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Jean Pierre Hersholt (12 July 1886 – 2 June 1956) was a Danish-born actor who lived in the United States, where he was a leading film and radio talent, best known for his 17 years starring on radio in Dr. Christian and for playing Shirley Temple's grandfather in Heidi. Asked how to pronounce his name, he told The Literary Digest, "In English, her'sholt; in Danish, hairs'hult." Of his total credits, 75 were silent films and 65 were sound films. He appeared in 140 films and directed four.
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Edgar Livingston Kennedy (April 26, 1890 – November 9, 1948) was an American comedic film character actor, known as "Slow Burn". A slow burn is an exasperated facial expression, performed very deliberately; Kennedy embellished this by rubbing his hand over his bald head and across his face, in an attempt to hold his temper. Kennedy is best known for a small role as a lemonade vendor in the Marx Brothers film Duck Soup, as well as the many Hal Roach films he appeared in.
Kennedy became so identified with frustration that practically every studio hired him to play hotheads. He often played dumb cops, detectives, and even a prison warden; sometimes he was a grouchy moving man, truck driver, or blue-collar workman. His character usually lost his temper at least once. In Diplomaniacs, Kennedy presides over an international tribunal, where Wheeler & Woolsey want to do something about world peace. "Well, ya can't do anything about it here", yells Kennedy, "this is a peace conference!" Kennedy, established as the poster boy for frustration, even starred in an instructional film titled The Other Fellow, in which loudmouthed roadhog Edgar always vents his anger on other drivers (each one played by Kennedy as well), little realizing that, to them, he is "the other fellow."
Perhaps his most unusual roles were as a puppeteer in the detective mystery The Falcon Strikes Back and as a philosophical bartender inspired to create exotic cocktails in Harold Lloyd's last film, The Sin of Harold Diddlebock (1947). He also played comical detectives opposite two titans of acting: John Barrymore in Twentieth Century (1934) and Rex Harrison in Unfaithfully Yours (1948); in the latter, he tells conductor Harrison that "Nobody handles Handel like you handle Handel."
Kennedy died of throat cancer at the Motion Picture Hospital, San Fernando Valley on 9 November 1948. His body was interred at the Holy Cross Cemetery, Culver City, Los Angeles County, California.
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Maude Eburne (born Maud Eburne Riggs, 10 November 1875 – 15 October 1960) was a Canadian character actress of stage and screen, known for playing eccentric roles. Eburne began her career in stock theater in Buffalo, New York. Her early theater work was in Ontario and New York City, debuting on Broadway to great acclaim as "Coddles" in the 1914 farce A Pair of Sixes. "When I first came to New York... I said I didn't want to be beautiful young girls or stately leading women, but wanted parts that had something queer in them, especially if there were dialect."
She continued to play mainly humorous domestic roles on stage, appearing in productions such as The Half Moon (1920), Lady Butterfly (1923), Three Cheers (1928) and Many a Slip (1930), before her first significant film role — and first sound film role — in The Bat Whispers (1930), director Roland West's sound remake of his 1926 silent feature The Bat.
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Renie Riano (August 7, 1899 – July 3, 1971) was an English-born American actress who, with the exception of the Jiggs and Maggie comedies, had minor roles in 1940s-1950s films.
She was the daughter of Irene Riano (1871–1940), the daughter of Joseph Rice, a Philadelphia theatre owner, who, in the early 1890s, married vaudeville acrobat Robert Riano (b. 1867, Yonkers, New York – 1909, New York City). Irene Riano was a stage actress, the sole female member of vaudeville's popular Four Rianos acrobatic act, eccentric acrobat act which toured the world in vaudeville, variety and music halls, and the mother of actress Renie Riano. Irene was the daughter of Joseph Rice, a Philadelphia theatre owner. In the early 1890s, she married vaudeville acrobat Robert Riano (b. 1867, Yonkers, New York – 1909, New York City) who organised the famous "Four Rianos" eccentric acrobat act which toured the world in vaudeville, variety and music halls.
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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).
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Stanley Blystone (August 1, 1894 – July 16, 1956) was an American film actor who made more than 500 film appearances between 1924 and 1956. Blystone is best known for his appearance in Charlie Chaplin's Modern Times, playing Paulette Goddard's father, and several short films starring The Three Stooges. Some of his more memorable roles were in the films Half Shot Shooters, False Alarms, Goofs and Saddles, Three Little Twirps and Slaphappy Sleuths. His final appearance with the trio was Of Cash and Hash in 1955. He also appeared in several Laurel and Hardy films.
Frank Coghlan, Jr. (1916–2009) was an American actor who later became a career officer in the United States Navy and a Naval Aviator.
He appeared in approximately 129 films and television programs between 1920 and 1974. During the 1920s and 1930s, he became a popular child and juvenile actor appearing in early Our Gang comedies, but he is best known for the role of Billy Batson in Adventures of Captain Marvel.
Coghlan later served 23 years as an aviator and officer in the US Navy from 1942 to 1965. After retiring from the Navy, he returned to acting and appeared in television, films, and commercials.
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Guy Edward Hearn (September 6, 1888 – April 15, 1963) was an American actor who, in a forty-year film career, starting in 1915, played hundreds of roles, starting with juvenile leads, then, briefly, as leading man, all during the silent era.
With the arrival of sound, he became a character actor, appearing in scores of productions for virtually every studio, in which he was mostly unbilled, while those credits in which he was listed reflected at least nine stage names, most frequently Edward Hearn, but also Guy E. Hearn, Ed Hearn, Eddie Hearn, Eddie Hearne, and Edward Hearne.