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Nydia Eileen Westman (February 19, 1902 – May 23, 1970) was an American actress and singer of stage, screen and television.
Westman's parents, Theodore and Lily (Wren) Westman were active in vaudeville in her native New York City. In addition to their working together on stage, her mother was a writer and her father was a composer. She attended the Professional Children's School.
Her sisters, Lolita and Neville were actresses, and her brother, Theodore (d. November 20, 1927), was an actor and playwright.
Westman's career ranged from episodic appearances on TV series such as That Girl and Dragnet and uncredited bit roles in movies to appearances in groundbreaking films (such as Craig's Wife, which starred Rosalind Russell, and the first film version of Little Women.
Westman's screen debut came in Strange Justice (1922). She appeared in 31 films in the 1930s.
She appeared as the housekeeper Mrs. Featherstone in the 1962–1963 ABC series, Going My Way, which starred Gene Kelly and Leo G. Carroll as Roman Catholic priests in New York City.
Westman's first Broadway play was Pigs (1924); her last was Midgie Purvis (1961).
She broke ground on stage, debuting the role of Nell off-Broadway in Samuel Beckett's Endgame, for which she won one of the first Obie awards.
Westman was married to Robert Sparks, a producer, from 1930 until 1937; they had a daughter, actress Kate Williamson, born on September 19, 1931.
Westman died of cancer at the age of sixty-eight in Burbank, California.
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Jed Prouty (April 6, 1879 – May 10, 1956) was an American film actor. Originally from Boston, Massachusetts, Prouty was a vaudeville performer before becoming a film actor. Mostly appearing in comedies, he occasionally performed a serious character role, for instance a small part as an oily publicist in A Star is Born (1937).
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Wade Boteler (October 3, 1888 – May 7, 1943) was an American film actor. He appeared in more than 430 films between 1919 and 1943. He was born in Santa Ana, California, and died in Hollywood, California from a heart attack.
On Broadway, Boteler appeared in the play The Silent Voice (1914).
Walter Andrew Brennan (July 25, 1894 – September 21, 1974) was an American actor and singer. He won the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his performances in Come and Get It (1936), Kentucky (1938), and The Westerner (1940), making him one of only three male actors to win three Academy Awards. Brennan was also nominated for his performance in Sergeant York (1941). Other noteworthy performances were in To Have and Have Not (1944), My Darling Clementine (1946), Red River (1948), and Rio Bravo (1959).
Description above from the Wikipedia article Walter Brennan, licensed under CC-BY-SA, full list of contributors on Wikipedia.
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Tom London (August 24, 1889 – December 5, 1963) was an American veteran actor who played frequently in B-Westerns. According to The Guinness Book of Movie Records, London is credited with appearing in the most films in the history of Hollywood, this according to the 2001 book Film Facts, where it states that the performer who played in the most films was "Tom London, who made his first of over 2000 appearances in The Great Train Robbery, 1903.
Born Leonard Clapham in Louisville, Kentucky, he got his start in movies as a props man in Chicago, Illinois. His debut was in 1915 in the Western Lone Larry, performing under his own name. In 1925, after having appeared in many silent films, he changed his name to Tom London, and used that name for the rest of his career. The first film in which he was billed under his new name was Winds of Chance, a World War I film, in which he played "Sgt. Rock". London was a trick rider and roper, and used his trick skills in scores of Westerns. In the silent film era he often played villainous roles, while in later years he often appeared as the sidekick to Western stars like Sunset Carson in several films.
One of the busiest character actors, he appeared in over 600 films. London made many guest appearances in television shows through the 1950s, such as The Range Rider, with Jock Mahoney and Dick Jones. He also played Sam, the attendant of Helen Ramirez (Katy Jurado) in High Noon. His last movie was Underworld U.S.A. in 1961, and his final roles on TV were in Lawman and The Dakotas.
London died at his home in North Hollywood at age 81 and was interred in the Forest Lawn Memorial Park Cemetery in Glendale, California.