Edith Fellows was born on May 20, 1923, in Boston, Massachusetts. When she was a year old, she and her father and grandmother moved to Charlotte, North Carolina. As a toddler, Edith was pigeon-toed and had trouble walking, and one doctor suggested that dance lessons might cure this condition. At age four, Edith entered Henderson's School of Dance, where she was spotted by a man claiming to be a talent scout, who told her grandmother that he could get Edith into show business for a fifty-dollar fee. The dance school raised the money, but when Edith and her grandmother arrived in Hollywood, they discovered that the address the man had given them did not exist, and they realized he was a fraud. Stranded in Hollywood with no means to return to North Carolina, Edith's grandmother began doing housework to earn a living. While she worked, she left Edith with a neighbor and her young son. One day Edith was taken along when the neighbor's son had an audition for the film Movie Night (1929), and she ended up getting the part. Although she never become a child star, Edith appeared in many popular films of the 1930s, most notably Pennies from Heaven (1936). She also proved herself to be a very versatile actress, playing roles ranging from a spoiled rich girl, as in Heart of the Rio Grande (1942), to a poor orphan girl, as in Pennies from Heaven. Edith was even given her own series, The Five Little Peppers, while under contract to Columbia, and she made four of the Pepper films (the first was Five Little Peppers and How They Grew (1939)) in two years. Between 1929 and 1954, Edith appeared in some fifty films, mostly in juvenile roles due to her short 4' 10" stature. But her career suddenly slowed down in the mid-1950s. Between 1955 and 1980, she appeared in only one film, Lilith (1964), in which she had a bit part. During this time, Edith chose to focus on her family life; she had married producer Freddie Fields in 1946, and their only child, daughter Kathy, was born in 1947. But Edith and Fields divorced in 1955, and the end of her marriage, coupled with other factors, caused Edith to have a nervous breakdown. She recovered, and in 1981, she returned to acting in numerous supporting roles on television. In 1985, fellow former child actor Jackie Cooper announced plans to make a TV movie based on Edith's life, but this project never happened.
Thomas Ross "Tommy" Bond was an American actor. A native of Dallas, Texas, Bond was best known for his work as a child actor for two different nonconsecutive periods on Our Gang (Little Rascals) comedies, and also for being the first actor to portray the role of "Superman's pal" Jimmy Olsen on screen.
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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.
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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.
Shirley Jean Rickert (March 25, 1926 – February 6, 2009) was an American child actress who was briefly the "blonde girl" for the Our Gang series in 1931, during the Hal Roach talkie period. At 18 months of age, Rickert won a local baby beauty contest, which emboldened her mother to move the family to Hollywood. She made her screen debut at the age of four in the short How's My Baby (1930), soon followed by her Our Gang debut, Helping Grandma in 1931. Rickert's most notable appearances were in the films Love Business and Bargain Day.
After Rickert left the Our Gang series, she had a brief movie career, including starring roles as Tomboy Teri Taylor alongside Mickey Rooney in eight Mickey McGuire comedies, followed by a string of jobs including driving trucks for the U.S. Army Air Corps during World War II. She later worked in burlesque as an exotic dancer, billed as Gilda and Her Crowning Glory (after her long blonde hair), retiring from burlesque in 1959. Description above from the Wikipedia article Shirley Jean Rickert, licensed under CC-BY-SA, full list of contributors on Wikipedia.
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Donald T. Beddoe (July 1, 1903 – January 19, 1991) was an American character actor. Born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, Beddoe was the son of Dan Beddoe, a Welsh classical singer, and his wife Mary. He graduated from the University of Cincinnati with bachelor's and master's degrees and taught English for three years.
After a decade of stage work and bit parts in films, Beddoe began more prominent film roles in the late 1930s. He was usually cast as fast-talking reporters and the like. His commercial acting career was put on hold when he served in World War II in the United States Army Air Corps, in which he performed in the Air Force play, Winged Victory.
Beddoe subsequently returned to films playing small character roles. He occasionally appeared in comedy shorts playing comic foils, such as in the Three Stooges shorts Three Sappy People and You Nazty Spy!
Beddoe appeared in more than 250 films.
Beddoe portrayed Mr. Tolliver in the ABC comedy The Second Hundred Years, and he was in the cast of Life with Father on CBS. He also was seen in dozens of television programs. In the 1950s and 1960s, he made four appearances on Have Gun – Will Travel, three times on Lawman, three on Maverick, three on Laramie, three on Lassie, and three on Perry Mason including in the 1958 episode 'The Case of the Buried Clock'. He was also cast on the western aviation series, Sky King, with Kirby Grant, on the ABC/Warner Brothers series, The Alaskans, with Roger Moore, on the ABC adventure series, Straightaway, with Brian Kelly and John Ashley, and on the NBC western series, The Tall Man, with Barry Sullivan and Clu Gulager. He appeared too on the CBS sitcom, Pete and Gladys, with Harry Morgan and Cara Williams, and on the ABC drama series, Going My Way, with Gene Kelly. He guest starred as well on David Janssen's first series, the crime drama, Richard Diamond, Private Detective. He also made appearances on episodes of The Lone Ranger in the '50s.
Beddoe played the outlaw Black Bart in the 1954 episode "Black Bart The PO8" of the western anthology series Death Valley Days, hosted by Stanley Andrews. In the story line, Black Bart is cast as a debonair poetry-writing former school teacher who turns to stagecoach robbery after his first holdup, a prank, pays handsomely. Wells Fargo detectives track him down through a laundry mark. He was also pursued with a romantic interest by his landlady, Winona Webb (Helen Brown). Black Bart spent six years in the penitentiary, never to be heard from again.
During the 1970–1971 season of ABC's Nanny and the Professor, Beddoe made four appearances, three as Mr. Thatcher. In 1984, he made his final television appearance as Kris in NBC's Highway to Heaven starring Michael Landon and Victor French.