Edward Arnold was born as Gunther Edward Arnold Schneider in 1890, on the Lower East Side of New York City, the son of German immigrants, Elizabeth (Ohse) and Carl Schneider. Arnold began his acting career on the New York stage and became a film actor in 1916. A burly man with a commanding style and superb baritone voice, he was a popular screen personality for decades, and was the star of such film classics as Diamond Jim (1935) (a role he reprised in Le roman de Lillian Russell (1940)) Arnold appeared in over 150 films and was President of The Screen Actors Guild shortly before his death in 1956.
William Frawley was born in Burlington, Iowa. As a boy he sang at St. Paul's Catholic Church and played at the Burlington Opera House. His first job was as a stenographer for the Union Pacific Railroad. He did vaudeville with his brother Paul, then joined pianist Franz Rath in an act they took to San Francisco in 1910. Four years later he formed a light comedy act with his new wife Edna Louise Broedt, "Frawley and Louise", touring the Orpheum and Keith circuits until they divorced in 1927. He next moved to Broadway and then, in 1932, to Hollywood with Paramount. By 1951, when he contacted Lucille Ball about a part in her TV show I Love Lucy (1951), he had performed in over 100 films. His Fred Mertz role lasted until the show ended in 1960, after which he did a five-year stint on My Three Sons (1960). Poor health forced his retirement. He collapsed of a heart attack on March 3, 1966, aged 79, walking along Hollywood Boulevard after seeing a movie. He is buried in San Fernando Mission Cemetery.
Edward Brophy was an American character actor, voice artist, and comedian. Small of build, balding, and raucous-voiced, he frequently portrayed dumb cops and gangsters, both serious and comic.
He is best remembered for his roles in the Falcon film series and for voicing Timothy Q. Mouse in Dumbo.
His screen debut was in Yes or No. He appeared in The Champ, Freaks, The Thin Man, The Thin Man Goes Home (1944). He also made several appearances in the films of director John Ford.
Stanley Andrews was an American actor perhaps best known as the voice of Daddy Warbucks on the radio program Little Orphan Annie and later as "The Old Ranger", the first host of the syndicated western anthology television series, Death Valley Days.
Brooks Benedict (born Harold J. Mann, February 6, 1896 – January 1, 1968) was an American actor of the silent and sound film era, where he played supporting and utility roles in over 300 films, mostly uncredited.
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Nora Cecil (September 20, 1878 – May 1, 1951) was a British-American character actress whose 30-year career spanned both the silent and sound film eras. Cecil's career began on the stage, where she appeared in a single Broadway production, The Sleeping Beauty and the Beast, which ran for more than 240 performances at the Broadway Theatre in 1901-02. (A 1930 newspaper article says that Cecil "made her debut, three decades ago, on the London stage.")
Cecil appeared in well over 100 feature films and film shorts.
In 1915, she moved from the stage into films, her first appearance being in a starring role in The Arrival of Perpetua, directed by Émile Chautard. She often played "thin-lipped, stern-visaged dowagers and forbidding mothers-in-law" and "welfare workers, landladies, schoolmistresses and maiden aunts".
One of the most significant roles was in the W.C. Fields vehicle, The Old Fashioned Way in 1934. Some of the other notable films in which Cecil appeared include: Ernst Lubitsch's historical romance, The Merry Widow, starring Maurice Chevalier and Jeanette MacDonald; the 1939 version of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, starring Mickey Rooney; the John Ford classic, Stagecoach, with John Wayne.
Her final acting performance was in a featured role in Mourning Becomes Electra in 1947, starring Rosalind Russell.
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Joseph Crehan (July 15, 1883 – April 15, 1966) was an American film actor. He appeared in more than 300 films between 1916 and 1965, and notably played Ulysses S. Grant nine times between 1939 and 1958, most memorably in Union Pacific and They Died With Their Boots On. He was born in Baltimore, Maryland and died in Hollywood, California from a stroke.
Crehan often played alongside Charles C. Wilson with whom he is sometimes confused.
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Claire Du Brey (born Clara Violet Dubrey, August 31, 1892 – August 1, 1993) was an American actress. She appeared in more than 200 films between 1916 and 1959. Her name is sometimes rendered as Claire Du Bray or as Claire Dubrey.
Du Brey's screen career began with Universal Studios and she played at one time or another with almost all the larger companies. More notable films in which she appeared were Anything Once (1917), Social Briars (1918), The Devil's Trail (1919), What Every Woman Wants (1919) and Dangerous Hours (1919). Other films include The Wishing Ring Man, The Spite Bride, The World Aflame, and The Walk Offs. Her career declined with the sound era and she later played mostly small roles.
Du Brey was proficient in athletics, excelling in swimming, riding, golfing, tennis and motoring. She was five feet seven inches high, weighed 130 pounds and had auburn hair and brown eyes, and took a lively interest in horticulture.
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Al Ernest Garcia (11 March 1887 – 4 September 1938) was an American actor, best known for his long association with Charlie Chaplin. He acted with Chaplin in six films between 1921 and 1936, cast mostly in clinical or villainous supporting roles. Garcia portrayed the brutal circus director in The Circus (1928), the snobbish butler of the millionaire in City Lights (1931), and the factory owner in Modern Times (1936). He was also a casting director for Chaplin on The Circus, City Lights, and Modern Times.
Garcia was co-founder of the Motion Picture Extras and Supporting Players Association, founded in 1933.
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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.
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Lee Phelps (May 15, 1893 – March 19, 1953) was an American film actor. He appeared in over 600 films between 1917 and 1953, mainly in uncredited roles. He also appeared in three films - Grand Hotel, You Can't Take It with You, and Gone with the Wind - that won the Academy Award for Best Picture.
Phelps appeared in the 1952 episode "Outlaw's Paradise" as a judge in the syndicated western television series The Adventures of Kit Carson, starring Bill Williams in the title role. He also appeared in a 1952 TV episode (#90) of The Lone Ranger.
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Cyril Ring (December 5, 1892 – July 17, 1967) was an American film actor. He began his career in silent films in 1921. By the time of his final performance in 1951, he had appeared in over 350 films, almost all in small and/or uncredited parts.
He is probably best remembered today for his role as Harvey Yates, a con artist captured and hand-cuffed to fellow con artist Penelope, played by Kay Francis at the very end of the Marx Brothers first film The Cocoanuts (1929).
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Stanley J. "Tiny" Sandford (February 26, 1894 – October 29, 1961) was a tall, burly actor who is best remembered for his roles in Laurel and Hardy and Charlie Chaplin films. He was usually cast as a comic heavy, and often played policemen, doormen, prizefighters, or bullies.
Sandford was born in Osage, Iowa. After working in stock theater he began acting in movies around 1910. He appeared in The Gold Rush with Charlie Chaplin, who became one of his best friends. His Charlie Chaplin movies include The Circus (1928) and Modern Times (1936), where he plays "Big Bill". His films with Laurel and Hardy include Big Business (1929), Double Whoopee (1929), The Chimp (1932), and Our Relations (1936). Sandford also acted in Way Out West, but his sequence was cut from the final take.
He also appeared in dramas such as The World's Champion (1922) and The Iron Mask (1929).
He retired from acting in 1940, the year he had a very small role Charlie Chaplin's The Great Dictator. He died in Los Angeles, California on October 29, 1961.
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Charles Williams was born on September 27, 1898 in Albany, New York. He was an actor and writer, known for It's a Wonderful Life (1946), Hollywood and Vine (1945) and Alexander's Ragtime Band (1938). He was married to Isabel and Virginia Josephine Evans. He died on January 3, 1958 in Hollywood, California.