Criminal Lawyer

Eduardo Ciannelli, sometimes credited as Edward Ciannelli, (30 August 1889 - 8 October 1969), was an Italian baritone and character actor with a long career in American films, mostly playing gangsters and criminals. Description above from the Wikipedia article Eduardo Ciannelli, licensed under CC-BY-SA, full list of contributors on Wikipedia.

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Betty Lawford (February 1, 1912 – November 20, 1960) was a United States-based English film and stage actress. Her parents, Ernest Lawford and Janet Slater Lawford, were also actors, and she was a cousin of the actor and socialite Peter Lawford. Lawford's stage debut came in a Players' Club production of Henry IV. She followed that with appearances in Julius Caesar and The Lady Lies. Her Broadway credits include Glamour Preferred (1940), Walk With Music (1940), The Women (1936), There's Wisdom in Women (1935), Heat Wave (1931), The Lady Lies (1928), and King Henry IV, Part I (1926). She was briefly married to the American actor-director Monta Bell. She died at Roosevelt Hospital, Manhattan, following an illness of three weeks.

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Wilfred Lucas (January 30, 1871 – December 13, 1940) was a Canadian-born American stage actor who found success in film as an actor, director, and screenwriter. Wilfred Lucas made his Broadway debut in 1904, playing in both the The Blue Grass Handicap and The Superstition of Sue. Following his 1906 role in the highly successful play The Chorus Lady, he was recruited to the fledgling Biograph Studios by D. W. Griffith. At the time, the film business was still looked down upon by many members of the theatrical community. In her 1925 book titled When the Movies Were Young, Griffith's wife, actress Linda Arvidson, told the story of the early days at Biograph Studios. In it, she referred to Lucas as the "first real grand actor, democratic enough to work in Biograph movies." In 1908 Lucas made his motion picture debut in Griffith's The Greaser's Gauntlet, appearing in more than 50 of these short (usually 17 minutes) films over the next two years. In 1910 while still acting, he wrote the script for Griffith's film Sunshine Sue, which was followed by many more scripts by 1924. Lucas also began directing in 1912 with Griffith on An Outcast Among Outcasts, and directed another 44 films over the next 20 years. In early 1916 he starred as John Carter in Acquitted, about which Photoplay wrote, "No single performance in the records of active photography has surpassed his visualization of the humble book-keeper in Acquitted." Later in 1916 he appeared in D.W. Griffith's film Intolerance. Part of the group of Canadian pioneers in early Hollywood, Lucas became friends and sometimes starred with Mary Pickford, Sam De Grasse, and Marie Dressler. Canadian-born director Mack Sennett hired him to both direct and act in a large number of films at his Keystone Studios. Lucas made the successful transition from silent film to sound. While working in Hollywood, in 1926 he returned to the stage, performing in several Broadway plays. He later appeared as a foil for Laurel and Hardy in their feature films Pardon Us and A Chump at Oxford. During his long career, Wilfred Lucas appeared in more than 375 films. Although for a time he was cast in leading roles, he became very successful as secondary and minor characters, making a good living in the film industry for more than three decades.

William Stack has been often mistaken as British in the scant bio information available on him - he could imitate many a British accent. He was actually born in Oregon. But like many Americans who wished to become serious stage actors and seeing New York as overly competitive, he went to London as a young man. Not much is known about his career there, but with many theaters (almost fifty) and companies around, the opportunities for a talented young man were there. From the craze for post cards with the subject of photos - and especially those of actors that ensued between about 1890 and 1914, there exist pictures of Stack as Hamlet. So Stack did find initial success, and by 1918 he tried his hand in the budding British silent film industry with not much initial interest - just one film that year and another in 1922, then back to the stage. But by 1930 Stack was back in America - and not to Broadway (perhaps in a touring company, but at least not on record as a principal), as was a stage actor's usual course. He did end up in early Hollywood sound pictures - those with marginal sound quality - first with Fredric March as the star in Sarah and Son (1930). With a rich stage actor's voice and accents to apply where needed - and appreciated as audio technology improved - he appeared in from four to ramping up to as many as ten pictures per year through the 1930s. Moving into his 50s, bald and dignified, his roles were focused as featured character pieces - assured doctors, lawyers, judges, nobles, and several butlers. He was one of the Crawley clan in Becky Sharp (1935), the first feature-length three-color film. He perhaps gained press from being in one movie of some scandalous notoriety - Tarzan and His Mate (1934) in which Maureen O'Sullivan appeared to swim nude (somebody else in a body stocking). Although he had a few lines as a white hunter, in this and other films (of note, MGM's first and most famous version of Mutiny on the Bounty, 1935), Stack was not credited for his always believable characterizations. The year 1936 provided Stack with some his most memorable historical roles. He played the French general Montcalm of the French and Indian War in the popular The Last of the Mohicans (1936) with Randolph Scott. The same year he played a much richer character in the film adaptation of the play Mary of Scotland (1936) directed by John Ford. Along with an assemblage of some of the best character actors of Hollywood, Stack played one among a rogues' gallery of self-seeking Scottish lords who included: Robert Barrat, Gavin Muir (another American who spent time in England and was often thought to be British), and Ian Keith. Stack is able to be most Shakespearean, vying in Scottish brogue with his fellow conspirators as the sly Lord Ruthven. Although Stack appeared in many of the best A pictures of the later 1930s, many did not give credit for his great acting skills. There were only a few movies into the 1940s, before he retired - leaving film history all the richer for his screen presence.

Charles Lane (born Charles Gerstle Levison; January 26, 1905 – July 9, 2007) was an American character actor and centenarian whose career spanned 77 years. Lane gave his last performance at the age of 101 as a narrator in 2006. Lane appeared in many Frank Capra films, including You Can't Take It With You (1938), Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939), Arsenic and Old Lace (1944), It's a Wonderful Life (1946) and Riding High (1950). He was a favored supporting actor of Lucille Ball, who often used him as a no-nonsense authority figure and comedic foe of her scatterbrained TV character on her TV series I Love Lucy, The Lucy–Desi Comedy Hour and The Lucy Show. His first film of more than 250 was as a hotel clerk in Smart Money (1931) starring Edward G. Robinson and James Cagney. From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

Aileen Pringle's favorite film was a mid-1920s silent based on a book by Elinor Glyn: Three Weeks (1924), sort of a "Lady Chatterly's Lover". She recalled in a 1980 telephone conversation: "The film was in good taste; some people thought the book was trashy". Anita Loos wrote in "A Girl Like I", the first volume of her autobiography, vaudeville comic Joe Frisco telling Glynn: "Leave me get this straight. You want to find some tramp that don't look like a tramp, to play that English tramp in your picture. But take it from me, that kind of tramp don't hang out in Hollywood". Aileen had spent her 20s married to Charles McKenzie Pringle, the son of Sir John Pringle, a Jamaica landowner and a member of the Privy and Legislative Councils of Jamaica. Aileen lived in Jamaica until she went on stage with George Arliss. When she began divorce proceedings against Pringle in 1926, Hollywood gossip columnists speculated she would marry H.L. Mencken. She did not remarry until 1944 when she became the bride of James M. Cain, author of "The Postman Always Rings Twice". I opened my 1980 telephone conversation with Aileen by mentioning that the day before I had been reading her correspondence with Mencken at the New York Public Library. "But all the letters were destroyed", she said. I knew that Mencken had asked for all of his letters to her back at the time he became engaged to Sara Haardt. Aileen was the only woman who received such a request from Mencken at that time. "It was your letters from the late '30s and '40s I was reading", I told Aileen. "In one of them Mencken was urging you to write a book. Did you ever finish it?" "No. I got married instead." In a 1946 letter she wrote to Mencken. "If I had remained married to that psychotic Cain, I would be wearing a straitjacket instead of the New Look." Date of Death 16 December 1989, New York City, New York

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).

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia 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).

Edward Van Sloan (born Edward Paul Van Sloun) was an American screen and stage character actor best remembered for his roles in Universal Studios horror films.

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Sidney Bracey (18 December 1877 – 5 August 1942) was an Australian-born American actor. After a stage career in Australia, on Broadway and in Britain, he appeared in 321 films between 1909 and 1942. Bracey was born in Melbourne, Victoria, with the name Sidney Bracy, later changing the spelling of his last name. He was the son of Welsh tenor Henry Bracy and English actress Clara T. Bracy. His aunt was actress and dancer Lydia Thompson. He began his stage career in Australia in the 1890s, with J. C. Williamson's comic opera companies. On Broadway, in 1900, he appeared as the tenor lead, Yussuf, in the first American production of The Rose of Persia at Daly's Theatre in New York. He then moved to England, appearing as Moreno in the Edwardian musical comedy hit The Toreador at the Gaiety Theatre, London in June 1901. He next joined the D'Oyly Carte Opera Company on tour in Britain, playing Terence O'Brian in The Emerald Isle from September 1901 to May 1902. He then left the D'Oyly Carte, continuing his stage career in Britain. He appeared in Amorelle at London's Comedy Theatre in 1904, The Winter's Tale in 1904–05, and A Persian Princess at Queen's Theatre in 1909. Back on Broadway, in 1912, he played as Sir Guy of Gisborne in a revival of Reginald de Koven's Robin Hood at the New Amsterdam Theatre, followed by Rob Roy at the Liberty Theatre in 1913. He then moved into film acting, making first silent films and then "talkies", until his death in 1942. Early in his film career, he wrote and directed a silent movie called Sid Nee's Finish, (Thanhouser Company (1914), in which he played the title character. In 1916, he changed the spelling of his last name to "Bracey". Silent film authority Diane MacIntyre gave this description of him: "Bracey, a stately looking character man, was in big demand for authority like roles; such as movie directors, bosses and, most of the time, the most respectable and poised butler in all of Hollywood. He was thin, dark haired and had an earnest, yet sober, face that could break into a look of wide-eyed exasperation." Bracy died in Hollywood, California on 5 August 1942, aged 64.