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Elisabeth Risdon (born Daisy Cartwright Risdon; 26 April 1887 – 20 December 1958) was an English film actress. She appeared in over 140 films between 1913 and 1952. A beauty in her youth, she usually played in society parts. In later years in films she switched to playing character parts.
Born in London, England, Risdon graduated from the Royal Academy of Arts in 1918 with high honours. She attracted the attention of George Bernard Shaw and was cast as the lead in his biggest plays. Besides her performances for Shaw, she was leading lady for actors including George Arliss, Otis Skinner, and William Faversham. She was also under contract to the Theatre Guild for many years.
In later years, she taught drama to patients at a veterans administration hospital near her Brentwood home. She was married to the prolific silent film director George Loane Tucker who left her a widow in 1921. She later married actor Brandon Evans, who died in April 1958. She was the great-aunt of actress Wendy Barrie-Wilson.
Risdon died in December 1958 in St Johns Hospital in Santa Monica, California from a cerebral haemorrhage. Her body was donated to medical science.
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Paul Guilfoyle (July 14, 1902 – June 27, 1961) was an American stage, film and television actor. Later in his career, he also directed films and television episodes.
Guilfoyle was born in Jersey City, New Jersey.
He started off working on stage, performing on Broadway in 16 plays according to the Internet Broadway Database, beginning with The Jolly Roger and Cyrano de Bergerac in 1923 and ending with Jayhawker in 1934. He appeared in many films that starred Lee Tracy in the 1930s. In the 1949 crime film White Heat, he played (uncredited) a treacherous prison inmate murdered in cold blood by James Cagney's lead character.
He died of a heart attack on June 27, 1961 in Hollywood. He had a son, Anthony. Guilfoyle was interred in Glendale, California's Forest Lawn Memorial Park Cemetery.
Carol Coombs was born on October 15, 1935 in Toronto, Canada. She is an actress, known for It's a Wonderful Life (1946), The Mating Season (1951) and One Spooky Night (1955).
Ernie Adams (born Ernest Stephen Dumarais, June 18, 1885 – November 26, 1947) was an American vaudevillian performer, stage and screen actor and writer.
Born in San Francisco, California to Leon D. Adams and Laurence G. Girard, he was also billed as Ernest S. Adams and Ernie S. Adams.
He appeared in vaudeville, theater, and film. He started his career in musical comedy on Broadway. Along with his wife Berdonna Gilbert, he formed the vaudeville team "Gilbert and Adams". He appeared in more than 400 films starting from the silent era between 1919 and 1948, and was particularly known for playing shady characters. On Broadway, Adams appeared in Toot-Toot! (1918).
On November 26, 1947, Adams died of an acute pulmonary edema at the West Olympic Sanitarium in Los Angeles, California, aged 62. He is buried in Valhalla Memorial Park in North Hollywood.
Description above from the Wikipedia article Ernie Adams (actor), licensed under CC-BY-SA, full list of contributors on Wikipedia.
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Walter S. Baldwin Jr. (January 2, 1889 − January 27, 1977) was a prolific character actor whose career spanned five decades and 150 film and television roles, and numerous stage performances.
Baldwin was born in Lima, Ohio from a theatrical family and served in the First World War.
He was probably best known for playing the father of the handicapped sailor in The Best Years of Our Lives. He was the first actor to portray "Floyd the Barber" on The Andy Griffith Show.
Prior to his first film roles in 1939, Baldwin had appeared in more than a dozen Broadway plays. He played Whit in the first Broadway production of Of Mice and Men, and also appeared in the original Grand Hotel in a small role, as well as serving as the production's stage manager. He originated the role of Bensinger, the prissy Chicago Tribune reporter, in the Broadway production of The Front Page.
In the 1960s he had small acting roles in television shows such as Petticoat Junction and Green Acres. He continued to act in motion pictures, and one of his last roles was in Rosemary's Baby.
Baldwin was known for playing solid middle class burghers, although sometimes he gave portrayals of eccentric characters. He played a customer seeking a prostitute in The Lost Weekend and the rebellious prison trusty Orvy in Cry of the City. Walter Baldwin was featured in a lot of John Deere Day Movies from 1949-59 where he played the farmer Tom Gordon. In this series of Deere Day movies over a decade he helped to introduce many new pieces of John Deere farm equipment year-by-year. In each yearly movie he would be shown on his in A Tom Gordon Family Film where he would be buying new John Deere farm equipment or a new green and yellow tractor.A picture of Walter Baldwin playing Tom Gordon can be found on page 108 of Bob Pripp's book John Deere Yesterday & Today
Hal Erickson writes in Allmovie: "With a pinched Midwestern countenance that enabled him to portray taciturn farmers, obsequious grocery store clerks and the occasional sniveling coward, Baldwin was a familiar (if often unbilled) presence in Hollywood films for three decades."
Al Bridge was an American character actor, a fixture both in Westerns and in the comedies of Preston Sturges.
Although frequently billed as Alan Bridge, he was born Alfred Morton Bridge in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania in 1891 (not as Alford Bridge in 1890, as his tombstone erroneously states).
Following service as a corporal in the U.S. Army infantry in the first World War, Bridge joined a theatrical troupe. He dabbled in writing and in 1930 sold a script to a short film, Her Hired Husband (1930). He followed this with a B-Western script, God's Country and the Man (1931), in which he made his film debut as an actor.
For the next quarter century, he managed the atypical achievement of maintaining a career in both B-Westerns and in bigger dramatic and comedy features. Ten films for director Preston Sturges represent probably his most familiar contribution to Hollywood history. Bridge also appeared frequently on television until his death in 1957 at 66.
Collier's acting career started in 1938, when she had a small but credited role in A Desperate Adventure, starring Ramon Novarro and Marian Marsh. From 1940 through 1949, her career would be active and somewhat successful, with her playing mostly heroine roles in B-movies. During that period, she often starred opposite western stars Bob Steele, Tom Tyler, and Dennis Moore. In 1950, she starred in the sci-fi serial The Flying Disc Man from Mars.
Collier was sometimes called the Fourth Mesquiteer because seven of Republic Pictures' The Three Mesquiteers movies featured her as the female lead. Collier played Carol in the soap opera Dear John, which ran on CBS in the 1930s and 1940s. Beginning December 6, 1948, she was featured in You, a program on KMGM in Los Angeles, California.
In 1949, Collier co-starred in City Desk, a drama about activity in the newsroom of a newspaper. From 1950 through 1957, she starred mostly on television series episodes. She played Mary, the hero's girlfriend and sidekick, in 58 episodes of the television series Boston Blackie, which ran from 1951 to 1954. She retired from acting after 1957.
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Roger Gray (May 26, 1881 – January 20, 1959) was an American character who was active in the early years of the talking picture era. Born in Omaha, Nebraska in 1881, he began acting later in life, his first role being featured part in 1930's Hit the Deck. Over his 14-year career he would have small or featured roles in over 75 films, including such classics as The Merry Widow (1934), Les Misérables (1935), Captains Courageous (1937), The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1939), and 1940's Road to Singapore. His final appearance would be in a small role in the 1943 film Redhead from Manhattan. Married and divorced twice, he died in a Los Angeles hospital, and his body was cremated in the crematorium of Hollywood Memorial Cemetery (now Hollywood Forever Cemetery).
Al Hill (July 14, 1892 – July 14, 1954) was an American film character actor who appeared in over 320 films between 1927 and 1954, including the 1951 film The Girl on the Bridge. Hill died in 1954 on his 62nd birthday.
Description above from the Wikipedia article Al Hill (actor), licensed under CC-BY-SA, full list of contributors on Wikipedia.
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James Millican (1911–1955) was an American actor with over 200 film appearances mostly in western movies.
Description above from the Wikipedia article James Millican, licensed under CC-BY-SA, full list of contributors on Wikipedia.
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Houseley Stevenson (July 30, 1879 – August 6, 1953) was an American character actor who was born in London on July 30, 1879, and died in Duarte, California on August 6, 1953. He began his movie career in 1936 and had a short career in early television productions. Stevenson performed in live stage productions in New York under the name Houseley Stevens. He was a resident teacher at the Pasadena Playhouse in California. He was the father of actors Houseley Stevenson Jr., Edward Stevenson and Onslow Stevens.
Charles Cahill Wilson (July 29, 1894 – January 7, 1948) was an American screen and stage actor. He appeared in numerous films during the Golden Age of Hollywood from the late 1920s to late 1940s. Born in New York City in 1894, the white-haired, burly actor was often typecast as an earnest police officer, newspaper editor or principal. He appeared in over 250 films between 1928 and 1948, mostly playing small supporting roles with a few sentences. Charles Wilson began his acting career at the theatre, including roles in six Broadway plays between 1918 and 1931. In 1928, he directed the Hollywood comedy Lucky Boy (1928), where he also made his film debut. According to the Internet Movie Database, Lucky Boy was Wilson's only film as a director.
His most notable role was probably Clark Gable's "wonderfully aggravated" newspaper boss in Frank Capra's comedy It Happened One Night, which won five Academy Awards in 1935. He was also cast in small roles in other Capra movies such as Mr. Deeds Goes to Town (1936) and It's a Wonderful Life (1946). Shortly before his death, Wilson appeared as the boss of the Three Stooges in the two-reel comedy Crime on Their Hands (1948).