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Ralph Rexford Bellamy (June 17, 1904 – November 29, 1991) was an American actor whose career spanned 62 years on stage, screen and television. During his career, he played leading roles as well as supporting roles, garnering acclaim and awards, including an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actor for The Awful Truth (1937).
His film career began with The Secret Six (1931) starring Wallace Beery and featuring Jean Harlow and Clark Gable. By the end of 1933, he had already appeared in 22 movies, most notably Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm (1932) and the second lead in the action film Picture Snatcher with James Cagney (1933). He played in seven more films in 1934 alone, including Woman in the Dark, based on a Dashiell Hammett story, in which Bellamy played the lead, second-billed under Fay Wray. Bellamy kept up the pace through the decade, receiving a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor for his role in The Awful Truth (1937) with Irene Dunne and Cary Grant, and played a similar part, that of a naive boyfriend competing with the sophisticated Grant character, in His Girl Friday (1940). He portrayed detective Ellery Queen in a few films during the 1940s, but as his film career did not progress, he returned to the stage, where he continued to perform throughout the 1950s. Bellamy appeared in other movies during this time, including Dance, Girl, Dance (1940) with Maureen O'Hara and Lucille Ball, and the horror classic The Wolf Man (1941) with Lon Chaney, Jr. and Evelyn Ankers. He also appeared in The Ghost of Frankenstein in 1942 with Chaney and Bela Lugosi.
Bellamy appeared in numerous television series. In 1949, Bellamy starred in the television noir private eye series Man Against Crime (also known as Follow That Man) on the DuMont Television Network; initially telecast live in its earliest seasons, the program lasted until 1956 and was simulcast for a season on Dumont and NBC, and ran on CBS during a different year. The lead role was taken by Frank Lovejoy in 1956, who subsequently starred in NBC's Meet McGraw detective series.
An Emmy Award nomination for the mini-series The Winds of War (1983) – in which Bellamy reprised his Sunrise at Campobello role of Franklin D. Roosevelt – brought him back into the spotlight.
Highly regarded within the industry, Bellamy served as a four-term President of Actors' Equity from 1952–1964. Description above from the Wikipedia article Ralph Bellamy, licensed under CC-BY-SA, full list of contributors on Wikipedia.
Arthur Hohl (May 21, 1889 – March 10, 1964) was an American stage and motion-picture character actor. He was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania and began appearing in films in the early 1920s. He played a great number of villainous or mildly larcenous roles, although his screen roles usually were small, but he also played a few sympathetic characters.
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Joseph Patrick Carrol Naish (January 21, 1896 – January 24, 1973) was an American character actor born in New York City, New York. Naish did many film roles, but they were eclipsed when he found fame in the title role of radio's Life with Luigi (1948–1953), which surpassed Bob Hope in the 1950 ratings.
Naish appeared on stage for several years before he began his film career. He began as a member of Gus Edwards's vaudeville troupe of child performers. In Paris after World War I, Naish formed his own song and dance act. He was traveling the globe from Europe to Egypt to Asia, when his China-bound ship developed engine problems, leaving him in California in 1926.
His uncredited bit role in What Price Glory (1926) launched his career in more than two hundred films. He was twice nominated for an Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor, the first for his role in the 1943 film Sahara, then for his performance in the 1945 film A Medal for Benny, for which he won the Golden Globe Award for Best Supporting Actor, Motion Picture. He notably played Boris Karloff's hunchback assistant in The House of Frankenstein in 1944.
He was of Irish descent, but never used his dialect skills to play Irishmen, explaining, "When the part of an Irishman comes along, nobody ever thinks of me." Instead, he portrayed myriad other ethnic groups on screen: Latino, Native American, East Asian, Polynesian, Middle Eastern/North African, South Asian, Eastern European, and Mediterranean. Besides his film roles, he often appeared on television later in his career. He spent many of his later years in San Diego studying philosophy and theology.
Naish was married (1929–1973) to actress Gladys Heaney (1907–1987). They had one daughter.
For his contributions to television and film, J. Carrol Naish has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame at 6145 Hollywood Boulevard.
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Wardell Edwin Bond (April 9, 1903 – November 5, 1960) was an American film character actor whose rugged appearance and easygoing charm were featured in more than 200 films, as well as in the NBC television series Wagon Train from 1957 to 1961. Among his best-remembered roles are Bert the cop in Frank Capra's It's a Wonderful Life (1946) and Captain Clayton in John Ford's The Searchers (1956).
Vincent Sherman (July 16, 1906 – June 18, 2006) was an American director, and actor, who worked in Hollywood. His movies include Mr. Skeffington (1944), Nora Prentiss (1947), and The Young Philadelphians (1959).
He began his career as an actor on Broadway and later films. He directed B-movies for Warner Bros. before moving up to A-pictures. He was a good friend of actor Errol Flynn, whom he directed in Adventures of Don Juan (1949). He directed three Joan Crawford movies The Damned Don't Cry! (1950), Harriet Craig (1950), and Goodbye, My Fancy (1951).
Description above from the Wikipedia article Vincent Sherman, licensed under CC-BY-SA, full list of contributors on Wikipedia.
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Edward Keane (May 28, 1884 – October 12, 1959) was an American film actor. He appeared in more than 300 films between 1921 and 1955.
Robert "Tex" Allen (also credited as Bob Allen) was a leading actor in both feature films and B-movie westerns between 1935 and 1944.
Born as Irvine E. Theodore Baehr on March 28, 1906 in Mount Vernon, New York, Allen went on to graduate from the New York Military Academy in 1924, where he rode in the academy cavalry and from Dartmouth College in 1929 with a degree in English. In vacations he had driven a truck as a labourer. He worked for a bank which soon failed in the Great Depression. He flew briefly with the Curtis Flying service as a commercial pilot. He first came to the screen in 1926 before signing a standard acting contract with Paramount Pictures, in 1929. He appeared in the famous Marx Brothers movie Animal Crackers and several other small parts. Then, he signed with Columbia Pictures in 1935. He also later contracted with 20th Century Fox.
Allen's first notable role was the male lead in Love Me Forever (1935), for which he won a Box Office Award. He gained additional notice as the star of When You're in Love (1936), opposite Grace Moore. The same year, he was nominated for an Academy Award for his performance in the title role in the film The Life of Lafayette.
After the departure of cowboy star Ken Maynard, Allen was plugged into producer Larry Darmour's formulaic Ranger pictures. Along with sidekick Wally Wales (played by Hal Taliaferro), he redefined the role, starring in six films for director Spencer Gordon Bennet in that year alone. These films became known as the Bob Allen Ranger series. However, the studio was looking for a singing cowboy to compete with Gene Autry and Allen was eventually replaced by Roy Rogers. He appeared in two dozen films after that, however.
He had acted on Broadway in the original productions of Show Boat and Kiss Them for Me. In 1956 he appeared in the original production of Auntie Mame, opposite Rosalind Russell, and later Greer Garson. He appeared in other Broadway plays, in touring productions, in soap operas, documentaries and commercials. He became a real estate broker in 1964 but returned to the stage from time to time, including an appearance as J.B. Biggley in the 1972 Equity Library Theatre revival of How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying.
Description above from the Wikipedia article Robert (Tex) Allen, licensed under CC-BY-SA, full list of contributors on Wikipedia.
Police Broadcaster in Ticker Tape Montage (uncredited)
Eddy Chandler
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Eddy Chandler (March 12, 1894 – March 23, 1948) was an American actor who appeared, mostly uncredited, in more than 300 films. Three of these films won the Academy Award for Best Picture: It Happened One Night (1934), You Can't Take It with You (1938), and Gone with the Wind (1939).
Chandler was born in the small Iowa city of Wilton Junction and died in Los Angeles, California.
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Bess Flowers (November 23, 1898 – July 28, 1984) was an American actress. By some counts considered the most prolific actress in the history of Hollywood, she was known as "The Queen of the Hollywood Extras," appearing in over 700 movies in her 41 year career.
Born in Sherman, Texas, Flowers's film debut came in 1923, when she appeared in Hollywood. She made three films that year, and then began working extensively. Many of her appearances are uncredited, as she generally played non-speaking roles.
By the 1930s, Flowers was in constant demand. Her appearances ranged from Alfred Hitchcock and John Ford thrillers to comedic roles alongside of Charley Chase, the Three Stooges, Leon Errol, Edgar Kennedy, and Laurel and Hardy.
She appeared in the following five films which won the Academy Award for Best Picture: It Happened One Night, You Can't Take it with You, All About Eve, The Greatest Show on Earth, and Around the World in Eighty Days. In each of these movies, Flowers was uncredited. Including these five movies, she had appeared in twenty-three Best Picture nominees in total, making her the record holder for most appearances in films nominated for the award. Her last movie was Good Neighbor Sam in 1964.
Flowers's acting career was not confined to feature films. She was also seen in many episodic American TV series, such as I Love Lucy, notably in episodes, "Lucy Is Enceinte" (1952), "Ethel's Birthday" (1955), and "Lucy's Night in Town" (1957), where she is usually seen as a theatre patron.
Outside her acting career, in 1945, Bess Flowers helped to found the Screen Extras Guild (active: 1946-1992, then merged with SAG), where she served as one of its first vice-presidents and recording secretaries.
Francis McDonald (August 22, 1891 – September 18, 1968) was an American actor whose career spanned 52 years.
McDonald's started acting professionally in stock theater with the Forepaugh Stock Company in Cincinnati. Following eight months with it, he worked one season with a stock company in Seattle, after which he performed for three seasons with a troupe in San Diego and Honolulu. He concluded his tenure in stock theater as juvenile leading man with the American Stock Company in Spokane, Washington.
By 1913 McDonald began to perform in the rapidly expanding film industry, initially working for Marion Leonard's Monopole Company in Hollywood. He was cast in over 280 films between 1913 and 1965, including The Temptress in 1926 with Greta Garbo. After he was designated "Hollywood's Prettiest Man," McDonald sought a tougher image by shaving his mustache and seeking roles of villains.
McDonald was one of Cecil B. DeMille's favorite character actors.[citation needed] DeMille gave him credited supporting roles in six of his films: The Plainsman (1936), The Buccaneer (1938), Union Pacific (1939), North West Mounted Police (1940), Samson and Delilah (1949), and The Ten Commandments (1956).
Bruce Mitchell was born on November 16, 1880 in Freeport, Illinois, USA as James Bruce Mitchell. He was an actor, known for Whistling Bullets (1937), I Cover Chinatown (1936) and Pride of the West (1938). He died on September 26, 1952 in Hollywood, California, USA.
Often confused with the British-born comic actor J. Pat O'Malley, who is the better remembered, silent dramatic film star Pat O'Malley had an enduring career that stands on its own. He was of solid Irish-American stock, born in Forest City, Pennsylvania, in 1890. A one-time railroad switchman, he also had circus experience by the time he discovered an interest in movie making. He began with the Kalem Studio in 1913 and appeared in a few Irish films before signing on with Thomas Edison's company in 1914. The following year, he married actress Lillian Wilkes, and three of their children, Eileen, Mary Katherine, and Sheila, would become actors as well. His brother Charles O'Malley was a sometime actor, appearing in westerns on occasion. His first identifiable film is The Alien (1913). He began freelancing in 1916 and from then on, appeared in scores of silents as both a rugged and romantic lead, some classic films being The Heart of Humanity (1918), My Wild Irish Rose (1922), and The Virginian (1923). He did not age well come sound pictures, and he was quickly relegated to supporting parts. He appeared in hundreds upon hundreds of bits (mostly unbilled) until 1956, when he retired. He died a decade later.
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Charles Emmett Vogan was an American actor with almost 500 film appearances from 1934–54, making him, along with Bess Flowers, one of the most prolific film actors of all time.