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Vivien Oakland (born Vivian Anderson, May 20, 1895 – August 1, 1958), was an American actress best known for her work in comedies in Hollywood in the 1920s and 1930s, most notably with the Hal Roach Studios. Oakland appeared in 142 films between 1915 and 1951.
She supported Laurel and Hardy on several occasions, and sometimes played the wife of Edgar Kennedy and Leon Errol in their series of short films. She played mostly bit roles in feature films in the 1940s before making her last film (an Errol comedy) in 1951.
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Charlie Hall (19 August 1899 – 7 December 1959) was an English film actor. He is best known as the "Little Nemesis" of Laurel and Hardy and appeared in nearly 50 films with them, so that Hall was the most frequent supporting actor of their films.
Hall was born in Ward End, Birmingham, Warwickshire, and learned carpentry as a trade, but as a teenager, he became a member of the Fred Karno troupe of stage comedians. In his late teens, he visited his sister in New York and stayed there, finding employment as a stagehand. While working behind the scenes, he met the comic actor Bobby Dunn and they became friends; Dunn convinced Hall to take a stab again at acting, which he did. By the mid-1920s, Hall was working for Hal Roach. Stan Laurel, one of Roach's comedy stars, was also a graduate of the Karno troupe.
As an actor, Hall worked with such comedians as Buster Keaton and Charley Chase, but is best remembered as a comic foil for Laurel and Hardy. He appeared in nearly 50 of their films, sometimes in bit parts, but often as a mean landlord or opponent in many of their memorable tit-for-tat sequences. Unlike the usual villains in Laurel and Hardy films, who were big and burly, Charlie Hall (billed as "Charley" Hall in the Roach comedies) was of short stature, standing 5 ft 5 in tall. His height and slight English accent allowed him to be convincingly cast as a college student, despite being 40 years old, in Laurel and Hardy's A Chump at Oxford.
Hall almost never played starring roles; the exception was in 1941, when he was teamed with character comedian Frank Faylen by Monogram Pictures. Hall continued to play bits and supporting roles in short subjects and features through the 1940s and 1950s, occasionally on TV, appearing very briefly in Charlie Chaplin's final American film, Limelight (1952).
In 1956 he played a small but important part in the TV show Cheyenne, season 1, episode 11, "Quicksand", starring Clint Walker, with Dennis Hopper, John Alderson, Wright King and Peggy Webber. His last role was in a Joe McDoakes short film starring George O'Hanlon, So You Want to Play the Piano, in 1956.
Hall died in North Hollywood, California, on 7 December 1959. A J D Wetherspoon's public house in Erdington, is named The Charlie Hall as a tribute to him.
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Rolfe Sedan (January 20, 1896 – September 15, 1982) was an American character actor, best known for appearing in bit parts, often uncredited, usually portraying clerks, train conductors, postmen, cooks, waiters etc. He began his career in show business as a nightclub and vaudeville performer and began acting in East Coast theatre. Sedan debuted on Broadway in 1916 and appeared in his first motion picture for Metro Pictures Corporation in 1921.
He became a prolific character actor and is probably best remembered by movie buffs as the hotel manager in Ninotchka (1939) starring Greta Garbo. Around the same time, he appeared in an uncredited role as the Emerald City's Balloon Ascensionist in The Wizard of Oz (1939). He returned to Broadway, performing in several different shows during the first half of the 1940s and in the 1950s began a sequence of guest roles in television series such as The Jack Benny Show. His most frequent TV work came from recurring roles as put-upon mail carriers (25 episodes as Mr. Beasley on The George Burns and Gracie Allen Show; 4 episodes as Mr. Briggs on The Addams Family). He was also seen as the train conductor in the film Young Frankenstein (1974). Rolfe Sedan remained active throughout a career that spanned more than six decades.