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Fredric March began a career in banking but in 1920 found himself cast as an extra in films being produced in New York. He starred on the Broadway stage first in 1926 and would return there between screen appearances later on. He won plaudits (and an Academy Award nomination) for his send-up of John Barrymore in The Royal Family of Broadway (1930). Four more Academy Award nominations would come his way, and he would win the Oscar for Best Actor twice: for Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1931) and The Best Years of Our Lives (1946). He could play roles varying from heavy drama to light comedy, and was often best portraying men in anguish, such as Willy Loman in Death of a Salesman (1951). As his career advanced he progressed from leading man to character actor.

Jack Haley was a movie and vaudeville actor who is always remembered as the Tin Man in The Wizard of Oz (1939). The Tin Man role was originally was going to Buddy Ebsen, but due to allergic reaction from the aluminum powder makeup, Ebsen was taken out of the casting and Haley replaced him. To avoid the same problem arising, they used aluminum paste for Haley instead of the powder. Haley starred in over thirty other movies.

One of seven children, Frank Capra was born on May 18, 1897, in Bisacquino, Sicily. On May 10, 1903, his family left for America aboard the ship Germania, arriving in New York on May 23rd. "There's no ventilation, and it stinks like hell. They're all miserable. It's the most degrading place you could ever be," Capra said about his Atlantic passage. "Oh, it was awful, awful. It seems to always be storming, raining like hell and very windy, with these big long rolling Atlantic waves. Everybody was sick, vomiting. God, they were sick. And the poor kids were always crying."

The family boarded a train for the trip to California, where Frank's older brother Benjamin was living. On their journey, they subsisted on bread and bananas, as their lack of English made it impossible for them to ask for any other kind of foodstuffs. On June 3, the Capra family arrived at the Southern Pacific station in Los Angeles, at the time, a small city of approximately 102,000 people. The family stayed with Capra's older brother Benjamin, and on September 14, 1903, Frank began his schooling at the Castelar Elementary school.

In 1909, he entered Los Angeles' Manual Arts High School. Capra made money selling newspapers in downtown L.A. after school and on Saturdays, sometimes working with his brother Tony. When sales were slow, Tony punched Frank to attract attention, which would attract a crowd and make Frank's papers sell quicker. Frank later became part of a two-man music combo, playing at various places in the red light district of L.A., including brothels, getting paid a dollar per night, performing the popular songs. He also worked as a janitor at the high school in the early mornings. It was at high school that he became interested in the theater, typically doing back-stage work such as lighting.

Capra's family pressured him to drop out of school and go to work, but he refused, as he wanted to partake fully of the American Dream, and for that he needed an education. Capra later reminisced that his family "thought I was a bum. My mother would slap me around; she wanted me to quit school. My teachers would urge me to keep going....I was going to school because I had a fight on my hands that I wanted to win."

Capra graduated from high school on January 27, 1915, and in September of that year, he entered the Throop College of Technology (later the California Institute of Technology) to study chemical engineering. The school's annual tuition was $250, and Capra received occasional financial support from his family, who were resigned to the fact they had a scholar in their midst. Throop had a fine arts department, and Capra discovered poetry and the essays of Montaigne, which he fell in love with, while matriculating at the technical school. He then decided to write.

"It was a great discovery for me. I discovered language. I discovered poetry. I discovered poetry at Caltech, can you imagine that? That was a big turning point in my life. I didn't know anything could be so beautiful." Capra penned "The Butler's Failure," about an English butler provoked by poverty to murder his employer, then to suicide."

Capra was singled out for a cash award of $250 for having the highest grades in the school. Part of his prize was a six-week trip across the U.S. and Canada. When Capra's father, Turiddu, died in 1916, Capra started working at the campus laundry to make money.

After the U.S. Congress declared War on Germany on April 6, 1917, Capra enlisted in the Army, and while he was not a naturalized citizen yet, he was allowed to join the military as part of the Coastal Artillery. Capra became a supply officer for the student soldiers at Throop, who have been enrolled in a Reserve Officers Training Corps program. At his enlistment, Capra discovered he was not an American citizen; he became naturalized in 1920.

On September 15, 1918, Capra graduated from Throop with his bachelor's degree, and was inducted into the U.S. Army on October 18th and shipped out to the Presidio at San Francisco. An armistice ending the fighting of World War One would be declared in less than a month. While at the Presidio, Capra became ill with the Spanish influenza that claimed 20 million lives worldwide. He was discharged from the Army on December 13th and moved to his brother Ben's home in L.A. While recuperating, Capra answered a cattle call for extras for John Ford's film "The The Outcasts of Poker Flat (1919) (Capra, cast as a laborer in the Ford picture, introduced himself to the film's star, Harry Carey. Two decades later, Capra, designated the #1 director in Hollywood by "Time" magazine, would cast Carey and his movie actress wife Olive in Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939) for which Carey won a Best Supporting Actor Oscar nomination).

While living at his mother's house, Capra took on a wide variety of manual laboring jobs, including errand boy and ditch digger, even working as an orange tree pruner at 20 cents a day. He continued to be employed as an extra at movie studios and as a prop buyer at an independent studio at Sunset Boulevard and Gower Street, which later became the home of Columbia Pictures, where Capra would make his reputation as the most successful movie director of the 1930s. Most of his time was spent unemployed and idle, which gave credence to his family's earlier opposition to him seeking higher education. Capra wrote short stories but was unable to get them published. He eventually got work as a live-in tutor for the son of "Lucky" Baldwin, a rich gambler. (He later used the Baldwin estate as a location for Dirigible (1931)).

Smitten by the movie bug, in August of that year, Capra, former actor W. M. Plank, and financial backer Ida May Heitmann incorporated the Tri-State Motion Picture Co. in Nevada. Tri-State produced three short films in Nevada in 1920, Don't Change Your Husband (1919), The Pulse of Life (1917), and The Scar of Love (1920), all directed by Plank, and possibly based on story treatments written by Capra. The films were failures, and Capra returned to Los Angeles when Tri-State broke up. In March 1920, Capra was employed by CBC Film Sales Co., the corporate precursor of Columbia Films, where he also worked as an editor and director on a series called "Screen Snapshots." He quit CBC in August and moved to San Francisco, but the only jobs he could find were that of bookseller and door-to-door salesman. Once again seeming to fulfill his family's prophecy, he turned to gambling, and also learned to ride the rails with a hobo named Frank Dwyer. There was also a rumor that he became a traveling salesman specializing in worthless securities, according to a "Time" magazine story "Columbia's Gem" (August 8, 1938 issue, V.32, No. 6).

Still based in San Francisco in 1921, producer Walter Montague hired Capra for $75 per week to help direct the short movie The Ballad of Fisher's Boarding House (1922), which was based on a poem by Rudyard Kipling. Montague, a former actor, had the dubious idea that foggy San Francisco was destined to become the capital of movies, and that he could make a fortune making movies based on poems. Capra helped Montague produced the one-reeler, which was budgeted at $1,700 and subsequently sold to the Pathe Exchange for $3,500. Capra quit Montague when he demanded that the next movie be based upon one of his own poems.

Unable to find another professional filmmaking job, Capra hired himself out as a maker of shorts for the public-at-large while working as an assistant at Walter Ball's film lab. Finally, in October 1921, the Paul Gerson Picture Corp. hired him to help make its two-reel comedies, around the time that he began dating the actress Helen Edith Howe, who would become his first wife. Capra continued to work for both Ball and Gerson, primarily as a cutter. On November 25, 1923, Capra married Helen Howell, and the couple soon moved to Hollywood.

Hal Roach hired Capra as a gag-writer for the "Our Gang" series in January, 1924. After writing the gags for five "Our Gang" comedies in seven weeks, he asked Roach to make him a director. When Roach refused (he somewhat rightly felt he had found the right man in director Bob McGowan), Capra quit. Roach's arch rival Mack Sennett subsequently hired him as a writer, one of a six-man team that wrote for silent movie comedian Harry Langdon, the last major star of the rapidly disintegrating Mack Sennett Studios, and reigning briefly as fourth major silent comedian after Charles Chaplin, Buster Keaton, and Harold Lloyd. Capra began working with the Harry Langdon production unit as a gag writer, first credited on the short Plain Clothes (1925).

As Harry Langdon became more popular, his production unit at Sennett had moved from two- to three-reelers before Langdon, determined to follow the example of Chaplin, Keaton, and Lloyd, went into features. After making his first feature-length comedy, His First Flame (1927) for Sennett, Langdon signed a three-year contract with Sol Lesser's First National Pictures to annually produce two feature-length comedies at a fixed fee per film. For a multitude of reasons Mack Sennett was never able to retain top talent. On September 15, 1925, Harry Langdon left Sennett in an egotistical rage, taking many of his key production personnel with him. Sennett promoted Capra to director but fired him after three days in his new position. In addition to the Langdon comedies, Capra had also written material for other Sennett films, eventually working on twenty-five movies.

After being sacked by Sennett, Capra was hired as a gag-writer by Harry Langdon, working on Langdon's first First National feature-length film, Tramp, Tramp, Tramp (1926). The movie was directed by Harry Edwards who had directed all of Harry Langdon's films at Sennett. His first comedy for First National, Tramp, Tramp, Tramp (1926) did well at the box office, but it had ran over budget, which came out of Langdon's end. Harry Edwards was sacked, and for his next picture, The Strong Man (1926), Langdon promoted Capra to director, boosting his salary to $750 per week. The movie was a hit, but trouble was brewing among members of the Harry Langdon company. Langdon was increasingly believing his own press.

His marriage with Helen began to unravel when it is discovered that she had a life-threatening ectopic pregnancy that had to be terminated. In order to cope with the tragedy, Capra became a work-a-holic while Helen turned to drink. The deterioration of his marriage was mirrored by the disintegration of his professional relationship with Harry Langdonduring the making of the new feature, Long Pants (1927).

The movie, which was released in March 1927, proved to be Capra's last with Harry Langdon, as the comedian soon sacked Capra after its release. Capra later explained the principle of Langdon comedies to James Agee, "It is the principal of the brick: If there was a rule for writing Langdon material, it was this: his only ally was God. Harry Langdon might be saved by a brick falling on a cop, but it was verboten that he in any way motivated the bricks fall."

During the production of Long Pants (1926), Capra had a falling out with Langdon. Screenwriter Arthur Ripley's dark sensibility did not mesh well with that of the more optimistic Capra, and Harry Langdon usually sided with Ripley. The picture fell behind schedule and went over budget, and since Langdon was paid a fixed fee for each film, this represented a financial loss to his own Harry Langdon Corp. Stung by the financial set-back, and desiring to further emulate the great Chaplin, Harry Langdon made a fateful decision: He fired Capra and decided to direct himself. (Langdon's next three movies for First National were dismal failures, the two surviving films being very dark and grim black comedies, one of which, The Chaser (1928), touched on the subject of suicide. It was the late years of the Jazz Age, a time of unprecedented prosperity and boundless bonhomie, and the critics, and more critically, the ticket-buying public, rejected Harry. In 1928, First National did not pick up his contract. The Harry Langdon Corp. soon went bankrupt, and his career as the "fourth major silent comedian" was through, just as sound was coming in.)

In April of 1927, Capra and his wife Helen split up, and Capra went off to New York to direct For the Love of Mike (1927) for First National, his first picture with Claudette Colbert. The director and his star did not get along, and the film went over budget. Subsequently, First National refused to pay Capra, and he had to hitchhike back to Hollywood. The film proved to be Capra's only genuine flop.

By September 1927, he was back working as a writer for Mack Sennett, but in October, he was hired as a director by Columbia Pictures President and Production Chief Harry Cohn for $1,000. The event was momentous for both of them, for at Columbia Capra would soon become the #1 director in Hollywood in the 1930s, and the success of Capra's films would propel the Poverty Row studio into the major leagues. But at first, Cohn was displeased with him. When viewing the first three days of rushes of his first Columbia film, That Certain Thing (1928), Cohn wanted to fire him as everything on the first day had been shot in long shot, on the second day in medium shot, and on the third day in close-ups.

"I did it that way for time," Capra later recalled. "It was so easy to be better than the other directors, because they were all dopes. They would shoot a long shot, then they would have to change the setup to shoot a medium shot, then they would take their close-ups. Then they would come back and start over again. You lose time, you see, moving the cameras and the big goddamn lights. I said, 'I'll get all the long shots on that first set first, then all the medium shots, and then the close-ups.' I wouldn't shoot the whole scene each way unless it was necessary. If I knew that part of it was going to play in long shot, I wouldn't shoot that part in close-up. But the trick was not to move nine times, just to move three times. This saved a day, maybe two days."

Cohn decided to stick with Capra (he was ultimately delighted at the picture and gave Capra a $1,500 bonus and upped his per-picture salary), and in 1928, Cohn raised his salary again, now to to $3,000 per picture after he made several successful pictures, including Submarine (1928). The Younger Generation (1929), the first of a series of films with higher budgets to be directed by Capra, would prove to be his first sound film, when scenes were reshot for dialogue. In the summer of that year, he was introduced to a young widow, Lucille Warner Reyburn (who became Capra's second wife Lou Capra). He also met a transplanted stage actress, Barbara Stanwyck, who had been recruited for the talkie but had been in three successive unsuccessful films and wanted to return to the New York stage. Harry Cohn wanted Stanwyck to appear in Capra's planned film, Ladies of Leisure (1930), but the interview with Capra did not go well, and Capra refused to use her.

Stanwyck went home crying after being dismissed by Capra, and her husband, a furious Frank Fay, called Capra up. In his defense, Capra said that Stanwyck didn't seem to want the part. According to Capra's 1961 autobiography, "The Name Above the Title," Fay said, "Frank, she's young, and shy, and she's been kicked around out here. Let me show you a test she made at Warner's." After viewing her Warners' test for The Noose (1928), Capra became enthusiastic and urged Cohn to sign her. In January of 1930, Capra began shooting Ladies of Leisure (1930) with Stanwyck in the lead. The movies the two made together in the early '30s established them both on their separate journeys towards becoming movieland legends. Though Capra would admit to falling in love with his leading lady, it was Lucille Warner Reyburn who became the second Mrs. Capra.

"You're wondering why I was at that party. That's my racket. I'm a party girl. Do you know what that is?"

Stanwyck played a working-class "party girl" hired as a model by the painter Jerry, who hails from a wealthy family. Capra had written the first draft of the movie before screenwriter Jo Swerling took over. Swerling thought the treatment was dreadful. According to Capra, Swerling told Harry Cohn, when he initially had approached about adapting the play "Ladies of the Evening" into Capra's next proposed film, "I don't like Hollywood, I don't like you, and I certainly don't like this putrid piece of gorgonzola somebody gave me to read. It stunk when Belasco produced it as Ladies of Leisure (1930), and it will stink as Ladies of Leisure, even if your little tin Jesus does direct it. The script is inane, vacuous, pompous, unreal, unbelievable and incredibly dull."

Capra, who favored extensive rehearsals before shooting a scene, developed his mature directorial style while collaborating with Stanwyck, a trained stage actress whose performance steadily deteriorated after rehearsals or retakes. Stanwyck's first take in a scene usually was her best. Capra started blocking out scenes in advance, and carefully preparing his other actors so that they could react to Stanwyck in the first shot, whose acting often was unpredictable, so they wouldn't foul up the continuity. In response to this semi-improvisatory style, Capra's crew had to boost its level of craftsmanship to beyond normal Hollywood standards, which were forged in more static and prosaic work conditions. Thus, the professionalism of Capra's crews became better than those of other directors. Capra's philosophy for his crew was, "You guys are working for the actors, they're not working for you."

After "Ladies of Leisure," Capra was assigned to direct Platinum Blonde (1931) starring Jean Harlow. The script had been the product of a series of writers, including Jo Swerling (who was given credit for adaptation), but was polished by Capra and Robert Riskin (who was given screen credit for the dialogue). Along with Jo Swerling, Riskin would rank as one of Capra's most important collaborators, ultimately having a hand in 13 movies. (Riskin wrote nine screenplays for Capra, and Capra based four other films on Riskin's work.)

Riskin created a hard-boiled newspaperman, Stew Smith for the film, a character his widow, the actress Fay Wray, said came closest to Riskin of any character he wrote. A comic character, the wise-cracking reporter who wants to lampoon high society but finds himself hostage to the pretensions of the rich he had previously mocked is the debut of the prototypical "Capra" hero. The dilemma faced by Stew, akin to the immigrant's desire to assimilate but being rejected by established society, was repeated in Mr. Deeds Goes to Town (1936) and in Meet John Doe (1941).

Capra, Stanwyck, Riskin and Jo Swerling all were together to create Capra's next picture, The Miracle Woman (1931), a story about a shady evangelist. With John Meehan, Riskin wrote the play that the movie is based on, "Bless You, Sister," and there is a possibly apocryphal story that has Riskin at a story conference at which Capra relates the treatment for the proposed film. Capra, finished, asked Riskin for his input, and Riskin replied, "I wrote that play. My brother and I were stupid enough to produce it on Broadway. It cost us almost every cent we had. If you intend to make a picture of it, it only proves one thing: You're even more stupid than we were."

Jo Swerling adapted Riskin's play, which he and his brother Everett patterned after Sinclair Lewis' "Elmer Gantry." Like the Lewis novel, the play focuses on the relationship between a lady evangelist and a con man. The difference, though, is that the nature of the relationship is just implied in Riskin's play (and the Capra film). There is also the addition of the blind war-vet as the moral conscience of the story; he is the pivotal character, whereas in Lewis' tale, the con artist comes to have complete control over the evangelist after eventually seducing her. Like some other Capra films, The Miracle Woman (1931) is about the love between a romantic, idealizing man and a cynical, bitter woman. Riskin had based his character on lady evangelist Uldine Utley, while Stanwyck based her characterization on Aimee Semple McPherson.

Recognizing that he had something in his star director, Harry Cohn took full advantage of the lowly position his studio had in Hollywood. Both Warner Brothers and mighty MGM habitually lent Cohn their troublesome stars -- anyone rejecting scripts or demanding a pay raise was fodder for a loan out to Cohn's Poverty Row studio. Cohn himself was habitually loathe to sign long-term stars in the early 1930s (although he made rare exceptions to Peter Lorre and The Three Stooges) and was delighted to land the talents of any top flight star and invariably assigned them to Capra's pictures. Most began their tenure in purgatory with trepidation but left eagerly wanting to work with Capra again.

In 1932, Capra decided to make a motion picture that reflected the social conditions of the day. He and Riskin wrote the screenplay for American Madness (1932), a melodrama that is an important precursor to later Capra films, not only with It's a Wonderful Life (1946) which shares the plot device of a bank run, but also in the depiction of the irrationality of a crowd mentality and the ability of the individual to make a difference. In the movie, an idealistic banker is excoriated by his conservative board of directors for making loans to small businesses on the basis of character rather than on sounder financial criteria. Since the Great Depression is on, and many people lack collateral, it would be impossible to productively lend money on any other criteria than character, the banker argues. When there is a run on the bank due to a scandal, it appears that the board of directors are rights the bank depositors make a run on the bank to take out their money before the bank fails. The fear of a bank failure ensures that the failure will become a reality as a crowd mentality takes over among the clientèle. The board of directors refuse to pledge their capital to stave off the collapse of the bank, but the banker makes a plea to the crowd, and just like George Bailey's depositors in It's a Wonderful Life (1946), the bank is saved as the fears of the crowd are ameliorated and businessmen grateful to the banker pledge their capital to save the bank. The board of directors, impressed by the banker's character and his belief in the character of his individual clients (as opposed to the irrationality of the crowd), pledge their capital and the bank run is staved off and the bank is saved.

In his biography, "The Name Above the Picture," Capra wrote that before American Madness (1932), he had only made "escapist" pictures with no basis in reality. He recounts how Poverty Row studios, lacking stars and production values, had to resort to "gimmick" movies to pull the crowds in, making films on au courant controversial subjects that were equivalent to "yellow journalism."

What was more important than the subject and its handling was the maturation of Capra's directorial style with the film. Capra had become convinced that the mass-experience of watching a motion picture with an audience had the psychological effect in individual audience members of slowing down the pace of a film. A film that during shooting and then when viewed on a movieola editing device and on a small screen in a screening room among a few professionals that had seemed normally paced became sluggish when projected on the big screen. While this could have been the result of the projection process blowing up the actors to such large proportions, Capra ultimately believed it was the effect of mass psychology affecting crowds since he also noticed this "slowing down" phenomenon at ball games and at political conventions. Since American Madness (1932) dealt with crowds, he feared that the effect would be magnified.

He decided to boost the pace of the film, during the shooting. He did away with characters' entrances and exits that were a common part of cinematic "grammar" in the early 1930s, a survival of the "photoplays" days. Instead, he "jumped" characters in and out of scenes, and jettisoned the dissolves that were also part of cinematic grammar that typically ended scenes and indicated changes in time or locale so as not to make cutting between scenes seem choppy to the audience. Dialogue was deliberately overlapped, a radical innovation in the early talkies, when actors were instructed to let the other actor finish his or her lines completely before taking up their cue and beginning their own lines, in order to facilitate the editing of the sound-track. What he felt was his greatest innovation was to boost the pacing of the acting in the film by a third by making a scene that would normally play in one minute take only 40 seconds.

When all these innovations were combined in his final cut, it made the movie seem normally paced on the big screen, though while shooting individual scenes, the pacing had seemed exaggerated. It also gave the film a sense of urgency that befitted the subject of a financial panic and a run on a bank. More importantly, it "kept audience attention riveted to the screen," as he said in his autobiography. Except for "mood pieces," Capra subsequently used these techniques in all his films, and he was amused by critics who commented on the "naturalness" of his direction.

Capra was close to completely establishing his themes and style. Justly accused of indulging in sentiment which some critics labeled "Capra-corn," Capra's next film, Lady for a Day (1933) was an adaptation of Damon Runyon's 1929 short story "Madame La Gimp" about a nearly destitute apple peddler whom the superstitious gambler Dave the Dude (portrayed by Warner Brothers star Warren William) sets up in high style so she and her daughter, who is visiting with her finance, will not be embarrassed. Dave the Dude believes his luck at gambling comes from his ritualistically buying an apple a day from Annie, who is distraught and considering suicide to avoid the shame of her daughter seeing her reduced to living on the street. The Dude and his criminal confederates put Annie up in a luxury apartment with a faux husband in order to establish Annie in the eyes of her daughter as a dignified and respectable woman, but in typical Runyon fashion, Annie becomes more than a fake as the masquerade continues.

Robert Riskin wrote the first four drafts of Lady for a Day (1933), and of all the scripts he worked on for Capra, the film deviates less from the script than any other. After seeing the movie, Runyon sent a telegraph to Riskin praising him for his success at elaborating on the story and fleshing out the characters while maintain his basic story. Lady for a Day (1933) was the favorite Capra film of John Ford, the great filmmaker who once directed the unknown extra. The movie cost $300,000 and was the first of Capra's oeuvre to attract the attention of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences, getting a Best Director nomination for Capra, plus nods for Riskin and Best Actress. The movie received Columbia's first Best Picture nomination, the studio never having attracted any attention from the Academy before Lady for a Day (1933). (Capra's last film was the flop remake of Lady for a Day (1933) with Bette Davis and Glenn Ford, Pocketful of Miracles (1961))

Capra reunited with Stanwyck and produced his first universally acknowledged classic, The Bitter Tea of General Yen (1932), a film that now seems to belong more to the oeuvre of Josef von Sternberg than it does to Frank Capra. With "General Yen," Capra had consciously set out to make a movie that would win Academy Awards. Frustrated that the innovative, timely, and critically well-received American Madness (1932) had not received any recognition at the Oscars (particularly in the director's category in recognition of his innovations in pacing), he vented his displeasure to Columbia boss Cohn.

"Forget it," Cohn told Capra, as recounted in his autobiography. "You ain't got a Chinaman's chance. They only vote for that arty junk."

Capra set out to boost his chances by making an arty film featuring a "Chinaman" that confronted that major taboo of American cinema of the first half of the century, miscegenation.

In the movie, the American missionary Megan Davis is in China to marry another missionary. Abducted by the Chinese Warlord General Yen, she is torn away from the American compound that kept her isolated from the Chinese and finds herself in a strange, dangerous culture. The two fall in love despite their different races and life-views. The film ran up against the taboo against miscegenation embedded in the Motion Picture Producers and Distributors Association's Production Code, and while Megan merely kisses General Yen's hand in the picture, the fact that she was undeniably in love with a man from a different race attracted the vituperation of many bigots.

Having fallen for Megan, General Yen engenders her escape back to the Americans before willingly drinking a poisoned cup of tea, his involvement with her having cost him his army, his wealth, and now his desire to live. The Bitter Tea of General Yen (1932) marks the introduction of suicide as a Capra theme that will come back repeatedly, most especially in George Bailey's breakdown on the snowy bridge in It's a Wonderful Life (1946).

Despair often shows itself in Capra films, and although in his post-"General Yen" work, the final reel wraps things up in a happy way, until that final reel, there is tragedy, cynicism, heartless exploitation, and other grim subject matter that Capra's audiences must have known were the truth of the world, but that were too grim to face when walking out of a movie theater. When pre-Code movies were rediscovered and showcased across the United States in the 1990s, they were often accompanied by thesis about how contemporary audiences "read" the films (and post-1934 more Puritanical works), as the movies were not so frank or racy as supposed. There was a great deal of signaling going on which the audience could read into, and the same must have been true for Capra's films, giving lie to the fact that he was a sentimentalist with a saccharine view of America. There are few films as bitter as those of Frank Capra before the final reel.

Despair was what befell Frank Capra, personally, on the night of March 16, 1934, which he attended as one of the Best Director nominees for Lady for a Day (1933). Capra had caught Oscar fever, and in his own words, "In the interim between the nominations and the final voting...my mind was on those Oscars." When Oscar host Will Rogers opened the envelope for Best Director, he commented, "Well, well, well. What do you know. I've watched this young man for a long time. Saw him come up from the bottom, and I mean the bottom. It couldn't have happened to a nicer guy. Come on up and get it, Frank!"

Capra got up to go get it, squeezing past tables and making his way to the open dance floor to accept his Oscar. "The spotlight searched around trying to find me. 'Over here!' I waved. Then it suddenly swept away from me -- and picked up a flustered man standing on the other side of the dance floor - Frank Lloyd!"

Frank Lloyd went up to the dais to accept HIS Oscar while a voice in back of Capra yelled, "Down in front!"

Capra's walk back to his table amidst shouts of "Sit down!" turned into the "Longest, saddest, most shattering walk in my life. I wished I could have crawled under the rug like a miserable worm. When I slumped in my chair I felt like one. All of my friends at the table were crying."

That night, after Lloyd's Cavalcade (1933), beat Lady for a Day (1933) for Best Picture, Capra got drunk at his house and passed out. "Big 'stupido,'" Capra thought to himself, "running up to get an Oscar dying with excitement, only to crawl back dying with shame. Those crummy Academy voters; to hell with their lousy awards. If ever they did vote me one, I would never, never, NEVER show up to accept it."

Capra would win his first of three Best Director Oscars the next year, and would show up to accept it. More importantly, he would become the president of the Academy in 1935 and take it out of the labor relations field a time when labor strife and the formation of the talent guilds threatened to destroy it.

The International Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences had been the brainchild of Louis B. Mayer in 1927 (it dropped the "International" soon after its formation). In order to forestall unionization by the creative talent (directors, actors and screenwriters) who were not covered by the Basic Agreement signed in 1926, Mayer had the idea of forming a company union, which is how the Academy came into being. The nascent Screen Writers Union, which had been created in 1920 in Hollywood, had never succeeded in getting a contract from the studios. It went out of existence in 1927, when labor relations between writers and studios were handled by the Academy's writers' branch.

The Academy had brokered studio-mandated pay-cuts of 10% in 1927 and 1931, and massive layoffs in 1930 and 1931. With the inauguration of President Franklin D. Roosevelt on March 4, 1933, Roosevelt took no time in attempting to tackle the Great Depression. The day after his inauguration, he declared a National Bank Holiday, which hurt the movie industry as it was heavily dependent on bank loans. Louis B. Mayer, as president of the Association of Motion Picture Producers, Inc. (the co-equal arm of the Motion Picture Producers and Distributors Association charged with handling labor relations) huddled with a group from the Academy (the organization he created and had long been criticized for dominating, in both labor relations and during the awards season) and announced a 50% across-the-board pay cut. In response, stagehands called a strike for March 13th, which shut down every studio in Hollywood.

After another caucus between Mayer and the Academy committee, a proposal for a pay-cut on a sliding-scale up to 50% for everyone making over $50 a week; which would only last for eight weeks, was inaugurated. Screen writers resigned en masse from the Academy and joined a reformed Screen Writers Guild, but most employees had little choice and went along with it. All the studios but Warner Bros. and Sam Goldwyn honored the pledge to restore full salaries after the eight weeks, and Warners production chief Darryl F. Zanuck resigned in protest over his studio's failure to honor its pledge. A time of bad feelings persisted, and much anger was directed towards the Academy in its role as company union.

The Academy, trying to position itself as an independent arbiter, hired the accounting firm of Price Waterhouse for the first time to inspect the books of the studios. The audit revealed that all the studios were solvent, but Harry Warner refused to budge and Academy President 'Conrad Nagel' resigned, although some said he was forced out after a vote of no-confidence after arguing Warner's case. The Academy announced that the studio bosses would never again try to impose a horizontal salary cut, but the usefulness of the Academy as a company union was over.

Under Roosevelt's New Deal, the self-regulation imposed by the National Industrial Relations Act (signed into law on June 16th) to bring business sectors back to economic health was predicated upon cartelization, in which the industry itself wrote its own regulatory code. With Hollywood, it meant the re-imposition of paternalistic labor relations that the Academy had been created to wallpaper over. The last nail in the company union's coffin was when it became public knowledge that the Academy appointed a committee to investigate the continued feasibility of the industry practice of giving actors and writers long-term contracts. High salaries to directors, actors, and screen writers was compensation to the creative people for producers refusing to ceded control over creative decision-making. Long-term contracts were the only stability in the Hollywood economic set-up up creative people,. Up to 20%-25% of net earnings of the movie industry went to bonuses to studio owners, production chiefs, and senior executives at the end of each year, and this created a good deal of resentment that fueled the militancy of the SWG and led to the formation of the Screen Actors Guild in July 1933 when they, too, felt that the Academy had sold them out.

The industry code instituted a cap on the salaries of actors, directors, and writers, but not of movie executives; mandated the licensing of agents by producers; and created a reserve clause similar to baseball where studios had renewal options with talent with expired contracts, who could only move to a new studio if the studio they had last been signed to did not pick up their option.

The SWG sent a telegram to FDR in October 1933 denouncing this policy, arguing that the executives had taken millions of dollars of bonuses while running their companies into receivership and bankruptcy. The SWG denounced the continued membership of executives who had led their studios into financial failure remaining on the corporate boards and in the management of the reorganized companies, and furthermore protested their use of the NIRA to write their corrupt and failed business practices into law at the expense of the workers.

There was a mass resignation of actors from the Academy in October 1933, with the actors switching their allegiance to SAG. SAG joined with the SWG to publish "The Screen Guilds Magazine," a periodical whose editorial content attacked the Academy as a company union in the producers' pocket. SAG President Eddie Cantor, a friend of Roosevelt who had bee invited to spend the Thanksgiving Day holiday with the president, informed him of the guild's grievances over the NIRA code. Roosevelt struck down many of the movie industry code's anti-labor provisions by executive order.

The labor battles between the guilds and the studios would continue until the late 1930s, and by the time Frank Capra was elected president of the Academy in 1935, the post was an unenviable one. The Screen Directors Guild was formed at King Vidor's house on January 15, 1936, and one of its first acts was to send a letter to its members urging them to boycott the Academy Awards ceremony, which was three days away. None of the guilds had been recognized as bargaining agents by the studios, and it was argued to grace the Academy Awards would give the Academy, a company union, recognition. Academy membership had declined to 40 from a high of 600, and Capra believed that the guilds wanted to punish the studios financially by depriving them of the good publicity the Oscars generated.

But the studios couldn't care less. Seeing that the Academy was worthless to help them in its attempts to enforce wage cuts, it too abandoned the Academy, which it had financed. Capra and the Board members had to pay for the Oscar statuettes for the 1936 ceremony. In order to counter the boycott threat, Capra needed a good publicity gimmick himself, and the Academy came up with one, voting D.W. Griffith an honorary Oscar, the first bestowed since one had been given to Charles Chaplin at the first Academy Awards ceremony.

The Guilds believed the boycott had worked as only 20 SAG members and 13 SWG members had showed up at the Oscars, but Capra remembered the night as a victory as all the winners had shown up. However, 'Variety' wrote that "there was not the galaxy of stars and celebs in the director and writer groups which distinguished awards banquets in recent years." "Variety" reported that to boost attendance, tickets had been given to secretaries and the like. Bette Davis and Victor McLaglen had showed up to accept their Oscars, but McLaglen's director and screenwriter, John Ford and Dudley Nichols, both winners like McLaglen for The Informer (1935), were not there, and Nichols became the first person to refuse an Academy Award when he sent back his statuette to the Academy with a note saying he would not turn his back on his fellow writers in the SWG. Capra sent it back to him. Ford, the treasurer of the SDG, had not showed up to accept his Oscar, he explained, because he wasn't a member of the Academy. When Capra staged a ceremony where Ford accepted his award, the SDG voted him out of office.

To save the Academy and the Oscars, Capra convinced the board to get it out of the labor relations field. He also democratized the nomination process to eliminate studio politics, opened the cinematography and interior decoration awards to films made outside the U.S., and created two new acting awards for supporting performances to win over SAG.

By the 1937 awards ceremony, SAG signaled its pleasure that the Academy had mostly stayed out of labor relations by announcing it had no objection to its members attending the awards ceremony. The ceremony was a success, despite the fact that the Academy had to charge admission due to its poor finances. Frank Capra had saved the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, and he even won his second Oscar that night, for directing Mr. Deeds Goes to Town (1936). At the end of the evening, Capra announced the creation of the Irving Thalberg Memorial Award to honor "the most consistent high level of production achievement by an individual producer." It was an award he himself was not destined to win.

By the 1938 awards, the Academy and all three guilds had buried the hatchet, and the guild presidents all attended the ceremony: SWG President Dudley Nichols, who finally had accepted his Oscar, SAG President Robert Montgomery, and SDG President King Vidor. Capra also had introduced the secret ballot, the results of which were unknown to everyone but the press, who were informed just before the dinner so they could make their deadlines. The first Irving Thalberg Award was given to long-time Academy supporter and anti-Guild stalwart Darryl F. Zanuck by Cecil B. DeMille, who in his preparatory remarks, declared that the Academy was "now free of all labor struggles."

But those struggles weren't over. In 1939, Capra had been voted president of the SDG and began negotiating with AMPP President 'Joseph Schenck', the head of 20th Century-Fox, for the industry to recognize the SDG as the sole collective bargaining agent for directors. When Schenck refused, Capra mobilized the directors and threatened a strike. He also threatened to resign from the Academy and mount a boycott of the awards ceremony, which was to be held a week later. Schenck gave in, and Capra won another victory when he was named Best Director for a third time at the Academy Awards, and his movie, You Can't Take It with You (1938), was voted Best Picture of 1938.

The 1940 awards ceremony was the last that Capra presided over, and he directed a documentary about them, which was sold to Warner Bros' for $30,000, the monies going to the Academy. He was nominated himself for Best Director and Best Picture for Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939), but lost to the Gone with the Wind (1939) juggernaut. Under Capra's guidance, the Academy had left the labor relations field behind in order to concentrated on the awards (publicity for the industry), research and education.

"I believe the guilds should more or less conduct the operations and functions of this institution," he said in his farewell speech. He would be nominated for Best Director and Best Picture once more with It's a Wonderful Life (1946) in 1947, but the Academy would never again honor him, not even with an honorary award after all his service. (Bob Hope, in contrast, received four honorary awards, including a lifetime membership in 1945, and the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian award in 1960 from the Academy.) The SDG (subsequently renamed the Directors Guild of America after its 1960 with the Radio and Television Directors Guild and which Capra served as its first president from 1960-61), the union he had struggled with in the mid-1930s but which he had first served as president from 1939 to 1941 and won it recognition, voted him a lifetime membership in 1941 and a Lifetime Achievement Award in 1959.

Whenever Capra convinced studio boss Harry Cohn to let him make movies with more controversial or ambitious themes, the movies typically lost money after under-performing at the box office. The Bitter Tea of General Yen (1932) and Lost Horizon (1937) were both expensive, philosophically minded pictures that sought to reposition Capra and Columbia into the prestige end of the movie market. After the former's relative failure at the box office and with critics, Capra turned to making a screwball comedy, a genre he excelled at, with It Happened One Night (1934). Bookended with You Can't Take It with You (1938), these two huge hits won Columbia Best Picture Oscars and Capra Best Director Academy Awards. These films, along with Mr. Deeds Goes to Town (1936), Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939), and It's a Wonderful Life (1946) are the heart of Capra's cinematic canon. They are all classics and products of superb craftsmanship, but they gave rise to the canard of "Capra-corn." One cannot consider Capra without taking into account The Bitter Tea of General Yen (1932), American Madness (1932), and Meet John Doe (1941), all three dark films tackling major issues, Imperialism, the American plutocracy, and domestic fascism. Capra was no Pollyanna, and the man who was called a "dago" by Mack Sennett and who went on to become one of the most unique, highly honored and successful directors, whose depictions of America are considered Americana themselves, did not live his cinematic life looking through a rose-colored range-finder

In his autobiography "The Name Above the Title," Capra says that at the time of American Madness (1932), critics began commenting on his "gee-whiz" style of filmmaking. The critics attacked "gee whiz" cultural artifacts as their fabricators "wander about wide-eyed and breathless, seeing everything as larger than life." Capra's response was "Gee whiz!"

Defining Hollywood as split between two camps, "Mr. Up-beat" and "Mr. Down-beat," Capra defended the up-beat gee whiz on the grounds that, "To some of us, all that meets the eye IS larger than life, including life itself. Who ca match the wonder of it?"

Among the artists of the "Gee-Whiz:" school were Ernest Hemingway, Homer, and Paul Gauguin, a novelist who lived a heroic life larger than life itself, a poet who limned the lives of gods and heroes, and a painter who created a mythic Tahiti, the Tahiti that he wanted to find. Capra pointed to Moses and the apostles as examples of men who were larger than life. Capra was proud to be "Mr. Up-beat" rather than belong to "the 'ashcan' school" whose "films depict life as an alley of cats clawing lids off garbage cans, and man as less noble than a hyena. The 'ash-canners,' in turn, call us Pollyannas, mawkish sentimentalists, and corny happy-enders."

What really moves Capra is that in America, there was room for both schools, that there was no government interference that kept him from making a film like American Madness (1932). (While Ambassador to the Court of St. James, Joseph P. Kennedy had asked Harry Cohn to stop exporting Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939) to Europe as it portrayed American democracy so negatively.) About Mr. Up-beat and Mr-Downbeat and "Mr. In-between," Capra says, "We all respect and admire each other because the great majority freely express their own individual artistry unfettered by subsidies or strictures from government, pressure groups, or ideologists."

In the period 1934 to 1941, Capra the created the core of his canon with the classics It Happened One Night (1934), Mr. Deeds Goes to Town (1936), You Can't Take It with You (1938), Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939) and Meet John Doe (1941), wining three Best Director Oscars in the process. Some cine-historians call Capra the great American propagandist, he was so effective in creating an indelible impression of America in the 1930s. "Maybe there never was an America in the thirties," John Cassavetes was quoted as saying. "Maybe it was all Frank Capra."

After the United States went to war in December 1941, Frank Capra rejoined the Army and became an actual propagandist. His "Why We Fight" series of propaganda films were highly lauded for their remarkable craftsmanship and were the best of the U.S. propaganda output during the war. Capra's philosophy, which has been variously described as a kind of Christian socialism (his films frequently feature a male protagonist who can be seen a Christ figure in a story about redemption emphasizing New Testament values) that is best understood as an expression of humanism, made him an ideal propagandist. He loved his adopted country with the fervor of the immigrant who had realized the American dream. One of his propaganda films, The Negro Soldier (1944), is a milestone in race relations.

Capra, a genius in the manipulation of the first form of "mass media," was opposed to "massism." The crowd in a Capra film is invariably wrong, and he comes down on the side of the individual, who can make a difference in a society of free individuals. In an interview, Capra said he was against "mass entertainment, mass production, mass education, mass everything. Especially mass man. I was fighting for, in a sense, the preservation of the liberty of the individual person against the mass."

Capra had left Columbia after "Mr. Smith" and formed his own production company. After the war, he founded Liberty Films with John Ford and made his last masterpiece, It's a Wonderful Life (1946). Liberty folded prior to its release (another Liberty film, William Wyler's masterpiece, The Best Years of Our Lives (1946) was released through United Artists). Though Capra received his sixth Oscar nomination as best director, the movie flopped at the box office, which is hard to believe now that the film is considered must-see viewing each Christmas. Capra's period of greatness was over, and after making three under-whelming films from 1948 to '51 (including a remake of his earlier Broadway Bill (1934)), Capra didn't direct another picture for eight years, instead making a series of memorable semi-comic science documentaries for television that became required viewing for most 1960's school kids. His last two movies, A Hole in the Head (1959) and Pocketful of Miracles (1961) his remake of Lady for a Day (1933) did little to enhance his reputation.

But a great reputation it was, and is. Capra's films withstood the test of time and continue to be as beloved as when they were embraced by the movie-going "masses" in the 1930s. It was the craftsmanship: Capra was undeniably a master of his medium. The great English novelist Graham Greene, who supported himself as a film critic in the 1930s, loved Capra's films due to their sense of responsibility and of common life, and due to his connection with his audience. (Capra, according to the 1938 "Time" article, believed that what he liked would be liked by moviegoers). In his review of Mr. Deeds Goes to Town (1936), Greene elucidated the central theme of Capra's movies: "Goodness and simplicity manhandled in a deeply selfish and brutal world."

But it was Capra's great mastery over film that was the key to his success. Comparing Capra to Dickens in a not wholly flattering review of You Can't Take It with You (1938), Green found Capra "a rather muddled and sentimental idealist who feels -- vaguely -- that something is wrong with the social system" (807). Commenting on the improbable scene in which Grandpa Vanderhof persuades the munitions magnate Anthony P. Kirby to give everything up and play the harmonica, Greene stated:

"It sounds awful, but it isn't as awful as all that, for Capra has a touch of genius with a camera: his screen always seems twice as big as other people's, and he cuts as brilliantly as Eisenstein (the climax when the big bad magnate takes up his harmonica is so exhilarating in its movement that you forget its absurdity). Humour and not wit is his line, a humor that shades off into whimsicality, and a kind of popular poetry which is apt to turn wistful. We may groan and blush as he cuts his way remorselessly through all finer values to the fallible human heart, but infallibly he makes his appeal - to that great soft organ with its unreliable goodness and easy melancholy and baseless optimism. The cinema, a popular craft, can hardly be expected to do more."

Capra was a populist, and the simplicity of his narrative structures, in which the great social problems facing America were boiled down to scenarios in which metaphorical boy scouts took on corrupt political bosses and evil-minded industrialists, created mythical America of simple archetypes that with its humor, created powerful films that appealed to the elemental emotions of the audience. The immigrant who had struggled and been humiliated but persevere due to his inner resolution harnessed the mytho-poetic power of the movie to create proletarian passion plays that appealed to the psyche of the New Deal movie-goer. The country during the Depression was down but not out, and the ultimate success of the individual in the Capra films was a bracing tonic for the movie audience of the 1930s. His own personal history, transformed on the screen, became their myths that got them through the Depression, and when that and the war was over, the great filmmaker found himself out of time. Capra, like Charles Dickens, moralized political and economic issues. Both were primarily masters of personal and moral expression, and not of the social and political. It was the emotional realism, not the social realism, of such films as Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939), which he was concerned with, and by focusing on the emotional and moral issues his protagonists faced, typically dramatized as a conflict between cynicism and the protagonist's faith and idealism, that made the movies so powerful, and made them register so powerfully with an audience.

Edith was the chief costume designer for Universal Studios having started her career as a sketch artist at Paramount. Sweet Charity was her 1,130th film, Over the years she had over30 Oscar nominations of which she won 7. She wrote two books, The Dress Doctor and How to Dress For Success. In 1959 she was chosen as Woman of the Year by the Los Angeles Times

Dame Judith Anderson was born Frances Margaret Anderson on February 10, 1897 in Adelaide, South Australia. She began her acting career in Australia before moving to New York in 1918. There she established herself as one of the greatest theatrical actresses and was a major star on Broadway throughout the 1930s, 1940s and 1950s. Her notable stage works included the role of Lady Macbeth, which she played first in the 1920s, and gave an Emmy Award-winning television performance in Macbeth (1960). Anderson's long association with Euripides' "Medea" began with her acclaimed Tony Award-winning 1948 stage performance in the title role. She appeared in the television version of Medea (1983) in the supporting character of the Nurse.

Anderson made her Hollywood film debut under director Rowland Brown in a supporting role in Blood Money (1933). Her striking, not conventionally attractive features were complemented with her powerful presence, mastery of timing and an effortless style. Anderson made a film career as a supporting character actress in several significant films including Alfred Hitchcock's Rebecca (1940), for which she was Oscar nominated for Best Supporting Actress. She worked with director Otto Preminger in Laura (1944), then with René Clair in And Then There Were None (1945). Her remarkable performance in a supporting role in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1958) fit in a stellar acting ensemble under director Richard Brooks.

Anderson was awarded Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire in the 1960 Queen's New Year's Honours List for her services to the performing arts. Living in Santa Barbara in her later years, she also had a successful stint on the soap opera Santa Barbara (1984) and was nominated for a Daytime Emmy Award in 1984. In the same year, at age 87, she appeared in Star Trek III: The Search for Spock (1984) as the High Priestess, and was nominated for a Saturn Award for that role. She was awarded Companion of the Order of Australia in the 1991 Queen's Birthday Honours List for her services to the performing arts. Anderson died at age 94 of pneumonia on January 3, 1992 in Santa Barbara, California.

One of stage, screen, radio and TV's most inimitable, irrepressible entertainers, Hermione Ferdinanda Gingold was born in London on December 9, 1897, the daughter of an upscale Austrian-Jewish financier and English homemaker. The blue-eyed blonde loved to perform in school plays and made her professional stage debut at age 11 as the Herald in "Pinkie and the Fairies."

She went on to appear at London's Savoy Theatre, at Christmastime in 1911, in the children's fantasy "Where the Raindow Ends," starring Reginald Owen and a cast of 45 children, including Gingold and a 12-year-old Noël Coward. Trained in the classics under actress/writer Rosina Filippi (1866-1930), Hermione played everything from the Page in "The Merry Wives of Windsor" to Jessica in "The Merchant of Venice" and Cassandra in "Troilus and Cressida." Stage parts in "Little Lord Fauntleroy" and "The Dippers" also came about during this period.

But it was Hermione's deep, guttural voice (as a result of vocal nodes) and flair for tart, quirky comedy that truly boosted her notoriety in the 1930's when she triumphed as a musical revue artist. Sharpening her talent and bawdy, razor-like wit in this venue throughout World War II, she graced such revues as "The Gate Revue," "Sweet and Low," "Sweet and Lower," "Sweet and Lowest," "Swinging the Gate" and "Rise Above It." In between she appeared in a few films, including a cleaning woman bit in the comedy thriller Someone at the Door (1936), and featured roles in the comedies Meet Mr. Penny (1938) and The Butler's Dilemma (1943).

After performances in such legit plays as "Fumed Oak" and "Fallen Angels" in 1949, and having completed character roles in the pictures The Pickwick Papers (1952), The Slasher (1953) and The Adventures of Sadie (1953), she transported herself to the States, making her New York bow with the popular revue "John Murray Anderson's Almanac," directed by Cyril Ritchard. She was an immediate success and went on to win the theatre's Donaldson Award for this performance. Settling now in America, she involved herself with a variety of theatre projects including "Sticks and Stones" (revue, 1956), "The Sleeping Prince (play) 1956), "Fallen Angels" (play, 1957-58), "First Impressions (play, 1959), "From A to Z (revue, 1960) and as Julia in "Abracadabra," (play, 1960), which she also wrote.

Beloved on Broadway, Hermione served as intriguing replacements for "Milk and Honey" (1962) and "Oh Dad, Poor Dad, Mama's Hung You in the Closet and I'm Feelin' So Sad" (1963) and continued to make a mark with such plays as "Charley's Aunt." In 1973, the 75-year-old veteran was a featured highlight nostalgically warbling the exotic tune "Liaisons" in the Stephen Sondheim musical hit "A Little Night Music" as Madame Armfeldt. She later returned to Sondheim with the tribute show "Side by Side by Sondheim" in 1978.

Never one to be overlooked for long, she was invited to Hollywood and made a delightfully offbeat niche for herself in several eccentric comedies and plush musical films. Usually permitted to play her charming and haughty self, she was Golden Globe awarded playing the aging courtesan in Gigi (1958) while singing the nostalgic duet "I Remember It Well" with equally aging playboy Maurice Chevalier. Other movie roles would include a quirky cameo as a witch queen in the comedy Bell Book and Candle (1958); another quirky cameo in the second-rate Hitchcockian thriller The Naked Edge (1961); a Golden Globe nominated part as the mayor's wife in the musical The Music Man (1962); a comically villainous voice in the animated musical feature Gay Purr-ee (1962) starring the vocal talents of Judy Garland; a charming reunion with Chevalier in the lightweight comedy I'd Rather Be Rich (1964); a bizarre landlady in the romantic comedy Promise Her Anything (1966), which reunited her with her "Gigi" star Leslie Caron; a devious British Munster relative in Munster, Go Home! (1966); and her Madame Armfeldt recreation in a rather pallid film version of her stage hit A Little Night Music (1977). Her last film was as an aging actress who rubbed elbows with Garbo in the comedy-drama Garbo Talks (1984) starring Anne Bancroft.

Gingold was a delightfully ribald raconteur and became a very popular TV talk show guest, particularly on The Tonight Show Starring Jack Paar (1957). She was finishing up the last touches on her autobiography when she passed away in New York City of pneumonia and a heart ailment on May 24, 1987. Her autobiography, How to Grow Old Disgracefully, was published a year after her death (1988). It had been previously presented in installments -- The World Is Square (1946), My Own Unaided Work (1952) and Sirens Should Be Seen and Not Heard (1963). A one-of-a-kind entertainer if ever there was one.

Walter Pidgeon, a handsome, tall and dark-haired man, began his career studying voice at the New England Conservatory of Music in Boston. He then did theater, mainly stage musicals. He went to Hollywood in the early 1920s, where he made silent films, including Mannequin (1926) and Sumuru (1927). When talkies arrived, Pidgeon made some musicals, but he never received top billing or recognition in these. In 1937 MGM put him under contract, but only in supporting roles and "the other man" roles, such as in Saratoga (1937) opposite Jean Harlow and Clark Gable and in The Girl of the Golden West (1938) opposite Jeanette MacDonald and Nelson Eddy. Although these two films were big successes, Pidgeon was overlooked for his contributions to them. MGM lent him out to Fox, where he finally had top billing, in How Green Was My Valley (1941). When he returned to MGM the studio tried to give him bigger roles, and he was cast opposite his frequent co-star Greer Garson. However, Garson seemed to come up on top in Blossoms in the Dust (1941) and Mrs. Miniver (1942), although Pidgeon did receive an Academy Award nomination for his role in the latter film.

Pidgeon remained with MGM through the mid-'50s, making films like Dream Wife (1953) and Hit the Deck (1955) with Jane Powell and old pal Gene Raymond. In 1956 Pidgeon left the movies to do some work in the theater, but he returned to film in 1961.

Pidgeon retired from acting in 1977. He suffered from several strokes that eventually led to his death in 1984.

Marion Davies was one of the great comedic actresses of the silent era and into the 1930s.

Marion Cecelia Douras was born in the borough of Brooklyn, New York on January 3, 1897, the daughter of Rose (Reilly) and Bernard J. Douras, a lawyer and judge. Her parents were both of Irish descent. Marion had been bitten by the show biz bug early as she watched her sisters perform in local stage productions. She wanted to do the same. As Marion got older, she tried out for various school plays and did fairly well. Once her formal education had ended, Marion began her career as a chorus girl in New York City, first in the pony follies, and eventually found herself in the famed Ziegfeld Follies. But she wanted to do more than dance. Acting, to Marion, was the epitome of show business and aimed her sights in that direction. Her stage name came when she and her family passed the Davies Insurance Building. One of her sisters called out "Davies!!! That shall be my stage name", and the whole family took on that name.

Her first film was Runaway Romany (1917), when she was 20. Written by Marion and directed by her brother-in-law, the film wasn't exactly a box-office smash, but for Marion, it was a start and a stepping stone to bigger things. The following year Marion starred in two films, The Burden of Proof (1918) and Cecilia of the Pink Roses (1918). The latter film was backed by newspaper magnate, William Randolph Hearst. When Marion moved to California, she already was involved with Hearst. They lived together at his San Simeon castle, an extremely elaborate mansion which stands as a California landmark to this day. At San Simeon, they threw grand parties, many of them in costume. Frequent guests included Carole Lombard, Mary Pickford, Sonja Henie, and Dolores Del Río - basically all the top names in Hollywood and other celebrities including the mayor of New York City, President Calvin Coolidge, and Charles Lindbergh. Davies and Hearst would continue a long-term romantic relationship for the next 30 years. Because of Hearst's newspaper empire, Marion would be promoted as no actress before her.

She appeared in numerous films over the next few years, with The Cinema Murder (1919) being one of the most suspenseful. In 1922, Marion appeared as Mary Tudor in the historical romantic epic, When Knighthood Was in Flower (1922). It was a film into which Hearst poured in millions of dollars as a showcase for her. Although Marion didn't normally appear in period pieces, she turned in a wonderful performance, and the film turned a profit. Marion remained busy, one of the staples in movie houses around the country. At the end of the twenties, it was obvious that sound films were about to replace silents. Marion was nervous because she had a stutter when she became excited and worried she wouldn't make a successful transition to the new medium, but she was a true professional who had no problem with the change. Time after time, film after film, Marion turned in masterful performances. In 1930, two of her better films were Not So Dumb (1930) and The Florodora Girl (1930). By the early 1930s, Marion had lost her box office appeal and the downward slide began.

Had she been without Hearst's backing, she possibly could have been more successful. He was more of a hindrance than a help. Hearst had tried to push MGM executives to hire Marion for the role of Elizabeth Barrett in The Barretts of Wimpole Street (1934). Louis B. Mayer had other ideas and hired producer Irving Thalberg's wife, Norma Shearer instead. Hearst reacted by pulling his newspaper support for MGM without much impact. By the late 1930s Hearst was suffering financial reversals and it was Marion who bailed him out by selling $1 million of her jewelry. Without her, the Hearst Corporation might not be where it is today. Hearst's financial problems also spelled an end to her career. Although she had made the transition to sound, other stars fared better, and her roles became fewer and further between. In 1937, a 40-year-old Marion filmed her last movie, Ever Since Eve (1937). Out of films and with the intense pressures of her relationship with Hearst, Davies turned more and more to alcohol. Despite those problems, Marion was a very sharp and savvy business woman.

When Hearst died in 1951, Marion did not really know what was going on. The night before, there had been a lot of people in the house. Marion was very upset by the large crowd of family and friends. She said it was too noisy, and they were disturbing Hearst by talking so loud. She was upset and had to be sedated. When she woke, her niece, Patricia Van Cleve Lake, and her husband, Arthur Lake, told her that Hearst was dead. Upon Patricia's death, it was revealed she had been the love child of Davies and Hearst. Marion was banned from Hearst's funeral.

She later started many charities including a children's clinic that is still operating today. She was very generous and was loved by everyone who knew her. She went through a lot, even getting polio in the 1940s. Marion married for the first time at the age of 54, to Horace Brown. The union would last until she died of cancer on September 22, 1961 in Los Angeles, California. She was 64 years old.

Moe Howard, the "Boss Stooge" and brother of Stooges Curly Howard and Shemp Howard, began his acting career in 1909 by playing bit roles in silent Vitagraph films. At 17 he joined a troupe working on a showboat and also appeared in several two-reel comedy shorts. In 1922 he, brother Shemp and Larry Fine joined roughhouse vaudeville comic Ted Healy, forming the act that would become The Three Stooges. Howard toured vaudeville and appeared in films with Healy for ten years before the Stooges left to pursue a separate career. Moe appeared in more than 250 films during his 66-year career, including 190 Three Stooges shorts. Over the act's 50-year history, the Stooges went through several personnel changes; when Moe died, the act ended.

A graduate of the University of Southern California School of Law, Morris Ankrum was an attorney and an economics professor before switching careers and joining the theater. He was a veteran stage actor by the time he entered the film industry in the 1930s. His film career spanned 1933-64, during which time he played in 279 films and TV shows. Ankrum spent much time in westerns, playing everything from Indian chiefs to crooked bankers. Among his best remembered parts are his numerous villainous roles in Paramount's highly popular Hopalong Cassidy film series. The Hoppy films in which he appears include North of the Rio Grande (1937), Hills of Old Wyoming (1937), Pirates on Horseback (1941), Three Men from Texas (1940), Borderland (1937), and Hopalong Cassidy Returns (1936), among others.

He was cast in many other films throughout the '30s, '40s, and '50s, varying from small appearances to co-starring roles. He can be seen in low-budget "B" pictures and big-budget blockbusters alike. It was in the 1950s, though, that he hit his stride in the science-fiction genre, where his gruff, no-nonsense demeanor and authoritative voice perfectly fit the role of the military officer helping scientists fight off outer-space menaces, most memorably as Col. Fielding in the classic Invaders from Mars (1953).

Later in his career he did much TV work, in such series as Bonanza (1959), The Rifleman (1958), Rawhide (1959), Cheyenne (1955), Gunsmoke (1955), The 20th Century-Fox Hour (1955), Maverick (1957), Have Gun - Will Travel (1957), Sea Hunt (1958), and over a dozen more. At the end of his career from 1957-64, he had a recurring role as a judge in 22 episodes on the Perry Mason (1957) TV series.

John Laurie was a Scotsman who would play many character roles in his long career - a lot of Scotsmen to be sure - but an enthusiastic and skilled actor in nearly 120 screen roles. He was the son of a mill worker, and studied for a career in architecture which he indeed began. But with World War I he left his position to join the British army. After the war he set his sights in a different direction, training to become an actor by attending the Central School of Speech and Drama in London. His first stage play was in 1921. He honed his skills thereafter (from 1922 to 1939) principally as a Shakespearian actor at the Old Vic in London or at Stratford-upon-Avon - and later the Open Air in Regent's Park. But by 1930 he was giving time to films as well. His first movie was the Sean O'Casey play Juno and the Paycock (1929), one of Alfred Hitchcock's early sound efforts. With his craggy profile and arcing bulbous nose, and rather stern visage (though it could as quickly break into a broad smile), he was right for many a memorable character. Hitchcock made sure of that first off by calling on him again to play the dour, suspicious, and miserly farmer, John Crofter, in The 39 Steps (1935). Laurie became a good friend of another Shakespearean, Laurence Olivier, and the two, Olivier as a lead, were in Hungarian director/producer Paul Czinner's As You Like It (1936). The year 1937 was a busy one, with six films, the most important giving him one of his few leading roles. This was director/screen writer Michael Powell's intriguing The Edge of the World (1937), doubly important in that it was the film that sold Powell to producers like Alexander Korda. The film was shot on location on the remote Shetland isle of Foula, the furthest point of Britain. It dealt with the impact of the modern world on the lives of the inhabitants of an economically decaying island. Into 1938 and 1939 Laurie was involved in British experimental TV movies, that medium to be revisit later frequently. In 1939 he was taped by Alexander Korda for his classic film production of The Four Feathers (1939) in which Laurie, who could fit his Scots voice to any part, played the zealous Mahdi (the Khalifa). He is hardly to be recognized in character.

During the war Olivier was planning one of the important morale movies of World War II; his Henry V (1944), and Laurie was asked to play a memorable Capt. Jamie. Olivier also called on him for his two other Shakespeare ventures: Hamlet (1948) and Richard III (1955). As any good character actor, Laurie could play comedy as well and set a number of roles to that end into the 1940s. He and Roger Livesey were cast in Emeric Pressburger and Powell's first color film, The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp (1943). And Laurie was a jubilant John Campbell in the Powell/Pressburger wonderful and thoughtful comedy of more insular Scots life, I Know Where I'm Going! (1945) with a delightful young Wendy Hiller and worldly-wise Livesey.

Through the remainder of the decade and into the 1950s, Laurie's face showed up in a variety of films - with greater frequency as assorted Scotsmen-comedic and otherwise - and further down the credits list of supporting actors. He was familiar in the decade invasion to the UK of American co-productions, such as Disney's Treasure Island (1950) and Kidnapped (1960). And he even trod the uncertain path of a few sci-fi films - that shall remain nameless here. But he was certainly always busy - when all told - the actor's foremost blessing. Television drama and series gave him better opportunities for a veteran actor, beginning with a Henry V (1953) where he played the comic role of Pistol. Along with some BBC TV theater (more Shakespeare and some American playhouse as well) and sporadic serials, he had a stint on the long-running BBC children's reading program "Jackanory". And he is probably best remembered as the dour James Frazer on the popular "Dad's Army" series (1968-1977). But one of his last and most touching performance was simply being his good-natured self - 80 years old but still a vibrant man with his Scots burr - when he accompanied Powell back to dramatically isolated Foula for the director's short documentary Return to the Edge of the World (1978) (included with the 2003 DVD release of the 1937 movie). There was a bit of staging by Powell. But Laurie's animated face was a picture of profound humanity, as - with a shade of theatrics when appropriate - he remembered the shoot and with sincere joy renewed acquaintances with the inhabitants, as if he himself had returned once more to his native heath. A bonnie old actor indeed!

Jerome Cowan was one of Hollywood's most prolific and instantly recognizable character actors. His trademark pencil-thin mustache and slicked back hair, immaculate suits and sophisticated manner were his stock-in-trade for impersonating an assortment of rejected husbands, shifty politicians, lawyers and shady detectives. He also excelled at delivering snappy repartee and witty or barbed one-liners which were typical of the gritty Warner Brothers films of the 1930's and 40's.

Straight out of high school, Jerome began to work his way up through stock companies and burlesque, making his debut on Broadway in the 1923 comedy 'We've Got to Have Money'. On the strength of his most successful stage performance in 'Boy Meets Girl' (1935-37), he was contracted by producer Samuel Goldwyn to appear in Beloved Enemy (1936) as an Irish patriot. Several films later, he found his niche as the dapper sophisticate with attitude, in films like There's Always a Woman (1938), as Nick Shane, Torrid Zone (1940), Crime by Night (1944) - a rare leading role as private eye Sam Campbell; and Mr. Skeffington (1944), as Bette Davis's ex. He was the short-lived partner, Miles Archer, to Humphrey Bogart's Sam Spade in The Maltese Falcon (1941), a nervous informer in Riffraff (1947) and the district attorney who fails to indict Kris Kringle in Miracle on 34th Street (1947). Add to that several well-acted gangsters (Frisco Lil (1942), Fog Island (1945), Deadline for Murder (1946), to mention a few) and some unexpected comedy, particularly as Dagwood's boss George Radcliffe in the Blondie (1957) series. In the 1950's and 1960's, Cowan adapted perfectly to the medium of television and became a regular on several shows, alternating drama with comedy, from Perry Mason (1957)to The Munsters (1964). He gave a short, but poignant performance opposite Ida Lupino in 'The Sixteen-Millimeter Shrine', a 1959 episode of Rod Serling's The Twilight Zone (1959), as an unrecognizable aged former matinee idol.

John Gilbert was born into a show-business family - his father was a comic with the Pringle Stock Company. By 1915 John was an extra with Thomas H. Ince's company and a lead player by 1917. In those days he was assistant director, actor or screenwriter. He also tried his hand at directing. By 1919 he was being noticed in films and getting better roles. In 1921 he signed a three-year contract with Fox Films. His popularity continued to soar and he was turning from villain to leading man. In 1924 he signed with MGM which put him into His Hour (1924). In 1925 he appeared in the very successful The Big Parade (1925) and was, by now, as popular as Rudolph Valentino. Lillian Gish, who had a new contract with MGM, picked Gilbert to co-star with her in La Bohème (1926). With the death of Valentino, his only competition, John was on top of the world. Then came Greta Garbo, who starred with him in Love (1927), Flesh and the Devil (1926) and A Woman of Affairs (1928). The screen chemistry between these two was incredible and led to a torrid off-screen affair. The studio publicity department worked overtime to publicize the romance between the two, but when it came time to marry, John was left at the altar. His performances after that were devoid of the sparkle that he once had and he began to drink heavily. Added to that, the whole industry was moving towards sound, and while his voice was not as bad as some had thought, it did not match the image that he portrayed on the screen. Even his characters had changed, in such films as Redemption (1930) and Way for a Sailor (1930). He was no longer the person that bad things happened to, but he now was the cause of bad things which happen. MGM did little to help John adjust to the new sound medium, as studio chief Louis B. Mayer and Gilbert had a fierce and nasty confrontation over Garbo. John was still under contract to MGM for a very large salary, but the money meant little to him. His contract ran out in 1933 after he appeared in Fast Workers (1933) as a riveter.

Garbo tried to restore some of his image when she insisted that he play opposite her in Queen Christina (1933), but by then it was too late. He appeared in only one more film and died of a heart attack in January 1936.

An air of almost smug disdain would hang over his characters like a grey cloud. Yet he could end up being a ray of sunshine with that cloud. Stage or screen, comedy or drama, playing butler or Lord Commander, Englishman Cecil Parker was born in 1897 and took an avid interest in performing following his discharge from World War I military service. Making his professional stage bow in 1922, he appeared in London's West End three years later and by the advent of sound could be found on film. Not surprisingly he fitted the support mold perfectly with his raspy, well-bred tones and stuffed-shirt personality, but by the late 40s he was actually toying with post-war character stardom with top-billed roles. Such films as Captain Boycott (1947), The Weaker Sex (1948) and The Amazing Mr. Beecham (1949), Tony Draws a Horse (1950) and I Believe in You (1952) demonstrated his talent and command. However, soon he started gaining in the stomach area and losing in the hair department, so he fell away again to the secondary ranks. His assisting men of power, position and influence are probably most recognized in the droll, classic films of Sir Alec Guiness, which include The Man in the White Suit (1951), The Detective (1954), The Ladykillers (1955). Parker could be humorously beleaguered or remotely pernicious and as the years wore on, found himself more and more in film comedy than anything else, often giving lift to such dry fare as Indiscreet (1958) and the farce-like slapstick of The Pure Hell of St. Trinian's (1960) and Carry on Jack (1964). Parker died in 1971.

The daughter of Bretislav Lvovsky, a.k.a. Emil Pick (1857-1910), a minor Czech opera composer, Lovsky was born in Vienna, where she trained at the Royal Academy of Arts and Music. She was a rising stage star in Vienna and Berlin in 1929, when she met future husband Peter Lorre. Celia accompanied the Jewish Lorre when he fled Hitler's Berlin to Vienna in 1933, then to Paris, then London where they married during the filming of The Man Who Knew Too Much (1934), in which Celia had an uncredited bit as a Russian aristocrat.

Although she accompanied Lorre to Hollywood, she did not act professionally while married; but, after their divorce in 1945, she became a Hollywood character actress, appearing in over 40 films between 1947-73, and some 200 television appearances between 1952 and 1974. Due to her accent, she played mostly European-born characters, often dignified or aristocratic; occasionally Hispanics, once a Native American (!), and T'Pau, the ruler of the planet Vulcan on Amok Time (1967). She remained a close friend of her former husband until his death in 1964, aged 59. She died of natural causes in 1979, at age 82.

His full name was Joseph Alexander Caesar Herstall Vincent Calleja - but he was better known as Joseph or Joe Calleia, one of Hollywood's most recognized bad guys. But Calleia's roots and talents ran much deeper than character actor. He was Maltese, born on that barren but historically important island of Malta between Italy and Africa in the Mediterranean. The Maltese culture was a crossroads of peoples (partially Arabic) but as intrepid fisherman, navigators, and warriors-as they proved to the 16th century Turks - it was a proud one. But it could not hold Calleia, who, blessed with a good singing voice and a talent for composing, joined a harmonica band that left for the Continent in 1914. This was a Europe feeling the initial blows of World War I, and Calleia's band toured the length and breadth of it in music halls and cafes. He went to Paris and eventually came to London to perform some concert singing engagements. And from there the lure of the New World brought him to New York by 1926.

It was a natural enough transition for a talented singing performer to acting. Calleia did his first play on Broadway in an original drama suitably called "Broadway" for a long run from late 1926 early 1928. This was the first of seven plays he did into early 1935. He took a double role as actor and stage manager for the 1930-31 run of "Grand Hotel". He received good reviews (once called him a "bright light" on Broadway) and later recalled that his treading the boards were his best years as an actor. By 1931 he had yet another course to steer. Hollywood had noticed him, for his constrained intensity as an actor was matched by a singular visage - heavy-lidded eyes and dark features that gave him a disquieting and menacing appearance. Yet the sometime telltale lilt in his voice betrayed the fine singer. He had just enough accent to make him Latin or Greek or Middle Eastern - or indigenous sorts. Of course, his look meant early heavy roles as he went under contract to MGM, doing his first two films in that year of 1931.

By 1935 his looks landed him the role of Sonny Black, a mob boss with many facets, and with a characteristic clenched-teeth delivery, Calleia acquitted himself in fine fashion. Through the 1930s he was pretty much typed-cast as a mobster-with variations. Always with the lean and hungry look, he was a club owner in After the Thin Man (1936) and played a government cop in the atmospheric Algiers (1938). He even had time to help write a screenplay for the film Robin Hood of El Dorado (1936) with veteran Warner Baxter. Calleia ended the decade with roles at opposite ends of the character acting spectrum-somewhat center stage as a priest in the sometimes heavy-handed Full Confession (1939) and most memorable as Vasquez, the brought-to-justice criminal on the ill-fated DC-3 that crash lands in headhunter-infested Amazon highlands in Five Came Back (1939). This is a classic adventure drama -- remade with Rod Steiger -- with a great supporting cast that included everyone's favorite wisecracking redhead, Lucille Ball.

Into the 1940s, Calleia was cast in more ethnic roles - particularly as Hispanics of various sorts. But his roles were memorable nonetheless, as El Sordo in For Whom the Bell Tolls (1943) and Rodriguez in The Cross of Lorraine (1943). But two roles stand out. His Buldeo in the Alexander Korda classic production of The Jungle Book (1942) was a personal favorite, a double role, as trouble-making villager and the selfsame man now old and wise telling the story to the village children as narrator. The makeup is so good-and Calleia enjoyed character makeup-that most viewers are surprised when the old man reveals his identity. More mainstream Hollywood was his intriguing role as Detective Obregon in Gilda (1946). He's the good guy-right? - but he comes off so sly with his sidelong looks and the way he bates the principals - Glenn Ford and Rita Hayworth - that you just don't know. In the end he has the task, like the chorus in a Shakespearean play, to explain and summarize-perhaps not the best means of getting to the point - but that was the director's choice. His secondary parts receded a bit into the later 1940s and further into the 1950s with Calleia typed to retrace former roles but giving them new nuance just the same. He has little more than a cameo as Indian chief Cuyloga-Native American chiefs being the lot of no few elder actors in 1950s Hollywood - in the otherwise worthwhile Disney adaptation of The Light in the Forest (1958). Calleia ventured into the TV briefly about that time.

But also from that year was another of his favorite roles. Without doubt Touch of Evil (1958) is one of the strangest of Orson Welles later efforts as director/star. It borders on the uneven but is so off-the-wall that one cannot help watching and thoroughly enjoying all the antics of Welles still brilliant film techniques: shadow and light, wild camera angles, gringos playing Mexicans-Charlton Heston is a wow and stained darker than necessary-and over-the-top performances with veteran dramatis personae like Marlene Dietrich, Akim Tamiroff, Calleia, of course, and Welles himself looking like a police captain from skid row and using that funny character voice of his that pops up in his films as an aside. Calleia, with white hair, is tired old cop Sergeant Menzies, long associate of Welles' seedy character. Doing what he has always done, covering up and running interference, in the end Menzies has to face the truth about his crooked captain. Calleia enjoyed the role as going so against his usual type - showing a man harried by his past and haunted by dirty secrets - vulnerable - and very human. It's a great part.

By 1963 Calleia walked away - or, that is - sailed away from Hollywood. He returned to his native Malta for a well deserved retirement. The Maltese had followed the career of their native son, and he had made several visits during his film career. Not surprisingly his biggest fan club was right at home. He was a kind and generous man and very appreciative of his fans wherever they were - quick to read all their letters and quick to send autographed pictures. It was strictly tongue-in-cheek when he supposedly quipped: "Everyone recognizes my face, but no one knows my name." After his passing, the government of the island state of Malta issued two commemorative stamps (1997) to honor him. A bust was erected before the house in which he was born as a further memorial to this Maltese VIP who had made good.

Although there may have been "bigger" actresses in Hollywood's history, there were few larger than Hope Emerson. She notably appeared as a witness for the defense in "Adam's Rib". At 6' 2" and 230 pounds, she towered over many of her male co-stars, and her size, brusque voice and stern demeanor typed her for a career in villainous roles, such as her star turn as the sadistic prison matron in Caged (1950), which garnered her an Oscar nomination. She could, however, play lighter parts, as in Westward the Women (1951), in which she played, of all things, a mail-order bride. She also worked steadily in television and played "Mother" in the landmark series Peter Gunn (1958). In the 1950s she was the voice of Elsie the Cow in a series of TV commercials for Borden's milk. She died of liver disease in 1960.

Pola Negri was born in Lipno, Poland, and moved to Warsaw as a child. Living in poverty with her mother, a teenage Pola auditioned and was accepted to the Imperial Ballet. Due to an illness that ended her dancing career, she soon switched to the Warsaw Imperial Academy of Dramatic Arts and became an actress. By 17 she was a star on the Warsaw stage, but World War I would soon change the theater scene. Without the theater, Pola turned to films. With her new career in pictures and her stage success in "Sumurun", she went to Berlin and was teamed with German director Ernst Lubitsch. The Lubitsch-Negri combination was very successful and the roles that Pola played were earthy, exotic, strong women. One of her films, Passion (1919), was optioned and retitled "Passion" for exhibition in America. The film was such a success that by 1922 she and Lubitsch were both given contracts to work in Hollywood. While her first few films showed some success, they were overshadowed by her reported romances with such stars as Charles Chaplin and Rudolph Valentino. Forbidden Paradise (1924), made with Lubitsch, and Hotel Imperial (1927) were two of her more successful films. However, three things conspired to end her career in Hollywood: (1) The perception that her mourning for Rudolph Valentino was insincere, though Negri did describe him as the love of her life; (2) The Hays Office codes that would not allow her to show the very traits that made her a sex-siren in Europe; (3) Her thick Polish accent would not play in the sound pictures that were coming into vogue.

Pola Negri returned to Europe and eventually made films for UFA, which was under Nazi management. In 1941 she returned to America penniless. She made Hi Diddle Diddle (1943) and became an American citizen in 1951. Her next and last movie was The Moon-Spinners (1964).

She died of pneumonia in San Antonio, TX, in 1987.

Film director Douglas Sirk, whose reputation blossomed in the generation after his 1959 retirement from Hollywood filmmaking, was born Hans Detlef Sierck on April 26, 1897, in Hamburg, Germany, to a journalist. Both of his parents were Danish, and the future director would make movies in German, Danish and English. His reputation, which was breathed to life by the French nouvelle vague critiques who developed the "auteur" (author) theory of film criticism, casts him as one of the cinema's great ironists. In his American and European films, his characters perceive their lives quite differently than does the movie audience viewing "them" in a theater. Dealing with love, death and societal constraints, his films often depend on melodrama, particularly the high-suds soap operas he lensed for producer Ross Hunter in the 1950s: Magnificent Obsession (1954), All That Heaven Allows (1955) and his last American film, Imitation of Life (1959) (Sirk's favorite American film was the Western Taza, Son of Cochise (1954), which was shot in 3-D).

Sirk's path to crafting what are now considered paradigmatic dissections of conformist 1950s American society began when he was 14 years old, in his native Germany, when he discovered the theater. He was very influenced by William Shakespeare's history plays. The young Sirk also liked the cinema, particularly films starring Danish actress Asta Nielsen. Sirk credited Nielsen's films with providing him an early exposure to "dramas of swollen emotions".

After World War One he studied law at Munich University beginning in 1919, then transferred to Hamburg University, where he read philosophy and the history of art. Following in the vein of his father, he wrote for the newspapers to earn money, and also began to work in the theater. It was in his native Hamburg that he made his professional debut as a theatrical director, with 'Hermann Bossdorf''s "Bahnmeister Tod" ("Stationmaster Death") in 1922. Until forced to leave Germany with the rise of the Nazi dictatorship, Sirk developed into one of the leading theatrical directors in the Weimar Republic. He began directing shorts at UFA Studios in 1934, and made his first feature film, April, April! (1935), shooting it first in Dutch and then in German).

His cinema technique was influenced by his interest in painting, particularly the works of Daumier and Delacroix, which he later claimed left "their imprint on the visual style of my melodramas". He made eight films in all for UFA through 1937, and the German Minister of Propaganda who oversaw the film industry, Dr. Joseph Goebbels, was an admirer. However, he left Germany in 1937 after his second wife, stage actress 'Hilde Jary', had fled to Rome to escape persecution as a Jew. Sirk's first wife and the mother of his only child, Lydia Brinken, a follower of Adolf Hitler, had denounced Sirk and his relationship with Jary, necessitating their departure. Sirk never saw his son again, who died during World War Two.

Sirk and Jary eventually made it to the US by 1941, and he joined the community of émigré/refugee film people working in Hollywood. His first directorial stint in America was Hitler's Madman (1943), but it is for his work at Universal International in the 1950s for which he is primarily known. For producer Ross Hunter he made nine films, many of which involved the collaboration of Rock Hudson, cinematographer Russell Metty, screenwriter George Zuckerman and art director Alexander Golitzen.

"I was, and to a large extent still am, too much of a loner," he said in his retirement, and his partnership with Universal, Hollywood and American society at large was a love-hate relationship. He and his wife did not approve of the excesses of the Hollywood life style, such as nude women splashing around in producer Albert Zugsmith's pool during a party (he shot two films for Zugsmith). Even though he had his biggest success with the remake of "Imitation of Life" (winner of the Laurel Award given out by movie exhibitors for the most successful picture of 1959), he and his wife left the US for Switzerland after the movie wrapped. The move was partly due to poor health, but by 1959 he had had enough of America, which he never felt at home in. The couple lived in Lugano, Switzerland until his death in 1987.

When he retired from American filmmaking (he was to make only one more feature length film, in German, in 1963), his reputation was that of a second- or third-tier director who turned out glossy Hollywood soap operas, a sort of second-rate Vincente Minnelli without the saving grace of Minelli's undeniable genius for musicals. In the nearly half-century since, Sirk has become one of the most revered of Hollywood's auteurs.

Jean-Luc Godard got the ball rolling in the April 1959 issue of "Cahiers du cinéma", in which he wrote a love letter to Sirk about his adaptation of the 'Erich Maria Remarque' novel A Time to Love and a Time to Die (1958). But the true genesis of the Sirk cult was another "Cahiers" article, "L'aveugle et le Miroir ou l'impossible cinema de Douglas Sirk" ("The Blind Man and the Mirror or The Impossible Cinema of Douglas Sirk"), which was in the April 1967 issue. That issue of "Cahiers" also featured an extended interview with Sirk and a "biofilmographie". More converts came to the Sirk cult via Andrew Sarris, who popularized the "auteur" concept in his seminal 1968 work, " The American Cinema," Yb Gucci Gae ranked Sirk on "The Far Side of Paradise". Sarris faintly praised Sirk's handling of the soap elements of his Universal oeuvre by his not shirking from going for broke and stirring all the improbable elements of melodrama into a heady witches' brew; he also complemented his distinctive visual style. However, the major work that transformed Sirk's reputation was rooted in the intelligence and thoughtfulness of the man himself: Jon Halliday's 1971 book-long interview, "Conversations with Sirk", which made his critical reputation in the English-speaking world. The Sirk of Halliday's book is an intellectual with a thorough grasp of filmmaking. The book is must-reading for any student or practitioner of the cinema. The 1972 Edinburgh Film Festival featured a 20-film retrospective of Sirk, and in 1974, the University of Connecticut Film Society put on a complete retrospective of Sirk's American films. The rise of 'Rainer Werner Fassbinder' as the best and the brightest of the post-war German directors also burnished Sirk's reputation, as Fassbinder was an unabashed fan of his films. Fassbinder's films clearly were indebted to Sirk's melodrama, his mise-en-scene, and his irony (Fassbinder visited Sirk at his Swiss home, and the two became friends. Sirk later, with Fassbinder's encouragement, taught at the Munich film school).

Society is an omnipresent character in Sirk's films, as important as the characters played by his actors, such as Jane Wyman and Rock Hudson. Sirk's characters are buffeted by forces beyond their control, as their lives are delineated by cultural mores that constrain their behavior and their moral choices. In addition to this fatalism, Sirk's characters must contend with repression. It is the latter trope that recruits the most converts to the Sirk cult, as the forces of repression are "signalled" through the imagery of a Sirk film, which typically was crafted in collaboration with the Oscar-winning lighting cameraman Russell Metty when Sirk worked for Hunter at Universal. The plots of the movies that are at the core of the Sirk cult are rooted in problems that would be insurmountable but for the miracles provided by the deus ex machina known as the Hollywood Happy Ending.

While Sirk was glad that his reputation had waxed since his retirement and that he was now respected, he was uncomfortable with some of the criticisms of his work. He particularly was irritated by cineastes' labeling him an unequivocal critic of the American Way and of the social conformity of 1950s America. Many critics seemed to see Sirk as American cinema's equivalent to Bertolt Brecht, that is, a fierce critic of the bourgeoisie. Sirk, like many of his generation in Germany, had been influenced by Brecht (he had directed a production of Brecht/Kurt Weill's Three Penny Opera (1963) in Germany), but he did not feel that he was a brother-in-arms of the unabashed communist Brecht, as many of his critics would have it. Like one of his own characters, Sirk was now subjected to societal forced outside his control, quite unlike the worlds he had controlled as a director in Germany and the United States.

Ironically for the great ironist, when Douglas Sirk died on January 14, 1987, his reputation was not yet in full flower. He continues to exert his influence on a new generation of filmmakers all over the world.

Moviegoers can be forgiven if they thought that stocky, jaunty Rhys Williams was a jovial Irishman, as he often played that type of character, but his role as a Welsh miner in John Ford's classic How Green Was My Valley (1941) (his film debut) was much closer to home for him, as he was born and raised in Wales. In fact, he served as a technical advisor and Welsh language consultant on the film. He began his career on the British stage, and traveled the country as a member of various Shakespearean stock companies, even joining the famed Globe Theater company for a spell. Once he began his career in Hollywood, though, he became one of the busiest supporting actors in the business. He appeared in everything from action pictures to mysteries to westerns to musicals. One of his few villainous roles was as a weaselly American reporter in Tokyo on the payroll of the Japanese government just prior to World War II in Blood on the Sun (1945). In addition to his prolific film work, he did much television over the years, appearing in everything from Maverick (1957) to Mission: Impossible (1966). He died in Santa Monica, California, in 1969, shortly before his last film, Skullduggery (1970), was released.

The delightful twinkle in her eye and that elderly mischievous look coming from the tiniest of frames were unmistakable traits in 1970s and 1980s lightweight films. One of a slew of popular elderly ladies getting their "fifteen minutes" at the time, character actress Paula Trueman was born in 1897 in New York City. She was the daughter of Joseph and Eva (Cohn) Trueman and was educated at Hunter College before preparing for the stage on a fellowship at the Neighborhood Playhouse.

Long trained in dance, Paula made her first stage appearance as a musical performer at the Hippodrome in a production of "The Thunderbird" in 1922. From there she appeared in revues, particularly the Grand Street Follies of 1924--staying with that annual show until 1929. Dramatic roles were not beyond her as she made her straight-acting debut in "The Little Clay Cart" in December of 1924. For the next four decades she was a theater presence to be reckoned with. Over the years she delighted audiences in such plays as "The Dybbuk (1927), "A Midsummer Night's Dream (as Puck) (1932), "The Merchant of Venice" (1932), "You Can't Take It With You" (1936), "Gentlemen Prefer Blondes" (1949), "The Solid Gold Cadillac" (1954), "Wonderful Town" (1963), "The Music Man" (1965) and "Catsplay (1977).

She had an uncredited role in the Ben Hecht/Charles MacArthur crime feature Crime Without Passion (1934), but it did not lead to any other offers. Other than an unbilled part in One Foot in Heaven (1941), she did not appear again until the musical film version of Paint Your Wagon (1969) with Clint Eastwood. She then got on a roll and appeared as a number of feisty, dotty, careworn grannies. She co-starred in the cult movie Homebodies (1974) and Eastwood handed her a prime featured part in his western The Outlaw Josey Wales (1976). For the next decade she continued to spring up in a number of comedies, albeit bit parts, including Woody Allen's Annie Hall (1977) and Zelig (1983). This adorable little bundle of joy made her last film appearances with Sweet Lorraine (1987) and Moonstruck (1987). She died of natural causes in her beloved New York in 1994, aged 96.

A mining engineer's daughter, blond, blue-eyed Betty Compson began in show business playing the violin in a Salt Lake City vaudeville establishment for $15 a week. Following that, she went on tour, accompanied by her mother, with an act called 'The Vagabond Violinist'. Aged eighteen, she appeared on the Alexander Pantages Theatre Circuit, again doing her violin solo vaudeville routine, and was spotted there by comedy producer Al Christie. Christie quickly changed her stage name from Eleanor to Betty. For the next few years, she turned out a steady stream of one-reel and two-reel slapstick comedies, frequently paired with Roscoe 'Fatty' Arbuckle.

In 1919, Betty was signed by writer-director George Loane Tucker to co-star opposite Lon Chaney as Rose in The Miracle Man (1919). The film was a huge critical and financial success and established Betty Compson as a major star at Paramount (under contract from 1921 to 1925). One of the more highly paid performers of the silent screen, her weekly earnings exceeded $5000 a week at the peak of her career. She came to own a fleet of luxury limousines and was able to move from a bungalow in the hills overlooking Hollywood to an expensive mansion on Hollywood Boulevard. From 1921, Betty also owned her own production company. She went on to make several films in England between 1923 and 1924 for the director Graham Cutts.

During the late 1920's, Betty appeared in a variety of dramatic and comedic roles. She received good reviews acting opposite George Bancroft as a waterfront prostitute in The Docks of New York (1928), and was even nominated for an Academy Award for her portrayal of a carnival girl in The Barker (1928). She gave a touching performance in The Great Gabbo (1929), directed by her then husband James Cruze, as the assistant of a demented ventriloquist (Erich von Stroheim), with whom she is unhappily in love. That same year, she appeared in RKO's first sound film, Street Girl (1929), and was briefly under contract to that studio, cast in so-called 'women's pictures' such as The Lady Refuses (1931) and Three Who Loved (1931).

The stature of her roles began to diminish from the mid 1930s, though she continued to act in character parts until 1948.

Betty's personal fortunes also declined. This came about primarily as a result of her marital contract to the alcoholic Cruze, whom she had divorced in 1929. For several years, Cruze had failed to pay his income tax and Betty (linked financially to Cruze) ended up being sued by the federal government to the tune of $150,000. This forced her to sell her Hollywood villa, her cars and her antiques.

In later years, Betty Compson developed her own cosmetics label and ran a business in California producing personalized ashtrays for the hospitality industry.

Josef Goebbels, the man who almost single-handedly developed the field of propaganda into an art form, would, for a day, be the leader of World War II Germany. Goebbels was born in the German Rhineland to strict Catholic parents. He was short, standing at 5'5", of small stature and thin build, and had a sharp, prominent nose and an oily, sallow complexion. He was rejected by the German army in World War I on the basis of being a cripple, specifically, he had a club foot for which he wore a brace, contracted after a bout of osteomyelitis. After Germany was defeated, Goebbels joined the National Socialist Workers Party, more infamously known as the Nazi party, which opposed the democratic Weimar Republic that had been set up to govern Germany. Because of his impressive oratorical skills and uncanny ability to slant arguments to his view, Goebbels was considered an ideal leader in the Nazi party. It was there that he met Hitler in 1925. Though they both shared a hatred of Jews, Goebbels, a dedicated socialist, initially tried to expel the relatively capitalistic Hitler, who he saw as simply an opportunist. He would change his tune, however, when Hitler rose in rank to become leader. Hitler rewarded Goebbels with a post as Nazi district leader of Berlin, where he would wage year-round political campaigns that eventually drained the organization of virtually all of its funds. He met and married divorcée Magda Quandt around this time. Though their membership grew, the Nazis didn't manage to attract a sizable enough number of voters - especially in Berlin - to attain any kind of legitimate political power, due to both the rebounding German economy and a distrust of the gang of street thugs within the Nazi party called the Sturm Abteilung (SA). However, after the US stock market crashed in 1929, the European economies took a tremendous hit, and the resulting worldwide economic depression hit Germany especially hard. The dire economic straits of many Germans were tailor-made for a demagogue like Hitler, and, slowly, he began to take power; first as Chancellor in 1933, then as Führer in 1934. Goebbels was named minister of entertainment and propaganda, a position that gave him have sole discretion as to what books, magazines, films, radios, newspapers, etc., could print, say, or show. Knowing the media power where the influencing of people was concerned, he searched for a director to place as the head of UFA, Germany's leading film studio. In a famous meeting, he offered the position to respected German director Fritz Lang, who tried to excuse himself by saying that he had Jewish grandparents, to which Goebbels curtly replied, "We will decide who is Jewish!" Lang promptly fled the country and Goebbels settled on a rising female director, Leni Riefenstahl, as the "official" Nazi filmmaker. She directed two documentaries on the party's Nuremburg rallies of 1932 and 1933. The first was disowned by Riefenstahl because of the little time she had to prepare and the fact that it was never shown publicly because the film featured Ernst Röhm, leader of the SA, who along with many SA leaders, was murdered by the Nazi high command when they moved against the SA, just after the film was completed. Their second attempt, on which Goebbels assisted Riefenstahl extensively, is perhaps the most famous propaganda film ever made: Triumph of the Will (1935). It took almost a year to prepare from the miles upon miles of footage shot. It was a success worldwide, but was not particularly popular in Germany at the time. Goebbels then commissioned Riefenstahl to shoot the 1936 Berlin Olympics, which the Nazi leadership assumed would be dominated by German athletes. The Germans did win the total medal counts, but African-American sprinter Jesse Owens shattered the myth of Aryan dominance by winning gold medals in four different events - more than any other competitor - and was idolized by the German crowds.

After World War II broke out, Goebbels was responsible for creating a massive propaganda body of work by the German government, much of which still remains recorded. He was known to use almost anything for propaganda purposes, such as posters from French and German movies with Jewish stars as examples of the "typical Jew." Even when Germany was crumbling in 1945 and the Allies demanded unconditional surrender, Goebbels used that as a motivational tool to demonstrate that every German needed to fight or face destruction.

As Allied forces began to advance toward Germany, a paranoid and rapidly deteriorating Hitler had many of his assistants executed or imprisoned, but Goebbels was given the title of "Defender of Berlin." Hitler committed suicide by gunshot on April 30, leaving Goebbels as the next in command to take over the faltering government, which, by then, controlled only a small part of Berlin. As both Soviet forces on one side and American and British forces on the other closed in on the capital, Goebbels was well aware of the fate he would meet if he were captured alive. On May 1, 1945, he reluctantly endorsed the plan his wife had conjured, which she had communicated to Albert Speer, and permitted her to drug their six children with morphine and proceed to poison them to death through the administration of a cyanide capsule. Later that day, after requesting a moment of privacy with his wife from the onlooking SS soldiers, he shot her in head, as they had also planned, and then took his own life within seconds. Soviet troops, who Goebbels had always boasted would never get to Berlin, found him and his wife partially burnt and unburied outside the Fuhrerbunker. He was survived only by a stepson from Magda's first marriage.

Legendary for his preening, prancing, delightfully playful villain Captain Hook on the award-winning stage (as well as TV) opposite America's musical treasure Mary Martin, beloved musical star Cyril Ritchard had a vast career that would last six decades, but "Peter Pan" would become his prime legacy. Born in Australia just before the turn of the century, he was educated at St. Aloysius College and Sydney University wherein he slyly sidestepped a parental-guided career in medicine for entertainment, participating in numerous college productions that quickly got him "hooked." He began professionally in the chorus line of The Royal Comic Opera Company and quickly progressed to juvenile leads. A subsequent pairing with the already-established theatre actress Madge Elliott in 1918 proved successful, and the musical twosome eventually married in 1935. Together they would go on to become known as "The Musical Lunts" by their acting peers performing in scores of plays and revues together. Ritchard specialized in playing slick, dandified villains in musical comedy and developed a potent reputation of being a man of many talents. Not only directing and staging Broadway's finest, he became a renown performer of various operas and led many productions as such. Shortly before his wife's death of bone cancer in 1955, Ritchard ventured into TV infamy by repeating his Tony and Donaldson award-winning portrayal of Hook in Peter Pan (1955). He continued to earn acclaim and/or honors with such classic stage productions as "Visit to a Small Planet" (Tony-nominated), "The Pleasure of His Company" (Drama League award, Tony-nominated), "The Roar of the Greasepaint...the Smell of the Crowd" (Tony-nominated), "A Midsummer Night's Dream" and "Sugar," the musical version of the classic Billy Wilder film Some Like It Hot (1959) in which Ritchard played the Joe E. Brown role. Lesser regarded when it comes to film, he performed in the early Hitchcock classic Blackmail (1929) and made his last movie with the musical Half a Sixpence (1967) with Tommy Steele. While performing as the Narrator in a stage production of "Side by Side by Sondheim" in November 1977, Ritchard suffered a heart attack and died one month later. A one-of-a-kind talent, his nefarious, narcissistic humor was a career trademark that culminated in the role of a lifetime -- one that will certainly be enjoyed by children young and old for eons to come.

Henry Kendall, born in London on 28 May 1897 was an English stage and film actor, theatre director and an immaculately stylish revue artiste.

Kendall was educated at the City of London School, and made his first appearance on the stage in September 1914 at the Lyceum Theatre, playing a 'super' in Tommy Atkins. He had a distinguished war career, serving as a Captain in the Royal Air Force from 1916 to 1919, and on demobilisation was awarded the Air Force Cross.

In addition to a busy career as an actor and entertainer, he was frequently engaged as a director, notably staging the first productions of See How They Run (Peterborough Rep, tour and Q Theatre 1944; Comedy Theatre 1945), and The Shop at Sly Corner (St Martin's Theatre 1945).

He also directed numerous plays at the Embassy Theatre and Q Theatre.