but instead found only a series of short-lived odd jobs.

Information is sketchy, however the positions of police constable, sanitation engineer, treasure hunter, sheep castrator, ship-master for hire, fisherman, and soldier seem to be among his more reputable career choices. The necessity to stay at least one jump ahead of the law--and jealous husbands--forced Flynn to flee to England, where he took up acting, into which he had previous stumbled when he was asked to play (ironically) Fletcher Christian in a film called In the Wake of the Bounty (1933). Flynn's natural athletic talent and good looks attracted the attention of Warner Brothers and soon he was off to America. His luck held when he replaced Robert Donat in the title role of Captain Blood (1935). He quickly rocketed to stardom as the undisputed king of adventure films, a title inherited from Douglas Fairbanks, though which remains his to this day. Onscreen, he was the freedom loving rebel, a man of action who fought against injustice and won the hearts of damsels in the process. His off-screen passions; drinking, fighting, boating and sex, made his film escapades seem pale. His love life brought him considerable fame, three statutory rape trials, and a lasting memorial in the expression "In like Flynn". Serious roles eluded him, and as his lifestyle eroded his youthful good looks, his career declined. Trouble with lawsuits and the IRS plagued him at this time, eroding what little money he had saved. A few good roles did come his way late in life, however, these were usually that of aging alcoholic, almost mirror images of Flynn. Despite any perceived similarity, he was making a name as a serious actor before his death.

George Reeves was born George Keefer Brewer in Woolstock, Iowa, to Helen Roberta (Lescher) and Donald C. Brewer. He was of German, English, and Scottish descent. Following his parents' divorce and his mother's remarriage to Frank J. Bessolo, Reeves was raised in Pasadena, California, and educated at Pasadena Junior College.

He was a skilled amateur boxer and musician. He interned as an actor at the famed Pasadena Playhouse, performed in dozens of plays, and was discovered there by casting director Maxwell Arnow. He was cast as Stuart Tarleton in Gone with the Wind (1939). While shooting the film, he appeared in another play at the Pasadena Playhouse and was seen there and signed by Warner Bros. studios. Over the next ten years he was contracted to Warners, Fox, and Paramount.

He achieved near-stardom as the male lead in So Proudly We Hail! (1943), but war service interrupted his career, and after he returned it never regained the same level. While in the Army Air Corps he appeared on Broadway in "Winged Victory," then made training films.

Career difficulties after the war led him to move to New York for live television. It was television where he achieved the kind of fame that had eluded him in films, as he was cast in the lead of the now-iconic Adventures of Superman (1952). He got a few film roles in the early 1950s, but he was mostly typecast as Superman, and other acting jobs soon dried up. His career had slid to the point where he was considering an attempt at exhibition wrestling when he committed suicide by shooting himself.

Controversy still surrounds his death, due mainly to the fact of his longtime affair with Toni Mannix, the wife of MGM executive E.J. Mannix. Many of Reeves' friends and colleagues didn't believe that he had committed suicide but that his death was related to the Mannix situation. However, no credible evidence has ever been produced to support that contention.

Lou Costello was born Louis Francis Cristillo in Paterson, New Jersey, to Helen (Rege) and Sebastiano Cristillo. His father was from Calabria, Italy, and his mother was an American of Italian, French, and Irish ancestry. Raised in Paterson, Costello dropped out of high school and headed west to break into the movies. He got a job as a carpenter at MGM and Warners. He went from there to stuntman and then to vaudeville as a comic. In 1931, while working in Brooklyn, his straight man became ill and the theater cashier, Bud Abbott, filled in for him. The two formed their famous comedy team and, through the 1930s, they worked burlesque, minstrel shows, vaudeville and movie houses. In 1938 they got national exposure through the Kate Smith Hour radio show, and signed with Universal Pictures the next year. They debuted in One Night in the Tropics (1940). Their scene-stealing performances in that film landed them their own picture the next year, Buck Privates (1941), with The Andrews Sisters. It was a runaway hit, grossing what was then a company record $10 million on a $180,000 budget. In 1942 they topped a poll of Hollywood stars. They had their own radio show (ABC, 1941-46, NBC, 1946-49) and TV show (The Abbott and Costello Show (1952)). After the war their movies shifted formula to one in which they met various monsters or found themselves in exotic locations. The team split up in 1957, with both winding up completely out of money after troubles with the Internal Revenue Service. After that Lou appeared in a few television shows and the movie The 30 Foot Bride of Candy Rock (1959), released a few months after he died.

There are very few character actors from the 1930s, '40s or '50s who rose to the rank of stardom. Only a rare man or woman reached the level of renown and admiration, and had enough audience appeal, to be the first name in a cast's billing, a name that got marquee posting. Charles Coburn comes to mind, but there aren't many others. However, one who made it was Edmund Gwenn.

Gwenn was born Edmund Kellaway in Wandsworth, London, on September 26, 1877. He was the oldest boy in the family, which at that time meant he was the only one who really mattered. His father was a British civil servant, and he groomed Edmund to take a position of power in the Empire. However, early on, the boy had a mind of his own. For a while, his inclination was to go to sea, but that ended when one of his forebear's in the Queen's Navy was court-martialed for exceeding his "wine bill". In addition to that, Edmund had poor eyesight and perhaps most importantly, he was his mother's darling, and she kept having visions of shipwrecks and desert island strandings. As for the civil service, to the boy it seemed like a "continent of unexplored boredom".

He attended St. Olaf's College and would attend King's College in London as well. Surprisingly, he excelled at rugby and amateur boxing. Meanwhile, he developed a strong inclination to the stage, partly because of his admiration for the great English actor, Henry Irving. A major roadblock to that ambition, however, was his father, who, at that time, was stationed in Ireland. When Edmund broke the news to his father that he had chosen acting as a career, there followed "a scene without parallel in Victorian melodrama." His father called the theatre "that sink of iniquity." He predicted that, if Edmund went into theatre, he would end up in the gutter, and then literally "showed him the door." Years later his father would admit he had been wrong, but that didn't help the young man during an all-night crossing from Dublin to England during which he had time to reflect. He was penniless. His experience consisted of a few performances in amateur productions, and he knew that if he failed, there was no going back home.

However, in 1895, at the age of eighteen, he made his first appearance on the English stage with a group of amateurs just turned professional, playing two roles, "Dodo Twinkle" and "Damper", in "Rogue and Vagabond". For a long time afterward, he refused to go on stage without a false beard or some other disguise, fearing someone would recognize him and tell his father (it's a bit ironic, by the way, that Edmund's younger brother Arthur would also become an actor using the name of Arthur Chesney). During the next few years, roles were hard to come by but, by 1899, he made his first appearance on the West End in London in "A Jealous Mistake". This was followed by ten years in the hinterlands acting with stock and touring companies, gradually working his way up from small parts to juicier roles. While with Edmund Tearle's Repertory Company, which toured the provinces, he played a different role each night. It was excellent training, in that he acted in everything from William Shakespeare to old melodrama.

About this time, he married Minnie Terry, niece of the more famous actress Ellen Terry, a marriage that evidently was short-lived. Most sources list it as beginning and ending in 1901, perhaps only for a matter of days or even hours. From that point, Gwenn would remain a bachelor for the rest of his life. He seems to have preferred not going into any details about the marriage and divorce, and Minnie Terry, who outlived Gwenn, apparently never mentioned what happened, at least not publicly. That same year, however, he went to Australia and acted there for three years, not returning to London until 1904. There, he took a small part in "In the Hospital", which led to his receiving a postcard from George Bernard Shaw, offering him a leading role as "Straker", the Cockney chauffeur, in "Man and Superman". Gwenn accepted (by this time he was Edmund Gwenn) and the play was a success. Shaw became a sort of professional godfather for him. He appeared in "John Bull's Island", "Major Barbara", "You Never Can Tell", "Captain Brassbound's Conversion" and "The Devil's Disciple", all by Shaw. He spent three years in Shaw's company, years which he called "the happiest I've ever had in the theatre".

From 1908 until 1915, he performed in new plays by noted playwrights of the time, including John Masefield's "The Campden Wonder", 'John Galsworthy''s "Justice" and "The Skin Game", J.M. Barrie's "What Every Woman Knows" and "The Twelve Pound Look", as well as Henrik Ibsen's "The Wild Duck" and Harley Granville-Barker's "The Voysey Inheritance". By this time, World War I had started and Gwenn, despite his poor eyesight, was conscripted into the British Army. Most of his time during "The Great War" was spent drawing supplies up to the front lines, while under fire. He was so successful at this task that, after a year as a private, he received a steady stream of promotions until eventually becoming a captain.

After the War, he returned to the stage and, in 1921, made his first appearance in the US in "A Voice from the Minaret" and "Fedora". He would return to America in 1928 to replace his friend, Dennis Eadie, who had died while in rehearsal for "The House of Arrows", but for most of this time, he was in England doing more stage roles and two dozen British films.

His first appearance on screen was in a British short, The Real Thing at Last (1916) in 1916, while he was still in the army. His next film roles were in Shaw's How He Lied to Her Husband (1931) and J.B. Priestley's The Good Companions (1933). He was also in Unmarried (1920) in 1920 and a silent version of "The Skin Game" (The Skin Game (1921)) as "Hornblower", a role he would reprise in 1931 for a talking version (The Skin Game (1931)) directed by Alfred Hitchcock. From then on, Gwenn was to work steadily until the end of his life. He appeared in English stage plays and films, eventually doing more and more on Broadway and in Hollywood. For example, he played the amiable counterfeiter in "Laburnum Grove" in 1933 (later to become the film Laburnum Grove (1936) in which he would star) and then with the entire British company brought it to New York. He was also a huge success in "The Wookey" in 1942, playing a Cockney tugboat captain. That same year, he appeared as "Chebutykin" in Anton Chekhov's "The Three Sisters", with Katharine Cornell, Ruth Gordon and Judith Anderson. In such illustrious company, Gwenn was hailed by critics as "magnificent" and "superlatively good".

In 1935, RKO summoned him to Hollywood to portray Katharine Hepburn's father in Sylvia Scarlett (1935). From then on, he was much in demand, appearing in Anthony Adverse (1936), All American Chump (1936), Parnell (1937), and A Yank at Oxford (1938). In 1940, he was the delightful "Mr. Bennet" in Pride and Prejudice (1940), then made a 180-degree turn by playing a folksy assassin in Alfred Hitchcock's Foreign Correspondent (1940). The year 1941 brought Cheers for Miss Bishop (1941), One Night in Lisbon (1941), The Devil and Miss Jones (1941) and Scotland Yard (1941). Then came Charley's Aunt (1941), in which he romanced Jack Benny, masquerading as a woman. Other important films included A Yank at Eton (1942), The Meanest Man in the World (1943), The Keys of the Kingdom (1944) and Between Two Worlds (1944).

In 1945, he played villain "Albert Richard Kingby" in Dangerous Partners (1945). There is a peculiar scene in this film, which makes one wonder what director Edward L. Cahn was thinking. James Craig and Signe Hasso, the hero and heroine, are being held by the villainous Gwenn in a room, when Gwenn comes in to interrogate them. In the midst of this, the 33-year-old, 6'2" Craig punches the 68-year-old, 5'5" Gwenn in the belly and then forces the doubled-over Gwenn to release them. Admittedly, Craig and Hasso must escape, and Gwenn's character is pretty evil, but knocking the wind out of the old man makes Craig seem like a bully and far less sympathetic.

After "Dangerous Partners", Gwenn was in Bewitched (1945), She Went to the Races (1945), Of Human Bondage (1946), Undercurrent (1946), Life with Father (1947), Green Dolphin Street (1947) and Apartment for Peggy (1948). In Thunder in the Valley (1947), he played one of his most unlikable characters, a father who beats his son, smashes his violin and shoots his dog.

Then in 1947, he struck it rich. Twentieth Century-Fox was planning Miracle on 34th Street (1947). It had offered the role of "Kris Kringle" to Gwenn's cousin, the well-known character actor Cecil Kellaway, but he had turned it down with the observation that "Americans don't like whimsy". Fox then offered it to Gwenn, who pounced on it. His performance was to earn him an Academy Award as Best Supporting Actor (at age 71) and, because it is rerun every Christmas season, he would become for many their all-time favorite screen Santa. Accepting the award, Gwenn said, "Now I know there is a Santa Claus". He beat out some stiff competition: Charles Bickford (The Farmer's Daughter (1947)), Thomas Gomez (Ride the Pink Horse (1947)), Robert Ryan (Crossfire (1947)) and Richard Widmark (Kiss of Death (1947)). As soon as he got the part, Gwenn went to work turning himself into Santa Claus. Though rotund, Gwenn didn't feel he was rotund enough to look like the jolly old elf most people expected after having read Clement Moore's "The Night before Christmas", in which Santa "had a broad face and a little round belly / That shook when he laughed like a bowlful of jelly." He could of course wear padding, but he resisted that as too artificial. So he put on almost 30 pounds for the role, a fair amount for a man of his short stature, and added nearly five inches to his waistline. The problem was that after the film was finished, Gwenn found it hard to lose the extra weight. "I've been stocky all my adult life," he said, "but now I must accept the fact that I'm fat." As was his nature, he didn't get upset, and instead was able to laugh about it. Six years later, when playing an elderly professor in The Student Prince (1954), he had a scene in which he entered the Prince's chamber, struggling with the buttons of a ceremonial uniform. The line he was given was, "I'm too old to wear a uniform," but Gwenn suggested a change which stayed in the finished film, "I'm too old and fat to wear a uniform."

Gwenn had lost his hair early on, and had no more concern about it than he did about his portliness. In a fair number of films, such as Pride and Prejudice (1940), he appears bald, but he also played many roles with a toupee if he felt that worked better for the character. He would select a hairpiece that helped achieve the look he was after for the role. As regards the rest of his appearance, Gwenn is commonly listed as 5'6" tall, which may have been accurate when he was a younger man, but by the time he was a Hollywood regular he appears to be at least two inches shorter. Plagued by weak eyesight since his youth, Gwenn wore a pince-nez for a while, and then glasses, off-screen and sometimes on. Though he enjoyed fine clothes, he does not seem to have been in the least bit vain about any physical shortcomings he may have had. He looked a bit like a benign clergyman, perhaps of the Anglican faith, an image enhanced by his soft, almost soothing voice. He once said he was "always short and stocky, and not a particularly handsome thing. I could never play romantic leads." After "Miracle on 34th Street," however, Gwenn was a star and constantly in demand, especially when the role called for a kindly eccentric.

Gwenn remained a British subject all his life. When he first moved to Hollywood, he lived at the Beverly Wilshire Hotel in Beverly Hills. His home in London had been reduced to rubble during the bombings by the Luftwaffe in World War II. Only the fireplace survived. What Gwenn regretted most was the loss of the memorabilia he had collected of the famous actor Henry Irving. Eventually Gwenn bought a house at 617 North Bedford Drive in Beverly Hills, which he was to share with his secretary and "confidential man", Ernest C. Bach, and later with former Olympic athlete Rodney Soher.

The year 1950 brought a pair of interesting films. In Louisa (1950) he and Charles Coburn were romantic rivals for the hand of Spring Byington. In one scene Gwenn socks Coburn in the jaw, though Coburn later bests him in arm wrestling. Gwenn wins Byington's hand in the end. He was also delightful in Mister 880 (1950) as a kindly counterfeiter. Gwenn received his second Oscar nomination for his performance, though this time he lost out to George Sanders in All About Eve (1950) He did, however, win the Golden Globe Award.

In 1952 he appeared in Sally and Saint Anne (1952) as Grandpa Patrick Ryan, affecting an Irish brogue for the role. He played football coach Pop Doyle, teamed up with a chimpanzee, in Bonzo Goes to College (1952). "The Student Prince" followed in 1954, as did the science-fiction classic Them! (1954). This film raises an interesting observation. The year before, Cecil Kellaway had appeared in another sci-fi classic, The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms (1953). Watch the two films together and you'll see that the two cousins are playing essentially the same role, that of an elderly scientist with a lovely daughter who is able to provide the hero, and the audience, with some scholarly background on the dangers they face. The two actors could easily have switched roles. "Them!" is noteworthy, too, in that it was a particularly physically painful part for Gwenn. By this time he was 77 and suffering from advanced arthritis. Several scenes in the movie were filmed in the desert, where the temperature often reached 110 degrees. The costumer had outfitted him in a wool suit for some of the early scenes. Joan Weldon, who played his daughter, has noted that Gwenn was in great discomfort and almost certainly could not have continued without the help of his valet, Ernest.

The next year Gwenn was in It's a Dog's Life (1955) and The Trouble with Harry (1955). His film work has some interesting patterns. "Dog's Life" was at least the third time Gwenn made a film centered on a dog. He had already co-starred with Pal as Lassie in Lassie Come Home (1943) and Challenge to Lassie (1949). "Harry" was Gwenn's fourth picture directed by Alfred Hitchcock, the others being "The Skin Game", Strauss' Great Waltz (1934) and "Foreign Correspondent". Gwenn's last feature film was The Rocket from Calabuch (1956), shot in Spain and released in 1958, when he was 81. As for TV, his most memorable role may have been as a snowman that comes to life in a Christmas night telecast on The Ford Television Theatre (1952) from a story by Nathaniel Hawthorne, "Heart of Gold".

Gwenn's final days were spent at the Motion Picture Home in Woodland Hills, California. Having endured terrible arthritis for many years, he had suffered a stroke, and then contracted pneumonia, from which he died at age 81 on September 6, 1959. His body was cremated, and his ashes were originally stored in a private vault at the Chapel of the Pines Crematory in Los Angeles. In March 2023, Gwenn's misplaced urn was found in the vault by Hollywood Graveyard creator Arthur Dark and researcher Jessical Wahl. Dark and Wahl created a GoFundMe campaign to fund moving Gwenn's urn to a publicly accessible location and, on December 3, 2023, Gwenn's urn was reinurned in the Cathedral Mausoleum at Hollywood Forever Cemetery.

Gwenn had appointed Rodney Soher as the executor of his will, in which he had left Minnie Terry one-third of his estate, his sister Elsie Kellaway a third, and Ernest Bach a third, in addition to his clothes, shoes, linens, ties and luggage. However, for some reason, while he was spending his last days at the Motion Picture Home, Gwenn signed a codicil to his will, in which he said he had given Bach the lump sum of $5000, and that was all he was to receive. After Gwenn's death, Bach challenged the codicil, claiming that Gwenn was not of sound mind while in the Home and that some unnamed person--possibly referring to Soher--had unduly influenced Gwenn to change his will. The outcome is not known. There is a story that has been around for years that shortly before he died a visitor observed, "It must be hard [to die]", to which Gwenn replied, "Dying is easy. Comedy is hard". The story and the wording vary somewhat from teller to teller. Gwenn may indeed have said it, but he may have been repeating someone else. The quotation has also been ascribed to several earlier wits, including his mentor George Bernard Shaw and the famous actor Edward Keane. Gwenn's star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame can be found at 1751 Vine Street.

Carl Switzer was an American child actor, singer, dog breeder, and hunting guide from Paris, Illinois. He became famous for portraying Alfalfa in the film series "Our Gang" during the 1930s. His character was one of the most memorable characters ever portrayed in the series. Later in his career, Switzer's acting roles were limited to bit parts and appearances in B-movies. He supported himself through other lines of work. Switzer was fatally shot by an acquaintance over a money dispute. The circumstances of his death are disputed, due to contradictory accounts by the shooter and by an eyewitness.

In 1927, Switzer was born in Paris, Illinois. A small city located about 165 miles (266 kilometers) south of Chicago and 90 miles (140 kilometers) west of Indianapolis. Switzer was the youngest of four children born to George Frederick "Fred" Switzer (1905-1960) and his wife Gladys Carrie Shanks (1904-1997). Switzer's older brother was the child actor Harold Switzer (1925-1967).

In the early 1930s, the Switzer brothers were locally famous in their hometown for their music performances. In 1934, the Switzer family traveled to California. They visited the Hal Roach Studios (1914-1961) while sightseeing. The Switzer brothers gave an impromptu performance in the the Our Gang Café, the studio's open-to-the-public cafeteria. They were both offered contracts by producer Hal Roach (1892 -1992), who wanted them to appear in the film series "Our Gang" (1922-1944). The long-running series featured a large group of child actors.

Switzer made his film debut in the "Our Gang" short film "Beginner's Luck" (1935), where his character performs as the "Arizona Nightingale". By the end of the year, Alfalfa (Switzer) had become one of the series' main characters. His brother Harold was relegated to performing background characters in the series. In 1937, Switzer surpassed George McFarland in popularity. At the time, McFarland was the nominal star of the "Our Gang" series. Switzer had a difficult relationship with his co-stars, as he enjoyed playing cruel jokes on them.

Switzer's performances in "Our Gang" ended in 1940. His last appearance as Alfalfa was in the short film "Kiddie Kure" (1940), where the gang members attempted to convince a hypochondriac that his pills were unnecessary. Switzer was 12-years-old at the time of the film's production, making him the oldest member of the main cast. The production team considered him too old to keep playing a child.

Switzer initially found more work in films of the time. He played a young boy scout in the comedy film "I Love You Again" (1940). He next appeared in "Barnyard Follies" (1940), a B-Movie depicting efforts to raise funds for a rural orphanage. Switzer had a leading role in the comedy film "Reg'lar Fellers" (1941), a feature-film adaptation of the long-running comic strip "Reg'lar Fellers" (1917-1949) by Gene Byrnes.

Switzer was reduced to a supporting role in "Henry and Dizzy" (1942), his first appearance in the-then popular film series about the Aldrich Family (1939-1944). The films were adaptations of a long-running radio sitcom of the same name, which lasted from 1939 to 1953. Switzer played a younger member of the Twine family in "There's One Born Every Minute" (1942), a comedy about false advertising. The Twine family profits from marketing their puddings as containing the fantastic Vitamin Z, with the press failing to realize that this vitamin does not exist. A local scientist is persuaded to act as a shill for their product.

Switzer had a minor role in the musical comedy "Johnny Doughboy" (1942), which featured a plot about fictionalized versions of "has-been" child stars. Several other real-life former child stars had roles in this film, including Baby Sandy, Bobby Breen, and George McFarland. The film received an Academy Award nomination for Best Musical Score.

Switzer had the uncredited role of Auggie in "The Human Comedy" (1943), a comedy-drama film about life in the home front of World War II. His character was a friend of Ulysses Macauley (played by Jackie Jenkins). Over the following few years, Switzer would frequently appear in uncredited roles, in films such as "Going My Way" (1944) and "Courage of Lassie" (1946).

Switzer had his first leading role in years when cast as Sammy Levine in "Gas House Kids" (1946). The film depicted the life of unruly youths from the Gas House District of New York City. It was partly inspired by the forced relocation of the District's residents in the 1940s, to make way for an urban renewal project. About 600 buildings were razed, and 3,100 families were forced to relocate. The real-life tragic conditions had inspired the popular culture of the time. The film was successful enough to have its own sequels, "Gas House Kids Go West" (1947) and The "Gas House Kids in Hollywood" (1947). Switzer had leading roles in both sequels, his last leading roles in any film.

During the 1950s, Switzer had a few significant supporting roles in films. He played a co-pilot in the aviation adventure "Island in the Sky" (1953), a pilot in the disaster film "The High and the Mighty" (1954), and a Native American ranch hand in the Western film "Track of the Cat" (1954). He had a minor part in the comedy film "Dig That Uranium" (1956), where the Bowery Boys seek an uranium mine in the Wild West. Switzer also had several appearances in television, serving as a recurring guest star in "The Roy Rogers Show".

Switzer's film career was not particularly lucrative during his adult years. He supplemented his income by breeding and training hunting dogs, and by serving as a guide to hunting expeditions. His most notable clients were Roy Rogers, Dale Evans, James Stewart, and Henry Fonda. In 1954, Switzer married his girlfriend Diantha "Dian" Collingwood (1930-2004). She was the heiress of the company Collingwood Grain, which specialized in the construction of grain elevators. The marriage was a rather hasty decision, as the couple had only met 3 months prior to the wedding.

In 1956, Switzer was broke and his wife Dian was pregnant. Switzer's mother-in-law offered them the administration of a farm near Pretty Prairie, Kansas, and Switzer took the offer. His only, son Justin Lance Collingwood Switzer, was born later that year. Switzer had a reunion with his former co-star George McFarland in 1957. McFarland recalled that Switzer seemed restless, and he got the impression that Switzer was bored with his life as a farmer. He figured that this life "wasn't going to last" for Switzer.

Switzer received a divorce in 1957, and lost custody of his son. In January 1958, Switzer was mysteriously shot in the upper right arm while sitting in his parked car, in front of a bar in Studio City, Los Angeles. The bullet smashed through the car's window. The shooter was never found, and no motive was ever established.

In December 1958, Switzer was arrested by the authorities. He had been cutting trees in the Sequoia National Forest, with the intention to sell them as Christmas trees. This practice was illegal. He was sentenced to pay a fine of 225 dollars, and was also sentenced to one year's probation. This left him in financial trouble for the last month of his life.

In 1959, Switzer was hired to train a hunting dog by Moses Samuel "Bud" Stiltz. Switzer and Stiltz had been business associates for years, having met each other at the Corriganville Movie Ranch. During the dog's training, the dog ran off to chase after a bear. Stiltz demanded that Switzer had to either relocate his dog or pay him the equivalent of the dog's value. Switzer placed a reward for the relocation of the dog and the safe return of the animal. When the dog was found, Switzer rewarded the rescuer with 35 dollars in cash, and the worth of 15 dollars in alcoholic beverages. The reward money pushed Switzer further into poverty.

In late January, 1959, Switzer had an emotional conversation about his financial troubles with photographer Jack Piott. The two figured that Stiltz had to reimburse Switzer for the finder's fee. The two of them headed together to Stiltz's home in Mission Hills, where they got into an argument with him. After being struck on the left side of his head, Stiltz proceeded to threaten the two men with a loaded a .38-caliber revolver.

What happened next is uncertain. Stiltz testified that Switzer pulled a knife on him, and that he had shot him in self-defense. Tom Corrigan (Stiltz's adolescent stepson) later testified that Switzer had decided to end the fight and to leave empty-handed, but Stiltz shot him anyway. In any case, the bullet damaged one of Switzer's arteries and caused massive internal bleeding. Switzer had already died by the time his body was transferred to a hospital. He was 31-years-old at the time of his death.

Switzer was buried in the Hollywood Forever Cemetery, located in the Hollywood district of Los Angeles. His gravestone depicts the image of a hunting dog, to commemorate that he trained hunting dogs for a living. His death initially attracted little attention from the press, but the controversial circumstances of his death have become the subject of true-crime articles and documentaries. Switzer is still remembered as one of the better child actors of his era, and as a reliable actor in supporting roles.

Delightful character actress who held her own against such acting heavyweights as Charles Laughton, Boris Karloff, Tyrone Power, Barbara Stanwyck, and Sydney Greenstreet. Often cast by studio heads as comic relief thanks to her thick Irish accent and rubber-faced expressions, most notably in Universal's horror classics, Bride of Frankenstein (1935) and The Invisible Man (1933). Her final role was as the devoted housekeeper in Billy Wilder's Witness for the Prosecution (1957), a role she originated on stage. Her hilarious testimony during the trial is one of the film's highlights.

His parents Henry C. DeMille and Beatrice DeMille were playwrights. His father died when he was 12, and his mother supported the family by opening a school for girls and a theatrical company. Too young to enlist in the Spanish-American War, Cecil followed his brother William C. de Mille to the New York Academy of Dramatic Arts, making his stage debut in 1900. For twelve years he was actor/manager of his mother's theatrical company. In 1913, Jesse L. Lasky, Samuel Goldwyn and DeMille formed the Lasky Film Company (which years later evolved into Paramount Pictures), and the next year went west to California and produced the successful six reeler, The Squaw Man (1914), of historical significance as the first feature length film produced in Hollywood. He championed the switch from short to feature-length films and is often credited with making Hollywood the motion picture capital of the world. Rather than putting his money into known stars, he emphasized production values. He also developed stars, notably Gloria Swanson. He produced and directed 70 films and was involved in many more. Many of his films were romantic sexual comedies (he is supposed to have believed that Americans were curious only about money and sex). His best-known were biblical/religious epics: Joan the Woman (1916), The Ten Commandments (1923), The King of Kings (1927), The Sign of the Cross (1932), The Crusades (1935), Samson and Delilah (1949), and The Ten Commandments (1956). From 1936 to 1945 he hosted and directed the hour-long "Lux Radio Theatre", which brought the actors and stories of many movies to the airwaves and further established him as the symbol of Hollywood. He appeared as himself in the classic Sunset Boulevard (1950) with his former star Gloria Swanson as the fictitious disturbed former silent film actress Norma Desmond. His niece Agnes de Mille was the acclaimed choreographer of both the original Broadway production and film version of Oklahoma! (1955).

Kay Kendall was born on 21 May 1927 in Withernsea, Yorkshire, England, UK. She was an actress, known for Les Girls (1957), The Reluctant Debutante (1958) and Simon and Laura (1955). She was married to Rex Harrison. She died on 6 September 1959 in London, England, UK.

Rambunctious British leading man (contrary to popular belief, he was of Scottish ancestry, not Irish) and later character actor primarily in American films, Victor McLaglen was a vital presence in a number of great motion pictures, especially those of director John Ford. McLaglen (pronounced Muh-clog-len, not Mack-loff-len) was the son of the Right Reverend Andrew McLaglen, a Protestant clergyman who was at one time Bishop of Claremont in South Africa. The young McLaglen, eldest of eight brothers, attempted to serve in the Boer War by joining the Life Guards, though his father secured his release. The adventuresome young man traveled to Canada where he did farm labor and then directed his pugnacious nature into professional prizefighting. He toured in circuses, vaudeville shows, and Wild West shows, often as a fighter challenging all comers. His tours took him to the US, Australia (where he joined in the gold rush) and South Africa. In 1909 he was the first fighter to box newly-crowned heavyweight champion Jack Johnson, whom he fought in a six-round exhibition match in Vancouver (as an exhibition fight, it had no decision). When the First World War broke out, McLaglen joined the Irish Fusiliers and soldiered in the Middle East, eventually serving as Provost Marshal (head of Military Police) for the city of Baghdad. After the war he attempted to resume a boxing career, but was given a substantial acting role in The Call of the Road (1920) and was well received. He became a popular leading man in British silent films, and within a few years was offered the lead in an American film, The Beloved Brute (1924). He quickly became a most popular star of dramas as well as action films, playing tough or suave with equal ease. With the coming of sound, his ability to be persuasively debonair diminished by reason of his native speech patterns, but his popularity increased, particularly when cast by Ford as the tragic Gypo Nolan in The Informer (1935), for which McLaglen won the Best Actor Oscar. He continued to play heroes, villains and simple-minded thugs into the 1940s, when Ford gave his career a new impetus with a number of lovably roguish Irish parts in such films as She Wore a Yellow Ribbon (1949) and The Quiet Man (1952). The latter film won McLaglen another Oscar nomination, the first time a Best Actor winner had been nominated subsequently in the Supporting category. McLaglen formed a semi-militaristic riding and polo club, the Light Horse Brigade, and a similarly arrayed precision motorcycle team, the Victor McLaglen Motorcycle Corps, both of which led to conclusions that he had fascist sympathies and was forming his own private army. McLaglen denied espousing the far right-wing sentiments that were often attributed to him. He continued to act in films into his 70s and died, from congestive heart failure, not long after appearing in a film directed by his son, Andrew V. McLaglen.

Ethel Barrymore was the second of three children seemingly destined for the actor's life of their parents Maurice and Georgiana. Maurice Barrymore had emigrated from England in 1875, and after graduating from Cambridge in law had shocked his family by becoming an actor. Georgiana Drew of Philadelphia acted in her parents' stage company. The two met and married as members of Augustin Daly's company in New York. They both acted with some of the great stage personalities of the mid Victorian theater of America and England. The Barrymore children were born and grew up in Philadelphia. Though older brother Lionel Barrymore began acting early with his mother's relatives in the Drew theater company, Ethel, after a traditional girl's schooling, planned on becoming a concert pianist.

The lure of the stage was perhaps congenital, however. She made her debut as a stage actress during the New York City season of 1894. Her youthful stage presence was at once a pleasure, a strikingly pretty and winsome face and large dark eyes that seemed to look out from her very soul. Her natural talent and distinctive voice only reinforced the physical presence of someone destined to command any role set before her. After the opportunity to appear on the London stage with English great Henry Irving in "The Bells" (1897) and later in "Peter the Great" (1898), she returned to New York to star in the Clyde Fitch play "Captain Jinks of the Horse Marines" (1901) (produced by her friend and benefactor Charles Frohman), which brought her initial American acclaim. Lead roles, such as Nora in Henrik Ibsen's "A Doll's House" (1905) and starring in "Alice By the Fire" (also 1905), "Mid-Channel" (1910) and "Trelawney of the Wells" (1911) proved her popularity as a warm and charismatic star of American stage. In the meantime she married stockbroker Russell Griswold Colt in 1909 and gave birth to three children while continuing her acting career.

Although the stage was her first love, she did heed the call of the silver screen, and though not achieving the matinée idol image that younger brother John Barrymore garnered in silent movies after similar chemistry on stage, she won over audiences from her first film appearance in The Nightingale (1914). However, her early film roles, steady through 1919, took a back seat to continued stage triumphs: "Declassee" (1919), her impassioned Juliet in "Romeo and Juliet" (1922), "The Second Mrs. Tanqueray" (1924) and, especially, "The Constant Wife" (1926).

She harnessed her considerable talents in the role of an activist as well, being a bedrock supporter of the Actors Equity Association and, in fact, had been a prominent figure in the actors strike of 1919. By 1930 she was entering middle age and her movie roles reflected this. Except for Rasputin and the Empress (1932) with her brothers, the roles were elderly mothers and grandmothers, dowager ladies and spinster aunts. Perhaps wisely she put off Hollywood for over a decade, with stage work that included her most endearing role in "The Corn is Green" (a tour that lasted from 1940 to 1942). She finally moved to Southern California in 1940.

Yet the consummate actress glowed still in the films that came steadily in the mid-'40s and through much of the 1950s. As the mother of Cary Grant in the pensive None But the Lonely Heart (1944) she started off her late film career brilliantly by receiving the Oscar for Best Actress in a supporting role, though she was not satisfied with that effort. Her engaging wit and humanity stood out in even supporting roles, such as, the politically savvy mother of Joseph Cotten in The Farmer's Daughter (1947) and, once again with Cotton, as sympathetic art dealer Miss Spinney, with those eyes, in the haunting screen adaptation of Robert Nathan's novel Portrait of Jennie (1948). There was also a mingling of some TV work to round out her last movies in the late 1950s. In 1955 she saw her book "Memories, An Autobiography" see publication. For the enduring legacy she had already begun years before, a theater named for her was dedicated in New York in 1928. When she passed away in 1959, she was interred near her brothers at Calvary Cemetery in East Los Angeles.

Max Baer is arguably best known today for siring Max Baer Jr., the actor who played Jethro Bodine on the classic TV series The Beverly Hillbillies (1962). However, old-timers, followers of the sweet science and viewers of the film Cinderella Man (2005) all know that Max Sr. was boxing's heavyweight champion of the world for all of 364 days, from the time he knocked out Primo Carnera on June 14, 1934, to the day he lost his title to Jimmy Braddock on June 13, 1935. Cinephiles also will remember the colorful Max from his numerous bit roles in films, including Bud Abbott and Lou Costello's Africa Screams (1949) to his near-autobiographical turn in the Budd Schulberg boxing expose The Harder They Fall (1956) starring Humphrey Bogart. Ironically, it was his acting in the latter film that likely led to his misrepresentation in "Cinderella Man" as being something akin to a monster, when actually, according to his family and those who knew him, he was an amiable man. Some fight fans thought that it was his good nature, which they attributed to his clowning, that eventually did him in, as he would not bear down on his opponents in the latter part of his career. Max Jr. says that his father wanted to be an actor, an insight that explains the flashy persona he displayed in and outside the ring as he wisecracked and clowned his way through careers as a boxer and performer in movies and nightclubs. Blessed with what "The Boxing Register: International Boxing Hall of Fame Official Record Book" terms the most powerful right hand in heavyweight history, Baer used that right to gain a fearsome reputation as a California prizefighter before moving to New York and taking on the top ranks of the heavyweight division.

Max Baer was born in Omaha, Nebraska, on February 11, 1909, to a Jewish father, Jacob Baer, and a mother of Scots-Irish descent, Dora (Bales). The family moved first to Colorado and then to California, where he dropped out of school after the eighth grade to work with his father on a cattle ranch. Baer developed tremendous physical strength as a ranch hand, and when he turned to boxing, he trained in a most dedicated fashion, a regimen he did not keep to when he reached the zenith of his craft. In 1929 he turned professional and racked up 22 wins in his first 24 fights, nine via first-round knockouts. He was a very dangerous fighter, and in 1930 he was suspended from the ring in California for a year after the death of one of his opponents, Frankie Campbell (the brother of pro baseball player Dolph Camilli). Campbell had died after being KO'ed by Baer, and criminal charges were filed against him. Though the manslaughter charges ultimately were dropped, Baer had to deal with the psychological burden of having taken another man's life. He quit the ring for several months after Campbell's death, and Max Jr. claims that this is when the Max the Clown (one of his nicknames was "Madcap Maxie") emerged, as a way of dealing with his torment. Plagued by nightmares for many years, he also took up smoking, which was not very wise for a fighter who depended on his wind in the ring. When Baer returned to boxing after the layoff, he was a different fighter, shy to go on the offense against his opponents. He lost four of his next six fights; according to one opponent who had beaten him in that period, Tommy Loughran, Baer was telegraphing his punches with a looping attack. Baer's career was revitalized when former heavyweight champ Jack Dempsey took a financial interest in the boxer and taught him to shorten his punches. The "monster" of the ring was back. Baer knocked out Ernie Schaaf, rendering him unconscious, in the tenth round of their August 31, 1932, fight. When Schaaf died after fighting future heavyweight champ Primo Carnera in a Februry 14, 1933, bout, many attributed his death to the beating he had taken at the hands of Baer.

This chain of events has long been considered part of boxing lore, which Baer helped perpetuate. In the 1956 movie "The Harder They Fall," the fictionalized story of Carnera's rise and fall through the heavyweight ranks, the Max Baer character, who was played by none other than Baer himself, says: "You know I'm the guy who nailed Gus [Ernie Schaaf], murdered him for 15 rounds. Don't know what held him up, but when Gus left the ring that night he was a dead man. All your joker did was tap him. I did all the work and they gave your guy all the glory." The "your guy" being referred to was the fictionalized Carnera (in actuality, it is most unlikely that Baer caused Schaaf's death. Schaaf likely was suffering from a form of meningitis caused by influenza when he fought Carnera six months after the Baer beating). Baer moved to New York to be near Dempsey and the boxing powers-that-be. In 1933 Baer publicly identified himself as a Jew and began wearing a Star of David on his trunks. This was when he was scheduled to meet the German Max Schmeling in the ring, just at the beginning of Adolf Hitler's Third Reich. Baer also wore a Star of David on his trunks during his title defense against Jim "Cinderella Man" Braddock, which was the centerpiece of Howard's film. In the movie, the Star of David is significantly less prominent than the real one Baer wore in the 1935 fight. Boxing in America has always capitalized at the box office on racial and ethnic conflicts, real and imagined, since at least the days of Jack Johnson and "The Great White Hope." Some thought Baer's self-identification as a Jew was opportunistic, as it appealed to the very large contingent of Jewish fight fans in the New York City metropolitan area. Baer's father was a non-practicing Jew, and his parents raised their son a Catholic, which fueled the charges of opportunism. However, writer Jeremy Schaap, whose book "Cinderella Man: James J. Braddock, Max Baer, and the Greatest Upset in Boxing History" served as the basis of Ron Howard's film, believes that Baer's manager, Ancil Hoffman, used Baer's ethnic consciousness to motivate him against Schmeling in the ring. Hitler had already launched his anti-Semitic campaign in Germany, and a Jew against a "Nazi" (though Schmeling would always be reluctant about his manipulation as a showpiece of the Nazi state) made good economic sense at the gate--and if it motivated Baer and his fans, so much the better. As it turned out, Baer beat Schmeling so badly at Yankee Stadium before 60,000 fans that the fight had to be stopped in the tenth round due to the ferocity of Baer's attack and the amount of punishment absorbed by Schmeling, himself a future heavyweight champ. Baer won the lead in the 1933 flick The Prizefighter and the Lady (1933) in which he starred with Myrna Loy and future opponent Primo Carnera, then the world's heavyweight boxing champ.

In a foreshadowing of what was to come in his career (his first title shot and first defense, though it would be Jimmy Braddock who was the underdog then), Baer was cast as an all-American underdog who challenges Carnera -- playing himself -- for the championship (Carnera only agreed to adhere to the script and retain his crown through a draw with Baer in the final reel for an additional fee of $10,000). The thespian Baer garnered good reviews and the film was a success at the box office, though Joseph Goebbels banned it in Germany, as the "Jew" Baer was in the cast. By defeating Schmeling, Baer had earned a title shot against the Italian Carnera, who at 6'6" and 263 pounds was two inches taller than Baer and outweighed him by 53 pounds. As was fictionalized in "The Harder They Fall" a generation later, there was a certain dubious quality about Carnera's career. Many thought that his career had been manipulated by the Mafia, and that he had been unfairly steered into the heavyweight title through a series of unworthy opponents and via outright corruption. As in the film, where the fictionalized Carnera got his comeuppance at the hands of Max Baer, the real Carnera was about to face his own Götterdämmerung in the ring.

At the Madison Square Garden Bowl, 50,000 fans of the fistic arts witnessed a ferocious Baer knock down Carnera (who along with Baer later would unsuccessfully take on the eponymous giant ape in Mighty Joe Young (1949) in a New York nightery) ten to 12 times during the 11-round bout (records differ as to the number of times Carnera went down). During the fight Baer constantly taunted and grimaced at Carnera, who kept his dignity despite Baer's shenanigans, which included playing to the ladies in the crowd and non-stop merciless mugging. After the last knockdown in the 11th, the referee stopped the fight, giving Baer the decision on a technical knockout. Max Baer was now the heavyweight champion of the world. He would hold the title for exactly 364 days. That his first order of business after the title fight was repairing to a nightclub where he served as master-of-ceremonies at a fee of $10,000 did not bode well for the length of his future reign as Heavyweight Champ. Baer's nemesis turned out to be New Jersey longshoreman James "Plain Jim" Braddock, a former top contender who had dropped out of the ranks after an injury. He was soon renamed "Cinderella Man" by Damon Runyon. According to Max Baer Jr., his father didn't prepare for the fight with a boxer many considered a "has been" or a "never will be," whose best days in the ring already were eclipsed. Bradock was a 20:1 underdog before the fight, but he wore the heavyweight championship belt after their match-up at the Madison Square Bowl. Lacking motivation, Baer's disdain for training left him at the losing end of one of the greatest upsets in sports history. Braddock won a unanimous decision after 15 rounds in the ring with Baer, the monster tamed through his own malfeasance. Baer had all the talent and the hardest right in the world, enough to make him a longer-reigning champ than just shy of one year, but he squandered. During his fight with Braddock, Baer clowned around while Braddock built up points. Baer thought he could knock out Braddock at will, but he could not find it in himself to do so. The emergence of the potentially great boxer that lurked inside him essentially was denied by Baer's overt persona, the good-natured clown. How much of this is rooted in his desire not to kill again in the ring is pure speculation. Something seemingly went out of Baer after losing the title. Future heavyweight champ Joe Louis, one of the all-time greats, administered a terrible beating to the former champ during Baer's next fight, in which he was counted out on one knee in the fourth round. Many aficionados of the sweet scene thought that Baer was through, and to keep his dignity, he should retire. Baer did quit the ring for a spell, but came back, knocking out "Two-Ton" Tony Galento, a top-ranked contender.

He retired for good in 1941 after being whipped soundly by a young Lou Nova, departing professional pugilism with a career record of 72 wins (52 KOs) and 12 losses. He was inducted into the International Boxing Hall of Fame in 1995. Max Baer died of a massive heart attack on November 21, 1959, in a Hollywood hotel. He was 50 years old. While he lay dying in his room, the hotel operator asked him if he needed the "house doctor." "No," he replied. "I need a people doctor!" A clown to the end.

Preston Sturges' own life is as unlikely as some of the plots of his best work. He was born into a wealthy family. As a boy he helped out on stage productions for his mother's friend, Isadora Duncan (the scarf that strangled her was made by his mother's company, Maison Desti). He served in the U.S. Army Signal Corps during WWI. Upon his return to Maison Desti, he invented a kissproof lipstick, Red-Red Rouge, in 1920. Shortly after his first marriage, his mother demanded that he return control of the company to her. Kicked out of Maison Desti, he turned to inventing. A tickertape machine, an intaglio photo-etching process, an automobile and an airplane were among his some of his commercially unsuccessful inventions. He began writing stories and, while recovering from an appendectomy in 1929, wrote his first play, "The Guinea Pig". In financial trouble over producing his plays, he moved to Hollywood in 1932 to make money. It wasn't long before he became frustrated by the lack of control he had over his work and wanted to direct the scripts he wrote. Paramount gave him this chance as part of a deal for selling his script for The Great McGinty (1940), at a cheap price. The film's success launched his career as writer/director and he had several hits over the next four years. That success emboldened him to become an independent filmmaker, but that did not last long--he had a string of commercial failures and acquired a reputation as an expensive perfectionist. He moved to France to make what turned out to be his last movie, The French, They Are a Funny Race (1955). He died at the Algonquin Hotel, New York City, in 1959.

James Gleason was born in New York City to William Gleason and Mina Crolius, who were both in the theatre. He was married to Lucile Gleason (born Lucile Webster), and had a son, Russell Gleason. As a young man James fought in the Spanish-American War. After the war he joined the stock company at the Liberty Theater in Oakland, California, which his parents were running. James and his wife then moved to Portland, Oregon, where they played in stock at the Baker Theater. For several years afterward they toured in road shows until James enlisted in the army during World War I. When he returned he appeared on the stage in "The Five Million." He then turned to writing, including "Is Zat So", which he produced for the NY stage. He also wrote and acted in "The Fall Guy" and "The Shannons on Broadway." Next he wrote The Broadway Melody (1929) for MGM. He collaborated, in 1930, on The Swellhead (1930), Dumbbells in Ermine (1930), What a Widow! (1930), Rain or Shine (1930) and His First Command (1929). He and his wife were then contracted to Pathe, Lucille to act, and James (or Jimmie as he was known) as a writer. Probably his most famous acting role was as Max Corkle, the manager of Joe Pendleton who was wrongly plucked from this life into the next, in the hit fantasy Here Comes Mr. Jordan (1941).

American actor who had early success as a sunny juvenile, but whose career declined following World War II, in which he was a highly-decorated hero. A native of Los Angeles, Morris played football at Los Angeles Junior College, then worked as a forest ranger. Returning to school, he studied acting at Los Angeles Junior College and at the acclaimed Pasadena Playhouse. A Warner Bros. talent scout spotted him at the Playhouse and he signed with the studio in 1936. Blond and open-faced, he was a perfect type for boy-next-door parts and within a year had made a success in the title role of Kid Galahad (1937). While filming Flight Angels (1940), Morris became interested in flying and became a pilot. With war in the wind, he joined the Naval Reserve and became a Navy flier in 1942, leaving his film career behind for the duration of the war. Assigned to the carrier Essex in the Pacific, Morris shot down seven Japanese planes and contributed to the sinking of five ships. He was awarded four Distinguished Flying Crosses and two Air Medals. Following the war, Morris returned to films, but his nearly four-year absence had cost him his burgeoning stardom. He continued to topline movies, but the pictures, for the most part, sank in quality. Losing his boyish looks but not demeanor, Morris spent most of the Fifties in low-budget Westerns. A wonderful performance as a weakling in Stanley Kubrick's Paths of Glory (1957) might have given impetus to a new career as a character actor, had Morris lived. However, he suffered a massive heart attack while visiting aboard the aircraft carrier Bon Homme Richard in San Francisco Bay and was pronounced dead after being transported to Oakland Naval Hospital in Oakland, California. He was 45. His last film was not released until two years after his death.

A rare breed this guy. Paul Douglas became an unlikely middle-aged cinema star by simply capitalizing on his big, burly, brash and boorish appeal to the nth degree. The 5'11", 200 lb. actor was a bold, unabashed risk taker. He forsook an extremely successful career as one of the country's top radio/sports announcers to prove his value as an actor. The risk paid off when he found immediate award-winning success on the Broadway comedy stage.

Later, despite being a raw new talent in Tinseltown, he had the audacity to turn down the Hollywood powers-that-be to revive his Broadway success to film because he felt they had "reduced" his role too much. Somehow again, the risk paid off. He defied the odds once again and became an unlikely overnight smash with his very first film(!) Moreover, he went on to prove he was no one trick pony, cementing his stardom in a number of prime vehicles in both broad comedy and melodrama. And, on top of that, the homely actor managed to have many of the top Hollywood dolls falling for his big lug appeal on screen -- Linda Darnell, Judy Holliday, Celeste Holm, Joan Bennett, Jean Peters, Janet Leigh and Ruth Roman among them. It, in fact, would take an early and sudden death to end all this wildly successful risk-taking.

The bombastic, blue-collar persona Douglas exhibited naturally on stage and screen was actually quite a contrast to his own family background. He was born in an upper-class section of Philadelphia to a well-to-do doctor on April 11, 1907, and was christened Paul Douglas Fleischer. An interest in acting sparked while he was a student at West Philadelphia High School. Following graduation, his thoughts turned to college. He went on to take entrance examinations at Yale but never attended the college. Instead Paul made a minor dent as a professional football player with Philly's Frankford Yellow Jackets team.

In 1928, he parlayed his passion for athletics into a highly successful sportscasting and commentating career and grew in respect as one of the country's top sports announcers and master of ceremonies. He started at the CBS radio station WCAU in Philly and relocated to the CBS headquarters in New York in 1934 where Douglas co-hosted its popular swing music program "The Saturday Night Swing Club" from 1936-39. But it wasn't enough. The acting bug bit again. After appearing in a few stock and small theatre plays, he made his Broadway acting debut in November of 1936 as a radio announcer in the comedy satire "Double Dummy" at the John Golden Theatre, but it closed the next month and he returned to radio, eventually landing a cozy niche as an announcer and straight man opposite the likes of Jack Benny (he was Benny's first announcer), Fred Allen and the team of George Burns and Gracie Allen in their respective series. He also found work narrating a host of pre-WWII documentary shorts.

Douglas became a highly recognized personality by this radio success ($2,500/week), but brashly decided to give it all up and accept a paltry weekly salary ($250 per week) when writer Garson Kanin offered him the lead role as chauvinistic moneybags Harry Brock in his Broadway play "Born Yesterday" in 1946. Co-starring Judy Holliday and Gary Merrill, the show was a huge comedy smash and Douglas the toast of New York in a highly unappealing role. He nabbed both the Theatre World and Clarence Derwent acting prizes for his hot-tempered junkman. The relatively inexperienced actor wisely remained with the show through all 1,024 performances before leaving to seek out Hollywood roles. He exploded onto the Hollywood scene with his very first film, the classic Joseph L. Mankiewicz drama A Letter to Three Wives (1949). There was pure electricity in his scenes with the equally earthy scene-stealing Linda Darnell. The new film star was immediately tapped to host the 22nd annual Academy Awards in March 1950.

In a surprise move, Douglas had the nerve to rebuff a Hollywood offer to recreate his Harry Brock role when Born Yesterday (1950) was turned into a film, starring his Broadway co-star Judy Holliday. After reading the film script, he was put off that his part had been minimalized to the point of favoring his leading lady and to meet the demands of the other male superstar in the picture, William Holden. Columbia used their own manic human dynamo, Broderick Crawford, to take over the film role. As brilliant as Crawford was, and as Douglas himself predicted, it was Holliday who received the lion's share of the attention with an Academy Award-winning tour de force.

Douglas instead concentrated on his own star vehicles. His chemistry was so good with Linda Darnell in his first film that the pair was signed to co-star in two more film showcases within a short span of time, Everybody Does It (1949) and The Guy Who Came Back (1951). He also found a way to pay tribute to his former roots in sports starring in two worthy baseball comedy films, It Happens Every Spring (1949), and Angels in the Outfield (1951). His string of hits continued with the cop thriller Panic in the Streets (1950) in which he partnered with Richard Widmark and Fourteen Hours (1951). He gave a sympathetic performance as the naive fisherman husband of adulterous Barbara Stanwyck in Clash by Night (1952); and re-teamed with "Born Yesterday (1950)" co-star Judy Holliday successfully in a different vehicle, the comedy The Solid Gold Cadillac (1956) in which he again plays a gruff, self-made businessman.

In other media, Douglas gave himself the chance to recreate his Harry Brock to video with a Hallmark Hall of Fame episode of Born Yesterday (1956) opposite Mary Martin and Arthur Hill. Douglas also made a return to Broadway with the moderate 1957 hit play, "A Hole in the Head", co-starring David Burns, Lee Grant and Kay Medford and again directed by his playwright/friend Garson Kanin. In between he continued to find work here and there as a radio announcer (for Ed Wynn)) and was the first host of NBC Radio's "Horn & Hardart Children's Hour".

Divorced from non-actors Sussie Welles, Elizabeth Farnesworth and Geraldine Higgins, Douglas's final two marriages were to actresses, with each one producing a child. In early 1942 he married fourth wife/actress Virginia Field. Separated in December 1945, they divorced the following year. He later met actress Jan Sterling and married her on June 22, 1950. This marriage proved happy and lasted until his death.

Douglas's final movie was another in a career of comedy highlights as the fun-loving bucolic in The Mating Game (1959), co-starring with Debbie Reynolds and Tony Randall. In April 1959, Douglas enjoyed a special guest star turn on the highly-popular The Lucy-Desi Comedy Hour (1957), as the dingy redhead's TV morning show boss, in a Connecticut episode entitled Lucy Wants a Career (1959).

Paul had just completed filming The Twilight Zone (1959) episode, The Mighty Casey (1960), in a baseball manager role, specifically written for him by Rod Serling, based on Douglas's memorable Angels in the Outfield (1951) role, when the 52-year-old Douglas collapsed and died of a massive heart attack as he got out of bed on the morning of September 11, 1959. With Serling unable to reshoot parts in which Douglas looked especially drawn and haggard, the entire episode had to be re-filmed (at Serling's own expense) with Jack Warden taking over the lead part. In addition, Billy Wilder had recently cast Douglas as Jack Lemmon's philandering boss Sheldrake in the hit film, The Apartment (1960). The film, which was about set to film, recast Fred MacMurray in the role.

Billie Holiday was a true artist of her day and rose as a social phenomenon in the 1950s. Her soulful, unique singing voice and her ability to boldly turn any material that she confronted into her own music made her a superstar of her time. Today, Holiday is remembered for her masterpieces, creativity and vivacity, as many of Holiday's songs are as well known today as they were decades ago. Holiday's poignant voice is still considered to be one of the greatest jazz voices of all time.

At the age of 18 and after gaining more experience than most adult musicians can claim, Holiday was spotted by John Hammond and cut her first record as part of a studio group led by Benny Goodman, who was then just on the verge of public prominence. In 1935 Holiday's career got a big push when she recorded four sides that went on to become hits, including "What a Little Moonlight Can Do" and "Miss Brown to You." This landed her a recording contract of her own, and then, until 1942, she recorded a number of master tracks that would ultimately become an important building block of early American jazz music.

Holiday recorded about 100 new recordings on another label, Verve, from 1952 to 1959. Her voice became more rugged and vulnerable on these tracks than earlier in her career. During this period, she toured Europe, and made her final studio recordings for the MGM label in March of 1959. Billie Holiday, a musical legend still popular today, died an untimely death at the age of 44. Her emotive voice, innovative techniques and touching songs will forever be remembered and enjoyed

One of the tallest actors ever, he held various odd jobs before his debut on the silver screen. He worked for Spike Jones and his City Slickers, Ardens Dairy (in California,) as a Cowboy for Public Relations and at Knotts Berry Farm, (in California) also as a Cowboy. It was while he was working as a doorman at Grauman's Chinese Theatre in Hollywood that his height was noticed and because of it he was chosen for the role of Gort. He also hosted a children's TV show in the Los Angeles area in the 50s called 'The Gentle Giant'. He was not a very strong man for his size. He was buried at Forest Lawn Memorial Park in Hollywood Hills, California.

Olin Howland had a career in movies which stretched from the 20s, up through the time he passed away, in the late 50s. After a few attempts at films in the silent era, Olin began to appear regularly in the sound pictures of the 1930s. His roles were usually in mysteries and dramas, and he became a western character actor in the 'horse operas' put out by Republic in the 1940s. One of his most memorable roles was also one of his last; he appeared in First Stop (1955), as the owner of a broken down motel in the middle of nowhere, which the Ricardo's and Mertz's are forced to stay at for the night (and which the can't leave because the car's steering wheel was mysteriously *stolen*.

Mario Lanza's life, sadly, has all the markings of an epic Shakespearean tragedy. The story is truly incredible: a wild, incendiary Philadelphia kid who can sing better than Enrico Caruso sets out to become the greatest dramatic opera singer who ever lived, is detoured by MGM honcho Louis B. Mayer and vixen Hollywood, is remade into a fiercely handsome box-office champ with a 50-inch chest, his own national radio show, 1951 TIME Magazine cover idol, and king of the pop record world. He was besieged on cross-country concert tours and appearances years before Elvis Presley and The Beatles, was a true "superstar" before the word was invented and the first singer to ever earn gold records, with million sellers in both classical and popular categories.

His MGM masterpiece, The Great Caruso (1951), was the top-grossing film in the world in 1951. The Lanza voice was so incredible, so powerful, so golden, so dazzling that an awestruck Arturo Toscanini called it, simply and correctly, the "voice of the century". Among the multitudes of stunned admirers worldwide included the likes of Serge Koussevitzky, Frank Sinatra, Presley, Tito Schipa, Renata Tebaldi, Sophie Tucker, Kirsten, Albanese and countless others. Lanza's voice has been called the "Northern Lights in a Throat' and passed through a heart of peerless sensitivity and passion . . . and vulnerability.

Fired by MGM during production of The Student Prince (1954) in 1952 after director Curtis Bernhardt assailed him over the "excess" passion of one song in his stunning recording of the soundtrack, his career began a downturn that would never be reversed. Lanza never fully recovered from the emotional catastrophe of "The Student Prince" fiasco and losing his MGM contract, and declined slowly in a pattern of near-alcoholism, food-binging, huge weight gains and losses and professional tempestuousness. Fed up with not being able to get film roles--other than Serenade (1956) for Warners in 1956--and a savage press, Lanza quit Hollywood and moved his family to his ancestral Italy to rebuild his life and career. He made two mediocre European-produced films, enjoyed generally successful concert performances and died, apparently of a heart attack, on October 7, 1959, only seven years after "The Student Prince" nightmare at the terribly young age of 38, leaving behind four children and his shattered wife, who died five months later of a drug overdose after returning to Hollywood.

Lanza's seven films and scores of astonishing recordings continue to stun and inspire singers and the public 40 years after his death. He is celebrated and honored with film festivals, a steady flow of new CDs, and constant worldwide musical tributes--most notably by Domingo-Carreras-Pavarotti and a multitude of lesser vocal lights. People Magazine, in 1998, summed up the Lanza voice as "magnificent". Simply put, there will never be another Mario Lanza.

Appeared in over 200 films. He had worked as a salesman and newspaper reporter before breaking into movies near the end of the silent era. Tall and tough, his starring roles in major pictures soon gave way to supporting parts, mainly as a villain, in B movies and serials. His elopement to Yuma, Arizona, in 1930 with a 17-year-old Loretta Young was widely reported. From 1940 on, he took numerous supporting roles, working until his suicide in 1959.

Born in London, Eric Blore came out of college and started his working life as an insurance agent. But while touring in Australia he took an interest in the stage and theater. He gave up his insurance job and turned to acting after returning to England. With his elfish long, straight nose, squint-eyed demeanor and a crisp voice, he successfully began a career starring in many shows and revues, focusing on traditional British comedy. Encouraged further, in 1923 he came to New York and was almost immediately using his London stage experience on Broadway. Though there were a few dramatic parts, he inevitably played comic roles in musical comedies and revues (in some of which he also received billing as a lyricist) regularly from 1923 to 1933. He would return once again some ten years later to take on multiple roles for Ziegfeld Follies of 1943. No stranger to film, as early as 1920 he had tried his hand in British cinema. And in 1926 he did the US silent version of The Great Gatsby (1926) that starred Warner Baxter. His familiar role as a head waiter began with his first Fred Astaire/Ginger Rogers film, Flying Down to Rio (1933). With a foot still on Broadway, in 1933 he played the waiter in the stage version of The Gay Divorcee and was then tapped to reprise the role in the film version with Fred and Ginger. Blore had been perfecting his basic comic characters since his London days -- a leering English gentlemen, brusque/wise-acre butler or waiter or other service provider -- with a lockjawed British accent. These characters accompanied by Blore's flawlessly timed delivery were thoroughly applicable and effective as he moved permanently to Hollywood character acting. He played a fair spectrum of other roles, even in a few rare dramas, such as the adventure The Soldier and the Lady (1937) and Island of Lost Men (1939).

Blore was very busy with movies from 1934 through most of the 1940s. He appeared in five of the nine Fred and Ginger dance musicals. Some of his best mugging and scripted lines were in Top Hat (1935) and Shall We Dance (1937) of that series. He was also cast very effectively as valet/butler Jamison in the screen adaptations of the Wolfe Kaufman Lone Wolf mystery novel series. There were eleven films between 1940 and 1947, with all but the last three starring the dashing, sonorous-voiced Warren William (who had a greater profile than 'The Great Profile', John Barrymore) as Michael Lanyard. This was a popular series with first-rate scripts and good production values to keep the public coming back for more. Blore was also invited into the company of stock players ruled over by zany comedy director Preston Sturges. Though Blore only did two films for Sturges, his role in the first of these, The Lady Eve (1941), was a Blore tour de force. Playing the suave confidence man, Pearly, to his old bunko acquaintances Barbara Stanwyck and Charles Coburn, he took the role of pseudo-wealthy Sir Alfred McGlennan Keith out to fleece the local American business gentry. His scene with a gullible Henry Fonda taking in Sir Alfred's concocted story of Stanwyck's being a twin daughter of the lady of the manor by way of her coachman is a delight, punctuated with Blore interrupting perplexed Fonda's questions with a loud shhhhhhh of silence at each.

Inevitably, the parts started to become less frequent. Several of Blore's 1940s movies were with lesser known up-and-comers or older stars such as himself. Still, he enjoyed a variety of roles, including the opportunity of animation immortality when Disney chose him for the voice of Mr. Toad in the classic short The Wind in the Willows (1949). But for two widely spaced appearances, Blore essentially retired by 1955.

And as sometimes is the case when personalities move into obscurity, their deaths are prematurely announced. Such was the case with Blore when the New Yorker journalist Kenneth Tynan reported him as having already passed on. Blore's lawyer raised a flurry, as did the editor of the New Yorker, who claimed the periodical had never had to print a retraction. The night before the highly profiled retraction appeared, Blore indeed passed away. And the next morning the New Yorker was the only publication with the wrong information. It seems likely Blore would have been particularly tickled with the irony of this last comedic bit in honor of his passing.

Helen Broderick was a deliciously funny character comedienne with vaudeville and stage experience, a close friend of Jeanne Eagels. The story goes that, at the age of 14, she ran away from home because her mother (who featured in operatic comedy) was totally obsessed by the theatre. Ironically, all the people she met turned out to be performers, and Helen (who needed to make a living, after all) ended up where she hadn't wanted to be -- on the stage.

Helen started out as a chorus girl in the first Ziegfeld Follies in 1907. Her talent for comedy was discovered quite by accident. In 1911, she was understudy to the actress Ina Claire in the Broadway play 'Jumping Jupiter'. One night, Claire was unable to perform and Helen Broderick stood in as the romantic lead. She soon had the audience in stitches, trampling about the stage like an elephant, rolling her big saucer eyes and attempting to croon 'Cuddle Near Me All Day Long' in her rather unique voice. The romance was no more and instead turned into a popular farce with Helen now permanently installed in the lead role. For a while, Helen partnered her husband Lester Crawford in vaudeville. In the 1920's, she enjoyed success on Broadway, most notably in 'Fifty Million Frenchmen' (a role she took to Hollywood in 1931). Her best parts in the movies were as the perennial friend or chaperone of the heroine (the type of role subsequently associated with Eve Arden), delivering acidic wisecracks in her inimitable dead-pan manner. On several occasions, Helen co-starred with Victor Moore, one of her previous acting partners on Broadway. However, these efforts were decidedly bottom-of-the-bill. She reserved her amusing best enlivening some of RKO's prestige musicals, especially Top Hat (1935) and Swing Time (1936) with Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers. Another good part came her way in The Rage of Paris (1938) (with Danielle Darrieux). Helen retired from films in 1946 and died thirteen years later at Beverly Hills Doctor's Hospital at the age of 68.

An American novelist, writer of crime fiction featuring the private detective Philip Marlowe, Raymond (Thornton) Chandler was born in Chicago of an American father and an Anglo-Irish mother. He moved to England when his parents divorced. He attended Dulwich College and studied languages in France and Germany before returning to England in 1907 and becoming a naturalized British subject. He took a civil service job in the Admiralty, which he left in 1912 to return to America, settling in California. After the US entered World War I he enlisted in the Canadian Army, then transferred to the Royal Flying Corps. After the armistice he returned to California and got a series of bookkeeping jobs, finally becoming a vice-president with the Dabney Oil syndicate.

All along, however, he had been submitting stories, poems, sketches and essays to a number of periodicals, but when the Depression hit and the bottom fell out of the oil business, he lost his job and turned to writing full-time. He found a niche with stories of the "hard-boiled" school popularized by Dashiell Hammett, and had many of his early stories accepted by Black Mask, the same mystery magazine that had first published Hammett. His first four novels--"The Big Sleep" (1939, filmed 1946 [The Big Sleep (1946)] and 1978 [The Big Sleep (1978)]); "Farewell My Lovely" (1940, filmed 1944 [Murder, My Sweet (1944)] and 1975 [Farewell, My Lovely (1975)]); "The High Window" (1942, filmed 1947 [The Brasher Doubloon (1947)]); and "The Lady in the Lake (1943, filmed 1946 [Lady in the Lake (1946)])--which reworked plots from some of his short stories, were his most successful.

He spent some time in Hollywood as a screenwriter, contributing to Billy Wilder's Double Indemnity (1944), the film noir classic The Blue Dahlia (1946) and Alfred Hitchcock's Strangers on a Train (1951). He wrote realistically, in stark contrast to the English style of drawing-room puzzle mysteries where an amateur detective always knows more than the police and clues turn up at just the right moment. Chandler dismissed these plots as "having God sit in your lap."

The daughter of stage actress Laura R. Parrish, lovely slim-eyed brunette Helen Parrish was born on March 12, 1923 (references sometimes vary between 1922 and 1924), in Columbus, Georgia. She started out in movies at the ripe old age of four playing Babe Ruth's daughter in the silent movie Babe Comes Home (1927). She was also featured in "Our Gang" comedy shorts and was sometimes cast to play the lead character as a child/youngster. A couple of those femme stars were Loretta Young in Beau Ideal (1931) and Mary Brian in Song of the Eagle (1933).

Into her teens, Helen became established as a cinematic kid sister, neighborhood friend or rich young girl in such films as There's Always Tomorrow (1934), Straight from the Heart (1935) and A Dog of Flanders (1935). She was most notable, however, as the bane of sweet Deanna Durbin's existence in several of the singing star's musical vehicles -- usually a jealous, spiteful rival. In their first film, Mad About Music (1938), the two worked so well together that Universal decided to form a sort of teen Shirley Temple/Jane Withers stand-off between the two in a couple of other movie confections as well -- Three Smart Girls Grow Up (1939) and First Love (1939).

Most of Helen's film offerings were quite pleasant but rather unexceptional and nominally in the "B" category, including X Marks the Spot (1931), When a Feller Needs a Friend (1932), A Dog of Flanders (1935), I'm Nobody's Sweetheart Now (1940), Too Many Blondes (1941) and X Marks the Spot (1942) (same name, different plot from her earlier film). By her mid-20s Helen filmed her last picture as the second lead in the "B" western The Wolf Hunters (1949). Focusing on the smaller screen into the 1950's, she appeared in a number of TV anthologies, including "Fireside Theatre" and "Chevon Theatre," and ended her on-camera career as a guest on "Leave It to Beaver" and "The Danny Thomas Show."

Helen's older brother, Robert Parrish, was a minor child actor who later earned respect as a film editor and director; older sister, child actress Beverly Parrish, died suddenly at the age of 10 after filming only one movie. Helen married twice. Her first husband was actor/screenwriter Charles Lang and her second, TV producer, John Guedel, survived her. She had no children.

Helen's untimely death from cancer in February 22, 1959, at age 35, robbed Hollywood of a glowing actress with true potential.

His grim, beady-eyed, sharp-nosed, weatherbeaten face was always familiar despite the small roles he appeared in. Every once in a while character actor Russell Simpson would stand out in a small scene, but his main purpose seemed to be adding rustic authenticity to his westerns or small-town dramas. Born on June 17, 1880 in San Francisco, California, Simpson was involved in the Alaska gold rush as a teenager before settling upon an acting career. A member of a number of touring companies, he eventually made it to Broadway. His silent film debut in The Virginian (1914) was unbilled, but he went on to appear in occasional leads and top support roles in many others, with such roles as Trampas in the remake of The Virginian (1923) and President Andrew Jackson in The Frontiersman (1927) highlighting his silent era. Simpson's parts grew smaller with the advent of sound and his gents grew increasingly grizzled, stubborn and cranky. In the late 1930s he became a stock player in director John Ford's company of actors, which culminated in one of his finest roles as Pa Joad in the classic The Grapes of Wrath (1940). He appeared in other Ford pictures, including Drums Along the Mohawk (1939), Tobacco Road (1941), They Were Expendable (1945), My Darling Clementine (1946) and The Sun Shines Bright (1953). He would continue acting to the very end, making his last film (naturally) for Ford: The Horse Soldiers (1959). Appearing in hundreds of films over a span of four decades, he graced TV westerns as well with roles on The Lone Ranger (1949) and Adventures of Wild Bill Hickok (1951) to his credit. His more than 40-year marriage to Gertrude Aller produced a daughter, Roberta. Simpson passed away on December 12, 1959 of natural causes in Woodland Hills, California at the age of 79.