Nance O'Neil, born Gertrude Lamson, was an American stage and screen actress. When she decided to become an actress, her religious father, George Lamson, an auctioneer, denounced his daughter in church for going on the stage and asked the congregation to pray for her. O'Neil's first performance in a professional production was in the role of a nun in Sarah at the Alcazar Theatre in San Francisco on October 16, 1893. At the height of her career, she was promoted on theatre bills and in period trade publications and newspapers as the "American Sarah Bernhardt".
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Florence Lake (born Florence Silverlake, November 27, 1904 – April 11, 1980) was an American actress best known as the leading lady in most of the Edgar Kennedy comedy shorts.
Florence was petite, with a high-pitched speaking voice. She perfected a comical singsong delivery that established her in "dumb" roles. She personified flightiness in the Kennedy shorts, as the scatterbrained Mrs. Kennedy. After the series ended upon Kennedy's death in 1948, she continued to play character roles in films and television. Her best-known TV role was Jenny, the Claverton telephone operator in Lassie. Lake played the role for the entire ten year "farm seasons" of the show (1954–1964), thus becoming the Lassie player with the longest tour of duty on the series.
She played the role of Mama Angel in a 1957 episode of the The Lone Ranger TV series entitled "The Angel and the Outlaw". She also appeared in the first color episode of the TV series Superman in 1957 as a cave woman.
In her later years, Lake appeared as Elvira Norton on an episode of Dragnet entitled "Frauds". She also played a blind date for the character Lou Grant on The Mary Tyler Moore Show episode, "Lou's First Date". Her last roles were in the TV series Emergency! and Baretta in 1976.
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Lionel Belmore (12 May 1867, Wimbledon, Surrey, England - 30 January 1953, Woodland Hills, Los Angeles, California) was an English character actor and director on stage for more than a quarter of a century.
Onstage, Belmore appeared with Wilson Barrett, Sir Henry Irving, William Faversham, Lily Langtry, and other famous actors. He entered in films from 1911. In total, he had some 200 titles to his film credit. He was notable as the huffy-puffy Herr Vogel the Burgomaster in Frankenstein (1931). Belmore played bit parts in several 1930s film classics. Unusually, he was a director before he became a prolific actor. He directed from 1914 to 1920, only acting in a limited number of films, until concentrating as an actor from then on.
He was the brother of the actress Daisy Belmore (Mrs. Samuel Waxman) (1874-1954) and the actor Paul Belmore. He was married to stage actress Emmeline Florence Carder and they had two daughters. Their daughter Violet had decided to follow in her father's footsteps and go into acting.
Description above from the Wikipedia article Lionel Belmore, licensed under CC-BY-SA, full list of contributors on Wikipedia.
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Wallace Archibald MacDonald (5 May 1891, Mulgrave, Nova Scotia, Canada - 30 October 1978, Santa Barbara, California) was a Canadian silent film actor, also a film producer.
MacDonald started as a messenger boy with the Dominion Steel Company in Sydney, Nova Scotia. He later worked up to teller with the Royal Bank in Sydney before the bank transferred him to Vancouver, British Columbia. From there, he moved to California, where he acted on the stage before making inroads into Hollywood.
MacDonald initially began as an actor in films in 1914 and appeared in almost 120 motion pictures between then and 1932. He had notable roles in such films as Youth's Endearing Charm in 1916 working with Mary Miles Minter and Harry von Meter.
Late in World War I he returned briefly to Nova Scotia to enlist in the 10th Canadian Siege Battery where he assisted in recruiting for the Canadian Army. With the advent of sound, MacDonald's acting career diminished, and most of his roles between 1927 and 1932 went uncredited. He retired from acting in 1932 to concentrate on script writing. However, by 1937 he had recognized the potential of film production. It is in his role of producer that MacDonald is now probably best remembered. He produced well over 100 films between 1937 and 1959.
He died in 1978. Sometimes he is mistaken as a brother of actor Francis McDonald. Though both resembled one another and were born in 1891, they were born three months apart and spelled their surnames differently.
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Stan Laurel (born Arthur Stanley Jefferson, 16 June 1890 – 23 February 1965) was an English comic actor, writer, and film director who was part of the comedy duo Laurel and Hardy. He appeared with his comedy partner Oliver Hardy in 107 short films, feature films, and cameo roles.
Laurel began his career in music hall, where he developed a number of his standard comic devices, including the bowler hat, the deep comic gravity, and the nonsensical understatement. His performances polished his skills at pantomime and music hall sketches. He was a member of "Fred Karno's Army", where he was Charlie Chaplin's understudy. He and Chaplin arrived in the United States on the same ship from the United Kingdom with the Karno troupe.
Laurel began his film career in 1917 and made his final appearance in 1951. From 1928 onwards he appeared exclusively with Hardy, and Laurel officially retired from the screen following his comedy partner's death in 1957.
In 1961 Laurel was given a Lifetime Achievement Academy Award for his pioneering work in comedy, and he has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 7021 Hollywood Blvd.
In 2009, a bronze statue of the Laurel and Hardy duo was unveiled in Laurel's hometown of Ulverston, England.
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Oliver Norvell Hardy (born Norvell Hardy, January 18, 1892 – August 7, 1957) was an American comic actor and one half of Laurel and Hardy, the double act that began in the era of silent films and lasted from 1927 to 1951. He appeared with his comedy partner Stan Laurel in 107 short films, feature films, and cameo roles. He was credited with his first film, Outwitting Dad, in 1914. In some of his early works, he was billed as "Babe Hardy".
Oliver Hardy died from cerebral thrombosis on August 7, 1957, at age 65. His star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame is located at 1500 Vine Street, Hollywood, California.