Esther Ralston (September 17th, 1902- January 14th, 1994) was an American silent film star.
She began her career as a child actress in a family vaudeville act named "The Ralston Family with Baby Esther, America's Youngest Juliet". She then went on to appear in a few small silent film roles, including one alongside her brother in the 1920 film adaptation of Huckleberry Finn. Ralston gained attention as Mrs. Darling in the 1924 film adaptation of Peter Pan.
Her most well known sound picture was To the Last Man in 1933.
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Clifton Avon "Cliff" Edwards (June 14, 1895 – July 17, 1971), nicknamed "Ukulele Ike", was an American musician, singer, actor and voice actor, who enjoyed considerable popularity in the 1920s and early 1930s, specializing in jazzy renditions of pop standards and novelty tunes. He had a number-one hit with "Singin' in the Rain" in 1929. He also did voices for animated cartoons later in his career, and is best known as the voice of Jiminy Cricket in Walt Disney's Pinocchio (1940) and Fun and Fancy Free (1947). His rendition of "When You Wish Upon a Star" in Pinocchio is probably his most familiar recorded legacy.
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Purnell Pratt (October 20, 1885 – July 25, 1941) was an American film actor. He appeared in 114 films between 1914 and 1941. He was born in Bethel, Illinois and died in Hollywood, California.
Hedda Hopper (May 2, 1885 – February 1, 1966) was an American actress and gossip columnist, notorious for feuding with her arch-rival Louella Parsons. She had been a moderately successful actress of stage and screen for years before being offered the chance to write the column Hedda Hopper's Hollywood for the Los Angeles Times in 1938. At the height of her power in the 1940s she commanded a 35 million strong readership. She was well known for her political conservatism, and during the McCarthy era she named suspected communists. Hopper continued to write gossip until the end, her work appearing in many magazines and later on radio.
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Emma Dunn (26 February 1875 – 14 December 1966) was an English character actress on the stage and in motion pictures.
Emma Dunn appeared onstage in her early teens, graduating to the London stage for several years and later became a noted Broadway actress. She appeared in the first American production of Ibsen's Peer Gynt (1906) with Richard Mansfield as Peer. She played Peer's mother, Ase, even though she was, in real life, 20 years younger than Mansfield. She appeared in three productions for theatre impresario David Belasco: The Warrens of Virginia (1907), The Easiest Way (1909) and The Governor's Lady (1912). In The Easiest Way, Dunn portrayed Annie, who was black, in blackface. In 1913 Dunn appeared in vaudeville.
Dunn made her first film in 1914, a silent film of her 1910 stage success, Mother, directed by Maurice Tourneur. This was Tourneur's first American film. Dunn's second film was 1920's Old Lady 31, reprising the role she played in the 1916 Broadway play of the same name. One more silent film followed in 1924, Pied Piper Malone, before she made her talkie debut in Side Street, co-starring the Moore brothers, Matt, Owen and Tom as her sons.
Dunn wrote two books on elocution and speech: Thought Quality in the Voice (1933) and You Can Do It (1947).
Emma Dunn was born 26 February 1875, in Birkenhead, England, although she sometimes gave her year of birth as 1883.
Dunn married Harry Beresford, an actor who was then known professionally as Harry J. Morgan, in Chicago on 4 October 1897. They divorced on 10 February 1909, in New York City. She was awarded sole custody of their young daughter, Dorothy. On 19 May 1909, Dunn married John W. Stokes (John W. S. Sullivan), an actor, playwright and theatrical manager. They subsequently adopted a second daughter, Helen. The couple divorced sometime between 1923 and Stokes' death in 1931.
After suffering a heart attack some months before, Dunn died 14 December 1966, in Los Angeles, California, aged 91.
Stepin Fetchit (1902–1985) was an American comedian and actor.
His Fetchit persona parlayed into a successful film career, eventually becoming the first black actor to become a millionaire. He was also the first black actor to receive screen credit.
Stepin Fetchit typical film persona and stage name have long been controversial, and seen as illustrative of negative stereotypes of Negroes. However, a newer interpretation of his film persona contends he was ultimately subversive of the status quo.
John Larkin was born in 1879 in Norfolk, Virginia, USA. He was a Negro actor, known for Hearts Divided (1936), The Wet Parade (1932) and Sporting Blood (1931). He died on March 18, 1936 in Los Angeles, California, USA.
Charles R. Moore (April 23, 1893, Chicago, Illinois - July 20, 1947, Los Angeles, California) was an African-American actor who appeared in over 100 films in his acting career, and was sometimes credited as Charles Moore or Charlie Moore Moore played small parts such as servants, bootblacks, elevator operators, menial laborers, and, especially, railroad porters and Red Caps. Film buffs may remember him in Meet John Doe where he played the City Hall janitor trying to smoke a cigar while washing the floor on the Christmas Eve that John Doe has threatened to jump off the building. Moore was part of Preston Sturges' unofficial "stock company" of character actors, appearing in six of Sturges' films. In Sullivan's Travels, Moore had a memorable moment as the chef who is propelled headfirst through the roof of the land yacht during the chase scene. Moore was also a dancer, but that skill was not often called for in his film appearances.