Gail Patrick (born Margaret LaVelle Fitzpatrick, June 20, 1911 - July 6, 1980) was an American film actress.
She appeared in 62 movies between 1932 and 1948. Some of these roles are in My Favorite Wife, Dangerous to Know, and in My Man Godfrey. Patrick retired from acting in films in 1948 and later became a producer of Perry Mason.
Anita Louise (born January 9, 1915) was an American actress.
She made her acting debut on Broadway at the age of six, and within a year was appearing regularly in Hollywood films. By her late teens she was being cast in leading and supporting roles in major productions. As her stature in Hollywood grew, she was named as a WAMPAS Baby Star.
Among her film successes were Madame Du Barry, A Midsummer Night's Dream, The Story of Louis Pasteur, Anthony Adverse, Marie Antoinette, The Sisters, and The Little Princess.
By the 1940s, Louise was reduced to minor roles and acted very infrequently until the advent of television in the 1950s provided her with further opportunities. In middle age she played one of her most widely seen roles as the gentle mother on My Friend Flicka.
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Paul Cavanagh (8 December 1888 – 15 March 1964) was an English film actor. He appeared in more than 100 films between 1928 and 1959.
Cavanagh was born in Chislehurst, Kent, and attended the Royal Grammar School, Newcastle upon Tyne, and Emmanuel College, Cambridge. Cavanagh studied law in England, earning a master of arts degree at Cambridge. A newspaper article published 17 June 1931, reported, "It is on record that Cavanagh won high honors in mathematics and history."
Cavanagh practised "for several years" before he changed professions. He went to Canada "for a year of sightseeing and wandering" before he joined the Royal Northwest Mounted Police.
After serving in World War I, he returned to Canada, where he practised law, including revising the statutes of Alberta, but eventually went back to England to practise law.
Cavanagh went onto the stage after a stroke of bad luck in 1924 caused him to lose his savings, and later he went into films.
In 1926, Cavanagh lost $22,000 in one evening on a roulette wheel in Monte Carlo. An observer offered to provide a letter "to some of my theatrical acquaintances" in London, England. Those contacts led to Cavanagh's role in It Pays to Advertise.
Cavanagh first film contract and film came in 1929 with Paramount Pictures.
Cavanagh died In London from a heart attack in 1964, aged 75.
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Olivia Joyce Compton (January 27, 1907 – October 13, 1997) was an American actress. Compton was born in Lexington, Kentucky. (Despite frequent reports to the contrary, her name was not originally "Eleanor Hunt"; she had appeared in the film Good Sport (1931) with Hunt and this confusion in an early press article followed Compton throughout her career.) After graduating high school she spent two years studying at the University of Tulsa, studying dramatics, art, music and dancing. She won a personality and beauty contest and spent two months in a film studio as an extra.
Compton first made a name for herself when she was named one of the WAMPAS Baby Stars in 1926, alongside Mary Brian, Dolores Costello, Joan Crawford, Dolores del Río, Janet Gaynor and Fay Wray. Compton appeared in a long string of mostly B-movies from the 1920s through the 1950s. She was a comedy actress and protested at being stereotyped as a "dumb blonde".
Among her over two hundred films were Imitation of Life, Magnificent Obsession, The Awful Truth, Mildred Pierce, and The Best Years of Our Lives.
A devout Christian, on her gravestone, just beneath her dates of birth and death, is written "Christian Actress". She died from natural causes, aged 90, and was buried in Forest Lawn Memorial Park in the Hollywood Hills.
Frank Faylen (born Francis Charles Ruf) was an American stage, screen, and television actor. He is best remembered for his movie performances as the cynical male nurse in The Lost Weekend (1945) and Ernie the taxi driver in It's a Wonderful Life (1946), as well as for his portrayal of long-suffering grocer Herbert T. Gillis on the 1950s television sitcom The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis.
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Fern Emmett (March 22, 1896 – September 3, 1946) was an American film actress. She appeared in 212 films between 1930 and 1946.
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Leading man in silent films until mid to late 1920s when Farnum transitioned to a character actor. Then later in life he remained in the film business as a paid extra in many films and TV shows.
Lloyd Ingraham was an American film actor and director. He appeared in over 280 films between 1912 and 1950, and directed more than 100 films between 1913 and 1930.
Carole Landis (born Frances Lillian Mary Ridste; January 1, 1919 – July 5, 1948) was an American actress and singer. She worked as a contract player for Twentieth Century-Fox in the 1940s. Her breakout role was as the female lead in the 1940 film One Million B.C. from United Artists. She was known as "The Ping Girl" and "The Chest" because of her curvy figure.
Landis was reportedly crushed when actor Rex Harrison refused to divorce his wife for her. Unable to cope any longer, on July 5, 1948, she died by suicide in her Pacific Palisades home by taking an overdose of Seconal.
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Steve Pendleton (September 16, 1908 – October 3, 1984) was an American film and television actor, often cast in the role of law-enforcement officers.
Pendleton was cast in eight episodes in different roles from 1952 to 1957 on The Roy Rogers Show. In 1955, he played the role of Baumer in "Gold of Haunted Mountain" of the CBS drama, Brave Eagle. In another 1955 appearance, he was cast as Captain Kenneth McNabb in "The Fight for Texas" of the syndicated western series, Buffalo Bill, Jr. In 1956, he was cast as Bill Mathison in the episode "The Long Weekend" of the then CBS military drama, Navy Log. In 1957, he appeared on two episodes of William Bendix's NBC situation comedy, The Life of Riley. In 1958, he played Marshal Purvis in "Star Witness" of another syndicated western series, Casey Jones, with Alan Hale, Jr., in the title role. In 1959 he portrayed Sheriff Anderson in "The Louisiana Dude" of the CBS western series Yancy Derringer.
Pendleton was cast in two roles in a total of twelve episodes broadcast between 1956 and 1961 of the ABC/Desilu western television series, The Life and Legend of Wyatt Earp, with Hugh O'Brian in the title role of deputy marshal Wyatt Earp. He played a United States Army mayor, Benteen, in five segments, including "Dull Knife Strikes for Freedom" (May 7, 1957). In this segment, the actor Ian MacDonald is cast as Dull Knife, a Cheyenne chief, who leads his tribe from its reservation in Oklahoma Territory to their homeland in Montana, which they claim the U.S. government had promised them. Benteen has orders to prevent the Indians from passing through. Pendleton also appeared in seven other series episodes as the character Thacker.
In 1960, Pendleton was cast as Marshal McCoy in "The Town That Wasn't There" of the ABC/Warner Brothers western series, Maverick. That same year, he played deputy Kelsey, with Lee Van Cleef as deputy Clyde Wilson, in the episode "Man on a Mountain" of another ABC/WB western, Lawman. In 1961, he portrayed deputy marshal Ben Johnson in the episode "Death Trap" of the ABC western series, The Rifleman, starring Chuck Connors.
In 1967, he played Mr. Hutchins in the episode "Howard and Millie" of the CBS sitcom, The Andy Griffith Show. From 1968 to 1970, he had a recurring role as Mr. Bennett in six episodes of the NBC sitcom, Julia, starring Diahann Carroll.
His last role was as a businessman on the 1976 episode "The Reformer" of William Conrad's CBS crime drama, Cannon. Pendleton died at the age of seventy-six in Pasadena, California.
Lawrence Wells Steers (February 14, 1888 – February 15, 1951) was an American film actor. He appeared in more than 550 films between 1917 and 1951. He was born in Indiana, and died in Woodland Hills, Los Angeles.
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Max Wagner (November 28, 1901 – November 16, 1975) was a Mexican-born American film actor who specialized in playing small parts such as thugs, gangsters, sailors, henchmen, bodyguards, cab drivers and moving men, appearing more than 400 films in his career, most without receiving screen credit. Newspaper gossip columnists noted his rise from playing "Gangster #4", with no lines, and not carrying a gun, to "Gangster #2", with both lines and a gun.
Wagner was one of five children, all boys, of William Wallace Wagner, a railroad conductor, and Edith Wagner, a writer who provided dispatches for the Christian Science Monitor during the Mexican Revolution. When he was 10 years old, his father was killed by rebels and the family moved to Salinas, California, where he met John Steinbeck, who became a lifelong friend. Steinback based the character of the boy in his novel The Red Pony on Wagner.
Under the name "Max Baron", Wagner acted in many Spanish-language versions of English-language films, which studios made as a matter of course in the early days of sound films, He also served as a Spanish language coach for other actors, and appeared in many of the "Mexican Spitfire" films starring Lupe Vélez, where he also served to monitor Velez's Spanish ad-libs for profanity.
Other series that Wagner appeared in include the Charlie Chan films, and Tom Mix serials, as well as others made by Mascot Pictures Corporation. In the 1940s, Wagner was part of Preston Sturges' unofficial "stock company" of character actors, appearing in six films written and directed by Sturges, beginning with The Palm Beach Story
In 1940 during the filming of "The Mad Doctor", Wagner was credited for driving 50,000 miles as an on-screen taxi driver on the studio back lots of Hollywood. Since his appearance as a cab driver in Charlie Chan in Shanghai (1935), producers often cast him as a wise-cracking or henchman taxi driver. "I was cast as a taxi driver about five years ago", Wagner told a reporter. "And I was typed."
In 1952, Wagner began to appear on television, in episodes of such shows as The Cisco Kid, Zane Grey Theater and Perry Mason, playing much the same kind of parts he played in the movies.
He was a regular cast member on the western television series Gunsmoke, making nearly 80 appearances between 1959 and 1973. He also appeared in many episodes of The Rifleman, Bonanza, Cimarron Strip, The Wild Wild West and Maverick, including a guest-starring role in the 1959 Rifleman episode "Blood Brother." He also had roles in the original Star Trek and The Twilight Zone series. He appeared in more than 200 television episodes between 1952 and 1974.
Notable film roles for Wagner include a supporting role in the cult science fiction classic Invaders from Mars (1953), an actor playing a gangster in the film-within-a-film segment of Bullets or Ballots (1936), and the bull farm attendant in the Laurel and Hardy comedy The Bullfighters (1945).
Late in his career, he appeared in To Kill a Mockingbird (1962) and The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962). He also occasionally composed music, such as the Mexican folk ballad "Pedro, Rudarte y Simon" in the Western film The Last Trail (1933).
Wagner died of a heart attack in Hollywood in 1975.
Blackie Whiteford was born on April 27, 1889 in New York City, New York, USA as John P. Whiteford. He is known for his work on Thundering Taxis (1933), Crazy Like a Fox (1944) and One Glorious Scrap (1925). He was married to Alma Bennett. He died on March 21, 1962 in Hollywood, Los Angeles, California, USA.
Raised on a cattle ranch in Montana. Educated at Stanford and the University of Nevada as an engineer. Washed out as an Army pilot. Toured the country in rodeos as a saddle bronc rider. Broke his neck in a horsefall in his 20s, but didn't know it until his 40s. Chosen along with Tex Ritter from a rodeo at Madison Square Garden in New York to appear in the Broadway play "Green Grow the Lilacs", the play from which the musical "Oklahoma" was later derived. Drove a cab in New York, then worked on dude ranches as a wrangler and as a guide on the Bright Angel trail of the Grand Canyon. Recommended by Billie Burke to several movie producers. Became friends with John Wayne, Howard Hawks, and later John Ford, all of whom provided him with much work. Survived by adopted daughter Dawn Henry.
Date of Death: 6 December 1992, Los Angeles, California, USA (natural causes)