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Carole Landis was born on New Year's Day in 1919 in Fairchild, Wisconsin, as Frances Lillian Mary Ridste. Her father, a railroad mechanic, was of Norwegian descent and her mother was Polish. Her father walked out, leaving Carole, her mother and an older brother and sister to fend for themselves.

After graduating from high school, she married Jack Robbins (Irving Wheeler), but the union lasted a month (the marriage was annulled because Carole was only 15 at the time). The couple remarried in August 1934, and the two headed to California to start a new life. For a while she worked as a dancer and singer, but before long the glitter of show business drew her to Los Angeles.

She won a studio contract with Warner Brothers but was a bit player for the most part in such films as A Star Is Born (1937), A Day at the Races (1937), and The Emperor's Candlesticks (1937). The following year started out much the same way, with more bit roles. By 1939, she was getting a few speaking roles, although mostly one-liners, and that year ended much as had the previous two years, with more bit roles; also, she and Wheeler were divorced.

In 1940 she was cast as Loana in the Hal Roach production of One Million B.C. (1940); she finally got noticed (the skimpy outfit helped), and her career began moving. She began getting parts in B pictures but didn't star in big productions -- although she had talent, the really good roles were given to the established stars of the day.

Her busiest year was 1942, with roles in Manila Calling (1942), The Powers Girl (1943), A Gentleman at Heart (1942), and three other movies. Unfortunately, critics took little notice of her films, and when they did, reviewers tended to focus on her breathtaking beauty. By the middle 1940s, Carole's career was beginning to short-circuit. Her contract with 20th Century-Fox had been canceled, her marriages to Willis Hunt Jr. and Thomas Wallace had failed, and her current marriage to Horace Schmidlapp was on the skids; all of that plus health problems spelled disaster for her professionally and personally.

Her final two films, Brass Monkey (1948) and The Silk Noose (1948) were released in 1948. On July 5, 1948, Carole committed suicide by taking an overdose of Seconal in her Brentwood Heights, California, home. She was only 29 and had made 49 pictures, most of which were, unfortunately, forgettable. If Hollywood moguls had given Carole a chance, she could have been one of the brightest stars in its history.

Warren William, the stalwart leading man of pre-Production Code talkies, was born Warren William Krech on December 2, 1894 in Aitkin, Minnesota, the son of a newspaper publisher. William originally planned to become a journalist, but he had a change of heart, and instead went to the American Academy of Dramatic Arts and trained to become an actor. He served in the military in France during World War I, remaining in that country after the Armistice to tour with a theatrical company.

He made his Broadway debut as William Warren in the H.G. Wells play "The Wonderful Visit" in 1924. While appearing in 17 more plays on Broadway from 1924 to 1930, he also managed to appear in three silent pictures under his own name, Warren Krech. His only substantial role was in his first flicker, Fox's The Town That Forgot God (1922). In 1923, he played a credited bit part in support of "Perils of Pauline" star Pearl White in her last serial photoplay, Plunder (1923) but he went uncredited in a bit part in the Roaring Twenties/John Gilbert-as-bootlegger movie, Twelve Miles Out (1927).

Possessed of a first-rate speaking voice, rich, deep, and mellifluous, he was a natural for the talkies, and in 1931, he joined the stock company at Warner Bros., the studio that gave the world cinema sound. Projecting a patrician persona, Warren William initially thrived in the all-talking pictures. He appeared in a lead role in his first talkie, Honor of the Family (1931), an adaptation Honoré de Balzac's novel "Cousin Pons." Subsequently, he appeared as second leads and leads in support of the likes of Dolores Costello (Drew Barrymore's grandmother), H.B. Warner, Walter Huston, and Marian Marsh, before headlining The Mouthpiece (1932) as a district attorney who quits for the other side of the law, defending mobsters before a last reel conversion. It was his break-through role, followed up by a turn as a crooked campaign manager with more than just the affairs of state on his mind in The Dark Horse (1932). He then moved on to leading roles in A-list pictures, including the high-suds soap opera Three on a Match (1932), the classic musical Gold Diggers of 1933 (1933), Frank Capra's Lady for a Day (1933), and the original Imitation of Life (1934) starring Claudette Colbert and Louise Beavers.

William's outstanding performances in these roles include Skyscraper Souls (1932), The Match King (1932), and Employees' Entrance (1933). He also broadened his range to play the fraudulent clairvoyant in The Mind Reader (1933).

The early 30s was the apogee of William's career. He appeared opposite strong female stars, including Barbara Stanwyck, Claudette Colbert, Bette Davis, Ann Dvorak and Loretta Young.

With his patrician looks and bearing, William was loaned out to Cecil B. DeMille to play the patrician's patrician, Julius Caesar, again opposite of Ms. Colbert in Cleopatra (1934), a typical prodigal DeMille production in which Henry Wilcoxon avenged his mentor's assassination by rousing the rabble. William went on as the second Sam Spade (renamed Ted Shayne) in the "Maltese Falcon" remake Satan Met a Lady (1936) with Bette Davis. He eventually found himself in B-films. The same year he played Caesar, he made his inaugural and terminal appearance as William Powell's premier replacement in the role of Philo Vance in The Dragon Murder Case (1934), a character he would resurrect five years later in The Gracie Allen Murder Case (1939).

After making his first appearance as the cinema sleuth Vance, William returned to his roots as a court-room advocate, cast as the first Perry Mason in The Case of the Howling Dog (1934). After four films, he was replaced as Erle Stanley Gardner's A-#1 attorney in 1936 by former silent screen heart-throb Ricardo Cortez, the man who had first played Sam Spade, in the original The Maltese Falcon (1931). Before leaving the studio, William appeared in one more picture under contract at Warners Bros., the A-list Stage Struck (1936); then the erstwhile Warners trouper trooped over to Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer for a few years, to work as a character actor.

Another movie series beckoned and William appeared as Michael Lanyard's "The Lone Wolf," in nine movies made by Columbia from 1939 to 1943 beginning with The Lone Wolf Spy Hunt (1939). Of the ten actors who appeared as "The Lone Wolf" in the 30 years the series ran, off and on, from 1919 until 1949, he made twice as many films as his nearest competitor (which included such top stars as Thomas Meighan and Melvyn Douglas). William continued to act in character parts calling for a patrician presence until his premature death in 1948.

Personally, Warren William was a shy and retiring type. Speaking of him, five-time Warners co-star Joan Blondell said that William "was an old man even when he was a young man." According to San Francisco critic Mick LaSalle's 2002 book "Dangerous Men: Pre-Code Hollywood and the Birth of the Modern Man" (New York: St. Martin's Press, 2002), William, who quite unlike his early Warner Bros.' stereotype as a heartless "love 'em and leave 'em"-style seducer, remained married to one woman throughout his adult life. He was an active inventor with multiple patents, designing one of the first recreational vehicles, reportedly so he could continue to sleep while being driven to the studio in the morning.

Warren William died in Hollywood on September 24, 1948, of multiple myeloma.

Movie roles are sometimes based upon what the audience expects to see. If the role called for the tall stereotypical Englishmen with the stiff upper lip and stern determination, that man would be C. Aubrey Smith, graduate of Cambridge University, a leading Freemason and a test cricketer for England. Smith was 30 by the time he embarked upon a career on the stage. It took another 20 plus years before he entered the flickering images of the movies. By 1915, Smith was over 50 in a medium that demanded young actors and starlets. For the next ten years, he appeared in a rather small number of silent movies, and after that, he faded from the scene. It was in 1930, with the advent of sound, that Smith found his position in the movies and that position would be distinguished roles. He played military officers, successful business men, ministers of the cloth and ministers of government. With the bushy eyebrows and stoic face, he played men who know about honour, tradition, and the correct path. He worked with big stars such as Greta Garbo, Douglas Fairbanks Jr. and Shirley Temple. As for honours, Smith received the Order of the British Empire in 1938 and was knighted in 1944. He continued to work up to the time of his death.

David Wark Griffith was born in rural Kentucky to Jacob "Roaring Jake" Griffith, a former Confederate Army colonel and Civil War veteran. Young Griffith grew up with his father's romantic war stories and melodramatic nineteenth-century literature that were to eventually shape his movies. In 1897 Griffith set out to pursue a career both acting and writing for the theater, but for the most part was unsuccessful. Reluctantly, he agreed to act in the new motion picture medium for Edwin S. Porter at the Edison Company. Griffith was eventually offered a job at the financially struggling American Mutoscope & Biograph Co., where he directed over four hundred and fifty short films, experimenting with the story-telling techniques he would later perfect in his epic The Birth of a Nation (1915).

Griffith and his personal cinematographer G.W. Bitzer collaborated to create and perfect such cinematic devices as the flashback, the iris shot, the mask and cross-cutting. In the years following "Birth", Griffith never again saw the same monumental success as his signature film and, in 1931, his increasing failures forced his retirement. Though hailed for his vision in narrative film-making, he was similarly criticized for his blatant racism. Griffith died in Los Angeles in 1948, one of the most dichotomous figures in film history.

The son of an affluent architect, Eisenstein attended the Institute of Civil Engineering in Petrograd as a young man. With the fall of the tsar in 1917, he worked as an engineer for the Red Army. In the following years, Eisenstein joined up with the Moscow Proletkult Theater as a set designer and then director. The Proletkult's director, Vsevolod Meyerhold, became a big influence on Eisenstein, introducing him to the concept of biomechanics, or conditioned spontaneity. Eisenstein furthered Meyerhold's theory with his own "montage of attractions"--a sequence of pictures whose total emotion effect is greater than the sum of its parts. He later theorized that this style of editing worked in a similar fashion to Marx's dialectic. Though Eisenstein wanted to make films for the common man, his intense use of symbolism and metaphor in what he called "intellectual montage" sometimes lost his audience. Though he made only seven films in his career, he and his theoretical writings demonstrated how film could move beyond its nineteenth-century predecessor--Victorian theatre-- to create abstract concepts with concrete images.

Samuel S. Hinds, a Harvard graduate, was a lawyer in Hollywood until the stock market crash of 1929, in which he lost most of his money. Hinds, who had an interest in theater acting, decided to embark on a career in acting, albeit it age 54. The tall, dignified-looking Hinds appeared in over 200 films, often cast as kindly authoritarian figures--doctors, judges, military officers, politicians, and such. His two most notable appearances were in Destry Rides Again (1939) and It's a Wonderful Life (1946). In addition to his film work, he kept busy appearing on stage, and continued working up until his death in 1948.

Most of Babe Ruth's records have been broken. In 1961, not only did Roger Maris break The Babe's 34-year-old record for most home runs in a season with 61* (2001), but Maris' teammate on the '61 Yankees, pitcher Whitey Ford broke the Babe's 43-year-old record for most scoreless innings pitched in a World Series when the Yankees dispatched the Reds that year in the postseason. (When asked how it felt to have beat the Babe's "other" record, Whitey responded, "It was a bad year for the Babe".)

Though Barry Bonds now holds the record for most home runs in a season (73), most home runs in a career (762), highest slugging percentage, most intentional walks, etc., The Babe still must be considered the greatest player who ever graced the game. In addition to his record 12 home run titles, his 13 slugging titles, his six R.B.I. titles, and his solo batting title (.378 in 1924; The Babe placed in the top five hitters in terms of batting average eight times, including a career high of .393 in 1923, when Harry Heilmann hit .403), The Babe won 18, 23 and 24 games as a left-handed pitcher for the Boston Red Sox in 1915, 1916 and 1917, and won the American League E.R.A. title in '16. He set his first home run title in 1918, another year the Sox won the World Series, as a part-time position player and part-time pitcher, notching up 11 homers and nine wins. George Herman Ruth likely will remain the sole player in major league baseball history to win batting, home run, R.B.I., slugging *and* E.R.A. titles, plus eat a dozen hot dogs and drink the better part of a keg of bootleg "needle" beer before suiting up for a game.

From 1914 to 1919, The Babe played for the Boston Red Sox, with whom he appeared on three World's Championship teams. Sold to the New York Yankees by Red Sox owner and theatrical impresario Harry Frazee, he led the-then no pennant American League franchise in Gotham to seven A.L. pennants and four World Series titles from 1920-1934. He played out his string with the Boston Braves in 1935; even a washed-up Babe was still able to pole three circuit clouts in one game before calling it quits after 28 games and six in that last season. The following year, he was one of the inaugural inductees into the Baseball Hall of Fame. Yes, the Babe was mighty, and he did prevail more often than naught except over one opponent: Father Time.

The Babe ended his 22 years in the Big Leagues with 2,873 hits good for a career batting average of .342, 714 home runs, 2,217 R.B.I.s, and 2,174 runs scored in 2,503 games. (From his debut in 1914 through the 1918 season, when he was making his transition to becoming a full time position player, Ruth only appeared in 261 ball games as he was considered the top left-handed pitcher in the American League.) In the record books, Ty Cobb scored more runs and Hank Aaron hit more homers and racked up more R.B.I.s (Interestingly, Hammerin' Hank and The Babe ended their careers with the exact same number of runs scored.), but they played in far more games than the The Babe, with 3,035 and 3,298 games, respectively. Among modern players, Rickey Henderson, who surpassed Cobb's record for runs after 25 years in The Show, played in 3,081 games, and Barry Bonds appeared in almost 3,000 games.

No player ever had the impact, both on and off the field, as did the charismatic Babe. When he died of cancer in 1948, the New York Times headline read, "Babe Ruth/Idol of Millions of Boys/Dead".

Elissa Landi was born in Venice, Italy on December 6, 1904. From an early age, she wanted to be an actress and writer. Her acting career started at the Oxford Repertory Company and on London's West End performing with actors such as Laurence Olivier and John Gielgud. She played Desdemona in "Othello" and appeared in plays with and by Noel Coward (most notably "Blithe Spirit, in which she was forced to enter through the fireplace when the door jammed). She made her London debut in "The Storm," which lasted for five months and for which she received rave reviews for her performances. That led to meaty leads in "Lavendar Ladies" and other plays. European film producers took notice of the photogenic beauty, and Elissa starred in eight films over the next two years. Her first film was the German-made Synd (1928). Her career didn't impress critics, though, until she played Anthea Dane in The Price of Things (1930). She felt that she would make more headway in the U.S., so she went to New York in 1931 to star in the stage version of "A Farewell to Arms." Although the play made no huge impression, Hollywood sat up and took notice, and she soon appeared in Body and Soul (1931) opposite Charles Farrell. However, it wasn't until Cecil B. DeMille's biblical epic The Sign of the Cross (1932) that many moviegoers got their first glimpse of Elissa, and they were enthralled, although she was among such heavyweight stars as Claudette Colbert, Fredric March, Charles Laughton, and Vivian Tobin. Completed in under eight weeks, the film was a smash hit. After A Passport to Hell (1932) and Devil's Lottery (1932), Elissa scored again in The Warrior's Husband (1933), a film about the intrigues and intricacies of the old Roman Empire that starred Marjorie Rambeau and Ernest Truex. In 1934 Elissa co-starred with Robert Donat in the classic The Count of Monte Cristo (1934). The next year saw Elissa as world-class singer Lisa Robbia, (singing voice dubbed by Nina Koshetz) in Enter Madame! (1934) with Cary Grant, the era's greatest leading man. In Cary Grant's biography, he mentions seeing Elissa at a typewriter, pursuing her other passion, writing, between takes throughout the filming process. After a mediocre role in Mad Holiday (1936), Elissa had a better part as the tormented Selma Landis in the hit After the Thin Man (1936), the second film in the series. She appeared in only three movies after that, the last being the low-budget Corregidor (1943) for bottom-of-the-barrel Producers Releasing Corporation. When that picture was completed, Elissa left films behind and concentrated on writing; she produced six novels and poetry volumes. After Hollywood she concentrated on Broadway, regional theater, and summer stock near Kingston, New York, where she lived with her husband Curtis Thomas and their daughter. Elissa succumbed to cancer on October 21, 1948 at just 43 years old.

James Baskett was born on February 16, 1904 in Indianapolis, Indiana, USA as James Franklin Baskett. He was an actor, known for Song of the South (1946), Revenge of the Zombies (1943) and Policy Man (1938). He was married to Margaret. He died on July 9, 1948 in Los Angeles, California, USA.

Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi (Mahatma Gandhi) was born on October 2, 1869, into a Hindu Modh family in Porbanadar, Gujarat, India. His father, named Karamchand Gandhi, was the Chief Minister (diwan) of the city of Porbanadar. His mother, named Putlibai, was the fourth wife; the previous three wives died in childbirth. Gandhi was born into the vaishya (business caste). He was 13 years old when married Kasturbai (Ba) Makhanji, through his parents arrangement. They had four sons. Gandhi learned tolerance and non-injury to living beings from an early age. He was abstinent from meat, alcohol, and promiscuity.

Gandhi studied law at the University of Bombay for one year, then at the University College London, from which he graduated in 1891, and was admitted to the bar of England. His reading of "Civil Disobedience" by David Thoreau inspired his devotion to the principle of non-violence. He returned to Bombay and practiced law there for a year, then went to South Africa to work for an Indian firm in Natal. There Gandhi experienced racism: he was thrown off a train while holding a valid first class ticket and pushed to third class. Later he was beaten by a stagecoach driver for refusing to travel on the foot-board to make room for a European passenger. He was barred from many hotels because of his race. In 1894, Gandhi founded the Natal Indian Congress. They focused on the Indian cause and British discrimination in South Africa. In 1897, Gandhi brought his wife and children to South Africa. He was attacked by a mob of racists, who tried to lynch him. He refused to press charges on any member of the mob. Gandhi became the first non-white lawyer to be admitted to the bar in South Africa.

During the South African War, Gandhi was a stretcher barer. He organized the Indian Ambulance corps of 300 Indian volunteers and hundreds of associates to serve wounded black South Africans. He was decorated for his courage at the Battle of Spion Kop. At that time Gandhi corresponded with Lev Tolstoy and expressed his admiration of the Tolstoyan principles of non-violence. In 1906 Gandhi, for the first time, organized a non-violent resistance against the Transvaal government's registration act. He called upon his fellow Indians to defy the new law in a non-violent manner and suffer the punishment for doing so. He was jailed on many occasions along with thousands of his supporters. Peaceful Indian protests caused a public outcry and forced the South African General J. C. Smuts to negotiate a compromise with Gandhi. However, Gandhi supported the British in World War I and encouraged Indians to join the Army to defend the British Empire, in compliance with the full citizenship requirement.

Back in India, Gandhi became active in the struggle for Indian Independence. He spoke at the conventions of the Indian National Congress, becoming one of its leaders. In 1918, Gandhi opposed the increasing tax levied by the British during the devastating famine. He was arrested in Champaran, state Bihar, for organizing civil resistance of tens of thousands of landless farmers and serfs. In jail Gandhi was on a hunger strike in solidarity with the famine stricken farmers. Hundreds of thousands of his supporters gathered around the jail. Gandhi was addressed by the people as Mahatma (Great Soul) and Bapu (Father). He was released. Then he represented the farmers in negotiation with the British administration. His effort worked. The tax collection was suspended and all prisoners were released. He declared that all violence was evil after the Amritsar massacre of 379 civilians by British troops, which traumatized the Indian nation. As the leader of the Indian National Congress party Gandhi launched "Swaraj", a campaign for independence and non-cooperation with the British authorities. He urged Indians to replace British goods with their own fabrics and goods. He was imprisoned from 1922-1924, being released after an appendectomy. During that time a Swaraj party was formed by his anxious opponents; it later dissolved back into the Congress.

On New Year's Eve, December 31, 1929, the Indian National Congress unfurled it's flag of independence. Gandhi and Jawaharlal Nehru issued the Declaration of Independence on January 26, 1930. Gandhi planned to achieve stability through the secularization of India, as the only way of uniting Hindus and Muslims in one peaceful nation. The religious divide was growing under the British colonial rule, which prospered from the monopoly on the salt trade. Everyone needed salt. Gandhi wrote to the Viceroy, Lord Irwin: "If my letter makes no appeal to your heart, on the eleventh day of March I shall proceed with co-workers of the Ashram as I can take, to disregard the provisions of the Salt Laws. I regard this tax to be the most iniquitous of all from the poor man's standpoint. As the Independence movement is essentially for the poorest in the land, the beginning will be made with this evil."

From March 12 to April 6, 1930, Gandhi made the famous Satyagraha ("Satya" - truth, "Agraha" - persuasion), The Salt March to Dandi. He walked on foot to the ocean in protest against the British salt monopoly and salt tax. He led thousands of Indians on a 240 mile (400 km) march from Ashram Ahmetabad to the village of Dandi on the ocean to make their own salt. For 23 days the two-mile long procession was watched by every resident along the journey. On April 6, Gandhi raised a grain of salt and declared, "With this, I am shaking the foundations of the British Empire." Gandhi's plan worked because it appealed to people in every region, class, religion, and ethnicity. The successful campaign led to the reaction of the British government and imprisonment of over 60,000 people for making or selling salt without a tax. The British opened fire on the unarmed crowd and shot hundreds of demonstrators. Gandhi was arrested in his sleep on the night of May 4th, 1930. Eventually the British government, represented by Lord Irwin, signed the Gandhi-Irwin Pact in March 1931, agreeing to free all political prisoners. Gandhi was invited to London as the leader of the Indian National Congress, but he was disappointed with the British attempts to destroy his influence by dividing him from his followers.

Gandhi campaigned to improve the lives of the untouchables, whom he called Harijans (the children of God). He promoted equitable rights, including the right to vote in the same electorates as other castes. In 1934 Gandhi survived three attempts on his life. In 1936, he briefly resigned from the party, because his popularity was stifling the diversity of membership; ranging from communists and socialists to religious conservatives and pro-business groups. He returned to the head of the party with the Jawaharlal Nehru presidency. At the beginning of the Second World War Gandhi declared that India could not be a party to this war, unless it has independence. His "Quit India" campaign led to mass arrests on an unprecedented scale of struggle. He was arrested in Bombay (Mumbai) and was held for two years. During his captivity his wife passed away and his secretary also died. Gandhi was released in May of 1944, due to a necessary surgery. His campaign led to a release of over 100,000 political prisoners before the end of the war.

India won independence in 1947, followed by the Indo-Pakistani War of 1947, and partition of India. Gandhi said, "Before partitioning India, my body will have to be cut into two pieces." About one million people died in the bloody riots until partition was reluctantly asserted by Gandhi as the only way to stop the Civil War. He urged the Congress Party to accept partition, and launched his last "fast-into-death" campaign in Delhi, calling for a stop to all violence. Gandhi also called to give Pakistan the 550,000,000 rupees in honor of the partition agreement. He tried to prevent instability and anger against India.

Gandhi was shot three times in the chest and died while on his way to a prayer meeting, on January 30, 1948. His assassins were convicted and executed a year later. The ashes of Mahatma Gandhi were split in portions and sent to all states of India to be scattered in rivers. Part of Gandhi's ashes rest in Raj Ghat, near Delhi, India. Part of Mahatma Gandhi's ashes are at the Lake Shrine in Los Angeles.

Born Mary Whitty on June 19, 1865, to a Liverpool newspaper editor and his wife, she became known as May Whitty to the world. She first stepped onto the London stage in 1882 at which she worked as an understudy at the St. James Theatre and then began playing leading roles when she joined a traveling stock company. After nearly 25 years as one of Britain's leading stage actresses, she appeared in her first film, Enoch Arden (1914), in Great Britain. She did not care much for the experience and appeared in only a few silent films afterward.

In 1918, based on her service to the arts and for performing for the troops during World War I, she was named as a Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire by King George V.

After a string of 1930s Broadway successes, she went to Hollywood, following the example of many of her British contemporaries. She found herself usually cast in highborn roles, sometimes crotchety, sometimes imperious, however often warmhearted. Classic examples of these were the crotchety Mrs. Bramson, an invalid who falls for the homicidal Robert Montgomery, in Night Must Fall (1937); Miss Froy\ in The Lady Vanishes (1938), wherein she plays the title character, enduring great physical exertion while maintaining her poise and dignity; and Lady Beldon in Mrs. Miniver (1942), a role which garnered her an Oscar nomination for best supporting actress. She proved herself equally capable of playing working-class roles, such as the dowdy phony psychic in The Thirteenth Chair (1937). Besides two Oscar nominations, she also won the National Board of Review best acting award for the 1937 film Night Must Fall (1937).

In 1892, she married London producer Ben Webster. They were the parents of a daughter, Margaret Webster, who became a playwright and actress in her own right. Margaret penned her mother's biography, The Same Only Different, published in 1969.

Whitty died at the age of 82 as the result of cancer in Beverly Hills shortly after completing her scenes in the film The Sign of the Ram (1948).

She once said, "I've got everything Betty Grable has ... only I've had it longer."

Diminutive Scots character actor of quirky personality and gift of gab. As a drama student at St. Andrews, he first performed in productions staged by the university's dramatic society. He served with the Royal Scots during World War I, then forged a career playing comic roles on the Shakespearean stage, where he was often billed as 'D.Hay Petrie'. With the Old Vic from 1920, he was much acclaimed for his performances as Sly in "The Taming of the Shrew" and as Puck in "A Midsummer Night's Dream". The screen saw him as eccentric personae, well-cast in period drama and in Dickensian parts (such as the malevolent debt-collector Quilp, in The Old Curiosity Shop (1934) and as the corn-chandler Uncle Pumblechook in Great Expectations (1946)). An inveterate scene-stealer, Petrie was able to slip with consummate ease from genre to genre and from comical to villainous.

He is perhaps best remembered as The MacLaggan in The Ghost Goes West (1935) and as the evil Dr. Fosco in Crimes at the Dark House (1940). To his ever-lasting regret, he missed out on the two parts he most coveted: that of Sancho Panza in Feodor Chaliapin Sr.'s film version of Don Quixote (1933) and as Quasimodo in The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1939). Petrie died suddenly, just two weeks after his 53rd birthday, from undisclosed causes.

Paul Wegener was born in Arnoldsdorf, West Prussia, part of the German Empire. His birthplace is currently part of Poland, under the name "Jarantowice". Wegener's family included a number of scientists, the most notable being his cousin Alfred Wegener (1880-1930). Alfred is remembered as the originator of the theory of continental drift.

Paul has no known relation to another Paul Wegener (1908-1993), who served as a Nazi Party official and an officer of the Schutzstaffel (SS).

Paul Wegener initially followed legal studies in college, but dropped out in order to become a theatrical actor. By 1906, he was part of an acting troupe led by Max Reinhardt (1873-1943). Reinhardt went on to become a film director. By 1912, Wegener himself had become interested in the film medium, and sought roles as a film actor.

In 1913, Wegener heard of an old Jewish legend, concerning the Golem. He wanted to adapt the legend into film, and started co-writing a script with Henrik Galeen (1881-1949). Their script was adapted into the film "The Golem" (1915), with Wegener and Galeen serving as the two co-directors. The film was a success and established Wegener as a celebrated figure in German cinema. Wegener returned to adapting the Golem legend into film, by directing a parody film in 1917 and the more serious "The Golem: How He Came into the World" (1920). The 1920 film remains one of the classics of German cinema. Wegener's other films often reflected his personal interests, such as trick photography, the supernatural, and mysticism.

He continued his film career into the 1930s, and made the transition from silent films to sound films. Under the Nazi regime (1933-1945), several actors and directors faced persecution or exile. Wegener instead found himself favored by the regime and appeared regularly in Nazi propaganda films of the 1940s. Wegener personally disliked the regime (which had persecuted a number of his friends and associates) and reputedly financed a number of German resistance groups.

In 1945, with World War II over and Berlin in ruins, Wegener took initiative as president of an organization intended to improve the living standards for surviving citizens of Berlin. He continued to appear in theatrical productions from 1945 to 1948, although he was suffering from an increasingly poor health.

In July 1948, Wegener collapsed on stage during a theatrical performance. The curtain was brought down and the rest of the performance was canceled. It was his last acting role, as he retired in an attempt to recuperate. He died in his sleep in September 1948. He was survived by his last wife Lyda Salmonova (1889-1968).

Eugene Joseff was born on 25 September 1904 in Illinois, USA. He was a set decorator and costume designer, known for Gone with the Wind (1939), Camille (1936) and Lillian Russell (1940). He was married to Joan Joseff. He died on 18 September 1948 in Newhall, California, USA.

His mother enrolled him in a dramatic class to overcome his self-consciousness. His gravel voice was exploited by an MGM talent scout. After his test and positive public reaction he was signed to a term contract to Our Gang. His favorite sport was bicycling. After Our Gang was over, Froggy was riding double on a motorized scooter with a friend delivering newspapers on a old three-lane highway in La Puente. Froggy was the passenger, his friend 'John Wilbrand' was driving and did a sudden U-turn into the front of a truck that hit and ended up killing Froggy who died around 6 hours later in the hospital. Froggy's friend John Wilbrand who was driving only suffered minor injuries. His older brother Tom said that he was just a normal type of kid in high school, doing well, when this accident occurred. After the gang, he did try out in some feature films, but he told his mother he wasn't interested in continuing with that. So his career in movies came to an end.

Warren Hymer was born on 25 February 1906 in New York City, New York, USA. He was an actor, known for Bluebeard's Eighth Wife (1938), The Lady and the Mob (1939) and Up the River (1930). He was married to Beau Williams and Virginia Meyer. He died on 25 March 1948 in Los Angeles, California, USA.

St. Louis-born King Baggot traveled to New York City with the express intent of crashing Broadway, but began his film career in nearby Fort Lee, NJ, in 1909. It didn't take long before he graduated from actor to writer and director--at times performing all three functions; in Shadows (1914) he not only directed but played ten different parts--and his efforts paid off, becoming a major star in the industry. Baggot was actually the first "star" to be given billing by his studio and his featured in its advertising. His most famous film as director would probably be the classic William S. Hart western Tumbleweeds (1925).

Baggot's career as a director faded with the coming of sound, but he continued his work as an actor, although often in bit parts. Still, he had an impressive career--more than 340 films as an actor and 45 as a director. He made his last film in 1947 and died of a stroke in 1948 in Los Angeles, CA.

Leo White started in comedy on the boards of English music hall in the late 1890's. He accompanied theatrical producer Daniel Frohman (later a partner of Adolph Zukor in Famous Players Lasky) to Hollywood in 1910. From 1914, he appeared in Essanay comedies and filmed the 'Sweedie' series with Wallace Beery. He then became a regular supporting player in Charles Chaplin's films at Essanay and, later Mutual, playing dapper, moustachioed continental (particularly French) villains and pompous aristocrats. That image remained with him, as he was contracted by Essanay to play the comic foil to their new French star comedian Max Linder.

White's major dramatic film credits of the silent period included Blood and Sand (1922) with Rudolph Valentino and the biblical epic Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ (1925). He successfully made the transition to talking pictures and had supporting roles in two Marx Brothers comedies, Monkey Business (1931) and the classic A Night at the Opera (1935), as well as playing a barber in Chaplin's The Great Dictator (1940). In the years just prior to his death, he worked as an extra in several films for Warner Brothers.

Blonde and utterly beautiful, Mary Nolan had the requisite figure and prettiness to rise up fast in the Hollywood ranks. Her downfall, however, would be just as fast and not at all pretty.

She was born Mary Imogene Robertson in 1905 and began her show-business career as a teenage model. Showman Florenz Ziegfeld Jr. took a gander at her--and her gorgeous gams--and signed up the young beauty for his "Follies" shows. A Jazz-Age baby and party girl by nature, Mary (who was using the moniker Imogene Wilson) had already earned the somewhat dubious nickname of "Bubbles" while working in New York, but she made the fatal career mistake of involving herself with a married Ziegfeld comedian and stirring up a major sex scandal. Frank Tinney was a top headliner married to musical comedy star Edna Davenport at the time. Mary's relationship with Tinney became quite abusive and the tabloids exposed the affair after Mary was seriously hospitalized during one of their many arguments. As a third-party husband-stealer, Mary received no comfort at all despite her injuries, and was summarily fired by Ziegfeld.

Forced to flee to Germany to avoid the negative attention, Mary starred in a few films there under the new moniker Imogene Robertson. She weathered the storm for almost two years in Europe before returning unobtrusively to Hollywood films in 1927 under another new stage name--Mary Nolan.

She proved a capable if not exceptional leading lady, pacing herself well in such films as West of Zanzibar (1928) with Lon Chaney, Desert Nights (1929)--one of John Gilbert's last vehicles--and Outside the Law (1930), a gangster flick opposite Edward G. Robinson. She even appeared top-billed in a few minor efforts, including Shanghai Lady (1929) and Young Desire (1930), but Docks of San Francisco (1932) would prove to be her last film appearance.

Troubled over her sudden and inexplicable reversal of fortune, she unfortunately let her self-destructive tendencies kick in again. Broke and despondent, she suffered several nervous breakdowns and her health declined due to acute malnutrition and a variety of physical ailments. She turned to heroin, and it spelled the end.

Little was heard from her until 1948, when she died of cardiac arrest and liver problems. She was only 45 years old. Mary became just one more Hollywood tragedy -- an incredible beauty whose life turned absolutely beastly.

Born in Illinois in 1904, the only child of Jennie and Frank Toland, Gregg and his mother moved to California several years after his parents divorced in 1910. Through Jennie's work as a housekeeper for several people in the movie business, Gregg may had gotten a $12-a-week job at age 15 as an office boy at William Fox Studios. Soon he was making $18 a week as an assistant cameraman. When sound came to movies in 1927, the audible whir of movie cameras became a problem, requiring the cumbersome use of soundproof booths. Toland helped devise a tool which silenced the camera's noise and which allowed the camera to move about more freely. In 1931, Toland received his first solo credit for the Eddie Cantor comedy, "Palmy Days." In 1939 he earned his first Oscar for his work on William Wyler's "Wuthering Heights." In the following year he sought out Orson Welles who then hired him to photograph "Citizen Kane." (Toland was said to have protected the inexperienced Welles from potential embarrassment by conferring with him in private about technical matters rather than bringing these up in front of the assembled cast and crew.) For "Kane" Toland used a method which became known as "deep focus" because it showed background objects as clearly as foreground objects. (Film theorist Andre Bazin said that Toland brought democracy to film-making by allowing viewers to discover what was interesting to them in a scene rather than having this choice dictated by the director.) Toland quickly became the highest paid cinematographer in the business, earning as much as $200,000 over a three year period. He also became perhaps the first cinematographer to receive prominent billing in the opening credits, rather than being relegated to a card containing seven or more other names. Tragically, Toland's career was cut short in 1948 by his untimely death at age 44. Toland had a daughter, Lothian, by his second wife and two sons, Gregg jr. and Timothy, by his third. Lothian became the wife of comic Red Skelton.

Patricia Farr was born on 15 January 1913 in Kansas City, Missouri, USA. She was an actress, known for This Gun for Hire (1942), Mr. & Mrs. Smith (1941) and Tailspin Tommy (1934). She was married to Robert Mayo. She died on 23 February 1948 in Burbank, California, USA.

Charles D. Brown was born on 1 July 1887 in Council Bluffs, Iowa, USA. He was an actor and director, known for The Big Sleep (1946), The Grapes of Wrath (1940) and Gold Diggers of 1937 (1936). He was married to Nellie V. Tallman (actress). He died on 25 November 1948 in Hollywood, California, USA.

Character actor who made his film debut on the East Coast in October 1911. After serving in WWI, Chandler continued with his film and stage career becoming one of the most prolific (if more often than not uncredited) bit actors in the industry. Also appeared in vaudeville as a comedian and singer; when his act completed its run in Los Angeles, signed with Thomas H. Ince's 101 Ranch Productions. First appearing in westerns and silent comedies, he was later frequently cast as detectives and police officers. He was related through marriage to actor 'Philip Morris (I)', both being married to sisters of the same family. Even though it exceeds 320 films, Chandler's film resume is likely incomplete due to the likelihood that many of his earliest silent films are lost.

Edgar Kennedy, who was born on April 26, 1890, near Monterey, California, hit the road as a young man and traveled across the country, working in a succession of jobs. He became a professional boxer, claiming to have gone 14 rounds against The Manassas Mauler, Jack Dempsey.

In addition to his knowledge of the "Sweet Science", Kennedy possessed a good musical voice, and wound up singing in musical shows in the Midwest, his first taste of show business. During his cross-country peregrinations he wound up in Los Angeles, and found himself hired as an actor by comedy producer Mack Sennett. At the Sennett Studios he was allegedly one of the original Keystone Kops, but soon graduated from bit parts to supporting roles in Keystone comedies, including Tillie's Punctured Romance (1914) with Charles Chaplin. Kennedy had good roles in other Chaplin movies, but when his contract expired in 1921 he went freelance, though he did occasionally return to Sennett.

After leaving Sennett Kennedy established himself as a first-rate supporting comic, and made a career out of playing harassed businessmen, next-door neighbors, cops, etc. By the late 1920s his craft was most prominently featured in comedies for Hal Roach, Sennett's arch-rival, where he flourished in support of Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy. It was with Roach that he developed his mastery of the "slow burn", a routine for which he became famous. He often played a none-too-bright policeman brought to the boiling point by the absurdities of Laurel and Hardy. He also directed the two in From Soup to Nuts (1928) and You're Darn Tootin' (1928).

RKO hired Kennedy to appear in a series of comedy shorts called "The Average Man," in which he played the head of a family. The shorts had very tight shooting schedules, often as few as three days, but Kennedy was always a pro and delighted the audience by giving them his all. He made over 200 short subjects and appeared in over 100 feature films, still in demand right up to the day he died of cancer on November 9, 1948.

Louis Lumière was a French engineer and industrialist who played a key role in the development of photography and cinema. His parents were Antoine Lumière, a photographer and painter, and Jeanne Joséphine Costille Lumière, who were married in 1861 and moved to Besançon, setting up a small photographic portrait studio. Here were born Auguste Lumière, Louis and their daughter Jeanne. They moved to Lyon in 1870, where their two other daughters were born: Mélina and Francine. Auguste and Louis both attended La Martiniere, the largest technical school in Lyon. At age 17, Louis invented a new process for film development using a dry plate. This process was significantly successful for the family business, permitting the opening of a new factory with an eventual production of 15 million plates per year. In 1894, his father, Antoine Lumière, attended an exhibition of Edison's Kinetoscope in Paris. Upon his return to Lyon, he showed his sons a length of film he had received from one of Edison's concessionaires; he also told them they should try to develop a cheaper alternative to the peephole film-viewing device and its bulky camera counterpart, the Kinetograph. This inspired brothers Auguste and Louis to work on a way to project film onto a screen, where many people could view it at the same time. By early 1895 they invented a device which they called the Cinématographe, a three-in-one device that could record, develop, and project motion pictures, and patented it on 13 February 1895. Their screening of a single film, Leaving the Factory (1895), on 22 March 1895 for around 200 members of the Society for the Development of the National Industry in Paris was probably the first presentation of projected film. Their first commercial public screening at Salon Indien du Grand Café in Paris on 28 December 1895 for around 40 paying visitors and invited relations has traditionally been regarded as the birth of cinema. The cinematographe was an immediate hit, and its influence was colossal. Within just two years, the Lumière catalogue included well over a thousand films, all of them single-shot efforts running under a minute, and many photographed by cameramen sent to various exotic locations. The Lumière brothers saw film as a novelty and had withdrawn from the film business by 1905. The Lumière freres' cinematographer was not their only invention. Mainly Louis is also credited with the birth of color photograph, the Autochromes, using a single exposure trichromic basis (instead of a long three-step exposure): a glass plaque is varnished and embedded with potato starch tinted in the three basic colors (rouge-orange, green and violet-blue), vegetal coal dust to fill the interstices and a black-and-white photographic emulsion layer to capture light. They were the main and more successful procedure for obtaining color photographs from 1903 to 1935, when Kodachrome, then Agfacolor and other less fragile film based procedures took over. An Autochrome is positivated from the same plaque, so they are unique images with a soft toned palette. As the Institut Lumière describes them, they are a middle point between photography and painting (akin specially to pointillism technique), because of their pastel shades and easy but still static pose looks.