From Wikipedia
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).
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
Spring Byington (October 17, 1886 – September 7, 1971) was an American actress. Her career included a seven-year run on radio and television as the star of December Bride. She was a key MGM contract player, appearing in films from the 1930s through the 1960s.
From Wikipedia
June Gale, born Doris Gilmartin (1911–1996), twin sister of
Jane: wife successively of Oscar Levant and Henry Ephron.
She died on November 13, 1996 in Los Angeles, California.
Hamilton MacFadden (April 26, 1901 – January 1, 1977) was an American actor, screenwriter and film director.
MacFadden's parents were Rev. Robert A. MacFadden and Edith Hamilton MacFadden. His father died in 1909, leaving his mother to support herself and four children. In 1928, she became the first woman to file papers to run for governor of Massachusetts.
MacFadden was a 1925 graduate of Harvard University. Soon after graduating, he became producer of the American Theatre Company, which presented plays for 10 weeks in the Boston area. The project was backed by Michael Strange, a writer who made her professional stage debut in the productions. He also served as director of the Community Arts Association in Santa Barbara, California, and the Theatre Guild School of Acting in New York.
Plays that MacFadden produced on Broadway included Gods of the Lightning and La Gringa. After starting out on Broadway in the 1920s, he moved into filmmaking in Hollywood. During the early 1930s he was a contract director at Fox. McFadden made a number of films for them including several early entries in the Charlie Chan series such as Charlie Chan Carries On (1931). He was released from his Fox contract following the 1934 merger with Twentieth Century Pictures. Thereafter he mixed occasional directing jobs with a number of small supporting appearances in films.
Later in his career, MacFadden was associate chief of the United States Department of State's international motion picture division.
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Matthew O. McHugh (January 22, 1894 – February 22, 1971) was an American film actor who appeared in more than 200 films between 1931 and 1955, primarily in small cameo parts.
McHugh came from a theatrical family. His parents ran a stock theatre company and, as a young child, he performed on stage. His brother, Frank, who went on to become part of the Warner Bros. stock company in the 1930s and 1940s, and sister Kitty performed an act with him by the time he was fourteen years old, but the family quit the stage around 1930. His brother Ed became an agent in New York.
Matt made his Broadway debut in Elmer Rice's Street Scene in 1929, along with his brother Ed, and also appeared in Swing Your Lady in 1936.
Despite his actual origins, McHugh usually performed his roles with a Brooklyn accent, and was often cast as characters explicitly from Brooklyn. In Star Spangled Rhythm (1941), his one scene is a protracted monologue during the climactic "Old Glory" sequence, in which McHugh plays a character who literally embodies the spirit of Brooklyn.
Phyllis Barry (born Gertrude Phyllis Hillyard, 7 December 1908 – 1 July 1954) was an English film actress. Born in Leeds, West Riding of Yorkshire, England, to Seth Henry and Bertha (née Giles) Hillyard, Barry appeared in over 40 films between 1925 and 1947.
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
George Chandler (June 30, 1898 – June 10, 1985), born in Waukegan, Illinois, was an American actor. He made his screen debut in 1928, ultimately appearing, throughout his career, in over 140 films, usually in smaller supporting roles. Chandler is perhaps best known for playing the character of Uncle Petrie Martin on the television series Lassie.
Early in his performing career he had a vaudeville act, billed as "George Chandler, the Musical Nut", which featured comedy and his violin. He served in the United States Army during World War I.
In addition to many film roles throughout the years 1928-1979, Chandler appeared, from 1951 onward, in numerous television series.
He was elected president of the Screen Actors Guild in 1960.
George Chandler died in Panorama City, California, the result of cancer, on June 10, 1985. He was 86.
Heinie Conklin (born Charles John Conklin; July 16, 1880 – July 30, 1959) was an American actor and comedian whose career began in the silent film era.
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Edgar Dearing (May 4, 1893 – August 17, 1974) was an American actor who became heavily type cast as a motorcycle cop in Hollywood films. Born in 1893, Dearing started in silent comedy shorts for Hal Roach, including several with Laurel and Hardy, notably in their classic Two Tars, probably his best ever screen role. He later had supporting roles in several of their features for 20th Century Fox in the 1940s.
Dearing continued in his familiar persona until the early 1950s, when he appeared in many film and television westerns, usually as a sheriff. One of his guest roles was on the syndicated television series, The Range Rider, starring Jock Mahoney and Dick Jones.
He was still active in films and television until he retired in the early 1960s; he died from lung cancer.
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Harold Goodwin (December 1, 1902 – July 12, 1987) was an American film actor who performed in over 225 films.
Born in Peoria, Illinois, Goodwin began his film career while still in his teens in the 1915 film short Mike's Elopement. One of his most popular roles of the silent era was that of Ted Brown in the 1927 Buster Keaton comedy College. Goodwin followed up with a role in another Keaton film The Cameraman in 1928 opposite Keaton and actress Marceline Day. He worked steadily through the silent film era and transitioned into the talkie era as a popular character actor. One of his most notable roles of the era was that of Detering in the 1930 Lewis Milestone directed World War I drama All Quiet on the Western Front.
In his later years, Goodwin mainly acted in the Western film genre and often worked as a stuntmen for film studios. In the 1960s, Goodwin made many guest appearances of the NBC television series Daniel Boone starring Fess Parker and Ed Ames.
Goodwin made his last film appearance in the low-budget horror film The Boy Who Cried Werewolf before retiring from the film industry. He died in Woodland Hills, Los Angeles, California, USA in 1987 after being shot for adultery.
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Mary Gordon (born Mary Gilmour, 16 May 1882 – 23 August 1963) was a Scottish actress, long in the United States, who mainly played housekeepers and mothers, most notably the landlady Mrs. Hudson in the Sherlock Holmes series of movies of the 1940s starring Basil Rathbone and Nigel Bruce. Her body of work included nearly 300 films between 1925 and 1950. With her mother and daughter (both also named Mary), she arrived in Los Angeles in the mid-1920s and began playing variations on the roles she would spend her career on. She became friends with John Ford while making Hangman's House in 1928 and made seven more films with him. In 1939, she took on her best-remembered role as Sherlock Holmes' landlady and played the role in ten films and numerous radio plays. She was a charter member of the Hollywood Canteen, entertaining servicemen throughout the Second World War. On the radio show Those We Love, she played the regular role of Mrs. Emmett.
She entered retirement just as television reshaped the entertainment industry, making only a single appearance in that medium.
She was active in the Daughters of Scotia auxiliary of the Order of Scottish Clans.
She lived out her final years in Pasadena, California with her daughter and grandson. She died at age 81 on 23 August 1963 in Pasadena, California after a long illness.
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
George Meeker (March 5, 1904 – August 19, 1984) was an American character movie and Broadway actor who became more of a legend off-camera than on. Meeker made several movies such as Crime, Inc. (1945) and Thief in the Dark (1928), and he played an uncredited part in All Through the Night (1941).
Meeker has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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.
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Pierre Frank Watkin (December 29, 1889 – February 3, 1960) was an American character actor in many films, serials, and television series from the 1930s through the 1950s, especially westerns. He is perhaps best remembered for being the father of Eleanor Twitchell, the lady who captures Lou Gehrig's heart in Pride of the Yankees (1942)
Watkin was born in Sioux City, Iowa. In the 1920s, he had his own theatrical troupe, the Pierre Watkin Players. In 1927, the group moved its headquarters from Sioux Falls to Lincoln, Nebraska.
Watkin portrayed Perry White in both of the Superman serials of the late 1940s, which starred Kirk Alyn as the title character and Noel Neill as Lois Lane.
Watkin played a few different characters in the television series Adventures of Superman, in which John Hamilton played Perry White. He was set to reprise his role as the editor of The Daily Planet in a revival of the series in 1959, as Hamilton had died in the interim since the cancellation of the original series. However, series star George Reeves also died in the summer of 1959, and those plans ended. Watkin himself died six months later.
He also cast in 1955 in the episode "Joey and the Gypsies" of the NBC children's western series Fury. Watkin guest starred in the CBS western series Brave Eagle. He was cast twice each on the ABC/Warner Brothers series, Cheyenne (as Harvey Sinclair in "The Law Man") and Annie Oakley (as the Reverend Mills in the 1956 episode "The Reckless Press"). In 1958, Watkin portrayed Dr. Breen of Samaritan Hospital in the episode "San Francisco Story" of Rex Allen's syndicated western series, Frontier Doctor.
During the first season of CBS's Perry Mason from 1957 to 1958, Watkin appeared in three episodes as Judge Keetley. He was also cast during the 1950s on The Range Rider, Tales of the Texas Rangers, in three episodes of the western aviation adventure series Sky King, and five times on The Jack Benny Program.
Watkin played the part of Colonel Duncan in the 1958 episode "Decoy" of the ABC/Warner Brothers western series Colt .45.